Seven Things I Did To Reboot My Life

 Wil Wheaton

About twenty years ago, I had a portable spa in the back yard of my first house. One day, the heater stopped working, so I called a repairman to come out and look at it. He told me that there would be an $85 charge no matter what, and I told him that was okay. When he got to my house, he opened up the access panel where the heater, pump, and filter lived. He looked inside, then looked back at me.

“Did you try pushing the reset button?” He asked.

“Um. No,” I said.

He pushed the reset button, and the heater came back to life.

“That’ll be $85,” he said. I paid him.

This post is about realizing that I was sitting in cold water, and not doing anything to turn the heater back on. This post is about how I hit the reset button.

I had this epiphany at the beginning of September: This thing that I’m doing? This series of choices I make every day? It isn’t working. I don’t like the way I feel, I don’t like the way I look, I don’t like the things I’m doing. Things need to change.

So I took a long, hard, serious look at myself, and concluded that some things needed to change.

• Drink less beer.
• Read more (and Reddit does not count as reading).
• Write more.
• Watch more movies.
• Get better sleep.
• Eat better food.
• Exercise more.

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Top 10 Skills You Need at Work That Have Nothing to Do with Your Job

Melanie Pinola

Lifehacker.com

Hiring managers make the difficult decision of who the best candidate is for the job based not just on the specific job requirements but also basic “soft skills” every worker should have, like communication and teamwork. Here are the top 10 additional job skills everyone needs.

10. Writing Skills

If you’re not a writer or an editor, you might think your writing ability has nothing to do with your job. Yet 51% of employers say that communication skills (like writing) are a requirement for their employees. Mike Borozdin, a former Microsoft engineer and now senior director of engineering at DocuSign, advises all programmers to sharpen their writing skills. Without being able to communicate clearly or express yourself properly, you probably won’t get ahead at work. Writing is also especially important if you work remotely, since your emails, IMs, and other text-based messages will be your primary form of communication with your boss and co-workers. Improve your writing with these top 10 tips or take a look at this periodic table of figures of speech.

9. Verbal Communication Skills

This goes hand-in-hand with writing skills as part of the good communication requirement just about every employer has. Whether it’s making a clear point when you’re talking in a meeting, giving a presentation that doesn’t suck, or simply chatting it up at the office party, communicating better at work is one of your key roles. If you need to get your message across quickly, remember the BRIEF technique or review our top 10 ways to improve your communication skills.

8. Self-Confidence and Assertiveness

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Quote of the day

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.”

—Melody Beattie

Prayer from a song

“How shall I sing to God when life is filled with bleakness, empty and chill, breaking my will? 

I’ll sing through my pain, angrily or aching, crying or complaining.

This is my song; I’ll sing it with love.”

taken from the song:

 "How shall I sing to God"

 by David Haas

Prayer of the Day

Lord, I pray that You continue to provide us with spiritual nourishment that we may be healthy in body and soul.