3 Ways to Prime Yourself for Success in Disruptive Times (in 10 minutes or less)

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Do you want to improve key skills;  critical thinking, problem-solving, decision making, influencing skills, communication and conflict resolution, time and energy management, delegation skills, development and leadership of teams, giving and receiving feedback, empowering others while achieving greater focus, satisfaction, and success?

Image Credit:  Getty  Images

The aforementioned skills are the focus of executive coaching and are critical to your success, but at a time when change, challenges, uncertainty, and possibilities are occurring faster than ever before, we need to also develop new ways of thinking that take us forward faster, stronger and happier.

The Bad
If YOU not aware that the World Health Organization forecasts that stress/anxiety/depression will be the MAJOR causes of disability in the world by 2020 you should be.  Our dialogue around this topic is clearly avoidant, but it is those who put their heads in the sand who will be the most impacted and negatively impacted.  You can run, but you cannot hide from a silent, from an insidious problem that is destroying lives, organizations and businesses from inside out.

The Good
Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is about taking small, but important actions to help you become what Nasim Taleb described as “anti-fragile” because the greatest technical knowledge and the best people/communication skills will not be enough to help you move from NOW to HOW in your life, your career, business or community.  A whole new world demands a whole new way of thinking that takes you forward faster, smarter and happier!


The Solution-A solution that is free, powerful and takes up to 10 minutes a day.
Emotional stuff, anxiety, depression…yes, the stuff we don’t want to talk about will in the end catch up with us, but before it does here are three steps you can take as a leader to become a success statistic and NOT a stress statistic.

Cool Tool #1: Disrupt negative thinking.

Instructions: Take 2 minutes a day to think of one positive experience that’s occurred in the past 24 hours. It works because the brain can’t tell the difference between visualization and actual experience. So, you’ve just doubled the most meaningful experience in your brain. Do it for 21 days, your brain starts connecting the dots for you. This tool, The Doubler is from the great work of happiness researcher, expert, and author, Shawn Achor

Cool Tool #2:  Take control by giving up control
What?  Yes, this counter-intuitive advice is powerful because it will help you develop a critical 21st Century life, leadership and success skill, emotional agility.  Do NOT numb down an emotion, do not force yourself to be positive or try to avoid what you are feeling.
Instructions: Let yourself feel what you are feeling, label the emotion and make the choice to move past it by spending 5 minutes journaling what you are feeling and the benefits of moving past this emotion.

 

Cool Tool #3:  Recharge and Reboot.

Gratitude can not only help us to feel better, focus on the positive, get empowered but it will also build emotional agility. What you focus on grows and science tells us that we cannot be grateful and angry at the same time.
Instructions: Prepare for this cool tool by distracting your brain (do anything that takes you out of the moment (wiggling your toes, pinching your arm, touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth) so that you can focus on 3 things you are grateful for.  Close your eyes and focus on 3 things that happened today that you are grateful for.  See them, feel them, make them foremost in your mind, then journal what you are feeling!

 

Try one or all of the cool tools this week.  Remember, consistency is key.  I would be delighted to hear your results, and invite you to comment on the blog because we do not need to be on a collision course with anxiety that can insidiously erode an organization, a business, a professional practice, a life and many lives.

Carpe diem!  

 

Irene Becker | Just Coach

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