Are you a good listener? I said are you a good listener? Do you feel you hear as well as listen? Do you understand what the difference between hearing and listening is? Do you have good active listening skills? And do you know what active listening skills are? We all think and feel we are good listeners, but how good are we really? We love to hear people’s stories don’t we, however, we are also often bursting to share our story also. Or we are listening to someone and ‘know’ (or assume) we know what they are saying or going to say and so stop listening. And what happens? We have picked up the wrong end of the stick, misunderstood, or worse still gone and done the thing we weren’t meant to or vice versa. Recognise the story? I believe we can all improve our listening skills and focus more
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We are all on a journey, that we know, and the paths are many and varied, that we also know too! However, how we choose which paths, when to take them and how we go about choosing them is another thing altogether. Today I wanted to encourage you to look at this a different way to consider where you are on your journey and are you where you thought you would be and if not, why not. Do you have a clear plan of where you want to be, or not? Have you chosen wrongly in the past and are somewhere you didn’t want to be? Do you know how to get yourself from where you are to where you want to be? And have you got the courage, confidence and clarity to get you there? So many questions – but let’s look at this as being in rooms rather
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We know that perception is different from reality, but for some, perception IS reality. How can we determine the difference when we are seeing and feeling things so strongly? Perception is how we perceive and understand something. Reality is the real truth, the fact and the actual existence of something. Perception is how we see the world Reality is how the world is Let’s look at the difference between them both. Perception: How we see something which can vary from person to personIt is the product and outcome of what we know, our knowledge, attitude, values and beliefsIt is subjective in that it can be right or wrong, positive or negativeIt’s our choice as we see and feel it Reality: It is factual, the truth, something that exists and is tangibleIt doesn’t depend on people or is it affected by people; it is always right with no middle groundIt can’t
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It’s always an interesting question to ask people when asked what they think leadership is or means, and what it means to them. Pause for a moment before reading on and write down just ONE think that you think leadership is. Then ask yourself what type of leader you would like to be and what skills or attributes do you currently have to help you in this role and write them down. I thought it would be helpful to clarify what traits a good leader has or should have and how this manifests itself to others around them. Perhaps you could go through the list and see if these were on your ONE word above or are amongst the ones you wrote down above. There are three large and key qualities a good leader has which I’ll focus on first. The first one being integrity. Being a person who is
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I came across a quote recently which read “A 90 second pause is the difference between a reaction and a response”. Not sure if you’ve ever even thought of the difference between a reaction and a response in any great detail before or not, but it led me to realise there is a big difference in that a reaction might typically end in a bad outcome, where is a response is likely to have a better outcome. This led me to further think about how often we do stop or pause and think. About what we are doing, want to do, or how we might react or have reacted in the past, and whether after a 90-second pause a response providing a more favourable outcome would have occurred. Either way, taking a pause to think, consider or ponder before responding or reacting could prevent conflict, an argument, making a wrong
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If we set goals that are unachievable, we will fail. Yet we constantly set goals, health goals, business goals, personal goals with the aim to do more of the good stuff and less of the bad things. However, if we don’t have a system in place or at least develop a system then we are unlikely to achieve our goals. What is the difference between a goal and a system? A goal is the outcome of measurables, whereas the system is the way in which we will go about it. Similar to actions only in a procedural way. There is a difference between achievement and effort too. We may not completely achieve the goal, however, if we have given it our all, everything we could have, then surely the effort needs to be acknowledged and recognised, rather than the goal itself. If we wanted to train to run a marathon,
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We all want to make changes but sometimes can’t get started or don’t have the energy or motivation, so do nothing. Small changes CAN make a big difference?Isn't it time for a change? Did you know that? Making small changes can make a huge differenceIncorporating a tiny margin for improvement in everything we do will be noticeableBreaking tasks or activities down to make these small changes will help us improve one percentMaking small adjustments mean our improvements accumulateWe often underestimate the importance and the value of making small improvements on a daily basis Sometimes we try too hard to make massive improvements over a short space of time and that by doing this it will create success, or we will be successful, however, it’s the opposite that works. You might think that 1% is so small and such a tiny improvement and so insignificant why bother, but in actual fact,
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Whether an employee, contractor or business owner we need to take care of ourselves. COVID has caused even more stress, concerns, worry that affect business owners which in turn affects employees and staff. Worries for business owners such as competing with other businesses, surviving as a business, juggling responsibilities, growing the business, making money, attracting and retaining customers or clients are some of the highest worries. Worries for employees and staff can be stress, managing conflicting deadlines, prioritising, concern for job security, pressure of too much work, insufficient support and lack of communication from employers. Either way we need to provide ourselves with self-care. We know this but often ignore the worries and stress until it’s too late. Here are some self-care tips which either as a business owner, contractor or employee you can look to incorporate these into your life to help ease stress, worry and concern and increase
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“Focus on what you can control and don't waste energy on the things you cannot” Unknown Determine what you can control We all wish we had a ‘magic stop’ button to stop us worrying, but we don’t and so we have to find strategies to help ourselves. When you find yourself worrying about something whether it is personal or professional, just take a minute or two to examine all the things you do have control over. Then look at the problem you’re worrying about and try and put it into context by putting some sort of scoring on it e.g. 1-5 with 5 being the biggest. Then look how likely this is to happen and what is the likely consequence should it happen. Doing something with our thoughts is one way we can at least prepare for things that might happen, we know we have to prepare for things we
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What are the benefits of using affirmations? They motivate us to actThey help us concentrate on our goalsThey enable us to change our negative thought patterns into positive onesThey influence our subconscious mind to access new beliefsThey help us feel positive about ourselves and boost our self-confidence Affirmations manifest a sense of empowerment and worth. Affirmations are positive, realistic mantras that have the ability to shift or change our mood and encourage us to have a different view of ourselves and the world around us. Affirmations are statements that help us reframe our thoughts into thoughts that are more truthful and helpful. With repetition and practice our brains can and will be trained to re-wire itself to truly believe them. We spend a great deal of time listening to that little voice in our head, usually the critical and negative voice that are hurtful and unhelpful. They cause us to
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