Change
At The Airport Without My Mobile Phone
My stress was rolling uncontrollably down a steep hill. It felt like I had no control of it. I was on the airport bus on my way to catch a plane to Adelaide. I had just reached into my bag to get my mobile phone and it wasn’t there. It had to be there, so I emptied everything out on the seat…. but it wasn’t there!
I had no addresses of where I had to go. No exact address of where I was staying. No phone numbers of anyone I was to meet. No Uber app. No plane bookings or reference numbers. All were on my phone.
It took me at least 15 minutes to regain equilibrium and then I spent the next hour on the bus planning my strategy for when I reached the airport. My proactive, solution-focused, emotionally intelligent, and resilient self came to the fore.
So what did I do and what did I learn?
Read MoreFailure is Never An Ending
So many people are stuck, overwhelmed with regret about what they didn’t do or should have done, unable to let go of what they perceive as failure. Failure is never an ending. It is an opportunity to learn and those who proactively do the reflection also learn. They start again, and, as C S Lewis says, they change the ending.
Read MoreAre You Ready For A Career Change?
COVID gave so many professionals the opportunity to step back and do a re-think on every part of their lives, their professional lives being no exception. Many decided they were ready for a career change. They decided, when the disruptive virus caused them to stop and reflect, that they didn’t want to go back into the rat race in which they had worked for too many years. Nor did they want to continue visiting groundhog day. Others realised that the job they had was never really what they wanted to do anyway. They had gone into that industry or professional sector because mum and dad had done that. Unfortunately others lost their jobs during that time and began to contemplate a career change that offered more security in this disrupted world.
Some viewed this reality with fear and trepidation, not knowing where to start. Other approached it with excitement and took pro-active initiatives to pursue their career change, one of which was to seek mentoring and coaching to accelerate the process. These excited professionals gave an Encore Performance. If you are still parked in the garage with the car running too afraid to back out, get on the road and make the career change move, then this article is for you.
Read MoreReset Your Body with Lifestyle Changes in 2023?
The start of a new year is always a good time to reset our body with lifestyle changes, changing our habits, especially around what we eat and drink. We can make good excuses for eating and drinking the way we have over the week between Christmas and New Year, even when we suffer as a result. But it is unsustainable between New Year and Christmas.
Given that what we eat and drink impacts our health and well-being and determines our levels of energy, it has, along with sleep, a powerful impact on our effectiveness and the success of what we do. I have said many times before that the way we manage our energy is far more important than the way we manage our time. High energy people do not have a time management issue, for example.
Read MoreProcrastination is an Emotional Issue
Procrastination is not a time management issue as many think. It is an emotional issue.The irony is that many people, if not most, want tips and strategies for managing it. They are easy to give but they may work one or two times, but then people find themselves procrastinating again. Why? Strategies, which sit well within our rational and logical self, only work when they are aligned, and work hand in hand, with our emotional self.
Many people who struggle with procrastination have all kinds of emotional obstacles blocking their success. They procrastinate for a whole range of reasons, and finding out why is the first step in overcoming procrastination.
Read MoreProcrastination is Exhausting
Procrastination ……….. we all know what that is. Some of us know it better than others because we live with it day after day. It’s our constant companion. It is so exhausting and fatiguing.
That project, report, phone call, letter, difficult conversation or action we have to take is on our mind all the time. We know we have to do it but we keep defering and delaying it. Why? We know it is not going to go away on its own. We all know that ultimately we are going to have to do it.
In the meantime, it absorbs enormous amounts of our emotional energy as we worry and angst about it.
Read MoreBe Difference Makers and Put A Dent in the Universe
This was an article I wrote 5 years ago and having re-read it recently I was surpised at how relevant it still is. Its message is particularly relevant in this new normal COVID world. It was Steve Jobs who famously said: “We are here to put a dent in the Universe”. To make sure, that when we do, our dent has our our unique name on it is a challenge. It’s an even bigger challenge to know what we need to do to put the dent there in the first place. This is what being Difference Makers is about. There are 6 attributes that make Difference Makers.
Read MoreWe Make The Road While Walking
There has never been another time in my life where I have seen leaders so challenged from so many sides. They are being called upon to lead in the most unpredictable and uncertain times and, of course, unprecedented times.
They are having to make decisions quickly without all the facts. They have to trust their judgement and draw on their inner resources, acting courageously and without fear or favour.
While they are being advised by experts in every relevant field, there are no guarantees that the decisions they make will take us where they want to go.
They have no idea what the road ahead looks like because they can’t see very far ahead at all. They can’t see around the corner.
I recall what Paulo Freire said decades ago when we don’t know what is ahead of us: We make the road while walking. That’s what our leaders need to do in leading through this crisis.
Read MoreEmpowered Adults Take Back The Control COVID-19 Has Taken From Us.
This was an article I sent out as part of my Self-Care newsletters early in this pandemic. Given we are about to go into very demanding restrictions and lockdowns here in Victoria, Australia, I thought it was worth re-visiting it. What kind of people do we want to BE in these next six weeks? And what skills, strategies and inner resources are we going to need to BE that kind of person? We need to believe that we can be empowered adults and take back the control that COVID-19 has taken from us. In a very real sense only we can do it.
Read MoreCreate The Future Rather Than Fear It!
Who would try and predict the future at the moment? So why try? Why not do what the late management expert Peter Drucker said many years ago and create the future we want and desire?
Is that a fantasy dream, a pie in the sky hope? It doesn’t have to be.
From day to day our reality changes. Yet we so often think that if we can’t predict our future with some degree of certainty we are in big trouble. We are now living in a very different world and uncertainty and change are its middle names. Any future we might have lies in being able to live with those two realities, in fact embrace them and make them work FOR us not AGAINST us.
It’s all about the mindset we bring to our lives and work, whether we have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.
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