Management expert and author Tom Peters has defined leadership as an ability to make people better – the ability to push people beyond their imaginations and outside of their visions of themselves.
Imagine if you could inspire others and yourself everyday to be better?
Imagine if instead of waiting for guidance you paved the path to your own success?
As great as this sounds, leadership, especially self-leadership is incredibly difficult to achieve.
Don’t wait for others to solve problems that need solving. Be aware of the fine line between subservience and insubordination. Begin to build the efficient workplace you imagine, lead those around you to success and craft ideas to take your organisation to the next level.
We can never stop learning. Who you spend your time with hugely influences who you become. Do your friends or colleagues push you to be your best? Do they inspire you to try new things or jump outside of your comfort zone? If not, find people that do, you need to be challenged every day and held accountable to your goals – having a support system around you, with the same leadership mindset, undoubtedly helps.
We aren’t perfect and sometimes we fail miserably. the difference between leaders and others is that leaders don’t make excuses, they admit their errors and do the extra work to get back on track. Make this your mantra too. However, if you continually find yourself performing below par, ask yourself if you’re in the right environment, role, or career. When you use your best skills, it isn’t hard to give your best every day.
Irrespective of your job role, or how irritated you feel on any given day, you are never better than anyone else and you should respect everyone, always. Building trust is the golden ticket to leadership success. If you do not come across as trust worthy, people are less likely to come forward and pitch their ideas (ideas are crucial for collaboration) or even worse, they might stop believing in you. Remember, without people there would be no organisation.
Leaders understand they can’t solve a problem on their own. This is why they bring together people with proven expertise. Develop a sense for collecting people from different teams, divisions, groups, and sometimes even companies, to work toward a solution or new idea. Successful collaboration results in innovation. Innovation results in market leadership.
Does work bring us happiness?
Work that brings the most happiness?
Eleven broad job types are recorded in the Gallup World Poll. The available categories cover many kinds of jobs, including being a business owner, office worker, or manager (white collar professions) and working in farming, construction, mining, or transport (blue collar professions).
People who class themselves as a manager, an executive, an official, or a professional worker evaluate the quality of their lives at a little over 6 out of 10, whereas people working in farming, fishing, or forestry evaluate their lives around 4.5 out of 10 on average. This means that white collar workers are typically happier than blue collar workers.
This pattern is not only found in overall happiness and satisfaction but also in day-to-day feelings – white collar workers report feeling more positive emotional states such as smiling, laughing, enjoyment, and fewer negative ones like feelings of worry, stress, sadness, and anger.
Self employment reflects a love-hate relationship with wellbeing.
Global averages are varying. Developed nations report higher overall happiness levels associated with self-employment – this appears to correlate with a regions economic state.
Further, developed nations report that self-employment provides higher overall life happiness however it appears to come with more negative, daily emotions such as stress and worry. This is rather accurate, ask any business owner and I’m sure they will agree that being self-employed is both highly satisfying and incredibly stressful.
Unemployment is destructive to people’s happiness. The data shows that this is a global fact. The employed evaluate the quality of their lives much more highly on average in comparison to the unemployed. Individuals who are unemployed also report around 30 percent more negative emotional experiences in their day-to-day lives.
The importance of having a job extends far beyond the monetary benefits. A huge amount of psychological research shows that work influences social status, social relations, daily structure, and goals which all shape ones purpose in the world and inevitably, overall happiness.
Not only are the unemployed generally unhappier than those employed but HBR found that people generally do not adapt over time to becoming unemployed. Even worse, unemployment seems to have a scarring effect on people’s wellbeing – it can traumatise them for a long time even after they have regained employment.
Intrapreneurs are completely different from employees. They have a different mindset and they bring you dramatically better results than employees. An “employee” is someone who wants to be managed. They want you to tell them what to do.
Think about how much time you could save if you had employees that thought for themselves? Being an entrepreneur is not being a manager, they are two different roles.
Imagine if your employees came up with innovative ideas to make your work-life and business better. Well, stop imagining because it happens for some entrepreneurs who instead of having a team of employees have a team of intraprenuers.
An intrapreneur is someone who thinks like an entrepreneur but is an employee within an organization. They get all the benefits of being an employee such as a steady salary, but they are ambitious and want self development. They bring ideas to the table and know they can impact decisions. Your intrapreneurs drive organizational change.
Once the idea is evaluated the employee is responsible for the research. Who will the idea help? Will they buy it?
Ignoring innovation is the best way to kill employee morale and experience high-talent turnover. To avoid this, develop an internal culture that all employees can use to bring ideas to the table This will encourage your intrapreneurs to contribute and now your business.
Being annoyed is an unpleasant feeling, but, like all feelings, it serves a useful purpose, if we dig a bit deeper and understand why it happens.
1. Your boundary is being encroached upon. Someone is asking you a question that’s too personal. Feeling annoyed lets you know that someone is violating your boundaries and you’re not comfortable with it. You don’t have to give any information you don’t want to – so explain that, instead of giving an unclear over defensive response.
3. You need to find a more efficient way to do something. Annoyed at all the morning tasks you need to handle just to get to work on time? Through your annoyance, create most efficient ways to handle your tasks. How can you make your life easier? What task in particular really bogs you down? All important questions, that without annoyance, may never be answered, don’t suffer – change.
4. You’re feeling resentment. This comes from “yes” syndrome. If you haven’t learnt to say no at this point in your life, than you will feel resentment as you do activities you don’t actually want to do. Instead of feeling irritable, acknowledge your annoyance and learn to say no next time. People are not mind readers, so it’s on you to understand what you do and don’t want to do.
If you are annoyed at yourself for falling short of the mark, you could choose to make a creative change, re-evaluate your high standards, or just send yourself some compassion (“You have a right to be less than perfect. You are human!”).
When someone else doesn’t live up to your standards, you could either speak up clearly about what you expect, try to see the situation from the other person’s point of view, or decide you need to let it go.
And when the world is cruel, unjust, or just plain disorganized, you can become an activist and make at least your corner of the world a bit better.
Let it be or take action to change the situation.
This article was written by the help of Meg Selig, 2013 and her useful article in Phycology Today, The 5 Most Common Reasons We Get Annoyed.
Take a look at Meg Seligs book, Changepower! 37 Secrets to Habit Change Success(Routledge, 2009). For shorter tidbits on health, happiness, and habit change, follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
Sometimes anxiety can creep up on us and make us feel a loss of control.
Read these 6 expertly crafted tips for how to reduce anxiety, instantly.
“The first thing to do when you feel anxious is breathe,” said Tom Corboy, MFT, the founder and executive director of the OCD Center of Los Angeles, and co-author of the upcoming book The Mindfulness Workbook for OCD.
Deep diaphragmatic breathing is a powerful anxiety killing technique because it activates the body’s relaxation response. It helps the body go from the fight-or-flight response of the sympathetic nervous system to the relaxed response of the parasympathetic nervous system, said Marla W. Deibler, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and director of The Center for Emotional Health of Greater Philadelphia, LLC.
Acceptance is critical because trying to wrangle or eliminate anxiety typically worsens it. It creates the idea that your anxiety is unbearable.
Accepting your anxiety doesn’t mean resigning yourself to it.
It just means that you would benefit by accepting it, for what it is. The bottom line is that the feeling of anxiety is less than ideal, but it is not unbearable. This mindset helps you to claw back your control.
3. Realize that your brain can and will play tricks on you.
Psychiatrist Kelli Hyland, M.D., has seen first-hand how a person’s brain can make them believe they’re dying of a heart attack when they’re actually having a panic attack.
Our brains are not always correct. Our brains fuelled with anxiety are almost never correct. When your brain plays tricks on you, the best thing you can do is be kind to yourself. Understand you are feeling vulnerable and this vulnerability makes you more open to manipulations from your anxious brain. Be self-aware and be kind.
4. Use a calming visualization.
Hyland suggested practicing the following meditation regularly, which will make it easier to utilise when you’re anxious in the moment.
Anxiety can produce a lot of negative chatter. For instance, you might say, “this anxiety feels bad, but I can use strategies to manage it.” Or you might say, i’m only human so I feel anxious but I can beat it. Get your control back from anxiety with positive self talk.