Category Archives: Self Improvement

How to Have Your Best Year Yet Part 2

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In the last post I started with three questions to ask yourself on your path to having your best year yet.

1.What did I accomplish in the past year? Or what did I accomplish in the last 12 months? You can start having your best year yet at any time.

2.What were my major disappointments?

3.What did I learn?

In my practice, which for the most part is as a personal business coach in The Woodlands, there are different roles I must play to be effective for my clients. Part of what I do is collaborate with them on purely business challenges. That is the business coach role. I may also collaborate with them on personal challenges that can lead to breakthroughs in their business. That is when I do self-improvement business coaching or what some call personal development business coaching.

When focusing on how to have your best year yet all these roles come into play. After all, I believe you must look at the whole situation. It is easy to develop strategies for the business but maybe those strategies don’t fit the leadership style or the person. Then adjustments need to be made as we discover what needs to be addressed. The exciting aspect for my clients and me is that they are not the same person today as they were two weeks or a month ago. When you are involved in the business coaching process, regardless of who you collaborate with, you must be willing to stretch.

So, you have answered the first three questions. I find that these are relatively easy for most people to address. Based on your accomplishments, your disappointments and what you learned, here are the next three.

4. How do I limit myself and how can I stop? This question, to me, is one of the most challenging. You have to take a deep introspective look at yourself and come to an understanding of how you may limit yourself and how can you stop.

5.What are my values? As with the other questions, there are no right or wrong answers here. If is important to define your values. It will give you a mirror into how you conduct your business and your life. It will show you your priorities in how you accomplish things.

6.What roles do I play? This is critical. Identify all the roles you play in your life. Most people are fascinated when they discover all the roles they play?

Once again, write down the answers to these questions. In the next segment we will start putting together the goals to have your best year yet.

How to Have Your Best Year Yet- Part 1

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When you come to the end of a calendar year, it is a wonderful time to reflect on our past year. What did you accomplish? What were our disappointments? What did you learn? These are a few questions that can get you started on reflecting and evaluating.

I have learned over the years in my personal business coaching in The Woodlands and surrounding areas, that this reflection is good to do annually, yet if you truly want to stay on track with your goals, it works even better to do a quarterly evaluation. If you are getting off track, you can more easily alter your course to refocus on your goals. If you get too far off, the difficulty and energy required to get back on track is much greater.

In a way, your life is like a football game. If you divide your year into quarters, you can see how you are doing at the end of each quarter and make the necessary adjustments to win, to achieve your goals. That’s what football coaches do.

At times, a large part of what I do when I collaborate with clients has to do with their personal development in their business. Yes, we find ways to improve processes, hire better people, streamline operations for efficiency, be more effective in our communication in the teams we have, create and execute a better marketing plan and the list can go on and on. To achieve these things, the client has to embrace the idea that self-improvement business coaching will accelerate the process of his or her successful performance.

Quite simply, you and your business will only rise to the level of your self-improvement, which in essence is your personal development. Fortunately, the clients in The Woodlands I have collaborated with over the years understand this. They understand that something has to change on the inside before it will manifest itself on the outside in attaining their goals both business and personal.

To start on your path to having your best year yet ask yourself these three questions as regards your business and life. Why look at your business and life? As a personal business coach in the Woodlands, or anywhere for that matter, I see that there is always a dynamic link between your personal and business life. If you achieve a goal on the personal side, it may have a great effect on the business side and vice versa. Once you have your answers to the following questions, write them down. Writing down your answers increases the odds of taking the necessary actions to have your best year yet. Here are:

1. What did I accomplish in the past year? Or what did I accomplish in the last 12 months? You can start having your best year yet at any time.

2. What were my major disappointments?

3. What did I learn?

Those three questions will get you started. In the next post I will give you three more questions to accelerate your process of having your best year yet!

Are You Willing to Stretch?

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Since 2005, I have been a personal business coach in The Woodlands. Whether you are in The Woodlands, another state or a foreign country, all business coaching is personal. Good business coaching is always about a person or persons, in the cases where I collaborate with and support teams.

Today, there are many different types of coaches who can fill various needs. There are health coaches, financial coaches, life coaches and the list goes on and on. Regardless of the type of coach you are, all business coaching as well as coaching in the other disciplines does include some aspects of self-improvement business coaching, self-improvement coaching or as some call it, personal development business coaching or personal development coaching.

All coaching is geared in some way to your self-improvement and personal development. The one foundational principle behind all types of coaching is this. It is your willingness and ability to stretch. When you stretch you are looking for ways to grow, learn and develop. And when you hire a coach, whether it be a personal business coach, life coach or some other coach you are saying that you are willing to stretch and, most importantly to be held accountable for the results of your stretching.

When you decide to stretch you are saying that you no longer want to be the same today as you were yesterday. Only when you stretch and bring more value to others will your business and life change. It will change because you have decided to improve yourself.

You are like the rubber band. As a rubber band, if you choose to stay in the box or the bag as a rubber band, you are worthless. The only value a rubber band has is when it is stretched. Unlike the rubber band, you have some inherent value. It’s only when you decide to stretch that you become of more value and can hold more of the good things that business and life have to offer.

No matter what type of coach you collaborate with: business coach, personal development coach, personal business coach, self-improvement business coach, life coach, health coach or coaches in other disciplines, be ready and willing to stretch. That’s what the coaching experience is about.

Definitions: Part 6-What a Personal Business Coach May Look at for Your Self-Improvement

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In the last post we looked at the terms symptoms, motivation and vision. When understood all three can provide the fuel for the engine of your self-improvement. In this post, we will look at tolerations, tolerations, strategy, strategize and attraction.These four terms will conclude our discussion on definitions that are central to the success of a personal business coach or a personal development coach and his or her client.

Tolerations:This, in my opinion, is a big one. All of us have things we tolerate. Over the years, in my life and the lives of others I have worked with I have seen the negative effect of tolerations.

To tolerate means to allow the existence of something, to permit or endure something, to put up with something. This implies that the something (or someone) is less than desirable, less than the ideal, and tends to drain a person’s energy. Let me add, that tolerations will also take you off course and can cause you to lose your focus.

A toleration is a situation, a condition, an influence of any kind that is allowed to exist, is put up with, that is less than ideal. A toleration is often a hindering influence.

Tolerations must be vigilantly managed. In fact, tolerations are like weeds. They must be yanked out at the roots. If you have a client with some serious tolerations it is going to be extremely challenging to find a good path to self-improvement.

Tolerations can sabotage the best of self-improvement business coaching. Wherever possible, get rid of your tolerations.
Strategy: A strategy is simply a plan or a method for achieving a specific goal. Referring back to the definition of vision which is about your goals for the future, a strategy creates a road to accomplish your goals.

A strategy can be anything from a way to accomplish a simple task to a way to live life more fully. Strategies generally have several ways they identify and track the goal-seeking process. A good strategy is one that makes use of all available resources.

As a personal business coach finding or discovering a workable strategy for your client is essential for his or her success. This leads us to the next term that I will define.

Strategizing: To develop a strategy, plan, or method for achieving goals. To be of value to your clients as a personal development business coach you must be strategizing with them. And once you have a strategy, continuously review it and alter it as progress is made and circumstances change.

Attraction: The last term we will define is attraction. Attraction is to be drawn to something. Or, I might add, to have something drawn to you. In coaching, attraction is the power and ability to draw people or circumstances to oneself. Being open to acting on one’s intuition allows a person to attract the right clients for the right fit. Likewise, if you are looking for a coach attraction, acting on your intuition will guide you to selecting a coach who is more in alignment with who you are and what you wish to accomplish.

Definitions: Part 5-What a Personal Business Coach May Look at for Your Self-Improvement

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In the last post we looked at the terms shifts, leaps, strengths and their definitions. In this post, we will look at symptom, motivation, and vision. Looking at how these four terms are defined will give us greater insight into what a personal business coach or a personal development coach may need to know to better coach his or her client. These four terms, symptom, motivation, vision and tolerations are key to understanding what is going on your business and life as well as those you may coach.

Symptom:When you think of a symptom very often it is in relationship to health. For example, if someone has a fever it may be a symptom of the flu. Very often symptoms give us a clue to something bigger that we can’t see, yet encourages us to ask more questions and to explore.

What is a symptom? The visible expression of a condition or situation; something that indicates the presences of something else. For example, if my client is speaking very quickly, he or she may be upset or not sure of what to say.

Yes, symptoms are clues. And in self-improvement business coaching, being able to recognize symptoms and to dig deeper to discover what they may be covering is essential to supporting my clients.
Like a good detective, the personal development business coach must see the symptoms, the clues, and then piece things together to solve the puzzle.

Motivation: An incentive or inducement to action. An example may be a client who is working hard at improving his or her communication skills because he or she wants to be promoted.

Notice that motivation is an incentive or inducement. Once the incentive or inducement is no longer available then what? A big part of continuous self-improvement is to always have an incentive or inducement to be your best.
Yet, to have success, motivation alone is not enough. If your intuition and discernment are off and you are not employing your strengths, you could set the wrong goals and priorities. When this happens, you start hurdling down the wrong path.

When you realize that your motivation has taken you down the wrong path what must you do to turn yourself around? You need more education. You must become educated about what brought you to going down this path that is taking you away from your goal of self-improvement. Secondly, you must get more education, or at the least re-educate yourself, so you can create a new pathway to turn yourself around.

Vision: A vision is simply something you see. A personal vision is something seen for the future. It involves anticipation, foresight, perception conception, and desire. It is a scene you create that is your vision of the future.

A personal or business vision is based on wants, needs, values, and goals. A vision may be singular in nature or involve many facets. The greatest value of creating a common vision that you and your client can share is that you both have a clear focus on where you want to be in the future.

With a common vision of the future it becomes much easier to co-create the mind maps that will be needed to take the client to the future he desires. Finally, the power of a vision, the future, is an awesome force. The vision of the future encourages us to become more. Also, it brings purpose to the present. With a clear vision of the future what you need to do in the present becomes absolutely clear.

Take a close look at these three terms, symptom, motivation and vision. Understand what they can do for you and your client. Symptoms can help uncover the true challenges. Motivation will create positive momentum for you and your client to achieve his or her vision. And lastly, but not least important is vision. With a clear vision of the future you will uncover the symptoms to problems that may be holding you back while creating the motivation to accomplish the vision.

Definitions: Part 4-What a Personal Business Coach May Look at for Your Self-Improvement

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In the last post we looked at the terms intuition, discern, solutions and environment and their definitions. In this post, we will look at shifts, leaps and strengths.All the terms we have addressed and defined so far are important. As a personal business coach or a personal development business coach I enjoy seeing shifts and leaps in my clients’ businesses and lives. And, for these shifts and leaps to occur, you must have strengths. So, let’s get started with the first term, shifts.

Shifts:Literally, a shift is a transfer from one place or position to another and includes a change, exchange, or substitution of something. It means to put something aside, such as a concept or understanding, and replace it with another. A shift can be systematic, following an established path of growth, or it can happen suddenly. Shifts are observable in resulting behaviors.

For example, in my personal business coach practice I had a client who was very talented, very bright and extremely impatient. You probably have already guessed that his impatience would end up sabotaging his talent and intellect. You are right. This was exactly what would happen. He would be overlooked for promotions because he was seen as reactionary with some mild displays of temper.

In his youth, he was a boxer. I asked him how he liked to box. He said he always liked to see what the other person was doing and react to it. He liked to be a counter puncher. He was very quick with great reflexes. I asked him if that was successful.

He said that in the beginning it was. Yet, as the competition improved he would lose because he would instinctively react, and everyone knew what his pattern was, so they were ready for him. Interestingly, everyone at work knew what his patterns as a manager were. They knew how he would react.

And very often, after he reacted, he would regret his behavior. We came up with a shift in thinking. Instead of reacting the next time someone says or does something, relax for a moment or a few minutes and then choose your response. Over time he changed from a react and respond leader to a relax and respond leader. This was huge shift. The benefit was that over time he became better liked and more trusted. Ultimately, he became the senior vice president of operations for the international company he was working for. To this day he is grateful for his shift from react and respond to relax and respond. Shifts will absolutely necessary to continuing self-improvement.

Leaps: To leap is to literally “spring” from one point or position to another. It involves jumping or springing over something to get to another place. In personal development business coaching, a leap is sudden and quick, not following a prescribed pattern of growth, and is usually accompanies with dramatic evidence of the leap. Leaps can be made over short or extensive distances. Leaping is the most obvious of all forms of client development that I have observed as a personal business coach. I have seen this in clients in many areas. It is a great reward as a coach to see clients make leaps in self-improvement that take their businesses and lives to a higher level.

Strengths: Literally, strength is the quality or state of being strong, an intellectual or moral force, a source of power, an attribute, or something with great value. Strengths are a collection of attributes, those things that a person excels at doing or has natural ability for. Strengths can be physical, emotional, or spiritual; they are values, skills, talents, attitudes, relationships, resources, and other sources of power, sustenance, encouragement, and satisfaction.

In self-improvement business coaching, identifying a client’s strengths is critical. Ultimately, for the client to be at his best and to give the most of himself he must be spending a large part of his time in his areas of strength.

When clients do not spend time in the areas of their strengths they will feel stuck, overwhelmed and are unlikely to improve. As a personal development business coach, I must identify a client’s strengths and guide them to developing a business and life around them. Yes, it is important to be aware of our weaknesses and to have a way to address them.

Yet, the greatest advances in self-improvement take place when we identify our strengths and design our businesses and lives to allow us to focus on them. When we do, this is a shift in and of itself. And when this shift is made, it leads to more shifts and ultimately leaps for the client to clear the way to greater self-improvement and creating the business and life he or she desires.

How to Build Confidence and Self-Esteem?

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How to build confidence and self-esteem? Very often, this question comes up when you feel that you have reached a ceiling in your personal development and growth. You have reached a point where you are asking is there more to my business and life? To move your business and life to the next level you have to become more. Only when you enlarge yourself will new opportunities find you.

How do you build confidence and self-esteem? Confidence is your ability and belief to take new action. As you know, taking the same actions will yield similar results to what you are achieving now. When it comes to confidence, motivation will get you started but it is the new habit or discipline to that will take you to the next level and keep you going.

Picture yourself driving on an unpaved road where you have to follow the ruts that have been created when the ground is soft. Wherever the ruts take you is where you will have to go. The same is true with your business and life. To experience greater satisfaction and fulfillment you must be willing to create new ruts. Confidence is the ability to create new ruts. New ruts will lead you to new opportunities for personal development and growth.
We have looked at confidence. Now let’s look at self-esteem. Self-esteem is how you believe about yourself. When it comes to trying something new it is very simple. You either believe you can, or you can’t. What you believe you can do is a measurement of your self-esteem. And, your self-esteem will rise as you take new actions and encounter success and failure.

You say, “Wait a minute?” “Failure cannot raise my self-esteem.” If you look at your failures as the necessary stepping stones to learn to be successful on another level then your perspective changes. Without failure we cannot know success. Very successful people fail often and reduce the cycle time it takes to experience success.

The fear of failure may be holding you back. But, something else may be holding you back, the fear of success. The fear that you cannot become the person you must become to have the level of success you desire. You can start today to build confidence and self-esteem. How? Take action. Action cures fear. Action shows you the possibilities. Continued purposeful action will show you the path to success.

Act today and you will build your confidence and self-esteem.

Definitions: Part 3-What a Personal Business Coach May Look at for Your Self-Improvement

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Previously, we looked at needs, wants goals and priorities.  A personal business coach or a personal development business coach also has to bring an aptitude to help the person being coached to better understand themselves internally.  As a business coach in Houston, I believe the following are areas that most coaches, regardless of the category, life coach, self-improvement coach, business coach or some other coaching discipline, use to benefit their clients.  Interestingly, regardless of the type of coach, they are all focused in some shape or form on self-improvement tips that can accelerate the process of your successful performance. This is critical because in the self-improvement business coaching model, all progress starts from within.  The first place to better understand yourself is with intuition.

Intuition:  This is the perception of truth, facts, information, or other input not based on any reasoning process.  It is the ability to have insight into something based on our own inner knowledge and truth, and not on external stimulus.  Intuition is that “little voice from within.”  Here’s what’s interesting.  The “little voice from within” very often counsels and supports our fears.  When our fears are affirmed, rightly or wrongly, they will keep us from taking a path to self-improvement.

The key to intuition and the “little voice from within” is to understand what we are truly saying when we talk to ourselves.  With self-improvement our intuition and what “the little voice from within” is saying to us will change over time as we gain in self-confidence and are on a more certain path.

Discern:  This means to be able to perceive and distinguish between things, usually through intuition or other internal knowledge. It means to recognize contrasts such as good and bad, right and wrong, timely and untimely, truth and untruth, real and false. Discernment is your natural ability to see at times what can’t be seen as well as what you can see and to take a course of action.

To move your self-improvement to the next level be aware of your level of discernment. For example, if you feel that very often you don’t see things coming or are often surprised in ways that are not pleasant, this is a call to up your level of discernment.  After all, only you can protect yourself from you.

Solutions:  The answers and/or solutions to a particular problem, situation, challenge, or dilemma.  For example, a common solution to miscommunication is to clarify what you hear the other person saying.  “Just to make sure I understand.  You said that we are going to meet next Wednesday, not next Tuesday?”

Solutions bring clarity.  Here’s a point that as a personal business coach, personal development business coach, or as a self-improvement business coach that I must always keep in mind for myself and my clients.  An answer is not necessarily a solution.  It is just an answer.  If the answer is something that can be reasonably implemented, then it can become a solution.  Very often an answer is the premise for a solution.

For example, a company wants to reach the next level.  The answer is to increase sales.  The solution is how to go about increasing sales.  In this situation we have an answer, to increase sales.  But, until how to increase sales is defined, we do not have a solution.

Environment:  The environment we are in is critical to our well being and our ability to embrace self-improvement.  In fact, one of the great challenges of personal business coaching is to support the client in creating the environment necessary for his or her personal development and improvement.

Environment can be defined as the aggregate or combination of surrounding things, conditions, and influences, including social, cultural, relational, personal, and professional forces, that shape the life of a person.

In conclusion, when you develop your intuition, you will discern better.  When you do these two things you will come up with solutions more quickly and as you do, you will create an environment that will support your continued self-improvement.  There are many self-improvement tips and ideas and my hope is that the above gives you some insights into how a self-improvement coach in Houston or anywhere in the world can support you in creating the business and life you desire.

In the next post, we will look at shifts, leaps and strengths.  All of which are key markers on the road to your successful performance.

Definitions: Part 2-What a Personal Business Coach May Look at for Your Self-Improvement

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In the previous post, I have shared some of the definitions to bring a better understanding as to what a personal business coach does, or as they are also called, personal development business coaches. Self-Improvement business coaching which is truly what a personal business coach or personal development business coach does can, like any coaching, have tangible and intangible results.  Whether I am business coaching in Houston or outside the area my goal is to collaborate with my clients to see real benefits as well as discovering others that are not so readily seen.

When you have an understanding of the terms and their definitions that coaches use, you will gain insight into how a personal development business coach or a personal business coach may benefit you.

Self-improvement does not happen in a vacuum.  The greatest strides in self-improvement are intentional.  They are intentional in that they require us to reach out and beyond ourselves to obtain the feedback and education to create our personal path to greater growth, satisfaction and happiness.  With that in mind, let’s continue our voyage of self-discovery and understanding with some more definitions.

Needs:  To me, as a personal business coach, the understanding of needs is central to connecting with a person you are coaching.  And, if you aren’t a personal development business coach, your ability to understand your needs will provide an essential key as to what drives you and what path you must take to self-improvement.

Needs are the emotional aspects that drive individuals.  The driving force behind needs is based in a human yearning for wholeness.  Often, needs direct major life decisions until they are met. Needs can also sit on top of, or get in the way of, a person’s clearly identifying their values and living life based on those values.

The kinds of needs I am discussing here go beyond the basic needs for food, air, water, and shelter to the things that person feels they must have.  Notice the word “feels.”  What you feel is emotional and defines your needs and drives you to satisfy them.  For example, one person may feel the need to be accepted.  Another has to accomplish. Needs take many forms such as acknowledgement, to be loved, to be right, or to be cared for.

People have multiple needs.  Yet, to be a successful personal development business coach you must be able to identify two or three key needs of your client.  If you create pathways to meet these needs, you have provided great value on a person’s path of self-improvement.

Wants:  All of us can get our needs confused with our wants. What’s the difference between a want and a need.  Wants, unlike needs, are flexible and/or optional; if you get it, great, if not, you are still okay.  When your needs are met, and your life is oriented to your values, your wants tend to proportionately decrease. For example, a person may want to succeed in business, have a great body, or have a big house.  Since these are flexible, they can change over time.

Goals:  A lot is written about goals and rightfully so.  Goals allow us to create a future and a pathway for our self-improvement.  With a goal, once the future is finished in your mind, then what you need to do in the present becomes absolutely clear.

A goal is the objective of a strategy.  Or, I like this definition.  A goal is a dream with a deadline.  A goal can be very simple or extremely complex. It is the result or achievement, toward which effort is directed:  the aim or end of something.  A goal implies that work (or effort) is involved to achieve it.

Priorities:  If you are to accomplish your goals, meet your needs and satisfy some of your wants, you must have priorities.  A priority is something that takes precedence over something else: something given special attention.  In general, priorities are a set of ideals (physical, spiritual, or emotional), that when grouped together compose the items most important to an individual.  They are considered to be at the top of any list of things to achieve in any area of life.  As an aside, there are many self-improvement tips, self-improvement tips and ideas or tips on self-improvement or however you wish to phrase it.  Yet, without priorities, most people will not take the first step, which is taking action, to enhance their self-improvement.

Moving forward on your path of self-improvement take a moment to write down your needs, your wants and your goals.  Then decide what your priorities are to achieve in each of these areas.  When you do, you will start creating pathways to accelerated the process of your successful performance.

Aim High

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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!