Ten Steps to a Happier More Successful YOU

Ten Steps to a Happier More Successful YOU-Best Practices!

Helping smart people & organizations communicate & lead forward smarter, faster, happier is what I do best
© Irene Becker | www.justcoachit.com | 3Q Leadership™ Blog

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 Are you facing a career, business or life challenge that has you stuck, frustrated or working/living on overdrive? Is it time to put the pep back in your step?  Find new ways of looking at challenges that take you forward?  Whether you want to get coached or self coach; here are ten simply but powerful steps for greater happiness and success. Yes, happiness may very well be the NEW currency of success.

Best Practice #1:  Know and understand what you really want, and use it to build your self confidence and self esteem from inside out.  We are socialized to have goals and objectives, and even core beliefs and values that are often not our own.  The journey to really HEAR our own voice, and tap into our true purpose, get rid of false core beliefs and replace them with our true core beliefs and values is the road to building true potential, success and happiness.  Often hearing our own voice requires more than reflection, but intervention or help from someone who can help you gain the clarity you need and use it to build self confidence and self esteem from inside out.

Best Practice 2.   Be the promise manager and CEO of your life. Use every opportunity to model promise management and leadership in your life and your work. Do what you say, come through with the promises you make, do not make a commitment that you cannot fulfill.  And, get rid of relationships with toxic people who cannot ever really be trusted, have values that you do not respect, and are perhaps emotionally, physically, sexually or financially abusive.

Best Practice #3.   Develop YOUR happiness and success DNA. Get coached so that you can not only build but sustain the high emotional intelligence edge (your ability to understand and manage your emotions, understand the emotions of others, and use what you are feeling and thinking to inspire, engage and motivate the best in yourself and others), strengthen the life, leadership and communication strengths that can help you not only move forward but stay there with greater happiness and success. Emotional Intelligence-EQ/EI is a learned skill that you can choose to build and enhance. It is probably one of the most critically important areas to develop in a coaching relationship.

Best Practice #4.   Practice the art of Failing Forward.  Take the stress out of success. Build your resiliency quotient by starting to see failure with new eyes that help you fail forward.That’s right, practice getting out of the comfort zone daily. You are not right all the time, neither is any one else. Yes, while most of us were trained to succeed, reality is that the sheer velocity of change, challenge, competition and stressors makes always succeeding the pixie dust of frustration, workaholism, anxiety, brown out, addictions, ailments and burn out.  Learn to use failures and challenges to build a positive sense of self.

Best Practice #5.   Take your ego out of the equation, stop personalizing.  Is anger and frustration is caused by feeling invalidated by another person or a situation?  If the answer is yes, you are a hostage of your ego.  Get free by noticing if a situation or conversation makes you feel invalidated; and, if it does pause, reflect, refocus on your goals and objectives.  Remember, you have a 90 second window to transform the desire to react into a response that will help you move forward rather than creating anger, frustration or contention. Focus on building good personal boundaries, developing your ability to stay focused on your true goals and objectives.

Best Practice #6.   Cultivate humor, optimism, resiliency. Take time each day for a good laugh.  Yes, laugh it up.  The research is in and it is conclusive, laughter not only connects you with others but it also helps strengthen the immune system and helps you tap into your right brain-your creative, communicative side. Find a way to incorporate humor and laughter in your day.

Best Practice #7.   Take ME time into every day.  One of the most important things you can do is find a window of opportunity each day to have ME time.  Time that you spend with yourself, cultivating your relationship with YOURSELF.  Me time is time when you need to nurture yourself, feel lovable and do something that helps you recharge, reconfigure and reboot your mind, body and soul.

Best Practice #8.   Build a critical EQ/EI strength- constructive discontent.  Constructive discontent is your ability to not only stay grounded in the heat of an argument or dispute, but to also feel unpleasant feelings and not be held hostage by them.  That’s right you can learn to develop your ability to feel an emotion and not be held hostage by it by learning to step back ride the wave, by becoming the participant observer and letting the emotion pass by just watching and refocusing on your true goals and objectives.

Best Practice #9.   Stop reacting and retrain your brain to RESPOND instead. No matter what happens you have the choice to be the cause or the effect.  When you react you are been the effect, when you respond you are being the cause.   Take your power back by developing your ability to respond rather than react and in so doing build higher emotional intelligence EQ/EI and develop critical life and leadership competencies like constructive discontent. You have a 90 second window to pause and circumvent the fight or flight reaction…USE it to retrain yourself to respond!

Best Practice #10.  Re-discover, nurture and cultivate your joy factor, your happiness set point.  Recapture the child and heart and start to re-discover what really makes you feel happy and fulfillment.  Once your survival needs have been met, material acquisitions are terrific but they cannot and will not create sustainable fulfillment.  Only you can work to re-discover what your joy factor, your happiness set point is by doing things that will help you nurture and sustain your love of self from inside out.

 


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 Irene Becker, Chief Success Officer, Just Coach It-The 3Q Edge™ Toronto and Virtually Everywhere | Face to Face, By Tel, Skype or Video Conferencing
www.justcoachit.com Twitter @justcoachit Skype: beckerirene Tel: 1-416-671-4726 Email: irene@justcoachitcom

 


13 replies
  1. Martina
    Martina says:

    Excellent post, Irene.

    The central theme for most of these seem to be about not being held hostage. Not being held hostage to your past (good and bad), your emotions, the emotions of others, our “usual” responses and fear of sucess. Once we can put some of the old stuff away, we can see the way froward more clearly.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Martina
    @martinamcgowan

    Reply
  2. Redge
    Redge says:

    Excellent points Irene. While many focus on failures and fear their consequences of doing so, I find it interesting that few take the time to understand their successes. There is knowledge to be gained in both.

    Fail fast, recover faster. I particularly appreciate the significance of “respond” versus “react” – thoughtful versus reflexive. We can’t necessarily choose our environment, however, we can choose how we respond.

    I think the key here is self awareness. A written purpose statement or vision statement helps to keep our focus on life’s calling. When we keep our purpose in focus, it becomes easier to discern the significance of events in real time.

    Great post!

    Reply
    • Irene Becker
      Irene Becker says:

      Hi Redge! Thank you so much for your comments. I apologize for the delay in responding, as there was a technical problem with my blog and I was not receiving comments.

      Your reflections on the posting are very wise. And, I have to add that we now know there is a biological component to how we react versus respond, however with training and reflection we can circumvent the fight or flight response and in so doing teach ourselves to respond versus react.

      We do not live in a society that encourages reflection, but it is critical both in terms of self awareness (YOU were entirely right-self awareness is the genesis of our growth, our evolution) and also developing our power to be recursive thinkers-to reflect upon what we have said, read or thought. Recursive thought is an incredible power that only human beings have, and I think that reflection is important and critical. WHile we do not want to get stuck in analysis paralysis, it is important to take the time to reflect.

      Your idea about having a written vision or purpose statement is great. May I suggest a really terrific book, a book that I know you will enjoy, “Full Steam Ahead” by Jesse Lyn Stoner and Ken Blanchard. It speaks to the importance of vision from an individual and a business point of view. You can find an excerpt of Full Steam Ahead in my blog my inputing the name in the search bar.

      Thank you again for your comments, and your reflections! So very appreciated, Redge.

      Best, Irene

      Reply
  3. Joanne Cipressi
    Joanne Cipressi says:

    Irene,

    I love how you start out with knowing what you really want. This is so important and holds many people back. Sometimes they are striving for what their parents or spouse wants or what they think they “should” be doing instead of knowing what is truly within their heart. All great tips–especially love the respond instead of reacting…this is one lesson as coaches that we usually need to teach each person. Such an important way to live if we want success. 🙂

    Reply
    • Irene Becker
      Irene Becker says:

      Hi Joanne: Thank you so much for your comments! I apologize for the delay in responding, as there was a technical problem with my blog and I was not receiving comments.

      Knowing what we really want is, I agree, one of the most difficult things we all face. And, in terms of a coaching relationships, understand what the client really wants or taking/him her to a place of greater clarity where they can see and share what they want is critical.

      Learning to respond rather than react, is a critical skill…and a learned skill. I believe that most of us can learn to use our strengths as well as our challenges, stressors to build what I call 3Q skills that can take us forward better, faster and happier at the speed of change, and in the face of challenges.

      It is always great to hear from a fellow coach, and I invite you to drop me a line at irene@justcoachit.com.

      I wish you great continued success with your coaching practice, and thank you again for your great comments!

      Best, Irene

      Reply
  4. Clovia Hamilton
    Clovia Hamilton says:

    These are great reminders Irene! I love this one: take ego out of the equation. I am dealing with a guy now who has an ego the size of Mother Earth. He is extremely insecure because he lacks the credentials his peers has. He gets very angry and hostile. It’s truly sad! Unfortunately, if I shared this with him I doubt that his massive ego would allow him to make good use of this.

    Here’s how we can connect:
    ■ Web: http://www.lemongrassplanning.com/
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    ■ Email: chamilton@lemongrassplanning.com
    ■ Snail-Mail: Lemongrass Consulting, Inc.| 951 Gettysburg Way | Locust Grove, GA 30248
    ■ Get your free ebook! www.http://www.lemongrassplanning.com/LemongrassFanPage.htm

    Reply
    • Irene Becker
      Irene Becker says:

      Dear Clovia: Thank you very much for your comments. I apologize about the tardiness of this reply, but I unfortunately had a techie problem with my blog and was unable to see pending comments.

      Dealing with ego driven, opinionated people can be very difficult. And, you hit the nail on the head as many if not most people who appear to have large egos are in fact really dealing with terrible personal insecurities. They do not feel better than others, rather then feel lesser than others and compensate for these painful feelings by pumping up their ego, their sense of self importance to the outside world.

      I will send you and email shortly, and look forward to speaking to you. Again, I apologize sincerely for the delay in responding…Ah, when technology does not work it is a headache!

      Kindest regards, Irene

      Reply
  5. Shelley Lundquist
    Shelley Lundquist says:

    This is a really fantastic post, Irene. Many of us get so caught up in where we want to go, panicking along the way when things don’t go as planned. They forget to simply be.

    Be. Discover. Dare. Care.

    It’s about the journey, not the destination. All we can do is live each day to the fullest!

    Reply
    • Irene Becker
      Irene Becker says:

      Dear Shelley: Thank you SO much for your comments. I do apologize for the tardiness of this reply, but we made some blog changes and I was not receiving a prompt that there were comments pending.

      BE…DISCOVER…DARE….CARE- Awesome. Would love to have your permission to quote you on Twitter as these words are so important and powerful-thank YOU.

      Yes, life is about the journey, and to many of us get so caught up on doing, that we forget about being!

      Best! Irene

      Reply
  6. Karen Loomis
    Karen Loomis says:

    Wonderful insight on how to be a power-generator vs energy drain in your own life. Loved it…thanks for sending the link directly to me via twitter.

    Reply
    • Irene Becker
      Irene Becker says:

      Karen: Thank YOU so much! I work, write and tweet in service, and truly appreciate your feedback. Please share the post with others who can benefit from the steps. The imperative to become positive in the face of negativity and constant change is critical. Neuroscience now tells us that our brains are automatically set to be attracted to the negative ( a vestige from when we live in caves surrounded by predators). The brain is neuroplastic, and most people who do not have a biological impediment can retrain default patterns. Really wonderful and amazing. Small steps taken consistently make all the difference, this is what I would call the coachable moment. I am a learnaholic, shareaholic and neuro-nut!

      Again, glad you enjoyed the post. Hope you will browse the blog as there is lots of good content on site. IF there is a particular area you are interested in just email me irene@justcoachit.com, as I have lots of other content not on the site. My posts are all around communication, leadership, career, motivation/inspiration/personaldevelopment emotional intelligence.

      Wishing you a great evening!
      Irene

      Reply

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