Little Things That Matter

Learn From The Past, Live The Present and Have An Open Mind to Face Tomorrow

How To Have A POSITIVE ATTITUDE

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The Gym TRX class starts at 11am on Sunday and two people walk in at 11:15 and their body language was such that they didn’t even look apologetic for being late. Despite being told that they are late and they can’t enter the class, they stomp in, ignoring the instructor’s request.

Eric who has just taken over as the Asia-Pacific sales head for his company, tells the new intern in his team that he has to get Eric’s breakfast sharp at 8 am daily.

If I can’t get that, you can’t get that too! This was Sylvia’s inner thought that was dictating the attitude that she was showing her friend who was looking bewildered.

It has been said that people don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care. Click To Tweet. This indicates the importance of demonstrating a respectful and caring attitude. Be it in sales or in any role, your credibility can be established by how much you know and your accomplishments but what finally allows your reputation to be built is having the right attitude. Click To Tweet

⇒How does bad attitude look and sound ? 

When The Going Gets Tough

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“I’m stuck.”

“I feel I’m running on a hamster wheel with no scope to get off. “

“I’ve no time to think or look at anything else because I’m always swamped with so many things I’ve to do.”

How often have you felt this way or heard your friends, partners, colleagues say this at various points in your day or their day?

Several of my coaching relationships start at this point.

We all go through this at several points in our life or at specific points in our day.

Is it a regular phenomena or something you feel at specific points in your day or specific periods of time at a stretch?

If you look around you, you’ll realize many people are stressed out or at a breaking point.

What are these stressors ?

Is it with work?

Is it with some transitions that you are going through at work or in life?

Is it with overall life in general in terms of your dreams and priorities?

What is the cause of these stressors? 

Is it fear of being dispensable and losing your job or not being able to advance in your area of talent? Or being forced on account of lack of choices ?

What about your day-to-day stressors? Is it because you are not taking the required break ? Are you facing the fear of missing out, if you are not seemingly present in what you are doing ?

What is the impact of these stressors?

– are you being thoughtful in your responses on email and other forms of communication?

– do you tend to not pay attention to the tasks that you are doing and to the people around you ?

– how often do you play the blame game in these moments ?

– do you feel threatened and sense of fear or a fight or flight mode?

Why does this happen – our brain is complex and research from various neuroscientists are discovering more and more that the parts of the brain work together as a symphony, so as we separate one part out, we have to remember that it doesn’t work in isolation. The prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is the executive center controls our ability to understand, think, decide, analyze, memorize, inhibit and recall.   So the PFC is vital to our daily survival, and yet there are many factors (environmental, hormonal, and genetic ) that can impact how well it works. The activity of the PFC Is also extremely energy-consuming.

If anything internal or external is impacting the functioning of the PFC, the activities relating to the 5 things above become harder and harder. Decisions will be harder to make, you won’t understand things as easily and inhibiting behaviors, or emotions will be harder.

Most of us are used to reading a proposal, at the same trying to understand it, possibly recall something from previous information. The more we add to this mix, the tougher it gets for the PFC to manage.

And one of the biggest drains to the PFC is inhibition, humans have the ability to socially control behaviors and emotions. And we need this to be able to function. These inhibitions could be in the form of not deciding to drink another cup of coffee or  go to dinner with a friend since you have to complete the task at hand.

Social Control is draining to the brain, and that thrown in with the other activities of the PFC fuels the drain. The more drained we become, the less effective we are at being able to understand, think, decide,  question, memorize or recall.

The more the stress/threat to the PFC, the greater the chances of our amygdala (flight or fight response part of our brain ) to take over, thus increasing our emotional response, and reducing our ability to use the PFC in general.

Do we need to take breaks ?

Research participants were nearly twice as likely to give the correct response to a complex decision-making problem if they were distracted by a simple three-minute number-matching task before being asked for their answers, says a team led by Marlène Abadie of the University of Toulouse in France. A more-demanding distraction had no such effect. Extracted from HBR

How do we get away from these breaking points or stressors

1. Self awareness – do you know your limits? How comfortable are you in saying No? Self awareness is your knowledge, moment by moment of what is going on within you, what is your emotional state, and the choice you make at that moment on how to behave.

2. Self Regulation – are you setting your priorities ? Do you schedule your day and prioritize ? Do you tend to react to every phenomenon that comes by your way during the day? Self regulation is having a degree of present moment self-awareness.

3. Self generation – how often do you reflect and renew? Do you question your beliefs and assumptions and ready to challenge them and move on? Self-generation is about creating alignment between moment to moment behavior and action with the desired outcome.

Do you take downtime, no matter how busy a schedule you may have?

Leadership success goes beyond your talents, skills, knowledge and experience. All the talent and skills are of no use if the moment by moment choice in terms of your behavior and action is not mindful.

When the heat is on and the going gets tough, are you on a reactive behavior as a leader or are you one who takes a calm, focused and balanced view? Do you encourage your team and help them refocus, thus building the trust.

The mental fences or shackles is what we set for ourselves. Learn to connect with your inner self and focus on your vision but allow yourself to take breaks.

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Success : What does It Mean To You ?

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What does success mean to you?  I was asked this question by one of my friends last week. Definitely got me thinking and after some thought I responded to her by saying it is something that appeals to my within, an act and achievement of that act.  She looked at me with the most surprised look and remarked, “oh!, so it is not about promotions, getting compliments, having a big house, or a successful business”.
Yes, success to many of us at some point in our lives may be associated with materialistic concepts because as we are growing up in life those are the things that are given importance to.  I’ve been there, yearned for the same things but life has taught me that success at the end of the day is how well I choose to face my disappointments and change my path to achieve the vision, one that still appeals to my within.  To achieve success one requires confidence, clarity and self-awareness.Success does not mean absence of failure. In fact, I would say not trying at all is possibly the worst failure. Our thoughts guide us through our journey in life and a lot of this depends on what you believe. Self belief is an important ingredient to the path of success. “I believe I can” or “I believe I can’t”, frame our thoughts and more often than not it is these self-limiting beliefs that become hurdles in our path to success.

Let me give you an example,  one of my clients ? (Jim – not his real name) was narrating one of his experiences with his client and how he was getting very frustrated with his client’s inability to understand the nitty-gritty and the technicalities despite his efforts to explain the procedure in detail.  Jim had reached a stage of almost giving up and believed he will not achieve success with this client of his, despite his repeated attempts.  As part of Jim’s coaching sessions, I asked questions focussing on his strengths and to evaluate options not considered.  With the help of coaching, I made him realize that self belief is imperative and closely aligned with self belief is courage, commitment, patience, and flexibility to change approach to reach the final vision.
I believe that a good sales person is one who believes in their ability, the value of the product or service that they are offering and is able to convince their buyer re: the utility value of the product or the service. Real conviction comes from believing in something wholeheartedly and as a good sales person you share that belief with your clients and are able to convince them of the product or service.
Life to each of us is a sum collection of our beliefs and thoughts and translating our vision to reality. If you believe you are, you will be. Belief is translated in your audio and video.  When you have a strong belief in yourself, everything that you do will reveal this positive power of your belief.  And this, I believe is the key to success.  If you believe, you exhibit confidence and being confident matters to the success in what you seek to achieve.
Drawing an analogy, I would say, self belief is almost like an addiction – if you are addicted to your vision,  you will believe you will achieve success and be confident about it and work towards achieving your vision.
For the Full Post Please Click on the LINK

Coaching for Success – Top 9 Reasons To Hire A Coach

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A leader is one who inspires by their actions and receives a buy-in to their vision by what they are, how they act, and what they do.  A leader need not necessarily be one with a title. Leadership is not about the use of authority.   Most organizations have managers but not necessarily many of them are leaders in a true sense.

Many managers rely on authority and control to get the job done. They are directive in their management style and instruct, no matter how enthusiastic or self-starter some members of their team may be. Described conversationally, it’s “I talk, you listen … I direct, and you adhere. “Described attitudinally, it’s I’m the boss and I alone have the authority to decide how things are done. However, no matter how junior or inexperienced your team may be most of us don’t like being bossed around.  Ask yourself if you’d like to be commanded and instructed – fact is most of us including you resent it and the team whom you are managing resent you for doing it.  Authoritative and directive style management stifle creativity, enthusiasm, learning, transition, commitment, morale and the tenacity to stay on is broken.

In today’s world where attention spans are for less than a nano second and with companies expanding and becoming complex, most managers expect the work to be done without actually caring to determine if their team member/s have understood or not.  Many high performing individuals are frustrated because there is no one to listen to them or determine what they actually want. Also, many times authority-based systems are a breeding ground for abuse of power and are prone to creating oppressive work environments.

So what can organizations and individuals do in these kind of situations, where meeting deadlines and targets are important but a manager may not necessarily have time to help a person within their team through a transition. Who can assist you in these kind of situations

9 things your Coach can help you with: Click Link 

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Do We Have It In Us?

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Here are some of Marianne Williamson (one of my recent discoveries and since then have become an ardent fan) Quotes and some examples in daily life that Each of Us Can Make A Difference in day to day life.

I.”The secret of success is to realize that the crisis on our planet is much larger than just deciding what to do with your own life, and if the system under which we live the structure of western civilization begins to collapse because of our selfishness and greed, then it will make no difference whether you have $1 million dollars when the crash comes or just $1.00. The only work that will ultimately bring any good to any of us is the work of contributing to the healing of the world.”

II.”Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don’t see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself.”

I read this article on a tweet today about a Cancer Survivor who has climbed Everest with one lung. For full article Read Here. A Perfect example of not giving up and to go beyond his self.

Each of us are faced with challenges and hurdles throughout our life.  However the best treatment each of us can give ourself is how we deal with these challenges and move on. Each of us have a purpose in life and we need to make the most of it. It is all about the personal drive which comes from one’s own enthusiasm, inspiration derived from friends and families and to me personally many a time by reading real life stories or meeting people in real life who have dealt with a thing or two in life.

III.”Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.”

Best example I can think of here is each of our effort to save energy, water and nature’s resources. We can stop wasting food, water and stressing the resources of this planet.  If you want to read more about this please refer to my Article “Earth Hour”

Don’t ask yourself do you have it in you. Each of us have it in us… it is a matter of doing. “Just Do it” by Nike conveys it all. Do each of us really need to be told by somebody to value their space and make a contribution ? What do you think?