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www.HartfordBusiness.com April 13, 2015 • Hartford Business Journal 21 BIZ BOOKS Tips for staying mentally sharp on the job "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do — Take Back Your Power, Embrace Change, Face Your Fears, and Train Your Brain for Happiness and Success" by Amy Morin (William Morrow, $26.99). Positive thinking doesn't guarantee suc- cess. To unlock its power, you must blend it with realism, mirror-image behavior and con- trolled emotion. Sound deci- sion-making uses rational thinking to offset knee-jerk emotional reactions. Mental strength requires doing what must be done while remem- bering things you don't do. Here are Morin's 13 don'ts: 1. "Don't waste time feeling sorry for yourself." Every day has its ups and downs. Look at all the good that happened and build upon it. If you dwell on the downs, you develop a glass-half- empty mentality, which triggers an ongoing self-pity party. 2. "Don't give away your power." Every day comes with new choices. These include how you respond to others — especially when criticism is involved. Evaluate feedback in terms of content, not personality or attitude. 3. "Don't shy away from change." Dis- comfort initially accompanies any change. But by creating a goal and action expecta- tions and a timeframe, you can manage change. Track your progress. When you encounter obstacles, keep an open mind and adjust. 4. "Don't waste energy on things you can't control." Quit wishing circumstances were different. Trying to gain con- trol over others and situations produces stress. Instead, pro- actively deal with what you can control: your actions and reactions. Use what you can control to influence others. 5. "Don't worry about pleasing everyone." Say- ing 'yes' to everyone makes it dif- ficult for you to handle your priorities. Their urgent shouldn't trump your important. It's okay to tell people, "I'm working on some- thing; can I get back to you…." 6. "Don't fear taking calculated risks." Choice involves risk — especially when facing change. Creating worst-case sce- narios plays into fear of failure. Basing decisions on the fear emotion limits the potential for identifying upside. You can't win by playing not to lose. 7. "Don't dwell on the past." Living today by looking at yesterday's rearview mirror, destroys one's ability to plan. Instead of figuring out what's next, you play 'Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda,' a game you can't win. 8. "Don't make the same mistakes over and over." "When we deny our mistakes, we are less likely to examine them and gain any lessons from them, making us more suscep- tible to repeating them." Often pride gets in our way. Stubbornness does, too. The wise man figures out why he fell off the horse before climbing back on. 9. "Don't resent other people's success." The emotions of insecurity, jealousy and envy create resentment. "The more time you spend focusing on someone else's achievements, the less time you have to work on your own goals." Your life involves maximizing your skills and talents — and being happy with the results. 10. "Don't give up after the first failure." Successful people understand that failure is a side step on the path to success. Thomas Edison found thousands of ways not to invent the light bulb. 11. "Don't fear alone time." A philosophy professor friend wakes up at 4 a.m. every day to think about what's happened and what could happen in his life. He told me that at 4 a.m. the world is silent, and that makes it easy to focus on "me being me." 12. "Don't feel the world owes you any- thing." Entitlement (n.) — the condition of having a right to have, do, or get something. My dad didn't give me allowance; I earned it by doing my chores. Effort begets reward, and creates self-esteem and motivation. 13. "Don't expect immediate results." There are no shortcuts to success. Like a newly-planted garden, it takes time for seeds to germinate; fertilizer and weeding are required to maximize the harvest. Mindset-reminder exercise: Write down the 13 don'ts and read them aloud before you start your workday. n Jim Pawlak is a nationally syndicated book reviewer. Jim Pawlak OTHER VOICES Outsourcing services, Medicaid reform, regionalism key to restoring CT's competitiveness By Oz Griebel C onnecticut's modest recovery from the Great Recession has been marked by slow job growth, stagnant personal income, and a "groundhog day" cycle of state budgets in which revenues con- sistently fail to meet increasing expendi- tures while under- funding mental health, transportation, and other critical initia- tives and programs. Indeed, we face a deficit in the current budget and billion- dollar-plus deficits in both FY '16 and '17. This steadily deteriorating situation requires a serious discussion not about defending spe- cific expenditure cuts or revenue increases but about significant structural changes that put the budget on a stable and sustainable footing that will support employment growth and private sector investment. In his February budget address, Gov. Mal- loy called for a budget that is balanced and within the spending cap. His proposed bud- get aimed to achieve this through approxi- mately $900 million in revenue increases and $590 million in cuts. As importantly, he invited constructive ideas to improve the budget. We responded to that invitation with a March 19 letter that contains six specific structural changes summarized below. We submitted these proposals to establish a fiscal framework that supports private sec- tor employment and investment that in turn generates the revenues needed to fund the education, health care, infrastructure, and social service needs of Connecticut's resi- dents. We also urge a genuine private-public effort to adopt these structural reforms to achieve three vital goals by Dec. 31, 2017: • Restore all jobs lost since 2008; • Exceed that number by 25,000 jobs; • Reignite growth in the state's personal income to an annual average of 5 percent. To underscore our commitment to these goals we are eager to participate in discus- sions to mitigate the revenue shortfall in the FY '16 and '17 budget in exchange for the implementation of the proposed reforms and similar structural changes. • Contracting state services with pri- vate providers: Expand contracting with private providers where such providers can deliver services more cost-effectively. • Incentivizing regional cooperation: Incent regional cooperation with 90 percent of funding municipalities received in FY '15 guaranteed and the remaining 10 percent made available to support regional collabo- ration led by Councils of Governments. • Transportation infrastructure strategy: Secure transportation fund- ing and expenditures by a constitutional amendment that also creates an indepen- dent governing authority with private sec- tor representation. • Medicaid reform: Introduce competi- tion, innovation and risk mitigation via part- nerships with private health plan entities; and eliminate the unsustainable cost-shifting to private sector providers that deliver vital care and jobs in our communities. • Strengthen the spending cap: Ensure through a constitutional amendment that all budget surpluses be used only to repay debt or address any underfunded obligations. • Restructure state employee benefit plans: Replace current defined ben- efit plans with a defined contribution retire- ment plan and a high deductible health insur- ance plan with health savings accounts for all who serve in any elected or appointed office. By working constructively with Gov. Mal- loy and the legislature, we can adopt these structural reforms that will send an unmis- takable signal to Connecticut's residents and its private sector that we have the political will to move the state to more stable and sus- tainable fiscal cycles that will be the basis for a prosperous economic future for all. n Oz Griebel is the president and CEO of the MetroHartford Alliance. Oz Griebel ▶ ▶ Sound decision-making uses rational thinking to offset knee-jerk emotional reactions. Mental strength requires doing what must be done while remembering things you don't do. ▶ ▶ This steadily deteriorating situation requires a serious discussion not about defending specific expenditure cuts or revenue increases but about significant structural changes that put the budget on a stable and sustainable footing …