How Successful People Stay Calm – Forbes.com

The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance. TalentSmart has conducted research with more than a million people, and we’ve found that 90% of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress in order to remain calm and in control.

If you’ve followed my work, you’ve read some startling research summaries that explore the havoc stress can wreak on one’s physical and mental health (such as the Yale study, which found that prolonged stress causes degeneration in the area of the brain responsible for self-control). The tricky thing about stress (and the anxiety that comes with it) is that it’s an absolutely necessary emotion. Our brains are wired such that it’s difficult to take action until we feel at least some level of this emotional state. In fact, performance peaks under the heightened activation that comes with moderate levels of stress. As long as the stress isn’t prolonged, it’s harmless.

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Tax Changes for Small Businesses in 2014 | Businessnewsdaily.com

Tax season is a stressful time for everyone, but for business owners, the pressure can be especially high. From January to April, it’s a whirlwind of sorting receipts and pay stubs, reviewing ledgers and completing IRS forms to ensure that everything is properly prepared and filed. Even though most businesses use an accountant, digging up all the necessary documentation and information needed for tax filing can still be a hassle.

Being unaware of important tax filing changes can add to the stress of this season. Mark Faggiano, CEO of tax automation software company TaxJar, noted several changes from last year that will affect small business owners:

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5 Customer Service Approaches to Avoid | Businessnewsdaily.com

Keeping your customers happy is the key to earning their trust and their business. Some companies do this well, and go above and beyond to make sure their customers are satisfied. Others seem to view customer service as an afterthought.

“It’s always befuddling to watch businesses that say they focus on customer service turn around and act like their customers don’t matter,” said Aishwarya Hariharan, product marketer at customer support software company Freshdesk. “They claim that no one matters more [than their customers], but their approach just doesn’t seem to reflect it.”

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5 Favorite Fruits and Veggies That Could Vanish if the FDA Has its Way | Care2.com

Get ready to say goodbye to those organic veggies and fruits from your favorite farmers market or CSA if a new food law, the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), goes into effect as currently written.

FSMA was enacted by Congress in 2010. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the law “aims to ensure the U.S. food supply is safe by shifting the focus from responding to contamination to preventing it.” Clearly this is a goal that we can all get behind, and we applaud the notion of FSMA being able to help prevent the outbreaks of food-borne illnesses that are becoming more frequent.

Over the past two decades, the number of farmers markets in America has quadrupled to 8,144. At the same time, supermarkets, restaurants, schools, hospitals and other wholesale buyers are increasingly using food they procured from local farmers, which is great news. This is fresh produce generally grown without pesticides, herbicides or GMO seeds.

However, those new food safety rules may actually put a halt to some of our healthy eating habits. That is, if the regulations take effect as currently written. Citizens still have time to voice their concerns, as the FDA is currently taking comments through Friday, November 15.

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How To Win When You Fail | Entrepreneur.com

If you’re an entrepreneur, you will fail. I don’t mean your business is going to fail and you’ll go bankrupt. I mean that sometime, somewhere, to some degree, you will fall short. You will forget to follow through on a commitment to an employee, partner or customer. You’ll be late to a meeting. You’ll make a bad choice. You’ll exercise poor judgment. You will make a mistake.

How you react when you fail will say a lot about who you are as a person, and will be a critical factor in determining how successful you are in business in ways that go beyond financial.

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