Learn The Art Of Saying NO!
Simple Ways to Say "No" ...even when your "yes' button gets pushed.
1. Just Say No. Thanks, but I'll have to pass on that. Say
it, then shut up. You don't want to ruin the effect.
2. The Gracious No. I really appreciate your asking me, but
my time is already committed. This is a gentle way to say no.
3. The "I'm sorry" No. I wish I could, but it's
just not convenient. The real masters of the "I'm Sorry" No somehow
get the other person to apologize for even asking. Amazing.
4. The "It's Someone Else's Decision" No. I
promised my coach I wouldn't take on any more projects without discussing them
with her first. This postpones the decision and allows you to decide if you
really want to say no. Only use when you're not sure if you want to say yes.
5. The "My Family is the Reason" No. Thank you
very much for the invitation. That's the day of my son's soccer game, and I
never miss those. Great reasons also include birthdays, anniversaries,
graduations...just be sure you're not making it up. Tell the truth. You may
think this is the easiest no to say, but it's not. How often have you said no
to your family in order to work? My point exactly.
6. The "I Know Someone Else" No. I just don't have
the time to help you, but let me recommend someone else I know. A great way to
say no while still helping the person by giving another option. It's often
easiest to say no when you can offer another solution.
7. The "I'm Already Booked" No. I appreciate your
thinking of me, but I'm afraid I'm already booked that day. Use this one
especially if you've blocked out time for yourself. It's horrible to break a
date with someone else -- even worse if you break the date with yourself.
And one more thing. Never, ever say maybe. Maybe is only a
way of postponing a decision. When you want to say no, say no. Otherwise,
you're not playing fair with yourself -- or with others. And saying "maybe
next time" makes it harder and harder to say no the next time. Don't fall
into this trap.
Expand your knowledge and enlighten your mind with tools to help you excel in life. Work with a Business and Life Management Coach to achieve your full potential today! Book a complimentary session at www.denisedema.com.
The Power of Choice
Rohn: Change Begins with Choice...
If you don't like how
things are, change it! Any day we wish, we can discipline ourselves to make
important changes in our lives. Any day we wish, we can open the book that will
open our mind to new knowledge. Any day we wish, we can start a new activity.
Any day we wish, we can start the process of life change. We can do it
immediately, or next week, or next month, or next year.
We can also do nothing. We can pretend rather than perform.
And if the idea of having to change ourselves makes us uncomfortable, we can
remain as we are. We can choose rest over labor, entertainment over education,
delusion over truth and doubt over confidence. The choices are ours to make.
But while we curse the effect, we continue to nourish the cause.
As Shakespeare uniquely observed, "The fault is not in
the stars, but in ourselves." We created our current circumstances by our
past choices. We have both the ability and the responsibility to make better
choices beginning today. Those who are in search of the good life do not need
more answers or more time to think things over to reach better conclusions.
They need the truth.
They need the whole truth. And they need nothing but the
truth. We cannot allow our errors in judgment, repeated every day, to lead us
down the wrong path. We must keep coming back to those basics that make the
biggest difference in how our life works out. And then we must make the very
choices that will bring life, happiness and joy into our daily lives.
And if I may be so bold to offer my last piece of advice for someone seeking and needing to make changes in their life: If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree. You have the ability to totally transform every area in your life—and it all begins with your very own power of choice.
And if I may be so bold to offer my last piece of advice for someone seeking and needing to make changes in their life: If you don't like how things are, change it! You're not a tree. You have the ability to totally transform every area in your life—and it all begins with your very own power of choice.
Expand your knowledge and enlighten your mind with tools to
help you excel in your professional and personal life. Work with a Business and
Life Management Coach and Book a Complimentary Coaching Session at http://www.denisedema.com
Turning Dreams Into Reality
“Dreams plus Luck” is in the same camp as winning the lottery.
“Dreams plus a Learning Agenda” is a commitment to a reality.
Dreams are highly beneficial when accompanied by action. But dreams without action enable people to live in a world of make believe. A dream without a plan is soon exposed.
“When the tide goes out, you discover who’s been swimming naked.” – Warren Buffet
Dreaming with a learning agenda directs our
intention towards what’s most important to us. John Kotter has said
there are two kinds of people in the world:
- those who accept their life, and
- those who lead their life.
Their thought process goes like this:
- Clearly noticing what’s possible
- Seeing specifically what I want to achieve
- Building upon good decisions along the way
- Strategically thinking about tactics to get things done and change minds
- Valuing the trust and respect of the people around me
- Determine your goals and ask yourself: Where do I want to be next year? What do I need to do to accomplish these goals? Your answers become your learning agenda.
- Assess the skills or knowledge you’ll need. Some goals won’t require new skills or knowledge, but others will. What specific skills do you need to make your dream(s) come true? What skill that you already possess needs to be improved?
- Explore the best sources. Is it going back to school? Enrolling in a training course offered by your employer? Developing a relationship with mentors and/or coworkers who can teach you new skills or insights? Look for that optimal source for every skill you decide you need to learn.
- Create your learning agenda. You now have the information, so start creating your learning plan. It should lay out the skills and knowledge you need to acquire. It should include a timeline and be in writing.
- Execute. Let the fun begin. The sooner you get going, the sooner you’ll learn the knowledge and skills you need to enjoy and achieve your goals!
- I’m too young.
- I’m too old.
- I don’t have the time.
- I don’t have the money.
You are putting a stake in the ground. It’s solid.
As you look at your dreams, don’t choose the hardest or the easiest. Choose the most important. When you create dreams that align with your purpose you will discover overlap in a number of areas of your life.
In the words of Seth Godin:
“Change that’s worth doing is change that most other people are afraid of. It’s change that other people fear won’t work or that will lead to ridicule. You know you are onto something when you find the tension, when you find the dissent, when you find people who say ‘that’s insane.’ You were taught in school to do what you were told. But you will not be rewarded for that going forward.”
“The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.” – Douglas MacArthurWork with a Business and Life Management Coach to Achieve your full potential today! Book a complimentary session at www.denisedema.com
Source:LeadershipTraq
Replace Negative Thoughts With Positive Thinking
Positive and negative
thoughts can become self-fulfilling prophecies: What we expect can often come
true.
If you start off
thinking you will mess up a task, the chances are that you will: You may not
try hard enough to succeed, you won't attract support from other people, and
you may not perceive any results as good enough. Positive thinking, on the
other hand, is often associated with positive actions and outcomes. You're drawn
to, and you focus on, the positive aspects of a situation. You have hope and
faith in yourself and others, and you work and invest hard to prove that your
optimism is warranted. You'll enthuse others, and they may well "pitch
in" to help you. This makes constructive outcomes all the more likely. When it comes down to it, positive, optimistic
people are happier and healthier, and enjoy more success than those who think
negatively. The key difference between them is how they think about and
interpret the events in their life.
So, how do you think
about your successes and failures? Do you think you have a predictable thinking
pattern?
The first step in
changing negative thinking is to become aware of it. For many of us, negative
thinking is a bad habit – and we may not even know we're doing it!
Consider these
examples of negative thought patterns: The guy on the subway who just made a
face is surely directing his behavior at you. When the receptionist doesn't
greet you in the morning, you must have done something to anger her. again! You
go straight to the coffee machine, because it's Monday morning and you just
know you'll be solving problems until lunchtime. When you finally get to your
desk, your assistant is waiting for you. "Oh no," you think.
"What has he done now? The first problem of the day.”
Imagine how it makes
you feel to constantly surround yourself with negativity. Then ask yourself if
this is the way you tend to think in your own life? Dr Martin Seligman,
who has been described as America's most influential psychologist, has done
extensive research on thought patterns. In particular, he looks at the impact
of an optimistic versus pessimistic outlook on life and success. He uses three
basic dimensions of Permanence, Pervasiveness and Personalization, with
optimistic people on one end of the scale and pessimistic people on the other.
Permanence
Believing that
something we are experiencing is either permanent or temporary. The pessimist
statement implies that you think bad times will carry on forever.
Pessimist: I lost my
job and I'll never find one as good again. No point even looking!
Optimist: I lost my
job. Thank goodness there are other opportunities I can explore!
Pervasiveness
Believing that
situational factors cause an effect or that the effect is evidence of more
universal factors at work. The pessimist
statement shows that you tend to think that if
you've experienced a problem in one place, you'll experience that problem
wherever you go.
Pessimist: I lost my
job. Companies are all the same; all they care about is money. I don't know why
I bother putting in any effort at all.
Optimist: I lost my
job. It's too bad our company has to reinvent itself to stay competitive.
Thankfully I learned some great transferable skills!
Personalization
Believing that
something about you influenced the outcome or that something external to you
caused it. The pessimist tends to blame himself for bad
things, rather than attributing the cause to more general factors.
Pessimist: I lost my
job. If I had been a decent employee they would have found a new job for me.
Optimist: I lost my
job. I gave it my all, however they just can't use my skill set right now.
Re-shape Your Thinking
The way you view what
happens around you can show whether you have a positive or negative pattern of
thinking when you become more aware of your thoughts - and the effect they have
on your life.
When you're more
aware of the way you think, you can take action to use positive situations to
your advantage, and re-shape the negative ones. The goal is to think
positively, regardless of the situation, and make a conscious effort to see
opportunities instead of obstacles.
So if we look at one
of the examples listed above, if you immediately think the receptionist is mad
at you because she didn't say hello, how rational is that? Now change that
thought to more rational outcomes like, she have been busy or distracted when
you walked by or did you say hello to her? Maybe she wasn't feeling well, or
she was in a negative mood herself. These are all more rational reasons for her
behavior than simply assuming that you did something wrong. Persistent negative thinking can cause mental
health problems, including depression. While these positive thinking techniques
have been shown to have a positive effect, they are for guidance only, and
readers should take the advice of suitably qualified health professionals if
they are experiencing persistent unhappiness.
Key Points
Becoming more
positive is always a good thing. The more aware you are of your thoughts, the
better you'll be able to change them to emphasize the positive. Positive thinking usually attracts positive
people, events, and outcomes. If you want to create an environment where you're
successful and satisfied, you'll need the power of positive thinking on your
side. You may not be aware of all of
your negative thoughts and the effect they have on your life, however, by
taking some time to understand your own thought patterns, you can challenge
those irrational, negative thoughts – and replace them with more positive, optimistic
and empowering messages.
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world." - Buddha
Achieve your full potential! Book a complimentary session at Business and Life Management Coaching to get the support you need to excel in your professional and personal life.
Are you connected to your emotional self?
For many of us, it can be hard to
properly express our emotions. We tend to either keep our emotions bottled up
and not show them to anyone, or they overflow and spill out in unhealthy and
unexpected ways.
In our society, emotions are often
seen as a sign of weakness. They are viewed as the opposite of “rationality”
and “intelligence,” and this stigma is part of what makes it difficult for
people to express their emotional self. We don’t want to be seen as weak.
However, emotions play a huge role
in how we understand the world and communicate to others. It is therefore very
important that we learn how to connect more with our emotional self.
Be aware of signs of emotional repression.
The first step in connecting more
with your emotional self is to be aware of signs of emotional repression. One common sign that you are
repressing your emotions is that your emotions often erupt unexpectedly. For
example, you spend a long time not telling someone about this little thing that
bothers you, and then one day you just explode at them. When you don’t allow yourself to
express or release emotions in a healthy way, they can build up to a point
where you can no longer control them.
Other signs of repressing your
emotions include lots of stress, anxiety, fatigue, and even insomnia. Keeping
emotions bottled up is draining on your body. When you try to keep your
emotions all to yourself, you often feel physically worse.
Ask yourself how you feel everyday.
One simple way to connect more with
your emotional self is to give time to ask yourself how you feel every day. Just spending 5-10 minutes sitting
down and questioning your feelings, can make a big difference in how well connected you are to
your emotional self. We often see our emotions as part of
the “background” of everyday life – so taking just a bit of time and making
them your main focus can be a very healthy and refreshing thing to do. And if you practice meditation, consider
spending a whole session just using your emotions as the object of focus.
Don’t try to rationalize away every emotion.
Often times people who aren’t
connected with their emotional self feel a constant need to “rationalize” their
emotions. They can’t just “feel” for the sake
of “feeling.” There needs to be a reason, a purpose, or an explanation behind
every feeling they ever have. While it can be useful to analyze
our emotions sometimes, it’s also nice to just let yourself experience an
emotion without needing to find some underlying reason behind it. Not every emotion is going to be
explainable. In fact, often times emotions express a special kind of
“knowledge” about ourselves and our world that can’t be translated verbally. You need to sometimes accept
emotions as a language of their own.
Talk to other people about how you feel
Emotions can be difficult to share
with others, but they are still good to talk about on a regular basis.
Talking more about your feelings
allows you to be honest about your emotional self, and gives others the
opportunity to offer insight that you may have not considered. Many emotions are emotions driven by
our relationships with other people – social emotions – like love,
anger, disappointment, shame, embarrassment, guilt, and pride. By openly sharing our feelings with
others, we fulfill our emotional expression at a much needed social level.
Find ways to express emotions creatively.
Talking with others is one way to
express your emotions, but another healthy alternative is to find creative
outlets. This can include any activities such
as music, writing, photography, painting, film-making, dancing, or whatever you
are passionate about. Often times art gives you a way to
communicate your feelings in a way other than just words. It allows you to
connect more with the physical and visceral experience of your emotional
self. Having creative outlets also gives
you a chance to digest your emotions at a unique and personal level that can’t
usually be achieved through only introspection and conversation.
Use movies, TV, books, and music that elicits strong emotions.
Another great tool in helping you
connect more with your emotional self is to watch movies or TV, read a book, or
listen to music that elicits strong emotions. Often times consuming movies, TV,
books, and music can give us an emotional experience that we don’t always have
in our “real world” lives. For example, a movie can take you into the life of a
character who lives a vastly different life than you – and goes through
struggles that are different than your own. In this way, these forms of
entertainment can broaden our emotional flexibility – they give us a chance to
experience a more “full range of human emotions” that isn’t always available to
us. Horror movies give us a chance to
experience terror and fear. Romance novels give us a chance to experience lust
and love. And dramas give us a chance to experience sadness and grief. All of
these provide a safe and healthy way to tap into different emotions.
Becoming self-aware of your emotions and the importance of actively expressing those emotions will allow the body and the mind to regulate itself towards a healthy, balanced existence. Achieve your full potential! Book a complimentary session at Business and Life Management Coaching to get the support you need to excel in your professional and personal life!
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