Self Improvement Tips

  Self-improvement is your own personal elevator. As you rise to the top you will have to let some people off. When you focus on self-improvement you are always in transition. As you rise, you must let go of those relationships that no longer serve you and the new person you are becoming. If you don’t, you will end up feeling stuck which eventually robs you of energy and happiness.  Look at your relationships.  Ask yourself, “Who do they have me becoming?”  And then ask yourself, “Is this acceptable?”   If the answer is no, let that person off your relational elevator so you may continue your self-improvement and rise to greater heights. In your personal world, this is easier to do.  But if you take the same approach to self-improvement in the business world you will discover some benefits even though things are more structured, and you have less input into who you are going to be working with. In my personal business coaching practice in The Woodlands and ...

In the previous post we looked at some factors that can take your networking to not working.  Lack of soft skills, people skills is the biggest challenge in today’s fast paced world.  For networking to work we must be effective with others which means being truly interested in them and willing to listen. One of the keys to success in your networking is the culture you bring into every interaction.  Your culture is a reflection of how you think and care about yourself.  Remember, the goal of networking is to build deeper relationships.  If the culture you are bringing is toxic that will not happen. As a personal business coach in The Woodlands and as a personal business coach in Houston I have witnessed with clients the impact their culture can have on relationships.  The first thing you must bring in your culture to others is a sense of safety.  If people sense you are turbulent, angry, totally into your own opinions they realize this is not a...

Let’s assume that you are out and about and networking regularly.  What that means is that you consistently attend the same meetings.  That is good.  It is not possible to build deeper relationships without being consistent in your networking. Yet, things aren’t coming together.  You are spending the time, but you are not getting to have deeper relationships.  As a business coach in Houston and The Woodlands I have had clients who get frustrated.  In fact, over my career I have become frustrated, too.  I join a group and believe that good things are going to happen, and they don’t. The first thing you may do is start questioning yourself.  This starts to bring in doubt.  Doubt, if you are broadcasting it, is not fertile ground for building deeper relationships.  Looking at yourself is a good idea, but over the years as a personal development business coach in The Woodlands and as a personal development business coach in Houston, I ...

If you are looking for the magical concept, the short course that will turn your life around or, to create in a few short days or weeks your escalator to success then this is not the place for you. Self improvement takes the creation of a vision. And, it takes time. With your vision you how have a map for your journey of self improvement. The journey of self improvement demands that you develop new skills and disciplines. If we keep the same skills and disciplines, nothing changes. Self improvement takes time. Thankfully, all of us have 24 hours in a day. Rich, poor, happy or unhappy all of us have 24 hours in our day. The choices we make will either move us forward in our self improvement or hold us back. Self improvement takes effort. There is a story of a man sitting in a small cabin on a cold night. He has a wood stove that is not giving him any heat. He looks at the stove and finally shouts at it, “Give me the heat. Then I’ll give you the wood.” Like the wood stove, in...

At twelve years old I didn’t have a good attitude. I didn’t understand input, output and reward. On this particular day I had a bad attitude. It was normal for this day every year. As a young boy who loved to play there were other things I would rather be doing. Work around the house was not for me. Every Spring my Dad and I would go out on our half acre and clean up the property after the Winter storms. There were always many tree limbs and sometimes fallen trees. We did not have a chain saw and I had to chop all the limbs and trees with an axe. It was very hard work. And here was the worst part. My Dad always picked the first nice weekend day in Spring when all of my other friends were out playing. Oh, did I mention, I hated chopping wood. And once we finished chopping and stacking the wood we had to rake the yard. This particular Spring day was no different than in past years. I wanted to play with my friends and here I was in work prison. This particular morning the more I t...

As we saw in the previous post, the word “network” was first used in England in the 1550’s to describe a finished product, a fish net.  A fish net was a piece of network. When you think about it, a nice piece of network is about catching more fish, and as time went on, bigger fish.  In personal business coaching in The Woodlands and in personal business coaching in Houston , I collaborate with many different business owners and types of businesses.  They are all casting their nets to market their business, and in many cases, to expand it. Some small businesses do not need or want to grow.  Even the owners of these businesses still network.  Yet, instead of doing it to bring in more business, they are doing their networking with their professional contacts, the salespeople and suppliers they deal with, to be able to be on the cutting edge of introducing new products at competitive prices as well as keeping a cost advantage and even supply of the foundational...

Networking is something all of us do in one way or another.  It could be with business associates, the checker at the grocery store and the list goes on and on.  When collaborating with small businesses as a business coach in The Woodlands one of the things that is brought up is networking. Specifically, the owner wants to know if he or she needs to do it.  And, if it is needed, how to be most effective in going about it.  Yet, before we get into whether or not to network, let’s take a look in this post as to the origins of the word networking. Depending on the research, it appears that the first use of the word “network” was in the 1550’s in England.  Some sources say it was earlier.  In any event, the word network comes from two words, net and work. Now the word net, the first half of the word network, has been around since ancient times.  And, it referred to nets to catch fish.  In England, in the 1550’s when someone constructed a net it...