
Tag: Discipline
Quote Of The Week #286
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less by Greg Mckeown
“Less but better” embodies the ethic of Essentialism.
The essence of Essentialism
Essentialism is a way of thinking that drives success, that replaces false assumptions that we can do it all, that being busy means being productive, that we must accept every single opportunity that comes our way.
Essentialists understand that they have the ability to choose before they feel helpless and let someone else make decisions for them.
They acknowledge that hard work does not necessarily pay off or lead to great results. Essentialists therefore learn to distinguish among all opportunities the best and most appropriate, most essential.
They also understand that decisions are made by design and not by default.
They focus their energy and time on a small portion of activities, and refuse those that won’t help them achieve their goals.
The exploration and selection process
Essentialists give themselves the liberty to explore everything and anything before making a decisions on what to focus their energy, before committing to one option.
To do so, they:
- Set aside time to think, to focus on different possibilities, to create space for intense concentration, to read, to meditate.
- Visualize the bigger picture and notice the larger issues that matter.
- Listen deliberately and observe intensely.
- Write a journal, with restraint, until it becomes a habit to keep track of the small changes implemented and to memorize the important events and information.
- Take time to play. In the workplace and in adulthood, playing has become trivial and undermined. However, playing sparks creativity, opens people up to see more possibilities, “challenges old assumptions and makes us more receptive to untested ideas”, alleviates stress, improve overall corporate skills.
- Make sleep a priority to counter-intuitively remain productive, to increase creativity and sustain a healthy mind.
- Apply the 90 percent rule, if unsure of a decision, to avoid committing to too many options in our personal and professional lives. “think about the single most important criterion for that decision, and then simply give the option a score between 0 and 100. If you rate it any lower than 90 percent, then automatically change the rating to 0 and simply reject”. For example, the 90 percent rule is useful to hire the right people and make sure that they are fit from the start.
- Say no to the unwanted opportunities that come your way.
- Fight the fear of missing out.
The elimination process
Furthermore, Essentialists find the courage, strength and conviction to firmly and resolutely say no to external pressure when they believe it is right and eliminate the nonessentials.
They clarify their goals, their personal and professional mission statements, make them concrete, measurable, meaningful and memorable, identify the activities that align themselves with their mission statements.
Clarifying their goals and missions improves their relationships, their motivation, sense of cooperation, sense of purpose, their jobs, roles.
It also helps them focus their energy and time in one direction and therefore increase productivity.
In the workplace, employees without a clear mission or values tend to play politics.
Often Nonessentialists are afraid of missing out on an opportunity or are afraid of conflict, of not being conform to expectations, to social norms, but saying no will increase your effectiveness and the respect level.
Nonessentialists would be better off if they:
- Separated the person from their decisions.
- Found different ways to say no politely but firmly. It is critical to be prepared for reactions of annoyance, disappointment or anger from the other party. However, respect usually replaces those emotions in the long run.
- Traded the denied nonessential opportunities for better ones.
- Realized that respect is more valuable than popularity.
- Exercised discipline to remove distractions, cut their losses and stopped investing time, money and energy in nonessentials, dead-end activities.
- Broke free from a false sense of ownership to a project and object.
- Avoided staying somewhere just because they are afraid of wasting time, losing their investment and ownership.
- Admitted their mistakes.
- Avoided trying too hard to fit in.
- Challenged the status quo.
- Took a break before responding to someone and taking on a new commitment.
- Set boundaries and viewed them as liberating. Essentialists write down their red flags, deal breakers, lay down their priorities and take heed of negative people.
The execution process
It is critical to come up with a system to execute your essential activities, the right things the right way.
To prepare for wet days or to allocate time to respond to the unexpected, Essentialists create a buffer.
The buffer is a contingency plan for difficult circumstances, works as a risk management strategy, ensures some wiggle room to execute their activities.
To create a buffer, Essentialists:
- Accurately estimate the time of the activity by adding half the time that is expected to accomplish your tasks.
- Identify early all obstacles in their plan and remove them beforehand.
- Take small steps, increase positive interactions and congratulate themselves and their team for small wins.
- Design a routine to improve their ability to execute the essentials, to render the process easy and unconscious, to remove obstacles, to save their energy in the long run, to enhance their creativity and innovation.
- Stay in the present, avoid doing too many thing at once as opposed to doing many things and focusing on one thing at a time.
Favorite quote(s)
the pursuit of success can be a catalyst for failure. Put another way, success can distract us from focusing on the essential things that produce success in the first place.
Discerning what is essential to explore requires us to be disciplined in how we scan and filter all the competing and conflicting facts, options, and opinions constantly vying for our attention.
By definition, applying highly selective criteria is a trade-off; sometimes you will have to turn down a seemingly very good option and have faith that the perfect option will soon come along.
Essentialism is not about how to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done. It doesn’t mean just doing less for the sake of less either. It is about making the wisest possible investment of your time and energy in order to operate at our highest point of contribution by doing only what is essential.
Review
In Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less, Greg Mckeown teaches us to hone our decisions making and time management skills in order to achieve more to do less and to do better, to filter out the noise and distractions, to find out what we really want out of life and pursue our dreams the most effective and disciplined way possible.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less by Greg Mckeown is destined to overachievers, to ambitious people, and to those who feel like they are spread thin in their personal and professional lives.
Indeed, when we want to be successful, we have a tendency of accepting every opportunity that comes to us, we fear that we will be missing out and we worry about everything.
Greg Mckeown shows us that we have the power to choose, that it is OK to turn down a mediocre option, with the faith that a better option comes around.
Also, this book administers practical advice, applicable to leaders, illustrated with great examples, and made me realize the number of things that hinder my productivity and my time management.
At last, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less cannot be compared with New Years resolutions but provides a new way of thinking, a new way of life.
Ratings 4/5
Author

18 Innovative Approaches To Improve Your Positive Thoughts, To Change Your Work Life And Your Leadership
Thoughts, positive or negative, influence our character, our behavior, our vision, how we deal with setbacks, how we build and maintain relationships, has direct impact on our body and health, emotions…
For instance, negative thoughts affect our daily lives more than we think and can send us down a spiral of despair, depression, insecurity, anxiety and self-sabotage.
Needless to say, most people want to improve themselves, to evolve, to get ahead in their work life but have a tendency to welcome negative thoughts or ignore how to shut them down.
Unfortunately, they end up hindering their accomplishments and career advancements.
That is why it is necessary to control the damage caused by our mind, to discipline our thoughts and emotions, to build up a robust positive attitude and to find peace of mind.
Wondering how to process and control negative thoughts, emotions and how to use a positive mindset to get ahead at work?
Thoughts automatically appear in our mind. They come from past experiences and from the fact that we believe what people have previously said about us. They can be brought up by a word, an image or a memory and employ torture words that decrease our self-esteem, worsens situations, such as “should”, “must” and “have to”.
Because they are spontaneous, we think that they are true. In the long run, thoughts sometimes become rigid beliefs, absolute truths.
Therefore, it becomes an imperative to gain control over them. Disciplining your mind, controlling your thoughts and generating emotions regardless of your environment, regardless the level of attack help you become more mature, make healthier decisions, become more creative, escape, heal bad memories.
Maintaining A Positive Mindset
Positive attitudes can become difficult to maintain in challenging situations in the workplace. But once acquired, it is a habit that can help you overcome bad situations.
Indeed, positivity ensures progress, diffuses situations, alleviates stress, reduces fear, increases endurance, increase self-esteem, attracts positive results and better opportunities. It requires inner work and is independent of external circumstances of the outcome.
There are many ways to bring positivity into the workplace and to your mindset.
1. Identify the source of your thoughts
Identify the source of your thoughts and check the memories that you store in your brain.
Be selective about the information that come into your mind.
Stay away from the news because they will negatively affect you.
Have a joke of the day and send it to people who matter to you. Watch shows, listen to podcasts, audio books that will uplift you, inspire you and motivate you.
2. Identify triggers, patterns in your thought process
Identify triggers, patterns in your thought process.
How do they start? What my thoughts say about me? What are the consequences of my thoughts? What do you say regularly to yourself?
3. Be aware of the content of your thoughts
At some point, you must be aware of the content of your thoughts.
Therefore, you will be able to interrupt them whenever they don’t help you, to delete the negative ones and replace them with forward-looking ones. Changing thought patterns is difficult because our brain generally resist change.
4. Understand that you are not the prisoner of your thoughts
When you understand that you are not the prisoner of your thoughts, you will eventually become the one to change the atmosphere in the workplace, won’t allow the environment to drain you or define who you are and won’t let someone else control your behavior.
5. Think about who you want to become
It helps to:
- Think about who you want to become and how you want to affect people.
- Write down 5 dreams that you have ever have, find 5 words to describe yourself and think about it several a day.
6. Select and force your brain to redirect negative thoughts
When faced with negativity, select and force your brain to redirect negative thoughts toward more pleasant alternatives.
For example, think about the opposite of the negative thought, attach constructive emotions to an outcome, visualize a positive outcome for the situation or visualize the perfect life every day before you got to bed and everyday when you wake up.
7. Focus on what is going right
What’s going right for you?
Focus on what is going right instead of what is going wrong.
People give negative emotions more importance than the positive ones, which conditions our brain to bring up negative thoughts automatically and repetitively for a long period of time.
You have the power to choose and train your brain to give positive emotions more attention.
8. Accept the present moment
Improving your thoughts reside in accepting the present moment and understanding that it is inevitable.
How to focus and stay in the present? Understand that panicking and worrying is useless, that the past is unchangeable and the future uncontrollable, that every experiences have made you who you are today.
9. Give your thoughts a name
Give your thoughts a name and call them out whenever they send us down a negative spiral and challenge every single thought by speaking them out loud.
10. Be grateful
It is easy to complain and whine, so be grateful that you have a job and show appreciation in your contribution.
11. Learn to discern toxic coworkers
Learn to discern toxic coworkers.
Don’t tolerate or focus on negative people.
12. Wake up early
Get up early and work out before going to work to seize the day and release the endorphins throughout the day.
13. Create a positive work zone
Create a positive work zone by insulating yourself with headphones for example.
Also, avoid gossip at all cost, put up motivational objects around your desk.
Take regular breaks from your cubicle to stop thinking, to meditate and go to the bathroom.
14. Create a better work life balance
It becomes essential to create a better work life balance to protect your home life.
So, leave the drama at work, be strict with your hours, avoid staying late and taking work at home!
15. Behave positively as well
Meaning fake it until you make it…
16. Separate yourself from the negativity
Sooner or later, you will have to separate yourself from the negativity and surround yourself with open-minded people with a positive mindset.
One way would be to stick positive quotes on your wall of your cubicle or on your desk.
17. Change your surroundings
Take a class after work or find a hobby so you have something to look forward to at the end of the day.
18. Find better!
Finally, if this environment isn’t working out the way you want to, you can always discreetly find a more comfortable and productive workplace.
Last Words Of Advice!
There is a need for Positive Leadership.
Positive leaders have a moral compass, are purpose driven, communicate effectively, exhibit integrity and provide emotional safety.
Because they inject good energy into the team, they instill an atmosphere of trust and openness they rip enthusiasm, motivation, transparency from their team.
Positive leaders are able to impact their company culture, improve results, increase performance and enhance job satisfaction.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
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9 Ways To Grow As A Leader In The Age Of Social Distancing
As a leader, you are really spread thin and barely have time for yourself. It is good to take this opportunity to relax.
You might want to use this time to reflect on your life. There are many activities that you can do to get back into the growth mindset.
You want to improve yourself and get you act together to reach your goals and insulate yourself from further failure.
Wondering what you can do as a leader to grow during the era of social distancing?
1. Communicate with your inner self
You can start the self-improvement process during quarantine by checking in on your inner self so you can to come out quarantine better than when you entered.
Sometimes, we are so busy that we don’t take the time to slow down, breath, embrace solitude and see how we are mentally doing.
Some choose to meditate and others to journal. Journaling is a great way to communicate with yourself. By writing down your thoughts, you free up you mind, confront and let go of past troubling experiences.
2. Make an honest assessment of yourself
When you know who you are and where you are, you will know which steps to take to reach your goals.
It requires real honesty and an ability to confront every part of yourself — the best parts as much as the horrible parts of yourself.
Doing that will give you a sense of who you are. Assessing yourself will help you gauge your strengths and weaknesses, get i touch with your purpose, identify the situations and opportunities that fit you.
3. Understand your worth
You have to believe that you are worthy as a person and still have room for improvement.
Furthermore, as you improve yourself, you will realize your worth, become wiser and make better decisions.
4. Reevaluate
You can use this moment to reevaluate, reset yourself and organize yourself for the future. You will know how to tackle your goals as soon as things get back in order. To do so effectively:
- Think about all the things you have to do.
- Write down your goals and tasks. Then, set a time-frame, a level of impact, an order of importance and emergency.
- Foresee the potential obstacles that are ahead of you.
Not because you are cozy at home or remotely working that you have to let yourself go or give up on yourself or your goals.
5. Learn to compete with yourself
Nobody really knows what to do in life but the first step you can take is evaluating yourself and ensuring that your future self is better than your older self.
To compete with yourself, it helps to think as yourself as a brand, to have a prioritized task list and to regularly track your progress.
6. Unclutter your space
You may not be able to immediately improve on yourself but you can fix small problems around you that will free up some mental load and enhance your mental health.
The clutter around you occupies the space in your mind. To unclutter, you may want to organize your room or repair things around your house for example.
7. Do something worthwhile
To grow and get out of a somewhat negative space, it is imperative that you take responsibility for yourself.
Besides, you cannot stay in one place self-loathing or blaming someone else for your situation.
There is no need to dwell on your problems and go down the rabbit hole. Instead, figure out your purpose and do something with meaning that can outweigh your negative situation.
8. Connect with others
While you are bored in the house, we can get activated and still improve ourselves indoors or while social distancing.
For those who love to be social, you can use all this time to your advantage, connect more deeply with your entourage and build deeper trust.
You can talk to someone, who will help you grow, about your inner turmoils or your dreams.
9. Read all the books you can
Sometimes, we are stuck in one way of thinking.
It takes an external event or person with deeper knowledge to promote our mindset.
Books contain knowledge that you couldn’t acquire on your own, events that probably have or won’t happen to you. Either way, books will broaden your sense of self and open up your mind.
Nowadays, podcast and audiobooks provide us with the same purpose as books.
Last Words Of Advice!
Social distancing is hard for some.
As you use the era of social distancing as an advantage, be very careful on what you focus your mind on.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
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The Importance of Accountability In Leadership
Right now, there is a serious need for accountable leaders in all aspects of the world and at all levels of life.
Accountable leaders are responsible for their team and organization.
In reality, accountability goes beyond responsibility.
Accountable leaders have a sense of ownership that has been developed for tasks, decisions and actions. It is intrinsic to each leader and is independent of the outcomes of said tasks, decisions and actions.
Wondering why accountability is so important and how leaders can develop a sense of accountability?
Accountability is important, hard to define and even harder to implement.
1. Get To Know Yourself
I will never cease to repeat that to lead others, you must first lead yourself.
Before you become a leader or an accountable leader, it is also important to know your why.
2. Become Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable
You are going to experience the unexpected, be constantly reviewed under a microscope and have to handle an extreme amount of pressure.
You have to develop enough resilience and determination to seek discomfort and be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
3. Acknowledge Failure
There is no room for victim mentality or the blame game.
Accountable leaders are not victims of their circumstances.
Accountable leaders are willing to acknowledge their past failures. They know when, how and why they failed in the past. Most importantly, they know how to repair their mistakes, forgive themselves and move forward.
4. Understand Your Impact
Accountable leaders know the influence they have on their team and in their organization.
That is why, most of the time, they will need to demonstrate strong leadership skills, a lot of professionalism, a high level of maturity and self-awareness.
5. Look Out For Temptations
There are so many temptations that come with the money and power of leadership.
Accountable leaders know their shortcomings. They are humble, ethical and disciplined enough to control themselves.
To avoid temptations, it can be helpful to have a strong support system and a healthy work-life balance.
6. Create A Culture Of Accountability
To create a culture of accountability, leaders need to:
- Increase employee commitment and engagement.
- Allow employees to make decisions for themselves.
- Build long term trust.
Last Words Of Advice!
You have to be accountable to yourself first before demanding that others are.
Being a mediocre leader is no longer acceptable. You don’t have to stay in a bad situation under bad leadership.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
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Quote Of The Week #142
Finish What You Start: The Art of Following Through, Taking Action, Executing, & Self-Discipline By Peter Hollins
Following through is hard but gratifying in the long run…
Some people usually don’t follow through because they self-sabotage, misuse their time and energy by procrastinating, setting impossible goals, managing their time poorly, yielding to temptations and distractions.
Other people have internal roadblocks that impede them from taking action because they are either lazy, lack discipline and willpower, fear judgement, rejection or failure, try to be perfect, are too insecure, lack self-awareness, are unconsciously protecting themselves.
Indeed, people who have interval roadblocks and who fail to follow through:
- Set unrealistic expectations for themselves and end up underachieving or underperforming.
- Overthink everything and lean towards negative thoughts which paralyzes them. Making a decision becomes difficult because they don’t have clear rules and priorities.
- Worry too much. They ruminate on past, present, future, real, fictitious problems that are most likely out of their control.
- Don’t know themselves well enough to create the best goals and environment for themselves.
The Requirements of Following Through
Following through requires four elements: focus, self-discipline, action and persistence.
With focus, you are able to keep “your head in the game and your eyes on the prize”. You concentrate all your effort and energy onto achieving your goals.
With self-discipline, you are bale to regulate your thoughts, control your focus and to work regardless of your emotions and your circumstances.
With action, you are able to get closer to the finish line, execute the plan and translate your intentions.
With persistence, you will develop resilience and be able to push through until you have achieved success.
How To Start Following Through?
To start following through, you have to take a good look at yourself, build a better relationship with yourself, develop the right mindset and equip yourself with the best tools to succeed.
To develop the mindset, you must believe that:
- You are capable and hard work leads to success.
- The steps that you take are purposeful and fit into a bigger picture.
- Discomfort is necessary to success. Following through will require you to get out of your comfort zone and do things that you have never done before.
- The information and knowledge you acquire increase with the steps that you take. You learn more about yourself on top of learning new skills and life lessons.
- Taking care of your mental health will reinforce your willpower and discipline.
Is Following Through Good For You?
Sometimes, you will have to make the decision to follow through or to give up.
To make the best decisions, you have to create a set of rules that will serve as a guideline, a code of conduct, a task roadmap and a mission statement.
Methods For Following Through
To stay motivated enough to follow through, you must identify the things that motivate you.
Some people want to avoid negative consequences at all cost and will do everything in their power to succeed.
Others are pushed forward by the need and desire to improve their lives.
To stop procrastinating and to follow through:
- Associate your present goals with an activity that provides instant gratification.
- Break down huge goals in small manageable steps.
- Evaluate the risks of inaction.
- Create an environment free from distractions and temptations.
- Avoid multitasking and focus on one single task at a time.
- Group similar tasks together and accomplish them all in one batch.
- Create lists of tasks that don’t add value or that are out of your control in order to discharge your mental load.
- Acquire between 40% and 70% of information.
- Allow yourself to recover mentally from time to time to avoid burnout.
Review
There are many reasons why people stay stagnant in life. In Finish What You Start: The Art of Following Through, Taking Action, Executing, & Self-Discipline, Peter Hollins breaks down the psychology and the art of following through on your goals.
Finish What You Start: The Art of Following Through, Taking Action, Executing, & Self-Discipline is recommended for people who struggle to get things done and is full of powerful tools to help you take action and achieve your goals.
Peter Hollins jumpstarts you towards your dreams, shares several tactics to execute whatever you set your mind to and makes some very good points when it comes to the mistakes people make when pursuing their goals.
Following through boils down to extracting lessons from past failures and knowing yourself well enough to create the best environments, rules and roadmaps for you to succeed.
Let me know below what you think about this book!
Favorite quote(s)
Focus guides your thoughts in figuring out how to follow through and directs your actions toward achieving your vision.
Leisure is an important part of life, but if it’s excessive and takes the place of reasonable productivity, then it becomes a vice.
Follow-through is 100% mental. It takes a cognitive effort to follow through on something, especially when you hit discouraging obstacles.
Stop judging yourself and others for being different. We are all different.
Our productivity is very fragile and requires particular care to flourish. Treat yourself to what helps you thrive if you want to follow through.
Ratings 3.5/5
Author
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The Leader Planner13,95€
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The Leader Planner13,95€
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Are you self-sabotaging at work? 18 Tips to Learn to improve your work performance and climb up the corporate ladder
We all have a dream of outperforming ourselves at work and staying consistent and moving up in our career.
However, we have difficulties bringing our wishes and expectations to life.
Furthermore, in the fast and highly competitive corporate world, some of our attitudes, assumptions, values, flaws often render us completely ineffective, come in the way of us being the best version of ourselves, from learning new skills, from developing our talents.
The reality is that, despite our best intentions, we are often our worst enemies, are unable to improve our career, to achieve our definition of success, to satisfy our higher purpose.
We thereby harbor dissatisfaction, self-defeating thoughts and resort to self-sabotaging actions.
Wondering how to become a better performer, a better contributor, a better leader in the workplace and control the self-sabotaging tendencies?
Most of the time, self-sabotage takes roots from collaborators sometimes abusing substance, striving too hard for materialistic success.
Self-sabotage also stems from an inability to control extreme negative thoughts and emotions such as anger, guilt or resentment, and an inability to control other people. Indeed, in the workplace, low performing employees and leaders tend to either:
- complain too much about circumstances,
- not take action or initiative,
- doubt their capabilities,
- be addicted to praise,
- struggle to live up to other people expectations. Not pursuing your true purpose and implementing somebody else dream cause you to subconsciously rebel against your current situation.
- act impatient,
- be unable to follow rules or respect authority figure,
- be unable to handle the pressures of responsibility;
- misinterpret the image they have of themselves
- be busy or lack time management skills,
- lack conflict resolution skills,
- fear the unknown,
- fear criticism, looking ridiculous or being embarrassed,
- fear change or fear success,
- feel rejected or reject their own being,
- fear failure. Failures are usually blessings in disguise.
How to improve these bad habits and become an effective member of the workforce?
Becoming a better performer and contributor in the workplace doesn’t end at solely executing your duties and providing acceptable results, it also means working on your character and core values. To enable effective performance in the workplace, it is necessary to:
- Assess your strengths and weaknesses and ground them into reality. I cannot stress enough how self-discovery is an important and long life process that allows to:
- upgrade your moral compass and create new ethical standards,
- accept our unique distinctions,
- evaluate your role and contributions at work,
- assist, be assisted by coworkers or team members with a complementing set of skills.
- Understand your interests and abilities. This way you are able to develop your core capabilities, to choose the work that stimulates you the most, the workplace in which you best fit in and the team that complements you the best.
- Keep learning, grow your knowledge and your emotional intelligence that you may increase satisfaction at work, to envision greater possibilities, to overcome obstacles and to be successful in every area of your life by:
- doing something new, something different, challenging your thoughts and your routine,
- nurturing your natural curiosity about the world, about what you don’t know,
- breaking routine and mindless actions to stimulate your imagination,
- tackling your fears and negative emotions head and listing the consequences of your actions.
- Adjust your self-image to reality by writing down:
- the qualities you have about yourself and the ones you want to acquire,
- your trigger points. Don’t let identifying your trigger points to get discouraged and give up on yourself. Noticing your self-sabotaging habits is actually beneficial to you: you are probably not in the walk of life that you wish or supposed to be in.
- Act responsibility, be proactive, take initiative. Take on more responsibility and assignments, perform them with enthusiasm and motivation in order to become confident in your abilities, autonomous, dependable, emotionally mature and trustworthy. Indeed, the more you take on responsibility, the more you learn about yourself, the more you understand the consequences of your actions, the faster you admit your mistakes as soon as you notice them, the better you remain accountable especially when things go wrong, the more you grow, the more you gain competencies, the more you are willing to take initiative and even risks.
- Discipline yourself by inspecting and readjusting your thoughts, actions and behaviors to set standards, and dominating your immediate desires and impulses.
- Stay true to yourself. Avoid comparing yourself to others and competing with others.
- Allow yourself to think. In silence, without looking for distractions, confront yourself, make peace with yourself, strengthen your decision-making skills, observe bad habits, and therefore learn more about yourself, find your true purpose, learn to trust your intuition and inner feelings. Meditation, quiet contemplation, introspection are the key to staying alert, to increase your performance at work, to develop and recognize good ideas, to stay engaged and more conscious of your life.
- Define clear goals and seek better methods to become more productive, more competent in the workplace.
- Learn to insulate yourself from the noise in the workplace.
- Vary your experiences and get out your comfort zone.
- Take care of your physical health. Exercise regularly.
- Make a good impression, from day one, without overdoing it and running a political campaign, by dressing appropriately and being punctual.
- Respect and treat people the way you would like to be respected and treated. Uplift people instead of bringing them down or being considered as a toxic coworker in the workplace. Develop relationships and properly manage people emotions, don’t impose your emotions on others, don’t create enemies where you can have a supportive friend. As a result, you can become a good contributor and a valuable team member.
- Embrace change, renew your coping and self-defense mechanism.
- Expect to make mistakes, to learn from them and keep it moving.
- Avoid naysayers and haters like the plague. Change your circle of friends if they are the ones bringing you down.
- Service others. Servicing others doesn’t mean to submit to everyone and to every order. It means doing your best to get along with one another.
Last words of advice!
If you happen to abuse substance or are in emotional distress in the workplace, don’t be ashamed, you are not alone. Please talk about it to your closest family and friends, or find the nearest Workplace Help Center.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
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The Leader Planner13,95€
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18 Innovative Approaches To Improve Your Positive Thoughts, To Change Your Work Life And Your Leadership
Thoughts, positive or negative, influence our character, our behavior, our vision, how we deal with setbacks, how we build and maintain relationships, has direct impact on our body and health, emotions.
For instance, negative thoughts affect our daily lives more than we think and can send us down a spiral of despair, depression, insecurity, anxiety and self-sabotage.
Needless to say, most people want to improve themselves, to evolve, to get ahead in their work life but have a tendency to welcome negative thoughts or ignore how to shut them down.
Unfortunately, they end up hindering their accomplishments and career advancements.
That is why it is necessary to control the damage caused by our mind, to discipline our thoughts and emotions, to build up a robust positive attitude and to find peace of mind.
Wondering how to process and control negative thoughts, emotions and how to use a positive mindset to get ahead at work?
Thoughts automatically appear in our mind. They come from past experiences and from the fact that we believe what people have previously said about us. They can be brought up by a word, an image or a memory and employ torture words that decrease our self-esteem, worsens situations, such as “should”, “must” and “have to”.
Because they are spontaneous, we think that they are true. In the long run, thoughts sometimes become rigid beliefs, absolute truths.
Therefore, it becomes an imperative to gain control over them. Disciplining your mind, controlling your thoughts and generating emotions regardless of your environment, regardless the level of attack help you become more mature, make healthier decisions, become more creative, escape, heal bad memories.
Maintaining A Positive Mindset
Positive attitudes can become difficult to maintain in challenging situations in the workplace. But once acquired, it is a habit that can help you overcome bad situations.
Indeed, positivity ensures progress, diffuses situations, alleviates stress, reduces fear, increases endurance, increase self-esteem, attracts positive results and better opportunities. It requires inner work and is independent of external circumstances of the outcome.
There are many ways to bring positivity into the workplace and into your mind:
- Identify the source of your thoughts and check the memories that you store in your brain. Be selective about the information that come into your mind. Stay away from the news because they will negatively affect you. Have a joke of the day and send it to people who matter to you. Watch shows, listen to podcasts, audio books that will uplift you, inspire you and motivate you.
- Identify triggers, patterns in your thought process. How do they start? What my thoughts say about me? What are the consequences of my thoughts? What do you say regularly to yourself?
- Be aware of the content of your thoughts. Therefore, you will be able to interrupt them whenever they don’t help you, to delete the negative ones and replace them with forward-looking ones. Changing thought patterns is difficult because our brain generally resist change.
- Understand that you are not the prisoner of your thoughts. Be the one to change the atmosphere in the workplace. Don’t allow the environment to drain you or define who you are. Don’t let someone else control your behavior.
- Think about who you want to become and how you want to affect people. Write down 5 dreams that you have ever have, find 5 words to describe yourself and think about it several a day.
- Select and force your brain to redirect negative thoughts toward more pleasant alternatives. For example, think about the opposite of the negative thought, attach constructive emotions to an outcome, visualize a positive outcome for the situation or visualize the perfect life every day before you got to bed and everyday when you wake up.
- Focus on what is going right instead of what is going wrong. People give negative emotions more importance than the positive ones, which conditions our brain to bring up negative thoughts automatically and repetitively for a long period of time. You have the power to choose and train your brain to give positive emotions more attention.
- Accept the present moment and understand that it is inevitable. How to focus and stay in the present? Understand that panicking and worrying is useless, that the past is unchangeable and the future uncontrollable, that every experiences have made you who you are today.
- Give your thoughts a name and call them out whenever they send us down a negative spiral and challenge every single thought by speaking them out loud.
- It is easy to complain and whine, so be grateful that you have a job and show appreciation in your contribution.
- Learn to discern toxic coworkers. Don’t tolerate or focus on negative people.
- Get up early and work out before going to work to release the endorphins throughout the day.
- Create a positive work zone by insulating yourself with headphones for example. Also, avoid gossip at all cost, put up motivational objects around your desk. Take regular breaks from your cubicle to stop thinking, to meditate and go to the bathroom.
- Create a better work life balance to protect your home life. Leave the drama at work, be strict with your hours, avoid staying late and taking work at home.
- Behave positively as well. Meaning fake it until you make it.
- Separate yourself from the negativity and surround yourself with open-minded people with a positive mindset. Stick positive quotes on your wall of your cubicle or on your desk.
- Take a class after work or find a hobby so you have something to look forward to at the end of the day.
- Discreetly find a more comfortable and productive workplace.
Last Words Of Advice!
There is a need for Positive Leadership.
Positive leaders have a moral compass, are purpose driven, communicate effectively, exhibit integrity and provide emotional safety. Because they inject good energy into the team, they instill an atmosphere of trust and openness they rip enthusiasm, motivation, transparency from their team.
Positive leaders are able to impact their company culture, improve results, increase performance and enhance job satisfaction.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
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Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World By Cal Newport
According to Cal Newport, Deep Working is “Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.“.
What is Deep Work?
Deep Work means that we must learn to focus intensely on a single task for long periods of time without distractions and without breaking concentration.
Deep Work:
- Requires a sense of confidence and a conviction that you will succeed.
- Is at a disadvantage in a society that values social media.
- Is not a trend but it can make you more efficient and transform a boring job into a satisfying one.
- Is rare but is valuable in today’s economy. Deep Work ethics in the workplace is rare as well. Most people have embraced distraction because it is easier and allows us to avoid planning and concentration.
How to train your brain and build habits for Deep Work
To create real value and to get ahead in this economy, it is imperative to develop an ability to:
- Learn and master hard things quickly.
- Produce at an elite level.
There are several rules to Deep Working and to replacing distraction with focus.
Rule #1: Work Deeply daily
Deep Working is about building habits and rituals that go beyond willpower and that will help you sustain focus.
Personal desires such as eating, sleeping, sex, television and music are the main cause for distractions. Willpower is not sustainable enough to fight off distractions because your will will eventually be strained.
That is why Deep Work necessitates rearranging your schedule. You can schedule Deep Work by:
- Minimizing shallow obligations from your day to day.
- Dedicating a full day or more to concentrate on a task and to shut out all exterior noises.
- Routinely going deep everyday at the same time and for the same amount of time.
- Fit in Deep Work wherever and whenever you can.
Besides scheduling your Deep Work and to maximize your success, you must also establish how, what, where, when, for how long you want to practice Deep Work.
Rule #2: Embrace boredom
Deep Working requires that you focus on a task and reject all distractions in a world where your brain has been conditioned to research distraction.
Outside of Deep Work sessions, you have to take care of your mind, embrace boredom, learn to meditate, schedule a break from focus to give in to distractions, rewire your brain to resist distractions.
Surprisingly, embracing boredom will help you improve the limits of your concentration abilities.
Rule #3: Quit social media
There are many benefits to social media.
However, Cal Newport states that modern technology is to blame for shallow work and suggests that social media should be intrinsically used as a tool.
He also emphasizes that you must assess your priorities in life and the impact of social media on your life.
To regain control of your time and attention, you can apply the law of the vital few over your network tools then avoid using Internet to entertain yourself.
Rule #4: Drain the shallows
A deep life is a good life. - Cal Newport in Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World Click To Tweet
Shallow Work can be damaging to your life. Shallow Work can be defined as “Noncognitively demanding, logistical-style tasks, often performed while distracted. These efforts tend to not create much new value in the world and are easy to replicate.”
To identify and remove the shallowness from your life, you must apply the following strategies:
- Schedule your entire day to avoid spending time on autopilot and to fully benefit from Deep Work.
- Determine how mush time you are spending on shallow activities and eliminate them.
- Become hard to reach via your network tools.
Review
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport explains all the strategies you can implement to become more productive and more focused in this economy .
Cal Newport takes most of his analogies from educators because they have to go in depth in their field of choice and provide quality work.
However, this book is written for bosses and leaders who want to go to the essential, be more productive, efficiently organize their day, improve workplace culture and who want to achieve their highest potential.
It is sad to see that meditation, Deep Working and deep thinking have disappeared from and been perverted by the corporate system.
Indeed, corporate culture promotes shallows activities. People are busy as ever but are often distracted by network tools and forced to break from their concentration.
Furthermore, people –if they are not the person in charge–who practice Deep Working are not well perceived in the workplace even though they are high achievers and improve productivity.
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport is a good reminder to stay focus and to go to the essential in life.
Let me know below what you think about this book!
Favorite quote(s)
A deep life is a good life.
Deep work is at a severe disadvantage in a technopoly because it builds on values like quality, craftsmanship, and mastery that are decidedly old-fashioned and nontechnological.
The deep life, of course, is not for everybody. It requires hard work and drastic changes to your habits. […] But if you’re willing to sidestep these comforts and fears, and instead struggle to deploy your mind to its fullest capacity to create things that matter, then you’ll discover, as others have before you, that depth generates a life rich with productivity and meaning.
Ratings 3/5
Author
Fast Focus By Damon Zahariades
In Fast Focus, a quick-start guide to mastering your attention, ignoring distractions, and getting more done in less time!, Damon Zahariades provides tools and strategies to manage your ability to focus.
What is focus?
Focus is the concentration required to consciously block out the noise and the distractions while performing a task.
The ability to focus can be a natural talent. But for most of us, it is a built-in habit, a skill which means it can be learnt.
Why do you need to effectively manage your attention?
Focus can positively impact your life. A lack of focus will reduce your effectiveness and your work quality.
Lack of focus or mind-wandering is not all negative. It helps us get in time with our creative side and find solutions to difficult circumstances.
However, gaining better focus will help you finish all your tasks on time, make better decisions, solve problems, become more productivity, get a successful work/life balance, embrace failure and learn from your mistakes.
By improving your focus, you can reserve your energy for relationships, build stronger connections, become more present, increase your memory, achieve greater self-confidence, handle and overcome adversity.
Why are people so unfocused?
Nobody is impervious to distraction. People are easily distracted because they usually:
- lack interest, are unable to commit or stay engaged to a particular task.
- lack emotional intelligence and are submerged by fear.
- are disorganized and don’t structure their day.
- lack energy. They don’t sleep, eat or exercise correctly.
- lack control or discipline.
Creating an environment to focus
Designing the proper environment is the first way to zero in on your task and to harmonize your workflow:
- Light up your work environment and always take advantage of your natural light. A low lighting makes you drowsy, strains your eyes and decrease your learning abilities.
- Some people feel comfortable working with background noises while others enjoy silence. Experiment and find out which one works best for you.
- Consider your level of physical comfort. To do so, you can adjust your clothes, your stationary, your sitting position, your sitting time and your sight line.
- Monitor the temperature of the room. For example, a too warm room will cause you to sleep.
- Breathe clean air.
- Practice aromatherapy. Some scents have a direct impact on your mood, mind and effectiveness.
- Avoid social situations if you want to work. Human nature makes us drawn to people but interacting with people decrease your focus.
- Organize and declutter your workspace. Clutter affects your focus more than you think because it decreases your processing abilities, hurts your creativity and occupies your memory space.
- Monitor your time to measure your progress.
- Write down your ideas and tasks so they don’t monopolize your thoughts.
Strategies to overcome mind-wandering
There are several tactics to increase your focus, to relax and to avoid the biggest distractions in your life.
- As stated above, it is essential to monitor your time, to set realistic deadlines, to reward yourself and break down your tasks in smaller steps.
- Don’t set too many daily goals and limit yourself to 5 tasks daily or else you will feel overwhelmed and pressured.
- Identify the purpose for every task.
- Exercise first thing in the morning.
- Avoid ignoring the ideas and thoughts floating around in your head. Log them down quickly before you forget them.
- Identify “internal or external stimuli” that break your concentration.
- Record every task that you must undertake by putting them down via a to do list.
- To sharpen your focus, to enter the zone and boost your performance, listen to music or nurture silence.
- Take regular breaks and naps to refresh your mind, to refresh your mind and to avoid boredom.
- Restore your focus by taking a short walk instead of remaining at your desk.
- Multitasking is valued by society. However, attacking one task at a time will help increase your performance and your work quality.
- Pack all similar activities into one and execute them in a row while monitoring your time.
- Break down your day into several tasks and allocate the time necessary for each task.
- Stay away from internet.
- Spend less time in meetings or avoid meetings all together as they can clog up your day and as they hold little value.
- Set boundaries and expectations about your time and your focus.
- Turn off your phone for long periods of time.
- Observe how your energy fluctuates during the day and use moments where your energy is high to achieve high productivity.
- Mediate and take care of your inner peace.
- Stop checking your mails frantically. Instead, keep track of your inbox once or twice a day.
- Define a daily routine and follow it. Routines facilitates your life, enables ow brain processing. You can use that same brain power to accomplish your tasks.
- Stay away from perfectionism.
- Completely edit the first draft then come back to correct your mistakes.
- Stop “consuming too much caffeine” because it is unhealthy and reduces your ability to concentrate.
Review
Fast Focus, a quick-start guide to mastering your attention, ignoring distractions, and getting more done in less time! is a pragmatic, complete, quick and easy to read self-help book.
In Fast Focus, a quick-start guide to mastering your attention, ignoring distractions, and getting more done in less time!, Damon Zahariades shares valuable tips on how to increase your productivity and your focus.
Damon Zahariades shares his preferences and also incorporates practical links and tools to enable your productivity.
It is a step by step guide, written for leaders, for people from all walks of life, for those who are easily distracted by social media, for those who procrastinate, who daydream easily and those with low productivity.
I like the fact that this books highlights the fact that so many things, concepts and institutions in life are purposely set up to distract us from reality: from the local bully to the background music in the stores to technology and internet.
All these distractions are the reason why most people procrastinate and never achieve their version of success.
Favorite quote(s)
When we lack a specific purpose, we become more susceptible to distractions. We focus on whatever our brains tell us to focus on, rather than the other way around. We become passengers rather than drivers.
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