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Long story short, enjoy the journey

startupcollective
Many of us are drawn to the peace and happiness promised by a life of mindfulness, but we often abandon it in our daily lives because practicing mindfulness can seem at odds with our desire to succeed.
But it doesn’t have to be.
Here are nine simple ways that incorporating mindfulness into your busy work life can actually help you succeed:
  1. Forgive and forget. Workplace politics are draining, and a waste of time. Don’t let yourself get sucked into drama. Save your mental energy for your own success by forgiving those who slight you, forgetting who said what about whom, and moving on to more important things.
  2. Breathe before you blast. Try not to shoot off emails when you’re angry. Take a deep breath first and reflect on what’s behind your anger. Anger-driven emails almost always do more harm than good, to sender and receiver alike.
  3. Stop being ‘judgy.’ Mistakes are an opportunity to learn, not an excuse to look at yourself or others with negativity. Assessing mistakes from a neutral perspective allows you and your team to grow from them. Harping on them only serves to bring you (and those around you) down.
  4. Do what you want. Mindfulness gurus often talk about the idea of “intention.” But what does intention really mean? It means to make sure you know why you’re doing what you’re doing. And to do what you want. If you feel like you are wasting time in your current occupation, stop doing it and start something new.
  5. Salute the sun. Starting your morning with a quiet mind will help you be more effective throughout the day. Carve out time in the mornings — before the day’s madness ensues — to do a few sun salutations, eat a leisurely breakfast, go for a jog or engage in whichever activity helps you to still your mind.
  6. Salute your enemies. The word “namaste” means “I bow to the divine in you.” Having respect for your enemies will help you learn from their strengths and be more objective about your own weaknesses. So salute your enemies. You may find yourself with fewer of them if you do.
  7. Take victory in stride. It’s important to celebrate milestones. But don’t get addicted to them. If you let yourself become too attached to your victories, you will be less able to cope with defeat. And the ability to persevere through failure is essential to success.
  8. Sleep more. According to the Dalai Lama, “Sleep is the best meditation.” Get more of it.
  9. Enjoy the journey. Life is short, and you will spend most of it working. Work can either be depressing, or it can be an incredible ride. It’s up to you. The more you enjoy what you do, the better you will be at it.
This article was originally published on StartupCollective.Do you know if your audience is listening?

It’s great to have a big following on Twitter and Facebook (or pinterest, linkedin, etc…) Certainly it’s an important first step to growing your business. But it’s not all about how many people you’re talking to, it’s about how well you’re connecting with the ones you’ve got. For instance, is it better to have 10,000 followers who don’t buy any of your work? Or is it better to have 1000 who buy everything you do?
It’s something of a loaded question, I know. The point is, engagement is just as important as the number of “likes” or “follows.” So I thought I’d share one basic way of measuring engagement. It takes a tiny bit of math, but it’s a good, simple gauge for how well your message is getting across.
Convinced yet? Good! So here’s a basic formula for Engagement. For any given day, divide the number of posts by the number of posts that were re-shared. So if you tweeted 5 times, and 2 of those tweets were re-shared even once, then your Engagement is 2/5 or %40. 
Now obviously, this isn’t a perfect measure, but just like keeping track of your car’s mileage, measuring Engagement every day only takes a second. It gives you a quick way of knowing how you’re doing. Ideally, your engagement rate goes up over time. And if it does, you know you’re getting better and better at writing content that’s valuable to your audience.
So get out there, start a little list somewhere, and keep track of your Engagement! This stuff matters.