The GoalTribe Blog

So you’ve lost your job, huh? That’s sucks. Or does it? What if it’s the best thing that ever happened to you? What if it’s a blessing in disguise? I know you might feel terrible about it, but millions of people who’ve lost there jobs are deciding to re-interpret what unemployment means. They’re going from UNemploymed to FUNemployed. And you can too!

5 Steps for Turning UNemployment into FUNemployment

1. Drop the Guilt and Fear: These are new times. Lots of people are losing there jobs. You may lose your job many more times. It doesn’t mean you’re bad. It doesn’t mean you’re not taking care of your family. Feeling bad about losing your job is a waste of time. Surrender to the situation, be grateful for the fresh opportunities before you, and get curious and excited about what you could do with your time off work!

2. Take a Mini Retirement: This is an opportunity: an opportunity to start a new chapter in your life; an opportunity to catch your breath, an opportunity to take a Mini Retirement! Tim Ferris’ book “4 Hour Workweek” explains how counting on a nice retirement at the end of your life is no longer a valid strategy. There’s too much uncertainty with the economy, social security, finances and your health. It’s much smarter to take mini-retirements throughout your life. There is no longer a stigma attached to taking off 3,6 or 12 months between jobs.

3. Carpe Diem: So seize the day! Give yourself permission to have the time of your life! Whether you just have a lot more fun with the flexibility and time you have during your job search, or whether you take a full on mini-retirement - have fun with your unemployment!

4. Swap Time for Money: When you have a good job, you have money, but no time to enjoy it. When you’re without work, you’re rich with time but have limited money. How exciting! You just need to learn how to be clever & creative with your cash.

5. Do Something Stupendous! I hope by now your brain is running wild with ideas for things you could do with your time off. Do something exciting! Do something that people will be amazed by! Do something that makes a great story! Do something that will fill a photo album that will make you laugh, and smile and relive happy memories all the days your life. Make this unemployment a FUNemployment!

What might you do with your FUNemployment? Learn a language? See concerts? Teach your children to surf? Learn the accordion? Backpack South America? Volunteer to help save the rain forest? Write your memoirs? Finish that screenplay? Play your favorite video game to the end? Find a cure for baldness? Please share your ideas in the comments section!

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Part of creating a fulfilling life for yourself is discovering the things you love to do and filling your life with them. It’s amazing when your profession is your passion and you volunteer doing things that are both profoundly helpful and enjoyable to you.

But inevitably you end up having to do things that make you want to scream, or make your eyes glaze over like a Dunkin Donut.

Don’t dispair! You can adjust your enjoyment of these things with a few simple tricks:

1. Know Why: Why are you doing this task? Focus on the outcome you’re after and how it will feel to achieve it. For example, how great will it feel to have all your finances organized and fully understand them? And how will it feel to be able to spend knowing that it’s in budget?

2. Watch Your Focus: When working on a project we tend to keep focusing on problems and things which aren’t complete yet, so we can fix them. But be sure to take a moment to look at what’s going right. What’s great about this?

3. Watch your Body: Often if you’re doing something you don’t like, you’re holding that tension and stress in your body - in your muscles, your breathing and your face. Get up and move a little, shake out your body, take a deep breath and let out a sigh as if you’re looking out over a beautiful scene. Let you body relax. Smile. Feel how that change of state feels in your body and try to keep that relaxation as you work. Remind yourself regularly to check how you’re using your body - and relax!

4. Take a Break: Studies have shown that you can’t concentrate too continuously for too long without it affecting your mood and performance. It’s recommended to take a short break every half hour or so. In fact, one study showed that people who watched YouTube or checked FaceBook at work were more productive because they could relax with a laugh or a smile very quickly! (Just don’t let it get carried away.)

5. Reframe & Find Meaning: Often you just picked up a bad attitude, belief or feeling about the task that is just unfairly making you suffer. You think you hate finances - why? Where did that belief come from? Take some time to write out all the ways in which that belief is making your life miserable, then write a new belief like - “I love mastering my finances!” and then write down all the reasons that could be true.

I got to thinking about this topic from the conclusions Glen came to on his inspiring 7 Day Discipline Challenge.
Read about his challenge here: http://www.pluginid.com/pure-self-discipline/

And his conclusions here: http://www.pluginid.com/self-discipline-challenge/

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Life was not meant to be a dull bore. It’s meant to be an uproarious, laugh-out-load, grin-from-ear-to-ear, technicolor thrill ride! And if there are boring details, or painful projects you need to complete along the way, there are hundreds of little tricks for injecting juice, joy and fun into anything.

I just read the PickTheBrain.com blog post The Ultimate Motivation Hack, which explains how adding fun is the key to staying motivated. It inspired me to continue to the conversation with 40 creative ways to make boring activities much more fun:

1. Rock Out! Play music that really makes you happy.

2. Don’t just turn on the top-40 station, get online and get MP3’s of the music that made you feel like conquering the world when you were a teenager!

3. Turn it up! Can’t turn it up? Get headphones.

4. Need to think while you’re working? Explore energizing music without lyrics like classical… or my favorite work music – Goa Trance!

5. Or perhaps you prefer relaxing, serene music that makes you smile. Experiment with genres to see how different music affects you. Try jazz,rock, easy listening, world, country, electronica. I recommend Pandora.com to listen for free.

6. Play music that reminds your favorite vacation

7. Sing along – preferably at the top of your lungs!

8. Change Locations. Do your project somewhere you normally wouldn’t.

9. Do it outside in the sunshine and fresh air

10. Do it at a coffee shop

11. Do it somewhere you’ve never been before

12. Ask if you can do this project from home

13. Focus on the Fun. Too often we focus on problems we need to address rather than the hundreds of details that would make us feel happier.

14. How will this positively impact you? Your loved ones? Your finances? Your health? The world?

15. What’s go right in this moment? What could you be grateful for? What are you proud of?

16. Give Them Something To Talk About – How could you turn a mundane project into a story worth sharing?

17. How can you do it in a new, creative, crazy, profound or noteworthy way?

18. What if you did it faster than anyone thought possible?

19. What if you did it while you were in the bathtub?

20. What if you added some creative flair?

21. Can you work on this while spending the whole day in bed?

22. Change Clothes. What you wear can have a big affect on how you feel.

23. Wear your craziest outfit

24. Wear vacation clothes (and put on music from your last vacation)

25. Do the project in your pajamas, in your underwear or naked!

26. Put on a suit or your dressiest clothes

27. Wear your coziest house clothes

28. User your Body. Studies have shown that body motion is directly connected to emotion.

29. So walk tall, stand like someone who is alive, electric and ready to take on the world

30. Smile a huge, big smile (proven to help even depressed patients reduce medication)

31. Breath deeply. Take a few deep breaths every few minutes. Let out a nice sigh as you exhale.

32. Dance – while cleaning, while walking, while doing anything. Tap a foot, bop your head, let the world see your happiness.

33. Excite your Senses

34. Surround yourself in flowers

35. Find the most exhilarating paintings, screen-savers or wallpaper to decorate with. Find images that you actually make your heart swell in a way you can feel.

36. Find a scent to fill your workspace that makes you happy.

37. Try pure peppermint flavoring, with no sugar or additives, to give you a calorie free zing throughout the day

38. Play stand-up comedy on Hulu.com while working

39. Listen to great inspiration speakers like Tony Robbins, Zig Zigglar or Wayne Dyer while working

40. Have a DVD of continuous thrill sports playing in the background – skydiving, snowboarding, surfing. Whatever excites you.

What do YOU do to make a boring project more fun? What things can you do to spice up any activity? Please tell us in the comments section.

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