January is "Restart The Spark" month

by Susie and Otto

... And because January is "Restart The
Spark" month...

...Not only are we going to be releasing our
brand new "Restart The Spark" audio program
towards the end of the month-- but you're
also going to be getting an incredible amount
of new info from us throughout January to help
you "restart the spark" in your relationship,
marriage and life just for being a subscriber
to these emails.

You're going to be so glad you're a member
of our online community and a subscriber to
our emails because we've got some F*R*eee
videos, audios, special reports, articles and
more we're just plain going to give you.

You can have more love, more passion,
more connection and more of anything YOU
want.

All you have to do is "restart the spark" in
your relationship and life and we're here
to help...

So,. let's get started...


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This Week's Article...

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4 Ways To "Restart The Spark"...

By Susie and Otto Collins

A couple of days ago, a friend of wished us a
happy new year by telling us that "everything's
going to be fine in 2009."

While this is certainly our wish for you, we think
that our lives and relationships can be even better
than "fine" in the coming year and so can yours.

We all can restart the spark--the spark in our
significant relationship; the spark in our everyday
lives; the spark in other relationships that are
important to us.

We can ALL create more happiness and joy in the
coming year.

We think it all starts with putting the spark back in your
relationships and lives.

So as you're reading this, your question might be ...

How do you put the spark back or even find it
after it's been buried under fear, distance, apathy,
tiredness or disconnection?

Here are some ways that you can begin starting
right now to invite more spark into your life...

1. Decide where you want more spark and make
sure that it's truly what you want. Make sure that
you are willing to make a few changes in your life
and do a few things differently.

In what area of your life or which relationship
would you like to enliven and enrich?

2. Make a change in a belief that holds you back.

Your beliefs come from thoughts that you think
over and over--which can certainly come from
past experiences. Wherever these beliefs came
from, they can be changed if they no longer
are in your best interest--if they hold you back
from having what you want.

A great example of this is this...

Old belief--"I'm not loved and supported in a
way that I want."

New belief--"Support is there for me to do what
I want if I'm open to it."

You can start changing that belief by noticing
when this new belief is true. In this case, when
you feel supported and loved.

What's one new belief you can begin to adopt
that will bring you closer to what you want?

3. Make a change in an attitude that holds you
back.

Your attitude toward life and your relationships
certainly create more of the same.

The trick is to change your attitude without
"blue-skying" it or telling yourself something
that you can not believe.

Here's an example of changing your attitude
and the way you think about your partner...

Old attitude--"My partner will never make
changes in our relationship."

New attitude--"My partner is my friend and
I can start treating him (or her) that way."

What new attitude can you begin to embody
that will bring you closer to what you want?

4. Learn a new skill and practice it.

To make any change, especially if you want
to bring more spark to your life, you usually
need to learn something new and then
practice it.

For Susie, it's a deeper learning of how to
stay present, grounded and open no matter
what is going on around her.

For you, it might be a new way to relate to
your loved one or it might be learning how
to change your thinking to be more positive.

What's one new skill you'd like to learn next
year that would make your life better?

What we know is that we all have the opportunity
to make 2009 the best year ever.

We encourage you to open yourself to this
opportunity of more love, passion and zest
for life than you ever thought possible.

Achieve Less Stress by Staying Organized

- By Get Organized

Day-to-day life in today's world can be very stressful. Individuals today cram longer hours at work, time with friends and family, as well as leisure time into the same 24 hours. As more demands are placed on our time, it only gets more difficult to avoid becoming stressed out. What else can be done to keep everything together? If you want to achieve less stress in your life, despite all its demands, the easiest and very best way to accomplish this is to become as well organized as possible.

Tips for Getting Organized:
Thinking up ways to get your life organized is the easy part. Identify the stressful aspects and activities in your life, and take some time (if you have any left!) to figure out a plan that will work for you. What makes you the most stressed: losing your car keys in the morning, looking for important documents at work, or having to stop on the way home from work for take-out because you did not have the time to plan dinner?

Here are some suggestions to get you started. Just remember: the focus is on the stressful things in your life and whether there are ways that you can get organized to reduce the stress.

* Do you have a habit of forgetting things? Make to-do lists and an appointment book your focus. In fact, you can even combine the two by purchasing a diary in which you note down all your daily tasks, appointments, and anything else that's important for you to remember.

* Use only one calendar, diary, appointment book, and so on. Don't use multiple planning tools for work and personal life -- this makes it all too easy to jot down conflicting appointments. Stick to one calendar, and you'll be able to see at a glance what you have planned on any given day, whether at work or at home.

* Are you constantly losing important items such as your wallet and keys? Position a table and a small dish right by your front door, and make a habit of putting all these items in the dish as soon as you get home.

* Is it cooking meals after work that makes your stress levels go up? Hunt down a cookbook or a recipe on a website with a focus on meals that are quick and easy to prepare. Pre-plan a week's worth of menus at once, shop once a week, and you'll never be at a loss for quick and tasty meals.

* Is the paper trail getting you down? Spend some time organizing your filing cabinet and purging it of out-dated documents -- and if you don't have a filing cabinet, get one!

* De-clutter your home and work space. The less you have, the less you can lose, and the less you need to keep organized.

* Is it simply getting the small things done that causes you the most stress? Make a deal with yourself: once you start a task, you'll keep going till it's done. This could be something as simple as sorting your mail. If you open a letter, take the appropriate action. For example, if it's a bill -- pay it, then file the bill, or put it in your to-do file to pay later (and make a note on your to-do list).

* Schedule in time for unplanned "stuff." Stuff could be an unexpected trip to the store, a batch of cookies for the bake sale your child forgot to mention, an emergency meeting at work -- anything at all. The point here is, by planning on unscheduled emergencies, you'll remain organized and stress-free even if an unplanned situation arises. And if it doesn't, you've got some spare "you" time!

Putting It All into Practice:
The best part is, none of these suggestions are difficult or too expensive to achieve. You don't need a complex and sophisticated PDA to write down appointments and make lists. There's absolutely nothing wrong with going old-fashioned and using a diary or even a simple notebook to organize your days. It is infinitely more sensible to rely on good old-fashioned pen and paper, rather than an expensive gadget that can break, get stolen, or run out of battery juice.

All of this sounds easy to do, because it is! There is nothing hard about making lists, writing down appointments, and putting your keys in the same place every time you come home. However, you will quickly find that remembering to put all of this into practice consistently is the difficult part.

Luckily, like most things, being organized gets easier over time. Make these simple tools and techniques part of your daily routine, and pretty soon being organized will be just another habit -- something you do without even thinking. And with better organization comes reduced stress. You will find that suddenly you have more time to spend with family and friends, and that the leisure time you do have is that much more enjoyable.

Befriend your fears

By Tara Brach

Maria described herself, during our first therapy session, as a "prisoner of fear." Her slight frame was tense, and her dark eyes had an apprehensive look. From the outside, she said, her life appeared to be going very well. As a social worker, she was a strong advocate for her clients. She had good friends, and she had been living with her partner, Jeff, for three years. Yet her incessant worrying about how things might go wrong clouded every experience.

When stuck in morning traffic, Maria was gripped with fear about being late for work. She was perpetually anxious about disappointing her clients or saying the wrong thing at staff lunches. Any hint of making a mistake spiraled into a fear of being fired. At home, if Jeff spoke in a sharp tone, Maria's heart pounded and her stomach knotted up. "This morning he complained that I'd left the gas tank near empty, and I thought, 'He's going to walk out and never come back,'" she said. Maria could never shake the feeling that just around the corner, things were going to fall apart.

Maria was living in what I call the trance of fear. When you are in this trance, fearful thoughts and emotions take over and obscure the larger truths of life. You forget the love between you and your dear ones; you forget the beauty of the natural world; you forget your essential goodness and wholeness. You expect trouble and are unable to live in the present moment.

Brain chemistry and genetics may predispose a person to excessive fearfulness, and it can be fueled by societal circumstances, such as the perception of a terrorist threat. Traumatic childhood experiences may also give rise to the trance of fear.

For Maria, the fear took hold in elementary school, when her mother was holding down two jobs and going to night school, leaving Maria to care for her two younger siblings. Her father worked erratically, drank too much, and had an unpredictable temper. "He would barge in at dinnertime, red-faced and angry, yell at me, and then disappear into his room," she told me. "I had no idea what I'd done wrong." When Maria was 13, her father vanished without a word, and she always felt that she had driven him away.

It is understandable that Maria's fear of her father's anger became linked with a belief that her "badness" made him leave. But even if your personal history is not so distressing, you might spend a part of your life worrying about the ways in which you aren't good enough.

Necessary Fears

Fear itself is a natural and necessary part of being alive. All living beings experience themselves as separate, with a sense of "me in here" and "the world out there." And that sense of separateness leads you to recognize that you can be injured by others, and that, eventually, the "me in here" will die. At the same time, you are genetically programmed to keep yourself alive and free from harm, and it is fear that signals you to respond when threats arise. It lets you know to hit the brakes when the car in front of you suddenly stops, or to call 911 if you are having chest pain.

The problem is that fear often works overtime. Mark Twain said it well when he quipped: "I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened." Think for just a minute about all of the time you've spent fearful and worrying. Looking back, you might see that much of what you fearfully anticipated turned out fine. Precious moments in life—moments that could have been full of love, creativity, and presence—were taken over by habitual fear.

Here's the good news: When you bring what I call unconditional presence to the trance of fear, you create the foundation for true spiritual awakening. In other words, as you learn to face your fears with courage and kindness, you discover the loving awareness that is your true nature. This awakening is the essence of all healing, and its fruition is the freedom to live and love fully.

Unsafe Havens

While the basic experience of fear is that "something is wrong," many people turn that feeling into "there must be something wrong with me." This is especially true in Western culture, where one's sense of belonging to family, community, and the natural world is often weak and the pressure to achieve is so strong. You may feel as though you must live up to certain standards in order to be loved, so you constantly monitor yourself, trying to see if you're falling short.

When you live in this trance of fear, you instinctively develop strategies to protect yourself. I call these attempts to find safety and relief "false refuges," since they work, at best, only for the time being.

One such strategy is physical contraction. When you stay trapped in fear, you begin to feel tight and guarded, even when there is no immediate threat. Your shoulders may become permanently knotted and raised, your head thrust forward, your back hunched, your belly tense. Chronic fear can generate a permanent suit of armor. In such a state, we become, as the Tibetan teacher Chögyam Trungpa taught, a bundle of tense muscles defending our very existence.

The trance of fear traps the mind in rigid patterns, too. The mind obsesses and produces endless stories, reminding you of the bad things that might happen and creating strategies to avoid them.

In addition to physical armoring and mental obsession, there are many well-worn behavioral strategies for reducing or avoiding fear. You might run from fear by staying busy, trying to accomplish a lot, or judging others critically to boost your ego. Or maybe you take the popular approach of numbing yourself by indulging in too much food, drugs, or alcohol. Yet no amount of doing or numbing can erase the undercurrents of feeling fearful and unworthy. In fact, the efforts you make to avoid fear and prove yourself worthy only reinforce the deep sense of being separate and inadequate. When you run from fear and take false refuge, you miss being in the very place where genuine healing and peace are possible.

Bringing compassion and mindfulness directly to the experience of fear will help dissolve the trance, taking you inside to the real refuge of unconditional presence. Compassion is the spacious quality of heart that allows and holds with tenderness whatever you are experiencing. It seeks to answer the question, Can I meet this moment, this experience, with kindness? Mindfulness is the clear recognition of your moment-to-moment experience. Here the inquiry to use is, What is happening inside me right now? Being mindfully attentive means that you are aware of the stories you are telling yourself and the feelings and sensations in your body. You can initially emphasize either compassion or mindfulness in meditation; both are essential when facing fear.

Unexamined Beliefs

One evening, Maria arrived at my office distraught and unnerved. A co-worker was sick and Maria's boss had asked her to step in as supervisor for their team of social workers. Sitting rigidly with her eyes downcast, she said bleakly, "Tara, I am really scared."

I invited her to pause—to breathe and simply be aware of the two of us sitting together. "I'm here with you right now," I said. "Would it be all right if we paid attention to the fear together?" Looking up at me, she nodded. "Good," I said, and went on. "You might begin by asking yourself, 'What am I believing right now?'" Maria responded without hesitation. "I'm going to let everyone down," she said. "They'll see that it was a mistake to ever hire me. They'll want to get rid of me."

When you are emotionally stuck, becoming mindful of what you believe at that moment can be a powerful part of awakening from trance. By bringing your stories and limiting beliefs to light, they gradually have less hold on your psyche. I encouraged Maria to simply acknowledge the thoughts as a story she was telling herself, and then to sense the feelings of vulnerability in her body. I assured her that if the process felt like more than she could handle, we could shift our attention—it's not helpful to feel overwhelmed or possessed by fear. After a few moments, she reported in a shaky voice, "The fear is big. My stomach is clenched, and my heart is banging. Mostly there is a gripping, aching, empty feeling in my heart."

I invited her to check in with the fear, to ask it what it wanted from her. Maria sat quietly for a few moments and then began speaking slowly: "It wants to know that it's OK that it's here...that I accept it. And..." At this point she became quiet for some long moments. "And that I pay attention, keep it company." Then, in a barely audible voice she whispered, "I will try. I want to keep you company." This was one of Maria's first moments of being truly compassionate with herself. Instead of pushing away her feelings, she was able to gently acknowledge and accept them.

Love Lessons

What Maria and all of us need is to feel that we are loved and understood. This is the essence of unconditional presence, the true refuge that can heal the trance of fear. As the Buddha taught, our fear is great, but greater yet is the truth of our essential connectedness.

If you've been wounded in a relationship, the love and understanding of friends are essential components in bringing a healing presence to your fears. You need the gift of this caring presence from others, and through meditations that cultivate compassion and mindfulness, you can learn to offer it to yourself.

And if you've been traumatized, I think it's important to seek the help of a therapist as well as an experienced meditation teacher as you begin deepening your presence with fear. Otherwise, when you allow yourself to reexperience the fear, you may find it to be traumatic rather than healing. In Maria's case, we spent several weeks working with meditative practices that develop unconditional presence. I acted as her guide, and when she became aware of fear, I encouraged her first to pause, because pausing creates a space for you to arrive in the present moment. Then she would begin mindfully naming out loud what she was noticing: the thoughts she was believing, the shakiness and tightness in her belly, the squeeze in her heart.

With whatever was arising, Maria's practice was to notice it, breathe with it, and with gentle, nonjudging attention, allow it to unfold naturally. If it felt overwhelming, she would open her eyes and reconnect to the sense of being with me, to the songs of the birds, to the trees and sky outside my office window.

Abandoning False Refuges

The challenge in facing fear is to overcome the initial reflex to dissociate from the body and take false refuge in racing thoughts. To combat this tendency to pull away from fear, you awaken mindfulness by intentionally leaning in. This means shifting your attention away from the stories—the planning, judging, worrying—and fully connecting with your feelings and the sensations in your body. By gently leaning in instead of pulling away, you discover the compassionate presence that releases you from the grip of fear.

My meditation student Phil got an opportunity to lean in to fear the first night his 16-year-old son borrowed the car. Josh had promised to return home by midnight. But midnight came and went. As the minutes passed, Phil became increasingly agitated. Had Josh been drinking? Had he had an accident? By 12:30 Phil was furious, trying his son's cell phone every few minutes.

Then he remembered the instructions on mindfulness from the weekly meditation class he attended. He sat down, desperate to ease his agitation. "OK, I'm pausing," he began. "Now, what's going on inside me?" Immediately he felt the rising pressure in his chest. Noting "anger, anger," he experienced the sensations filling his body. Then, under the anger, Phil felt the painful clutch of fear. His mind was imagining the police calling with the news that is a parent's worst nightmare. He leaned in, breathing with the fear, feeling its crushing weight at his chest. The story kept arising, and each time, Phil returned to his body, bringing his breath and attention directly to the place of churning, pressing fear.

As he leaned in to the fear, he found buried within it the hollow ache of grief. Then, drawing on a traditional Buddhist compassion practice, Phil began gently offering himself the message "I care about this suffering," repeating the phrase over and over as his eyes filled with tears. Phil was holding his grief with compassion, and as he did so, he could feel how much he cherished his son. While the fear remained, leaning in had connected him with unconditional presence.

A short while later, he heard the car rolling into the driveway. Josh barged into the living room and launched into his defense: He had lost track of time. The cell phone had run out of juice. Instead of reacting, Phil listened quietly. Then with his eyes glistening, he told his son, "This last hour was one of the worst I've gone through. I love you and..." He was silent for some moments and then continued softly, "I was afraid something terrible had happened. Please, Josh, don't do this again." The boy's armor instantly melted, and apologizing, he sank onto the couch next to his dad.

If Phil had not met his fears with unconditional presence, they would have possessed him and fueled angry reactivity. Instead, he opened to the full truth of his experience and was able to meet his son from a place of honesty and wholeness, rather than blame.

Fear's Gift

Several months after we had started therapy, Maria arrived for our session with her own story of healing. Two nights before, she and Jeff had been arguing about an upcoming visit from his parents. Tired from a difficult day at work, he suggested they figure things out the next evening. Without their usual goodnight kiss, he just rolled over and fell asleep.

Filled with agitation, Maria got up, went into her office, and sat down on her meditation cushion. As she had done so often with me, she became still, pausing to check in and find out what was going on. There was a familiar swirl of thoughts: "He's ashamed of me. He doesn't really want to be with me." Then she had an image of her father, drunk and angry, walking out the front door, and she heard a familiar inner voice saying, "No matter how hard I try, he's going to leave me." She felt as if icy claws were gripping her heart. Her whole body was shaking.

Taking a few deep breaths, Maria began whispering a prayer: "Please, may I feel held in love." She called to mind her spirit allies—her grandmother, a close friend, and me—and visualized us circling around her, a presence that could help keep her company as she experienced the quaking in her heart. Placing her hand gently on her heart, she sensed compassion pouring through her hand directly into the core of her vulnerability.

She decided to let go of any resistance to the fear and to let it be as big as it was. Breathing with it, she felt something shift: "The fear was storming through me, but it felt like a violent current moving through a sea of love." She heard a gentle whisper arise from her heart: "When I trust I'm the ocean, I'm not afraid of the waves." This homecoming to the fullness of our being is the gift of fear, and it frees us to be genuinely intimate with our world. The next evening when Maria and Jeff met to talk, she felt at peace. "For the first time ever," she told me, "I could let in the truth that he loved me."

As long as you are alive, you will feel fear. It is an intrinsic part of your world, as natural as a bitter cold winter day or the winds that rip branches off trees. If you resist it or push it aside, you miss a powerful opportunity for healing and freedom. When you face your fears with mindfulness and compassion, you begin to realize the loving and luminous awareness that, like the ocean, can hold the moving waves. This boundless presence is your true refuge—you are coming home to the vastness of your own awakened heart.

Making Sense of the Dating Process

by Dr. Jackie Black

Dating is a process with a beginning, middle, and end. Very importantly, the process is different depending on why you are dating.

If you are Dating to Find Your Ideal Partner, be crystal clear; the more you know what you want, the more likely you will be successful finding your ideal partner.

If you are Dating for Friendship or to Create Social Opportunities, take the time to find the right words to let the people you are dating know that you are not ready for a committed relationship.

Be a good observer of your feelings and behavior. Let the people you date experience you in the places in which you are the most comfortable doing the things that you most love.

Stop Dead-end Dating

If your goal is to find your ideal partner, then stop dating the person you are dating as soon as you recognize that she/he is not your ideal match. Approach dating as a process of discovery, realizing that the end of the process is discovering your ideal match; it will save lots of wear and tear on your emotions.

Identifying Your Ideal Match

We create our life and our love life through our beliefs, intentions, and the actions we take in the world. Vision, Needs/Values, Life Purpose, and Mission are the four corners, the foundational pieces of your inner life.

Create an image of your life with your ideal partner that includes anything and everything you ever wanted, using as many rich details as you can.

Become an expert on BOTH you and your ideal partner by identifying major life areas that are important to you both. Then imagine how you might like your ideal match to express herself/himself in each area.

Bring a fresh curiosity to each new person you meet. Hear, see, and react to her/him—not to an old image of a previous experience. Appreciate yourself for your courage and trust that your efforts will be richly rewarded.

Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say

Most of us know how to speak. Many of us have never learned how to communicate.

To communicate clearly and effectively you must understand there are two sides to every communication—one who sends the communication and one who receives it. Likewise, there are two methods of communication—verbal and non-verbal communication. Just because you are not speaking, doesn't mean you are not communicating.

"I"-Message Feedback

Speaking from the "I" position is very useful for assertively and accurately expressing scary or negative feelings or thoughts to someone else.

An "I" message has three parts: a feeling or request; a factual description of the situation/event; and the impact, effect, or result it has/had on you.

Listening With More Than Your Ears

Most of us know how to hear. Many of us have never learned how to listen.

Effective listening is the ability to receive, attend to, interpret, and respond appropriately to the purpose of the sender. Pay attention to what isn't said—to feelings, facial expressions, gestures, posture, and other nonverbal cues.

Respond to the speaker with verbal and nonverbal cues that confirm you are listening and understanding. The sender wants to be understood! Make eye contact, settle down, breathe deeply—become a receiver of information, thoughts, and feelings being expressed by the sender.

Let go of your own agenda, opinions, advice, and judgments while you are listening. Ask clarifying questions and invite the sender to say more. Offer your understanding by nodding, mirroring what you heard/understood, or gesturing in some subtle way that you get it!

Setting Boundaries, Making Commitments and Crafting Elegant Agreements

These are three essential life skills and absolute requirements of a loving, lasting relationship.

Setting personal boundaries requires that you have knowledge about your needs, values, attitudes, beliefs, likes, dislikes, and preferences. As you choose to set and maintain your boundaries, do so with intention and with deliberate words/actions.

Making and keeping agreements and commitments comprise fundamental ingredients of any relationship. Not honoring the agreements or commitments you make with people is a betrayal of your relationship with that person.

Crafting elegant agreements is a process that includes three essential keys: (1) know who you are and what you need, want, value, and believe; (2) become willing and able to honor who you are and ask for what you want; and, (3) find your courage and accurately articulate all that to another person.

Stop Criticizing: Start Complaining and Making Requests

Complaining is a healthy way to convey your grievances and objections when your desires and needs go unmet. Request a change after you have aired your complaint.

Giving Up / Giving In

These are signs that you feel powerless and undeserving. Settling for less is often the result of not recognizing that your thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, needs, and wants are legitimate. Compromising and negotiating can only occur when you honor and respect your thoughts, attitudes, values, beliefs, needs and wants, hopes and dreams, and deem them legitimate.

Remember, only YOU can make it happen!

10 Great Things You Can Do Right Now to Improve Your Job

Liz Wolgemuth

1. Make some friends. "Life is hard and then you die." My mother has been saying this to me since I can remember (she pulls no punches). Well, work is also hard. But you have to do it if you want to pay your mortgage and your cable bill and avoid scavenging for Christmas presents. That being the case, why not just make some friends where you do it? Try making a joke. Ask someone about their weekend. If you say something stupid, at least you'll get some notice, which is better than being "the guy who works down the hall beside the copier."

2. Talk to your boss. You can talk about the Bears game or you can talk about a client, but just start a conversation. It's easy to retreat from your boss when times are tough and he or she looks harried, or you're convinced that if you're in their line of their sight they might suddenly think they should add you to the list of budget-related layoffs. It's always better to have a bit of a (nonromantic) relationship with your boss. It's good for your job security, and they might perk up from the conversation.

3. Stop dressing like a sorority sister or a fraternity brother. It's been said a thousand times but I'm saying it again: If it makes thwacking sounds when you walk on it, it's meant for the beach. If it creates or exposes cleavage, it's best saved for Saturday nights. If it rides way up or rides way down, it probably belongs at Goodwill. Do not subject your colleagues to your poor taste. This economy is confusing and trying enough for them.

4. Keep your expenses clean. Now is not the time to fudge anything. In fact, it's probably the time to double-check your arrangements and make sure you're trying to save the company some cash. Then you should double-check your receipts to make sure all the numbers are correct. You may be tight financially, but this is a stupid reason to get in trouble at work.

5. Pack your lunch. You've read this a million times, I know. It's good for your health and good for your pocketbook. So why are there still so many people standing in line for deli sandwiches and french fries every afternoon? Aren't these the same people who needed a stimulus package to afford a new dishwasher?

6. Stop eating at your desk. It makes you look like a slave. It makes you look like you have no boundaries. I do it all the time, but I don't agree with it. If I were wiser, I would take my packed lunch to the lovely courtyard across the street, or to the indoor tables in a neighboring building. I would get a break, and then I'd come back with a clearer mind. I'll do it tomorrow.

7. Enjoy your commute. Read the news if you like. Bring a book if that's what you'd prefer. Listen to a George Winston album. Find a little pleasure on your way to work every morning.

8. Speak up. If you have a good idea, say something. If you see a colleague in distress, lend your hand (or ear). If you're unhappy with your work and you've got a great idea for how to improve the situation, offer up your solution. This is not the time to suck it up, stay quiet, and accept the routine. Companies want happy, driven, visionary employees, not pencil-pushing sycophants.

9. Be nice to others. Now is an especially dumb time to be rude to the intern or the front-desk receptionist. It's always a bad idea—but if your company is looking for people to cut, and someone catches you being a jerk, you're just making it easy for them. On the other hand, if you're really gracious to the intern and you're friendly with the receptionist, it may not escape the notice of a higher-up. You can count on the fact that it won't escape the intern/receptionist's notice either, which is a nice thing.

10. Treasure something. That's an old-fashioned word, "treasure." It's sort of a shame. You should be finding something at work to treasure, whether it's a boss's praise, a colleague's jokes, Friday group lunches, an ongoing assignment, or a new self-directed project. The American Heritage Dictionary says "treasure" means: "To keep or regard as precious; value highly." Figure out how to get something like that into your 9-to-5.

Seven Stupid Things EMPLOYEES Do To Screw Up Performance Appraisal

by Robert Bacal

Generally, when performance appraisal goes awry, the primary cause has little to do with employees. For the most part, employees take their cues from management and human resources. However, when individual employees perceive the process in negative ways, they can create or damage even the best of appraisal processes.

Stupid Thing #1: Focusing On The Appraisal Forms

Performance appraisal isn't about the forms (although, often managers and HR treat it as such). The ultimate purpose of performance appraisal is to allow employees and managers to improve continuously and to remove barriers to job success. In other words, to make everyone better. Forms don't make people better, and are simply a way or recording basic information for later reference. If the focus is getting the forms "done", without thought and effort, the whole process becomes at best a waste of time, and at worst, insulting.

Stupid Thing #2: Not Preparing Beforehand

Preparing for performance appraisal helps the employee focus on the key issue - performance improvement, and to examine his or her performance in a more objective way (see defensiveness below). Unfortunately, many employees walk into the appraisal meeting not having thought about the review period, and so are unprepared to present their points of view. Being unprepared means being a reactive participant, or being a passive participant. Neither are going to help manager or employee. Employees can prepare by reviewing their work beforehand, identifying any barriers they faced in doing their jobs, and refamiliarizing themselves with their job descriptions, job responsibilities, and any job performance expectations set with the manager.

Stupid Thing #3: Defensiveness

We tend to take our jobs seriously and personally, making it more difficult to hear others' comments about our work, particularly when they are critical. Even constructive criticism is often hard to hear. If employees enter into the discussion with an attitude of "defending", then it's almost impossible to create the dialogue necessary for performance improvement. That doesn't mean employees can't present their own opinions and perceptions, but it does mean that they should be presented in a calm, factual manner, rather than a defensive, emotional way. Of course, if managers are inept in the appraisal process, it makes it very difficult to avoid this defensiveness.

Stupid Thing #4: Not Communicating During The Year

Employees need to know how they are doing all year round, not just at appraisal time. Generally it is primarily management's responsibility to ensure that there are no surprises at appraisal time. Often managers discuss both positives and negatives of employee performance throughout the year, but this is unfortunately, not a universal practice. It's in the employees interests to open up discussion about performance during the year, even if the manager does not initiate it. The sooner employees know where they are at, and what they need to change (or keep doing), the sooner problems can be fixed. In fact many problems can be prevented if they are caught early enough. Even if managers aren't creating that communication, employees can and should. It's a shared responsibility.

Stupid Thing #5: Not Clarifying Enough

Life would be much easier if managers were perfect, but they aren't. Some communicate and explain well. Some don't. Some are aggravating and some not. At times employees won't be clear about their managers' reasoning or comments, or what a manager is suggesting. That could be because the manager isn't clear him/herself, or simply isn't good at explaining. However, unless employees clarify when they aren't sure about the reasoning or explanations, they won't know what they need to do to improve their future job performance. It's important to leave the appraisal meeting having a good understanding of what's been said. If that's not possible clarification can occur after the meeting, or down the road, if that's more appropriate.

Stupid Thing #6: Allowing One-Sidedness

Performance appraisals work best when both participants are active, and expressing their positions and ideas. Some employees are uncomfortable doing that, and while managers should be creating a climate where employees are comfortable, some managers aren't good at it. Performance appraisal time is an excellent time for employees to make suggestions about things that could be changed to improve performance, about how to remove barriers to job success, and ways to increase productivity. Remember also that managers can't read minds. The better managers will work with employees to help them do their jobs more effectively, but they can't know how they can help unless employees provide them with good, factual information, or, even better, concrete ideas.

Stupid Thing #7: Focusing On Appraisal As A Way Of Getting More Money

Unfortunately, many organizations tie employee pay to appraisal results, which puts employee and manager on opposite sides. Employees in such systems tend to focus too much on the money component, although that focus is certainly understandable. It's also understandable when employees in such systems become hesitant to reveal shortcomings or mistakes. But it's still dumb. If employees main purpose is to squeeze as much of an increase out of the company, and the managers try to keep increases as small as possible, it becomes totally impossible to focus on what ultimately matters over the long term, which is continuous performance improvement and success for everyone.

Pay IS important, but it is not the only issue related to the appraisal focus. If employees enter into the process willing to defend their own positions in factual and fair ways, and to work with managers, the process can become much more pleasant. If not, it can become a war.

Conclusion:

The major responsibilities for setting performance appraisal tone and climate rest with managers and the human resources department. However, even when managers and human resources do their jobs well, employees who come at the process with a negative or defensive approach are not likely to gain from the process or to prosper over the long term. The constant key is for employees to participate actively and assertively, but to keep a problem-solving mindset, and keep focused on how things can be improved in the future. No matter who initiates it, performance appraisal is about positive open communication between employee and manager.