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Leadership

Team Conflict: Is It Always a Bad Thing?

When we hear “conflict”, we think “trouble”. When we hear “conflict”, we think “dysfunctional team”, where communication doesn’t work, and people have personal issues. Or when we hear “conflict”, we think that leader doesn’t know how to lead his/her team successfully. Is that really true? Why are we so scared of a conflict? What is the worst thing that can happen when there is a conflict in the team? What kind of experiences we have with the conflict that make us think and behave in a certain way when one appears? Why do we avoid conflict? The real question should be: why do we avoid doing things in overall? In the area of conflicts, it’s extremely visible: we avoid it, because we burned ourselves once or twice. Based on that we make this strategy to not get involved in any kind of “risky” situation: so, we sit quiet and just focus on living through another day. Is it really the best option we can get? When a lack of conflict is dysfunctional, not the other way around? One of the biggest experts of team development and leadership, Patrick Lencioni, years ago wrote a book “5 Disfunctions of a Team”. It is a really short story (doesn’t even look like a personal/professional development book), yet it’s very powerful. And there is one part that stopped me when I first read it: Lencioni says that one of the dysfunctions of a team is a fear of conflict. What? (On the chart on the left-hand side there are definitions of all disfunctions and on the right-hand side there are solutions, that answer the questions: what is the best thing we can do here for our teams?) If we stick to our old believe that a conflict is something negative and destructive – that it ruins the trust and good atmosphere in the team, how is it possible that it’s actually the other way around? When we avoid conflict, not speaking up and be open about what do we really think, feel, or observe in the workplace, there is a huge risk of not being as effective and efficient as possible. It’s also short sided: if we are not sharing it now, it’s going to backfire in the future. So, at the end of the day, it will bring worse result than we imagine now. What’s even worse, people probably will talk behind other colleagues’ or leader’s backs, and not saying anything out loud. We can imagine that it will bring even worse outcomes, like really ruining the atmosphere, creating space for psychological games and in a consequence: lack of trust. The fear of conflict can be one of the biggest barriers that will stop people from growth, thrive and being the best versions of themselves in a workplace. What can we do to change this mindset? How can we use conflict that nourishes our team? The key thing to understand is that a certain kind conflict is something that we can use. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t, it really depends on what we are dealing with. There are 2 categories of conflicts, I call them functional and dysfunctional. What can we do with the dysfunctional conflicts? First and foremost: we need to map and name correctly which conflict is the real one in the situation we are dealing with. Without that, even the most beautiful strategy is not going to work, because we are going to answer to the wrong need. We’ll get frustrated and use all our energy badly. Focus on investigating will bring the best results, since then the solutions will be to the point: it’s more than certain that it’s worth investing time in this process. The bottom line The conflict is a huge, hairy, and scary thing that we often have very strong convictions about. We avoid it, by staying low, don’t speak up to not get into any confrontation. We do it because we don’t want to get hurt, expose ourselves to bad emotions, stress or feeling that we do not belong. Perfectly natural, there is nothing to be ashamed of. When we make a mindset shift: from fixed (focused on avoiding conflict) to a growth one, where we take into consideration that the conflict can be good for us, nourishing and interesting, we can gain more than we think. With remembering about having a good intention, being in OK-OK zone and with a goal of creating something extraordinary as a consequence of a passionate discussion, we can achieve the outcome that won’t be possible to achieve on our own. It puts old, good conflict in a completely new light. I believe it’s worth trying if it fits.

22 July 2023 No Comments

Organization

How To Teach Others Effectively?

Did you ever have a situation when you wanted to teach a person something? You explained everything, you put a lot of time and effort in it, and at the end of the day the person never learned anything? Or you gave somebody feedback because they didn’t do something correctly. And after the conversation it seemed that everything was okay, but after a couple of weeks or months the same mistake was done by the same person? Did you start getting angry, feeling disappointed or guilty: is it you or is it all about them? Were you persistent, sit with the person and explain the same thing 10 times? Or have you just decided to not bother anymore: since apparently this person doesn’t understand what you are saying? How many cases ends like a failure when we think about teaching others effectively? 20%? 50%? More than that? And how many of them don’t say that they don’t understand because they don’t want to look or sound stupid? What can we do to teach others better, so they can grow thanks to our knowledge and experience? And both sides don’t have the impression that they’ve wasted time on the doubtful effect? Why doesn’t learning process work so often? We can have the best intentions to teach others. In fact, most of the time we have those: we want people to be better in what they do, we share our knowledge, experience and what we’ve learned so far in a certain topic. Everything seems good in our head. The readiness to teach and an honest intention to do it is there. Let’s say we are a buddy to the new employee. We want to onboard this person, take care of them, pass all information about how this organization works. To prepare a new joiner to understand the new environment, how everything gets done, so they don’t waste time and get stressed or frustrated of running around in circles, looking for the right person to answer their questions. We have a plan, we start the process. We pass our knowledge, we teach the other person how to cover the goals we have as a team as well as possible. We check by asking: “do you have any questions?” or “is everything clear for you?”. And what is the answer on those two questions most of the time? 90% people goes with “no, all good, no questions”, “yes, all clear”. Is it your experience too? And it’s clear until it isn’t. We explained everything, checked with new employee and this is it: they start to work on their own. And there is one mistake. And then another one. We give feedback, all is clear again, they go and do the same mistake again. When we ask what they need to do it to have the result that we aim for, they say “nothing, all good”. Sounds familiar? Sometimes we teach, then we see that the work is not done with a result that we did contract for, we give feedback with an intention so next time it’s better. And it’s not better at all: sometimes it’s the same, or even worse. What is happening in between of this process, so the results are often so disappointing (for both sides)? Who we need to be to teach others well? There is a certain set of skills that people who want to be efficient and effective in how they teach others should have. Based on my teaching (others) and learning (from others) perspective, I believe that those are a golden list of competencies that make a person amazing guide to transform work and life of people that are around them. And we do know that you don’t need to be a school or academic teacher to use them. We share knowledge in so many ways every day: we teach our colleagues at work, our kids at home, we share some tips and tricks with our friends or family members, we pass value to the members of our community. What do we need to do it in the best possible way? The bottom line When we teach others, we are there for them. It can be super hard to stop the need to show that we the smartest persons in the room, but we must do it to be effective at teaching others. Remembering that the process where we teach something is for our audience (even if it is a one person), makes us take a step or two back from time to time and reflect on the way we do it. Is it for me, or for them? Where is my focus: on the process, or on the person? Do I care more about ticking all the boxes that I passed everything I had on the agenda, or I care about the change that I make in this person’s brain and heart? These are the questions that I invite all of us to ask ourselves every time we teach something. It will make everything we do better, more effective and efficient, and: we will be satisfied with the job well done.

16 July 2023 No Comments

Leadership

TEAMING: Why No One Teaches How to Be a Good Team Member?

Did you ever noticed that we teach leaders in countless growth programs, workshops, or mentoring processes how to be a great leader, and we almost never teach employees how to be great team members? To follow the TEAMING idea? Why is that? Is it more important to have qualified leaders than people who know how to work well together? We know it’s not true. A part of successful leadership is to have a team that has an ability to cooperate effectively, ideally to like and understand each other as people. During my post-grad studies in Transition Management area, one of the lecturers brought to the class a book named “Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in Knowledge Economy” by Amy C. Edmondson. And while having a conversation about the teaming, people, communication and how it creates great (or not so great) organizations, I’ve started to wonder how all those dots are connected. How one thing influences the other and makes success or failure at the end of the day? How to think about TEAMING: is it even the real thing? What is TEAMING? TEAMING is a mindset. Based on Amy’s book, TEAMING is more about “being” with others in a certain way than “doing” things. Of course, the behavior is an important part of the whole idea, so we can tell that “behaving” is “doing”. But it’s not the point. The point is that TEAMING covers the way of working, behaving, making decisions in work environment where we don’t have a luxury of a stable team structures. Where individuals, teams, departments, and projects need to work together somehow, while the circumstances change all the time. So, TEAMING brings to the table collaboration based on an eagerness to learn, be better every day and communicate as well as possible, despite the constant change that never ends. And it never will, let’s be honest about it. Do we ever think about the qualities of a good team member? We for sure can list very quickly the qualities of a good manager within 30 seconds. But how about team members? Recently, I did this exercise with one group of leaders that I facilitated the workshop for. I asked them to give 2-3 things that they believe are qualities of a great team member. The results came up like this. So, as we can see, there are a lot of things connected with taking responsibility and do the job, but mostly there are things connected to “being” with others. A person who shares knowledge, taking care of other team members, listen, be brave, mentor others etc. Not many “transactional” elements are there as we can see. Interesting, isn’t’ it? How to lead a TEAMING process? As leaders, we have a lot of influence (more that we think we have) on how the work environment looks like for our people. Pretty often we don’t use this power because we don’t believe that it would work, we don’t know how to do it, or we are afraid that we’ll get different outcome from what we aim for by certain actions. We don’t believe that we can actually change something. Leading in TEAMING means using the mindset that will allow people to be a better team member. It consists of three things: A leader is responsible for creating a workspace for people to thrive. It’s all we need to do. Why don’t we teach people how to be great team members? It’s not very intuitive to start from teaching people about being a good team member. Definitively more classical way is to teach leaders how to be great and lead others successfully. But that way, we put all responsibility on the leader’s shoulders. I’m not saying that leader don’t need to grow, have certain set of skills, behaviors or mindset. But when we think about improving the ability of being a great team member, we divide the responsibility into all people that making a team: manager AND team members. Both parties need to participate in the process of team creation: it influences the level of engagement, being in control and a part of something more than just my own scope. Why don’t we do it more often? Maybe because it requires a mindset and approach shift, a creation of a new one to cover the different perspective. And it can be difficult, sometimes going far away into the stretch zone and recreate the growth options we have for people in the organization. What do we need to make that shift? Wouldn’t it be more efficient, nice, and engaging to have more than one people who takes care of different team building elements? Imagine that we all are taking part in building the environment where people are highly motivated, performing very well, create space to give different ideas and have sparing partners to discuss them? Where we learn from each other, share knowledge and the best ways of working? Sounds pretty cool to me. And for you?

7 July 2023 No Comments

Leadership

Leading With Agility: 3 Ways to Do It Well

Agility, being Agile, using Agile tools. For the last couple of years those words or phrases became viral: there are so many training sessions, certification programs, workshops and growth paths connected with this. Thinking in an agile way or leading with agility appeared in the job descriptions, since it looks like a leadership skill that is necessary in these crazy, fast pacing time where things are changing all the time. And yes, it is a quality that can be extremely useful, because the change was, is and will be with us no matter what, regardless of the period of history we live in at the certain moment. But I’ve seen many times that this subject was copied and pasted from the project management books (literally 1:1) and not really tailored to the context of managerial work. There are many common points of working as leader with the team and while being a project manager, but there are also many differences that need to be taken into consideration. To have useful tools, that can be implemented successfully, without frustration that it doesn’t work, or is not applicable at all to the certain circumstances. So today, we are going to go deeper into the subject and see how to lead teams with agility in 3 areas by using what is the best in agile into the reality of a manager. 1. Reshape your mindset (from fixed to growth) Leadership agility is a set of competencies, abilities and attitudes. But the most important thing of all this is mindset. Mindset combines all the thoughts, convictions, beliefs and abilities we have, and it creates the way we look at the world. These are the glasses that we put on to see and interpret what is happening around us. A leader that has a fixed mindset sees the world of restraints, sometimes without a perspective for it to improve. This person operates daily based on thinking about the change as a threat, something that can rob him/her from what they’ve work on so hard for years. They see new things as challenges to the status quo that are in their comfort zone, often by using the sentence: “it always worked, why to bother changing it?”. A leader with a growth mindset at the other hand has an open-minded perspective, she/he thinks holistically, looking for opportunities and space to learn every day. Every mistake is a chance to learn, be better next time and have a constant possibility to try different approaches, ideas, making their workspace a better environment for their people. When you have a fixed mindset as a leader, you will probably never go to the agility leadership space. Agile means adaptive, changing regarding the circumstances, tailoring the approach, response or reaction adequately to the current situation. To modify the way of leading people and business as needed. People with fixed mindset are not that flexible, they are not going to be able to do it. If you want to be an agile leader, you need to make a shift in your mindset. Move from fear to courage. From ended version to the iterative one, with a constant possibility to improve and adapt. Why it is important? Because if you have a fixed mindset, your people will have it too. They won’t grow exponentially; they are not going to be high-performing teams with an ability to achieve anything they want. They’ll stay in their comfort, safe space where it’s cozy and warm. But there is no chance to thrive in the comfort zone. 2. Look for opportunities to learn all the time Once the right mindset it there, the next steps on the journey are possible to implement. Leading with agility requires learning all the time: trying to find the best options, to improve the ways the team works, operates, solve problems or makes decisions. For a leader that works with people in that way, it’s crucial to seek for opportunities to grow every day. As mentioned in one of the previous articles: “If you didn’t fail today, it means that you haven’t pushed yourself hard enough. Be better tomorrow”. If you make a mistake, ask yourself: “What have I done well? What could I do better next time?”. Being an agile leader means using the right tools. Use retrospective with yourself on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. Invest 3 minutes of your time each day to see what went really great, and what could have been better. It’s not a lot of time: every person can manage to do it. The key here is to prioritize it, to know what kind of advantage it brings to your table. That’s how we learn: remember 70/20/10 rule. 70% of the learning comes from day-to-day tasks, experiences, projects and many different situations we face. 20% is mentoring, feedback, observing others. And 10% is formal (or less formal) education, workshops, studies etc. Use your 70% daily, the best way you can possibly do it. Be mindful about what you do with your time, how you talk to your people, how you solve problems or create space of others to solve it by themselves. How you pass the responsibility to others, how you strengthen your team to be in charge of what they do. How you delegate tasks 100%, without being a nano manager, but with a trust in employees: that they’ll do their best to cover it, in the best quality they can. Talk to other people that you find experts in your field. Share knowledge, ways of working or experience you gathered all along the way, be curious about their experiences and learnings too. Follow them on social media, read or listen to the books, get inspired, try what they’ve done to see if it can work in some way in your case. Life the life-long learning value: this is the key to lead with agility. 3. Be adaptive, react and let people do the same Agility means adaptability. Reacting to changes, making the best of them.

23 June 2023 No Comments

Self-Development

What Kind of Rituals Do You Have in Your Life?

While running the other day, I was listening to the podcast by Lori Harder “Earn Your Happy: This Will Get You the Results You Want in Your Life Fast!”. And there was one sentence at the very beginning that stick with me, and I thought about it a lot afterwards. “If you have in your life the results that you are not very happy about, it means that you have a ritual that creates that kind of result”. So basically, it’s about connecting the dots between what we do and what kind of outcome we get because of making a certain decision (or not). It seems obvious, as well as the quote that I got from the podcast, but it dawned on me that many times in our life we don’t think that way. We look for guilty and blame the outside world for something happening to us. I can’t lose weight, because of my genetics (big bones). It’s impossible for me to take care of myself, because I have kids. I’m not becoming the entrepreneur, because I need financial stability that 9-5 job gives me. I feel bad after eating another piece of candy or slice of pizza, but I can’t help it. We all have those voices in our heads. They relate to all areas of our life and it’s natural to have them. Our brain tries to protect us all the time from being hurt, suffering or feeling disappointed. That’s how rituals are made. What kind of rituals in different life roles you have that bring you certain results? Let’s dig deeper into this subject today. Health Rituals What kind of rituals do you have regarding your health that give you certain results? Do you like those results? Are you healthy: physically and mentally? Sometimes we are surprised that we eat in some way, don’t work out or don’t take care of our sleep and we are tired, we gain weight, or we can’t focus. Examples of the bad health rituals and their results? At the other hand, there are some examples of good health rituals and their results: Do you see the difference? The rituals we have shape the results we get, the emotions we feel and the thoughts we have in our heads. If you don’t feel happy or satisfied with your health and body, it means that you have rituals in your life that give you that kind of results. What can you do differently in this area? How can you change your rituals to get some other results than before? Work Rituals Are you satisfied with your professional life? Are you who you want to be? Or you hate Mondays, waiting for Friday every single week and having a stomach age every Sunday afternoon? What kind of rituals do you have now connected with your work? Do you work every day 12-14 hours, barely see your friends or family and feeling constantly guilty about it? But you do it for them, right? So they have a good life, or you can spend time together travelling or hanging out in fancy places? Or maybe you just love what you do so much that you lose the track of time and that’s why you don’t have space for rest or anything else? Or maybe you didn’t participate in any training session, workshop, mentoring or coaching program for years and you are surprised that you are the last person in line to get promoted, younger people beat you in any category of activities and you are upset about it? The second scenario is that you invest time every day to be a better specialist, manager, entrepreneur or colleague for your teammates. Even if it’s just 5 minutes of reading or listening to the podcast that feed your brain, you do it consistently. And it pays out. Maybe you look for the opportunities all the time, seeking proximity to those people who achieved success, so you can learn from their experiences. The choice is yours. Many people look at all those experiences and say that it happens to them, the circumstances are not very good, it’s not a good time or economy. And it’s so not true. Rituals you have in your work-life have consequences that create your professional reality. Relations Rituals If your relationships are not looking like you wanted them to like, most people look for guilty outside of themselves. He/she is not behaving “like before”. I reached out twenty times, now’s the time for my friends to do the first move. My parents weren’t very supportive when I was a child, so now I’m going to punish them, and I won’t contact them more than every other Christmas. Or I’m so busy that I don’t have time to make a 5-minute call and check what’s up. What kind of rituals do you have in terms of the relationships in your life? And what kind of results are you getting from it? Do you spend time that you have together with your significant other by scrolling social media, instead of focusing on what the other person is talking about, and your relationship is falling apart? You are calling or writing to your friends only when there is an emergency or you need something, and they stop reaching you out? Or maybe when you with someone, you put your phone down and have a quality conversation with the other person, so you feel closer to each other every time you speak? Or maybe you call your parents every day, even if it’s just 5 minutes while you simply exchange what happened during the day and say that you love each other? Rituals that you have make the results you get. If you invest time, focus, good energy, care in the people that are around you, you have certain, mostly positive outcome. If you don’t, there is also an outcome: but I bet most of us prefer to have those results coming from the first scenario.

10 June 2023 No Comments

Self-Development

What To Do When You Are Not Sure?

We live in different places all over the world. We have different backgrounds, needs, ambitions, personalities. We want different things. But most of us, in some point of our lives had (or having regularly) one of the most limited thoughts in our head: doubt. Not being sure of something. We doubt in ourselves, sometimes because we were raised in a certain way (that’s how the convictions and drivers were made in our brain), sometimes because the environment that we live or work with at the moment isn’t very supportive. We doubt in ourselves because it’s a strategy of our reptilian brain (not a very good one though) to protect ourselves from the loss that we potentially can experience (it’s better to freeze or flight, not to take action). And sometimes it’s just a feeling of fear that we can lose what we already have, either it’s a matter of status, prestige, money, position (of and expert in a certain area), or somebody (it can happen when we move on and some people just leave behind). Fear of not being good enough, smart enough, expert enough. Enough for whom exactly? What can we do to be more sure, to not question every bigger step or a change that we want to try or implement in our life? How to convince ourselves that we are good/smart/ready enough to go for it, even when we know that we can fail? Let’s dig deeper into that area today. Inspired by Tony Robbins. (The important thing is that the elements are presented in the order as below, but it doesn’t mean that they should appear in every case in this particular one. You can start your story from the Belief and then go through Potential, Action and Result: it’s something that can work as well. It really depends on what kind of situation you are in at the moment.) Element no. 1: Potential Potential is an element that people have as a certain source of power, skills and value that they can give to others. It can be area in which we feel empowered, competent or we can potentially grow within it. It can be an idea to do something in a certain way, to fulfill a particular dream or plan to do something. We can say that a person has potential to be a great leader. Or a great parent, amazing doctor, outstanding journalist. Sometimes potential is a name of something intangible, something that it’s hard for us to even describe. In some cases it’s a gut feeling which tells us that a certain idea about doing something is just right. When you feel that you really want to do something, you go for it. Make the next step of an uncomfortable action, a decision that will bring you closer to fulfilling your potential. Element no. 2: Action One of the most important and yet difficult things to do is to take this uncomfortable action. To be scared but to do it anyway. It’s courage. To reach your full potential, to get and achieve what you want, to be better, smarter, more successful you need to do this. You need to take this one step further to see what is going to happen. When we are not sure what do or we struggle with making a decision we often wonder what we should or shouldn’t do. When we are not sure, sometimes we think about 10 different scenarios: pretty much a lot of them are just excuses to keep the status quo and not make any decision that can somehow threaten who we are. Action is necessary to try the hypotheses out, to challenge who we are and who we want to be. Without this step we can stay in the fear zone, without checking how the reality actually looks like. Taking action, even if it’s just one small step, is a starting point to living the life that you want to live. And it can be anything: making a call, writing to someone you don’t know, setting a boundary, saying “no” to eating something or spending time in a certain way. It can be making a short video and publishing it online or writing first article on the blog. It can be reaching out to a person that you really like, but you didn’t have courage to make a connection until now. Every single area of our live can be good as a start: it’s your decision where you want to take the action. Element no. 3: Results When you take action, you always get the results. They can be positive or not really what you aimed for, but there will be some, every single time. Every action triggers a reaction, it’s one of the basic rules of physics. Everything you do has its consequences. One of the most important things for our brain is to see the positive results of our decisions. When we get a certain type of confirmation that what we do has an impact, a result, a positive consequence, our brain gives us a dopamine shot that convinces us that we should keep going. It shows us that the moment of feeling uncomfortable while taking the step of action is worth it, because we have an actual piece of evidence that it’s working. Of course there is always a risk that you take an action and you fail. That’s okay too! And you know why? Because that’s the way you learn. As I wrote lastly about Sara Blakely and her father’s saying that “a day without a mistake is not a good day”. If your current convictions are whispering to your ear that every mistake makes you a looser, you can actually train your brain to think differently. You can shape your mind into taking every result that is not satisfying you into the retrospective process. This tool has its roots in the tech world, but it’s as good there as in personal development area. The ultimate

19 May 2023 No Comments

Self-Development

Does The Way You Feed Your Brain Influence Who You Are?

We often hear: “you are what you eat”. But not very often we reflect on how the content we are feeding our brain with makes us becoming a certain person. Depends on which sense(s) do you use the most while absorbing what is outside to build what is inside of you, the stimuli can be different and the ways of learning can be different for each of us. But what is the most important here is that we can become what we take, consciously or unconsciously. And by having more elements in the scope of control, we have more and more influence on how we shape our mindset. You can say: “I read every day, how my mindset can be in danger?”. The point is, reading or seeing something is not the only channel that influences our brain. Let’s divide the ways of feeding our minds, so you can reflect on how you shape your reality by the content you consume every day. The things you read For people who consume the most of their content from using the visuals (by reading, looking at things, observing what is around them, how things work etc.), feeding the brain that way will be the best option to grow. For those people by everything they see, they shape their mindset. It’s how they learn in the fastest way possible and how they build the understanding of the world that is around them. If you are a visual person, everything you read: books, articles, reports, documents, social media posts, comments under the YouTube videos etc.; it all has an influence on what you think, how you feel and what kind of decisions you make in your life. Does all of it has an impact on who you are and how do you feel about yourself and the world? Absolutely! Good, valuable, developmental content – regardless of what is the subject of it (business, career, relations, habits, health, spirituality – you name it) is the key to feed your brain with something that will nourish it. Not a pile of trash that contaminates your body. How to recognize if the piece of content is feeding or contaminating your brain? Reflect on how you feel after consuming it. It’s just like with the food: you feel different after having healthy, balanced meal in compare to the fast food that you eat within the 5 or 10 minutes in between the meetings, without even sitting at the table. Do you feel inspired, good about yourself and/or others? Do you have a new portion of energy that you can use to keep your momentum going? Or you feel bad about yourself, angry, guilty or you lose the whole hope for this world after you read the news for instance? (There is nothing good ever come from reading the news though: did you ever feel good after reading the news? Exactly.) The things you listen to Same story, different medium. This category is for people who consume the most of their daily content by listening (to other people talking, podcasts, radio, recordings, music, video – but only sound of it etc.). What they hear is who they become, how they create themselves in this world. When they don’t hear anything, they don’t learn, grow or they even have troubles with a simple existence. If you are in this bucket, check on what kind of things do you listen to on a daily basis? What kind of resources do you use to feed your listening need well? What kind of authors, storytellers? Audiobooks? Online courses? Or do you listen to the news and commercials on the radio? Or you listen to all of those whiny people that are talking about how this world is crazy, that changes all the time, is getting worse and worse? And again: how certain pieces of content make you feel? Energized, hopeful? Or rather disengaged, without any hope for the better tomorrow for yourself? The things you touch and experience For some people, reading or listening to something is not the way they experience the world that is around them. They need to touch, feel, make a physical connection with a certain object, situation, moment or other person. They don’t believe before they actually live through something or have something in their hand. You can either have the experiences that nourish you, or not. When we think about taking the best out of the moments that are happening for us throughout the whole life, there is always something that you can take with you, even when the situation is tough. It is about treating the day without a mistake or weaker moment as a wasted day. Do you plan your activities or they just happen TO you? Do other people decide on what you do, where you spend your time and energy on? Do you choose what kind of objects and spaces are around you: in the office, home, what kind of gym of open outdoor space you use? Do you have experiences after which you feed energized, inspired, happy, full of new possibilities? Or after what happens every day you feel dejected, sad, with no energy whatsoever? The people that are around you People are interesting species. They can be happy, inspired, successful, open-minded, loving, caring and determined. At the same time they can feel angry, sad, furious, disappointed, frustrated, depressed or not-loved. Depends on what kind of convictions we have in our brain that were constructed there at the very beginning of our lives, we either have a winning or a losing script. The winning script is a set of assumptions that we have about our life, ourselves, people and situations that are around us that support us in achieving our goals. The losing script is a set of assumptions that we have that is a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy: that all we do brings us closer to destruction. Whatever we do, everything is going to end the way we predicted and

11 May 2023 No Comments

Self-Development

5 Ways to Make Your Life Exceptional Every Day

Many of us wait for the perfect day when a certain thing happen and then we can start doing what we dream of. When my kids are out for university, I’ll start travelling. When I retire, I’ll read every day. When I have X amount of money, I’ll start my own business. When I have X years of experience, I’ll share it with others. You name it, you get the idea. We often wait for a moment X to start doing Y. It sometimes makes sense, taking into consideration the basic need of safety, security of our finances, our family or a business. But pretty often it is just an excuse, waiting for something that might never happen. Why we do it? Mostly because we are scared of the change, we don’t like feeling uncertainty and taking uncomfortable action. How many times you’ve heard the sentence “you should be happy about what you have”, when you told somebody about your idea, business plan or a new habit that you want to build? How many times you’ve heard: “you should settle in, in your age it’s not appropriate to behave like that”, when you told somebody about the new passion or career path you want to go all in? I know I’ve heard it enough to agree to be mediocre, because other people couldn’t stand that I move and learn all the time. Because they felt uncomfortable. But I never leaned on it, I’ve stayed resistant to all of those voices that wanted to keep me with them where it’s “safe” (whatever that means). And today I want to share with you 5 elements that help me every day to stay on the right track, where I feel that I learn and I’m better than myself from yesterday. Despite the circumstances, hard times and other people that may not be able to do it for themselves. Inspired by Tony Robbins. Feed your brain with good content every day All of us learn differently. Basically, there are 4 types of learning styles: How do you prefer to learn? When do you remember the most (by using which way of learning)? Understanding our individual preferences is crucial to make a decision about how to feed our brain. Once we have a favorite medium, we can go to the choice of what we consume. And why this is so important to provide ourselves a good content? It’s like with this saying: “you become what you eat” or “you are the average of 5 people you spend the most of your time with”. What kind of content you absorb has a tremendous influence on how you think, how your mindset is formed and in a consequence of those: how you make your decisions about life and work. Good content means a content that makes you a better: person, employee, entrepreneur, writer, sales person, negotiator, analyst, manager, parent, friend, partner. Something that nourish your body and mind, that allows you to be a better human being that you were yesterday. This is the main frame you should use: don’t compare yourself with others, compare yourself with you from yesterday. Does your content support who you want to become? Or most of it is rather internet memes, social media bs or endless series watching one after another? Don’t get me wrong: that’s fine to get some rest, fun or amusement. The questions is: what is the ratio between the “fun without value” and valuable content you keep reading or watching on a daily basis? Spend 30 minutes every day on feeding your brain with something valuable and you will see a huge difference in your life. Feed and move your body How you treat your body is how you feel every day. If you eat trash food, you will feel like trash. Do you often have low level of energy? Do you have bad mood, feeling sad, angry or tired a lot? Do you feel physical pain in your body when you are in your 30s or 40s and nothing bad actually happens with your health? 90% of the cases like that happen because of a poor diet and being in sitting position for the whole day: at work and then on the couch. That’s how people in their 30s feel, behave and speak like they were in their 80s. Eat well, put in your diet as many super food as possible: fruits, vegetables, high-proteins, low-processed food, healthy fats. Move your body: go for a walk, jump, do push-ups, go for a run or swim. Do yoga, work on your balance or strength. The possibilities are endless, and don’t say that you don’t have time. It can be 5 minutes of jumping around with your dog or a kid. Or 10 push-ups while waiting for a coffee to be ready. When the body doesn’t move, it dies. I guess that you don’t want to die anytime soon, right? Find role models When we think about the last hundreds of years that people have been living on this planet, there were a lot of very smart, successful (in different areas of life) women and men that have been discovering one thing after another. And nowadays, most of us have unlimited access to everything that was gathered through all of this time. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel in many situations and contexts: we just can reach for it’s already there, redesign it a little bit so it fits ours current needs and just go for it. Lazy? Not at all. That way we can simplify everything we do, and spend energy where it is really important and where it can really change something. Go and use Google or ChatGPT. Ask about 10 best people in the area that you want to master (again: as a person, parent, partner, entrepreneur, employee, manager, writer, you name it). Read, watch, listen every piece of document that is available about that person. Absorb it. Choose what resonates with you

14 April 2023 No Comments

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