Enrich Your Life With a Positive Attitude

In my recent post on 8 Rules for Creating a Passionate Life at WorkI explore ways to enrich the work experience to find passion in what can be a frustrating environment.  Finding solutions to life's annoyances and difficult problems can be a challenge.  But when you solve the puzzle and find the motivation of the issue, any challenge can also bring you joy.  You may learn to understand other people better and find truths within yourself to meet those challenges which will ultimately enrich your life.   


Yvetta Fedorova


Today I read an article that explores the benefits of having a positive attitude towards life's struggles.  A Richer Life by Seeing the Glass Half Full - NYTimes.com  In this article on Personal Health by Jane Broday, she discusses that it's "Not Just About Being Positive"
Yvetta Fedorova

"Murphy’s Law — “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong” — is the antithesis of optimism. In a book called “Breaking Murphy’s Law,” Suzanne C. Segerstrom, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky, explained that optimism is not about being positive so much as it is about being motivated and persistent."

This idea that a positive experience can bloom from a rotten seed just by putting your mind to finding a solution and working at it persistently rang true to me.

In business, as in other aspects of life, the times I've felt the most accomplished are the times when I have overcome an especially difficult challenge by finding a solution to what seemed like an insurmountable problem.  The times when I've been challenged by annoying people or difficult situations that refused to cooperate with my plans would frustrate me to no end and cause me to be anxious or unhappy.  

But i have learned that when I stop judging and approached the challenge with curiosity, I find that  instead of being frustrated, I become energized to solve the mystery of why this person or this situation is acting the way it is, what is their motivation for the disruptive action, and what I can do to manipulate it to reach my ultimate goal and achieve success.  

This persistence of will and quite literally an attitude adjustment, to stop complaining and being negative and start thinking of positive solutions, is making a huge the difference in how I perceive challenges in at work.  These challenges are mere stepping stones to my own inward journey of learning how to better relate to the world around me.  This lesson, of course,  applies equally to my work life as it does to my personal life.

Treating others with the perspective of love rather than hate is the goal in all of life's challenging situations. 

The Buddha teaches us to thank your enemy for challenging you to seek inward for the Dharma.  

'Compassion and love are not mere luxuries. As the source both of inner and external peace, they are fundamental to the continued survival of our species.' His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama

Likewise, Jesus teaches us to, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you, and persecute you;”  Matthew 5:44

In this way, I can face my work and all other challenges in life with a positive perspective, seeking the truth within to find solutions to my problems and face each challenge with an open and loving heart.

I hope this may motivate others who are faced with difficulties that seem insurmountable and unpleasant - to strive to keep trying to find a solution to the problem by simply changing your mind about how your perceive it.  When you think positive, you do positive actions, and your life will become a positive experience.

That is my goal.  Wish me luck in achieving it today!  

8 Rules for Creating a Passionate Life at Work

Today I read an article on Fast Company's website titled 8 Rules for Creating a Passionate Work Culture and it got me thinking about how to optimize my daily work environment.  Then I read another blog written by Manish Gupta entitled "Work with Passion" and found even more inspiration.

Lately I've been struggling with settling into a new job and getting used to new co-workers, a new boss, using new databases and trying to work with new vendors.  Add on a new commute and working in a new cubicle after 6 years of working from home and I'm left with a whole new work life.  It's a lot to adjust to and lately I've felt less than passionate about my work life.


PAUL ALOFS' article helped me realize that it takes a real commitment to create a passionate work place environment.  He references Ken Thomson and this very wealthy Canadian businessman's commitment to value the simple things in life as well as in business.  "He bought off-the-rack suits and had his old shoes resoled. Yet he had no difficulty paying almost $76 million for a painting"  He knew the value of things and spent his money on things he was passionate about (investing, art, business) and saved his money on things that just got him from A to B (groceries, shoes, suits).


This level of commitment to invest in your passion is not just for the employer, but also for myself as the employee to optimize my work space and invest in things that I am passionate about in my own life.  


In this way, I've devised a list of my own 8 Rules for Creating a Passionate Life at Work

1. Surround yourself with the right people

Befriend co-workers with passion and commitment first, experience second, and credentials third. You should try to find people who are interested in the same things you are. You don’t want to be simply a stepping stone as someone works their way up the corporate ladder, but rather a true colleague who you both find mutual benefit from working together.

2. Communicate

Once you have surrounded yourself with the right people, meet with them regularly and discuss your projects.  Knowing what team members are working on and discussing projects builds a level of trusted community and is crucial in developing mutually beneficial relationships at work.  Ask for what you need from others,  adjust to issues that are identified, discuss ways to rectify problems and find solutions together - whether it be over a casual lunch or in a regularly scheduled business meeting. 

Listening is an equal part in communication.  Listening to what your co-worker's needs are, hearing what frustrates them about business processes, understanding their pain points is so important to discover how to find solutions to alleviate those problems and create harmony in the work place.

3. Tend to the weeds

Sometimes you run across co-workers who's passions are not your own.  These people may create frustration and stress on your work day.  Try to understand their motivation for the unpleasant behavior.  Are they insecure and threatened by your work?  Are they generally unhappy people that have a tendency to whine and complain?  First, try to distance yourself from interacting with these negative people as much as possible.  Second, try to feel compassionate towards them and show kindness to them in the face of their troubles.  Third, realize that there are usually a few bad apples in  almost every bunch and part of a healthy work life is learning how to work around these "speed bump" people.

4. Work Life Balance

A good work ethic should be coupled with a good play strategy.  I tend to do my best work under pressure and will work long hours when necessary.  Conversely, I also need to schedule in in several play breaks during my day to play a round of scrabble on Words with Friends or hit the gym after an especially strenuous day at the office.  Remembering to unwind after giving 100% mental effort during the day is so important to remind me why I do it all over again the next day.   

5. Be Inspired & Ambitious

Keep striving to be better, do better, see more, learn more.  Having dreams and goals to work towards help push you along in those dreary, boring times in the office.  Being inspired helps you see the bigger picture, knowing that you have what you need to achieve your passions.

“Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them-- that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.” 
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

6. Diversify & innovate 

Shakespeare said it best, "Variety is the spice of life".  Interacting with people in different departments who work in different fields from your own is part of what stimulates the learning centers in the brain and causes Dopamine to release, where you get those "feel good" vibes.  Meeting new people, discussing new projects, learning new methodologies can excite the everyday mundane existence that many people often tire of in their own little cubicle at the office.  Get out of your own little space and meet some people, join a work sporting group, participate in a volunteer effort, go to a conference.  You never know who you'll meet that could stimulate you on to greatness!  Innovation stems from learning, and communicating with those who know different things from your own knowledge base can be just the nudge you need. 

7. Attitude Adjustment

Happiness is a choice one makes everyday.  Not happy with your job?  Feeling frustrated with your co-workers?  Is your boss not supportive?  Changing all that can be as simple as changing your mind to think positive.  Bring some cheerful flowers to your office to remind you of the life outside the office.  Remember how many people are unemployed and out of work and would do anything to have the job you have.  Be grateful for the benefits your job offers you both financially and professionally and remind yourself of all the good things that come from hard work.  Make this attitude adjustment and decide to be happy and find ways to solve the things that annoy you in the work place.  And if it truly is an abusive work environment with no real hope for change, then YOU make the decision to change your work situation.  Find a new job, change departments, go back to school to learn a new trade.  The way that you perceive the world will be reflected back at you.  If you give the universe a positive attitude, it will respond with positive experiences.     

8. Play the long game

Like great wine, true passion takes time. An article in The Telegraph points out that "Good things come to those who wait, Scientist Say" may well be true.  Recent research has found that a "person has the ability to resist an on the spot reward and delay it for months or even years if it means a better return in the future..."  Simply by vividly imagining a better future one can delay impulse choices and which can then lead to better well being in the long run.  Hoping for a better work life is one thing, having faith that it WILL HAPPEN if you give your best is quite another.  Realizing the difference in having Hope vs. having Faith can lead to a lifetime of peace both at work and in your everyday life.  Read Hope vs. Faith in this Gaiam blog by Cynthia James.     

Education Revolution: Optimize the Interactive Experience

Last week, MIT and Harvard announced a joint online education project launch called edX and was heralded by David Brooks on the NY Times as how schools envision their futures.  


This effectively raises the bar for the reputation of online education with the participation of some of the nation's top universities.  Everyone is now able to benefit from low cost, high level education courses from some of the smartest people in the world.



Watch the edX Press Conference

This may well be the biggest advancement in human history since the Industrial Revolution....an Educational Revolution changing the way whole generations of people advance in their careers and in their life choices.   Learning, collaborating, and discussing advanced concepts in large and diverse groups can bring a new level of understanding to people who never before were exposed to high level education participation. 


Interactive education offers a tailored environment to people everywhere and can enrich the larger educational environment for all by continually improving the process that we impart knowledge to one another.  This is a great example of optimizing the educational experience in a digital environment.


Who knows what this huge exposition of creating and transmitting knowledge will bring to humanity.  I envision collaborating and problem solving for some of the world's greatest challenges, jobs for those who are jobless, purpose and direction for those who could never envision a better life before.  


Congratulations edX!  I'm excited to see if my ideas for your high quality educational courses prove true.     

SEO for Everybody - In Blogging and In Life

Recently I searched for the term" everyone is an seo" and stumbled upon an interesting article entitled WordPress SEO for Everybody.  This article lists basic strategies for optimizing your blog, greater link building and stronger communication opportunities with your blog readers.  


Links to detailed SEO strategies are listed:

WordPress SEO for Beginners

• Beginner WordPress SEO (Part 1): How to Optimize Your Blog Posts
• Beginner WordPress SEO (Part 2): 9 Ways to Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines
• How to Optimize Images for Better Search Engine Rankings

Advanced WordPress SEO Topics

• How to Interlink Your WordPress Articles the Right Way
• How to Make Your WordPress Category Pages Search Engine (and People) Friendly
• The Secret to Getting More Links and Social Media Love
• How to Optimize Your WordPress Archive Pages for SEO

As a blogger, I can understand and appreciate these tactics and hope to employ them here myself.


But when I review just the titles listed above, it makes me interested in the broader communication strategies at play here.  Most of these tactics are teaching bloggers how to organize their thought process and how to properly categorize and label content.  This is Librarian School and Creative Writing classes all-in-one! 


I love SEO and I'm so happy that I work in this field that celebrates rational thought and organization as well as creative expression.  It just still always strikes me as funny that SEO is really at it's core, a communication strategy.  When you employ all the technical analysis and code your page correctly and label things properly, it really all boils down to making yourself heard - clearly and succinctly.


Isn't it funny how bloggers still need help to organize themselves, to rationally think through the user experience and make their pages function in a rational and easy to use manner?  If only we all properly communicated our ideas in clear and rational ways.  Wouldn't life be less complicated and easier to understand? 


But life is not so simple....and maybe all the incorrect communication that goes on in the world today between people, politics, and religion only serves to keep life interesting.   Yes, the world would be a more peaceful place if we learned to organize, label, and communicate effectively....but where's the fun in that?  For now, learning a few helpful lessons to better organize and communicate online will serve the bloggers purpose.  Next we need to learn to organize and communicate with each other in more personal and meaningful ways.  

SEO's Use BOTH Sides of Their Brain

I recently viewed a photo on Facebook published by the Missouri Institute of Natural Science showing how the different hemispheres of the brain influence different personality traits.

The text for the left brain reads:

“I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.”

And for the right brain:

“I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feat. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.”

As an Search Engine Optimizer (SEO), I have often told people I use both sides of my brain on the job.  The technical analysis needed for keyword modeling, HTML coding, taxonomy and usage tracking utilize the left hemisphere where logic and reason reside. The creativity, interest level, usability, common sense and visual flow of a site kick the right hemisphere into gear.

It's a fine thing to realize that this industry has so many facets that require so many different skills and offer an endless variety of specialization: cross-channel optimization, keyword research, link building, web development, reporting analysis, usability coordination, social media, video, mobile, etc.  How exciting to live, work, and breathe this dynamic industry and be rewarded not just for thinking clearly, but for emotional impact and influence, as well.

This photo lead me to want to test my skills and natural inclinations to find out which hemisphere of my brain is most dominant.  I Googled "brain hemisphere dominance test" and came up with the following test: http://www.web-us.com/brain/braindominance.htm.  This turned out to be a ridiculous test that always told me I was left brain dominant no matter how I changed the answers.  I'm guessing just by taking the test and answering all the questions, it could be assumed I am left brain dominant.  

I wanted a more serious evaluation and kept searching and was satisfied when I came across this test published by the International PcE Netword, Biofeedback Training Made Simple:  Brain Dominance Test.  This test gave a more thorough explanation, grading each answer as to which hemisphere related and giving me an overall evaluation that was much more plausible.

Regardless which side of the brain is dominant, it's exciting to find an industry that engages both hemispheres of communication, logic, reason, creativity, and emotional response.  Cheers to all the SEO's out there thinking and feeling and making better digital communication experiences for all.

Link Building: The Red String of Fate

Link Building is such an intricate part of SEO.  The more people that link into your site, the more popular your page is, and the better search results you'll see.  It's a very democratic process to measure buzz on the internet.  Search engines use page authority and popularity as a major part of their search algorithms affecting page rank in search results. The search engines are teaching web developers to have better connections online by weighting the value of inbound links.


But link building is more of a natural communication process than it may appear in the world of internet marketing, paid search, or site optimization.  We build links everyday with people all around us, even when we are unaware of it.  The driver who cut you off on the morning commute can put you in a bad mood for the rest of the day; the woman in the mall who looked at you and laughed can make you feel self-conscious about your appearance; saying "thank you" to the McDonald's drive through employee can put a smile on his face; a hug from a loved one can make any situation bearable.  The connections we make in our lives, both great and small, have power and authority to affect other people's lives in ways that we may never know. 

Touch

I recently watched the pilot for the FOX TV show "Touch"  that intros with the Chinese legend of The Red String of Fate.  The legend says that the Gods have tied a red thread to every one of our ankles and attached it to all the people whose lives we're destined to touch.  This string may stretch, tangle, but it will never break.  


One story featuring the red string of fate involves a young boy. Walking home one night, a young boy sees an old man standing beneath the moonlight (Yue Xia Lao). The man explains to the boy that he is attached to his destined wife by a red thread. Yue Xia Lao shows the boy the young girl who is destined to be his wife. Being young and having no interest in having a wife, the young boy picks up a rock and throws it at the girl, running away. Many years later, when the boy has grown into a young man, his parents arrange a wedding for him. On the night of his wedding, his wife waits for him in their bedroom, with the traditional veil covering her face. Raising it, the man is delighted to find that his wife is one of the great beauties of his village. However, she wears an adornment on her eyebrow. He asks her why she wears it and she responds that when she was a young girl, a boy threw a rock at her that struck her, leaving a scar on her eyebrow. She self-consciously wears the adornment to cover it up. The woman is, in fact, the same young girl connected to the man by the red thread shown to him by Yue Xia Lao back in his childhood, showing that they were connected by the red string of fate. 


The basic theory of Cause and Effect proves true throughout the physical universe.  Why wouldn't we think it proves true in our daily lives, as well?  In Physics class I learned that this rule, "For each action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."  Look around the world today and you can see this played out in politics, wars, financial disasters, environmental concerns.  When I look around my personal relationships, I can also see this played out - how I react to others if often caused by what I'm feeling internally.  If I stop to take a breath and adjust my attitude, the world can change for the better in that instant. 


I vow to remember this lesson of Cause and Effect and how our lives are all connected in every way, online and off.  This is a lesson that could change not just my world, but all of ours.

The Power Of Vulnerability in Human Communications

So much of what we study in SEO is how to better communicate with the end user to supply meaningful information.  It's all about how to connect and feel connected to each other via the internet.  Some fundamental human emotions can greatly change our interpersonal and corporate behaviors to solidify those connections we all seek in life.

A recent TEDx speech by Brene Brown studies human connection -- our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk at TEDxHouston, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity. A talk to share about shame, courage, compassion, connection and fully embracing vulnerability.

Brene Brown talks about connection: The ability to feel connected is the goal of all communication and is destroyed by one thing - shame.  The fear of disconnection, shame, fear and our struggle for acceptance lies in our vulnerability.  As a person or as a company, letting go of who you think you "should be" and accepting "who you are" and fully embracing vulnerability are the keys to experiencing true connections with others, both online and off.  


Only by allowing ourselves to be broken, exposing our flaws, do we truly open our hearts and souls to love, acceptance, and understanding.  This is as true in the corporate world of online marketing as it is in personal connections.  Relating to others in an authentic and true way, understanding that nobody is perfect and that we all make mistakes, and accepting life's vulnerable moments are what draw us together as people and create deep and strong connections between family, friends, business partners, and customers. 


In this age of social media, we are more connected than ever before in human history.  Watch and learn and let it change the way you connect online and in your personal relationships in life: Brene Brown: The power of vulnerability. 

Link Building: It's Not WHAT You Know, But WHO You Know!

Link Building is a huge topic in the Search Optimization world since Google's Panda update back in February 2011 which raised the value on a site's authority when calculating page rankings in search results.  Actually link building has been an issue for SEO's for years.  The actual process of having external sites link back into your website by hyper-linking specific keywords can take quite some time to implement and analyse results.  


First off, it can take years to build personal and professional relationships with the content authors of news, blog, technology, and product information websites.  Then contracting to link exact keywords to your site can be an issue. And then you have to analyse how each link has effected your search rankings.  For these reasons, most companies choose to hire a Link Building Service Agency to hire out this process.  


These link building agencies already have the relationships in place with reputable publications and can contract to link specific keywords back into your site, which basically amounts to paid keyword services.  They can also help track how each link has influenced search rankings for those specific keywords which can help with your ROI reporting.


Since being on the job hunt for several months, I've discovered how important  face-to-face "link building", otherwise known as "networking" can be.  It greatly helps to put your face with your name for recruiters and head-hunters who are trying to sell your services and find you a job.  The more they can relate to you and understand what your do best, the better than they work their match making skills to find you that perfect job fit.  It also helps to join and attend industry networking events and shake a few hands and be seen as an active participant in your industry.  


Building better communication with your friendship groups is also so important, not just in helping your professional networks, but in making true connections with people who can help benefit your life goals, as well. When you start spending time with the right people, you're whole outlook on life can change for the better.  These are the people you enjoy, who love and appreciate you, and who encourage you to improve in healthy and exciting ways.  They are the ones who make you feel more alive, and not only embrace who you are now, but also embrace and embody who you want to be, unconditionally.  Check out "30 Things to Start Going for Yourself" to read more.


You never know what recommendations from colleagues and friends might just land you a job.  As the saying goes, it's not WHAT you know, it's WHO you know!