Self Improvement Tips

  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...

  Grief is everywhere! Our experience with COVID 19 has and continues to bring us grief. In my business coaching practice and in my own life grief is at the forefront. Grief is the loss of normal. Grief is the death of something. In the businesses I collaborate as well as many others I know all of us are dealing with grief. What was normal, the way we did things is gone. And when there is a loss of normal it is replaced by fear. We are grieving because we are fearful about the future. In the United States we are grieving as a society because we miss each other. With COVID 19 we are hearing grief in almost all aspects of our society. Why? We are collectively dealing with the loss of the world we knew. And when each of us is grieving it is harder to connect. Why? We have to become vulnerable to the situation that is causing someone else to grieve and reconcile it with our vulnerability in our situation. When we feel vulnerab...

In the previous two posts we have looked at the fear that is based on indifference and indecision. In this post we will look at doubt. And, like the other fears, doubt has a valid time and place. Yet, if you let doubt rule you, your circle of accomplishment and your feelings of self-worth will be very small. As a  personal development business coach in The Woodlands  and as a  personal development business coach in Houston  I have seen doubt sabotage talented people. When I had businesses of my own, some as large as eighty people, I let doubt creep in and keep me from greater accomplishment. Doubt  is highly personal. It is a fear we generate based on our view of ourselves and our world. It is one the hardest enemies to overcome because it demands that we change our perspective, our reality, on ourselves and our world. If I were to pick one  self-improvement tip for success , it would be to always have  self-awareness  of your doubts. With...