Tag: Purpose

Book Reviews

Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds By David Goggins

by journeytoleadershipblogLeave a Comment on Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds By David Goggins

Western society has an obsession for mediocrity and complacency even though we have great resources to excel and even though our minds are strong and are built to endure whatever challenges we face.

Succeeding and functioning at your highest potential is all a matter of detaching yourself from that system of belief, gaining self-awareness and conquering the mind.

Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds By David Goggins #books #bookreviews #leadership #leadershipdevelopment #characterdevelopment #selfimprovement #badhand #canthurtme #accountabilitymirror #discomfortzone #pathofmostresistance #impossibletask #takingsouls #armoredmind #cookiejar https://journeytoleadershipblog.com

#1: Self-limiting beliefs

Inequalities in the system, systemic oppression will always exist but are not the core reason why you are not excelling and functioning at your highest potential.

The truth is you are the one limiting yourself.

That is why you must imperatively identify what is holding you back in life.

To do so, you can:

  • Get a journal and write down your pain, the list of things that are causing you pain.
  • Give shape and name to what is bothering you.
  • Create rituals where you call yourself out, face the hard truth.
  • Set tangible goals for yourself and keep yourself accountable.

By identifying what is limiting you and creating rituals, you will be able to renew your purpose and reinvent yourself.

#2: The path of most resistance

You must understand that in life, there will always be pain. But if you have a purpose, you can overcome that pain and borrow the path of most resistance.

Before starting your mission, you will have to objectively assess your current situation and abolish your ego for it is the cause of all your problems.

On your mission and on the path of most resistance, you might get depressed and discouraged but you have to be convinced that your depression is a sign that you are no longer in your comfort zone.

#3: Taking Souls

In life, you will be confronted with your own demons, bullies who will oppose you for no reason and will face many other challenges.

You have to prepare your mind for eventual opposition and understand that:

  • Challenges reveal your character and your mindset.
  • Pain is finite and you can take on any challenge you want.
  • You must defeat your own demons before you can defeat your opponent.

The Taking Souls strategy is a game that you play with yourself and yourself only by tapping into your own reserve of energy and power. It allows you to easily defeat your opponent and find your inner beast:

  • Know who you are and why you are here and why you are fighting.
  • Find areas in your life that need improvement.
  • Take on tasks that you deem impossible or that make you uncomfortable.
  • List your strengths and weaknesses. Turn your weaknesses into your strengths.
  • List the strengths and weaknesses of your opponent or bully. Bullies are already insecure and unstable so it’s easy to get into their heads.
  • Remember that the easiest way to fight a bully is to help them.

#4: Flipping the script

Every negative experience creates callouses in the mind. When you know how to avoid negative self-talk, to manage your mind and your callouses, then you can choose fight over flight, push through any obstacles and overcome self-doubt.

To build the most stable callous mind there is, to acquire mental toughness and to improve your character, you need to accept your Self, stop running away from your past, face the source of your wounds, fear and insecurities.

For this reason, when you are facing opposition or a negative situation, you have to:

  • Flip the script and stop seeing yourself as the victim of your circumstances.
  • Work the hardest when you want to the least.
  • Seek excellence to outdo your competition.
  • Make your competition admire you and your abilities.

#5: Attaining your goals

Now that you are comfortable with the concept of pain and possess the ability to flip your negative experience, it is time for you to start:

  • Feeding off your pain to overcome challenges and to live the life you want.
  • Painting a picture of what success feels and looks like.
  • Visualizing yourself achieving your goals or overcoming the obstacles standing in your way.
  • Using your past achievements to fuel your news goals.
  • Putting in the work to succeed.

When all is said and done, don’t forget to take the time to celebrate your success.

Review

Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds is David Goggins’ raw and uncut autobiography.

In Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds, David Goggins aims to help you use your setbacks as fuel for your success, live a bolder life to your fullest potential, master the mind and use it to its maximum capacity.

David Goggins, intense and pragmatic, shares his hardships and successes in his civilian and military lives. Through his story, he encourages people to stop playing the victim and making self-limiting choices.

To make this short, his story is rooted in pain, very dramatic and hard to read. You basically need to brace yourself for the first chapters where David Goggins recalls his childhood.

Throughout his autobiography, we can observe:

  • The evolution of his relationship with pain and suffering. He went from enduring pain, to insulating himself from it, to embracing it, to enjoying it a little bit too much, to diligently seeking it, to understanding that he is immune to suffering and finally using his pain as a pillar for his success.
  • The shift from Victim to Warrior mentality.
  • The catharsis from depicting his life and transferring his knowledge in a book.
  • His willingness to open old wounds and repair the broken pieces of his life.
  • His weight loss, brutal honesty, resilience, confidence and individual growth.

Furthermore, I couldn’t help to wonder about military life and how they recruit their candidates.

On one hand, does the military hire people who don’t know what to do with their lives, who completely lack purpose or are at their wit’s end? Then, the military breaks them down, builds them up into superhumans, gives them a patriotic purpose, and pours into them their way of thinking to get these superhumans to obey them and do whatever they want without asking questions?

On the other hand, according to David Goggins, “Hell Week is designed to show you that a human is capable of much more than you know. It opens your mind to the true possibilities of human potential, and with that comes a change in your mentality.”.

Needless to say, it’s amazing what these soldiers put their mind and body through but still survive. I wonder if they know how much they lose or gain mentally and emotionally doing so? If they are able to function outside of that institution and with that level of trauma?

Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds should definitely be called “How to make the best out of the worst”.

While reading this book, you will experience a lot of sadness, twisted experiences, inspirational and funny perspectives on life. Just life!

As much as I had a hard time reading this book, I couldn’t put it down.

Let me know below what you think about this book!

Favorite quote(s)

Nobody likes to hear the hard truth. Individually and as a culture, we avoid what we need to hear most. This world is fucked up, there are major problems in our society. We are still dividing ourselves up along racial and cultural lines, and people don’t have the balls to hear it! The truth is racism and bigotry still fucking exist and some people are so thin-skinned they refuse to admit that.

There is no more time to waste. Hours and days evaporate like creeks in the desert. That’s why it’s okay to be cruel to yourself as long as you realize you’re doing it to become better. We all need thicker skin to improve in life.

I looked at the people who were making me feel uncomfortable and realized how uncomfortable they were in their own skin. To make fun of or try to intimidate someone they didn’t even know based on race alone was a clear indication that something was very wrong with them, not me.

Self-improvement takes dedication and self-discipline.

The first step on the journey toward a calloused mind is stepping outside your comfort zone on a regular basis.

Until you experience hardships like abuse and bullying, failures and disappointments, your mind will remain soft and exposed. Life experience, especially negative experiences, help callous the mind.

Ratings 4.5/5

About the author

David Goggins

 

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Author

David Goggins

by journeytoleadershipblogLeave a Comment on David Goggins

MEET THE AUTHORDavid Goggins is a retired Navy SEAL who has earned many accolades and who has participated in more than sixty marathons.

David Goggins is also the author of the Amazon Best Seller Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds.

Book Reviews

6 Leadership Books To Read While Social Distancing

by journeytoleadershipblog1 Comment on 6 Leadership Books To Read While Social Distancing

There is nothing like a good book to anticipate difficulties, to lazily and passively kill time, to help you nurture your mental health and to increase your understanding of yourself and life…

Needless to say, books are essential for growth and contain invaluable life principles.

6 Leadership Books To Read While Social Distancing #books #book #bookreviews #selfimprovement #selfdevelopment #leadership #leadershipdevelopment journeytoleadershipblog.com

The books selected, geared towards self-improvement, share useful principles to get inspiration and broaden your mindset.

1. Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action By Simon Sinek

Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action provides a leadership framework for leaders and organizations.

Indeed, this book invites people to look within and back up each action with an intention. Great leaders know why they do what they do.

It also explains how people won’t buy into an idea, a product or a person until they know the story and the reason behind it.

2. Mental Toughness: Essential Principles of Leadership and Success By Mak Hill

If you intend to live your life to the fullest and to pursue your goals, mental toughness is required at all cost.

Mental Toughness: Essential Principles of Leadership and Success, Mak Hill states that leaders who are mentally tough are generally successful because they:

  • Have been through a lot in life.
  • Acknowledge that their attitude determines their altitude.
  • Understand that their circumstances don’t determine your mindset or your level of success.
  • Face their fears, overcome self-doubt and are at peace with their past.

3. Ego Is The Enemy By Ryan Holiday

Ego Is The Enemy, Ryan Holiday states that you have to remain humble in your aspiration in order to succeed and the way people treat you don’t determine your worth.

This books teaches you to discipline your ego during your moments of success and failure. Challenges come and go but you must always be mindful of your attitude towards these challenges.

4. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success By Carol S. Dweck

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Carol S. Dweck invites us to move from a Fixed Mindset to a Growth Mindset in order to perform to out highest level, to stop worrying about what others think of us, to let go of fears and past failures.

Leaders who adopt a Growth Mindset are open to learning, are at peace with themselves and have achieved personal success.

5. Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t By Jim Collins

In Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t, by surveying different companies to understand what makes them great, Jim Collins offers a complete roadmap to success.

Jim Collins stresses the importance of self-discipline in order to become great.

6. Finish What You Start: The Art of Following Through, Taking Action, Executing, & Self-Discipline By Peter Hollins

Finish What You Start: The Art of Following Through, Taking Action, Executing, & Self-Discipline, Peter Hollins provides us with different strategies to help us achieve anything we want to.

Leaders who follow though on their goals and dreams have taken a good look at themselves first, then have worked to improve their mindset. They believe that they are capable, have purpose, are continual learner and that discomfort is inevitable. 

 

While everyone is social distancing, taking time off to take care of themselves, you can always take away something from books.

Books can reduce your stress levels, improve your communication, emotional intelligence, self-awareness and self-discipline.

Let me know below what you think about our book selection!

 

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19 Signs You Are Meant To Be A Self-Employed Leader

by journeytoleadershipblogLeave a Comment on 19 Signs You Are Meant To Be A Self-Employed Leader

If you are reading this, chances are that you have been pondering for a long time whether or not you should go out on your own or keep your 9-to-5 leadership job…

Making the decision to be self-employed is a difficult one since everyone is not cut out to go out on their own and the risks are extreme.

However, staying in your current 9-to-5 contains risks of its own:

  • You are not sure if you will get laid off or not.
  • You are financially dependent.  
  • You are responsible for things that you don’t really care about.
  • You are in a cubicle and around people you don’t care about.
  • You suffer from a unhealthy work-life balance.
  • You are being underutilized, under-challenged and are underperforming.

Wondering if you are meant to work for yourself?

19 Signs You Are Meant To Be A Self-Employed Leader #leadership #self-development journeytoleadershipblog.com

1. You are all about growth

You are focused on yourself, on your growth and on the expansion of your business.

When others create drama or partake in office politics, you are too busy listening to books, reading my blog, self-development and business books.

2. You think as a brand

You need to start thinking about yourself as a brand and as a business.

Everything you say or do is connected to your brand and purpose.

3. You enjoy taking risks

The people closest to you will try to talk you out of being self-employed because they are afraid of the unknown.

If you have to take risks, it is better and safer to bet on yourself.

4. You love to learn

Whether you are reading books or taking classes, you are always open to learn.

You believe that there is always room for improvement.

5. You are good at many things

You don’t want to be stuck in one position or with the same role.

Your skillset is transverse, you want to apply yourself in different fields and you often outdo your job description.

6. You understand sacrifice

Sacrifice is necessary to get where you cant to go.

You won’t be able to go out or stay in bed as much as you want to because you are willing to get down in the trenches and put in the hard work.

7. You require flexible hours

You want to be able to handle your own hours and not punch in.

You want a healthy work-life balance.

The tricky part about this is that you are your own boss, wont take much time off, have to be self-disciplined enough to follow your schedule and achieve your goals.

8. You make your own rules

If you have been in the workplace, you will encounter rules that don’t make sense, that consistently protect one group or people and that create or encourage bias.

You want to walk to the beat of your own drums without having to be like other people or having to comply to crazy and counterproductive rules.

You want to create a culture with clear guidelines that makes more sense and that will help people succeed.

9. You want more control and visibility

You don’t want to constantly look for validation or permission.

You need all the information you can get to make the best decisions.

You need control and visibility to perform at your best. 

10. You want ownership of your work

You are sick and tired of giving away your ideas, intellectual property, time and energy for a small paycheck.

Thanks to ownership over your work, you take pride in what you produce daily.

11. You cannot hold down a regular job to save your life

Because you follow your own rules, are good at many things and are frustrated with the status quo, it is hard for you to keep a job.

You don’t like taking orders, are uncomfortable with the status quo, you get fired a lot or quit often.

12. You value financial independence

You respect money and enjoy making money.

You don’t like depending on someone else than yourself for income.

13. You don’t fit in

You are not a team player, have a hard time getting along with others or stand out like a sore thumb.

You generally speak your mind and end up leading a project.

You have and value your own mind.

14. You genuinely love what you do

You want to do your best in your field of expertise.

However, in the workplace, you have no room to explore your passions or to demonstrate full enthusiasm for your field.

15. You take responsibility for your actions

You enjoy making your own decisions and understand that there are consequences for their actions.

When you make wrong decisions, you don’t shift blame, you learn from your failures and you are able to move on.

16. You are self-disciplined

You don’t want for people to tell you what to do or when to do it.

Even when you don’t feel like it, you manage your tile effectively, don’t procrastinate and go through your task list.

17. You enjoy working alone

Working alone is scary for some people but you embrace freedom and solitude.

You know that you can achieve more in less time when you are on your own.

18. You are resilient and resourceful

You expect the unexpected and believe that there is room for everybody to succeed in this world.

You see obstacles as challenges and are able to face different situations on a daily basis.

You don’t dwell on your failures, you celebrate your success and push through.

19. You are burning out

Your work environment has become toxic and is burning you out.

Your stress levels are very high and you feel like you are leaving your best self at work.

Something or someone at work is draining all your energy.

Last Words Of Advice!

If you are considering going out on your own, you have to be honest with yourself and assess your character and skills.

Before leaving your 9-to-5, make sure that you can survive without a job income or that your side hustle is making enough money.

 

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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Four Red Flags Wrecking Team Success and Cohesion

by journeytoleadershipblog26 Comments on 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

by journeytoleadershipblog24 Comments on 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!

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Goal Setting & The 80/20 Principle

 

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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

by journeytoleadershipblog40 Comments on 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!

Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.

 

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