Self Improvement Tips

  Self improvement   does not change things overnight.   It is about small things.   You develop a new skill here or a new discipline there. And it is the accumulation of these over time that yield a positive harvest in the field that is life. When you embrace the process of self improvement there will be  a positive ripple effect throughout your life . First comes internal change. You change your thinking. All change starts from within. Next, when you have  changed your thinking  you are now ready to  change your habits . When you start changing your habits things start to change in our outside world. When you change your habits it will  change your activity. With a change in activity comes a  change in your results. And the change in results brings  change in your life. Self improvement is your own personal elevator. As you rise to the top  you will have to let some people off.  You will have to let go of ways of thinkin...

Any person who is interested in   self-improvement   welcomes hearing any   self-improvement tips for success .  When I hear a tip I may say, “Wow, that is great!  I can apply that immediately.”  Or, “That’s good but it really doesn’t resonate with me.”   Whatever resonates with you at the time are self-improvement tips for success that reflect where you are mentally and emotionally at that particular moment. What are some truths when it comes to  self-improvement tips for success ? Seldom will whatever you want in life exceed your personal development. Choose to self-improve and you will enlarge yourself to where more and better opportunities will be attracted to you. I must be the best “me” in order to be the best for others. I used to say, “If you will be good to me, I will be good to you.”  I had that all wrong.  I was leaving my self-improvement up to a reaction to others.  I was letting them control my self-improvement....

Today, there are many different types of coaches who can fill various needs. There are health coaches, financial coaches, life coaches and the list goes on and on. Regardless of the type of coach you are, all business coaching as well as coaching in the other disciplines does include some aspects of   self-improvement business coaching , self-improvement coaching or as some call it,   personal development business coaching   or personal development coaching. All coaching is geared in some way to your self-improvement and personal development. The one foundational principle behind all types of coaching is this. It is your willingness and ability to stretch. When you stretch you are looking for ways to grow, learn and develop. And when you hire a coach, whether it be a  personal business coach , life coach or some other coach you are saying that you are willing to stretch and, most importantly to be held accountable for the results of your stretching. When you decide t...

John Maxwell, in his book, “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”, talks about the Law of the Lid. In short, the ceiling for your leadership ability will depend on the level of your personal development. All of the 21 Laws are interrelated. So a leadership experience may seem to lean more on one law than another but in truth, there are several laws at work at any one time. In reflecting of the Law of the Lid and its relevance in my life I found my thoughts going back to when I was in Cub Scouts. I was eight or nine years old at the time. In my small town, we did not have a movie theater. The fund raiser for our Cub Scout pack was to sponsor a movie show in the high school gym. My hometown of Chappaqua, New York, which at the time had about 2,000 residents is quite hilly and the school district encompassed approximately nine square miles. To sell tickets to the show, you had to go door to door between houses that could be up to a tenth of a mile or more apart from each other. Also, the...

As a   business coach in The Woodlands   and as a   business coach in Houston  I have seen and experienced timidity. What is timidity? Quite simply, timidity is overly cautious. Timidity or over caution, will keep people on the sidelines when they need to be in the game of business and life. Interestingly, timidity can hold back talented and nice people. Why? A timid person will not take a risk. They always want to have both feet planted firmly on the ground. If you think about it, when you take a step forward, you get out of balance. Timid people love balance. Yet, when you are totally in balance, you cannot move. Very often timid people although qualified will not get the promotion or be offered opportunities to advance. Why? Because others see that stepping out or taking a risk makes them uncomfortable. In my personal business coaching practice, timidity is something that everyone has to deal with at times. Sometimes it is appropriate. But if you let the over cau...

  Do people possessing high self-esteem achieve greater success in life? You may have heard from many people that they want to increase their self esteem. They believe that once their confidence and self esteem is high, they’ll be able to achieve more and greater successes. While that’s a valid fact that high self esteem assists you in achieve all you want in your life, the mistake most of the people make is how they think about self-esteem. It’s not a thing to be increased or decreased! Instead, self esteem is the process of esteeming yourself. In other words, the process of boosting your self esteem starts with thinking of how valuable you are and treating yourself the same. Self Confidence is closely related to self esteem . It is an external behavior that stems from a high self esteem. Self confidence means believing in yourself that you can be effective in the world, feeling able to handle the challenges of the world to achieve goals. So,  how to build confidence and self...

  There is a song by musical group Alabama.  Its title is “I’m in a Hurry to Get Things Done”.  The song begins with the following: I’m in a hurry to get things done Oh, I rush and rush until life’s no fun All I really gotta do is live and die Even I’m in a hurry and don’t know why. There is no doubt that we are in a hurry up world. Between emails, texts, phone calls, zoom calls, face to face meetings, work and just doing the basics of taking care of ourselves and others there is excessive strain.  What happens when the body and mind are subject to excessive strain?  The tension, the worry and the feeling that we must continue to run the race of life at a high-speed wear us out mentally, emotionally and physically. Hurrying and running all the time has an adverse effect on your health. In my  personal business coach  practice in Houston, I encounter the debilitating effect of always being in a hurry with several of my clients. One of the things we coll...

Washing machines help us clean dirty clothes.  Some of the clothes come out perfectly clean.  Others may still have the remnants of a stain that is now barely visible.  And then there are some clothes where the machine, no matter how you well it cleans, cannot remove the stain.  The stain remains visible to where you will decide to discard that piece of clothing. Washing machines are also a great metaphor for relationships.  All of us are imperfect.  We have dirt and stains that need to be cleaned up.  As with washing clothes, our relationships need repeated washings to keep them looking good to where they can perform as we need them to.  In my personal business coaching practice in The Woodlands business and personal relationships are very often dominate over the topics of sales, operations and profitability. Here’s the question:  How effective is your personal washing machine at two things?  Are you able to keep yourself clean and pres...

In the last post I spoke about some of the foundational components to building a strong culture. It is necessary for people to feel safe and to believe they belong to something bigger than themselves. Also, for a culture to thrive it needs a clear mission, vision and an established purpose. As a  business coach in the Woodlands and as a business coach in Houston , a clear sense of purpose makes the possibilities for growth and advancement of an organization much clearer. Why? With clarity comes pointed and focused action. The individuals and teams who make up the culture have a clear purpose. Several years ago, a designer and engineer, Peter Skillman, held a competition to find out the following: Why do certain groups add up to be greater than the sum of their parts, while others add up to be less? To this end he assembled a series of four-person groups at three major universities and a few other places. He challenged each group to build the tallest possible structure using the fol...

  Washing machines help us clean dirty clothes.  Some of the clothes come out perfectly clean.  Others may still have the remnants of a stain that is now barely visible.  And then there are some clothes where the machine, no matter how you well it cleans, cannot remove the stain.  The stain remains visible to where you will decide to discard that piece of clothing. Washing machines are also a great metaphor for relationships.  All of us are imperfect.  We have dirt and stains that need to be cleaned up.  As with washing clothes, our relationships need repeated washings to keep them looking good to where they can perform as we need them to.  In my personal business coaching practice in The Woodlands business and personal relationships are very often dominate over the topics of sales, operations and profitability. Here’s the question:  How effective is your personal washing machine at two things?  Are you able to keep yourself clean a...

A college professor prepared a test for his soon to be graduating seniors.  The test questions were divided into three categories and the students were instructed to choose questions from only one of the categories.  The first category of questions was the hardest and worth fifty points.  The second, which was easier, was worth forty points.  The third, the simplest, was worth thirty points. Upon completion of the test, students who had chosen the hardest fifty-point questions were given As.  The students who had chosen the forty-point questions received Bs.  Those who settled for the easiest thirty-pointers were given Cs. The students were frustrated with the grading of their papers and asked the professor what he was looking for.  The professor leaned over the podium, smiled, and explained, “I wasn’t testing your book knowledge.  I was testing your aim.” An anonymous writer once commented, “Make no small plans for they have no power to stir your...

As a   personal Development coach in Houston   I have the opportunity to work with teams in corporations. In my personal business coaching in The Woodlands, I get to work with small businesses and the teams within the businesses. Whether the organization is large or small there is a desire to have good culture. It has been shown in studies that a strong culture can increase income by several hundred percent! We know that a good culture works. We are generally not sure why it works. But the bigger question is: How do we go about creating it? Like the kindergartners referenced in the last two posts, culture is created by a specific set of interactions. These interactions are based on social skills. In his book, The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle references three keys to building a good culture. 1. Build safety—which through our social signals build bonds of belonging and identity. 2. Share vulnerability—explains how habits of mutual risk drive trusting cooperation. 3. Establish...

  Faucets and drains are two things designed to work together.  Water comes out of a faucet and goes into a sink.  Once in the sink, it flows toward the drain and goes away.  Or you can stop up the drain and let the sink collect water.  As a personal business coach in The Woodlands and in Houston, I look for the faucets in a business such as cash flow, marketing, advertising, operational and financial processes, administrative and management style, and most importantly, the people. And I also look for the drains. Interestingly, there are several ways to look at faucets and drains in business.  A company invests a great deal of money in an advertising program.  The money is the faucet.  It pours out into the advertising program.  The advertising program is wildly successful at bringing in new and profitable sales.  The sink, the company’s cash reserves, start to fill up.  The drain, which is the money going out for advertising, is s...

  There is something I do know. The two most important concepts for a civil, peaceful society to function are to have a clear definition of “what is okay” and “what is not okay. In your own life you determine “what is okay” and “what is not okay.”  For society, “What is okay” has laws, customs and guidelines.  “What is not okay” creates its own law, which in truth is the rule of men and their decisions at the moment as to “what is okay,” not law, along with their own special customs and guidelines.  When “what is okay,” is not enforced, then “what is not okay” takes over.  This is when lawlessness becomes the law. Fear sets in.   And people when people see and feel this, they become scared.  They are not themselves.  They will pander to the fear in hopes of pacifying it and that the threat that is causing the fear will go away.  In reality, nothing is being done to curb the source of the fear.  There is no pushback. Without pushback, wha...

  There is a song by the musical group, Alabama, “I’m in a Hurry.” All of us appear to be in a hurry. Is that something that benefits us?  At times we are in a season of hurriedness. That is understandable.  But, if your whole life is that way I suggest that you are missing many things. The first verse of the song states: “I’m in a hurry to get things done Oh I rush and rush until life’s no fun All I really gotta do is live and die But I’m in a hurry and don’t know why.”   In today’s world being in a hurry can be equated with being busy.  We are busy because we are striving for greater self-esteem, wealth, possessions and property among other things.  But, in looking at my own life and those of my personal business coaching clients I see that excessive hurriedness because we are always busy is a distraction.  We rush and rush until life’s no fun.  And we don’t either recognize or know why our lives are no fun. Being continually busy never gives me...

  Tugboats and trains perform distinct and separate functions in real life.  Tugboats operate on water.  Their mission is to push, nudge and help direct the barges and large vessels that cannot turn very precisely in the confined areas of a harbor.  Trains are designed to pull and transport heavy loads over steel rails to a specific destination. In business, to be successful, you must have both the tugboat and train.  You need people who are tugboats.  And you need people who are trains.  As a personal business coach in Houston and The Woodlands, I have seen successful businesses. the necessity for both over a forty-year career in business. Let’s look first at the train people.  They set a course, they lay down the processes, tracks and they have a clear destination in mind.  They are usually meticulous and very process-oriented.  They want the most direct and shortest path to achieving their business goals. Tugboat people see the same g...

  With the advent of COVID 19, almost a year ago in the United States, there has been a transformation in how we look at ourselves, our relationships, work, and as a society in general.  Where pre-COVID we trafficked in a currency of confidence and a “can-do” attitude we now use the currency of fear.  Fear shuts down connections.  Fear shuts down conversations.  Fear shuts down moving forward.  Fear isolates us.  As social human beings this last one, isolation, is the one that has wreaked the most mental and emotional damage. Fear causes us to grieve.  We grieve because we have lost our sense of normal.  We may have lost loved ones, our jobs, or our homes.  Grief is the death of something.  And fear triggers grief because we have lost our sense of normal and at the same time, as we move forward day by day, we have no sense of certainty about the future.  In a way we are afraid to step out and move forward. Our fears are legitim...

One of the biggest challenges I have seen in my personal business coaching practice and in life over the past year is how to meet the challenge that fear, surrounding COVID represents.  If there were a perfect answer, I would give it to you, and we could all happily move forward.  But there is not. The ultimate goal in business and life is to first survive and then thrive.  Many businesses and individuals have gone from thriving to surviving.  And some have experienced the most feared outcome, death. For myself and my clients, we have fears.  The fears are valid.  Yet how we choose to act on them is our choice.  Once again, if there was the perfect answer on how to react to our fears, I would be happy to provide it.  Unfortunately, there is not. But the philosophy you bring to a fearful situation is critical to putting the odds in your favor of having a more successful outcome.  Notice I said putting the odds in your favor.  I did not sa...

As a   personal business coach in Houston   I have the opportunity to work with teams in corporations. In my personal business coaching in The Woodlands, I get to work with small businesses and the teams within the businesses. Whether the organization is large or small there is a desire to have good culture. It has been shown in studies that a strong culture can increase income by several hundred percent! We know that a good culture works. We are generally not sure why it works. But the bigger question is: How do we go about creating it? Like the kindergartners referenced in the last two posts, culture is created by a specific set of interactions. These interactions are based on social skills. In his book, The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle references three keys to building a good culture. 1. Build safety—which through our social signals build bonds of belonging and identity. 2. Share vulnerability—explains how habits of mutual risk drive trusting cooperation. 3. Establish purpose...

 Holding on to what you cannot change is like wrestling with your shadow. It makes for a frustrating relationship with yourself. The shadow is visible, but you will be continually frustrated and unhappy because you cannot control or change it. In your business and personal world, you must know when you are wrestling with your shadow. Your shadow is all the things you cannot control.   In my personal business coaching in The Woodlands and Houston, very often I have clients that are wrestling with shadows.  I have certainly wrestled with shadows.  My shadows can be doubt, indecision, and timidity to name a few.  They are valid as long as I wrestle with them.  The moment I let go, stop wrestling with them, they lose their power to distort the picture I have of myself and my world. How do I let go?  First, what I am about to share does not always work.  But when you have a method for dealing with your shadows you start having confidence which brings a...