"The alarm sounds and you're off: Onto checking emails, finding car keys and, if you're lucky, brushing your hair.

The madness, the rush of it all -- it's got to stop. Adding intention into your morning routine is in your best interest: It sets the tone for the rest of your day, and may ultimately reflect how productive, happy and calm you'll be for your following waking hours.

You have the power to wake up on the right side of the bed every single morning for the rest of your life.

"If the first thing you do in the morning isn’t 100 percent for you, selfishly, then the rest of your day will be spent not doing anything for you," writes Micah Baldwin, founder and CEO of Graphicly. "Find something that is yours, and yours alone," Baldwin advises. He personally sets two alarms separated by 30 minutes and gets out of bed at the sound of the second. The ritual has him appreciating sleep.

Take a cue from Baldwin. There are several things you can do, without leaving your bed, that'll ensure a fantastic day ahead. So before you roll out of the comfort of your warm, cozy nest, consider these eight rituals below."

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All UMBC Students, Faculty, Staff, and RAC Members:

PLEASE PARDON OUR PROGRESS WHILE WE RENOVATE THE RAC WEIGHT ROOM!

The
UMBC NCAA Division-I Athletics Program is allowing
students/faculty/staff and patrons of the RAC to utilize the Michael S.
Knapp Training Center on the RAC Arena Track level for the following
hours while renovations are completed in the Recreation Weight Room in
October:


Monday 9/30
8am-10am
2pm-3pm
8pm-10pm

Tuesday 10/1
8am-10:30am
11am-12pm
1pm-2pm
3pm-4pm
8pm-10pm

Wednesday 10/2
9am-10am
2pm-3pm
8pm-10pm

Thursday 10/3
8am-10:30am
11am-12pm
1pm-3pm
8pm-10pm

Friday 10/4
9am-10am
1pm-9pm

Saturday 10/5
1pm-7pm

Sunday 10/6
12pm-7pm

Thank you for your patience,

RAC Staff

SkillSoft Topic of the Month: Performance Management Series

This series of courses outlines the five phases of a performance management system: planning, monitoring, improving, reviewing, and rewarding. You will also learn how to monitor and improve your employees' performance using a four-step process that covers setting targets, collecting the necessary information, analyzing that information, and responding to performance gaps that appear, and how to rate employee performance objectively by applying a five-category rating scale. The series provides strategies to prepare yourself and your employee for an annual appraisal meeting, instructs you in how to conduct such a meeting, and gives you an opportunity to practice. Finally, it outlines some principles for developing effective rewards and presents a technique you can use to link compensation to different levels of performance.

• Planning for Performance: mgmt_37_a01_bs_enus
• Monitoring and Improving Performance: mgmt_37_a02_bs_enus
• Reviewing and Rewarding Performance: mgmt_37_a03_bs_enus
Visit the UMBC SkillSoft website for a Quick Start Guide, FAQs, and the link to log in to SkillPort.

For more information about the Business Exploration Series courseware, click here.

To schedule a department presentation about using SkillSoft for professional development, call ext. 5-6262 or hrtraining@umbc.edu.

Happiness is so interesting, because we all have different ideas about what it is and how to get it. It’s also no surprise that it’s the Nr.1 value for Buffer’s culture, if you see our slidedeck about it. So naturally we are obsessed with it.

I would love to be happier, as I’m sure most people would, so I thought it would be interesting to find some ways to become a happier person that are actually backed up by science. Here are ten of the best ones I found.

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Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, theorizes that while 60 percent of happiness is determined by our genetics and environment, the remaining 40 percent is up to us.

In his 2004 Ted Talk, Seligman describes three different kinds of happy lives: The pleasant life, in which you fill your life with as many pleasures as you can, the life of engagement, where you find a life in your work, parenting, love and leisure and the meaningful life, which "consists of knowing what your highest strengths are, and using them to belong to and in the service of something larger than you are."

After exploring what accounts for ultimate satisfaction, Seligman says he was surprised. The pursuit of pleasure, research determined, has hardly any contribution to a lasting fulfillment. Instead, pleasure is "the whipped cream and the cherry" that adds a certain sweetness to satisfactory lives founded by the simultaneous pursuit of meaning and engagement.

Read more!

The course shows you how the essential elements of trust, credibility, and specific confident communication behaviors bring about confident communication and enhance your influence. It highlights the advantages of communicating with confidence, explores the construction of trust and credibility, and clarifies how trust and credibility result in confident communications.

This is course number:  comm_21_a01_bs_enus

Visit the UMBC SkillSoft website (link to: www.umbc.edu/skillsoft) for a Quick Start Guide, FAQ’s, and the link to log in to SkillPort. 

For more information about the Business Exploration Series courseware, click here.

To schedule a department presentation about using SkillSoft for professional development, call ext. 5-6262 or e-mail hrtraining@umbc.edu. 

A few things—like chocolate, chick flicks, and clean sheets—are almost guaranteed to boost your mood. But when it comes to achieving true happiness, there are a ton of misconceptions.
 
Shawn Achor, author of the upcoming book Before Happiness: The 5 Hidden Keys to Achieving Success, Spreading Happiness, and Sustaining Positive Change, clears up some of the most common myths about finding bliss.

Read more!