Archive for the ‘Goal Setting’ Category

Why do Girls Outperform Boys But Fail to Reach Their Full Potential In their Career, is it Low Self Esteem.

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012

I don’t think there is one answer to this question and often when I’m interviewed on Radio, one of the questions is ‘Who is to blame’ but perhaps it is a trick question because I think on many occasions it is ourselves to blame and no-one else.   Even young people can start working on their self esteem if that is causing them an issue. Follow my tips below:

How to build self esteem

1. Recognise what high self esteem, looks and feels like? Write it down, it will be different to each and every person but you need to know what it looks and feels like to you, or how else will you know when you’ve got it.

2. Recognise how much control you have to change it, I get people to visualise stepping into someone else’s shoes, my favourite is Eric Cantona the footballer and moving in and out of them and noticing how much control you have in how you feel by switching it on and off. There’s a lovely funny scene at the start of the film ‘Finding Eric’ watching a group of middle aged men, practicing this.

3. Establish what your values are, they have a lot to do with your confidence – values are under-rated but they can be the glue that sticks your confidence together – if Trust is one of your values and it is being compromised by people not trusting you, then your confidence will be in jeopardy – understand your values and raise your confidence

4. Take small self steps – building self esteem is not about throwing yourself onto the world stage, take small steps and reflect on how your confidence is improving – rate it out of 10 and see it progress each time you push yourself.

5. Congratulate yourself on each achievement – when you reach a point of change – recognise it and celebrate it – you have moved on – if once you couldn’t stand up and ask a question in a group and now you can, give yourself some praise

6. Forgive the things that go wrong – so you got embarrassed and went bright red – you didn’t die! Only one experience is fatal, remember that. Learn from it, what could you have done differently and try it out next time or as Yoda once said ‘ Do or do not, there is no try”.

7. Find your own beauty – none of us are perfect so what makes you special, enjoy the fact you are different.

8. Wear clothes that only make you feel good – your first thought when getting dressed should always be ‘Will wearing this make me feel good’. I always follow this and it paid off last week when I had a last minute phone call to meet my hero Billy Connolly, I jumped in the car just as I was, no need to get changed, I was happy as I was.

9. Move away from friends that have low self esteem, you’ll model them – if you surround yourself by others who lack confidence you will start to become like them – aim to have a good mix of people who do have confidence and observe and watch and learn what they do differently.

10. Scare yourself, enter the tunnel – change doesn’t start until you enter the dark tunnel because only by scaring yourself out of your safe zone will you feel the fear and move on, many people stand at the entrance and complain how dark it looks, get in there and through, there is light at the other end. Remind yourself of this if you are in situations that daunt you.

Confidence is a process not an end result, there are times when even the most confident person will lack belief in themselves, that’s ok but learn from it and do it differently next time, that’s what makes them different, confidence never stands still it is always growing and developing, let yours grow too.

Free confidence visualisation – click here

 

 

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Top Tips To Project Manage Your Mind

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

I worked successfully as a Training Project Manager on some of the largest projects in the UK and alongside my Psychology experience and skills, I often reflected on some of the similarities and factors that a project and our own emotional well-being had in common.

So first if you look at what makes a project fail, you will find the following top 5 factors;

1. Lack of agreement on goals
2. Lack of Planning
3. Ineffective Communications
4. Uncontrolled Scope
5. Insufficient Management Support

Now consider using project management methodology to manage your emotional wellbeing and your ultimate success. Firstly;

1. Agreement on Goals –have a focus  in life and be clear where it will take you, even though this journey  may well change many times on route. Once you are clear it is very easy to get others on board to help you. After all you wouldn’t get in a taxi and tell the driver to take you anywhere he wants to, or would you?
2. Planning – Things don’t always happen in life without some clear planning, a project without dates is just a task list. Be specific in your own mind when you want to see the fruits of your hard work. Always write things down, some of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world such as Richard Branson have small notebooks that they document ideas in.
3. Constant, Effective Communication – you can read all the books in the world about why relationships fail but they can sum most of it up in these two words ‘ineffective communications’. Be clear on what is acceptable to you and what you will tolerate. We all tolerate far too much and never communicate our real feelings for fear of consequences. Get back to being the real you and your relationships will have a much more solid foundation to build upon.
4. Controlled Scope – on projects there are a number of factors in scope that can sabotage it. It’s no different with your goals, the scope of what you are aiming to achieve can get unwieldy and stress sets in, HOPE creep rears its head and you hope you’ll catch up, EFFORT creep shows up and you’re 95 % there, but 5% to finish something will feel like 95% of the work and then FEATURE creep joins in, where something else gets added in to the equation. Controlling the scope of what you want to achieve ensures you control your coping mechanisms in your mind which will keep you sane.
5. Unequivocal Support – who are your brain drainers? I’m always surprised how people hang on to people that are just not good for their health and when I ask them what they get from the relationship, they don’t really know. Ditch the brain drainers, the people that don’t help you and replace them with the real support team you need.

When you project manage your mind you will be on the ladder to increasing your Emotional Intelligence and gain a valuable skill of self-awareness that once triggered just continues to develop.

Angela delivers talks on ‘How to Project Manage Your Mind, which includes great tips to achieve real success using hypnosis and NLP techniques. If you would like to know more, please contact us at info@angelawhitlock.com.

www.angelawhitlock.com

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