Friday, March 20, 2020

7 ways to avoid letting envy ruin your career growth

7 ways to avoid letting envy ruin your career growth Even though it’s ideal to always keep your eyes on your own career, we’re only human. It’s almost impossible not to look at your friends and colleagues to see where they are in their job, what they’ve done by a certain age, and how much they’re making compared to you. In fact, envy can be a very useful tool and motivator for personal and professional success, provided it comes in the appropriate doses and is put to the best possible use. But if you let it spiral out of its bounds, it can eat you alive- and even ruin your life.Here are a few tips you can follow to make sure you’re comparing yourself to others for the good of self-evaluation and motivation, rather than endless comparison that will only lead to anger or unhappiness about others’ successes.1. Check your reactions.When a close friend or colleague scores a lucky break or achieves something great, what is your reaction? Are you a seething green monster, or are you excited for them, no matter how motivated you are to accomplish great things yourself? And when something bad happens to someone, are you quietly doing a happy dance or are you truly sympathetic for their hardship? Hint: You want to feel good when good things happen to the good people in your life and bad when bad things happen to them. If your reactions are reversed, you have some work to do.2. Get off the Internet.There’s nothing worse for stoking spirals of negative emotion and envy than social media. If you can’t be trusted to use Facebook or Instagram without losing oodles of time and your own humanity, just suspend your accounts. Take a break or cut yourself off entirely- especially if you spend most of the time looking at your high school acquaintance’s successful lifestyle blog. It’s just not worth the risk to your soul.3. Only compete with yourself.If you’re comparing yourself constantly with others, restructure your focus. Instead, start comparing y our present self against your past. How much progress have you made? Enough? Too little? Are you actually killing it by this metric? Remember, you usually have no idea where anybody else began, and with what benefits. It’s no use playing a silent competition game that you can’t win.4. Become the best version of yourself.It is impossible to be authentic and yourself if you’re constantly looking outward. Instead, start caring more about your own personal development and less about how others see you, what they do, or what they are. Be original and authentic and get noticed for who you are, not who you envy.5. Focus on taking action to get what you want.You want the momentum that gets you chugging your way to the top? That requires focus, determination, and hard work- none of which you’re doing if you’re constantly in the hamster wheel of envying your co-workers and friends. You’re also compromising your ability to be an effective networker- al so a crucial piece to your success. Trust yourself enough to be able to sell your capabilities and capacities at the highest possible value, and trust everyone else to take care of themselves.6. Be empathetic.Try putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. That person whose successes have you blowing steam out of your ears is impressive and shiny on the outside, but might be harboring all sorts of hurts and challenges within. Try to see past the social media posts to the human underneath.7. Practice gratitude.Instead of coveting every little thing you don’t have, try being more grateful for what you do have: Your current job. Your current rung on the ladder. How far you’ve come. This doesn’t mean you can’t strive for more or better; it just means you shouldn’t dismiss what you’ve already earned.

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Important Quotes from Night by Elie Wiesel

Important Quotes from Night by Elie Wiesel Night, by Elie Wiesel, is a work of Holocaust literature, with a decidedly autobiographical slant. Wiesel based the book- at least in part- on his own experiences during World War II. Through just a brief 116 pages, the book has received considerable acclaim, and the author won the Nobel Prize in 1986. The quotes below show the searing nature of the novel, as Wiesel tries to make sense of one of the worst human-made catastrophes in history. Night Falls Wiesels journey into Hell began with a yellow star, which the Nazis forced Jews to wear. The star was, often, a mark of death, as the Germans used it to identify Jews and send them to concentration camps.   The  yellow star? Oh well, what of it? You dont die of it.   Chapter 1 A prolonged whistle split the air. The wheels began to grind. We were on our way.   Chapter 1 The journey to the camps began with a train ride, with Jews packed into pitch-black rail cars, with no room to sit down, no bathrooms, no hope. Men to the left! Women to the right!   Chapter 3 Eight words  spoken  quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight short, simple words. Yet that was the moment when I parted from my mother.   Chapter 3 Upon entering the camps, men,  women, and children were usually segregated; the line to the left meant going into forced slave labor and wretched conditions- but temporary survival; the line to the right often meant a trip the gas chamber and immediate death. Do you see that chimney over there? See it? Do you see those flames? (Yes, we did see the flames.) Over there-thats where youre going to be taken. Thats your grave, over there.   Chapter 3 The flames rose 24-hours a day from the incinerators- after the Jews were killed in the gas chambers by Zyklon B, their bodies were immediately taken to incinerators to be burned into to black, charred dust. Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night.   Chapter 3 Utter Loss of Hope Wiesels quotes speak eloquently of the utter hopelessness of life in the concentration camps. A dark flame had entered into my soul and devoured it.​  Ã‚  Chapter 3 I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time.   Chapter 4 I was thinking of my father. He must have suffered more than I did.   Chapter 4 Whenever I dreamed of a better world, I could only imagine a universe with no bells.   Chapter 5 Ive got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. Hes the only one whos kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.   Chapter 5 Living With Death Wiesel, of course, did survive the Holocaust  and became a journalist, but it was only 15 years after the war ended that he was able to describe how the inhumane experience in the camps turned him into a living corpse. When they withdrew, next to me were two corpses, side by side, the father and the son. I was fifteen years old.   Ã¢â‚¬â€¹Chapter 7 We were all going to die here. All limits had been passed. No one had any strength left. And again the night would be long.   Chapter 7 But I had no more tears. And, in the depths of my being, in the recesses of my weakened conscience, could I have searched it, I might perhaps have found something like-free at last!​   Chapter 8 After my fathers death, nothing could touch me any more.   Chapter 9 From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.   Chapter 9