3 Tips to Make Better Career Decisions - FlexJobs

3 Tips to Make Better Career Decisions - FlexJobs3 Tips to Make Better Career Decisions -Are you making the best career decisions for yourself? Are your actions moving you forward to a brighter career future? Our friend and renowned career expert Michael Dr. Woody Woodwardwrote about the ways that professionals make better career decisions.According to Dr. Woodys article on FoxBusiness.com, there are two types of career decision makers Sacrificers and maximizers.Satisficers tend to jump at the first option that meets their minimum set criteria for what they are looking for, whereas maximizers tend to be mora exhaustive in their search, availing themselves of as many options as possible before making a decision.Even though they spend more time exploring options, maximizers tend to be less satisfied with the choices they finally make.Are you one of the professionals who spends too much time thinking and not enough time acting?To make better career decisions that put your career on the right track and chugging right along, follow these three tips from Dr. Woody1. Keep it RealThe job market is tough, which means finding that ideal opportunity wont be easy. The fact is you need to understand the reality of what is available and adjust your expectations accordingly. The more realistic you are with your expectations the more likely that you will be satisfied with your choice.2. Be DecisiveSet some time parameters around your decision making. The longer the decision making process takes, the more anxiety provoking it can be. It may also be helpful to understand that being decisive doesnt mean being bound by that decision. Career decisions are not final and you can always make a change later. In todays environment, changing careers isnt unusual and is certainly not frowned upon like it used to be.3. Own Your DecisionsFocus on the positive benefits of your choices as opposed to mulling over the perceived opportunities missed by not going with one of the alternatives. In other words focus on the positive and be forward thinking.Michael Dr. Woody Woodward, PhD, is an Organizational Psychologist and author of the Amazon.com top-selling job hunting book,The YOU Plan, and newly released online courseYOU Plan for Career Change on Udemy. As a Member Savings Partner, Dr. Woody offers all members a discounted rate of $19 (50% off the standard rate) on his online course If youre a member, check out your Member Savings page for details on this and over 50 other great discountsReaders, how do you make better career decisions? Tell us in the comments below

9 Perfect Jobs for Career Changers

9 Perfect Jobs for Career Changers9 Perfect Jobs for Career Changers Whether you arent being challenged enough, dont see potential for growth or cant stop thinking the grass might be greener on the other side, its natural to feel restless in your career at some point or another. This doesnt necessarily mean that you should jump ship immediately, but if your frustration drags on for months (or even years), it could be a sign that its time to start looking for a more fulfilling career.But of course, transitioning careers isnt always simple. In many fields, career changers encounter high barriers to entry, from required degrees and certifications to minimum years of experience. The good news? There are plenty of jobs out there where those without direct experience are welcomed and celebrated.We spoke with a handful of career experts to identify the best of the best jobs for career changers - heres what made the cut.Why Its Great for Career Changers Sometimes a positio n is listed as a project manager, but its actually more akin to a lower-stakes program coordinator role. This means focusing more on the administrative tasks involved and, because of that, makes a fantastic option for administrative or other professionals looking for a career stepping stone. A great candidate is someone who is organized, responsive, adaptable and a good communicator. Down the road, you can evolve to a higher-level Project Manager role. Or, because the position is so versatile and the skills are so valued, it may open doors in other industries. - Beth Tucker, CEO of KNF&T Staffing ResourcesWhy Its Great for Career Changers As long as you have good listening skills and a willingness to learn, fruchtwein anyone can succeed in sales as a career transition. For example, lets say you love and have worked in construction. You could retool yourself as a real estate agent. If you love cars, consider selling classic cars or RVs. Even selling jobs that require licenses, lik e a financial planner and insurance agent , are easy jobs to transition into with just a few months online training and certification. - Laura Handrick, Career Analyst at FitSmallBusiness.comWhy Its Great for Career Changers The tech industry is among the fruchtwein open to career changers. And it generally values results above linear career paths or university degrees. Case in point just recently Google, Apple, IBM and other top tech companies announced they wont require a college degree anymore. There are many different career options available, so take some time to choose what is most appealing to you (and in demand) and start learning you can find several alternative ways to learn new skills and get your foot in the door, from programs that aim to increase diversity in STEM, to free or paid online courses. - Aurora Meneghello, career coach and founder of Repurpose Your PurposeWhy Its Great for Career Changers The world is a data minefield. Leaders lean on insights fr om data to make business decisions. If you are analytical, love Excel, prefer to work with facts, logic and numbers and often alone, you might transfer into a Data Analyst role. There is demand for these skills, so it is a great choice for career changers. - Ellie Eckhoff, Senior Vice President at career transition firm Clear RockWhy Its Great for Career Changers Having a vibrant social media presence is essential for most businesses. Your success building across social media platforms for a non-profit where you volunteer could be transferable to many industries. If you built an Instagram account for foodies with a huge following or write blogs on your LinkedIn profile that are widely read, you have experience in Social Media. - Terri Wein, CEO of career coaching firm Weil & WeinWhy Its Great for Career Changers Recruiting can be a great field. You will need to have or build a network, so this is a great career for someone who is a natural connector. You can work for yourself, for recruiting companies or in-house. Recruiters can specialize in specific roles (e.g. engineering, technical roles, etc.) or hire across different positions, fields and skill levels. If you are a people-person and love to take initiative, this can be a fun career that will challenge you to be your best. - Aurora MeneghelloWhy Its Great for Career Changers Are you an expert in the financial, construction or healthcare industries? These are growing sectors in the economy and there are opportunities for people to insert themselves into a business temporarily. Clearly, you need to be a subject matter expert. On top of that, you must be willing to share your advice and recommendations and find comfort in working with some uncertainty about the work and ambiguity about whats next. This is a great option because workers get to try out companies before they commit, and they can build their own business. - Ellie EckhoffWhy Its Great for Career Changers I find digital marketing to be a fantastic field for any career changer who loves storytelling, communication and business Because marketing moves so fast, colleges and universities usually take a few years to catch up with it - this means most graduates with formal marketing degrees might not have learned what is just now starting to emerge. And many seasoned professionals do not always keep up with the latest trends. Thats your opportunity to enter the field. - Aurora Meneghello Why Its Great for Career Changers Due to the current teacher shortage in many states, those with industry experience can often fast track into teaching roles. In fact, private schools arent required to abide by state certifications in many locations. If you like teaching others, whether kids or adults, teaching jobs are out there - and the requirements are not as restricting as you might think. Perhaps youre an expert on WordPress? With as little as a bachelors degree, you could teach at the community college. Or maybe you love and p layed college softball? Consider teaching sports at the high school. There are lots of openings in STEM subjects. If you have experience in science, technology, engineering or math, transitioning to a role with summers off is not a badeanstalt option. - Laura Handrick

The Role and Responsibilities of a Manager

The Role and Responsibilities of a ManagerThe Role and Responsibilities of a ManagerIn two related articles, What Does a Manager Do?and Why Its Time to Change Our Views on Management and the Job of the Manager, we explore this changing and important role in-depth. In this article, we take a step back and focus on the fundamentals of the job of manager and why it is both critical to success in todays organizations and why it represents a viable career option. The Managers Role Inside the Organization Organizations are hierarchies of titles. The organizational chart or the structure of the company and the relationships of the jobs and responsibilities, from the top down, maybe CEO, Vice President, Director, then Manager, each of whom perform separate and critical functions, enabling the organization to function, meet its obligations and turn a profit. The higher you climb in the organizations ranks, the further away you move from the day-to-day operations and work of the firms empl oyees. While the CEO and Vice-Presidents focus more of their efforts on issues ofstrategy, investment, and overall coordination, managers are directly involved with the individuals serving customers, producing and selling the firms goods or services, and providing internal support to other groups. Additionally, the manager acts as a bridge between senior management for translating higher-level strategies and goals into operating plans that drive the business.The challenging role of the manager is accountable to senior executives for performance and to front-line employees for guidance, motivation, and support. It is common for managers to feel as if they are pulled between the demands of top leaders and the needs of the individuals performing the work of the firm. The Work of the Manager Have you ever witnessed the plate spinner at the circus? This is the individual who places a breakable dinner plate on a stick and starts it spinning. The entertainer repeats this task a dozen o r more times, and then runs around and striving to keep all of the plates spinning without letting any crash to the floor. On many occasions, the role of manager feels a great deal like this plate spinner. The managers functions are many and varied, including Hiring and staffing.Training new employees.Coaching and developing existing employees.Dealing with performance herausforderungs and terminations.Supporting problem resolution and decision-making.Conducting timely performance evaluations.Translating corporate goals into functional and individual goals.Monitoring performance and initiating action to strengthen results.Monitoring and controlling expenses and budgets.Tracking and reporting scorecard results to senior management.Planning and goal-setting for future periods. The daily work of the manager is filled with one-on-one or group interactions focused on operations. Many managers use early mornings or later evenings to complete their reports, catch-up on e-mail and update th eir task lists. There is never a dull moment much less time for quiet contemplation in the lives of most managers. Types of Managers Managers are most often responsible for a particular function or department within the organization. From accounting to marketing, to sales, customer support, engineering, quality, and all other groups, a manager either lead a gruppe directly or leads a group of supervisors who lead the teams. In addition to the traditional role of departmental or functional manager, there are also product and project managers who are responsible for a set of activities or initiatives, often without any people reporting to them.These informal managers work across functions and recruit team members from the various groups for temporary and unique initiatives. Span of Control The phrase span of control relates to the number of individuals who report directly to any particular manager. One of the trends of recent years has been to reduce the number of managers in an organization and increase the number of direct reports working for remaining managers. A manager optimally has no more than six to eight direct reports, although many have ten or even twenty individuals they are responsible for on a daily basis. A smaller span of control enables increased support for training, coaching, and development. The larger span reduces the managers effectiveness for supporting her direct reports. Authority of the Manager A manager may have the power to hire or fire employees or to promote them. In larger companies, a manager may only recommend such action to the next level of management. The manager has the authority to change the work assignments of team members. Essential Skills of the Manager Managers need to develop and hone the following skills Leadership- Youve got to be able to set priorities and motivate your team members. This involves self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Be a source of energy, em pathy, and trust. And remember that effective leaders work daily to develop team members through positive feedback, constructive feedback, and coaching.Communication- Become a student of effective communication in all its applications, including one-on-one, small group, large group, email and social media. Realize that the most important aspect of communicating is listening. Collaboration- Serve as a role model for working together. Support cross-functional efforts and model collaborative behaviors to set the example for your team members.Critical Thinking- Strive to understand where and how your projects fit into the bigger picture to enhance your effectiveness. Review priorities in light of larger goals. Translate this understanding into meaningful goals and objectives for your team members.Finance- Learn the language of numbers. Managers must strive to understand how company funds are invested and to ensure that these investments earn a good return for the firm. While you do not need to be an accountant to be a manager, it is imperative that you learn and apply the basics. Project Management- Everything that we do that is new in an organization is created in the form of projects. Todays managers understand and leverage formal project management practices to ensure timely completion and proper control of initiatives. The Bottom Line- A Career in Management The work of management is divided into the activities around planning, leading, organizing and controlling, and the work of a manager encompasses all of these areas. Anyone aspiring to move into management as a career should develop and display strong technical and functional skills- become an expert in your discipline, and have a strong liking of interacting with, supporting and guiding others. The best managers understand their role is about their team and their teams performance and not about themselves. They work hard to develop the skills identified above and they take great satisfaction in the su ccesses of their team members. Do this effectively at a lower level and others will recognize your value and abilities and strive to increase your responsibilities over time. Management as a career is simultaneously challenging and exciting. Updated by Art Petty

This is the best way to overcome your fear of missing out

This is the best way to overcome yur fear of missing outThis is the best way to overcome your fear of missing outYouhear about FOMO a lot these days. In fact, the wordwelches added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013.What does it really mean? A recentstudyon the subject defined it asthe uneasy and sometimes all-consuming feeling that youre missing out that your peers are doing, in the know about, or in possession of mora or something better than you. Under this framing of FoMO, nearly three quarters of young adults reported they experienced the phenomenon.Its certainly not a good thing. And it leads you tocheck social media again and again and again so you dont feel out of the loop. So you know youre doing okay. So you dont feel left out.Sometimes that alleviates the anxiety - but often it doesnt. And either way it drives you to keep running around the digital hamster wheel to feel okay with yourself.Is this just a symptom of modern life? Is it no big deal? Or is it telling us something we need to know? And is there anything we can do to break the vicious cycle?Research has answers. And you can fix this problem. But first, the badeanstalt news FOMO is a lot worse than you thinkFOMO comes from unhappinessCaught in the FOMO cycle? Youre probably not feeling too great about your life. FOMO often originates inunhappinessOur findings show those with low levels of satisfaction of the fundamental needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness tend towards higher levels of fear of missing out as do those with lower levels of general mood and overall life satisfaction.So youre not feeling so hot about things. Or youre wondering if everyone else is having more fun than you. How do you scratch the itch? Check facebook inc, of courseAcross all three mediation models results FoMO welches robustly associated with social media engagement, b = .40, p .001 (B path)Study 2 showed that fear of missing played a key and robust role in explaining social media engagement ove r and above the other factors we considered.In fact, FOMO leads people to check social media right after they wake up, before they go to bed and during mealsResults conceptually replicated findings from Study 2, those high in FoMO tended to use facebook inc more often immediately after waking, before going to sleep, and during meals.Um, sounds uncomfortably like addiction to me(To learn the four things neuroscience says will keep your brain happy, clickhere.)So youre not feeling so great- whether you realize it or not - and you turn to social media to make you feel better. Only one problem there it actually makes you feel worseThe facebook inc illusionWe all know that Facebook doesnt provide a very well-rounded picture of peoples lives. Its more like the cherry-picked perfection version.Often it seems like if bragging and showing off were banned, some people wouldnt post anything at all.But despite knowing this,studiessay we cant help but compare our lives to theirsAfter controlli ng for the possibility of reverse causality, our results suggest that (Social Network Site)users have a higher probability to compare their achievements with those of others.Andresearchshows this is the happiness equivalent of taking someone with a nut allergy and putting them on an all-cashew dietAccording to Burke, passive consumption of Facebook also correlates to a marginal increase in depression. If two women each talk to their friends the same amount of time, but one of them spends more time reading about friends on Facebook as well, the one reading tends to grow slightly more depressed, Burke saysAgain and again the happiness research shows comparisons to lives that seem better than yours, well,thats some bad juju, hombre.AsMontesquieuonce saidIf one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.As Swarthmore professorBarry Schwartzwrites i n his excellent book,The Paradox of Choice Why More Is LessStop paying so much attention to how others around you are doing is easy advice to give, but hard to follow, because the evidence of how others are doing is pervasive, because fruchtwein of us seem to care a great deal about status, and finally, because access to some of the fruchtwein important things in life (for example, the best colleges, the best jobs, the best houses in the best neighborhoods) is granted only to those who do better than their peers. Nonetheless, social comparison seems sufficiently destructive to our sense of well-being that it is worthwhile to remind ourselves to do it less.So youre wondering if your life measures up and you turn to everyone elses deliberately sculpted illusion of lifestyle perfection This is the happiness equivalent of readingyour bank statement after looking atthe Forbes 400 list.As Erica Jong once saidJealousy is all the fun you think they had.Even if we logically know Facebookisnt an accurate depiction of peoples lives, well, confronting your seeming inadequacy 24/7 against an unachievable false realitycan hammer your already vulnerable self-esteem.You just cant compete with their highly-edited topiary of lifestyle awesomeness - especially when youre feeling a little down or anxious to begin with.So whats the most common response? To post something. As if to sayLook at me Im cool, tooBut thisonly strengthens the cycle. As internet maven and co-founder of Flickr, Caterina Fake,once saidSocial software is both the creator and the cure of FOMO.Its cyclical.And the research agrees. People with FOMO have ambivalent feelings toward Facebook. It brings them up and slams them back downTo evaluate our prediction that FoMO would be associated with high levels of ambivalent emotions when using Facebook use we regressed positive affect, b=.31, p.001, and negative affect, b = .40, p .001, on FoMO scores. This pattern of relations indicated those high in FoMO were more likely to experienced mixed feelings when using social media.A roller coaster of emotion. Just like the highs and lows of addiction, eh?But posting to alleviate your discomfortalso has an important secondary effect by presenting your carefully edited versionof life awesomeness, you just made anyone who sees it feel worse.Youre spreading the virus.Good for Facebook. Good for Haagen Dazs sales. Bad for happiness.(To learn what Harvard research says will make you happier and more successful, clickhere.)So this is how FOMO comes about and why its so awful. But how do we break the cycle?The Problem isattentionLooking at social media for happiness is a bad idea. You wont find it out there. Sounds cliche, but theresearchsays you need to look insideThe problem with FOMO is the individuals it impacts are looking outward instead of inward, McLaughlin said. When youre so tuned in to the other, or the better (in your mind), you lose your authentic sense of self. This constant fear of missing ou t means you are not participating as a real person in your own world.Facebook isnt real life.Its obviously not life. And itscertainlynot real. Only real life is real life. But youre comparing yourself tofake life. (Someone cue the music from The Matrix, please.)And the key to happiness really comes down to one wordAttention.We all have bad things we could think about. But they dont bother us when we pay them no mind.Look on the bright side is a cliche, but its also scientifically valid.Paul Dolan teaches at the London School of Economics and was a visiting scholar at Princeton where he worked with Nobel-Prize winner Daniel Kahneman.He explains the importance of attention in his book,Happiness by Design Change What You Do, bedrngnis How You ThinkYour happiness is determined by how you allocate your attention. What you attend to drives your behavior and it determines your happiness. Attention is the glue that holds your life together The scarcity of attentional resources means that yo u must consider how you can make and facilitate better decisions about what to pay attention to and in what ways. If you are not as happy as you could be, then you must be misallocating your attention So changing behavior and enhancing happiness is as much about withdrawing attention from the negative as it is about attending to the positive.But when youre caught in the loop of FOMO you tune out the real world and tune in to the fake one - Facebook.And thats what the research shows people with FOMO stop paying attention to life and turn to social media for their happiness cure.Students withFOMO pay less attention in school and are even more likely to check their phone when theyre drivingThis analysis showed that students high in FoMO were more liable to use Facebook during university lecturesYoung adults who were high in fear of missing out paid greater attention to emails, text messages, and their mobile phones when driving compared to those lower on FoMO.(To learn more about how to focus your attention and be happy, clickhere.)Buthow do you focus your attention so that you appreciate the real world and dont turn to Facebook (which is only going to make you feel worse)? What can you pay attention to when life is, frankly, kinda sad or boring?Its deceptively simple, reallyTry gratitudeSounds sappy, I know. But try a simple experimentLook around. What good things mightyou be taking for granted? Home? Family? Friends?Now take a couple seconds to imagine thosewere taken away from you. How would you feel? Bad things happen to us randomly, right? So to some degree, you areluckyto have what you do.Does this exercise sound silly?Researchshows it works. Mentally subtracting cherished moments from your life makes you appreciate them more, makes you grateful and makes you happier.In fact,gratitudeis arguably the king of happiness. Whats the research say? Cant be more clearthan thisthe more a person is inclined to gratitude, the less likely he or she is to be depressed, anxious, lonely, envious, or neurotic.And feeling gratitude doesnt just make you happier. Its correlated with anobjectively better lifewe found thatgratitude, controlling for materialism, uniquely predicts all outcomes considered higher grade point average, life satisfaction, social integration, and absorption, as well as lower envy and depression.The inevitable comparisons to the fake lives on Facebook makes you feel you haveless. Contemplating what you are lucky to already possess makes you feel you havemore.Somaybe its time to look atthe good things you take for grantedin life rather than your Facebook wall. Turn notifications off. As the author of the FOMO studysaidFor people who feel very secure in their relationships, their relationships are important to them, but they dont feel compelled to always be connected, Przybylski said. Social media may not create the tendency, he said, but it likely exacerbates it by making sharing so easy. Sometimes, he said, its good to insulate y ourself from the world of possibilities.(To learn more about how you can use gratitude to make yourself happy all the time, clickhere.)Alright, lets round up what weve learned about FOMO and find out the best way to make sure you keep feeling good when you hear the siren song of social mediaSum upHeres where FOMO comes from and how to beat itFOMO starts with sadness.For the best way to feel better and stop the problem before it starts, clickhere.Social media makes it worse, not better.Facebook isnt evil - but relying on it for happiness is.Happiness is about attention.Focus on the good and you will feel good.Gratitude is essential.Imagine losing thethings youre lucky to have and you willappreciate them.Social media isnt the devil. But were wired to compare ourselves to others and you know where that leads on a medium where everyone is cutting cornersto look their best.And Facebookcanhelp you be happy. But dont scroll and compare.Use it toplan face-to-face get togethers.University of Chicago professorJohn Cacioppo, the leading researcher on loneliness, says doing that canmake your life betterFacebook is merely a tool, he says, and like any tool, its effectiveness will depend on its user. If you use Facebook to increase face-to-face contact, he says, it increases social capital. So if social media lets you organize a game of football among your friends, thats healthy. If you turn to social media instead of playing football, however, thats unhealthy.And when youre with friends,put that phone away. Seeing friends and family regularly is the happiness equivalent of an extra$97,265 a year. Whatever you want to check on social mediaaint worth a hundred grand, bubba.Forget the fake perfect lives of Facebook that lead to FOMO. Instead, try JOMO the joy of missing out on all those illusions.When you spend all that time staring in envy at the oh-so-cool pictures of cleverly crafted bliss on Facebook, keepone thingin mindIts your life youre missing out on.Join over 260,00 0 readers.Get a free weekly update via emailhere.Related postsHow To Get People To Like You 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior ExpertNew Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You HappyNew Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More SuccessfulThis article originally appeared at Barking Up the Wrong Tree.This is the best way to overcome your fear of missing outYouhear about FOMO a lot these days. In fact, the wordwas added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013.What does it really mean? A recentstudyon the subject defined it asthe uneasy and sometimes all-consuming feeling that youre missing out that your peers are doing, in the know about, or in possession of more or something better than you. Under this framing of FoMO, nearly three quarters of young adults reported they experienced the phenomenon.Its certainly not a good thing. And it leads you tocheck social media again and again and again so you dont feel out of the loop. So you know youre doing okay. So you dont feel left out.Sometimes that alleviates the anxiety - but often it doesnt. And either way it drives you to keep running around the digital hamster wheel to feel okay with yourself.Is this just a symptom of modern life? Is it no big deal? Or is it telling us something we need to know? And is there anything we can do to break the vicious cycle?Research has answers. And you can fix this problem. But first, the bad news FOMO is a lot worse than you thinkFOMO comes from unhappinessCaught in the FOMO cycle? Youre probably not feeling too great about your life. FOMO often originates inunhappinessOur findings show those with low levels of satisfaction of the fundamental needs for competence, autonomy, and relatedness tend towards higher levels of fear of missing out as do those with lower levels of general mood and overall life satisfaction.So youre not feeling so hot about things. Or youre wondering if everyone else is having more fun than you. How do you scratch the itch? Check Facebook, of course Across all three mediation models results FoMO was robustly associated with social media engagement, b = .40, p .001 (B path)Study 2 showed that fear of missing played a key and robust role in explaining social media engagement over and above the other factors we considered.In fact, FOMO leads people to check social media right after they wake up, before they go to bed and during mealsResults conceptually replicated findings from Study 2, those high in FoMO tended to use Facebook more often immediately after waking, before going to sleep, and during meals.Um, sounds uncomfortably like addiction to me(To learn the four things neuroscience says will keep your brain happy, clickhere.)So youre not feeling so great- whether you realize it or not - and you turn to social media to make you feel better. Only one problem there it actually makes you feel worseThe Facebook illusionWe all know that Facebook doesnt provide a very well-rounded picture of peoples lives. Its more like the cherry -picked perfection version.Often it seems like if bragging and showing off were banned, some people wouldnt post anything at all.But despite knowing this,studiessay we cant help but compare our lives to theirsAfter controlling for the possibility of reverse causality, our results suggest that (Social Network Site)users have a higher probability to compare their achievements with those of others.Andresearchshows this is the happiness equivalent of taking someone with a nut allergy and putting them on an all-cashew dietAccording to Burke, passive consumption of Facebook also correlates to a marginal increase in depression. If two women each talk to their friends the same amount of time, but one of them spends more time reading about friends on Facebook as well, the one reading tends to grow slightly more depressed, Burke saysAgain and again the happiness research shows comparisons to lives that seem better than yours, well,thats some bad juju, hombre.AsMontesquieuonce saidIf one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.As Swarthmore professorBarry Schwartzwrites in his excellent book,The Paradox of Choice Why More Is LessStop paying so much attention to how others around you are doing is easy advice to give, but hard to follow, because the evidence of how others are doing is pervasive, because most of us seem to care a great deal about status, and finally, because access to some of the most important things in life (for example, the best colleges, the best jobs, the best houses in the best neighborhoods) is granted only to those who do better than their peers. Nonetheless, social comparison seems sufficiently destructive to our sense of well-being that it is worthwhile to remind ourselves to do it less.So youre wondering if your life measures up and you turn to everyone elses deliberately sculpted illusion of lifestyle pe rfection This is the happiness equivalent of readingyour bank statement after looking atthe Forbes 400 list.As Erica Jong once saidJealousy is all the fun you think they had.Even if we logically know Facebookisnt an accurate depiction of peoples lives, well, confronting your seeming inadequacy 24/7 against an unachievable false realitycan hammer your already vulnerable self-esteem.You just cant compete with their highly-edited topiary of lifestyle awesomeness - especially when youre feeling a little down or anxious to begin with.So whats the most common response? To post something. As if to sayLook at me Im cool, tooBut thisonly strengthens the cycle. As internet maven and co-founder of Flickr, Caterina Fake,once saidSocial software is both the creator and the cure of FOMO.Its cyclical.And the research agrees. People with FOMO have ambivalent feelings toward Facebook. It brings them up and slams them back downTo evaluate our prediction that FoMO would be associated with high levels of ambivalent emotions when using Facebook use we regressed positive affect, b=.31, p.001, and negative affect, b = .40, p .001, on FoMO scores. This pattern of relations indicated those high in FoMO were more likely to experienced mixed feelings when using social media.A roller coaster of emotion. Just like the highs and lows of addiction, eh?But posting to alleviate your discomfortalso has an important secondary effect by presenting your carefully edited versionof life awesomeness, you just made anyone who sees it feel worse.Youre spreading the virus.Good for Facebook. Good for Haagen Dazs sales. Bad for happiness.(To learn what Harvard research says will make you happier and more successful, clickhere.)So this is how FOMO comes about and why its so awful. But how do we break the cycle?The Problem isattentionLooking at social media for happiness is a bad idea. You wont find it out there. Sounds cliche, but theresearchsays you need to look insideThe problem with FOMO is the indiv iduals it impacts are looking outward instead of inward, McLaughlin said. When youre so tuned in to the other, or the better (in your mind), you lose your authentic sense of self. This constant fear of missing out means you are not participating as a real person in your own world.Facebook isnt real life.Its obviously not life. And itscertainlynot real. Only real life is real life. But youre comparing yourself tofake life. (Someone cue the music from The Matrix, please.)And the key to happiness really comes down to one wordAttention.We all have bad things we could think about. But they dont bother us when we pay them no mind.Look on the bright side is a cliche, but its also scientifically valid.Paul Dolan teaches at the London School of Economics and was a visiting scholar at Princeton where he worked with Nobel-Prize winner Daniel Kahneman.He explains the importance of attention in his book,Happiness by Design Change What You Do, Not How You ThinkYour happiness is determined by how you allocate your attention. What you attend to drives your behavior and it determines your happiness. Attention is the glue that holds your life together The scarcity of attentional resources means that you must consider how you can make and facilitate better decisions about what to pay attention to and in what ways. If you are not as happy as you could be, then you must be misallocating your attention So changing behavior and enhancing happiness is as much about withdrawing attention from the negative as it is about attending to the positive.But when youre caught in the loop of FOMO you tune out the real world and tune in to the fake one - Facebook.And thats what the research shows people with FOMO stop paying attention to life and turn to social media for their happiness cure.Students withFOMO pay less attention in school and are even more likely to check their phone when theyre drivingThis analysis showed that students high in FoMO were more liable to use Facebook during univer sity lecturesYoung adults who were high in fear of missing out paid greater attention to emails, text messages, and their mobile phones when driving compared to those lower on FoMO.(To learn more about how to focus your attention and be happy, clickhere.)Buthow do you focus your attention so that you appreciate the real world and dont turn to Facebook (which is only going to make you feel worse)? What can you pay attention to when life is, frankly, kinda sad or boring?Its deceptively simple, reallyTry gratitudeSounds sappy, I know. But try a simple experimentLook around. What good things mightyou be taking for granted? Home? Family? Friends?Now take a couple seconds to imagine thosewere taken away from you. How would you feel? Bad things happen to us randomly, right? So to some degree, you areluckyto have what you do.Does this exercise sound silly?Researchshows it works. Mentally subtracting cherished moments from your life makes you appreciate them more, makes you grateful and make s you happier.In fact,gratitudeis arguably the king of happiness. Whats the research say? Cant be more clearthan thisthe more a person is inclined to gratitude, the less likely he or she is to be depressed, anxious, lonely, envious, or neurotic.And feeling gratitude doesnt just make you happier. Its correlated with anobjectively better lifewe found thatgratitude, controlling for materialism, uniquely predicts all outcomes considered higher grade point average, life satisfaction, social integration, and absorption, as well as lower envy and depression.The inevitable comparisons to the fake lives on Facebook makes you feel you haveless. Contemplating what you are lucky to already possess makes you feel you havemore.Somaybe its time to look atthe good things you take for grantedin life rather than your Facebook wall. Turn notifications off. As the author of the FOMO studysaidFor people who feel very secure in their relationships, their relationships are important to them, but they dont feel compelled to always be connected, Przybylski said. Social media may not create the tendency, he said, but it likely exacerbates it by making sharing so easy. Sometimes, he said, its good to insulate yourself from the world of possibilities.(To learn more about how you can use gratitude to make yourself happy all the time, clickhere.)Alright, lets round up what weve learned about FOMO and find out the best way to make sure you keep feeling good when you hear the siren song of social mediaSum upHeres where FOMO comes from and how to beat itFOMO starts with sadness.For the best way to feel better and stop the problem before it starts, clickhere.Social media makes it worse, not better.Facebook isnt evil - but relying on it for happiness is.Happiness is about attention.Focus on the good and you will feel good.Gratitude is essential.Imagine losing thethings youre lucky to have and you willappreciate them.Social media isnt the devil. But were wired to compare ourselves to others and you know where that leads on a medium where everyone is cutting cornersto look their best.And Facebookcanhelp you be happy. But dont scroll and compare.Use it toplan face-to-face get togethers.University of Chicago professorJohn Cacioppo, the leading researcher on loneliness, says doing that canmake your life betterFacebook is merely a tool, he says, and like any tool, its effectiveness will depend on its user. If you use Facebook to increase face-to-face contact, he says, it increases social capital. So if social media lets you organize a game of football among your friends, thats healthy. If you turn to social media instead of playing football, however, thats unhealthy.And when youre with friends,put that phone away. Seeing friends and family regularly is the happiness equivalent of an extra$97,265 a year. Whatever you want to check on social mediaaint worth a hundred grand, bubba.Forget the fake perfect lives of Facebook that lead to FOMO. Instead, try JOMO the joy of missing out on all those illusions.When you spend all that time staring in envy at the oh-so-cool pictures of cleverly crafted bliss on Facebook, keepone thingin mindIts your life youre missing out on.Join over 260,000 readers.Get a free weekly update via emailhere.Related postsHow To Get People To Like You 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior ExpertNew Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You HappyNew Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More SuccessfulThis article originally appeared at Barking Up the Wrong Tree.

The Hidden Truth About Good Things to Put on a Resume Uncovered

The Hidden Truth About Good Things to Put on a Resume Uncovered When applying to a transportation operations manager job, make sure that you match your skills with the demands of the work description to make the most of your mglichkeits. The work market is among the most fierce markets around, youre not just in competition with thousands of graduates which have been in the market before you but you also need to be worried about the candidates who have accumulated intimidating heights of job experience. Cost effective but just for the minimal volume jobs. Meet the requirements of a growing number of employers. Its increasingly obvious that employers will need to better describe the particular skills theyre seeking to hire, and that job seekers ought to be able to demonstrate that they possess the skills employers need. Youre able to write the job winning resume only in case you have thorough understanding of resume writing. It is possible to later prove your work suitability at the right time of the personal interview. On account of the increasing competition in every area, it is now important for every single job searching individual to remain different from every other candidate to acquire attention from the employer. To create a strong organization, you want to have repeat and referral business. In the end, should you need help with the many sections of your resume, utilizing a resume builder is the ideal solution. Employing a template can help you to create a cover letter with a typical structure. The job of attempting to obtain a job free of experience is an intimidating task that most recent graduates arent ready for. The work has to be exciting and attractive to the individual who performs it. Learn what you pay attention to at work and whats important to you. Someone who trained in a particular skill for 2 years may have spent more hours training than somebody who has done it for 6 decades. The Hidden Treasure of Good Things to Put on a Res ume Sports Even in case you dont play anymore, competing as an athlete can let you get work. The Competition is fierce but you always have the option to decide to rise until the challenge. Specifically, you ought to be certain to incorporate any previous awards on your resume. You dont need to have a good website, you merely need to have a passable one (and it should work on mobile). A person might be more appropriate to work a great deal of overtime. 1 person may have a better teacher. Take a look at your perfect career in the cloud and find a feeling of what type of job would be a fantastic fit for you. If you wind up deciding you just require a work at the moment and will take the one whichs not your dream. Worst case scenario you simply dont get the work anyway which is where you were in the very first location. Low-level jobs Even if you believe that a few of your previous jobs are trivial, 1 expert says they may still help you receive work. A disappearance alone can earn a celebrity. A standard issue is that many individuals dont understand how to create a resume or write one. A last trouble can occur when an individual uses his spare time too effectively. There arent many troubles that could occur at work if someone doesnt utilize time away from office productively. Most importantly, your resume is the very first impression an employer gets while reading and therefore, you may receive a call for the interview. Bear in mind that companies are only people looking for different individuals to work alongside them. In fact, it can make more confusion as you attempt to spell out the jobs youve had in the terms you feel a prospective employer would like to see. Usually jobs with low minimal requirements are jobs that will provide the firm the chance to train them in how the company does business.

The Bizarre Secret of Resume Writing for Beginners and High School Students

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