COCKTAILS CAN BE ANYTHING
"Relaxing with a Mental PDA" Your 5 minutes daily program to Stress management
We all have this favorite expression when it comes to being stressed out, and I wouldn't bother naming all of them since it may also vary in different languages. But when it comes down to it, I think that it is how we work or even relax, for that matter that triggers stress. Ever been stressed even when you're well relaxed and bored? I know I have.
Since Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. is unavoidable in life, it is important to find ways to decrease and prevent stressful incidents and decrease negative reactions to stress. Here are some of the things that can be done by just remembering it, since life is basically a routine to follow like brushing your teeth or eating breakfast. You can do a few of them in a longer span of time, but as they say-- every minute counts.
Managing time
Time management skills can allow you more time with your family and friends and possibly increase your performance and productivity. This will help reduce your stress.
To improve your time management:
- Save time by focusing and concentrating, delegating, and scheduling time for yourself.
- Keep a record of how you spend your time, including work, family, and leisure time.
- Prioritize your time by rating tasks by importance and urgency. Redirect your time to those activities that are important and meaningful to you.
- Manage your commitments by not over- or undercommitting. Don't commit to what is not important to you.
- Deal with procrastination by using a day planner, breaking large projects into smaller ones, and setting short-term deadlines.
- Examine your beliefs to reduce conflict between what you believe and what your life is like.
It is important that you identify your coping strategies. One way to do this is by recording the stressful event, your reaction, and how you cope in a stress journal. With this information, you can work to change unhealthy coping strategies into healthy ones-those that help you focus on the positive and what you can change or control in your life.
Lifestyle
Some behaviors and lifestyle choices affect your stress level. They may not cause stress directly, but they can interfere with the ways your body seeks relief from stress. Try to:
- Balance personal, work, and family needs and obligations.
- Have a sense of purpose in life.
- Get enough sleep, since your body recovers from the stresses of the day while you are sleeping.
- Eat a balanced diet for a nutritional defense against stress.
- Get moderate exercise throughout the week.
- Limit your consumption of alcohol.
- Don't smoke.
Social support
Social support is a major factor in how we experience stress. Social support is the positive support you receive from family, friends, and the community. It is the knowledge that you are cared for, loved, esteemed, and valued. More and more research indicates a strong relationship between social support and better mental and physical health.
Changing thinking
When an event triggers negative thoughts, you may experience fear, insecurity, anxiety, depression, rage, guilt, and a sense of worthlessness or powerlessness. These emotions trigger the body's stress, just as an actual threat does. Dealing with your negative thoughts and how you see things can help reduce stress.
- Thought-stopping helps you stop a negative thought to help eliminate stress.
- Disproving irrational thoughts helps you to avoid exaggerating the negative thought, anticipating the worst, and interpreting an event incorrectly.
- Problem solving helps you identify all aspects of a stressful event and find ways to deal with it.
- Changing your communication style helps you communicate in a way that makes your views known without making others feel put down, hostile, or intimidated. This reduces the stress that comes from poor communication. Use the assertiveness ladder to improve your communication style.
Even writers like me can get stressed even though we're just using our hands to do the talking, but having to sit for 7 or 8 hours is already stressful enough and have our own way to relieve stress. Whether you're the mail guy, the CEO, or probably the average working parent, stress is one unwanted visitor you would love to boot out of your homes, especially your life.
Leadership Exposed: Things You Thought You Knew About Leadership
Much has been written about leadership: rules, pointers, styles, and biographies of inspiring leaders throughout world history. But there are certain leadership ideas that we ourselves fail to recognize and realize in the course of reading books. Here is a short list of things you thought you knew about leadership.
1. Leaders come in different flavors.
There are different types of leaders and you will probably encounter more than one type in your lifetime. Formal leaders are those we elect into positions or offices such as the senators, congressmen, and presidents of the local clubs. Informal leaders or those we look up to by virtue of their wisdom and experience such as in the case of the elders of a tribe, or our grandparents; or by virtue of their expertise and contribution on a given field such as Albert Einstein in the field of Theoretical Physics and Leonardo da Vinci in the field of the Arts. Both formal and informal leaders practice a combination of leadership styles.
?Lewin three basic leadership styles ?authoritative, participative, and delegative
?Likert four leadership styles ?exploitive authoritative, benevolent authoritative, consultative, and participative
?Goleman six emotional leadership styles - visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and commanding.
2. Leadership is a process of becoming.
Although certain people seem to be born with innate leadership qualities, without the right environment and exposure, they may fail to develop their full potential. So like learning how to ride a bicycle, you can also learn how to become a leader and hone your leadership abilities. Knowledge on leadership theories and skills may be formally gained by enrolling in leadership seminars, workshops, and conferences. Daily interactions with people provide the opportunity to observe and practice leadership theories. Together, formal and informal learning will help you gain leadership attitudes, gain leadership insights, and thus furthering the cycle of learning. You do not become a leader in one day and just stop. Life-long learning is important in becoming a good leader for each day brings new experiences that put your knowledge, skills, and attitude to a test.
3. Leadership starts with you.
The best way to develop leadership qualities is to apply it to your own life. As an adage goes Action speaks louder than words.?Leaders are always in the limelight. Keep in mind that your credibility as a leader depends much on your actions: your interaction with your family, friends, and co-workers; your way of managing your personal and organizational responsibilities; and even the way you talk with the newspaper vendor across the street. Repeated actions become habits. Habits in turn form a person character. Steven Covey book entitled 7 Habits of Highly Effective People provides good insights on how you can achieve personal leadership.
4. Leadership is shared.
Leadership is not the sole responsibility of one person, but rather a shared responsibility among members of an emerging team. A leader belongs to a group. Each member has responsibilities to fulfill. Formal leadership positions are merely added responsibilities aside from their responsibilities as members of the team. Effective leadership requires members to do their share of work. Starting as a mere group of individuals, members and leaders work towards the formation of an effective team. In this light, social interaction plays a major role in leadership. To learn how to work together requires a great deal of trust between and among leaders and members of an emerging team. Trust is built upon actions and not merely on words. When mutual respect exists, trust is fostered and confidence is built.
5. Leadership styles depend on the situation.
How come dictatorship works for Singapore but not in the United States of America? Aside from culture, beliefs, value system, and form of government, the current situation of a nation also affects the leadership styles used by its formal leaders. There is no rule that only one style can be used. Most of the time, leaders employ a combination of leadership styles depending on the situation. In emergency situations such as periods of war and calamity, decision-making is a matter of life and death. Thus, a nation leader cannot afford to consult with all departments to arrive at crucial decisions. The case is of course different in times of peace and order---different sectors and other branches of government can freely interact and participate in governance. Another case in point is in leading organizations. When the staffs are highly motivated and competent, a combination of high delegative and moderate participative styles of leadership is most appropriate. But if the staffs have low competence and low commitment, a combination of high coaching, high supporting, and high directing behavior from organizational leaders is required.
Now that you are reminded of these things, keep in mind that there are always ideas that we think we already know; concepts we take for granted, but are actually the most useful insights on leadership.
The Key to a Better Life
Time management is basically about being focused. The Pareto Principle also known as the '80:20 Rule' states that 80% of efforts that are not time managed or unfocused generates only 20% of the desired output. However, 80% of the desired output can be generated using only 20% of a well time managed effort. Although the ratio '80:20' is only arbitrary, it is used to put emphasis on how much is lost or how much can be gained with time management.
Some people view time management as a list of rules that involves scheduling of appointments, goal settings, thorough planning, creating things to do lists and prioritizing. These are the core basics of time management that should be understood to develop an efficient personal time management skill. These basic skills can be fine tuned further to include the finer points of each skill that can give you that extra reserve to make the results you desire.
But there is more skills involved in time management than the core basics. Skills such as decision making, inherent abilities such as emotional intelligence and critical thinking are also essential to your personal growth.
Personal time management involves everything you do. No matter how big and no matter how small, everything counts. Each new knowledge you acquire, each new advice you consider, each new skill you develop should be taken into consideration.
Having a balanced life-style should be the key result in having personal time management. This is the main aspect that many practitioners of personal time management fail to grasp.
Time management is about getting results, not about being busy.
The six areas that personal time management seeks to improve in anyone's life are physical, intellectual, social, career, emotional and spiritual.
The physical aspect involves having a healthy body, less stress and fatigue.
The intellectual aspect involves learning and other mental growth activities.
The social aspect involves developing personal or intimate relations and being an active contributor to society.
The career aspect involves school and work.
The emotional aspect involves appropriate feelings and desires and manifesting them.
The spiritual aspect involves a personal quest for meaning.
Thoroughly planning and having a set of things to do list for each of the key areas may not be very practical, but determining which area in your life is not being giving enough attention is part of time management. Each area creates the whole you, if you are ignoring one area then you are ignoring an important part of yourself.
Personal time management should not be so daunting a task. It is a very sensible and reasonable approach in solving problems big or small.
A great way of learning time management and improving your personal life is to follow several basic activities.
One of them is to review your goals whether it be immediate or long-term goals often.
A way to do this is to keep a list that is always accessible to you.
Always determine which task is necessary or not necessary in achieving your goals and which activities are helping you maintain a balanced life style.
Each and everyone of us has a peek time and a time when we slow down, these are our natural cycles. We should be able to tell when to do the difficult tasks when we are the sharpest.
Learning to say "No". You actually see this advice often. Heed it even if it involves saying the word to family or friends.
Pat yourself at the back or just reward yourself in any manner for an effective time management result.
Try and get the cooperation from people around you who are actually benefiting from your efforts of time management.
Don't procrastinate. Attend to necessary things immediately.
Have a positive attitude and set yourself up for success. But be realistic in your approach in achieving your goals.
Have a record or journal of all your activities. This will help you get things in their proper perspective.
These are the few steps you initially take in becoming a well rounded individual.
As the say personal time management is the art and science of building a better life.
From the moment you integrate into your life time management skills, you have opened several options that can provide a broad spectrum of solutions to your personal growth. It also creates more doors for opportunities to knock on.
Creating Effective and Efficient Relationships
Relationships of all kinds are often perceived as very delicate things, that require extra effort to maintain. However, a relationship can also be something that can provide security and can also be long lasting despite many trials.
Building an effective and lasting relationships is a necessity for several reasons. For example in a group or organization, the well being of the people depends on how efficient and effective that group or organization works.
The group or organization is also dependent on how the members work well with the management.
An ineffective group or organization can really be very frustrating. An effective group or organization can also ask so much on their members, that sometimes the members would be having no life outside the walls of the area where they work or sacrifice the other aspects of their life just to meet deadlines. For an organization or group with this kind of scenario, relationships can be stressed or suffer from breakdown.
People or other entities who depend on these groups or organization also suffer.
Society is defined as a web of relationships, which requires all parties to work and contribute their share in order to achieve a common goal. Having a relationship that is good, where cooperation and respect are manifested, can make society work better. In this way each member works for the good of the whole and towards achieving a common goal. This can only be attained with effective and efficient relationships.
Understanding the other parties' feeling and position creates an effective and efficient relationship. The easiest method to understand what is important to another party is to ask them what they want and listen to what they have to say. When the other party realizes this, they would feel the importance given to them
Effective and efficient relationships require parties to openly express their feelings and positions on all matters pertinent on the relationship. Assuming that the other party understands our needs and give us when we need it without asking for it is not a good practice.
Respect is the key to relationship. In order to create a more effective relationship, parties should treat each other with respect. We can show respect just by listening to the other party and by trying sincerely to understand how they function. You can also show respect to other parties by confirming that they are doing everything they can.
The opposite of respect is quick forming of judgements based on unfounded facts and prejudice.
Respect is the very foundation for a great relationship. This also means respecting yourself and respecting others.
Another key area in forming an effective relationship is to tackle differences of the other party directly. Differences between parties or people are quite interesting. For example in a conversation where each party listens to the other party, you may observe that each is having two different perspectives.
Work towards a win-win solution for both parties.
This can be done when at least one party acknowledges that the relationship is important. That party would then exert more time, effort and energy to understand the other party's needs and deal with it to get it out of the way. Should they fail, it is comforting for that party to know that they tried.
Effectively listening and no pre-judging. This is important if parties are to understand each other.
Informal discussions are conducive for parties. They bring out issues and concerns comfortably. They also feel more relaxed making them think more clearly.
Developing an atmosphere where the other party can express their feelings when they need to.
When parties fail to express whatever is on their mind or their feelings, it can get in the way of building an effective relationship.
Parties should be aware that certain things exist naturally but should be controlled in any dealings in any relationship. Human nature is one. Some of these things found in a relationship also include a history of stereotyping or mistrust, blaming the other person or party for a strained relationship, excluding the other party's feelings when focusing on a task, no clear and defined objectives, roles and expectations of each party in a relationship is also unclear.
Relationships are important to anyone, addressing issues and problems right away is a must to further improve the relationship. As they say 'No man is an Island'.
Power through the people
Have you come across a person who is so naturally friendly that when you put him inside a room of strangers, he'll be friends with almost everyone in no time? We call such a people-person, someone unbelievably nice and charismatic that he can charm anyone into doing anything.
A socially-empowered person achieves so much greatness, basically because of the people that catapult him to success. He earns the trust and all-out support of the people, whom he had helped before. He never runs out of help. He can do anything with the plethora of people behind him. All because he knows he maximizes his social potential!
See, if you know your social skills and you make use of them, you will reach self-empowerment. Self-empowerment is making a general overhaul in your life and turning yourself into a happier and more successful person.If you can be one of those people-persons, then I can't see any reason why you will not succeed. You just have to know how to start.
1. Be genuine.
Hypocrisy will just bring you all the way down. Be genuinely nice and interested to people. Once they perceive that you are Mr. Hypocrite with selfish intentions, you might as well say goodbye to self-empowerment.
2. Be the greatest listener that you can be.
To earn the love and trust of the people, listen to their problems and sympathize with them. Do not just hear them out, listen to them with your heart. Make eye contact when the person talks to you. Listen as if every word matters, and it does. Brownie points when they find out that there is a confidante in you.
3. Laugh out loud.
I do not mean that you force yourself to laugh for every joke cracked by someone, albeit you do not find it funny at all.This means finding humor in things and not being too darn serious. A person oozing with an awesome sense of humor attracts crowds and eventually, attracts success.
4. Don't forget yourself.
In the process of fluttering around like a social butterfly, you might forget yourself, allowing everyone to push you over. Remember, love and value yourself before anyone else. If you deem yourself respectable and worthy of affection, people will flock to you and not trample on you.
5. Do random acts of kindness.
You don't have to do a John Rockefeller and blow your savings to charity. Little acts of kindness matters the most, and this can be as simple as giving someone a surprise you-take-care card or helping an elderly cross the street. When we were kindergarten students, kindness was taught to us and greatly practiced. Now is the time to revive the good deeds and this time, let them stay for good.
6. Contact your old friends.
Sad how some friendships are destined to goodbye, but thanks to technology, you can do something about it. Relive the good old days by flipping your yearbook and look for the great people whom you want to communicate with again. Adding these old friends to your roster of support peers will surely make you feel good all over.
7. Develop your personality.
Are you grouchy, grumpy and generally morose? Whoa, you can't go through life with those. Get rid of the bad traits and habits that perpetually hamper your growth. And really, who wants a grouchy friend anyway?
8. Be confident.
Be able to stride to the other corner of the room and introduce yourself to people with that winning smile of yours. Just remember: be confident, not arrogant.
9. Practice control.
When angry, don't snap at anyone. Never throw a tantrum. Stay calm and collected. Be adult enough to take control of situation and transform your anger into something more productive and passive. As soon as people think your anger goes to volcanic proportions easily, they will find it hard to come to you.
10. Keep nurturing your relationships.
Your relationship with your family, friends and significant others is too precious that you must not neglect it whatever happens. Go out and have fun with them. Do things together. Happiness will never fly from your side as long as the people who matter the most are close to you.
In the end, using people for self-empowerment means becoming a better and more lovable person. It's a win-win situation: the people know they can turn to you anytime and vice versa.
The Powers of a Positive Attitude
I am going to ask you to something very weird right now. First of all, I want you to listen to your thoughts. Now tell me, what thoughts fill your head? Would you label them as positive, or negative?
Now let's say you are walking down the street with these thoughts. Do you think anyone who would meet you would be able to tell you what on your mind?
The answer to number one is up to you. But, the answer number two can be pretty generic. Although people will not be able to tell you exactly what you think, they will more or less have an idea of how you are feeling.
Here's another question. When you enter a party filled with friends, do they all fall silent as if something terrible had happened? Or does everybody there perk up as if waiting for something exciting to happen?
You know what? The answer to all these depends on your frame of mind.
Thoughts are very powerful. They affect your general attitude. The attitude you carry reflects on your appearance, too ?unless, of course, you are a great actor.
And it doesn't end there. Your attitude can also affect people around you.
The type of attitude you carry depends on you. It can be either positive or negative.
Positive thoughts have a filling effect. They are admittedly invigorating. Plus, the people around the person carrying positive thoughts are usually energized by this type of attitude.
Negative thoughts on the other hand have a sapping effect on other people. Aside from making you look gloomy and sad, negative thoughts can turn a festive gathering into a funeral wake.
A positive attitude attracts people, while a negative attitude repels them. People tend to shy away from those who carry a negative attitude.
We can also define attitude as the way of looking at the world. If you choose to focus on the negative things in the world, more or less you have a negative attitude brewing up. However, if you choose to focus on the positive things, you are more likely carry a positive attitude.
You have much to gain from a very positive attitude. For one, studies have shown that a positive attitude promotes better health. Those with this kind of attitude also have more friends. projecting a positive attitude also helps one to handle stress and problems better than those who have a negative attitude.
A positive attitude begins with a healthy self-image. If you will love the way you are and are satisfied, confident, and self-assured, you also make others are around feel the same way.
A negative attitude, on the other hand, has, of course, an opposite effect. So, carrying a negative attitude has a twofold drawback. You feel bad about yourself, and you make others feel the same way.
If you want to have a positive attitude, you have to feature healthy thoughts. This is probably very hard to do nowadays since, all around us, the media feeds us nothing but negative thoughts. A study shows that for every 14 things a parent says to his or her child, only one is positive. This is truly a saddening thought.
If you want a healthier outlook in life, you need to think happy thoughts, and you have to hear positive things as well. So, what can you do? Well, for starters, you could see a funny movie, you could play with children, spend some time telling jokes with friends. All these activities fill you with positive stimuli, which in turn promotes positive attitude.
Although it is impossible to keep ourselves from the negative things around us, you can still carry a positive attitude by focusing on the good things, the positive things in life.
And this positive attitude you now carry can be of benefit to other people. Sometimes when other people feel down, the thing people mostly do is try to give them advice. But sometimes, all they need is somebody to sit by them, and listen to them. If you have a positive attitude you may be able to cheer them up without even having to say anything.
If positive attitude is really great, why do people choose to adopt a negative attitude instead? One who carries a negative attitude may be actually sending a signal for attention. Before you get me wrong, feeling sad, angry, or gloomy is not wrong itself. But dwelling on these thoughts for far too long is not healthy either. There is a time to mourn.
As always, if you are beset by troubles, even in your darkest hour, focus on the good things in life, you will always have hope. Problems become something you can overcome.
You do not have much to lose by adopting a healthy, positive attitude. Studies show that such an attitude actually retards aging, makes you healthier, helps you develop a better stress coping mechanism, and has a very positive effect on all the people you meet every day. So, what's not to like about a positive attitude? Adopt one today.
"The Way to Wellness" It's time to start a Healthy life: your 7 days program
How many times have you gone to sleep at night, swearing you'll go to the gym in the morning, and then changing your mind just eight hours later because when you get up, you don't feel like exercising?
While this can happen to the best of us, it doesn't mean you should drop the ball altogether when it comes to staying fit. What people need to realize is that staying active and eating right are critical for long-term health and wellness -- and that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The more you know about how your body responds to your lifestyle choices, the better you can customize a nutrition and exercise plan that is right for you. When you eat well, increase your level of physical activity, and exercise at the proper intensity, you are informing your body that you want to burn a substantial amount of fuel. This translates to burning fat more efficiently for energy.
In other words, proper eating habits plus exercise equals fast metabolism, which, in turn gives you more energy throughout the day and allows you to do more physical work with less effort.
The true purpose of exercise is to send a repetitive message to the body asking for improvement in metabolism, strength, aerobic capacity and overall fitness and health. Each time you exercise, your body responds by upgrading its capabilities to burn fat throughout the day and night, Exercise doesn't have to be intense to work for you, but it does need to be consistent.
I recommend engaging in regular cardiovascular exercise four times per week for 20 to 30 minutes per session, and resistance training four times per week for 20 to 25 minutes per session. This balanced approach provides a one-two punch, incorporating aerobic exercise to burn fat and deliver more oxygen, and resistance training to increase lean body mass and burn more calories around the block.
Here's a sample exercise program that may work for you:
- Warm Up -- seven to eight minutes of light aerobic activity intended to increase blood flow and lubricate and warm-up your tendons and joints.
- Resistance Training -- Train all major muscle groups. One to two sets of each exercise. Rest 45 seconds between sets.
- Aerobic Exercise -- Pick two favorite activities, they could be jogging, rowing, biking or cross-country skiing, whatever fits your lifestyle. Perform 12 to 15 minutes of the first activity and continue with 10 minutes of the second activity. Cool down during the last five minutes.
- Stretching -- Wrap up your exercise session by stretching, breathing deeply, relaxing and meditating. When starting an exercise program, it is important to have realistic expectations. Depending on your initial fitness level, you should expect the following changes early on.
- From one to eight weeks -- Feel better and have more energy.
- From two to six months -- Lose size and inches while becoming leaner. Clothes begin to fit more loosely. You are gaining muscle and losing fat.
- After six months -- Start losing weight quite rapidly.
Once you make the commitment to exercise several times a week, don't stop there. You should also change your diet and/or eating habits,' says Zwiefel. Counting calories or calculating grams and percentages for certain nutrients is impractical. Instead, I suggest these easy-to-follow guidelines:
- Eat several small meals (optimally four) and a couple of small snacks throughout the day
- Make sure every meal is balanced -- incorporate palm-sized proteins like lean meats, fish, egg whites and dairy products, fist-sized portions of complex carbohydrates like whole-wheat bread and pasta, wild rice, multigrain cereal and potatoes, and fist-sized portions of vegetable and fruits
- Limit your fat intake to only what's necessary for adequate flavor
- Drink at least eight 8-oz. glasses of water throughout the day
- I also recommend that you take a multi-vitamin each day to ensure you are getting all the vitamins and minerals your body needs.
I suppose that's all I can think of for now. I should extend my thanks to a doctor friend of mine. Without him, I wouldn't be able to write this article, or keep my sanity.
Enjoy life, we all deserve it.
Self-improvement seminar for good leaders
What are you? A leader or a follower?
We can all become leaders and also followers. Both are important but the leader sets the good example for his/her followers. A good leader has a good follower.
If you think you are not a good leader, maybe you should have a self-improvement seminar.
Self-improvement seminar for leaders is training them to be good to the followers.
There are a variety of self-improvement seminar for you. But leadership training seminar is the best for you.
In order to be a great leader, one must possess various qualities that will attract followers. The following qualities are just of few of the many qualities that are vital for effective leadership:
1. Charisma- charismatic leaders have the gift to touch people through their choice of words. Charismatic leaders are alluring, charming and can encourage followers to support a grand vision or idea.
2. Positive Attitude - A leader who has a positive attitude will influence his/her followers to carry that same attitude. A good example of a leader with a positive attitude could be a parent or teacher.
Mothers, fathers, or elementary teachers appear and are viewed as role models to the young children they are teaching and nurturing.
These role models are the first leaders they encounter in life. Children become very dependent of leaders because they are their vehicles to the outside world and provide much needed help and assistance.
If a parent is nurturing and loving to their child, they will thrive under this encouragement.
If a school teacher provides a positive learning experience to the child, they will succeed and that success will become contagious... In any circumstance, a leader positive attitude will have greater impact and influence on their followers.
3. Motivation - In an athletic world, a motivating leader could be a coach, trainer or even a fellow teammate. While the talent of players is a good determinant of a winning team, their coach is also an important factor.
If a coach can not produce a winning team, his job is at stake. A coach motivation involves infusing his players with high standards, and setting challenging but attainable goals as they perform well. Thus, his/her ability to motivate his players will enhance their performances.
Motivation also correlates with having a positive attitude. When a coach has a positive attitude and provides a positive environment for his players, then the team will most likely be motivated to move in his/her direction where ultimate success can be found.
4. Assertiveness - A leader has the responsibility to guide the direction of his or her company. When a leader is firm and assertive in delegating tasks to his subordinates, they will hold a greater respect to follow through on their assignments.
An assertive leader has the ability to convey enforcement without being too autocratic or threatening to their subordinates.
Furthermore, an assertive leader should not make his subordinates feel like theye in a hostile environment. Instead, an assertive leader should respect his people, and require proper accountability at the same time. A leader assertiveness and confidence earns respect. With that respect, people are much more likely to follow, help, and emulate their leader to achieve success.
Self-improvement is important for leaders. Attending self-improvement seminars may be a good help in being a good leader.
Following your self improvement worksheets by heart
Have you ever wished that your life could be a lot better and more fulfilling than the one you are in right now? Have a self improvement worksheet you can put your plans on to turn them into reality.
Here are some of the things you have to plan out in your worksheet for a smooth sailing journey towards self improvement goal.
Get up early.
To be able to accomplish this and still avoid losing any precious sleep, you can go to bed just a half hour earlier to get up a half hour earlier than you usually do.
What this got to do with self improvement?
For different people the answer can vary slightly. To start with you need to fully awaken yourself and get rid of early morning sluggishness.
After you are completely alert step outside of your house and watch the sunrise. Nothing like the view of a fresh morning to set you out on your self improvement destination.
This simple but immensely satisfying act will lift your spirits and help with self improvement.
If you are unable to do this, take a brisk walk, jog or run depending upon what you prefer and what you are physically capable of.
Eat breakfast.
To start your day out on the right foot and stay in keeping with your self improvement plan this is practically a necessity. You need the energy this will provide you with to accomplish your daily tasks.
If you are overly pressed for time you might try cereal and milk or even a few pieces of fresh fruit would do.
Any of these are better alternatives than skipping breakfast.
Smile a lot.
When you go places, smile more at other people, even if you find it a bit difficult at first. Just curve your lips up a bit as you make eye contact with another human being.
An effective goal is written.
The primary purpose of your self improvement worksheet.
This is extremely helpful and essential because there will be times when your self improvement goals will make you uncomfortable and you may lose site of them.
When this happens, you need to have them written down to keep yourself on track and accountable. Posting your goals on the refrigerator, bulletin board, or in your planner ensures that you will be reminded of them on a daily basis.
Review them on a regular basis.
You must review your self improvement goals in order to stay on track. Check out your worksheet on the schedule you set. Reviewing them causes you to commit to their achievement.
According to studies, only 1% of the population actually understands how to effectively set goals. This is the reason why so many New Year's resolutions are not followed.
And this is also why people keep failing at the very same goal. The desire to improve yourself is genuine, but the process you go about while seeking this desire is faulty. Then how can you achieve the self improvement results you want?
The positive results of achieving any goal are unforgettable. An individual's failure to achieve is not because they are incompetent but because they simply do not know the process of success.
Have an effective self improvement worksheet. Follow what is written, be patient and celebrate your success to come.
Genuine Happiness Comes from Within
Life isn the sweetest candy. Sometimes, when I feel like the world is just too heavy, I look around and find people who continued to live fascinating and wonderful lives. And then thoughts come popping into my mind like bubbles from nowhere ?ow did their life become so adorably sweet? How come they still can manage to laugh and play around despite a busy stressful life?? Then I pause and observed for awhile?I figured out that maybe, they start to work on a place called elf?
So, how does one become genuinely happy? Step 1 is to love yourself.
My theology professor once said that oving means accepting.? To love oneself means to accept that you are not a perfect being, but behind the imperfections must lie a great ounce of courage to be able to discover ways on how to improve your repertoire to recover from our mistakes.
Genuine happiness also pertains to contentment. When you are contented with the job you have, the way you look, with your family, your friends, the place you live in, your car, and all the things you now have ?truly, you know the answer to the question ow to be genuinely happy.?
When we discover a small start somewhere from within, that small start will eventually lead to something else, and to something else. But if you keep questioning life lit it has never done you any good, you will never be able to find genuine happiness.
I believe that life is about finding out about right and wrong, trying and failing, wining and losing. These are things that happen as often as you inhale and exhale. Failure, in a person life has become as abundant and necessary as air. But this should not hinder us from becoming happy.
How to be genuinely happy in spite all these? I tell you?every time you exert effort to improve the quality of life and your being, whether it is cleaning up your room, helping a friend, taking care of your sick dog, fail on board exams and trying again, life gives you equivalent points for that.
Imagine life as a big score board like those which are used in the NFLs. Every time you take a step forward, you make scoring points. Wouldn it be nice to look at that board at the end of each game and think to yourself hew! I got a point today. I glad I gave it a shot.? instead of looking at it all blank and murmur eez, I didn even hit a score today. I wish I had the guts to try out. We could have won!?and then walk away.
Genuine happiness isn about driving the hottest Formula 1 car, nor getting the employee of the year award, earning the highest 13th month pay, or beating the sales quota. Sometimes, the most sought after prizes in life doesn always go to the fastest, the strongest, the bravest or not even the best. So, how do you become genuinely happy? Every one has his own definition of appiness? Happiness for a writer may mean launching as much best selling books as possible. Happiness for a basketball rookie may mean getting the rookie of the year award. Happiness for a beggar may mean a lot of money. Happiness for a business man may mean success. So, really now, how do we become genuinely happy? Simple. You don have to have the best things in this world. Its about doing and making the best out of every single thing. When you find yourself smiling at your own mistake and telling your self h, Il do better next time? you carry with you a flame of strong will power to persevere that may spread out like a brush fire. You possess a willingness to stand up again and try ?that will make you a genuinely happy person.
When you learn to accept yourself and your own faults. You pass step 1 in the project ow to become genuinely happy?For as long as you know how to accept others, you will also be accepted. For as long as you love and know how to love, you will receive love ten folds back.
Again, throw me that same question ow to become genuinely happy?? Il refer you to a friend of mine who strongly quoted- ost of us know that laughter is the best medicine to life aches and pain. But most of us don know that the best kind of laughter is laughter over self. Coz then you don just become happy?you become free.?
Why Coaching is the Way to Go in Team Management
When you hear the word oach? what comes first into your mind? Do you picture a basketball team with a man/woman shouting out directions? Or perhaps a football team with a man/woman pacing to and fro and calling out the names of the players?
Coaching is no longer reserved to sports teams; it is now one of the key concepts in leadership and management. Why is coaching popular?
Coaching levels the playing field.
Coaching is one of the six emotional leadership styles proposed by Daniel Goleman. Moreover, it is a behavior or role that leaders enforce in the context of situational leadership. As a leadership style, coaching is used when the members of a group or team are competent and motivated, but do not have an idea of the long-term goals of an organization. This involves two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team coaching makes members work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone may have nor share the same level of competence and commitment to a goal. A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately competent members with varying levels of commitment. These differences can cause friction among the members. The coaching leader helps the members level their expectations. Also, the coaching leader manages differing perspectives so that the common goal succeeds over personal goals and interests. In a big organization, leaders need to align the staffs?personal values and goals with that of the organization so that long-term directions can be pursued.
Coaching builds up confidence and competence.
Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at work. It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence of members by affirming good performance during regular feedbacks; and increase competence by helping the member assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development. Depending on the individual level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more coaching behavior for the less-experienced members. Usually, this happens in the case of new staffs. The direct supervisor gives more defined tasks and holds regular feedbacks for the new staff, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting roles to favor delegating as competence and confidence increase.
Coaching promotes individual and team excellence.
Excellence is a product of habitual good practice. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback is important in establishing habits. Members catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement that they themselves perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire to attain team goals. In the process, they attain individually excellence as well. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. In order to achieve harmony of music from the different instrument, members will polish their part in the piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble. Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.
Coaching develops high commitment to common goals.
A coaching leader balances the attainment of immediate targets with long-term goals towards the vision of an organization. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are kept in check. By constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and motivated. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational goals; and making an action plan to attain these goals can help sustain the increased motivation and commitment to common goals of the members.
Coaching produces valuable leaders.
Leadership by example is important in coaching. A coaching leader loses credibility when he/she cannot practice what he/she preaches. This means that a coaching leader should be well organized, highly competent is his/her field, communicates openly and encourages feedback, and has a clear idea of the organization vision-mission-goals. By vicarious and purposive learning, members catch the same good practices and attitudes from the coaching leader, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If a member experiences good coaching, he/she is most likely to do the same things when entrusted with formal leadership roles.
Some words of caution though: coaching is just one of the styles of leadership. It can be done in combination with the other five emotional leadership styles depending on the profile of the emerging team. Moreover, coaching as a leadership style requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching: individual and team. Your members expect you to be the last one to give up or bail out in any situation especially during times of crises. A coaching leader must be conscious that coaching entails investing time on each individual, and on the whole team. Moreover, that the responsibilities are greater since while you are coaching members, you are also developing future coaches as well.
UNLOCK YOUR SELF IMPROVEMENT POWER
When we look at a certain object, a painting for example ?we won be able to appreciate what in it, what is painted and what else goes with it if the painting is just an inch away from our face. But if we try to take it a little further, wel have a clearer vision of the whole art work.
We reach a point in our life when we are ready for change and a whole bunch of information that will help us unlock our self improvement power. Until then, something can be staring us right under our nose but we don see it. The only time we think of unlocking our self improvement power is when everything got worst. Take the frog principle for example ?
Try placing Frog A in a pot of boiling water. What happens? He twerps! He jumps off! Why? Because he is not able to tolerate sudden change in his environment ?the water temperature. Then try Frog B: place him in a luke warm water, then turn the gas stove on. Wait til the water reaches a certain boiling point. Frog B then thinks oh?it a bit warm in here?
People are like Frog B in general. Today, Anna thinks Carl hates her. Tomorrow, Patrick walks up to her and told her he hates her. Anna stays the same and doesn mind her what her friends says. The next day, she learned that Kim and John also abhors her. Anna doesn realize at once the importance and the need for self improvement until the entire community hates her.
We learn our lessons when we experience pain. We finally see the warning signs and signals when things get rough and tough. When do we realize that we need to change diets? When none of our jeans and shirts would fit us. When do we stop eating candies and chocolates? When all of our teeth has fallen off. When do we realize that we need to stop smoking? When our lungs have gone bad. When do we pray and ask for help? When we realize that wee gonna die tomorrow.
The only time most of us ever learn about unlocking our self improvement power is when the whole world is crashing and falling apart. We think and feel this way because it is not easy to change. But change becomes more painful when we ignore it.
Change will happen, like it or hate it. At one point or another, we are all going to experience different turning points in our life ?and we are all going to eventually unlock our self improvement power not because the world says so, not because our friends are nagging us, but because we realized its for our own good.
Happy people don just accept change, they embrace it. Now, you don have to feel a tremendous heat before realizing the need for self improvement. Unlocking your self improvement power means unlocking yourself up in the cage of thought that ts just the way I am? It is such a poor excuse for people who fear and resist change. Most of us program our minds like computers.
Jen repeatedly tells everyone that she doesn have the guts to be around groups of people. She heard her mom, her dad, her sister, her teacher tell the same things about her to other people. Over the years, that is what Jen believes. She believes its her story. And what happens? Every time a great crowd would troop over their house, in school, and in the community ?she tends to step back, shy away and lock herself up in a room. Jen didn only believed in her story, she lived it.
Jen has to realize that she is not what she is in her story. Instead of having her story post around her face for everyone to remember, she has to have the spirit and show people am an important person and I should be treated accordingly!?
Self improvement may not be everybody's favorite word, but if we look at things in a different point of view, we might have greater chances of enjoying the whole process instead of counting the days until we are fully improved. Three sessions in a week at the gym would result to a healthier life, reading books instead of looking at porns will shape up a more profound knowledge, going out with friends and peers will help you take a step back from work and unwind. And just when you are enjoying the whole process of unlocking your self improvement power, youl realize that youe beginning to take things light and become happy.
