- Personal Effectiveness Tips
- Practice getting your point across more succinctly. Leave short, to-the-point emails and voice messages, as this will save you loads of time over the long haul (via not having to return extra calls, avoiding hurting the relationship (or your chances at having one) by leaving a five minute voicemail, etc).
- Remember this about excuses: They only serve as ineffective buffers between reality and ourselves. When you use an excuse, you are essentially trying to deny the unfortunate situation or circumstance you currently find yourself in. Thus, "I'm too old" equates to "I am scared, but I don't want to admit it" and "I'll do it later" means "I am feeling lazy right now." The more excuses we can eliminate, the more we will have to deal with ourselves AS IS. That, my friends, is a good thing, provided we want to grow and learn.
- If you are in a position of leadership, you need to know the difference between being diagnostic and being prescriptive. At times, you will need to spend time to assess the situation based on needs and resources available. At other times, what is needed is decisiveness, and a course of action. Good leaders balance these skills, and know how to fit their style to those that rely on them.
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- Day in the Life
My typical morning starts at about 6 or 6:30, when my two-year-old son, Gable, climbs into my bed and starts whispering, "Wiggles, daddy," as his voices rises to a crescendo. After about five minutes of this, I give in, wake up, turn on the TV for him, and start my day with his smile and a warm hug. The next hour is usually a blur of showering, dressing, reviewing my daily calendar, letting the dog out, eating breakfast, seeing my wife off, and hurrying out to the car to join the morning traffic.
One morning this past week I found myself feeling particularly good about myself, to the point that I even got myself up earlier than usual (even before Gable) and made some particularly pungent coffee to enjoy while sitting in traffic.
Traffic wasn't bad that morning, which I took as another good omen. I made it to work in plenty of time, got some pre-client research done, attended a team practice, as well as a meeting, and then saw two individual clients for therapy. At around noon, I visited the restroom, and when I looked in the mirror, I realized which step of my morning routine I had neglected: hair gel. I had gotten out of the shower and dressed at such a pace that I had completely forgotten to make my hair presentable to the public. Now, anyone that knows me knows that my hair is both thick and wavy when I go more than four weeks between haircuts. So on this particular morning, I looked like a Q-Tip. My hair was both puffy and misaligned, with chunks facing forward, sideways, and backwards. Think Flock of Seagulls meets The Muppets.
The funny part of the story is that I had gone through an entire morning and nobody said a thing to me.
I wonder if those clients will ever return?
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- Reality Check - Self-Esteem Crises
One issue that repeatedly pops up in most all of the work I do is the issue of self-esteem. It seems that, no matter how hard we try, we cannot conquer this issue in our daily lives. Just when we do feel like we figure it out, life seems to find a sudden way of informing us otherwise.
Here's the deal: Self-esteem should never be dependent upon external factors: praise, punishment, weather, weight, height, toe size, presence of facial hair, or the like. When we make our self-worth dependent upon something outside of our control, we are essentially setting ourselves up for an emotional roller coaster ride. If external sources provide us with good feedback, we are lucky, and live another day. If not, however, life gets difficult. We doubt ourselves, question our motives, and compare ourselves to those more fortunate.
Healthy self-esteem doesn't work that way. It isn't dependent on whether our team won, or if the sun came out. Healthy self-esteem comes from within, and starts with an inventory of what we are good at, blessed with, and happy for. It starts with realizing that we can only do the best we can do in any given situation, and no more. It begins with going easy on ourselves, and with not equating mistakes with character flaws, realizing instead that humans err, and often. This is the type of self-esteem that can withstand the harshness of the world and the ugly side of human nature in other people that we may have to face on a daily basis.
Start today to make yourself stronger from within, in order that you won't have to experience a self-esteem crisis every time you mess up, get rejected, or otherwise display human tendencies. While it is true that no amount of affirmations (ala Stuart Smalley from SNL) can replace a good compliment from a friend, it is also true that no amount of kind words from others can help us if we don't help ourselves first.
I mean, how else can you deal with a really bad hair day?
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