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Showing posts with label English for WORK. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English for WORK. Show all posts

RESILIENCE - Bouncing back from adversity

👉 Excerpts from PSYCHOLOGY TODAY ⇒ GO TO FULL ARTICLES

All About Resilience
Adversity is a fact of life. Resilience is that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back at least as strong as before. Rather than letting difficulties or failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes. Psychologists have identified some of the factors that make a person resilient, among them a positive attitude, optimism, the ability to regulate emotions, and the ability to see failure as a form of helpful feedback. [...] Resilience is not some magical quality; it takes real mental work to transcend hardship. But even after misfortune, resilient people are able to change course and move toward achieving their goals. There's growing evidence that the the elements of resilience can be cultivated.
From: https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/resilience-quotes/
Bouncing Back From Tough Times
[...] Do you demand a perfect streak, or can you accept a mix of losses and wins? Resilience is about getting through pain and disappointment without letting them crush your spirit, and research continues to uncover what resilient people do as they persist after missteps, accidents, and trauma. Stories of ordinary people thrust into extraordinarily challenging circumstances prove that disasters can be overcome—and can even make one stronger.

The Power of Failure
To fail is deeply human, as is the capacity to inspect, learn from, and transcend failure. That doesn’t mean one needs to pretend that it’s pleasant to fail or simply ignore the frustration that arises when a goal falls out of reach. But accepting the feelings that come with failure, being curious about them, and resisting the urge to judge oneself too harshly are critical skills to cultivate. Ultimately, failures are no more than stumbling blocks on the proverbial path to success: The lessons they teach have implications for humility, maturity, and empathy.

Linda Raynier ⇒ Fear of Failure (How to Overcome the Fear of Failure) (7:37 minutes)

👉 Excerpt from AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION ⇒ GO TO FULL ARTICLE
The Road to Resilience
How do people deal with difficult events that change their lives? The death of a loved one, loss of a job, serious illness, terrorist attacks and other traumatic events: these are all examples of very challenging life experiences. Many people react to such circumstances with a flood of strong emotions and a sense of uncertainty.

Yet people generally adapt well over time to life-changing situations and stressful conditions. What enables them to do so? It involves resilience, an ongoing process that requires time and effort and engages people in taking a number of steps.

This brochure is intended to help readers with taking their own road to resilience. The information within describes resilience and some factors that affect how people deal with hardship. Much of the brochure focuses on developing and using a personal strategy for enhancing resilience.

💡 GO TO FULL ARTICLE for more information about:
  • What is resilience? 
  • Resilience factors & strategies 
  • 10 ways to build resilience 
  • Learning from your past 
  • Staying flexible 
  • Places to look for help
  • Continuing on your journey
From: https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/road-resilience.aspx
👉 Excerpt from MIND TOOLS ⇒ GO TO FULL ARTICLE
Developing Resilience - Overcoming and Growing From Setbacks
According to legend, Thomas Edison made thousands of prototypes of the incandescent light bulb before he finally got it right. And, since the prolific inventor was awarded more than 1,000 patents, it's easy to imagine him failing on a daily basis in his lab at Menlo Park.

In spite of struggling with "failure" throughout his entire working life, Edison never let it get the best of him. All of these "failures," which are reported to be in the tens of thousands, simply showed him how not to invent something. His resilience gave the world some of the most amazing inventions of the early 20th century, such as the phonograph, the telegraph, and the motion picture.

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."– Thomas Edison

In this article, we'll examine resilience: what it is, why we need it, and how to develop it; so that we have the strength and fortitude to overcome adversity, and to keep on moving forward towards our dreams and our goals. (Continue reading)
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WEEKLY PICKS - 23

This is a weekly selection of reading articles, free online exercises, YouTube videos, games, quizzes and resources for you to further improve your English language skills and have fun – ENJOY!

📜READING PICKS – Articles, blog posts, quizzes and more:

From BBC CULTURE: Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera: Portraits of a complex marriage, by Kelly Grovier. Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera painted each other for 25 years: those works give us an insight into their relationship, argues Kelly Grovier.
Seen side-by-side in photographs, they struck an almost comic pose: his girth dwarfing her petite frame. When they married, her parents called them ‘the elephant’ and ‘the dove’. He was the older, celebrated master of frescoes who helped revive an ancient Mayan mural tradition, and gave a vivid visual voice to indigenous Mexican labourers seeking social equality after centuries of colonial oppression. She was the younger, self-mythologising dreamer, who magically wove from piercing introspection and chronic physical pain paintings of a severe and mysterious beauty. Together, they were two of the most important artists of the 20th Century. (Continue reading)

From BBC TRAVEL: The country with 11 official languages, by Denby Weller. Before coming to South Africa, the last thing an Australian would think is that there might be language difficulties.
[...] Discussion of the evolution of the colonial languages of South Africa is controversial, not least because they are just two of the 11 official languages in use today, and neither one is the first language for the majority of South Africans. In the 2011 Census, IsiZulu emerged as the language most spoken at home, followed by IsiXhosa. Afrikaans was a first language for 13.5% of South Africans, while English was spoken in just 9.6% of homes. Yet it is English that has emerged as the lingua franca – albeit a unique, local dialect enriched by the company of the many languages of the land. (Continue reading)

🎬 VIDEO PICKS – Short and fun videos:

LESS-THAN-5-MINUTE VIDEOS:
What causes antibiotic resistance? - Kevin Wu (4:34 minutes)
5-TO-10-MINUTE VIDEOS:
BBC 6 Minute English: What Makes You Laugh? with English Subtitle (6:03 minutes)
A LITTLE LONGER BUT WORTH IT!
How to Survive Long Haul Flights - Travel Tips, Hacks & Tricks (11:42 minutes)
💬 VOCABULARY PICKS:
VOCABULARY: Find out when to write hyphens (6:14 minutes)
💡 GRAMMAR PICKS – Assorted exercises and games:
English Grammar - comparing with LIKE & AS (9:10 minutes)
MORE PICKS NEXT WEEK!
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How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?

Boosting Your People Skills


We all know people who are in full control of their emotions. They're calm in a crisis, and they make decisions sensitively, however stressful the situation.

We also know people who can read the emotions of others. They understand what to say to make people feel better, and they know how to inspire them to take action.

People like this have high emotional intelligence (or EI). They have strong relationships, and they manage difficult situations calmly and effectively. They're also likely to be resilient in the face of adversity.

So, how emotionally intelligent are you, and how can you develop further? Find out below.


💡 You may also be interested in:
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WEEKLY PICKS - 22

This is a weekly selection of reading articles, free online exercises, YouTube videos, games, quizzes and resources for you to further improve your English language skills and have fun – ENJOY!

📜READING PICKS – Articles, blog posts, quizzes and more:

From BBC CAPITAL: How similar you are to your partner can affect your happiness, by Christian Jarrett. Researchers have found that how similar you are to your partner can affect your happiness – but it’s complicated.
Among many monogamous species, from cockatiels to cichlid fish, studies have revealed a clear pattern: it helps to be more similar to your mate. When mating pairs are behaviourally similar, their reproductive success tends to be higher.
In human terms, this would imply it’s better to be similar to your partner. Indeed, for a long time psychologists and others have argued that similarity is probably beneficial – after all, then we will be more likely to enjoy the same pursuits, values and outlook on life.
But no matter how intuitive the idea seems, for decades nearly every study has failed to support it.
Now, though, a team of psychologists at the University of Amsterdam think they know why. They have taken a far more sophisticated and nuanced look at the issue than in previous research. (Continue reading)

From BBC REEL: Reel: The oldest coffee in the world. From huts in remote villages to internet cafes in the capital city, coffee ceremonies are the centre of social life and hospitality in Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee. (Continue reading)

🎬 VIDEO PICKS – Short and fun videos:

LESS-THAN-5-MINUTE VIDEOS:
How to show annoyance (4:11 minutes)
5-TO-10-MINUTE VIDEOS:
Salary Negotiation: 6 Tips on How to Negotiate a Higher Salary (9:56 minutes)
A LITTLE LONGER BUT WORTH IT!
HISTORY: CONSUMERISM (10:52 minutes)
💬 VOCABULARY PICKS:
VOCABULARY: Words with more than one spelling (6:16 minutes)
💡 GRAMMAR PICKS – Assorted exercises and games:
Learn English: "last year" OR "in the last year" (8:26 minutes)
MORE PICKS NEXT WEEK!
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Core Values Are What You Believe, by Susan M. Heathfield (From The Balance Careers)

👉By Susan M. Heathfield (From The Balance Careers)

 What Are Your Most Significant Beliefs and Needs?

Core values are traits or qualities that you consider not just worthwhile, they represent an individual's or an organization's highest priorities, deeply held beliefs, and core, fundamental driving forces. They are the heart of what your organization and its employees stand for in the world.

 Core values are intrinsic to form the vision of your organization that you present to the world outside of your organization. Your core values are fundamental to attracting and retaining the best, most contributing employees.

 Core values define what your organization believes and how you want your organization resonating with and appealing to employees and the external world. [They] should be so integrated with your employees and their belief systems and actions that clients, customers, and vendors see the values in action.

 For example, [...] when customers tell the company that they feel cherished by the business, you know that your employees are living your core value of extraordinary customer care and service.

 Core values are also known as guiding principles because they form a solid core of who you are, what you believe, and who you want to be going forward.

📌 Core Values Form the Foundation of Your Organization
Values form the foundation for everything that happens in your workplace. The core values of the employees in your workplace, along with their experiences, upbringing, and so on, meld together to form your corporate culture. [...]

 📌 How to Identify Your Core Values
Your goal, when you identify the core values of your organization, is to identify the key core values, not a laundry list of cookie-cutter values that you copied from another organization's list of core values. An organization's employees would have a hard time living any more than 10-12 core values (at a maximum). Four-six is better and easier to hold front and center in everything you do. [...]

 📌 Develop Value Statements From Your Core Values
Value statements describe actions that are the living enactment of the fundamental core values held by most individuals within the organization. For example, a nursing group of employees identified caring service as one of their core values. When they wrote their value statements, one was, "We will respond to all customer calls within one minute." Another values statement was, "No patient shall ever run out of medication from the drip line."

 Values play a defining role in employee motivation and morale. [...] Values such as integrity, empowerment, perseverance, equality, self-discipline, and accountability, when truly integrated within the culture of the organization, are powerful motivators.

 They become the compass that the organization uses to select staff members, reward and recognize employee performance, promote employees to more senior roles, and guide interpersonal interaction among staff members.
📌 The Downside to Identifying Values

The downside to identifying values occurs when an organization's senior leaders claim to hold certain values and then behave in ways that are contradictory to their stated values. In these workplaces, values deflate motivation because employees don’t trust their leaders’ word.

 Remember that employees are like radar machines watching everything you do, listening to everything you say, and watching your interaction with customers and their coworkers. They see your values in action every day at work—or they do not.

 Employees want to work in a workplace that shares their values. They want their overall work culture to promote being a part of a whole system that is much bigger than themselves. They experience motivation and engagement when their workplace exhibits their most important core values. Never underestimate the power of core values in creating a motivating work environment—or not. Your choice.

💡 You may also be interested in:
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How many is a billion? (From Oxford Dictionary – Explore)


💡 In British English, a billion used to be equivalent to a million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,000), while in American English it has always equated to a thousand million (i.e. 1,000,000,000). British English has now adopted the American figure, though, so that a billion equals a thousand million in both varieties of English.
The same sort of change has taken place with the meaning of trillion. In British English, a trillion used to mean a million million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,000,000,000). Nowadays, it's generally held to be equivalent to a million million (1,000,000,000,000), as it is in American English.

 The same evolution can be seen with quadrillion and quintillion. In British English, a quadrillion used to mean a thousand raised to the power of eight (1024), and is now understood to be a thousand raised to the power of five (1015). A quintillion, in British English, used to mean a million raised to the power of five (1030), and is now most commonly held to be a thousand raised to the power of six (1018).

 Even higher are sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion, and decillion, some of which are not common enough to be included in OxfordDictionaries.com yet.

 Other terms follow the same linguistic pattern (ending with -illion) but do not refer to precise numbers. These include jillion, zillion, squillion, gazillion, kazillion, bajillion, and bazillion. All of these words are used informally to refer to an extremely or indefinitely large number.
How many is a billion? (2:02 minutes)

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CV / RESUME WRITING (Posts from Glassdoor Blog + Videos)

Resume Hacks - How to Make a Resume Stand Out (9:00 minutes - By Linda Raynier)


📝 How to Write a Resume (From Glassdoor Blog)

[… This article] will take you through all the essential steps of crafting this career document, from how to structure its many sections to how to make sure a spelling error doesn’t sneak in. […]

How to Structure a Resume

This is what the perfect resume looks like: it's got a simple, clean design and a clear way to contact the job candidate, plus it makes the applicant's experience stand out. You'll need to add your work experience, education — including any specialized training you may have received — your skills, and the best way to contact you. (Adding references to your resume is optional.) […]

For example, professional resume writer Peter Yang told Glassdoor that there's no rule that your education section must come before your work experience section. If your work experience is more relevant to the position for which you're applying—or if your education doesn't match the position's requirements—then your degree should be placed at the bottom of your resume. But if your GPA is sure to wow, or you’re a recent graduate without much experience, put your degree toward the top. In other words, structure your resume in a way that makes sense for you — and that shows off your strongest assets for the specific job for which you're applying.

Lastly, beware of leaning too heavily on traditional resume templates. They may make writing your resume easier, but they also won't help you stand out in a pile of other resumes. "People too often use a standardized resume," said Aikman, "and don't think from a creative perspective."

Instead, Aikman told Glassdoor, "You should consider, 'What does this employer think about? What are they looking for? What can I communicate visually?' You are trying to communicate to someone else, so think about what they want to see. What works for the engineering industry does not work for the marketing industry; [and] therefore, you have to style it toward the person who is going to be reading it."

How to Showcase Your Skills, Education & More

Career experts agree: finding a way to quantify or paint a picture of your skills is the most effective way to show them off on your resume. So, what does that look like?

It means stripping words such as "results-oriented" and "hardworking" from your resume. Why? They're overused, and they're not specific enough. Instead, use verbs "that really pinpoint what was accomplished, i.e. influenced, improved, achieved, etc.," according to expert Susan Joyce. "This way, there is no miscommunication about a candidate’s qualifications."

Job coach Angela Copeland told Glassdoor, "if you want to show that you’re results-oriented and hardworking, share the numbers. Rather than stating that you’re an 'excellent digital marketer,' prove it. Say something that reflects your actual results, such as, "grew online sales and revenue by 200 percent in one year.'"

But when it comes to showcasing your skills, education, and anything else you want to stand out, there are more words you need to focus on than just verbs. Recruiters and applicant tracking systems scan your resume for exact keywords that match the job description. So, one way you'll ensure you can show off those skills is to pepper your skills section with those keywords. For example, Yang told Glassdoor, if the job description for a software engineering position requires candidates have knowledge of object-oriented design and you took a course on object-oriented programming in college, note it on your resume. You can include it in your education or your skills section.

How to Edit Your Resume

You've written your resume, and read it twice, but that's not enough. A good editing job will take a little longer—and some specific tactics meant to catch resume errors.

First, don't attempt to edit your resume until it's done. […]

Next, never try to edit your resume right after you've written it. In fact, you should give yourself a 24-hour break before editing your resume. With time away, you'll see your resume with fresh eyes and for what it really is—not what you meant it to be.

When you give your resume a read, try reading your resume backward. It sounds odd — and it's not always easy — but reading backward forces you to focus on each word, and helps you better catch both spelling and grammatical errors in the text.

Ask a friend or family member to read your resume, too. They may spot errors that you missed or have suggestions for how to show yourself in an even better light.

Then, fact-check your resume. Check the spelling of proper nouns — think: company names, addresses, etc. — and make sure you have the current contact information for any references you've chosen to add. These things might have changed since you last applied for a job.

And lastly, be sure to look for these common resume pitfalls before you press send. […]

💡 A few examples:
💡 More from Glassdoor Blog:
5 Things Your Resume Must Have To Get More Job Interviews (6:39 minutes - From Work It Daily)
If Your Resume Doesn't Have This, It Gets Tossed by Recruiters | #HelpMeJT (1:54 minutes - From Work It Daily)
Should I List A Short-Term Job On My Resume? - Coaching Moment (2:00 minutes - From Work It Daily)
This Resume Mistake Will RUIN Your Chances Of Getting A Job - Part 6 of 8 (2:06 minutes - From Work It Daily)
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