iColleague

How to Extend the Life of Your Computer

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:45:00 +0000

Slideshare.net Contest

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:31:00 +0000

A good news, Slideshare.net is conducting a contest "Tell a Story in 30 slides (or less!)" starting May 26 to June 15th, 2009. So if you are good in designing PowerPoint presentations then go ahead and give it a try.

All entrants will get a free Fuze Meeting account for a year — a $270 value!

Prizes:
Grand Prize $5,000

4 Category prizes: iPhone + $100 iTunes card

Categories:
Best Design
Best Story Telling Ability
Most Popular
Best Use of Multimedia

For more information visit this link: http://www.slideshare.net/contest/fuze-tell-a-story-contest and read the contest rules.

Wishing you all a good luck!

Creative Thinking

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:03:00 +0000

Motivational Speech of Steven Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Sun, 31 May 2009 18:33:00 +0000

Steven Paul Jobs is an American businessman and co-founder, and CEO of Apple Inc. Jobs is the former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios.

Below is the transcript:

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

How to Pick a Comfortable Airline Seat

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:34:00 +0000

How to Prevent and Recognize Symptoms of Swine Flu

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:28:00 +0000

Sayings of Mahatma Gandhi

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:21:00 +0000

Re-Tool Your Thinking

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:45:00 +0000

Happiness has a different meaning for each of us. The reason is everyone is at a different place and has varied desires. All types of self-improvement requires change and change is hard for most people. There are some basics that apply to all forms of change. Read on to find out what they are.

Everything we do and everything we are starts with a thought.

So where do thoughts come from?

This is like asking where does the universe start? Who knows, but when it comes to thoughts we know they come from your brain. Thoughts can be accumulated over time from the environment you grew up in, from what we hear and from what we see. We have good thoughts and we have bad thoughts. Where you have success or failure is when you act on these thoughts and if you are acting on good or bad thoughts.

Good thoughts are no good without action. For you to experience happiness you first have to know the difference between being just OK and really happy. Then your first step will be to re-tool your thinking.

What is re-tool thinking?

This is a process, it involves steps and techniques to eliminate the old thinking and replace it with the new thoughts. Just like machinery has to be retooled so it can make new parts, your thinking has to go through the same process. If you don't you will always be battling old habits and old habits die hard. We can make it very simple and say change can't to can, but without retooling something goes haywire in the process.

The other issue is, don't try to do it all at once. The number one thing that frustrates people from changing is wanting it to happen in one day. This fast food mentality carries over into many other areas. Write down a few things, work on them one at a time and then see what difference they make. If you see a positive change you know your on the right track, if not try again. Happiness is a state of thought, changing thoughts is a process.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Re-Tool-Your-Thinking&id=2347392

What is a trojan horse virus?

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:39:00 +0000

Top 10 best Antiviruses (2009)

Windows 7 First Look Cnet

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:20:00 +0000

Microsoft gives users Windows 7 free for 13 months

Microsoft Corp. will let users run Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) for more than a year, giving them free use of the new operating system for a significantly longer time than it did Vista's previews.

Windows 7 RC, slated for download by MSDN and TechNet subscribers today and by the general public on May 5, doesn't expire until June 1, 2010, 13 months from tomorrow, Microsoft confirmed today.

Click here to read more.

Creative Commons

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:14:00 +0000

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."

Click here to get more info.

Be Good to Parents

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Fri, 15 May 2009 08:18:00 +0000

Rights of Parents in Islam

1. You should not cause them any harm even if they commit any excesses.

2. Respect and honour them in your speech and dealings with them.

3. Obey them in permissible acts.

4. If they are in need of money, assist them.

5. The following rights are due to parents after their death:

(a) Continue making duas of forgiveness and mercy for them. Continue sending rewards to them in the form of optional acts of worship and charity on their behalf.
(b) Meet their friends and relatives in a friendly way and also assist them wherever possible.

(c) If you have the finances, fulfil their unpaid debts and the permissible bequests that they have made.

(d) When they pass away, abstain from crying and wailing aloud or else their souls will be troubled.

Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said: "On the Day of Judgment, my person will not be seen by those who drank liquor, those who on hearing my name did not invoke the blessings of God on me, or those who were cursed and disowned by their parents."

May Allah grant us the success that we may be regarded amongst those who have been good towards their parents.

Thorny Devil

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Fri, 15 May 2009 07:32:00 +0000

Thorny Devil is a name of a reptile of lizard species recently found in Australia.

A Wise Camel

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Thu, 14 May 2009 19:30:00 +0000

Windows 98 & XP Sounds

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Thu, 14 May 2009 19:10:00 +0000

A compilation of music from the Windows 98 and Windows XP sound files.

A Difference Between DVD-R and DVD+R

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Sat, 09 May 2009 18:37:00 +0000

Create a Map

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Sat, 09 May 2009 18:32:00 +0000

How to create personalized, annotated, customized maps using Google Maps.

Google Docs in Plain English

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Sat, 09 May 2009 18:24:00 +0000

Access Free Yahoo! Mail with Outlook 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:29:00 +0000

Now you can access Free Yahoo! Mail with Outlook 2007.

Outlook takes really good care of you. It knows and reminds you about your appointments. It tells you what to do. It remembers your contacts. It keeps track of the documents you touch.

Click here to learn more.

Importance of Time in our Life

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:15:00 +0000

Time bears a unique and direct pertinence to all human concerns. Time is a fundamental feature of the physical universe, of the life process, of the functions of the mind, and of collective behavior. In humans, temporal experience is all pervasive, intimate and immediate. Life, death and time combine in a dynamic unity that has been of concern to all great philosophies and religions and to the arts and humanities.

In general, sensible people know the importance of time.

Imagine there is a bank which credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day, allow you to keep no cash balance, and every evening cancels whatever part of the amount you had failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course!

Well, everyone has such a bank. Its name is TIME. Every morning, it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purpose.

It carries over no balance. It allows no overdraft. Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day's deposits, the loss is yours.

There is no going back. There is no drawing against the "tomorrow". You must live in the present on today's deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness and success!

The clock is running. Make the most of today....

The Importance of Being Healthy and Staying Fit

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:10:00 +0000

We try to do many things at a time and normally find that the day should have more than 24 hours. Many people have full time jobs of more than eight hours a day, have to take work to home, study a long distance course and on top of that, take care of a family or home. And probably, the last thing in our "to do list" is to take care about health and fitness.

The health and fitness industry was developed to make people aware that these are two aspects of your being you can not be careless about and need as much attention as any other aspect of our lives. In fact, it should be one of the priorities, as the good health of our body will enable us to do the rest of our activities.

Health has being a major issue for political leaders in the past years. The increase of the number of people suffering of obesity and the illnesses related to this condition, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, have made them rethink the strategy to battle this. Campaigns in schools and health centers target kids and parents to make them aware of the importance of keeping a healthy diet and to exercise. But it is difficult to keep people and specially kids away from hamburgers, fizzy drinks and fast food. We seem to find it very difficult to organize our schedules in order to make time for cooking meals and eating healthily and fast food is so cheap!

Fitness is another big issue that is closely related to the lifestyles we have. In a society where obesity has become a very big concern, exercising has become one of the most advertised ways of solving the problem. The gyms and health clubs are experiencing their golden age, offering very appealing offers to every person who would like to try them out.

One thing most of the people do not realize is that it is not necessary to go to a gym and workout for long hours in order to keep fit. To exercise is a habit people must acquire and try to do it every day. A sedentary life is not healthy and added to an unhealthy diet can have serious consequences.

A daily walk of 30 minutes, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, getting off the bus one stop before our usual one or going to the nearby shop by walk instead of taking the car, will provide us with the daily exercise our body needs and will keep us fit. So as you can see, no gym is necessary and fitness can be achieved with the little things we do in our daily routine. Our lives are busy enough to make another slot for the gym, and most of the times it becomes easier to blame this fact for the lack of exercise we get and for the extra weight we may have.

Kids are too used to spending their spare time in front of the TV playing video games that they have forgotten what is like to be outside playing ball with other kids, running and climbing. They prefer to be in front of the computer chatting with friends instead of going out with them and play around. Technology has made our lives easier but it has also thrown us into bad habits which in the long term do not seem to be very healthy for us.

Source: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1164722/the_importance_of_being_healthy_and.html

Swine Flu Facts

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 20:08:00 +0000

The swine flu outbreak (2009) refers to the spread among humans of a new strain of H1N1 swine influenza virus. The outbreak is believed to have begun in March 2009. Local outbreaks of an influenza-like illness were first detected in three areas of Mexico, but the outbreak was not clinically identified as a new strain until April 24, 2009. Its presence was soon confirmed in various Mexican states and Mexico City.

Within days isolated cases (and suspected cases) began to appear elsewhere in Mexico, the U.S., and several other Northern Hemisphere countries. By April 28, the new strain was confirmed to have spread to other regions. Countries with confirmed cases included Spain, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Israel, and the virus was suspected in many other nations, including South Korea and Austria, with over 3,000 candidate cases, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to raise its pandemic alert level to phase 4. A phase 4 warning means that the WHO considers that there is "sustained human to human transmission"; whereas phases 5 and 6 represent "widespread human infection". Despite the scale of the alert, the WHO stated on April 29 that the majority of people infected with the virus make a full recovery without need of medical attention or antiviral drugs. Until April 25, all cases were said to be people who lived in or had been to Mexico, but on this date Kansas confirmed a case of a person who had not traveled to Mexico.

The new strain is an apparent reassortment of several strains of influenza A virus subtype H1N1, which analysis at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified as a strain endemic in humans, a strain endemic in birds, and two strains endemic in American and Eurasian pigs (swine).

In late April both the United Nations WHO and the U.S. CDC expressed serious concern about the situation, as it had the potential to become a flu pandemic due to the novelty of the influenza strain, its transmission from human to human, and the unusually high mortality rate in Mexico.

On April 25, 2009, the WHO formally determined the situation to be a "public health emergency of international concern", with knowledge lacking in regard to "the clinical features, epidemiology, and virology of reported cases and the appropriate responses". Government health agencies around the world also expressed concerns over the outbreak and are monitoring the situation closely.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_outbreak

Safety At Work - Everyone's Responsibility

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:06:00 +0000

Why is safety in the workplace important?

This is a question that I think many managers find themselves asking themselves a lot. There are many reasons why safety in the work place is very important. There are two major reasons that will be talked about here.

The first is about employees being comfortable and confident in their jobs. The second reason has to do with cost of work-related injuries and illness. When a person goes in to work at a new job for the first time, they automatically assume there work place is a safe environment. After they start working for the company and they find unsafe working conditions this can cause employees to become reluctant of their jobs. People always want to feel safe no matter what it is that they are doing, whether it is driving in their car, walking down the street, or if they are at work. If an employee is constantly worried about safety hazards when they are on the job, this will undoubtedly interrupt their work performance. How can an employee concentrate and focus on their job when they are thinking about falling off the ladder because the ground underneath of the ladder is so unstable? If your employees are not comfortable and confident in their work environment you will lose productivity.

The cost of work place injury is no joke. A simple injury such as stitches can put a nice dent in the bank account. If a person is seriously injured there are many things that will cost you money. If an employee must take time off from work because of work related injury, there will be workman’s compensation to pay for. Your premiums for workman’s compensation will also go up. Other employees will have to pick up the extra work which could result in overtime and more money lost. There is also possibility of further injury if another employee has to fill the spot of the employee that was injured. The person taken the other employees spot might not have time to receive the proper training needed.

You will also lose time and money filling out all the paperwork that goes a long with workplace injury. As soon as the injured employee has recovered, get then back to work as soon as possible. The faster they return to work the more money you will save. A lot of employers a reluctant after a work-related injury to have the employee return again. They are afraid of repeat injury, but don’t be more than likely it won’t happen again.

Injuries that occur over a long period of time can also be a real money drainer. When employees are constantly doing the same repetitive motions injury can occur over a long period of time, especially if safety precautions are not being taken. Two very common problems that happen are back problems and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Always make sure your employees have proper training and are executing the training correctly. Surgery and time off for work for such things can be pretty costly.

Always remember to keep a watchful eye for safety hazards around your business. Things may seem fine but safety problems can appear out of nowhere. If you come across a safety hazard fix the problem immediately. The faster it is fixed the less likely hood of injury and money lost. Remember when it comes to safety be a perfect role model to your employees. If they see it is top priority to you, they will make it top priority themselves.

Source: http://workplace-safetytips.com/

5 Great Ways to Keep Your Cool

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:46:00 +0000

Here are five tips for staying cool as a cucumber during heated moments. If these are new to you, don’t try to incorporate all five at once. Pick one, use it until it feels more comfortable, then incorporate another, and so on.

Take a brain break. Take a minimum of 20 minutes to allow the emotional flooding to reside. The key here is to do something else. Don’t use the break to keep replaying the conflict conversation in your head, as that may increase the heat. Examples: Go for a walk and think about your weekend plans. Do the crossword puzzle in today’s paper. Pick something that makes your brain think about anything other than the conflict situation.

Neutralize by naming. Naming the behavior that’s contributing to your anger can help take its power away. This is particularly true in difficult negotiations. Example: “When you said you have other candidates who would be happy to accept the job with that salary, it appeared you were suggesting you’re ready to hire someone else instead. I’d hate for a tactic tried in a difficult moment to get in the way of what could be a great partnership here. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Set reminders. Reminding yourself of your goals can help re-stabilize you during difficult moments. Write them on 3×5 card and bring the card with you. When you feel yourself heating up, look down at your card and remind yourself what you really want from this conversation. Keep in mind, though, that your goals shouldn’t be contingent on getting the other person to do something. They should long-term: Strengthen this work relationship. Improve customer service in the department. Get a better handle on my workload.

Identify the threat. We get angry when we perceive that something important to us is threatened, often something related to our identity. For example, we may feel angry if we believe the other person is challenging our competence, trying to control us, exclude us or question our worth. We can manage our conflict triggers by identifying the threat and reminding ourselves it’s not “all or nothing.” If a boss let’s you know that there’s a part of your job you didn’t handle well, that’s not the same as being incompetent. It means there’s probably work you do well and some you don’t do so well. Don’t get swept away.

Create a stopper. Stoppers are mechanisms for reminding yourself to stop doing something. Stoppers might include a note you pin to your bathroom mirror, kind of a “daily reminder.” Or a spot on the back of your hand that you pinch to get your own attention. Or a meditation breathing technique you learned in yoga class. You get the idea. You’ll need to practice using this stopper a number of times before you’ll find it truly effective.

For more ideas, visit: http://conflictzen.com/calm-down-during-disagreements/

A Visual Guide to Inflation

noreply@blogger.com (Mohammed Abdulhameed) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:31:00 +0000