In today's fast-paced and demanding world, many individuals find themselves struggling to live a life full of meaning, maintain perspective, and reduce stress. The constant pressure to succeed, the overwhelming amount of information, and the ever-increasing responsibilities can leave us feeling lost and disconnected.
However, coaching offers valuable tools and techniques to help individuals overcome these challenges and create a life that is both fulfilling and balanced. In this article, we will explore the common challenges people face in their pursuit of a meaningful life, the importance of putting things in perspective, and how coaching can provide the necessary support to overcome these obstacles.
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Building trust within a team isn't just about improving performance; it's about forging a workplace culture that aligns with integrity, innovation, and shared success.
When trust is the cornerstone of your leadership, solving complex problems becomes a collective endeavour, and creating lasting change becomes a shared mission. A team that trusts its leader is a team that's committed, resilient, and ready to go above and beyond. But how do you earn this trust? Empathy It's about demonstrating that you prioritise your team’s well-being. For instance, recognising the importance of work-life balance isn't just about offering flexible hours—it's about respecting those hours. When your team knows their time is valued, they're more invested during working hours. Which of us doesn’t want to have a good life? Who doesn’t want to be enough? With a lovely house and garden, sweet children, a loving spouse, who come together for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A life filled with good friends who celebrate over an elaborate meal and extended family that come together often with smiles and hugs. A life with a rewarding job that appreciates your work and brings out your best. While these scenarios might be things that people dream about, they are scenes from stock photos, advertising campaigns, lifestyle shows, and social media influencers. Yet they inspire us to want to be perfect, to have perfect lives. They prey on our feelings that we are not enough. Then, for many of us, the drive to have a perfect life overwhelms. In her book, End the Struggle and Dance With Life, Susan called the drive to always be perfect an addiction. Always having to be the best, always going above and beyond, always having to prove yourself are just ways of trying to show the world, and yourself, that you are good enough. Being a perfectionist, while it might look as if everything is fantastic, takes its toll on our health and our relationships. It can also hold us back from new opportunities. All those images and videos we see of perfect-looking people living perfect lives only has the echo of truth in them. What we never see in those images is the mess behind the camera. The other people working behind those scenes to make the illusion seem real. So while those images make us feel as if we are less than perfect, they only represent something superficially “perfect.” The reason our addiction to perfection can be so devastating is that we believe our self-worth is measured by our performance. But since no one is perfect, it is impossible to attain self-worth through perfection. Trying to be perfect in everything we do is only a means to feel as if we are good enough. Let go of your expectations Most people assume that the solution to their emotional struggles is to do more:
The more you do to try and get rid of emotions directly, the stronger they’ll get. Take sadness, for example:
A skill is when you learn how to do something in order to achieve a positive outcome; an anti-skill is learning how to not do something in order to achieve a positive outcome. Taking care of ourselves helps us do better work, but it shouldn’t feel like work.
Well-being is having a moment. What was once considered a soft-news lifestyle topic has, thanks to our collective experience of the pandemic, moved to the center of the conversation about work and life. And as a Chief Well-Being Officer, I’m certainly glad to see this shift (even if I obviously would have preferred a different catalyst). Still, when I’m asked questions about well-being, as I often am, I’ve noticed a troubling trend. Very often, well-being becomes just another stress-inducing item on our to-do list. So as we continue to prioritize our well-being, we also need to shift our mindset away from viewing well-being as work. Because well-being isn’t a benchmark we need to hit. It’s not another guilt-inducing metric to measure ourselves by. The whole point of bringing more well-being into our lives is to lower our stress, not add to it. With that in mind, here are six ways to prevent well-being from becoming just another item on our to-do lists. Lessons from Rebekah Taussig on honoring and celebrating our bodies.
Self-acceptance is essential to self-care and our overall well-being. If we can’t accept ourselves, our well-being is going to suffer, regardless of how diligent we are about any other physical and mental health practices. Still, even with all the progress we’ve made in recent years on body positivity and mental health, the radical act of accepting ourselves for who we are has never been more challenging. Our society surrounds us with images of what supposedly healthy and perfect bodies look like. And of course, much of that is fueled by social media, which, in study after study, has been shown to damage our body image and self-acceptance. So how can we learn to accept ourselves and show up for ourselves in a way that nurtures our well-being? To begin to answer this question, I had the privilege of talking with Rebekah Taussig on a recent episode of Deloitte’s “WorkWell” podcast. Rebekah is a writer, teacher, and advocate, whose popular Instagram feed, @sitting_pretty, is filled with what she calls “Mini memoirs.” I was thrilled to talk to her about her new book, Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body, in which she chronicles her journey to self-acceptance with her trademark candor, humor, vulnerability, and authenticity. Learn to become a doer who can think clearly What you do changes the trajectory of your life — not what you think.
Don’t get me wrong; smart thinking influences our actions more than we think. But to make real change that gets you close to what you want, you have to take become a doer. Aristotle was right, “For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” The only way to close the gap between where you are now and what you want for your future self is by taking the right action consistently. Choosing to take action is a choice that comes with responsibility, sacrifice and a lot of grit. Nobody can practically push to do anything more than yourself. Instead of convincing yourself that you can’t do something, say yes to the right opportunities, habits, routines and behaviours that guarantee real progress or a much better life. Some considerations about your remote working environment by Paolo Cuomo.
Just over 9,000 days ago I entered 37 Fitzroy Square, London and sat at an office desk for the first time. 380 days ago I entered the iconic Cheesegrater building and sat at an office desk for the last time. I hope it won’t be the very last, but it’s clear I won’t be back until mid-2021 at the soonest. Ignoring a project I did many years ago with night-shift supermarket workers, this is the longest by far I’ve not worked in an office. When the UK and much of the rest of the world went into “lockdown” back in March/April 2020, it all seemed rather temporary. Of the many millions conducting our work interactions via email and Zoom, most took a short-term approach to our workspace — sometimes through limited choice, sometimes through natural inertia. Sure, a new mouse or a monitor, but still just stuck in the same corner or on the dining room table. As the work from home extended, we entered the summer months with the siren song of working outside or, as in my case, spending large parts of the day on calls while walking. Thus no real reason to adjust. Now here we are a year later. by Leah Njoki
Ever been asked to say a few things about yourself? Perhaps you said you’re a good communicator, attentive to details, or a team player. The point being, we all define ourselves in a certain way. Here’s the paradox, though; It’s not what you say that is an accurate representation of who you are, but rather what you show yourself to be. That’s how people judge you. They respond to the image you project. As such, it’s critical to focus on what you do rather than what you say. If you want to sell yourself to the world in an authentic way, focus on these four really small things because they say a lot about you. This way, you’re guaranteed to make a lasting impression and command respect from people. 1. How you keep time .... By Susan Begeman Steiner
Diane was new to the job and was having a problem with a co-worker named Matt. The team that Diane was leading needed Matt’s expertise for their health-care project, but he didn't show up for team meetings. He would miss one team meeting after another, always for seemingly good reasons. Diane heard from others on the team that Matt was arrogant, anti-social and notoriously difficult to work with. Diane and her boss met with Matt and talked to him directly about the advantages of his participating on the team, but nothing changed. |
Self-Help Book / Personal Development
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