I have never let any constraints block my path. Here’s a few tips in how to improve your social skills:
Say 'Thank you'
Say 'Please'
Listen without interrupting
Do not brag
Wait your turn
Choose kind over clever
Hold doors open longer
Forgive first
Talk less, but say more
Show gratitude
Do not respond to negativity
Be humble
““When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love…””
To paraphrase Henry David Thoreau: “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” I have been a big fan of Byron Katie for many years, so I would like to give you an opportunity to get familiar with her work. Write down your stressful thoughts, and then ask yourself the following four questions:
1: Is it true?
Ask yourself if the thought you wrote down is true.
2: Can you absolutely know it’s true?
This is another opportunity to open your mind and to go deeper into the unknown, to find the answers that live beneath what we think we know.
3: What happens? How do you react when you believe that thought?
What do you feel? How do you treat the person (or the situation) you’ve written about, how do you treat yourself, when you believe that thought? Make a list, and be specific.
4: Who would you be without the thought?
Imagine yourself in the presence of that person (or in that situation), without believing the thought. How would your life be different if you didn’t have the ability to even think the stressful thought? How would you feel? Which do you prefer—life with or without the thought? Which feels kinder, more peaceful?
“I discovered that when I believed my thoughts I suffered, but when I didn’t believe them I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that.”
When setting a proper goal whether it be for your career, physical, spiritual, social, family, intellectual, or financial well being, you need to make sure it follows this simple format:
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Realistic
T – Timely
I think a good way to ensure you’re able to stick to your goals is by setting SMART goals. Do something today that is going to move you out of your comfort zone and put you one step closer to achieving the goals you have set for yourself.
Unlike other animals, humans spend a lot of time thinking about what isn’t going on around them: contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or may never happen at all. Disruption is a down-to-earth method whose objective is to help us think with our rational brains and emotional hearts. It’s not about making things complicated, nor is it an exclusively rational concept but it’s a method whose objective is to release feelings, intuitions, and emotions. I think we should focus on innovation and create results through good conflicts within an innovation culture as nothing teaches us better than our own experiences.
The American organisational psychologist, Edwin A. Locke pioneered the goal-setting theory. The simplest and most direct explanation of why some people perform better than others is because they have different performance goals. I think that nothing intelligent has ever come from intelligence alone, and nothing reasonable has ever come from reason alone. The essence of the theory is:
Difficult specific goals lead to significantly higher performance than easy goals, no goals, or even the setting of an abstract goal such as urging people to do their best.
Holding ability constant, and given that there is goal commitment, the higher the goal the higher the performance.
Variables such as praise, feedback, or the participation of people in decision-making about the goal only influence behaviour to the extent that they lead to the setting of and subsequent commitment to a specific difficult goal.
Goal setting involves the development of an action plan designed to motivate and guide a person or group towards a goal. We are fast approaching that time of the year where your New Year’s resolutions begin to fade. Remember that as long as you are doing something to achieve your goal, you are making progress. It’s easy to become caught up in routine, but sometimes all you need is a small change of perspective to get the ideas flowing and feel motivated again.
The F.O.C.U.S acronym = Follow > One > Course > Until > Success
Distractions have no effect on the truly focused individual as winners focus on the goal, not the pain. There four types of distractions or should I call them, interruptions you will face in your work:
1. Meetings, office visitors and loud colleagues
2. E-mail, telephone notifications and meetings
3. Team lunches, calls from loved one, coffee machine conversations
4. Social media, news websites, instant messaging
According to Tim Ferris, we need to “…limit e-mail consumption and production. This is the greatest single interruption in the modern world.” What do you think?
There may be things present in our lives and our habits that we are not happy about. We want change, yet as hard as we try, sometimes, we are just not seeing the level of profound change we desire. Is there an area of your life you’ve tried changing, made some progress but somehow ended up in the same spot you started in? Real behaviour changes are very difficult to bring about by effort and willpower alone. Contact me via e-mail for 1:1 consultations.
“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.”
I started watching Chelsea regularly in the 70’s when we were languishing in the old 2nd Division and financially broke. Yesterday in Abu Dhabi we beat Brazil's Palmeiras 2-1 to win the FIFA Club World Cup for the first time. We are the World Club Champions! It’s weird to say, but it’s a fact that Chelsea FC are only the fifth team to have won every trophy available, the others are: Ajax, Bayern Munich, Juventus and Manchester United.
Often, we focus on things that don’t matter and things that are beyond our control. In times of crisis, organisations often forget about their sales and marketing strategies because there’s so much else to focus on and this results in wasted time and wasted opportunities. For me it’s all about customer satisfaction, giving good advice and solving customer problems to improve their customer’s lives.
I think knowing which things we should focus on is key to getting what we want. From my perspective, customer loyalty is truly satisfying and many of my customers have become real friends. Focusing on the human side instead of the sales and marketing side helps because visibility to attract new customers is key to expanding my customer base as I work in human-to-human industry.
Time management is very important and we have the ability to manage our time. When we talk about time management there’s usually the ‘tips to be more efficient’, but that’s not the point of time management. It’s not all about being more efficient and productive, as it may lead to stress and overworking. It’s about embracing our freedom to choose what we want to do with our time, being able to understand that time is limited and that it’s up to our own judgement as to how we want to spend it. We have this tendency to trick ourselves into thinking we’re not free because being free to use your time as you please, means that you have to make a choice and live with the consequences of that choice. In reality, we do have time and time can be managed, it’s just that we don’t have a lot of it so there has to be sacrifices.
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give life a meaning.”
Research shows that whenever people start thinking of time as money, they become greedy, less happy, and more restless. When time is spent without consideration, it becomes a persistent source of regret. How many times do you catch yourself ‘wasting time online,’ spending hours on Facebook not learning anything? I think that when it comes to time, we can either make excuses or sacrifices but only one of them will allow you to live a meaningful life.
To drive lasting productivity, make assessing your progress and enjoying the fruits of your labour part of your routine. I think life and work will always be messy, therefore, trouble shooting, firefighting and problem solving are how we spend a lot of our time so let’s make sure we enjoy it! Contact me via e-mail for practical, actionable tips, which will guide you to achieving even more throughout each day.
“For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”
The Day Reconstruction Model (DRM) measures how people spend their time and how they emotionally experience the various activities and settings of their lives, combining features of time-budget measurement and experience sampling. It looks a little like this:
PEAK - Usually in the morning and is the ideal time to do your heavy analytical work.
TROUGH - Early afternoon, here I would advise you to do adminstrative work.
RECOVERY (also known as the rebound) - Late afternoon/early evening and is the perfect time to do your insightful work.
Negativity is on the rise in the afternoon and falls during the evening. Understanding this pattern will have a very direct impact on the work you do and also when you schedule important meetings.
“We need to start thinking of breaks as a part of performance rather than a deviation from performance.”
According to my dictionary, when you say something is perfect it means it’s as good as it could possibly be. Timing on the other hand is used to refer to the time at which something happens or is planned to happen, or the length of time that something takes.
There is an emotional pattern to our daily lives. There is a genuine mood of positivity that peaks during the morning, drops during the afternoon, and then climbs back up in the evening. This prevailing cycle of moods happen every weekday to everyone, regardless of race or nationality. Behavioural scientists from Cornell University using the Day Reconstruction Method (DRM) and going hour by hour through people’s lives found the same pattern.
It’s essential to learn and practice time management if you want to increase your productivity and efficiency. Rather than feel you are at the mercy of your schedule, you can become a strategic master of your time and calendar, which empowers you to enhance your productivity. No one can create extra hours in the day, but you can manage your time well and create the sense that you’ve got all the time you need.
“As it is not one swallow or a fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy.”
Would you like to increase your productivity and achieve more? Do you already have feasible strategies to make better use of your time? Contact me via e-mail to arrange a time management workshop which are tailor made for you and your team.
We only have 24 hours in a day, and we always try to steal from the health part (sleep, training, etc.) and give it to the working hard part. Working smart = doing the same number of sales and at the same time by getting rid of the low productivity activities and focusing on the high productivity activities. We have to get big deals; we have to get deals that provide revenue now. I help companies solve problems, by getting into the nitty gritty and changing how companies do things. Are you aware about what is the smartest way of doing things? Have you learned how to anticipate what is going to happen with a deal?
I’ve spent the last few years in consulting and it’s a huge advantage to be able to connect with people and use psychology and understand who you are dealing with. I think it’s all about people and I take a therapist’s approach to dealing with whomever is in front of me. Contact me via e-mail to arrange a meeting.
There are only 24 hours in a day and our productivity is based on what, and how much we do per day. Time management are the tools we use to make most of our time. As humans, it’s natural to want to constantly improve and set new personal records and when it comes to time management, many of us hit roadblocks. Research suggests that the average worker is only productive for around three hours a day.
What we can accomplish in a day dictates how quickly our projects will progress. The more distractions and time-consuming tasks, the less actual progress we make. Those of you that have been working from home over the past 2 years will recognise the most popular unproductive office activities:
- Reading news websites
- Checking social media
- Discussing non-work-related things with co-workers
- Searching for new jobs
- Taking smoke breaks
- Making calls to partners or friends
- Making hot drinks
- Texting or instant messaging
- Eating snacks
- Making food in office
Habits shape our attitudes, actions, and decision-making abilities, and they affect every aspect of our lives. Before we can build good habits, we need to understand what habits are and how they’re formed. We also need to know what mistakes we should avoid in the process as it’s easy to say, “to get better results, adopt better habits”.
Every single day I blog about a point of view, something I see, an assertion and this has rewired my brain. I’m continuously thinking about what I am going to say tomorrow. This act of public journaling is risk-free, all the rational parts of my brain know that nothing bad can happen. I can’t tell you precisely what narrative will help you undo your own narrative, but you are welcome to contact me via e-mail to arrange a meeting.
In my experience everyone can change their habits, but there is one condition: you to have a reason to make a change. Don’t worry about how you will change, just focus on what habits you want to form and why. If you have a hard time keeping and maintaining good habits, you may be thinking “too big,”perhaps you need to break them down into smaller steps. For example, if you are struggling to focus on work when you are in the office, try turning off the notifications on your smartphone.
According to Wendy Wood (social psychologist professor), there are three main principles to consider when effectively changing habitual behavior. First, you must derail existing habits and create a window of opportunity to act on new intentions. The second principle is remembering that repetition is key. Studies have shown it can take anywhere from 15 days to 254 days to truly form a new habit. Lastly, there must be stable context cues available in order to trigger a new pattern. "It's easier to maintain the behavior if it's repeated in a specific context."
c/o Medium
In his book, “Change Your Mind, Change Your Results”, Shawn Shewchuk highlights that the roadmap for success is printed on the outside of the box you put yourself in. Putting on my clothes and tying my shoelaces are so firmly placed in my subconscious mind they have become habitual. Everything is a habit whether you admit or not. As children we are taught that practice makes perfect, but many of us have been practicing the wrong things for far too many years.
“There are no high-performance people, there are only high-performance habits.”
There is a huge difference between waiting for orders and taking initiative. Statistics show that 90% of the western world is waiting for someone to do something for them. The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself as it will deliver the best return on investment. Where will you be in 5 years? Contact me via e-mail for a meeting if you want to improve the quality of your life.
