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Category: Self-Leadership Skills

Achieve Excellence – Proven Ways to Make Accountability Work for You

Achieving excellence always results from focused, energetic, and consistent supervision and training. The coaching culture of accountability is vital.When you think of the word excellence, what images spring to mind? Is it the fine craftsmanship of a superior sailing ship? Or perhaps you think of an influential leader who masterfully brings out the best in the crowds that flock to her. How do people achieve excellence like that? 

Excellence is not only for an elite few. Admittedly, some people are predisposed to traits that come readily to them. But no one excels without dedication and consistent effort. Can you upgrade from ‘settling for good enough’ to ‘achieving excellence’? Yes!

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How To Overcome Obstacles In Life — Managing Setbacks With Ease

When you need to overcome obstacles in life, use this easy exercise that empowers you to identify and regulate your emotional reactions to situations.Under the best circumstances, change doesn’t come easily. Some people say it takes 21 days to create a new habit. However, one study shows that on average it takes up to 66 days. Some people can create a new habit in as little as 18 days, while others take 254 days! What do we learn from this? Don’t count the days. Be convinced that the new habit is what you want and practice it until it becomes a part of who you are. Because let’s face it, life isn’t ideal. Much of the time we’re overcoming obstacles as we make these changes.

How about you? Do your goals and intentions fade after the first setback? How many challenges can you handle before you give up?

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How to Increase Self-Understanding? Use This Powerful Mindfulness Exercise

The beginning of self-understanding starts with mindful awareness of your world and how you respond to it, only then you can make responsible choices.“Why did I do that? Sometimes I don’t understand myself.” During a coaching session, has your client ever said that to you? Or perhaps you’ve felt that way yourself. If so, you’re not alone. Even though we live with ourselves 24/7, we don’t automatically possess total self-understanding. Just as it takes work to understand someone else, it takes time and effort to understand ourselves.

Oftentimes, we’re so busy and our lives and thoughts become so cluttered we get into a reactive mode rather than staying in a calm place of choice. This mindlessness makes us forgetful and causes us to feel separation from self, which creates a sense of merely existing rather than living a full and purposeful life. So how can harmony be restored? The answer lies in developing the skill of mindfulness. Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. explains that 

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What’s the Best Way to Achieve Your Goals? Take Baby Steps!

 If you want to achieve your goals yet you keep getting stuck, try this easy, proven process of breaking the big goal down into the smallest baby steps.Are you feeling stuck? Perhaps you have big dreams, but  you’re like many of my clients who say, “Maria, I don’t know how to do it!” “I just can’t make myself get started.” “I want to, but I keep getting in my own way.”  What’s the thing that keeps you stuck so that you can’t achieve your goals? Procrastination? Perfectionism? Lack of confidence? Whatever the cause, the one thing that reliably works EVERY SINGLE TIME, for EVERYONE is taking baby steps. When you break anything you want to achieve into the smallest steps possible, you can do it! 

Even when we’re not talking about closed-end goals, like losing 10 pounds or giving a public talk, baby steps work. (A closed-end goal has a final destination, i.e., lose 10 pounds and the goal ends. An open-ended goal is open to change and may apply to multiple areas of life, i.e., becoming more secure. It’s not a destination. It’s a direction.)  Yes! Baby steps can even help you change your inner person.

So if you’ve ever asked, “How do I become more secure?” “How do I become more productive?” “How do I become less anxious?” This article will show you how to break these big concepts into smaller, actionable tasks.

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Become The Observer of Your Life, Then Lasting Change Will Follow

Like an artist, you can become The Observer in your life, to mindfully acknowledge each “brush stroke” as it transforms your “canvas”, your life.

A practice of mindfulness is priceless. Without it, we can go through life only experiencing things superficially, missing the things that bring lasting enrichment. However, when you become The Observer, taking in information without judgment, you’ll see what you want more of or less of, in your life. 

For example… how observant are you? If I asked you to identify the colors in a picture of a forest, no doubt you would say green, brown, and maybe some yellow. But an artist closely inspects each area for color or hue; she also sees the variances of shade (black added to the hue), tone (gray added to the hue), and tint (white added to the hue). Not only that, she detects the differences in intensity and value. Before the painting is done, the artist will have mixed hundreds of different combinations of paint, each one intentionally performing a specific function on the canvas. Why is this so important? Jon Kabat-Zinn explains “The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness.”

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