Year End Goal Setting Self Coaching Questions

It's the time of the year again where people reflect on what they have achieved the rest of the year. Some reactions include regret (Why didn't I do it?), satisfaction (Thank God I quit that job!), shock (What? Year end already?) and ignorance (I don't need goals to be successful!).

To make personal and professional changes and move one step closer to having your dreams fulfilled, personal reflection is needed. It's like driving a car and looking at the rear view mirror to make sure all is safe and we are on the right track.

One of the most powerful tools to do the above is Self Coaching. Coaching is basically asking powerful questions that make people reflect on their problems or issues and come up with their own solutions. It creates empowerment. Coaching can be done one to one, group or on self.

Below are some powerful coaching questions that can be asked for self reflection (for goal setting);

1. What is the purpose of my life?
2. What makes me happy and fulfilled?
3. What are my strength?
4. How can I use my strength and achieve fulfillment?
5. What are my weaknesses?
6. How will my weaknesses prevent me from achieving my goals?
7. What can I do to control or manage my weaknesses?
8. What do I want to achieve next year?
9. How will I achieve my new year goals?
10. What possible barriers that prevent me from achieving my goals?
11. What can I do to remove or manage the barriers?
12. Who do I need to bring to achieve my goals?
13. How do I measure my progress in term of my new year goals?
14. What makes the goals important to me?
15. What have I achieved so far in my life? this year?
16. Am I happy with my progress? 
17. How can I make myself happier?
18. What kind of system do I need to put in place to help me achieve my goals?
19. How will I reward myself once I achieve my goals?
20. What changes do I need to make to get closer to my goals?

All the best in your year end reflection and may you achieve your goals in 2015.        

The Right Way To Prioritize

When I am conducting time management workshop, one of the tools that I like to share with my learners are the Urgent Important Matrix. This tool is made famous in the classic book by Stephen R Covey titled "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". It is also known as the Eisenhower Matrix.

The main idea in the tool is that we can categorize our activities by urgency (needs to be done now or suffer serious consequences) or importance. By drawing each axis, we have four categories as shown below.

Next, we categorize our activities into each boxes and start tackling them one by one. Start with activities in the urgent-important category first. As for activities in the not-urgent-important box, we need to allocate time for them in our timetable. Activities in the other two boxes can be ignored, delegated or abandoned altogether.

Give it a try and see your productivity improve today.

  

Avoiding Work-Related Burnout

Work-related burnout is a silent killer in the workplace. It is believed to have caused serious long term health problems such as heart disease, hypertension, ulcer and cancer.

What is a burnout? It is basically the physical and mental conditions that are characterized by tiredness, lack of focus, low desire to work and others. If left untreated, burnout can cause serious health problems mentioned above.

Causes of work related burnout include relationship problem with colleagues, overwork, lack of resources, financial problems, poor health  and many others.

How to avoid workplace burnout? Maybe you can try some of the tips below;

1. Be a better communicator at work. Most of problems at work are caused by misunderstanding. Learn to 'read' people better, a good listener and polish your skills to ask quality decisions.

2. Build good work relationship. We spend most of our day time at work the entire week. Having good work relationship will help us to feel appreciated, cared for and loved. These are strong emotions that can be great motivators and killers of work related burnout.

3. Manage time effectively. Multi-tasking is a common thing today. So, on a weekly or daily basis, plan how you will use your time, taking into account not only work related activities but time for families, God, personal development and hobbies.

4. Exercise regularly. One of the best ways to beat work-related burnout is by being physically fit. Activities such as brisk walk, jogging, swimming or cycling 3 times a week will do wonders to your body and guard you against burnout at work.

5. Nurture your spiritual growth. Humans that live for something bigger than themselves normally can withstand many challenges in life. They are found to be more positive thinking, disciplined and motivated. If you feel the symptoms of burnout, maybe now is the time for you to go to that spiritual retreat than you have planned but postponed many times before.  

Traffic Light Technique to Manage Stress

Exposure to prolonged high level of stress can damage our health, lower productivity and affect relationships. One of the fact that we need to accept is that, as long as we are still here on earth, stress is our way of life. The main issue now is how to manage stress more effectively so that we can maintain our productivity at work and home.

One of the simplest method to manage stress is the Traffic Light Technique. It is easy to use, fast and highly effective. It helps us to reorient ourselves and refocus on bigger, more important issues at hand.

Using the traffic light as an analogy, red signals that we need to stop that ever that we are doing at that particular moment that causes us to be under stress. It can be an argument with a colleague, feeling overwhelmed doing that pile of paper work or cursing that driver that suddenly overtakes you in a dangerous manner.

Next, orange means that we need to reorient and refocus ourselves internally. Feel that tense feelings in our body, that fast heartbeat, short breathing or stiff shoulders. Acknowledge that we are now under stress. There is no point in fighting the symptoms. The best way is to feel them inside our body. Once we are aware of them, it signals the brain that we are in control (it takes away the control from our more primitive brain - the amygdala and passes it to our more advanced brain - the neo cortex).

Lastly, green means that we actively do something to let that stress feelings (or symptoms) go. The easiest way is to take several deep breaths, inhaling through our nose and exhaling through our mouth. You will feel you heartbeat slowly going down, your muscles starting to loosen up and a sense of inner peace comes to you. Taking a short walk or doing light stretching are some of the other methods to let go of that stress symptoms.

The next time you feel stressful, remember the traffic light; red - stop, orange - reorient and refocus and  green - letting go of the symptoms by actively doing something.Try it today!

Re-framing Technique To Manage Emotions

The late Stephen R. Covey in his book '7 Habits of Highly Effective People' stated that 'between stimulus and response there is a gap'. This implies that we have choices when it comes to the changes that we experience in the environment.

Some of the changes in the environment requires us to express emotional responses. As we have experienced many times in our lives, emotional responses can be positive or negative. Negatives emotions such as rage, anger, envy and others in the long run hamper our growth, destroy relationships and cause us to be less productive.

The opposite is true for positive emotions such as being happy, energized and motivated can propel us to greater heights. We experience more fulfilling life, are more productive and have rewarding relationship with others.

One of the technique to manage our emotions thus making us be more in control is Re-framing. What is re-framing? It is basically giving new meaning or interpretation for a negative event or experience that switch our emotions from negative to positive.

For example, if a car suddenly overtake us in a dangerous manner causing us to slam the brake, our natural and spontaneous response is to be angry and start cursing the driver. The worst part happens if we 'carry' the anger and vent it to our colleagues and family members long after the incident has happened.

Harnessing the power of choice, we can now re-frame the experience by saying to ourselves that maybe the driver is having an emergency and is on the way to the hospital. Thus, we have switched our emotions from being angry to that of a calmer state. We may even sympathize with the driver.

The good thing about this technique is that we can  use it in any circumstances and it can be done instantaneously in seconds. So the next time you experience something negative or unpleasant, remember that you have a choice on how to response in a more positive manner using the re-framing technique. Start practicing it today.      

What To do When Feeling Down

I am sure you have experienced these before; tiredness, lethargic, unmotivated and unfocused. These are signs that you need to do something to get back on track. Like the wheel, life has its up and down.

However, if the wheel is mostly down all the time, then something needs to be done to put the wheel (your life back in order). Below are some of the tips to get you back on track and feel motivated again;

1. Write the gratitude list. The next time you feel down, take a pen and paper and spend 3 minutes to write 10 things that you are thankful (to God) for in your life. Be specific. If you want more impact, email it to yourself. I can assure you that you will feel better when you read your own email early the next day.

2. Allocate your Power Hour. Power Hour is the time, say 30 minutes to an hour that you spend with yourself, away from your spouse, children, friends and gadgets. Do something that you love during this Power Hour. Personally, I use this time to read Scriptures and motivational books, pray and meditate. Other activities include exercising, engrossed in your own hobbies and others.

3. Take a break. Go for that long deserved holiday, go on a short getaway with your spouse, catch a movie or spend a day in your local library. Go deep sea fishing with your friends and forget about work for a day or two.

4. Surround yourself with positive people. We are like the 5 people we mix the most with. Choose to stay around positive people. These are those that look at life in an optimistic way, embrace challenges and like to uplift one another. They use positive language and seldom talk bad things about other people.

5. Feed your mind with positive messages. Read positive books. Go and watch uplifting movies, play and dramas. Buy motivational cds and listen to them in the car, your office or home. Do not let a little bit of negativity enter your mind.  

Balanced Life

One of the most pressing issues most working adults face today is having a balanced life. Balanced life means a person experiences fulfillment in all aspect of his life be they work, play, love and others.

One of the best ways to know whether we have a balanced life is by performing personal reflection using the Wheel of Life Technique. This technique is used by many professional business coaches to help their clients achieve a more balanced thus fulfilled life.

The technique is very simple. Rank your personal satisfaction by marking on the marks allocated at the wheel. The more satisfied you are, the higher the marks you allocate, the further it moves from the center of the wheel. Finally, connect all the marks and analyse whether your 'wheel' is balanced ie more or less round or imbalanced ie crooked.

Then, make plans to address the imbalances that you have detected from the exercise and take action on them daily.