Memorial Day Tribute
Seek First to Understand and Then Be Understood!
Have you ever been with a family member, friend, business college or an acquaintance that has very strong opinions where you clearly disagree about something? You probably go around in circles until you think this will be the last time that you will disagree with that person because clearly they do not understand your perspective. Often times the conversation escalates to the point where one person isn’t listening anymore but yelling to get their point across. Then all communication breaks down at that point and different perspectives are no longer discussed.
So try to think about this
for a minute. Just because you are never going to agree, because you have different opinions, does not
mean you “should” agree. It’s not about being right or wrong but about being
aware and respectful of our differences. Communication in a respectful, calm
way is the beginning to understanding others and being understood.
Is it realistic to expect
other people to understand us when we are not willing to listen or understand
another’s perspective?” Imagine what our world would be like if we first
started our conversations based on understanding. The quote “Seek to understand
and then be understood” is relevant now more than ever. There are so many
fascinating ways that people live their lives from what people wear to their
political philosophy to how they choose to enjoy their lives. By choosing to understand, we can create
conversations that are based on acceptance of our differences as opposed to
allowing those differences to make us angry and fearful of each other.
“Everything that irritates us
about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” ― C.G. Jung
What about this: “You believe
what you believe. I believe what I believe. And that’s alright. ” I believe
that just because someone has a different perspective from us it doesn’t mean
that we cannot try to understand where the other person is coming from. With so
many people, cultures, perspectives floating around how can we all have the
same opinions? If we did it would make the world pretty boring. So we can all
agree to disagree but still seek to understand in a respectful way.
The key to this concept of
agreeing to disagree is honest communication. I think that it is important to
ask the other person why they feel the way they do. While you may not be able
to change the other person’s perspective, you will be able to open your mind
and understand it. Respect not only applies to people but also to beliefs. By
agreeing to disagree we can respect other people’s beliefs without necessarily
calling them our own.
I think that “difference” is
an amazing thing and choosing to understand them can truly allow us to grow as
individuals. Difference can expand our perception of what is possible. Understanding is a mindset, it is a choice
that can be challenging at times but it allows us to learn more and grow by
creating more connections. Building connections helps us learn more about the
world we live in. You never know what you may
learn if you open your mind……………
“Only the development of
compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and
happiness we all seek.” ― Dalai Lama XIV
Get the tools you need to
excel in your life by working with a Business and Life Management Coach who has
over 20 years’ experience empowering individuals, executives and business
owners to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal
lives. Denise Dema’s passion for personal development is at the core of her
business and life philosophy and is committed to helping others achieve their
full potential in order to live richer, more fulfilling lives. Book a
complimentary session at http://www.denisedema.com
to get started in reaching your goals
today! On-site, phone and e-mail coaching available.
Developing Resilience
The importance of being a resilient person plays a hand in everything you do. Even if you're not a naturally resilient person, you can learn to develop a resilient mindset and attitude to improve your life. Start focusing on incorporating the following into your daily life.
1. Get enough sleep and exercise, and learn to manage stress. When you take care of your mind and body, you're better able to cope effectively with challenges in your life.
2. Practice thought awareness. Resilient people don't let negative thoughts derail their efforts. Instead, they consistently practice positive thinking. Also, "listen" to how you talk to yourself when something goes wrong - if you find yourself making statements that are permanent, pervasive or personalized, correct these thoughts in your mind.
3. Restructure the way that you think about negative situations and bad events. This will help turn your mood around, so that you can approach situations in a positive frame of mind.
4. Learn from your mistakes and failures. Every mistake has the power to teach you something important; so don't stop searching until you've found the lesson in every situation. Also, make sure that you understand the idea of "post-traumatic growth" - there can be real truth in the saying that "if it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger."
5. Choose your response. Remember, we all experience bad days and we all go through our share of crises. But we have a choice in how we respond; we can choose to react negatively or in a panic, or we can choose to remain calm and logical to find a solution. Your reaction is always up to you and it will determine how others respond to you as well.
6. Maintain perspective. Resilient people understand that, although a situation or crisis may seem overwhelming in the moment, it may not make that much of an impact over the long-term. Try to avoid blowing events out of proportion.
7. If you don't already, learn to set SMART, effective personal goals – it's incredibly important to set and achieve goals, and to learn from your experiences.
8. Build your self confidence. Remember, resilient people are confident that they're going to succeed eventually, despite the setbacks or stresses that they might be facing. This belief in themselves also enables them to take risks: when you develop confidence and a strong sense of self, you have the strength to keep moving forward, and to take the risks you need to get ahead.
9. Develop strong relationships with your colleagues. People who have strong connections at work are more resistant to stress, and they're happier in their role. This also goes for your personal life: the more real friendships you develop, the more resilient you're going to be, because you have a strong support network to fall back on. (Remember that treating people with compassion and empathy is very important here.)
10. Focus on being flexible. Resilient people understand that things change, and that carefully-made plans may, occasionally, need to be amended or scrapped.
Remember......
You can develop resilience in several ways. First, take care to exercise regularly and get enough sleep, so that you can control stress more easily. The stronger you feel physically and emotionally, the easier it is for you to overcome challenges.
Focus on thinking positively, and try to learn from the mistakes you make. Build strong relationships with colleagues and friends, so that you have a support network to fall back on. Also, set specific and achievable personal goals, and work on building your self-confidence.
Achieve your full potential and work with a Business and Life Management Coach who has over 20 year’s experience empowering individuals, executives and business owners to attain self-defined success in their professional and personal lives. Book a complimentary session at http://www.denisedema.com to get the tools you need to excel in life.
Practicing Humility
If you take responsibility for your actions as actions, not as a definition of who you are. This allows you to make objective, non-judgmental observations of yourself that lead to motivated activities rather than paralysis from shame.
Humility as “a modest or low view of one’s own importance.” When we talk about humility as a spiritual principle, we’re talking about developing an honest, accurate and objective view of our importance in the universe. Humility is not low self-esteem. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. With humility, our self-esteem is not attached to our personal traits, physical appearance, wealth, shortcomings, assets or our past. Instead it is attached to the design of our creator who created us with a purpose and gives us the power to fulfill that purpose. With humility, we view ourselves as equals with other human beings.
Someone who practices humility rarely feels insecure or self-conscious. They unflinchingly take credit for that which they are responsible and give credit for that which they are not. Their self-esteem is stable and they are secure with who they are. They feel no need for competition. They learn from the opinions of others, but are not shaken by them.
How to be humble.....
Be Grateful for Your Challenges & Shortcomings. If you struggle with feeling that you are less motivated, less attractive or less intelligent than others, be grateful for the perspective and learning experience that apparent shortcoming offers you. Life is about growth and change. Every challenge we face builds our character and our assets. When we express gratitude for the challenges we face, those challenges lose their power over our perception of ourselves and become building blocks we can grow on.
Don't Compare Yourself with Others. Human Beings are the most diverse and variable creatures on the planet. Comparing one person to another is like comparing apples to green beans. It is this uniqueness that allows us to learn and grow from one another. You were created like no one else in the universe. You were created with a purpose that is shared with no one else. When you compare yourself with someone else, you could not possibly see what God sees in you.
Be Teachable. The key to wisdom is to be teachable, to realize that you do not know everything, that many things you believe to be true may be false, and that you have much to learn from others. Practice kindness anonymously. When you practice kindness, you transcend the high-anxiety world of selfishness and experiencing the fulfilling sense of oneness with others. When you practice kindness anonymously, you share the vision of your kindness without the distractions of pride and self-importance which may result from sharing your kindness publicly.
Loosen Your Expectations. No matter how good you are at making plans or predicting outcomes, no matter how strong your belief is that something should be a certain way, life will often produce results you did not expect or did not want. When we hold tight to expectations, we become easily frustrated, disappointed, angry and humiliated. When we take ourselves and our expectations less seriously, we can more easily handle what life hands us as we are guided on our unique life journey.
Achieve your full potential and work with a Business and Life Management Coach who has over 20 years experience empowering individuals, executives and business owners to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. Book a complimentary session at http://www.denisedema.com
The Importance of Resilience
There are three elements that are essential to resilience:
1. Challenge - Resilient people view a difficulty as a challenge, not as a paralyzing event. They look at their failures and mistakes as lessons to be learned from, and as opportunities for growth. They don't view them as a negative reflection on their abilities or self-worth.
2. Commitment - Resilient people are committed to their lives and their goals, and they have a compelling reason to get out of bed in the morning. Commitment isn't just restricted to their work - they commit to their relationships, their friendships, the causes they care about, and their religious or spiritual beliefs.
3. Personal Control - Resilient people spend their time and energy focusing on situations and events that they have control over. Because they put their efforts where they can have the most impact, they feel empowered and confident. Those who spend time worrying about uncontrollable events can often feel lost, helpless, and powerless to take action.
The way that we explain setbacks to ourselves is also important and is made up of a few main elements:
· Permanence - People who are optimistic (and therefore have more resilience) see the effects of bad events as temporary rather than permanent. For instance, they might say "My boss didn't like the work I did on that project" rather than "My boss never likes my work."
· Pervasiveness - Resilient people don't let setbacks or bad events affect other unrelated areas of their lives. For instance, they would say "I'm not very good at this" rather than "I'm no good at anything."
· Personalization - People who have resilience don't blame themselves when bad events occur. Instead, they see other people, or the circumstances, as the cause. For instance, they might say "I didn't get the support I needed to finish that project successfully," rather than "I messed that project up because I can't do my job."
Here are several further attributes that are common in resilient people:
Resilient people have a positive image of the future. That is, they maintain a positive outlook, and envision brighter days ahead.
Resilient people have solid goals, and a desire to achieve those goals.
Resilient people are empathetic and compassionate, however, they don't waste time worrying what others think of them. They maintain healthy relationships, but don't bow to peer pressure.
Resilient people never think of themselves as victims - they focus their time and energy on changing the things that they have control over.
How we view adversity and stress strongly affects how we succeed, and this is one of the most important reasons that having a resilient mindset is so important.
The fact is that we're going to fail from time to time: it's an inevitable part of living that we make mistakes and occasionally fall flat on our faces. The only way to avoid this is to live a shuttered and meager existence, never trying anything new or taking a risk. Few of us want a life like that!
Instead, we should have the courage to go after our dreams, despite the very real risk that we'll fail in some way or other. Being resilient means that when we do fail, we bounce back, we have the strength to learn the lessons we need to learn, and we can move on to bigger and better things.
Overall, resilience gives us the power to overcome setbacks, so that we can live the life we've always imagined.
Achieve your full potential and work with a Business and Life Management Coach who has over 20 year’s experience empowering individuals, executives and business owners to attain self-defined success in their professional and personal lives. Book a complimentary session at http://www.denisedema.com to get the tools you need to excel in life!
Help Others Feel Important
The second major reason why you should make others feel important is because when you are helping others feel important you are helping yourself feel important as well. Not only will you feel better about yourself when you practice noticing the good in others but the people you help feel important will in turn notice and talk about the good things in you.
So how do we help others feel important?
Here is a list of time-proven methods for helping others feel important.
- Call people by their first name. People are extremely attached to their name. It has a certain ring in their ears. If you call people by their first name in a pleasant, optimistic, and friendly manner they will show you more courtesy, more respect, and they will like you more.
- Acknowledge and pay attention to the people around you. It does not take much energy to give the doorman, secretary, or taxi driver a kind and pleasant “good morning sir or mam”, but it will do wonders in the way they treat you. When you acknowledge the people around you, they will acknowledge you in return.
- Appreciate others. Show appreciation for the things that others do. If someone provides you with a quality service make sure you let them know. If you enjoyed a conversation with a friend be sure to let them know that you appreciate the time and energy they have given you. Sincere and honest appreciate can go a long way in building relationships as well as making others feel important.
- Compliment others. If you are paying attention to people you will begin to notice the things they do. If your co-worker gets her hair done be sure to give her a compliment. Be sincere and honest. Pay attention and ask a related question. Let the taxi driver know you think he is doing a great job driving in the busy streets. Let your wife know how amazing the dinner she prepared was.
- Be courteous and considerate. Be considerate to the feelings of those around you. If your husband is having a tough day and wants some time alone to think make sure you give him a period of quiet time to be with himself. If your wife had a long day at the office and wants to talk make sure you earnestly listen to what she has to say.
- Encourage others. A bit of encouragement can help give a person the confidence to keep on. When you encourage someone you are saying to them that you believe they can do whatever they are trying to do and that makes them feel important.
- Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to. This is one of Dale Carnegie’s rules to making friends and influencing people. The bottom line of this rule is that it helps others feel important. When you give them a grand reputation they feel good about themselves and they believe in themselves.
Achieve your full potential and work with a Business and Life Management Coach with over 20 years experience empowering individuals, executives and business owners to attain self-defined success in their professional & personal lives. Book a complimentary session at http://www.denisedema.com to discuss your goals today!
Change Your Focus to the Positive!
People who wish to make changes in their lives tend to do so because they are experiencing pain or bad feelings. This pain can actually lead to positive improvements, but in order to do so the focus must not be on the negative but instead on the positive outcome that is expected.
Remember that what you focus on becomes your reality. Focus on the positive.
Simple Focus Exercise:
1. Write down one of your negative thoughts. (I am not happy at work.)
2. Cross it out.
3. Find something positive about it and write that down.(I am respected and well paid)
4. Spend some time focusing only on the positive aspect of that new thought.
5. When you feel that negative thought come up again just cross it out in your mind and replace it with the positive one.
Apply this exercise to all negative thoughts throughout your day. Express your mental power and before long you will be able to focus your attention on the positive things in your life and experience personal growth.
Get the tools you need to excel in your personal and professional life. Denise’s passion for personal development is at the core of her business and life philosophy and is committed to helping others achieve their full potential in order to live richer, more fulfilling lives. Book a complimentary session at http://www.denisedema.com to get started in reaching your goals today! On-site, phone and e-mail coaching available.
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