Personal Sustainability

Staying on Track

If you’ve followed the advice in parts one and two of this series, you’ve picked your focus and made a proper plan. You’ve probably even started executing it. Despite this focus and organization, however, you’re eventually going to run into frustrations. Why? The only sure thing about any plan is that it isn’t going to go according to plan! This doesn’t mean that there’s no point in making one...

Getting More Life for Your Time

In our scramble to trade our time for money, we forget something: it’s not money that’s your most precious non-renewable resource. It’s time itself. You can save money to use in the future, you can invest it and it will grow, and you can get a second job or start a side business to increase the amount of money you have. But time is the great equalizer. We all...

Wabi-Sabi Wisdom — Available on Amazon!

The Kyosei team is proud to announce the publication of Andrea Jacques’ new book Wabi-Sabi Wisdom: Inspiration for an Authentic Life.  We live fast-paced, imperfect lives, rushing to and from work and back again. Our Google Calendars are bursting. We’re juggling meetings, hobbies and family obligations with occasional rest. It’s no surprise then that many of us are exhausted and eventually succumb to stress. After all, how often does anyone...

How to Remove Stress by Sticking to Priorities

You know that setting priorities is important for success in both business and life. If you are like me, however, sticking to them can cause stress. Why? The very nature of priorities requires choosing some things over others. This past year, I realized that there are actually two different levels that this choice occurs at, and that the secret to reducing stress lies in ensuring you have made the...

Red Socks and Tattoos: 2 New Ways to Think About Stress

This past month, I’ve encountered two powerful metaphors that have helped me think about the choices I make in life and at work: red socks and tattoos. Let’s start with the socks. Red socks (or really any red item) in your laundry can stain all of your light clothes pink. It doesn’t matter if you have a dozen offending items or just one, the outcome is the same –...

4 Ways to Fuel Energy and Well-being at Work

Our last post about staying genki (a Japanese word for energized and enthusiastic) at work focused on physiological strategies for enhancing your well-being. This post focuses on some less tangible strategies to ramp up your energy and enthusiasm in life and work. Identify and Plug Energy Leaks Have you ever experienced that tight feeling in your chest or gut when you do something that doesn’t feel quite right? Maybe you went along...

How can I find work I love if I don’t feel passionate about anything?

If you don’t love your work now, but want to find a career that is energizing and fulfilling you probably fall into one of the four following camps: You already know what you really want to do and are working on transitioning from where you are to where you want to be. You know what you are passionate about, but aren’t sure about how you could actually make a...

The Link Between Procrastination and Purpose

Admit it. You procrastinate. We all do it sometimes. (Dont’ believe me? Check out this vintage Ellen DeGeneres take on the art of procrastination. Sound familiar?) But what is the purpose of procrastination? As a regular columnist for several online and offline magazines over the years, I have come to realize that, like Ellen illustrates, procrastination is often a necessary part of the creative process. When the words just aren’t...

3 Tips to Boost Your Energy for Life and Work.

During my five-year stint in Japan, one of my favorite (and most used) Japanese words was genki.  Part of the reason for this is that, in Japan, o genki desu ka is used as a common greeting akin to “How are you?” The accepted response, genki desu is the equivalent of “I am fine.” But the reason that this word was co-opted into everyday vernacular by myself and so many other of my English-speaking friends is...