Quote Of The Week #298

Quote Of The Week #298 The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra. - Jimmy Johnson #quote #quotes #performance #achievements #achieve #mindset #successmindset #journeytoleadership journeytoleadershipblog.com

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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?

18 Innovative Approaches To Improve Your Positive Thoughts, To Change Your Work Life And Your Leadership

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.

18 Innovative Approaches To Improve Your Positive Thoughts, To Change Your Work Life And Your 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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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.

Finish What You Start: The Art of Following Through, Taking Action, Executing, & Self-Discipline By Peter Hollins #books #bookreviews #selfdiscipline #resilience #emotionalintelligence

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

Peter Hollins

 

 

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Four Red Flags Wrecking Team Success and Cohesion

Four Red Flags Wrecking Team Success and CohesionBuilding an ideal team is one of the most complex but also one of the most rewarding and advantageous responsibility of a leader.

The leader has to select the team to ultimately create the best results for the organization, in light of the company’s culture and of the personality, motivation, commitment, values, performance, integrity level of his or her potential team members, with respect to his or her leadership style.

When the team is built, the leader has to look out for red flags that can destroy the synergy of his or her team and easily create a lasting toxic climate.

Wondering how to detect these red flags, avoid toxicity on your team, how to extract the best results from your team members and to become the best team member you can?

A few years ago, I worked on a year-long project, under a boss who used demotions and other measures to punish some of his employees when mistakes occurred. For example, he would quickly and sadistically withdraw work responsibilities from someone he did not favor to give to someone else.

Four Red Flags Wrecking Team Success and CohesionAs a result, the team was a unsalvable shipwreck: every man for himself, searching for a flotation device, fighting to get on land. My former boss manipulative behavior created a toxic climate where people were continually in flight or fight mode, were mistrustful towards one another, would turn on each other, retain information and sabotage every other person efforts to succeed, were obliged to seek his “affections” and to continually prove their loyalty to him in order to feel safe in their position, were more focused on office politics than on their work, were always on the lookout of a scapegoat, were afraid of speaking up and being transparent.

The lack of trust, commitment, performance was noticeable on a daily basis. By trust, I mean the ability of the team members to admit their mistakes, acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses, stay open, transparent with one another without any repercussion on themselves or their career.

RED FLAG #1: Lack of Transparency

In Speaking Truth to Power, James O’Toole states that “In essence, trust is hard to earn, easy to lose, and, once lost, nearly impossible to regain”.

Teams must be able to understand each other, to interpret their respective behavior and to be candid with one another.

To enable transparency, leaders have to:

  • Ask their team to reveal something personal and relevant about themselves. It can relate to their failures or successes, to their worst or most embarrassing experiences at work.
  • Encourage team building to better understand one another and enable bonds.
  • Assess and apply their team strengths and weaknesses by using profiling tools to get more insights into their behavior such as the DISC assessment, Social Style model, Right Path Profiles, Insights, MBTI).
  • Define a clear purpose for the team.
  • Explain major decisions from the organization to their team and include them in the flow of relevant information.
  • Maintain trust overtime and create unanimity.
  • Consistently tell the truth to their followers, be comfortable with it and practice integrity.
  • Value openness, empower those who tell the truth and must not reward those who do otherwise.

RED FLAG #2: Fear of conflict

In teams, conflicts do exist, are raw and real, are to be expected, and shouldn’t be avoided. In addition, they occur because we were born into different generations, backgrounds, with different personalities, values and morals.

Furthermore, conflict is always seen in a negative light or as a destructive process.
However, conflicts can be healthy and productive too. And even though conflicts are uncomfortable and make you feel under attack, they are necessary for personal and organizational progress, are used to generate the best decisions for the organization and to make team meetings mire engaging. In order to establish a conflict culture, it is imperative that leaders:

  • Create a structure where it is safe for their team members to express themselves without feeling the need to attack.
  • Hold their team accountable to the conflict system established.
  • Focus the conflict on the issue at hand to avoid personal attacks.
  • Assess each team member conflict capabilities/profiles with MBTI to develop the appropriate approach.
  • Ask their team members directly how they deal with conflicts.
  • Define conflict resolution, ease anxious team members in the face of conflict and find courage to speak truth to power.

RED FLAG #3: Lack of Commitment

Commitment is the willingness to achieve common goals as a team, the ability of team members to align themselves with the organization purpose, values and strategies even in disagreement with the decision taken.

To enhance team commitment, leaders must:

  • Embrace conflicts, divergent opinions, ideas and perspectives.
  • Among conflicting ideas, make wise decisions and be unafraid to displease some team members.
  • Before making a decision, understand and consider all ideas.
  • Clarify their decisions with the team and write down them down to avoid ulterior assumptions and ambiguities.

RED FLAG #4: Lack of accountability

Team members must keep each other accountable for their behavior, their mistakes and lack of performance. If no one is held accountable, team members gradually lose respect for each other and moral decreases. Leaders must:

  • Lead by example, call out mishaps, low results and misconduct.
  • Make every team member aware of each other contributions and functions on the team.
  • Track everyone’s progress and accurately measure performance.
  • Measure team success using objective and liable means.
  • Measure progress with timelines.
  • Focus on areas of productivity.
  • Make sure that the collective interest in results exceeds the individual needs of the team.

How to be an effective team member?

  • Develop your communication skills.

  • Make sure that you are understood and are open to clarifying misunderstandings.

  • Monitor your non verbal communication. Keep your body language positive and opened.

  • Look at the person you’re exchanging with.

  • If a problem occurs between you and someone else, fix it before the problem festers by talking to that person as soon as possible. This shows that you are willing to work through issues, that you are a problem solver instead of being inappropriate and ineffective.

  • Give sincere and appropriate positive feedback to your team members.

  • Develop your listening skills.

 

To demonstrate your interest in learning new skills, to better understand the other person, you have to:

  • be willing to listen more that you speak and voice your opinion in due time.
  • Implement the conversation with probing question.
  • Request other people opinion before giving yours.
  • Avoid planning your responses during the conversation.
  • Encourage the conversation with nods, smiles and eye contact.
  • Manage your tasks and time.
  • Put your understanding of the team task into writing in order to clarify immediate issues and to have a reference for time and deadlines measurement.
  • Own up to your actions.

 

Failing to follow through on your team assignments is synonym to letting your team down. To stay accountable for your part:

  • Keep your promises.
  • Offer to help coworkers in time of need.
  • Avoid procrastination and do not hesitate yo ask for help.
  • Avoid blaming others for your mistakes take the blame if you have done something wrong.
  • Find solutions to issues instead if creating them.
  • Learn from each and very situations and move on group them.
  • Avoid repeating past mistakes.
  • Work on interrelationship skills.

 

Last Words Of Advice!

In the team, you have to cooperate with your coworkers and work well with your supervisor. To do so:

  • Treat everyone with respect.
  • Avoid stereotypes and jumping to conclusions.
  • Avoid gossip and keep confidences.
  • Share your knowledge with your team.

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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Goal Setting & The 80/20 Principle — 18 Ways To Apply This Principle And Change Your Life

Strangely, this week, I found myself explaining the 80/20 principle to everyone I know. Though this principle is well-known by leaders, it is rarely applied. Leaders around the globe get flooded with information, sometimes more than they can handle. However, they have to make swift decisions and keep their most important objectives in mind. To extract value and positivity in every situation, to improve our daily life, our institutions, our efficiency, our processes, our achievements, it is detrimental to understand the 80/20 Principle. Wondering how to generate goals and focus on the most important ones using the 80/20 Principle? Goal Setting & The 80/20 Principle

What Is The 80/20 Principle?

The 80/20 Principle is actually known as the Principle of Imbalance, the Principle of Least Effort or the Pareto Law, uncovered in 1897 by Vilfredo Pareto, an italian economist. In the 19th century, in England, Pareto noticed that 80% of the wealth and income was accumulated by only 20% of the population. Furthermore, Pareto remarked that the wealth was not evenly distributed and that not only wealth was distributed in this manner. The Pareto Principle was consistently reproducible in different countries, in different times and with different sets of data. The Pareto Principle :
  • has been justified by Professor Zipf who demonstrated that 70% of marriages happened to people living 30% within each other.
  • has been used by Joseph Moses Juran during the industrial revolution, in Japan, in order to improve the quantity, the reliability and the value of customer goods.
  • is illustrated in every cause to effect relationship. For example,
    • 20% of employees or customers are responsible for 80% of the company profits.
    • 20% of criminals commit 80% of the crimes.
    • 20% of your clothes in your closet will be worn 80% of the time.
    • 80% of our achievements happen in 20% of our time.
According to Richard Koch, author of The 80/20 Principle The secret of achieving more with less, the principle either requires 80/20 Analysis or 80/20 Thinking:
  • 80/20 Analysis: Before taking action, Prior analysis of the non linear relationship between cause and effort. This analysis is time-consuming but more detailed.
  • 80/20 Thinking: Before taking action, intuitively identify what is most important, then verify the usefulness of the 80/20 principle in the given situation. This is faster.

Why It Will Change Your Life

Generally, the 80/20 is used to prioritize, to set goals, to achieve more in less time and with less effort. It can be applied in business, in life, in any social grouping and in various cultures. For instance, in business, it helps you identify the areas where you lose time, money and where it is possible to cut your losses. To exploit its full potential, the 80/20 principle exerts us to:
  • Spot the most important and ignore the massive unimportant.
  • Understand that every action doesn’t lead to the same outcome or even lead to one.
  • Use and work on strengths rather than weaknesses.
  • Seek shortcuts instead of taking long detours.
  • Gain more control over our lives and thoughts, our work and career selection.
  • Relax, work less and “target a limited number of very valuable goals”.
  • Transform your work habits.
  • Target a number of valuable goals.
  • Develop a healthy business strategy.
  • It is always possible to improve your skills.
  • Multiply what is effective.
  • Apply it in business to reduce costs and to generate more revenue.

Putting The Principle Into Practice To Set Tangible Goals

The 80/20 is for those who want more of their life, for the ambitious, for the goal-oriented and for the self-disciplined. Being ambitious is not synonymous to bein overworked, busy, or sacrificing yourself. To harness the 80/20 Principle, to make your dreams more feasible and to grow exponentially in any field:
  1. Discover what you are more enthusiastic about in life.
  2. Avoid investing the same amount of energy in everything that you pursue. Be strategic and identify the best 20% and invest 80% of your effort.
  3. Most people believe that goals are wishes, mere desires that they don’t believe they can achieve. Get clarity and be specific on what you want. There is no unrealistic goals.
  4. Make your goals big. The bigger the goal, the bigger the impact on your life, the higher the motivation and the longer you can maintain the vision.
  5. Make sure that these goals are self-imposed.
  6. Keep your goals simple. Simple is rare but simple is effective. Choose simplicity first. For example, identify the simplest and most standardized product, nurture the simplest 20%, make it high quality and eliminate the rest. In addition, simple businesses are better than complex ones because they deliver better value and perform better.
  7. Find ways to make your goals achievements fun. Avoid spending time on easy tasks and tune out distractions. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said it best: “Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least”.
  8. Avoid focusing on the negative and waiting for a positive outcome. It is necessary to let go of the customers, employees, products and processes that don’t bring profits
  9. Know your values and purpose. Then, align your goals with your values in order to feel more fulfilled.
  10. Analyze the reasons and the costs of these goals beforehand. Applying the 80/20 Analysis will indicate whether or not you would pursue them.
  11. Write down your goals for various parts of your life (career, work processes, leadership styles, lifestyle, health) and accomplish the most important goal. These goals must have value. Writing down goals allows you to solidify them subconsciously and to get everything into place.
  12. Write down what you really want and write it down as if you are writing it from the future, having already achieved your goal.
  13. Work on this one goal all the time. 20 Percent of your activities will result in 80 percent of our results. It is  a known fact that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in a basket. Instead, choose the basket to put all your eggs into.
  14. Review these goals on a daily to keep your commitment to yourself.
  15. Divide your goals into smaller steps to make your plan more coherent and easier to achieve.
  16. Identify the obstacles, the knowledge needed, the relationships that you have to build to achieve your goals.
  17. Measure your progress with parameters like money, time, energy, emotional investment. You can even create a deadline. If you miss a deadline, create another one.
  18. Share your goals with those that will implement it.

Last Words Of Advice!

Don’t beat yourself or your team up for not realizing all your goals. Have you used the 80/20 principle and what have you noticed? What is one of the goal that you want to accomplish? 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. Goal Setting & The 80/20 Principle Subscribe to Journey To Leadership

Are you self-sabotaging at work? 18 Tips to Learn to improve your work performance and climb up the corporate ladder

jonathan-pendleton-61209We 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Discipline yourself by inspecting and readjusting your thoughts, actions and behaviors to set standards, and dominating your immediate desires and impulses.
  7. Stay true to yourself. Avoid comparing yourself to others and competing with others.
  8. 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.
  9. Define clear goals and seek better methods to become more productive, more competent in the workplace.
  10. Learn to insulate yourself from the noise in the workplace.
  11. Vary your experiences and get out your comfort zone.
  12. Take care of your physical health. Exercise regularly.
  13. Make a good impression, from day one, without overdoing it and running a political campaign, by dressing appropriately and being punctual.
  14. 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.
  15. Embrace change, renew your coping and self-defense mechanism.
  16. Expect to make mistakes, to learn from them and keep it moving.
  17. Avoid naysayers and haters like the plague. Change your circle of friends if they are the ones bringing you down.
  18. 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!

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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?

18 Innovative Approaches To Improve Your Positive Thoughts, To Change Your Work Life And Your Leadership

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:

  1. 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. 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. 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. 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.
  5. 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 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 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 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.
  9. 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. 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. Don’t tolerate or focus on negative people.
  12. Get up early and work out before going to work to release the endorphins throughout the day.
  13. 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 to protect your home life. 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 and surround yourself with open-minded people with a positive mindset. Stick positive quotes on your wall of your cubicle or on your desk.
  17. Take a class after work or find a hobby so you have something to look forward to at the end of the day.
  18. 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.

18 Innovative Approaches To Improve Your Positive Thoughts, To Change Your Work Life And Your 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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