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RESET – Creating Your New Normal

February 15, 2021 by Alicia Curtis

What an opportunity 2020 was to truly reflect on what’s important in our personal lives and collective society. Have you taken the time to reflect on how the global pandemic impacted your life? To make sense of it and to ask what it is teaching you?

The interruptions to how we live and work gave us a chance to experiment with our habits. Habits you may have intentionally developed for your life as well as the habits that emerge without you knowing. You know, habits like checking your social media first thing in the morning, staying up too late, eating too much fast food or checking email or news at all times of the day. These habits are not who you are or who you want to be.

I spoke to one CEO who really enjoyed the slower pace rather than racing from meeting to meeting. They reflected the pandemic had given them more time and space to think, to move more and connect with family.

If we can take away anything from this experience, it’s the opportunity to reset.  This is the time to make purposeful changes to your daily life.  To raise questions at work about how you work best!  This is the time to start carving those new grooves and living in a way that aligns more with your purpose and values.

 

Look at your Life

It starts by asking some of the big questions in life. What is important to me? What values do I hold dear? How do I want to show up in the world? Maybe you’ve done some of this thinking before and maybe you haven’t. Either way – it’s a good time!

Author, Brian Johnson suggests starting with three key domains in your life – energy, work and love to align your purpose and values to the everyday actions in your life.

  • Energy:  Without your health, you can’t show up fully for your work or life so your energy is foundational to living your best life.
  • Work:  Happy people have meaningful work serving a purpose greater than themselves.
  • Love:  Cultivating connection with family, friends and community has been shown time and time again to create enduring wellbeing in life.

So let’s look at those in-depth…

 

Domain 1: Energy – lighting you up!

The pandemic has caused a fair amount of physical and mental stress. It’s important to acknowledge this as it takes a hit on our energy levels ongoingly. Research has found people with high energy are happier people.

So how do you increase your energy? There are two key ways we can create energy in your life – physiologically and psychologically.

Physiological – Creating energy physiologically means the basics of life – how you move, eat and sleep. How would you rate on the basics? It wasn’t a surprise when the lockdown first hit, many people were extolling the importance of eating well, moving your body and getting enough sleep. That’s because it protects us from physical and mental illness!

But it’s so easy to see these things as getting in the way of what we really want to do in your life. They become a chores that need to be done. Dr Michelle Segar, in her book No Sweat, suggests we reframe these chores to instead seeing them as a gifts.

How?

Dr Segar suggests connecting exercise (or eating healthily or sleeping enough) with the short term benefits it brings to your life. That’s right, forget about vague promises that it’s good for your health and think about how it makes you feel today.

She also suggests focusing on the smallest improvements. For example, instead of trying to fit in our hour of rigorous exercise, she says make it a game to find OTM – Opportunities To Move throughout your day. She says – everything counts!

 

You may think that your day is crammed so full that you can’t fit in one more thing, but believe me: It’s not true. If you’ve got one minute, you’ve got time.”
Dr Michelle Segar, Author, No Sweat

 

Like finding a parking spot furtherest away from the supermarket, train station or workplace rather than the closest (you’ll be spoilt for choice!). Taking the stairs rather than the lift (easy way to avoid the crowds!). Taking a walk during your lunch break or while the kids are taking their music class or when meeting with a colleague. How many opportunities to move do you have in your day?

Psychological – You can also create energy psychologically too. I’m sure you’ve had the up and down of negative thoughts and emotions over the last few months. Recognising the emotions you are feeling, acknowledging them in the moment and realising they will pass are vital skills to manage the stress.

There are a number of scientifically validated mental tools to get you in the right frame of mind too, training your mental resilience through focus training, gratitude, confidence building and hope.

It starts by spending small moments thinking, talking or reflecting about what you are grateful for, what goals you have for the future, reframing mistakes and acting in integrity with your values. Setting habits to review what you are grateful for, your purpose, goals and values can help cultivate your mental strength and resilience to weather the highs and lows in life.

The more you move away from our values, the more you feel stressed and anxious in your life. Instead, aim for coherence between your purpose, values and goals and your everyday actions.

 

Domain 2: Work – serving the planet with your greatest strengths

What conditions help you to do your greatest work? Think about where prefer to work? What time do you have the greatest energy? What cues help you to focus? What gets you in the zone? This is what top companies obsess about – helping their people do their greatest work. What did you learn about this during lockdown?

Did you learn you work best from five to seven in the morning?
Did you learn you were most productive with less distractions around you?
Did you learn what triggers you into your most productive work?

What percentage of your work allows you to use your greatest strengths? Psychologist, Martin Seligman found using your strengths makes you more productive, happier and engaged at work! Are you making the best use of your greatest strengths?

The challenge becomes creating space and time to focus on your strengths deeply within your diary. In Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work, he suggests your ability to focus deeply at work is becoming increasing uncommon. Think – notifications, open plan working, back to back meetings or 24/7 email. Yet, this deep work is becoming more and more valuable in our economy.

 

The Deep Work Hypothesis: The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”
Cal Newport, Author, Deep Work

 

Your deep work is your life’s work. It’s building a body of work that makes you proud. We tend to overestimate what we can achieve in a day and underestimate what we can achieve in a year. So what is the focus for your next 12 months and how are you breaking that down and working towards it little by little every single day?

You can’t do eight hours of deep work every day though so Brian Johnson suggests you match your the energy levels to the type of work you want to do. You want to create rhythms to do your best (deep) work when you have your greatest energy and the oscillate your deep work time blocks with time with your team (team work) and then the monkey work (email, admin and so on) as well as some time to rest (don’t forget this too)!

 

Domain 3: Love – cultivating moments of connection

The pandemic has given many of us a huge wake up call about how much time we are spending with our loved ones. A recent newspaper article shared how many leaders had been able to reset during the lockdown, realising that events every night of the week was not only burning them out energy wise but slowly disconnecting them from their partner and children.

Clayton Christensen, Harvard professor and author of How will your Measure your Life? suggests we live in a culture that over invests in work and under invests in our close personal relationships.

 

The relationships you have with family and close friends are going to be the most important sources of happiness in your life. But you have to be careful. When it seems like everything at home is going well, you will be lulled into believing that you can put your investments in these relationships on the back burner. That would be an enormous mistake. By the time serious problems arise in those relationships, it often is too late to repair them.”
Clayton Christensen, Author, How Will you Measure your Life?

 

I’m not saying don’t focus on your work I’m saying actively take the time to cultivate the love in your life too! Career or business success can be super important, for sure, but it is not the only ‘capital’ you want to build in your life

Are you building a life which allows you to be the healthiest version of you?
Are you building a life which allows you to connect with your partner and children?
Are you building a life which allows you to be an active member in your community?

 

Time to RESET?

Undoubtedly, this pandemic has had immeasurable effects to our global world. This, on top of insane environmental, social, political and cultural challenges, has left many of feeling off kilter.

This was the gift of 2020. Not the year many of us might of imagined but a gift no less. Any opportunity to reset. An opportunity to re-imagine. An opportunity to reconnect. Are you making the most of this opportunity?

 

Want to join the Greater Good Collective? Launching 1 May

On 1 May, I’m launching the Greater Good Collective, a 3 month personal leadership journey to live and lead courageously to create a better world.

Check it out here to join us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Business, Self Reflection, Values Tagged With: habits, reflection, reset, strength

One simple change to your development plan

September 30, 2019 by Alicia Curtis

Want to shake up your professional development plan this year? I’ve got a strategy that can play a HUGE role in reframing your professional development.

Without even thinking, we are so conditioned to focus on our weaknesses and it makes sense, for the most part. We fill out our professional development plans with strategies to overcome the areas we are not good at. However, extraordinary leaders are not created by having no weaknesses, they are created by having built mastery around their strength areas. In fact, you have the most opportunity for growth in your areas of strength not your weaknesses.

Pop quiz time!

What do you think is a strength? Something you:
– Used to get an A for in school or university?
– Are born with?
– Can teach others?
– Can learn and master?

Nearly! Marcus Buckingham describes a strength as something that makes you feel STRONG. It’s partly something that you’re drawn to do, something that feels almost effortlessly simple to you and draws on your innate talents.

Buckingham explores the three elements of all strengths.

Talents – These are your innate abilities. Buckingham describes them as “naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behaviour”.

Skills – Skills are the action steps of any activity. It’s a learned behaviour.

Knowledge – Knowledge is acquired too. It involves the information that you learn.

If you combine all these three elements, you get a strength! It’s a great reminder – you can’t rely on natural aptitude (your talents) alone to build your strength, it must be combined with learned knowledge and skills.

“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work”
Emile Zola
 

Of course, there are some things that we are naturally good at but don’t give you that sense of energy and enthusiasm and therefore we are not drawn to build our knowledge and skills in that area – this is not our strengths.

A strength must fulfil you, give you energy and gives you that sense of flow. As Emile’s quote reflects, you must work at your natural talents to create them into an area of true strength for you.

Answer: Yes or No

Here’s an easy Yes or No quiz to get you thinking about harnessing your strengths and the strengths of others in your everyday life.

I can name my top strengths easily Yes / No
I use my top strengths daily Yes / No
I encourage others to use their top strengths Yes / No
I work on my strengths as much if not more than my weaknesses Yes / No
I focus on building mastery in my areas of strength Yes / No
I continually look for ways to use my strengths more Yes / No
I work with mentors who contribute to my strengths Yes / No
I do not let the fear of my weaknesses get in the way of my success Yes / No
I build my self confidence in my strengths Yes / No

The more ‘yes’’ answers you have, the more you are heading down the pathway of discovering and utilising your strengths every day.

If you got a few no answers – don’t stress!

We are taught to acknowledge our strengths and work hard on our weaknesses.
But what if this was switched? What if we lived in a world where we focused on mastering your strengths?

In one of Marcus Buckingham’s books, Go Put your Strengths to Work, he says that 61% of people believe you will grow the most in your areas of greatest weakness. Buckingham himself calls this a MYTH.

“You will learn the most, grow the most, and develop the most in your areas of greatest strength”
Buckingham
 

What are your preconceived thoughts about strengths and weaknesses? Do you have the mindset of focusing mastering and harnessing your strengths or focusing on fixing your weaknesses?

Do you struggle through trying to fix your weaknesses? Working on those areas that you find boring until you get it right. If so, it’s time to ask whether this strategy is serving you or not?

One exception – beware your fatal flaws!

In John Zenger’s book, The Extraordinary Leader, it does acknowledge that this notion of focusing on strengths and leaving your weaknesses works UNLESS you have a fatal flaw. A fatal flaw is a weakness that will impinge on your success and your use of your strengths.

In their research, they found that fatal flaws usually have three things in common:

• They are extremely obvious to everyone around you.
• They tend to be your inability to do something rather than your ability to do something.
• They tend to be areas of emotional intelligence rather than intellectual deficiencies.

Buckingham lists 5 ways to overcome your talent weaknesses:

1. Get just a little better at them
2. Design a support system to overcome the weaknesses
3. Use your strongest strengths to overwhelm your weaknesses
4. Find a partner who has a strength in your area of weaknesses
5. Just stop doing it (if you can).

So we can’t rest completely on our laurels about our weaknesses, as long as we manage them appropriately then we can focus on learning and development strategies on our strengths.

How do I focus on my strengths?

What are the simplest ways of identifying your strengths? Check out three different methods for discovering your own strengths.

The first technique is personally reflecting and identifying your strengths. The two other techniques are psychological tools you can use.

1. Personal Assessment – Think, Reflect and Journal

No surveys, quizzes or research – just your own feelings and reflection. But how do you do it? Here are three ways to identify your own personal strengths:

Journalling – take the time to write and reflect on the times in your life that you’ve felt most alive. What activities make you feel strong, empowered and feel effortlessly simple to you? Write down the activities that you feel constantly drawn to.
Ask the people around you – mentors, friends and family, ask them what they see in you. They can highlight your good blind-spots!
Examine your history – look for the themes and patterns in your life. What keeps popping up as your strength areas?

2. Strengths Finder Test

Strengths Finder lists 34 of the most common natural talents through their research. Add to these talents, your skills and knowledge and you have your strengths.

You can complete the Strengths Finder test online here or when you buy the book. It will take about 30 minutes to complete. The book details the 34 talents and give ideas for action for each. Heads up – this is a paid assessment.

3. Virtues in Action Character Strengths Survey

Ok, let’s face it, there are many online tools out there to identify your strengths, but the Authentic Happiness website is coordinated by Dr Martin Seligman, who is one of the founders of positive psychology movement and also the Director of the Positive Psychology Centre at the University of Pennsylvania.

You can complete the (free) VIA (Virtues in Action) Character Strengths survey to help you explore your character strengths and consider how to put them to work. The VIA classification is the result of many years research about people’s strengths and how they are used to improve your life. What they discovered was six universal virtues of which 24 character strengths stem from – get to know yours!

Get to know your strengths

I would recommend you try all three methodologies above. Do your personal assessment first, then do the Strengths Finder test and Character Strengths survey. List your talents and strengths and consider which ones really resonate with you. Think about how you can use them more everyday and build your knowledge, experience and skills in these areas.

Go live your very best strengths every single day.

Now over to you: What are your top strengths? How do you use them? Let’s continue the conversation here!

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Filed Under: Purpose, Self Awareness Tagged With: buckingham, development, plan, strength

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