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How many people do you know that meet one of the following burn out criteria?

He feels frustrated because he “just can’t please everyone.”

She “just doesn’t care anymore.”

He just “can’t deal with the attitudes and demands.”

Burnout is possible in any profession. It is often those with the highest ideals that are most susceptible.

You can take very real steps to avoid maintain a positive attitude to combat burnout. One of the most important is to strike a balance between work and personal life.

Here are some proactive steps you can take to avoid burnout.

1. Keep introducing something new. Set new goals. Avoid mental drudgery.
2. Build a network of support. Find colleagues with which you can let off a bit of steam.
3. Concentrate on the positive things in your life (friends, family, hobby, etc.).
4. Seek assistance. Ask for help when you need it. Knowing your limits is a true sign of professionalism.
5. Examine your choices. You are not what you do. If the situation is desperate consider a professional change.
6. Limit the hours you put in at work. Protect your “down time.”
7. Accept your limits. You cannot do it all. You are only one person.

Consulting the plans Flickr

Most people build a plan because someone told them they should or their place of employment tells them they have to. But, the best reason is that it gives you the opportunity to make a complete assessment of your current state of affairs.

Only by knowing exactly where you are can you build the road map to where you want to be.

You can buy hundreds of books that go into tremendous detail and examine the minutia of how to build a plan. But, most people really don’t need all that detail. The following general outline is all most folks need.

1. Give your plan a title. Name it to claim it. You can even call it a “Mission Statement” if you want to.

2. Decide how to allocate your resources. Break it down by department, division, section, area or the part of your life you are concentrating on.

3. Decide on short and long term objectives. Clearly identify your goals, purpose. This helps you evaluate your degree of success.

4. Select an introduction activity to motivating you and springboard your plan into action.

5. Outline the specific procedures and steps you foresee as required for the achievement of your goal.

6. Conduct an analysis of the materials, resources, technology, support and personnel you have available to commit to your plan.

7. Set a time limit for closure and culmination of your plan in which you can evaluate and measure your success.

8. Complete a summation and choose the next goal.Elemental Value Added Truth: Failing to plan is planning to fail.

I recently had an extremely profitable exchange with the author of “Finally {} In the end everything will be fine; if it isn’t fine, it is not the end,” Joseph Jude.

Joseph published a list of some of the web based publications that are currently on his reading list and why he chooses to read them. As a portion of his list he was kind enough to refer to Elemental Truths

See below for our exchange.

Joseph says:
ElementalTruths.Com: Reg Adkins is a behavioral consultant. I found his early writings to be very informative. I feel that recently, he has deviated from his core strengths. But I still keep reading him.

This really piqued my interests in all the basic need areas of control, inclusion and affection. I wanted to know if there were elements I could adjust that would make ElementalTruths more useful to Joseph (control). I wanted to bring him in to why I had taken certain writing approaches (inclusion). And I wanted to thank him for taking the time to reflect on and react to something I had done (affection). In order to take action, I went to Joseph’s site and left the following comment.

Me (commenting on Joseph home page)
“I feel that recently, he has deviated from his core strengths. But I still keep reading him.”
Not that is feed back I can use!
Can you be more specific about the type of content you would like to see?

Joseph immediately capitalized on the cardinal rule of building web publication readership. He actually interacted with his reader (me) by providing the feedback below.

Joseph (replying in his comments section):
Reg: I didn’t mean to offend. If I had, my apologies.
To answer your question, I enjoy every article on behavior management and temperaments. I didn’t understand your experiments with water (and so I didn’t like it). And sometimes I felt that you posted few articles just for the sake of posting.Probably it is a dilemma between what you want to write and what your readers come to expect.

Keep posting your articles. They have helped me a lot. In case I come across any entries in the category of ‘deviating-from-core-strengths’, I will email you.

That was absolutely some of the best feedback I had ever gotten. Joseph was very clear about what he did and did not like. The control aspect of my temperament was ecstatic. This was actually something I could take action on to improve my work and provide a better product at the same time. And I had to tell him about it. So, I wrote the following comment on his site.

Me:I took no offence from the comment.

I am sincere when I say this is feed back I can use.

I spend an extremely large portion of my time building, evaluating and conducting professional development training. So, what I write sometimes gets colored by the questions asked by participants. Their questions can cause me to stray from behaviors and temperament into other surrounding areas and if I don’t do a good job of connecting them for my readers it can definitely look like I’m doing “filler pieces.”

The water cure experiment is a case in point. In one of the behavior focused classes I was teaching the impact of environmental chemicals and stimulants and their relationships to temperament came in to question. The experiment was an attempt to explore how someone with my temperament might react, and cope with an arbitrary adjustment in their life. I chose liquid intake because it was the easiest to explore. But, as you point out, I didn’t do a good job making the connection.

Elemental Truths is about the readers. I want to provide something of value them. When I get feed back like yours, it gives me an opportunity to do that.

In fact, I will probably use our entire exchange (with your credit of course) in a post about temperament behavior and product continuity.

Thank you and God Bless,
Reg Adkins

Folks, you can’t BUY this kind of open honest feedback. It is only available when readers like Joseph take the time to reflect about something you have done. That means they have no ulterior motive, it is an open, honest reaction. If you bread and butter is temperament and behavior, it just doesn’t get any better than that. Ted Demopoulos himself could not have contrived a better client provider exchange.

This is why I don’t understand how some authors can say they are about providing something of value to readers and yet have no method for readers to comment and provide input.

If I could figure out how to get feedback from readers like this on a consistent basis I’d be writing about it every single day.

Rangers aren’t the only ones who lead the way.

A well maintained record or log is an invaluable tool. It provides an excellent launching pad for analysis of success and failure in nearly every avenue of life. This is particularly true when crisis situations arise.

The trick to good documentation is knowing what is pertinent to record. Good documentation takes practice and your particular format will need time to evolve to meet your needs.

However, there are a few guidelines you should consider.

1. Decide which instances require full documentation.
-many occurrences need only be noted in your daily log or chart
-variances from routine policies and procedures probably require an in depth incident report

2. Be Prompt.
-delays in documenting incidents allow our memories to fog and our imaginations to color events
-significant incidents may require the view point and documentation of more than one individual

3. Fact Ladder.
-address the who, what, when, where, why and how in chronological order
-remember to include precipitating factors and other items you may feel relevant.

4. Avoid Conjecture.
-stick as close to the play by play account as you can. This is not the time to expound on your interpretation of the feelings and motivating factors in the psyche of others

5. Be Brief.
-include facts names, dates and times
-do a rough draft first

6. Maintain your documentation.
-keep your records on hand for the debriefing process

Everyone has the same basic underlying emotional needs. At the seminal level these needs can be identified as Inclusion, Affection and Control. If you understand the essence of your needs and how you can meet them in positive ways you can meld the elemental truths of psychology, philosophy and practical knowledge into a scaffold you can use to secure your own success and nudge others along the path to their success as well.

Inclusion is the amount of desire to be included in the practice of every day life juxtaposed against the tolerance you have for others to be included in your life. Striking the perfect balance in this area gives one the feeling of wearing a perfectly tailored suit. It is just showy enough to display your best features without betray your faults.

Affection is the realm of self that balances your desire for affection with your tolerance for displays of affection and your comfort level with displaying affection yourself. The perfect balance achieve here can be likened to meal that leaves you completely satiated with feeling gluttonous.

Control is the area in which your desire to exert control over others and your environment melds with your tolerance and desire to be controlled or taken care of by others. The perfect balance here brings to mind the metaphor of a perfectly match team of horses. Neither can pull the load of life alone but together the exertion of their contained power is a glorious thing to behold.

By keeping this spectrum of balances in mind through out our daily lives we can make conscious decisions that bring us our most self actualized moments without infringing upon the needs of others. In so doing, your obvious natural abilities will be enhanced and you will begin to attract those experiences and opportunities that allow you to continue to add to your repertoire of ever greater successes.

It beats me how I have avoided getting obscenely rich in this country. More people than ever before in our national history are making enormous fortunes. In fact, those who can stomach the requirements are reaching higher financial peaks than any in the history of this nation.

But what are those requirements?

1. Is it hard work?

I know what your thinking because I’m thinking the same thing, “I do work hard, and I’m not wealthy!”

But (there’s always a but isn’t there?) that is only partially true for me. I work hard and I’m sure you do work hard. But, who do you and I work hard for? And what do you and I work hard doing?

If you and I have a regular job working for someone else we are quite probably amassing wealth. We just are not for you me. We are amassing wealth for whoever owns the business you and I are working for (thank you Ted Demopoulos).

2. Is it a willingness to take risks?

In most circumstances the only difference between the employee and the owner of the company is the ability to tolerate risk. On the other hand, for you and me there is a tremendous difference in taking risks and gambling our hard earned money away.

3. Is it being persistent?

If you and I have a plan and we present is and it gets rejected, do we adjust our plan and try again?

4. Are we afraid to be individualists?

It is a very healthy excercise for you and I to ask ourselves the same question on a regular basis. Why do we do it this way? Can I think of a way to do it better?

5. Do we despair if we don’t consider ourselves to be “gifted?”

The reality is being overly gifted can be a detractor. Gifted people get annoyed when others don’t see things that to them seem completely obvious and simple. So, to you and I, who deal with the less than visionary on a daily basis, we actually should be in an advantageous position.

6. Can we stand on the shoulders of giants?

What if you and I were to find someone else who has achieved success in building what what we are trying to build and mimic them. Oddly, most of those who have achieved what we aspire to are in their 40’s and so are at a time in their lives when they feel comfortable in the mentor role.

7. Do we make amassing wealth our primary goal?

Money is nice, but it won’t us happy. I once met an extremely wealthy man name Kenny Stewart. Kenny has built a tremendous fortune in the MLM industry. He focused on the Amway plan and built an organization that brought him millions in residual revenue every year.

When he started with the organization he was a bankrupt building contractor.

Kenny had the achieved the dream. Several big beautiful houses, motor coaches, cars, fabulous vacations the whole nine yards. At the time I met Ken he was in the midst of a divorce. Although, he was too much of a gentleman to speak in detail about his personal life he did make one statement that has stayed with me through the years. “Money can’t fix everything.”

Even though Stewart was making an obscene amount of money he could not reconcile his conscious to what he viewed as the inappropriate requirements for using the Business Support Materials (BSM’S) in the organization he had built and it ultimately contributed to the demise of his marriage.

So, why aren’t you wealthy?

According to the “Urban Dictionary Dot Com” the Princess Syndrome may be defined as:

“princess syndrome

A mental state that a female exhibits out of reverse sexism. Because she is unaware of her sexism, she will claim to deserve supreme aristocratic rights from a partner due to her looks or her child-bearing “pain.” Any brainwashed man will give her tangible things and emotional sublimity to stop her, and she will only demand more.

“Look at that lady; I’d go out with her, but she’s got princess syndrome. Hookin’ up with a good lookin’ / intelligent guy like me would just make her condition worsen.”"

Although, tongue in cheek and intended as a humor piece I have encountered a great deal of material on this topic of late.

The “Official Dating Resource Dot Com” even lists a series of risk factors, causes, symptoms, and diagnostics for the “condition.” I’ve shared them below, edited for content and inappropriate language.

Who’s at risk

• Spoiled females
• Females that try to be like others too much (read: insecure)
• Females that turn to the media in search of a role model
• Females with extreme jealousy
• Females that feel the need to stir up drama to make their lives more exciting

Causes

• Feminism
• Bad parenting
• The media
• Paris Hilton
• Other girls with princess syndrome

Symptoms

• Extreme insecurity
• Urge to be the center of attention
• Never taking responsibility for anything
• Wanting everyone to know she’s a princess
• Drama queen

How to spot a female with princess syndrome

• If 9/10 of her friends are ugly, this points to the symptom of insecurity. You should also note that these females are the type that play hard to get but are really promiscuous.
• If she’s with 10 others that are just like her. Unlike the insecure female with ugly friends, these females are openly risque.
• If she has no real goal in life and thinks her looks will not only get her everywhere in life, but stick with her for the rest of her life - DELUSIONAL.
• If she plays too many games. If you give into these games, eventually she’ll think you’re just a nice guy, and if that’s the case then she’ll just use you to show herself that a male is interested in her. This makes her feel wanted and temporarily cures her insecurity, don’t give into these games.
• If she tries to be like Paris Hilton

Although, I’ve encountered my share of those who felt they were owed something from life I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it categorized by gender in this way.

What do you think, is this an actual phenomena or a unfounded perception?

As I continue to receive questions and requests for trainings on assaultive behaviors I’ve compiled the following lists of preventative measures.

• State clearly that violence is not permitted or tolerated.
• Establish liaison with local police and report all incidents of violence.
• Require reports on all assaults.
• Advise all of procedures for requesting police assistance or filing charges and assist them in doing so.
• Provide support and respond promptly to all complaints.
• Set up response team/individual to respond to emergencies.
• Establish a system to identify individuals with assaultive behavior problems.
• Use conferences to discuss ways to effectively treat potentially violent individuals.
• Conduct a post-incident evaluation after any incident of assaultive behavior.

I know this has very little to do with my usual topics but I found it very interesting and wanted to share. 

Are you worried about the impact of global warming?

I kind of was, until I found this chart. What are your thoughts.

Global temperature variation for the past 425,000 years. The present is at the right. The horizontal 0 line represents the 1961–990 average global temperature. The numbers on the left show the variation from that baseline in °C.

The data were derived from an analysis of ice cores taken at the Vostok station in Antarctica. Find out more about how temperature estimates are made from proxy data.

Image based on data from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

At one time knowledge for the sake of knowledge was the vogue for our culture. Those who were accumulators of wisdom were held in high esteem.

Then were underwent a major paradigm shift. Knowledge was only held of high value if it solved a problem right now.

We began the devaluation of knowledge which held no immediate marketable value.

This has had a particularly profound impact in the field of the sciences. Science itself is named for the Latin word scentia which means knowledge.

As I sat down to compose this article I began to wonder what became of those who found the enhancement of knowledge reason enough to push forward and to seek further.

Then it dawned on me. They became bloggers.

Where have you chosen to enhance your knowledge or that of of others?