Take That Phone Call During Your Board Meeting!
Should mobile phones be turned off during business meetings and coaching sessions? Yes? This real story might change your mind.
Why Change is Necessary and Laziness Does not Work Out
Change is inevitable. You can either adjust to permanently changing circumstances or ignore them – and bear the consequences…However, despite the obvious need for change, a certain reluctance to change is human. Change often requires to stretch or even leave our comfort zone, and we don’t necessarily like this in the first place.
How to Stop Negative Self-Talk and Gain Self-Confidence
Executive Coaching case study: how an overwhelmed Western director in Asia learned to overcome negative self-talk, regain self-confidence, and succeed on his expat assignment.
Are You the Cause of the Problem?
Problems and challenging situations are inevitable. That is true for your professional as well as for your personal life. The question is how you deal with the challenges effectively.
A typical human reaction to difficult situations is to blame other people. Often we see ourselves as victims of the circumstances. But is that true? In most cases it is not.
In any unpleasant situation you have to ask yourself first: in how far am I part of the problem? What part of the problem am I causing myself? And as inconvenient as it may be, we have to be brutally honest with the answer.
Leadership of Self and Others in Crisis
As the saying goes, you cannot prevent the pain, but suffering is optional. Here’s how to lead yourself and others through crisis:
1. You cannot control the events in your life. But you can control how you respond to them. Ask yourself these two empowering questions: What can I learn from this? How can I turn this around?
2. You get what you focus on. So focus on the solution, not the problem.
3. Be a role model and lead your team. In order to lead your team, you have to lead yourself first and not give in to your worries and negative emotions. Create empowering beliefs, self-confidence, and know that you can handle the situation.
Clarity + Action = Happiness & Success
Many people in our society are unhappy with their careers or with their relationships. A lot of the dissatisfaction we are experiencing is caused trying to fulfill too many expectations at the same time: expectations from our spouse, our boss, the society. And ultimately the high expectations from ourselves.
Pleasing everyone or being perfect is impossible.
The key to happiness is gaining clarity on what really matters in your life, and then to take consistent action accordingly.
Calrity + Action = Happiness & Success
Learnings from Death
Death teaches valuable lessons. It can help you re-evaluate what is important to you. Maybe it helps you not to postpone things that need to be done, not to hold back words that need to be said. Maybe it makes you reconsider how to spend the valuable but limited time that is given to you. Maybe you start adjusting the actions in your life in a way that helps you to minimize the regrets you might otherwise have one day.
May you seize the day.
Scarcity – What do you need to do to have zero regrets on your death bed?
It is Sunday noon. The last day of my stay in Germany. Strange feelings. Although I have chosen that my new home is in Thailand, it is hard to leave my parents and the country in which I was born and in which everything is so familiar and easy.
I have stayed for more than two weeks, but as it is the last day, it is a special day. How can I make best use of it? How can I make this special day special? And: have I made optimum use of the other 14 days?
To make more use of commuting time, I sometimes listen to audio books. During my stay in Germany, whenever I drove the car, I listened to Anthony Robbins “Live with Passion”. And suddenly I feel reminded of his concept of scarcity.
In short, it’s about the fact that we humans usually value things more once we realize they are scarce. Anthony gives a simple example of him and his family being keen on a new sort of cookies. He realized their craving for cookies increased as soon as they ran out of stock. Once they raised the inventory to 25 boxes of cookies, suddenly the cookies were not so special anymore, and they consumed less.
Shifting your Focus – How to apply racing techniques to take control of your life
Take control of your life right now and look at where you want to go – do not look at the obstacles on your way.
The Four Agreements – Part 2: “Don’t Take Anything Personally!”
Have you been impeccable with your word? Yes? Fantastic. But it was so hard? Sure it was.
Here’s the second agreement for you, warrior: “Don’t take anything personally.”
Well, haven’t we heard that before? Isn’t it easily said, but so difficult to do? I can tell you, I can be quite emotional and short-tempered at times – oh, let me correct: I was emotional and short-tempered!
Once you truly get the point that “NOTHING other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves” you will understand that this is the key to equanimity. You only take something personally “when you agree with whatever was said.” So just don’t. Really don’t.
“Whatever other people think or feel, it is their problem, not your problem. If someone get’s mad at you they are dealing with themselves. You are just the excuse for them to get mad. They get mad because they are dealing with fear.”