Life Habits

Want to improve the presentations you give?  Whether you're in school or beginning your career and just starting to give presentations or you're a veteran presenter, Karel provides advice on how to improve the overall effectiveness of your presentations.  He addresses the following topics: audience, objectives, three main points, duration, slides/structure, graphics/text, audio-video/animation, humor, practice, and delivery.

Does your life feel out of control? Are you not spending time on the things you think are important in life? In this episode, Karel summarizes some insightful quotes and then reviews ten ideas for optimizing the balance and integration of the work and non-work aspects of your life.

Want to improve your electronic communication?  Karel devotes this longer than usual episode on the topic of electronic communication which includes everything from Facebook and Twitter to texting, instant messaging, e-mail, conference calling, and video conferencing.  Karel provides advice on increasing your effective use of these mechanisms as well as how to limit them as well.

Karel is joined on this episode by special guest UK Psychologist Mandy Kloppers who discusses the important topic of self-confidence.  Mandy shares her favorite quotes on the topic and outlines her top 10 ideas for increasing self-confidence. Mandy also recommends the book Mind over Mood as a particularly good source of information on this topic. If you live in the UK, you can also checkout the innovative service she founded called text-tonic. If you live outside the UK, you can still visit the website but for now can't make use of the mobile/cell phone service itself.

How are the various relationships in your life doing? Karel focuses this episode on the topic of relationships - taking stock, increasing, decreasing, and deepening them across all contexts and roles within your life.  He also provides advice on improving the quality of relationships, something that is so important to the overall quality of all our lives.

Having trouble staying focussed with everything going on in your life?  Karel devotes this episode to the topic of getting and staying focussed and shares his thoughts and ideas so that you can improve your approach to this important aspect of your life.

Want to further develop and hone your leadership skills?  Whether you're a political or business leader, a little league coach, a parent or student, a formal designated leader or an emergent one, the advice Karel provides in this episode will help you improve your leadership skills. The problem with the initial mp3 file for this episode is now fixed. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Want to make New Year's resolutions that will last?  Karel devotes this episode to providing advice on determining how to select appropriate resolutions and how to make sure that you'll be able to successfully carry them out.

Want to get better at expressing gratitude?  Most people don't express gratitude enough.  Karel summarizes some good thinking on this topic and then provides 10 ideas for understanding gratitude and getting good at expressing it yourself.

Do you have the necessary level of resilience to deal with the changes happening in the world?  Karel outlines the concept of personal resilience in this episode and provides ten ideas to develop into habits that will increase your capacity to deal with major changes, the results of them, and ways to turn challenges into opportunities.

Want to make sense of blogs, mini-blogs, and podcasts?  Karel devotes this episode to describing the current trends in blog and podcast technologies (Google Alerts, Twitter, iTunes) and providing specific advice on how to find the content that is of interest to you using these technologies.  The top 10 list for this episode provides Karel's specific recommendations of blogs and podcasts.  Feel free to provide any recommendations you may have for blogs and podcasts via comments on this site or in an e-mail to lifehabits@gmail.com.

Feeling stressed?  Karel devotes this episode to a set of ideas and skills to develop into routine habits to help you manage stress on a day-to-day basis.  After summarizing the ever popular insightful famous quotes on the topic, Karel starts by helping you understand your circle of influence then describes a series of practical techniques and encourages listeners to try them and assess progress in using them.  He also briefly outlines but doesn't provide the detailed instructions for practicing a technique called Progressive Muscle Relaxation.  Here is some further information on this technique.

How are things working out for you?  Every once in a while it's good to take stock of how things are going.  Inspired by a listener suggestion, Karel takes this episode to review key ideas from previous podcasts and provide additional perspectives on them in order for you to check your progress and make any necessary mid-course corrections.

Haven't been getting certain things done?  Many people procrastinate and don't know how to stop.  In this episode, Karel reads some insightful quotes on the topic of procrastination and then takes listeners through 10 ideas for dealing with it and developing life-long habits to prevent getting into cycles of procrastination. He also summarizes the feedback received regarding the format of the podcast which strongly favored sticking with the current 30-40 minute length and content. Thanks so those of you who provided feedback.

Is your life getting too complicated?  Most people experience this and don't know how to go about dealing with it.  In this episode, Karel reads the usual famous quotes to get started and then summarizes 10 ideas for taking stock of your life and systematically simplifying it.  In response to a listener request, the famous quotes are now going to be made available starting with this episode right in the mp3 file along with the top 10 list.

Everyone wants to be more creative but few know how to go about it.  After reviewing some insightful and thought-provoking famous quotes on the topic, Karel details 10 ideas for fostering creativity.  The approaches are applicable to work situations involving products, services, and processes but equally to your personal and home life.  At the end of the episode, Karel also asks for input on a suggestion for improving the podcast series by providing short 5-8 minute daily refresher podcast episodes.

Many people hang on to resentment, hurt, and anger.  Many people also haven't experienced the power of helping others.  This episode provides you with 10 ideas for skills to develop into habits so that you can appropriately and regularly express forgiveness and compassion.

After the basic needs in life are met, many people still look for something else that will make their life everything that it can be.  Maslow's hierarchy of needs provides a context for this and his work on self-actualization outlines the attributes people have who have achieved the highest levels of personal fulfillment.  Karel summarizes Maslow's hierarchy approach and then uses it as the basis for a proposed set of 10 ideas for you to develop into self-actualization skills and, in time, habits.

Most people find themselves getting angry and reacting in ways that they later regret.  After providing some description of what happens in the body and setting the context with some insightful quotes, Karel details ten ideas for skills to develop into habits that can help you to control your emotions, like anger, rather than them controlling you.

A new area in the field of psychology is Applied Positive Psychology.  Karel interviews Kathryn Britton a professional coach who specializes in this area. Kathryn describes the major career changes she made to become become an expert in Applied Positive Psychology.  She outlines its history and the major themes it addresses given practical examples of each.  Discussion in the episode mentions Kathryn's website, blog, and the newsletter to which she is a regular contributor.