7 Powerful Questions That Will Help You Get Exactly What You Want

If I could show you how to get crystal clear about your goals and effortlessly start taking action in the right direction, would you be interested?
In this article we’re going to go through seven powerful questions that will not only help you get clear about what you want, but also identify the obstacles and eliminate them.
These are some of the questions I use in my coaching sessions to help you get clear about what you want and make it so effortless for you that you can’t not take action.
What you’ll really love about these questions is how simple they are. I recommend you grab a pen and a piece of paper and follow along with the questions.
This will help you integrate them and really make progress in your life, which is what you want, right?
For the purposes of this article, I’m going to travel back in time to when I wanted to start Wake Up Cloud, so you can get a concrete example of how these questions are used.

1. What do you want?

What is it that you truly want? If you were a client, I’d dive into this question more deeply because there are always multiple layers, but for the sake of this article, I’ll keep it brief.
Before I started Wake Up Cloud, my heart was telling me to just go ahead and start. I wanted to help people, share what I knew, and also make a living doing what I love.
I had a yearning to do something else than be a professional poker player. Looking back now I see that I’ve always wanted to do this, but I just wasn’t ready, until now.

2. Why do you want that?

The next question focuses on the purpose. Why do you want what you want?
You’re writing all this down, aren’t you?
I wanted to start Wake Up Cloud because I wanted to feel fulfilled. I wanted to feel good about myself, and I felt like it was something that I was drawn to do.
That is the simplest way I can put it.

3. What stops you?

Next we come to a really interesting question, which helps you identify the obstacles that stop you from taking action right away.
What stopped me was that I didn’t believe I had anything to share with the world. I looked at other personal development bloggers, authors and speakers, and they seemed to know so much and I so little.
It took me a few years to finally reach the point where I got mad at myself and took action even though I wasn’t sure I had anything to contribute.
And I’m glad I did.

4. Why is it like that?

Once you’ve identified what stops you, it’s time to look at why you have the obstacles in the first place. Where have they come from?
My obstacle was that I didn’t believe I knew enough. I wish I had known what I know now, because it would’ve helped me tremendously in getting started faster and with more confidence.
Why did I believe that I didn’t have enough to share? How did I know that was the case? This is where it gets tricky for me. Many of these questions really make you think.
We often take our beliefs and thoughts for granted. Once you start really looking at them, they start breaking down if they aren’t useful, and you become free from the shackles of your mind.
I believed that I wasn’t enough because I went inside and tried to compare myself to people that had been doing this for years. It didn’t match, which “told” me that I wasn’t good enough.
These kinds of limiting beliefs are what usually stop people from going after what they truly want.

5. How have you been perceiving this as a problem until now?

How have you perceived this to be a problem in your life? I mean, I could’ve just decided to not start Wake Up Cloud and the problem would’ve been solved, right?
The problem was that I wanted to do something that I knew I could do, but I was comparing myself to other people and stopping myself from taking action.
Funny how that works, isn’t it?
One part of me was saying, “Go for it!” while the other was saying “Wait a minute, you don’t know enough. What if you fail?”
The funny thing about a split like this is that usually both parts want the same thing. They want what is best for me.

6. What would you like to believe?

What would you like to believe instead of the limiting belief? This is an interesting question, because it lets you discover that you have choice, and that you’ve always had choice.
In my case, what I would’ve wanted to believe at that point is that I do know enough, and that I can learn whatever I need to know as I am taking action.
This question helps you imagine what you want and look at the future differently. We can often get stuck in one way of thinking, so jumping out of that can begin to break the spell of the old belief.
So imagine, what would you like to believe instead? How would it feel if you believed something more positive and empowering?
And how would your future look different if you did that now?

7. What would happen if you could?

Last, but not least, what would happen if you could? This is an eye-opener for many, because it may open your eyes to something scary.
What I mean by that is that you may be afraid of success in some way.
For example, what would happen if I did start Wake Up Cloud? My thoughts at the time would’ve probably been that I then would have to put myself out there.
I might have to do interviews, create products, and learn all kinds of new stuff. This is all unknown territory which had the potential to evoke a lot of old fears.
So in some way, my limiting beliefs were helping me stay away from this. Once you’ve identified what’s going on, you can deal with it and starting flying toward what you truly want from life.

By: Henri
Source: Wake Up Cloud

3 Simple Ways to Start Raising Your Self-Esteem Today

Image by ·Insomnia·

“Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.”
Unknown

Your self-esteem is one of the most important things in life. It is one of those things that will make a huge difference for you if you work on it.

As you raise your self-esteem you will for instance:

• Feel more deserving and trusting in yourself. This will allow you to more fully explore your own potential and start going for your dreams and happiness. Instead of holding yourself back in life because you do not think you deserve good things or because of fear of failure, rejection etc.
• Live as you want. Not just when it comes to your goals and dreams. But also in the way that you will be better at standing up for yourself, asking for what you really want, saying no and to not feel pressured by shoulds or perfectionism.
• Stop feeling lousy about yourself and start feeling that you are OK and good. Sure, life still has its ups and downs with better self-esteem but those ups and downs also become easier to handle. And if you become more understanding, accepting and loving of yourself then just about any day in life will become better and happier than it used to be.

Those are a couple of reasons why I have created my brand new course, the Self-Esteem Course. It will launch on Tuesday as the headline mentions.

But that is not the only thing about self-esteem that I wanted to share today. I also wanted to share three simple ways that you can start using today to start raising or to better maintain your own self-esteem.

1. The daily self-appreciation journal.
It is easy to get lost in basing your self-esteem on just what you accomplish, on what you get done in a day or week. But basing your self-esteem on just that makes it pretty unstable.
One way help yourself out with that and with appreciating what is good and awesome about you is to use a self-appreciation journal.

You can do that by taking out a pen and notepad (or use a word processor on your computer or cell phone) every evening for a week. There you write down 5 things you appreciate about yourself. But make sure that you do not only write down accomplishments. Also write down good stuff related to your core-self esteem. By that I mean things that always there no matter how you perform at work or in school. It could be things/traits like your sense of humor, your kindness, your honesty, wisdom, creativity and so on.

If you like, continue to make this kind of journaling a habit of yours after the first week is up.

2. The stop word or stop-phrase.
We all have an inner critic. The critic can spur you on to get things done and to behave in way that gains acceptance from the people around you. But it can also drag you and your self-esteem down.
The inner critic whispers or shouts thoughts in your mind. It could be thoughts like:

• You are lazy and sloppy too, now get to work.
• No one really likes you for who you are.
• You always fail in relationships.
• You aren’t good at your job at all and someone will figure that out and throw you out.
• You are worse or uglier than someone else.

Now, the inner critic can as I mentioned help you to be productive and so on. But there are alternatives that are better. If you want to become more effective then it will for example be healthier and more productive to remind yourself of your major reasons for doing what you do each day. You could write down the most important reasons why you are focusing on this project, on these classes in school and so on and put that note where you will see it every day.

But, as you start going on that other, healthier path, you also have to stop the critic so it does not start to drag you down. You have to talk back to it.

You can do so by simply creating a stop word or stop-phrase that you say or shout in your mind whenever your critic pipes up with a distorted and self-esteem hurting thought.
Simply say: Stop!

Or use something else. I like these two phrases:

• No, no, no, we are not going there!
• No, that is just stupid.

They have worked well for me to get the inner critic to shut up. Try these ones out or create one that feels good and works for you.

Then use it to not get dragged down by your own inner critic when it may get triggered by for example criticism or a mistake in everyday life. And as you use the word or phrase and it becomes a habit and as you find healthier paths towards what you want your critic will pop up up less and less.

3. Be kind and understanding towards others (and yourself).
By being kinder towards and more understanding of others if becomes easier to do the same to yourself. One simple way to focus on being more understanding and kind when you feel the need to judge someone is to use helpful questions. One I find to be really effective is:
What parts of this person can I see in myself? How is he or she like me?

This one helps me to shift my perspective from what is different and what I feel the need to judge to what we have in common instead. This tears down the mental barriers between us and I can feel closer to and more understanding of this person.

Try it out whenever you feel the need to judge someone, no matter if it is someone close to you or someone you don’t even know.

By doing so it becomes more natural to extend and use this more understanding and kind frame of mind when you view yourself too. And by behaving in this way towards others you will feel better about yourself and in that way raise your self-esteem too.

By: Henrik Edberg
Source: The Positivity Blog

How to Greatly Improve Your Results

If you want to greatly improve your results in whatever goal you are trying to obtain, there is one thing you can do to make this happen. Before I get into that though, let's take a look at how most people try to achieve their goals. By understanding this, you will see just why the method I am going to tell will work so well. Normally when people set a goal, the excitement is high and the energy level is plentiful. So they go out and start taking massive amounts of action. This is great, but what normally happens after a few weeks or months is that they start going into a passive state of mind. Basically, their intensity level plummets and they find themselves less passionate about obtaining their goals and struggle to continue taking action at the level they were before. So to greatly improve your results, you must increase your intensity. Let's look at an example of this in the world of sports. If you've ever played a sport where you compete head on with your opponent, you will notice that often times you can defeat a person with more skill than you by simply playing at a higher intensity level than they are playing. When I say high intensity level, what I mean is that you are not holding anything back. You are going full out during the duration of the match. I have experienced this myself many times playing various sports. For some reason, whenever I compete with someone who I know is better than me, my intensity level goes through the roof. I will go all out just to be able to keep up with their level of play. The odd thing is that even if they are more skilled than me, I sometimes find myself being able to beat them or at least come very close. In contrast, when I compete with someone who I know I can beat, my intensity level is usually a lot lower. Here's what I am getting at. If you want to greatly improve your results in achieving your goals, you need to increase your intensity, and the way you do that is by seeing yourself as the underdog. Now, as a side note, this won't work for everyone. People who are not competitive by nature, will normally shy away and back down when the odds are stacked against them. So if this is you, this probably won't work. However, you can still increase your intensity simply by revisiting your reasons to achieve your goals in the first place. Those of you who are used to competition and usually play at a much higher level when coming up against someone who is more skilled than you, seeing yourself as the underdog can help you increase your intensity. This is a way to bring out that warrior within you, that winning spirit. It's the voice inside of you that screams, "I will not back down!" When you pursue your goals with that kind of mentality and intensity compared to going at it in a passive manner, you will greatly increase your odds of obtaining your goals. Until next time... Love Life. Do Good. Live Well. By: Kevin Ngo Source: Motivation Well Being

The 5 Best Ways to Praise Employees

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Think your "Employee of the Month" program is a great way to recognize performance?
Think again. Praising an employee should:

• Boost their confidence and self esteem, and
• Reinforce positive behaviors, and
• Reward their effort and accomplishment, and
• Build their motivation and enthusiasm...

Can a special parking spot, or a photo in the newsletter, or a $20 gift card really accomplish all that? Nope.

Here are five great ways to praise employees:

1. Ask for their help. Asking another person for help is possibly the most sincere way to recognize their abilities and value. Why? Asking makes us vulnerable: We admit weakness or need or a lack of skill. Ask employees for help and not only do you show you respect their skills, you also extend your trust.

The key is to ask for help partly or totally unrelated to their function, and to make the assistance relatively personal to you. I once returned from a corporate meeting where layoffs had been discussed. I proposed alternatives to cutting staffing but was unsuccessful. By the time I got back word had already spread throughout the plant that layoffs were imminent. Just before the plant meeting one of my employees said, "So, layoffs, huh?" I didn't have to confirm it; he knew. I said, "I have no idea what to tell our employees. What would you say?"

He thought and said, "Just tell everyone you tried. Then talk about where we go from here."

Simple? Sure. But powerful. Later he told me how much it meant to him that I had wanted his opinion and took his advice.

2. Ask for their ideas. Again, make it somewhat unrelated to the employee's function. For example, don't go the typical, "Do you have any ideas regarding how you can do your job faster?" route. Instead, build off skills or insights they possess to use them in other ways.

Say an HR employee is incredibly organized. Say, "I'm always impressed by how organized you are; I wish we could clone you." Then ask if she has thoughts about how to streamline warehouse processing, or streamline the paperwork involved in hiring new employees, or how another department could handle data collection more efficiently. Not only will you get great ideas, but you also recognize skill and ability in a more meaningful way than simply saying, "Wow, you're awesome."

3. Create informal leadership roles. Putting an employee in a short-term informal leadership role can make a major impact. Think how you would feel if your boss said, "We're swamped... and now we have this huge customer problem. If we don't take care of it we may lose them. Can you grab a few people and handle it for me?"

Informal leadership roles show you trust an employee's skills and judgment. The more important the task, the higher the implied praise and the greater the boost to their self esteem.

4. Do something together. Since you're the boss, you and your employees are on unequal footing. A great way to recognize an employee's value -- especially their value to you -- is to tackle a task together.

Years ago my boss said, "I'm thinking of joining Toastmasters to improve my presentation skills. Would you be interested in joining with me? Might be good for both of us..." I was flattered he asked, flattered he saw me as someone who would someday need great presentation skills....

What you choose to do together doesn't have to be outside of work, of course. The key is to do something as relative equals, not as boss and employee. Unequal separates; equal elevates.

5. Play Priceline.com. Congratulate an employee for a job well done, then let them name their "price." Say, "You did an outstanding job; what can I do to reward you?"

You might be surprised by how simple the reward they choose will be.

Bottom line: Verbal praise is always great, but implied praise can be even more powerful. Asking for help or ideas, putting an employee in charge, dropping hierarchical roles and working together... each is a powerful way to recognize the true value of your employees.

And to show you trust them -- which is the highest praise of all.

By: Jeff Haden

 

Source: CBS Money Watch

5 Simple Principles for Becoming an Expert

There aren’t shortcuts.
Merely direct paths.
Most people don’t take them, because they frighten us.
Things that look like shortcuts are usually detours disguised as less work.
-Seth Godin

For the past month, I’ve been studying people who have become skilled and knowledgeable enough to be called “experts” in preparation for the launch of a new blog.
I’ve interviewed experts, spent time with them and have asked them whether shortcuts exist to becoming an expert (and received some incredible responses like the one from Seth Godin above). I’ve even read books by people who study success and expertise (expertologists?).

Part of me expected to find some secret shortcuts to becoming an expert, and part of me knew better. I’m most interested in how people gain expert-level skills and knowledge on multiple subjects quickly. Being a renaissance man has always appealed to me, as has getting very good at just a couple of things. Both types of expertise are as fascinating as they are useful.

Despite wanting to believe secrets and shortcuts to expertise exist, deep down I think I’ve always known what you probably know too: becoming an expert takes hard work, focus and dedication.
There are certainly ways to become an expert faster than traditional teaching might dictate, but there’s no getting around putting your time in.

The good news is, becoming an expert is much like changing a habit. The fact that secrets don’t exist is a good thing in my book, because we can stop wasting time searching for secrets and start making direct progress towards our goals.

Instead of looking for secrets, rely simply on these best practices for becoming an expert:

1. Realize expert is a relative term.
I’m a big believer in relative expertise. For most purposes, you don’t need to be the world’s foremost expert on something to benefit from what you know. Being expert enough means knowing enough or being good enough to accomplish your goals, however modest or grand they may be.
Someone once told me to think about expertise as a scale from one to ten, not as an absolute. If you’re a two or three on the scale, you’re expert enough to help people who are ones and twos. In fact, you might be better suited to helping beginners than a ten on the expert scale, because you’re closer to their level and better understand where they’re coming from.

2. Learn from books and experience.
There’s a time for learning and a time for practicing. A true expert needs to have both expertise (book learning) and experience (real-world practice).
For example, if you want to become a bodybuilder, all the reading you can possibly do won’t help you actually build muscle (unless they’re really heavy books). On the other hand, would-be bodybuilders who just jump into lifting weights without learning about best practices won’t know time-saving techniques and principles for optimum rep counts, resting time between sets, nutrition, supplements and more.

There’s a balance between learning and doing. Most people spend far too much time doing one or the other. If you’ve been mostly learning, it’s probably time to start doing. If you’ve long been practicing without the results you’re looking for, it’s time to learn more and time to focus, which brings us to point #3.

3. Focus.
Just as Leo advocates for changing habits, focus is a powerful ally for gaining expertise (especially in the beginning).

When you start learning something new, it’s easy to become daunted by everything you have to master to reach your final goal. Instead of just focusing on the very next step you need to take, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the bigger picture.

Focus is critical for two reasons. First, it helps you pay attention to the task at hand so you don’t become paralyzed by the thought of everything to follow. Second, you have to focus so you can ignore all the possible distractions that are always waiting to pull you off your path.
You can follow Leo’s four steps for changing habits to focus on what you need to become an expert:

1. Start very small.
2. Do only one change at a time.
3. Be present and enjoy the activity (don’t focus on results).
4. Be grateful for every step you take.

4. Get outside help.
When I asked productivity coach Charlie Gilkey about whether shortcuts exist to becoming an expert, he pointed out another critical aspect of gaining expertise:

When you look at peak-performing experts, you’ll often see that they have either coaches, involved mentors, or a pack of growth-oriented friends that help them excel. You simply can’t gauge your performance as well as someone external can, and, past the “competent” stage of skill acquisition, it gets increasingly harder to both observe what you’re doing and find quick and easy answers as to how to improve.

At some point, learning and practicing will only get you so far. You need feedback from outsiders to uncover more opportunities for improvement.

5. Make mistakes.
Fear of failure might be the biggest opponent you’ll face on your road to learning new things.
Take something as simple as learning a language. As language hacking expert Benny Lewis explains, people who speak a language learn it. People who don’t speak a language don’t learn it. It’s simple: you need to learn and practice. What keeps many people from practicing a language is the fear of making mistakes and embarrassing themselves.

You have to be willing to make mistakes in order to learn and grow. That’s what practice is. The sooner you get comfortable with making mistakes, the quicker you’ll learn your new skill.

What’s on your wish list to learn and do?
Maybe there’s a skill you’re actively trying to get better at, or maybe you’ve been afraid to get started. In either case, try these five simple principles and see if you can make a breakthrough.
Try becoming a (relative) expert in something you’ve always wanted to learn or do. There are few things as rewarding and fun as acquiring new skills and knowledge that enrich your life.

By: Corbett Barr
Source: Zen Habits

Three Things You Need to Know About Recognition

I can live for two months on a good compliment – Mark Twain

A story is told how one day the great Italian artist Michelangelo happened to overhear a group of people admiring his Pieta, a statue of Christ on His mother’s kneeafter His death on the cross. One man attributed the work to another sculptor, much to the chagrin of Michelangelo, who took particular pride in the Pieta. Returning to the sculpture after dark that evening, Michelangelo carved his name on it so that no similar mistake would occur in the future.

In your workplace, does recognition matter? Is it a motivator? John Baldoni, author of the book, Great Motivation Secrets of Great Leaders, says it does. “It matters a great deal. As mentioned earlier, employees have a strong desire for recognition.” Baldoni summarizes the findings of Catherine Meeks, president of Meek Associates who has conducted thousands of employee interviews. Meeks states, “If I had to pick one thing that comes through to me loud and clear it’s that organizations do a lousy job of recognizing people’s contributions.”

One pitfall leaders face is in giving proper recognition where deserved and having to cater to employees who require a lot of strokes. Dave Ramsey, in his highly acclaimed new book, EntreLeadership, says, “Too many people in business have become so shallow that they are merely transactional, not relational. The people on your payroll are not units of production, they are people.” That is practical advice worth remembering. Understanding the practice recognition and how it impacts your business is important. Consider these three benefits and the difference it can make.

Recognition builds morale. The hard work and efforts of your team are worth praising and recognition is always an investment in your people. Highly motivated people do not necessarily need the recognition, but it does signify that you are mindful of their hard work and that it is appreciated. For others who require more strokes it can be the spark they need to go to a new level.
Dale Carnegie says, “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” Do you want to build morale in your organization? Would you like to see an uptick in productivity? When you recognize team members it builds morale and the environment you create will give wind to your sails.

Recognition breeds loyalty. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your employee- to- employer loyalty quotient? Rensis Likert said, “The greater the loyalty of a group toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals.” Recognition and loyalty go hand-in-hand. If you want to build a culture of loyalty first begin with recognition.

From her employee interviews, Catherine Meeks quotes them as saying, “If my boss would just say thank you, if he would just acknowledge that I exist. The only time I hear anything is when I screw up. I never hear when I do a good job.” That type of attitude will do more to breed contempt than it will ever do to build loyalty. Loyalty is reciprocal and when it is not given it should not be expected. In short, loyalty is a two-way street.

Recognition builds bridges. When you build morale and loyalty within your organization, you are building up the greatest resource you have — your people. What is your R+V=P score? The formula is: Recognition +Value = Performance. In short, a team that is recognized and valued will perform with greater purpose and performance.

Do you need to build bridges to greater productivity, or new clientele? How about building bridges to better relationships in your office? When morale is strong then loyalty will not be far behind. Couple strong morale and loyalty and you now have the winning ingredients to create a climate of excellence.

Who have you recognized today?

By: Doug Dickerson
Source: Leaders Beacon

The Surfer's Guide to Personal Development

A few years ago I wrote an article here about navigating the waters of life.

Surfers have a different relationship with the ocean than most people do. Rather than admire its beauty from the sidelines, we feed off its energy because for most of us it’s a second home. We’re more comfortable in water than on land. It’s much more than a sport, but our calling in life. Every session leaves us with powerful life lessons and today I just wanted to share a few of my most important ones with you.

Live in the moment, but keep your eyes on the horizon

If there’s anything that surfing really teaches you it’s how to be present. When you’re on a wave you really can’t think bout another thing and if you do you will find yourself submerged rather quickly. But, the interesting thing is that you have to keep your eyes on the horizon and anticipate when the next wave will arrive. Life is kind of the same way. We need to live in the moment, while being mindful of our future goals and plans. However if live too far in the future our performance in the presence suffers.

Embrace the Unknown
Every single time you paddle for a wave you’re taking a risk because there’s no telling how it’s going to turn out. You’re either going to take a hard fall or experience the ride of your life. When you do catch that ride every sense of fear, doubt, and uncertainty disappears and you’re overcome by a sense of pure bliss that words can hardly describe. In life when when we’re willing take risks, and step into the unknown we dramatically raise our potential for the possibility of an extraordinary life. Everything you know and are confident in today was once an unknown that required a leap of faith. So embrace the unknown.

Learn to Shake The Wipeouts
If you want to ride waves you have to be ok with the occasional wipeout. In his recent graduation speech at U-Penn, Denzel Washington eloquently said “you will suck a something and you will fail.” That’s just a part of life and once you learn to realize that your failures don’t define you, but build character you can learn to shake the wipeouts.

All It Takes is One Good Wave
Talk to anybody who surfs and they’ll tell you their addiction started with that very first wave. Standing up for the first time is the hardest part of learning how to surf. But once you do, you can never get enough of that rush. Accomplishing anything in life is kind of the same. It might take a while for you to hit your stride, but once you do it will have been totally worth it and all it takes is one major milestone to establish your confidence and keep you pushing yourself to the next level.

There’s Always Another Wave Coming
The ocean teaches you abundance because there is always another wave coming. But if you’re too caught up in the one you missed or didn’t’ catch you won’t be there to catch your wave when it arrives. People talk quite a bit about missed opportunities. When you dwell on the past and the opportunities you missed, you’ll be looking back instead of seeing the opportunity that might be right there in front of you. So don’t sweat it when you miss your chance and believe at your core that there is always another wave coming.

Nature Rewards Patience
When you’re in the ocean you’re on mother nature’s schedule rather than your own. You learn to be extremely patient. In life we have a tendency to want to force the order in which things happen and we end up creating the very resistance that kills our flow. When we become patient and let nature take its course we’re able to navigate the waters of life with far more ease.

The ocean is an incredible teacher. There won’t be a single day that it doesn’t leave you humbled, grateful and slightly wiser.

 

By: Srinivas Rao

Source: Dumb Little Man