Seven Things To Maintain Our Self-Esteem

First of all ...... it's great to be back. I've been technically 'missing in action' due to 4 months of family and personal health issues which I must admit, although everyone can cite times when things weren't going too well, have proved to be a testing period, to say the least.

Although the above gave me a deeper understanding into the term 'running about like a blue (something) fly' it also gave me some time for reflection, which was the subject of our most recent Table of Eight meeting during which I was asked "How do you manage to stay positive after what you've been through recently?"

Well! the answer is simple really. Irrespective of how bad things get .... they could always be worse, right?

I mean, theoretically speaking ... if I lived in north east Japan, or Edinburgh had just experienced 62 tornados as some states in America have recently, or why I had just been asked to appear on a certain breakfast tv show to explain a questionable DNA connection to a female politician ....... any one of those would be much much worse.

So in my reply to 'chair seven' of our table of eight was my top seven recommendations to maintain personal confidence and self esteem.

Seven Things We Can All Do To Maintain Our Self-Esteem (one a day)

The following are my top seven tips for increasing your self-esteem, enhancing your self-confidence, and igniting your motivation. You may recognize some of them - and will probably have others - as things you naturally do in your interactions with other people. But if you don't, I suggest you motivate yourself to take some of these important steps immediately.

In many cases we aren't implementing what we know is best for our personal development. So for most people, even though we all know that there is a tremendous amount to learn, it isn't knowledge that's holding you back.

We need a lot more doing of the right things and a lot less time spent on the wrong things.

Like people trying to lose weight, I think we get caught up in the day to day acivities. We're busy doing stuff, we forget, we procrastinate, we're tempted to do things that are fun, as opposed to doing what will get results and overall, we like the freedom of doing pretty much as we please. Unfortunately if you keep doing this, you'll keep getting what you've always got.

First, develop the art of 'letting the little things go' like forgetting errors in judgement of the past and stop worrying about what hasn't yet happened in the future. I'm not saying don't plan but rather just set your goals and watch them happen.

Second, always greet others with a smile and make eye contact. A smile and direct eye contact convey a confidence born of self-respect. In the same way, answer the phone pleasantly in the office and at home, and when placing a call, give your name before asking to speak to the party you want to reach. Leading with your name underscores that a person with self-respect is making the call.

Third, always show real sincere appreciation for a gift or complement. Don't underestimate or sidestep expressions of affection or honor from others. The ability to accept or receive is a mark of an individual with self-esteem.

Fourth, don't brag. It's almost a paradox that genuine modesty is actually part of the capacity to gracefully receive compliments. People who brag or demand special attention are simply trying to build themselves up in the eyes of others - and that's because they don't perceive themselves as worthy of respect.

Fifth, don't make your problems the centerpiece of your conversation. Talk positively about your life and the progress you're trying to make. Be aware of any negative thinking, then let it go. When you hear yourself criticize someone - and this includes self-criticism - find a way to be helpful and give advice rather than be critical.

The best way to help negative people ...... is not to become one of them! Instead of trying to become 'interesting' spend your time being interested (in others)

Sixth, respond to difficult times or depressing moments by increasing your level of productive activity. When your self-esteem is being challenged, don't sit around and fall victim to "paralysis by analysis."

Seventh, choose to see mistakes and rejections as opportunities to learn. View failure as an event, the conclusion of one singular activity. Observe your shortcomings, but refuse to see yourself as a failure. Failure ..... is a negative state of mind. It may be something you have done, or believe you have done - and it may even be something you'll have to do again - but a failure is definitely not something .... you are.

So ..... makea concious effort to understand what is bugging you and change it .... or at least change your attitude to it.

Even if you're at a point where you're feeling negatively about yourself or events surrounding you, be aware that you're now positioning yourself to make dramatic improvement. A negative self-evaluation, if it's honest and insightful, takes much more courage and character than the self-delusions that underly arrogance and conceit.

I've seen the truth of this proven many times in my work with personal development colleagues.

Quote for the Day: "What you have at the moment .... you have attracted to you by the person you've become!"
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John Wylie MCIPR Director of Public Affairs
Translate Scotland Public Relations & Marketing

When The Going Gets Tough - Part 2

Competition SUCKS! part 2 ........ why and what I believe we can do about it.

With a saturated marketplace and new competition getting in 'the game' every day in life, you often hear things like:

"Why should I buy your whatever when the XYZ company sells it for £50 less?"

"Why should I hire you to sell my house when the ABC company will sell it for 5% instead of 6% commission?"

"Why should I listen to you when say your products or service are the best value for money?"

Want to know what’s even worse about living in this state of competition?

In most cases, you’ll never even get a chance to respond to these objections because people won’t verbalize them to you… those objections often never make it past their subconscious evaluation phase. When you live in competition with others, prospects and customers will ELIMINATE you without a second thought… and they often won’t even know why they’ve eliminated you.

Competing against other people inevitably creates an internal struggle within you… Internal struggle leads to other negative feelings like anger, resentment, inferiority and worse!

If you try to win through competing with others … ultimately, your health and your bank balance will suffer!

You can’t win in this way (nobody can)!

Even if you succeed for a while by competing with others, ultimately you will lose because once you become #1, people naturally try to knock you off… pull you down… or otherwise climb over you in their quest to take the #1 spot.

Unless you possess an unlimited budget, incredible good looks, or psychic abilities that let you see into the future, competing with others is NOT the way to win in life or in business over the long haul! At this point, you probably have a question on your mind (or at least you should)…

"If better, faster, quicker competition isn’t the answer, then what’s the secret to winning?"

Simple! Don’t play the game everyone else is playing… Don’t compete.

Instead… you should "Create!"

Creation - not competition - is the secret to winning in everything you do!

As competition is not desirable ....what really matters is creativity.

Lead don't follow ....and have the greatest respect for anyone who has the courage to lead anything creative or constructive ....

Creation is the process of finding, inventing, discovering or originating something new. It’s doing things in a different, more creative, more beneficial way than others are currently delivering to them.

Creation means coming up with new solutions to existing problems and doing things in a way that immediately separates you from the competition in the minds of your prospects.

In fact, being a creator rather than a competitor, so much so, that they won’t even make a comparison… you stand alone in their minds.

Creation means being different… and people who are different stand apart from the crowd and don’t face the struggles that naturally come along with the inherent pressure from market competition.

Creation means being the only game in town if people want and trust what you offer… and that means a whole lot more sales, more satisfaction, better relationships… and more money!

Creation comes with a price… a price most people are mysteriously NOT willing to pay. But if you pay the price… the world will deliver anything you ask. That’s the price?

In order to create instead of compete you must cut yourself off from the mentality of the 'crowd' mindset and ..........

You must be willing to make mistakes.
You must be willing to take chances and be vulnerable.
You must be willing to open yourself up to criticism.

You must be willing to work through the doubts that will inevitably bubble up from your subconscious mind as you experiment with new and better ways to help others get the results they want.

How do you remove yourself from the crowded arena of competition and get into the fresh air of creation? Simple.

Here’s a 4-step formula for getting out of competition and in to creation…

# Step 1 – Decide

Make a positive decision that you will no longer do things the exact same way, sell the exact same things, just because everyone else does it that way doesn’t make it right… or better…

Earl Nightingale termed it best when he said most people play "Follow the follower." People blindly following the person in front of them… who follows the person in front them… and there’s no leader at the front, just an endless line of followers… doing the same old thing… the same old way… with the same old tools… creating needless competition.

And remember – dare to be different.

# Step 2 – Innovate

Innovation means finding a new use for an existing tool or technique and is simply the process of taking something old and creating something new by taking two seemingly unrelated things, putting them together in a slightly different way thus creating a new solution to a problem.

Innovation means sticking your head above the crowd, doing a complete about-face, and heading in a totally different direction looking for new answers to old problems.

Innovation means being different… it means trusting yourself and your abilities…

# Step 3 - Mix in the “magic” ingredient – YOU!

Decide to always look for ways to inject your individuality and unique talents into everything you do or say.

By embracing all of your your talents, developing yourself as a person, and valuing your contributions – you unleash the new way of creative thinking we ALL possess inside us. You simply create needless competition and struggle when you try to be like others without injecting your own uniqueness into what you do and how you do it.

# Step 4 - Trust

Trust that you do contribute exceptional value and always go the extra mile.
Trust that you can always improve in some small way over yesterday
Trust that everything that happens in your life happens with a purpose and it serves you.

Trust that creation, not competition holds the 'secret' for your eventual success and that, like anything, you’ll get better over time with practice and positive application.

Creativity makes you unique… uniqueness makes you almost indispensable… indispensable people have little or no immediate 'competition'!

John

Quote for the Day: "ImagiNATION is the greatest nation on earth......... you are invited to join that nation"
__________________
John Wylie MCIPR Director of Public Affairs
Translate Scotland Public Relations & Marketing
www.translatescotland.co.uk

"It's what we learn after we think we know it all.....that really counts!"

How To Implement Systems That Will Simplify Your Life

and enable your business to operate without you ..........

Imagine this scenario.................

It’s 09.00am on a Monday morning and you pick up the phone and call your office and say “Hi, it’s me. I’m taking a few weeks off to travel and attend some business meetings. Look after things for me” and hang up.

If you had the right systems in place could you do that?

I would argue that we don’t have to spend a lot of money to build better business systems. However we do need to put in place a method by which the least professional amongst the professionals, the least experienced amongst the experienced can be given a system which will leverage them to produce the results we seek to achieve over and over again.

The answer is simply to give those ordinary people - extraordinary tools (SYSTEMS) with which to work and those tools need to be developed no matter what we do or the true assets of the business (the people) walk out of the door every day.........leaving it empty of capability, empty of commitment.

It has, been suggested that the intellectual assets of any business, are the systems we develop to allow us the predictable results every single time, no matter what activity we are engaged in and if we can drive that technology down and put it within the reach of ordinary people we literally guarantee ourselves, our business
partners and our Clients............ more opportunity and more chance of success.

We are all aware that running a business can be stressful, especially if we're like most business owners: We want/need to have a hand in everything that goes on in the business because we want to make sure everything is done right.

Most seasoned entrepreneurs eventually realize that the long work hours and constant threat of burnout require a change. The key is to implement systems - that allow your business to operate without you physically being there.

It's obvious that the more talented you are, the more creative you are, the more confident you are, the more ambitious you are etc then it is more likely that you will feel that your life is starting to get out of control, that you will start to operate in an inefficient and unproductive way.

One of the biggest mistakes we often make is to volunteer for so many unconnected things ... we say well I can do that, then I can do this and once I'm finished that I'll come and help you then before we know where we are we start to get under pressure to do the things which we would have finished before our latest round
of 'volunteering to help' was over.

The mnemonic for the word SYSTEM is .... Save Yourself SomeTime Effort and Money.

Something we all want .....right?

#1 Make a list of your priorities

Look at the most effective use of your time by asking yourself 'what one or two things - if I could do them today - would have the biggest impact on my business?'.

Chances are you often find yourself so wrapped up in the actual running of your business that you have little or no time to focus on other key aspects of your business, such as seeking out growth opportunities, networking, or building relationships with your clients.

Once you've made a list of your priorities, you know the most important things on which you want to focus, allowing you to leave the less important or low impact other tasks to your employees or outsource to others, leaving you free to FOCUS solely on the high impact, high yield activities.

#2 Be prepared to delegate or outsource responsibilities

For many small business owners, handing over the everyday responsibilities to employees our outsourcing tasks can be a challenge. But, it's essential if you want your business to run without you and if you want time to concentrate on other aspects of your business. You must learn how to delegate responsibilities and
trust that your employees/others will do as good a job as you would do.

#3 Create replicatable systems

Systems are going to allow you to have a more hands-off approach to the everyday happenings of your business. Everyone in your business should have a role in creating systems. For example, if you have a payroll department, even if it consists of only one person, you're going to create a system that allows the payroll
department to run smoothly even if you're not around.

Have the payroll manager sit down and write a list of all the processes that occur each day to ensure the payroll department runs smoothly. That way, if she isn't around, someone can come in, read the payroll department's procedures and do the job in her place.

#4 Create a step by step simplified procedure manual

A procedure manual is essential to ensuring that your business runs smoothly when you're not around. Take all of the processes that were created by you or your employees and compile them into a comprehensive procedure manual that lists every procedure and process that is followed to ensure your business runs smoothly. A stranger should be able to come into your business, read your procedure manual, and know what needs to be done to run the business smoothly.

#5 Train people to work in other positions

As a business owner, you can and probably have worked in every role in your business. While it's important for you to be able to step in when needed, it's just as important that you cross train your employees, so they are able to step into other roles if and when needed.

#6 Be patient and appreciate that it takes time

Systemizing your business so it can run when you're not around is a process. It's not going to happen overnight, so be prepared to take the time that is needed now so that your business will eventually be able to operate without you there.

John

Quote for the day: "Management and Personnel work IN the system, whilst leaders work ON the system".

www.translatescotland.co.uk