How To Cope With Being Passed Over For Promotion

Have you recently been passed over for promotion? Seeing a peer being offered advancement opportunities while your career seems stuck in a rut can be an unpleasant experience. This is especially true when you consider your skill set and commitment to be equal to (or better than) that of your promoted coworker. Coping with the emotional fall out of this situation requires objective self examination and good communication. Stressing out about your capabilities and worth isn’t effective either so the best thing to do is find out what happened and get feedback.

Talking to Your Boss

Storming into your manager’s office and demanding an explanation for why you weren’t chosen is a bad idea for obvious reasons. Someone who can’t stay in control of their emotions isn’t ready for additional responsibilities. On the other hand, trying to figure out “what went wrong” all on your own is a sure way to become paranoid and depressed. So, it is OK to talk to your boss about how the decision to promote a peer was reached – once you have calmed down. Here’s an example of a respectful way you can talk to your boss that may shed some light on what’s holding you back in terms of your career:

Elder Caregivers Need Policies and Benefits to Change with Times

Many of today’s workers are faced with a stressful caregiving situation as their parents become more and more dependent. Even if you don’t have an aging parent living with you, there’s a good chance you could be “on call”. Mom may fall and break her hip while she’s home alone; Dad might have a memory lapse and be found wandering the streets. As the emergency contact, you’re the one who is asked to come and sort things out.

If a health issue is ongoing, FMLA may kick in. This provides you with legally protected (but unpaid) leave to care for an ill family member if you work for a company with 50+ employees. However, when you pitch in to care for a mother or father in-law FMLA does not apply. So far, the law hasn’t caught up with the realities of elder caregiving. It’s up to employers to decide when and if emergency time off will be granted or if you will be fired for attendance violations.

Some Employers Have a Double Standard

Many employers seem to have a compassionate attitude about parents having to leave the office suddenly when a dependent child needs them. Part of this has to do with a wariness of being accused of discriminating against women. After all, it’s still usually Mom who gets the call to deal with a child-related emergency – even if both parents work.

However, employers don’t always view the elder caregiving relationship as a serious commitment. Apparently, they figure you can just get someone else to step in and take care of an emergent need. Unlike in the UK, there is currently no law protecting U.S. employees’ right to put family first in these situations. Employees can’t afford to wait for the law to catch up – they need to start negotiating for changes in the workplace now.

Contrarian Investing

Would you consider purchasing a fireplace in the peak of summer or an air conditioner in the dead of winter? Would you invest in a sale even if you did not have an immediate use for the product you are purchasing? Do you place value on the things you get at a discounted rate?

The summertime almost always presents an opportunity for people to invest. It is a quiet period because most individuals are focused on spending money and having fun. Businesses tend to slow down and they offer significant incentives to attract new clientele. Most companies are focused on maintaining relevance, marketing and promotions. It’s a great opportunity for networking and seeking out new relationships. Investment of time and money can produce great rewards if strategically planned.

As a singer, songwriter or other creative artist, the summertime is the best time to work on your visibility and ability to earn significant money promoting your ministry and/or product. While everyone else is vacationing, you should be working diligently making connections, attending events and yes, even selling your product out of the trunk of your car. Going into non-traditional places for exposure will give you a chance to book your calendar for the remainder of the year.

Amazing Self Stress Test!

Read the full description BEFORE clicking on the link and looking at the picture on the next page.

The picture you will see when you click on the link below has 2 identical dolphins in it.
It was used in a case study on stress levels at St. Mary’s Hospital.
This is quite possibly the MOST accurate self [...]

I Fired My Dad

Are you in your 20s to early 30s and filling a managerial role at your job? Congratulations! Your work ethic, educational accomplishments, and job skills are paying off already. As a Gen Y boss, you’ve got a bright future ahead if you can learn how leverage the talents of those who report to you. This can be a particularly challenging task when your employees are older – in some cases – old enough to be your parents. It’s even more challenging when you encounter performance problems that can result in disciplinary actions that can, in some cases, lead to termination.

Many Gen Y managers are adapting, often rapidly, with how best to manage the needs and motivations of a multi-generational team. Supervising an older workforce as a young adult highlights the generation differences that impact work relationships. This can create a host of awkward and stressful communication challenges to Gen Y managers.

Generation Profiles: Comparing Work Styles

In order to understand how to approach performance issues between a younger manager and an older employee, you have to recognize that discrepancies abound between Gen Y and other generations in terms of work ethic. The chart below highlights some typical attitudinal differences about work between generations that make up the bulk of current workforce populations.

Relax and Reduce Your Risk of Heart Attack

By Guest Blogger: Dr. John M. Kennedy, MD, FACC – Marina Del Rey Hospital

Most people know that smoking, high cholesterol and high blood pressure are among the main risk factors for heart disease. Few of us realize that daily stress is another key risk factor. It can damage the heart and arteries even in people who are otherwise healthy.

Recent finding: A University of Southern California study that looked at 735 patients for more than 12 years found that chronic stress and anxiety were better predictors of future cardiovascular events (such as a heart attack) than other risk factors. The researchers estimate that those who reduce or stabilize their stress levels are 50% to 60% less likely to have a heart attack than those who experience increasing stress.

TOXIC OVER TIME
Researchers have known for a long time that sudden traumatic events can trigger heart problems. Three years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, for example, study participants — most of whom watched the attacks on live television — were questioned about their stress levels. Those who still were severely stressed were 53% more likely to have heart problems, and twice as likely to develop high blood pressure, as those with lower stress levels.
It appears that even “normal” stress — financial pressures or an unhappy job situation — is dangerous when it continues for a long time. It’s estimated that more than 75% of visits to primary care physicians are linked to stress-related disorders.

What happens: Chronic stress increases vascular resistance, the main cause of high blood pressure. It increases the activity of platelets, cell-like structures in blood that clump together and trigger most heart attacks. It increases levels of cortisol, adrenaline and other stress hormones that promote arterial inflammation.

A Quick Depression Quiz

Are you depressed?

Do you feel down?

Did you know that: 25 percent of adults will have a major depressive episode at some point?

It’s just a part of life. It’s human nature.

However, most people don’t realize that depression is bad for your heart health, memory and more.
With all of the economic troubles in the world today, sadly TV commercials for every antidepressant known to man have become a part of our modern culture. In a recent study, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at 2.4 billion drugs prescribed in visits to doctors and hospitals in 2005.

Of those, 118 million were for antidepressants.

Why?

Sharing Your Vision

This challenging economic season has created an opportunity for everyone to think outside of the box and create a plan of action utilizes your natural talents and abilities. Consideration to establish your own business is both personally fulfilling and a satisfactory financial vehicle as well.

It is imperative to identify your talent, write a vision and make it plain. Then, you must share your vision with others. This is what I want to discuss today. You’ve determined your true calling, you’ve envisioned yourself walking into your destiny and now how do you make that happen? Sharing your vision based on your talent with others will allow those individuals to assist you creatively with options of how to get started. After all, that is what deters people most often. They don’t know where to begin.

I recall sharing the challenges I faced when I first became an author. I wasn’t certain if I accomplished my goals and objectives. Fear of rejection made me keep the thoughts of my perceived failure to myself. To share that intimate information and allow myself to be open to criticism was new for me. After all, a reason why we don’t succeed is because we talk ourselves out of our destiny being afraid of what others might think. Or perhaps we didn’t get the results we were seeking the first time we tried. Maybe, you shared your ideas with the wrong people and they told you that you were chasing a dream, it wasn’t possible, you can’t achieve… I could go on. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had more to accomplish. So I went back to the drawing board. I had already identified the gift and I wrote the vision. It never changed. This time around I shared the vision with other people.

You see, I was independently successful the first time around based on my own skills.

But when I shared my vision with other people, they began to add creative ideas and suggestions I never considered.

Your Body: Owner’s Manual, Part One

Your body is the greatest vehicle that has ever been created! OH MY… the intricacies, the details, the overall quality, the precision of all the parts, the perfection of multiple systems all coordinating to work together with unexplainable synergy. This amazing vehicle allows us to walk, talk, eat, breathe, see, hear, etc… it’s literally unexplainable…

However, regular maintenance IS required…and therein lays the rub!

Now if we use a car as a metaphor we can easily understand this analogy. If you were to walk into Lamborghini dealer and decide to buy the top of the line vehicle from him he would spend a great deal of time explaining the care and upkeep that you would need to do to make sure that this amazing vehicle stayed working at it’s optimal level. In fact, he would make sure that you knew that if you didn’t take care of the vehicle in the manner that was best for it, your warranty would be null and void.

This makes sense right?

I mean it is a $400,000 Lamborghini.

Managing Workplace Stress by Clarifying Your Role

Are you having difficulty managing workplace stress because there is simply too much on your plate? When the responsibilities of your position are unclear, this will make you feel overloaded. Clarifying the scope of your job duties and your role within the organization can offer relief. You will be able to prioritize and organize your day-to-day activities much more easily.

Also, you can unload tasks that are rightfully part of a co-worker’s (or boss’s) job function. When you no longer feel stuck trying to do it all, you will perform more effectively and productively. This will increase your sense of satisfaction and your confidence in your own abilities.

Reduce Your Workload

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