Tag: Goals

Goal 2014: 3 Questions to help increase your well-being in the Year of the Male

1 Comment
Plug In To Access Support

Plug In To Access Support

Have you heard the one about the man who asks his best mate for emotional support during a difficult period, and receives consistent, empathic care from his friend?  Chances are you haven’t.  Women may follow Sheryl Sandberg’s example at Facebook and ‘Lean In’ supporting each other, men don’t traditionally plug into their networks like that.

In fact British men may be spending nearly £1800 on making themselves look good outwardly according to 2012 research , but they aren’t making similar efforts to connect with their inner feelings and improve their emotional well-being.

Luckily there are new options men can adopt to tackle their well-being goals.  Those options are being explored by CALM , the mental health charity.

The charity is focusing on suicide prevention this year.  Here’s a sobering number CALM comments on , taken from a recent Office for National Statistics bulletin: suicide is the leading cause of death for British men under 50.  Such men are 3 times more likely to kill themselves than women.  That rate is comparable to the United States, where men are nearly 4 times more likely to take their own lives than women, according to the World Health Organisation .

Under the Year of the Male banner – that’s @yearofthemale on Twitter, or online at www.yearofthemale.com – the UK organisation is looking to challenge the range of influences which contribute to men’s less positive life experiences.  Perhaps we can all recognise that modern life has the potential to lead to high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression.

If you are a man and the experiences above ring bells, ask yourself how do your age, class, disability or employment status, ethnicity, family situation, religion, sexual orientation and upbringing affect your well-being?  What are you prepared to do change your well-being status this year?  Here are three more questions for you to reflect on.

  • What can you include in your health and well-being goal to make it more achievable?
  • In what ways will your goal help you live life with a greater degree of authenticity?
  • How will your goal add value to your dealings with the important people in your life?

Good luck with your actions.  Remember to check out the Archive section for more inspiration.  There are further ideas On Facebook and Google+ too

Goals 2014: 3 key questions to help you get more from your networks

Leave a comment

How is your job treating you at the moment?

Do you ever feel like your job skills are not being fully engaged?  Perhaps you are stuck in a dead-end post which does not help you meet your career development goals?  Or maybe your manager is not sufficiently interested in allowing your career to flourish?  Stressful isn’t it?

You probably want to do more to have your needs met.  The good news is that there are actions you can take, if the situations I described ring bells with you.

It doesn’t matter if you are in the US, the UK, the EU or further afield.  Your situation will improve if you are able to network effectively with peers, mentors, friends who can support your growth and whose growth you can also nurture.

Your three key questions

My experience suggests the basis of your action plan will flow from the following questions:

  • What precise outcome do you want from the professional people who will help you achieve your career goals?
  • In what way do you want your social network to provide you with more support?
  • As you take action on your own behalf what contribution will you make to the development of the people around you?

Your next step is to write down your responses, refine them, and fix a time to start your programme of action on the most important area on your list.

If you would like to see these principles at work, take a look at the link contained in the tweet below.  It sets out advice to an underemployed jobholder who wants their job satisfaction goal to be fulfilled.   Remember, taking action increases the likelihood your goals will be achieved; coaching support makes that outcome even more likely.

What’s your self-development goal this spring?  Check out the Archive at www.experienceyourlife.me for some inspiration.  There are more ideas On Facebook and Google+ too

Goals 2014: 3 Questions To Help Your Personal Growth

Leave a comment
Cup Of Tea

How Are You Planning To Develop This Spring?

Friday was Valentine’s Day, one of the few days in the year where your goal is simple to define: happiness.  How did it feel to take action to improve the quality of your personal relationship?

Congratulations on starting the ball rolling.  This weekend is the opportunity to take a 30 minute tea / coffee break and do some wider work on your goals.  When will you take further action to make your personal and professional life even better?

When you are doing this work – to help yourself develop in the direction you want to this spring – why not use the three questions below to kick start your thoughts.  Write down the answers and identify the action you are going to take.  Include the exact time in the coming week when you will take the action (and reward yourself when you do).

  • How will you seek more support from the people who will help you achieve your career and personal goals?
  • When will you influence your social network to provide you with more support?
  • As you take action on your own behalf what contribution will you make to the development of the people around you?

Good luck with your actions.  Feel free to feedback on your progress via the Contact page or on Twitter @RogerD_said (you can use On Facebook and Google+ too)

Goals 2014: Three Questions About The Health Of Your Relationship

Leave a comment
morguefile0001542430377

Chocolates Show You Care

Happy Valentine’s Day: It’s the one day you have a good reason to show you value your main relationship.  Have you opted for chocolates, flowers, or wine?

Speaking of your relationship, what’s your goal beyond today?  What else are you doing to keep improving the quality of that relationship, tomorrow and the next day?  In particular how will you:

  • Demonstrate your long-term commitment to the relationship?
  • Share your authentic self within it?
  • Deepen the element of trust the relationship depends upon?

It is worth having a action plan to maintain the health of this key part of your life.  In that way you remind yourself that you value the well-being of your every part of your life: from your main relationship, to your well-being at work, to the health of your finances.

Goals 2014: Three Strategies To Help Get Back To Work After 50

Leave a comment

 

The Journey To Work
The Journey To Work

 

How happy are you with your commute to work?  The Office for National Statistics reportedly says that 30 minute plus commuter journeys make people unhappy and anxious, especially if they travel by bus.  ONS Guardian Article

People between jobs – following redundancy – may not have the commute to contend with, but they have to face other stressors, like getting another job.

If you are in that situation your immediate goal may involve taking action to secure another job before the summer.  If so you probably know what steps you are going to take to get you there.

How would you feel if your actions didn’t produce results this summer?

What would you feel like if you didn’t secure work over the next two summers either?

How much more of a challenge would you face if you were now in your early 50s?

That is the situation highlighted in an enquiry to the Guardian newspaper from a fifty something former academic.  He describes his situation in negative terms.  Luckily he has options, if he feels positive about pursuing them.  Your positive attitude would be crucial too.

Take a few moments and follow the link in the tweet below to find out more.  There is a lot of positivity in the three valuable strategies of

  • Networking with former peers
  • Maintaining a Professional Online Presence
  • Publishing Material That Enhances Your Reputation

Your circumstances as a fifty something between jobs may be different.  Nonetheless there are some questions the scenario may raise for you:

  • What would your first step be to return to work after redundancy?
  • What would your Plan B look like if you needed one?
  • Where would you get support from whilst your plans came together?

If these are hard questions to answer you may want to spend 30 minutes, this week, writing down your responses.  That investment of time is worth it.

Keep your responses in a safe place.  Hopefully you won’t need to use them.  However if your circumstances unexpectedly change you and your coach may need to work through that material, as you plan your journey back to work.

(To find out more about coaching you can follow me On Facebook and Google+ too)

 

Goals 2014: Six Actions To Help You Manage Your Stress Levels This Week

Leave a comment

Life is full of coincidences.  Fresh from posting about the impact of workplace stress, caused by poor management, I read a really useful article* by Lucy Dimbylow – @lucywriter on Twitter.

Lucy is responding to the question posed by the half a million UK workers whose stress and anxiety levels are too high: What actions can I can take to manage my levels of work stress?

The key actions I took away from Lucy’s article are:

  • Taking regular Exercise reduces stress
  • Following a healthy Diet aids positive mental health
  • Taking the Rest periods you are entitled to is beneficial
  • Making time to have Fun with family is important
  • Adopting a positive approach to Mindfulness helps you manage the aspects of pressure you can change
  • Seeking Support from those in a position to affect workloads, and job objectives, also helps

Having read that list here’s a final question for you:

  • What key action will you take, this week, to more effectively manage your workplace stress?

*The article appears in the spring edition of Benenden Healthcare Society’s subscription-only magazine ‘benhealth’.  Information on the society’s work can be found online at www.benenden.co.uk

Goals 2014: Three Key Posting Tips

Leave a comment

Happy 10th birthday Facebook!  It is a long way from an audience of Harvard students in February 2004 to a global audience of 1.23 billion in 2014.

All those users face a dilemma: how do I achieve my goal of representing myself well online?  I’ve blogged (in the related tweet above) about the challenges of managing a credible personal brand on social media before, most recently after 2013’s Business Show.

How will you manage your brand this year?

When it comes to your 2014 posts, how will you manage your personal brand?  From what I can see it helps to keep posts:

  • Professional – bearing in mind regularly posts about getting wasted the night before might not impress a future employer
  • Succinct – staying on point, in fewer than 500 words, helps your reader focus on your message
  • Visual – readers appreciate eye-catching elements

How do your posts reflect your values?

It also helps to be mindful of your key values when posting.  What story are you telling about yourself?

If you are looking to make an impact on a wider community from a position of knowledge your advice and commentary could attract a strong following.  Posting on a regular schedule would make you an important presence in others’ lives.

How are you managing your data?

How mindful are you about data protection when you are online?  A bit of thought probably helps, as more and more of us contribute to the pool of Big Data being waded through by large organisations.

The goal of the European Data Protection Day (on 28 January) – branded as Data Privacy Day in the US – is simple: to inform the public about how their online data is collected and processed; helping to protect their privacy and control their digital footprint.

So, taking all of this into account, would today be a good day to start managing your digital self more thoughtfully?

Click to Visit me on Facebook

Goals 2014: Goal Setting In Three Steps

Leave a comment
Workshop Paperwork

Goal Setting Starts Here

 

Congratulations on surviving January.  The first of February is a great time to concentrate on goal setting, action planning and clarifying values.  Here are three key questions to aid in that process:

  • What significant outcome do you want to have achieved by Easter?
  • How you will get there?
  • How does that effort fit with your core values?

Spending even thirty minutes today writing down your response to these questions is worthwhile.  Narrow your focus by expressing your goal in terms that are:

  • positive
  • present-tense
  • realistic

Writing down your first, significant, step to make progress toward your goal helps to underscore that you are confident that you can pursue and attain the outcome you that you want.  So does making an absolute commitment to taking prompt action.  An end date in your diary, with action milestones preceding it are powerful triggers to progress.

This process isn’t the preserve of the business world.  It applies in the public sector or the world of volunteering too.

It was great therefore to meet the volunteer team at The Asian Centre, Waltham Forest – @tacwf on Twitter – and support their work on #GoalSetting yesterday.  An evening in their company showed that goal setting helps volunteer mentors on a community programme, just like it does paid professionals working on costly projects.  Clients benefit too, whether they are young mentees, or high net worth customers.

If you would like to find out more about mentoring you can contact the Asian Centre via their website www.theasiancentrewf.org.uk for more information on their successful #YouthMentoring programme.

So, when will you make time to set your next significant goal?  How can effective coaching help you deliver on your commitment to self-development?

Click to Visit me on Facebook 

Goals 2014: What Does Success Look Like?

Leave a comment

Here is a Tweet relating to Jordan Belfort, he’s the subject of the biopic ‘The Wolf Of Wall Street’.  I haven’t seen the film, although it sounds an interesting look at 1990s concepts of success.   I’ll have to write another post once I have seen the movie.

Meanwhile I am sharing the Tweet as it contains a link to the Huffington Post.  Have a look at the link and see what you think of Mr Belfort’s ten thoughts about achieving goals.  Feel free to share this post with family, colleagues and friends.

How many of your 2014 goals relate to: Your workplace?  Your well-being?  Managing your wealth?  Let me know if you have goals that are more attainable with coaching support.

Goals 2014: Your Key To The Three Main Benefits Of Being Coached

Leave a comment

Here, in case you missed it, is another chance to hear more about the three key benefits of being coached.

Feel free to share the information with family, colleagues and friends.  Get in touch when you are ready to arrange your own coaching programme and to start living your best life.