Good times present great opportunities. Tough times present a great many opportunities too. How do you approach challenging times? What opportunities do you find in tough times?
Here are ten things you can do in tough times:

1. Learn new skills.
2. Take time to explore ideas, places and possibilities that looked impossible previously.
3. Stay well, fit and healthy. Discipline yourself to engage regularly in your preferred sport or exercise. Maintain good nutritional balance.
4. Sharpen your focus on what matters.
5. Reinvent what you do and how you do it.
6. Discover alliances that are based in true value and trust.
7. Re-examine your beliefs: do they stand the test of the times? Do they deliver you to the right place in yourself? Test new assumptions about life, about work and about business.
8. Clarify the difference between ‘musts’ and ‘wants’.
9. Let go, forgive and enjoy.
10. Discover that there is no reason for fear – here you are in tough times and you are managing, it is not the end of the world.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Sep.12.2008 :: Personal Growth, Tough Times :: 1 Comment »

What’s the most important mindset you need to have when facing tough times? There is plenty of doom talk all around. The economy, oil, war, financial meltdown, GM, Fannie and Freddy – you name it. The good news is the world is not coming to an end tomorrow. But abrupt changes are underway. These changes bring with them challenges filled with opportunities.

How do you react when you’re faced with a challenge?

People approach tough times with unproductive mindsets that assume the worst for themselves and those around them or with productive mindsets. The key, the most important thing to know – the most important mindset to have – is that you have the power to choose your mindset. It’s easy to fall into a number of unproductive mindsets, but you can learn the signs and practice shifting and reframing these into productive mindsets.

Click here to find out about the unproductive and the productive mindsets you can choose when faced with a challenge.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Sep.04.2008 :: The Key, Tough Times :: No Comments »