Self-Improvement Tips For Success

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.  To me, this is one of the most important self-improvement tips to success. To grow myself and the opportunities in business and life I must promise myself to do what I can to be the best “me” in order to be the best for others.
  • Motivation alone is not enough. I heard years ago that if you have an idiot and motivate him, you now have a motivated idiot.  All of us have our motivated idiocy.  That is part of our humanity.  Yet, we have a choice.  We can choose to overcome it.
  • Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.  I love this one than if for no other reason that self-improvement is self-education.  Your fortune comes from living in alignment with who you are with more peace and happiness.  More often than not when you do that, your finances will improve, too.

When I think of self-improvement tips for success, these are ones that immediately come to mind.  There are hundreds of others.  Find three or four that resonate with you.  Incorporate them into your life.

And then start executing and implementing them in your thinking, attitude, and behavior.  You will learn a great deal in the process and when you do you will be implementing my favorite of all the self-improvement tips for success.

Learning with an application is nothing.  It is okay to learn for the sake of learning.  But when you are learning for your own self-improvement you must apply it.  Learning with an application is the miracle process that will take you from who you are today to who you can be and a whole new world tomorrow.

Personal Development and Growth

You will become what you think about most.  This is a powerful statement when it comes to your personal development and growth.  What you think about most becomes the foundation for building your confidence and self-esteem.  And, what you think about most can help to improve your self-confidence or it can diminish it.  So, what are you thinking about most?

As a business coach, who also plays the role of a personal development coach, it is not necessarily easy to answer the question, “What do you think about most?”

I find a way to get something complex and deep started is to simplify it.  It is important to break it down into manageable pieces.  Let’s take a look at what I like to call the 5 Areas of Life.

  1. Spiritual-The spiritual is about how much you are conducting your life in alignment with your gifts and talents, who you are. If you are not, don’t panic or beat up on yourself.  This doesn’t mean that you don’t have a good life.  You probably do.  What it means is, that when you are living your life using your gifts and talents that you and your life will be happier and more fulfilling.  That definitely builds your confidence and self-esteem.
  2. Family-How is your relationship with your family? This is critical. Poor relationships will drain you of energy, focus and the desire to expand yourself and your world.  It is important to get this as right as possible.  It is hard to have build confidence and self-esteem in a constant cauldron of negative relationships.
  3. Business-This is what you do to earn a living. Or, what you do to exist.  The goal here is to be doing things that not only let you survive, but thrive.  An environment where you thrive will accelerate your personal development and growth.
  4. Financial-This is pretty straight forward. Have your income exceed your expenses.  Be a good steward of your money.  And, if you aren’t earning enough money, even if you have good financial habits, you can embark on personal development and growth, which will increase your value and put the odds in your favor of finding something where you will be paid more.  Actually, in the United States, this is the easiest area to change.
  5. Personal-This has three sub areas: The Mental.  The Emotional.  The Physical.  This is the area where you recharge yourself.  When you recharge yourself by focusing your mind on good things and progress, by feeling good about yourself and what you are doing then you are much more likely to create new pathways for your successful personal development and growth and ultimately your successful performance.  The last area, the Physical, is very important to supporting the mental and emotional.  When you feel good about yourself physically it is because you are doing good things for yourself.  The physical serves as an impetus to build your confidence and self-esteem in your thoughts and emotions.  The physical acts as a reservoir that the mental and emotional can draw on.  Take care of the reservoir of the physical and you will have the energy to become all that you can be.

These are five areas that you can focus on to take your personal development and growth to the next level.  Let them guide you to what you think about most.  After all, you do become what you think about most.

Self-Improvement Tips for Success

Your personal development and growth are built directly on the foundation of your self-improvement.  The more you embrace your own self-improvement the greater the possibilities in your business and life.  As a business coach, very often my primary role with clients transitions into that of a personal development coach and personal development coaching.

Today, business owners, executives, and managers have a wealth of information available on systems, processes and what I call the “how to” of how to have a successful business.  If marketing is a challenge there are hundreds of solutions and services.  If manufacturing to higher tolerances is the challenge, there are processes to achieve them.  Regardless, almost anything you need to improve business today can be found.

Yet, there is one area where you can’t call someone in or bring a company to institute a process without your active participation.  And, that area is your self-improvement.  Much has been written on self-improvement.  Some people call self-improvement personal development.  I will use the terms interchangeably here.  Why is self-improvement or personal development critical?

Quite simply, seldom will whatever you want in life exceed your self-improvement or personal development.  The following I have found to be useful guidelines for many clients when I am in the role of personal development coach and do personal development coaching.

  1. Know your philosophy. Your philosophy is how you think.  Your world and your personal development can only become as large as your thinking.  What are the lids of your thinking?
  2. Know your attitudes. How do you feel, your attitude, about what you think?  All thoughts are things.  Every thought has an emotion attached to it.  Thoughts are things.
  3. Activity is the result of your thoughts and how you feel about your thoughts. If you wish for increased activity to accelerate your personal development than you must examine your thoughts and how you feel about them.  If your activity is not leading you to where you want to go then you must re-examine your philosophy and your attitudes.

At this point, to have the activity you want, you must be willing to amend your thinking.  When you amend your thinking and attitudes that is when you can create new habits and activity.  This is where a personal development coach and personal development coaching can be helpful.  It is important to have someone outside of yourself to support you in making the advances you want.  After all, if you are in the picture, it is hard to see yourself as you are.

  1. Results are the accumulation of your philosophy, attitude, and activity. If you wish for different results all you need to do is go back and amend your philosophy and attitude.  In turn, this will change your activity which will change your results.

To bring these four areas together, philosophy, attitude, activity, and results you must have one purpose at the forefront.  You must be willing to take action and to take it consistently and to be persistent.  Learning about your philosophy, attitude, activity, and results are good.  But, without the miracle process of applying, taking action on what you have learned, you will remain stuck.

Take action and the other self-improvement tips for success will transform you, your business and your life.

Aim High

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 soul.”  Robert Kriegel put it this way, “The key is to have a dream that inspires us to go beyond our limits.”  Not only are people short on dreams but even those with dreams often set their sights low enough to protect themselves from failure.

To stay on your course for continuous self-improvement and the benefits that will be attracted to you and your business—AIM HIGH!

Proven Use of Team Roles

Dr. Meredith Belbin defined a team role as “a tendency to behave, contribute an interrelate with others in aparticular way.”

He named nine such team roles that underlie team success. It is important to emphasize that these are not set instone behavioral patterns of individuals, rather these are preferences and attitudes team members will assume in agiven team situation.

Therefore a certain individual might perform a certain role within one team and accomplish a different role within another team. Often however individuals do have a tendency to fill a certain rolewithin all the teams that they are a part of or at least strive to fill this preferred role.

Remember: Belbin asserts that when a team is performing at its best, one finds that each team member has clear responsibilities. Also noticeable is that every Belbin role needed to achieve the team’s goalis being performed fully and well. However it is likely that a team will fall short of its full potential not because skillsare lacking but because the Belbin roles aren’t harmonized across the team.

Balanced Teams

Teams become unbalanced when all team members carry out the same behavioral team role. When team members have similar strengths and weaknesses this can create problems. If the strengths arethe same they may compete instead of collaborate.

With this information in mind, the team leader together with the team can implement the model and investigatethe team members preferred roles as well as explore the roles which are missing.

By understanding your role within a particular team, you can develop your strengths and manage yourweaknesses as a team member, and so improve your contribution to the team.

Belbin’s Team Roles Model

Belbin identified nine team roles and he categorized those roles into three groups:

  • Action Oriented
  • People Oriented
  • Thought Oriented

The nine team roles divided into the three groups are:

Action Oriented Roles:

Shaper (SH)

Shapers are people who challenge the team to improve. The Shaper is the one who shakes thingsup to make sure that all possibilities are considered and that the team does not become complacent.

Implementer (IMP)

Implementers are the people who get things done. They turn the team’s ideas and concepts into practical actions and plans.

Completer-Finisher (CF)

Completer-Finishers are the people who see that projects are completed thoroughly.

People Oriented Roles:

Coordinator (CO)

Coordinators are the ones who take on the traditional team-leader role and have also been referred to asthe delegate.

Team Worker (TW)

Team Workers are the people who provide support and make sure that people within the team are working togethereffectively.

Resource Investigator (RI)

Resource Investigators are innovative and curious. They explore available options; develop contacts, and negotiate for resources on behalf of the team.

Thought Oriented Roles:

Plant (PL)

The Plant is the creative innovator who comes up with new ideas and approaches. They thriveon praise but criticism is especially hard for them to deal with.

Monitor-Evaluator (ME)

Monitor-Evaluators are best at analyzing and evaluating ideas that other people (oftenPlants) come up with. These people are shrewd and objective and they carefully weigh the pros and cons of all theoptions before coming to a decision.

Specialist (SP)

Specialists are people who have specialized knowledge that is needed to get the job done. Theypride themselves on their skills and abilities, and they work to maintain their professional status.
In finding roles for actual or potential team members keep the above in mind. When a person has guidance on what role or roles (you can play more than one at a time) he or she can play for a team they will have clarity. With clarity they can take steps and provide thinking to fulfill their role, thus helping the team. They now have purpose.

And with purpose, it is much easier for a team member to contribute to achieving the team’s goals. Also, I have found this process to be liberating. You have a specific role or roles and you understand, instead of worrying, how you can make a positive contribution to achieving what the team is tasked to accomplish.

Preparation, Failure, Opportunity

The game was tight. The lead had gone back and forth. And, there was a lot on the line. This was the Men’s AAU Basketball championship game for the greater Denver area.

As the time wound down on the game clock our team had the final possession with less than ten seconds left. My team was down by one point. One of us would take the final shot. If it went in, we won. And if it didn’t, all those championship dreams that we had been harboring since the beginning of the tournament a couple of weeks before would be dashed.

I always loved basketball. I was not good enough in high school to make the varsity. Yet, in college, I had grown four inches and had kept playing and practicing. I kept dreaming that someday I would be good enough to play on a high level.

Now I was in graduate business school at the University of Denver and had become good enough to play on a very good AAU basketball team. We trained and worked out daily. The players in our league were either former college players or players who had played professionally at one time. The competition and skill levels were extremely high.

On our team all the starters had been Division 1 scholarship basketball players, the highest level of college basketball, with one exception, me. As we took our final timeout, we knew that one of us would be taking that final shot. Who would that be?

We didn’t know the answer to that question. We would in bounds the ball from underneath the basket and our center, if he had a layup he would take it, if not he would pass the ball out to one of the corners where myself and our other guard would be.

We got the ball to our center and it looked like he was going to be tied up and not get a shot off. With less than five seconds to go, he was able to pass the ball to the corner, my corner. I was over twenty feet away from the basket. I got the ball and started to take a jump shot. I am six feet two inches. Bearing down on me and jumping at me was a defender who was six feet six inches.

As I released the ball all I knew was that he hadn’t blocked it. I did not see the ball’s flight or see what happened after that. He came crashing into me with such force that it knocked me off my feet and had me sliding backwards into the stands.

Both of us ended up in a heap. I could hear the loud cheers of the crowd! Who were they cheering for? Which team had won? What had happened? Then our center and the rest of my teammates were surrounding me, picking me up and congratulating me. My shot, that I never saw, had gone in. We had won the game and the championship.

At the time, I did not realize the impact this moment had on me. I had played and worked at basketball for almost 20 years with a great deal more failure than success. Yet, all my preparation paid off in that moment of victory. There are many life lessons I took away from that game. I had always heard that luck is when preparation meets opportunity. I certainly felt fortunate to make the winning shot, yet it was all my preparation that allowed me to take advantage of that opportunity.

There were more positive impacts over the years, that positively supported me in many areas. First, was the importance of having a great team, not just in terms of ability, but our chemistry where we were willing to blend our individual talents together to create something bigger than any one of us could accomplish on our own, a great team.

Second, was that failures are the necessary stepping stones to success. I came to understand that I am not judged by the number of times I failed. I was cut from more teams than I made. I am judged by my successes and those come from my ability to find a path up from failure and to keep on trying.

I have discovered that when I keep trying in spite of failure, and keep preparing, that I increase the odds of success when the right opportunity comes along. When you do the preparation, you too will find the opportunities to make your game winning shots.

Simplify and Apply

Change, in most instances, is not easy. Why? It presents a whole new set of challenges to the people who have to learn to master it, not to mention, the other who work with them who can be directly or indirectly in the performance of their work be affected by the change.

As we know when we throw a stone in the middle of a calm pond, the waves it creates will wash up on the shore in ways that we cannot see.

To increase the odds of successful change we must simplify it to help those who are going to apply it. To simplify change we must make it something that people can remember and recall how to do it. When change can be remembered and recalled it can be applied. Read more

Stop Drinking The Poison

love yourself“When you truly love yourself, you don’t have enemies. They may hate you but you’re too big to hate them back.” — Tony Gaskins. When you love yourself, you understand that hate is self-destructive. Hate is like drinking poison and hoping that the other person dies.

There is a huge opportunity for self improvement in truly understanding that you must love yourself first. When you do, hate starts to fade away. How do you go about doing this?

Self improvement, or personal development, is about how to change your habits to become the person you wish to be. When you start loving yourself more the consequence is that there is less room for hate. You love yourself more by finding the good in every person or situation, no matter how distasteful.

Practice being a “good finder.” When you do, you will be practicing gratitude. And gratitude is the first step in the path of how to change your life for the better. Hate cannot flourish in an atmosphere of love and gratitude. Read more

Success In Business And Life: Attitude Determines Your Input, Output And Reward

Self Improvement TipsAt 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. Read more