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Category: Personal Development

Is your chair your worst health enemy?

“Your chair is your enemy,” a recent New York Times article declared. Een if you exercise regularly, if you spend most of your time sitting, you’re still at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and some cancers. That sounds like terrible news to anyone whose job requires sitting at a desk, working on a computer or spending long stretches in meetings. But you do actually have a choice.

Building circles of life

The future you want is attainable, but you’ll need a positive vision to reach it. That’s according to personal finance expert Marianna Olszewski, who has a new book called Live It, Love It, Earn It. In addition to the advice about managing finances, she offers these fun suggestions for charting your future:

Cheer up with a good read

Happiness coaching is seeping into the workplace, The Wall Street Journal noted recently. It’s considered an antidote to the recession and its effect on the workplace. Here are four books that tackle the topic of happiness:

Ask for the boss’s help intelligently

Being afraid to ask for help can land you in deep water. So learning how to ask for help—and doing it right—is critical to your success as an administrative professional. Asking for help doesn’t have to make you look dumb. In fact, it shows you have good judgment, and that you’re aware of what you don’t know.

Suffering health problems in silence

More than half of workers believe their work status would be negatively affected if they sought treatment for a range of health problems, according to a recent poll by the American Psychiatric Association. For example, the percentage who fear the stigma of seeking treatment for alcoholism is 73%, and for depression, 62%. One way to change existing stigmas? Raise awareness.

Leverage your intuition on the job

Your gut tells you to wait a day before sending an angry e-mail or to stay away from the rumor mill. That’s your intuitive intelligence, says best-selling author and UCLA psychiatrist Judith Orloff. By checking in with your intuitive coach, she says in her book Second Sight, you end up making better on-the-job decisions and navigating office politics masterfully.

Didn’t impress? Try again

You already know nothing is more valuable than a good first impression. What should you do if you arrived late, stuck your foot in your mouth or just weren’t feeling like your usual self during that first encounter? Should you throw in the towel and accept your fate? Absolutely not! Even though research supports the difficulty in overcoming a negative first impression, you can take action to up the odds of getting back in someone’s good graces.