Take Accountability and Take Back Your Power

5 Motivation Tips

To Change or Not to Change – That Is the Question

To Change or Not to Change? That Is the Question

Back in the day it was commonplace to have a job for life or at least stay with the same company for an entire working lifetime. As time has passed, it’s become less and less likely that any of us will stay at the same job, company, or even career for very long.

Most people choose a job because it satisfied their needs at that moment.

For most everyone, there will come a time when their needs or circumstances change and it’s time to leave. Sometimes for a progression in the same career, sometimes to do something entirely different. But how do you know when it’s the right time to change?

How long should we stay doing something before it’s time to move on?

Many people stay because the position ‘pays the bills’ or because ‘it’s easy enough.’ Most stay because they don’t know what else to do, so they resign themselves to a lifetime of mediocrity, in the same position simply because they are devoid of any new ideas.

Is that really any way to spend your life? Waiting for the time to pass until you can retire and do what? Nothing? If that’s where you’re at, it might be an idea to pray for a layoff so that you are forced to come up with something new to do.

No doubt when you started in your current position there was something about the job that you were drawn to. Maybe the challenge? Maybe it was something completely new for you? There was something there that in that moment that you wanted. Has that something gone? If so, now is the time to change.

You Are Not the Same Person You Used to Be

Why should we find a career and stick with it for life? There are so many things we could do, so many new things we could learn. Think about it: just showing up in life causes personal growth. If you apply yourself to any job or career you will also grow from that.

You are not the same person you were 10 years ago. You are not even the same person you were 10 weeks ago, or 10 days ago. Growth comes from experiencing life.

The more you engage with life itself, the faster and more dramatic your growth.

With growth comes awareness and right behind awareness is clarity. You can learn most about your direction for the future by understanding your thinking and decision making in the past.

Making smart decisions and taking effective actions on those decisions can be improved with the benefit of hindsight.

Try these techniques to develop greater clarity:

1. Make a list of all the things you have done in the past. Include your hobbies and things you did just for fun.
   • Figure out what it was you got out of it. Maybe it was the challenge, maybe it was building or creating something, maybe it was in your service to others, or setting something up completely from scratch.
2. Then make a note of what caused you to stop or change direction in each scenario. The past is no indication of our future, but it can be useful to understand our thinking around the circumstances we were in at that time. It can help us make wiser choices for the future.

Are You a Contrarian Thinker?

Do you light up when you get involved in anything new? Do you love helping others? Do you thrive on variety and change? Could it be that you are smarter than you thought and you’re multi-talented? Could you be a contrarian thinker? Is that nearer the truth for you?

It’s important to do what fulfills you, fascinates you, or makes your heart sing.

If you’re not doing that now, then now’s the time to change!

Social Media is Ruining Your Life

8 Reasons the News and Social Media Might be Ruining Your Life

The news and social media are very popular. We love to hear about all the drama of life on the news. Unfortunately, the news isn’t designed to be helpful, it’s designed to get as many people watching it as possible.

We also like to know what our friends, family, coworkers, enemies, and exes are up to on social media. Social media is designed to be addictive. Social media companies want you to stay engaged as long as possible. It’s the best thing for their revenue.

See how the news and social media could be harming you:

1. Your brain focuses on negative news and situations. Your brain is largely preoccupied with keeping you alive. This means it pays extra close attention to negative situations and news. The positive stuff isn’t going to hurt you and is quickly ignored.
   • When your brain is focused on negative information, you’re not going to feel your best.
2. Social media leads to comparisons. Your best friend from high school just bought a brand-new car. Your coworker just bought a brand-new house with a swimming pool. Your neighbor is on vacation in Tahiti. Social media is there to make sure you know all about it.
   • It’s hard not to compare your life to everyone else’s on social media. When it seems like your life pales by comparison, you’re bound to feel negatively about your life.
3. Social media and the news are distracting. Social media and the News are designed to capture your attention. The longer that they are able to keep you and everyone else looking, the more money they make through advertising. Both have the intention of being addicting.
   • It’s not easy to accomplish anything when you’re distracted on a regular basis.
4. Social media and the news are misleading. Most of the people on social media are not being honest about their lives. They’re attempting to present the best possible version of their lives to you.
   • The news isn’t much better. For example, Fox News presents the news in a way that appeals to a conservative audience. MSNBC presents the news in a way that appeals to a liberal audience. Neither does a good job of telling the whole story.
5. They both have the potential to be great time wasters. It’s easy to spend a lot of time scrolling through social media feeds and watching the news on TV. All these activities can be entertaining, but they are rarely productive.
6. Both can be depressing. Social media and the news can lead to depressive feelings. The news is negative because it’s more interesting to watch. Social media leads you to compare your life to those that seem to be doing better than you are.
7. Social media can lead to bullying. Social media provides an easy way to bully others. Don’t believe that this only happens to teenagers. Adults that would normally behave in a responsible manner find it easy to mistreat others while online.
8. Social media has been linked to depression, anxiety, and body image issues. Several studies have shown that social media use can be damaging to mental health.

Consider limiting your news consumption to print or online news where you can pick and choose the stories that are meaningful to you. You’ll save time and your sanity.

Limit social media to your family and closest friends. If you believe that even this level of social media is having negative effects, avoid these websites and apps altogether. You survived just fine without social media for years.

How Do You Know If You Need A Coach

How Do You Know If You Need A Coach?

You will never know just how energized working with a Coach can make you, how sharp and productive you can be, and how much fun you can have in the process, until you have experienced it.

Think about it, has there ever been anything in your life you have made a sensible assessment of while standing on the outside, poking it with a stick?

It’s not possible to make a rational assessment of anything unless you engage with it, explore it, or try it on for size.

Even so, if you haven’t ever worked with a Coach, you may have some important questions about the process.

Here are some of the more common questions:

1. How do I know Coaching will work for me? You don’t. No two coaches are the same, no two clients are the same, and no two issues that can be resolved with Coaching expertise will be the same.
   • Even if your 10 best friends rave about Coaching, you will never know for sure if it will work for you until you try it.
2. Can I afford a Coach? In order to answer this question, it’s important to look at the difference a Coach can make in your life or your business.
   • For example, if your Coach was instrumental in boosting your income by $1000, $2000, or $3000 a month, would cost be an issue? What if your Coach was able to help you add $10,000 a month to your income?
   • This example is not a rarity in Coaching. It happens every day all over the world. It happens to people in all walks of life, in all kinds of different circumstances. It can happen to you too, but you have to make a decision and take action to make it happen.
3. How can I find the right Coach for me? Exactly the same way you found the right house, the right car, and even the right spouse! You went looking! Nobody knocked on your door with the perfect car, house or wife, did they? Nobody is going to come knocking with the perfect Coach either.
   • To get started, determine your criteria for a Coach. Use your contacts to find some referrals.
   • You’ll know the right Coach by how you feel about them AFTER you’ve had some interaction with them, not before.
4. Will a Coach be able to help me? To help you answer this question, find a Coach and talk with them. Find out what the Coach is like, ask them how they like to work, find out if they are familiar with people in your kind of circumstances, and ask them what they could do to help you.
   • Maybe the first Coach you talk to would be ideal for you. Maybe it’s Coach number 5.
   • One thing you can be absolutely sure of, is that there are Coaches who can help you and there are Coaches who have dealt with similar circumstances to yours many times. You just need to find them!

The Bottom Line

Those who hire Coaches are strong-minded characters. They’re going places and getting things done. They might not always know exactly where they are going or exactly what it is they plan to do, but they have a sense of purpose and a commitment to themselves that can be amplified considerably by working with a Coach.

That is why they hire a Coach, to get more out of themselves than they ever thought possible by working on their own.

Ask anyone who has had a great Coach for any length of time if they could have done it on their own, without the help of a personal Coach, and watch their face light up as they tell you it was the very best decision they ever made. Do your research and you can find one like this too!

7 Questions to Ask Yourself

7 Questions to Ask Yourself to Make the Most of Each Day

Each day provides the opportunity to make your life a little better or a little worse. Most of us are too focused on surviving another day, or too distracted, to be focused on the things that matter the most to us.

Asking yourself questions is a great way of focusing your attention and setting your priorities. When you ask yourself something, your brain can’t help but try to answer it. Give it something worthwhile to answer.

Asking yourself meaningful questions on a regular basis can change your focus and your life.

Consider asking yourself these questions:

1. What is the most important thing I need to accomplish? To get the most out of each day, it’s necessary to get some things accomplished. What are the most important things you need to accomplish? How you spend your time determines the quality of your life.
   • Asking yourself this question each morning will give you the chance to design the day around your most important goals.
2. What am I tolerating? We tolerate too much. We’re taught to be tough, indifferent, and tolerant. But all of the things that get on your nerves take their toll after a while. You are the only person that’s going to consistently have your best interests at heart. What are you tolerating?
   • Bad relationship?
   • A stove with a broken burner?
   • A dead bush in front of your house?
   • A terrible boss?
   • An extra 30 pounds?
3. What problems or challenges do I foresee happening in the future? Most of the challenges we face in life aren’t surprises. We can reasonably predict they have a good chance of happening. We’d just rather not address them or even think about them.
   • It’s easier to prevent a disaster than to deal with it. Look into the future and be proactive.
4. What mistakes did I make today? If you never repeated a mistake, it wouldn’t take long before you were a remarkably successful person. Think of how much better your relationships would be. Think of how much better you would be at your job.
   • Identify your mistakes and make a decision not to make them again.
5. What am I grateful for? This question puts you in a great frame of mind. It reminds you that your life is already pretty good. It also gives you the courage to take smart risks. Gratitude is a powerful state to address the world from.
6. What am I looking forward to? If you have something to look forward to, you’ll feel a rush of excitement and enthusiasm. If you don’t have something to look forward to, you’ll realize that you need to make plans to do, see, or receive something exciting in the future.
7. What do I want to change about myself? We don’t come perfect right out of the box. We have to grow and change in new ways depending on what we want to accomplish.
   • Our greatest ability is the ability to adapt. In what ways do you need to adapt so that your world becomes what you want it to be?

How long would it take to ask yourself these questions each day? Five minutes? Do you have five minutes available each day to change your life for the better?

What do you predict would happen if you asked yourself these questions each day?

These questions will make a difference in your life if you use them regularly. Take control of your focus by asking yourself the right questions each day. What are some other questions that you believe would be valuable?

How to Give an Amazing Presentation

How to Give an Amazing Presentation

What’s scarier than spiders and high places? For many adults, the answer is public speaking. According to the National Social Anxiety Center, more than 70% of Americans have at least a mild case of glossophobia, otherwise known as fear of public speaking.

While it’s natural to be nervous in front of an audience, it could also be holding you back in your personal and professional life. Increasing your confidence is the key to raising your visibility and sharing what you know.

With patience and practice you can overcome your stage fright. Try these tips for reducing stress and strengthening your communication skills.

Learning to Relax:

1. Rehearse your speech. Set yourself up to succeed by going over your presentation thoroughly. Ask a colleague or friend to be your test audience. If you’re on your own, practice in front of a mirror or record yourself.
2. Remember your purpose. You’ll feel less anxious if you focus on helping your audience rather than overthinking your performance. Identify your core message and why it matters. Ask yourself what you’re trying to achieve.
3. Straighten up. Your body language counts too. Lift your chest and relax your shoulders. Project confidence by standing tall and avoiding nervous hand gestures.
4. Monitor your breath. Taking deep full breaths will make you feel calmer and happier. It will also enhance the quality of your voice.
5. Enjoy the excitement. Reframe your thoughts. Think of yourself as being energized rather than nervous. Feeling stimulated can help you to appear dynamic and communicate effectively.

Developing Your Presentation Skills:

1. Build rapport. Make it easy for your audience to like and trust you. Smile and maintain eye contact. If possible, arrive early to greet them and engage in casual conversation. Offer to stay afterwards to answer questions and continue the discussion.
2. Start strong. The first few minutes are critical for capturing your audience’s attention. Lead off with an interesting statistic or a question that will stir up curiosity.
3. Tell stories. You can liven up any subject by throwing in some characters and a plot. Draw from your own personal experience or find relevant material in current events and pop culture.
4. Slow down. Do you talk faster when you’re nervous? Pace yourself and insert some meaningful pauses.
5. Limit text. Written notes can be helpful but resist the urge to read extensively because your audience may tune you out. Similarly, keep slides and other supporting materials brief and easy to scan. Consider handouts if you need to provide more detailed information.
6. Recover quickly. What if you freeze and forget what you were going to say next? What if you tell a joke and no one laughs? Embarrassing moments are more likely to be forgotten if you keep your composure and move on.
7. Welcome feedback. Learn from each experience. Hand out evaluation forms and give out your contact information. Watch your audience to see if they’re listening closely or becoming bored or confused.
8. Seize opportunities. Speaking more often is usually the most effective way to strengthen your presentation skills. Start small with a familiar and friendly group, like your book club or the local chapter of your professional association.
9. Find a role model. You can also learn by studying the speaking styles of celebrities or anyone you admire. Watch Ted Talks and YouTube videos. Attend lectures and panel discussions. Experiment with new techniques and adapt them to your own personality.

Your hard work is more likely to pay off if you learn how to demonstrate your knowledge and connect with your audience. Giving amazing presentations will help you to impress others and make the most of your abilities.

10 Things You Can Do

10 Things You Can Do Now That Will Greatly Benefit Your Life in 10 Years

Just think how much different your life would be if you had done a few things differently 10 years ago.

• You could have been saving money for 10 years or learning to play the guitar.
• Exercising regularly for the last 10 years would have benefited your health.
• How profitable of a website could you have built if you had started 10 years ago?

The key to having a great life is to regularly spend time on things that will enhance your future.

You can’t travel back in time, but you can make the most of the next 10 years by taking advantage of these tips:

1. Maintain a healthy weight. Everyone has that skinny picture from high school. However, if you look around, there are far fewer middle-age adults that would be classified as skinny. There are a lot of health issues that can be avoided or minimized by maintaining a healthy weight.
2. Save money. A lack of savings is a major stressor for most people. Just think, if you had just started saving $100 a month 10 years ago, you’d have over $17,000 today. That assumes a 7% return.
   • A little money saved each month can make a big difference over the years.
3. Avoid consumer debt. Most people have to finance a car or home. However, anything else you can’t afford to buy with cash could probably wait. Consumer debt is very expensive and ultimately very stressful.
4. Set goals and reach them. It’s possible to accomplish a lot in 10 years. Setting goals, reaching them, and then setting new goals will result in a very effective and fulfilling decade.
5. Find a hobby that you love. Spending 10 years on a hobby that you love will bring a lot of joy into your life. If your hobby is something like playing the piano that requires a lot of skill, you’ll be pretty good at it after 10 years.
   • Hobbies can also be a great way of making friends and enhancing your social life.
6. Avoid making big mistakes. It’s not too hard to have a great life if you can avoid making any major mistakes. Big mistakes include things like marrying the wrong person, accumulating a huge amount of debt, committing a crime, seriously injuring yourself, and ignoring your health.
   • Some things are difficult or even impossible to unwind, so choose your actions wisely.
7. See the doctor regularly. An annual trip to the doctor can discover a lot of issues before they become serious. This is one of those things that has the potential to be a major mistake.
8. Travel. The differences between someone that has traveled extensively and someone that never ventures far from the familiar is stunning.
   • When you meet someone that has traveled the world, you notice something special about them. They have a wisdom that many of us lack.
9. Read. You can learn an awful lot in a decade if you read good books. The library is free and contains a treasure trove of information and entertainment.
10. Make a budget and stick to it. Everyone needs to be able to create and stick to a budget. Even people making over $10 million a year have outspent their income and gotten themselves into serious trouble.

Ten years is a long time, but it goes by very quickly. Time only seems to accelerate as we age, so the next 10 years will seem to pass more quickly than the last 10 years.

Will you make the most of the next decade? Or will you be kicking yourself for not taking advantage of this opportunity? Your life can be vastly different in 10 years by making a few wise decisions today.

9 Tips to Save Time Each Day

9 Tips to Save Time Each Day

If you have more to do than you have time to do it in, you’re not alone. Regardless of how much society advances with new technology that’s supposed to enable us to do more in less time, there never seems to be enough time to do everything that needs to be done.

But what if you could essentially add another hour or two to your day? How would you use that time?

While you can’t actually add time, you can free up additional time with these techniques:

1. Eliminate unnecessary tasks. Maybe you just have too many things to do! Take a detailed look at your life and determine if there are any tasks that you’re doing that are simply unnecessary. There are bound to be a few things you can eliminate from your life without suffering any negative impact.
2. Delete social media accounts. Social media platforms can be valuable, but they are also great timewasters. There’s also a lot of evidence that social media use can be harmful to your mental health.
   • Consider deleting your social media accounts and picking up the phone once in a while to check in on your friends and family the old-fashioned way.
3. Disable notifications. Do you really need to be notified of every text, email, and app activity in real time? Turn all of it off and take a quick peek every few hours to see if you’re missing something important.
4. Avoid perfection. Some tasks require a high level of attention. Others do not. It’s not necessary to clean out your closet with the same level of perfection as a surgeon performing a liver transplant. Ask yourself how well a task really needs to be done and perform it at an appropriate level of effort and detail.
5. Ask yourself how you can do this task better and faster. Are you sure you’re taking the best route to work? Are you cleaning your house efficiently? Think about every task you do on a regular basis and search for a more efficient way of doing it.
6. Outsource. It’s possible to outsource much of your life. No one can eat, sleep, or exercise for you, but you can pay others to do a lot of things for you.
   • There are people that will clean, do laundry, mow grass, drive, shop, cook, do your taxes, and build your new deck for you.
   • You might even have a partner or children that can carry some of your load.
7. Schedule your day. A decent plan is lightyears better than no plan at all. Think about what you need to accomplish and make a list. Stick to your list and you’re bound to get more done in less time each day.
8. Track your time. Where are you wasting time? How are you spending all of your time? You might be surprised where your time is going if you’ve never taken a hard look at it.
   • Spend a couple of days logging your tasks and how much time you spend on them. Pay particular attention to the time spent on electronic devices and other amusing activities.
9. Consider your mealtimes. Eating takes more time than people realize. You have to shop for the food, cook it, eat it, and clean up afterwards. If you eat three meals a day, that’s a lot of time.
   • Some meals are much quicker than others. A sandwich and an apple eaten on a paper plate is less time and work than roasting a chicken, making mashed potatoes, and washing pots and pans.
   • Shop for foods that are easy to prepare and have minimal cleanup. Also, shop as infrequently as possible. Each trip to the store can take an hour or more.

Everyone gets the same 24 hours each day to live life. Whether your 24-hour day is easy and carefree or extremely busy, it’s also helpful to find additional time to use as you see fit.

You can’t make a day last longer, but you create additional hours by being more effective, more efficient, and reducing unnecessary tasks and responsibilities.

How to Make Yourself Accountable to Yourself

How to Make Yourself Accountable to Yourself

You might be accountable to your boss at work, but are you accountable to yourself? Do you regularly let yourself down or fail to live up to the standards you’ve set for yourself? You’re not alone.

Most people struggle to behave in a way that is congruent with their values and goals. Most people make plans that they never follow or set goals they never come close to achieving.

This is a frustrating and ineffective way to live. There’s no one to hold you accountable if you don’t do it yourself.

Be accountable to yourself and anything is possible!

Follow these tips to master the art of accountability:

1. Keep a to-do list. If you don’t have a plan, you can’t hold yourself accountable to anything. Start each day with a detailed plan of what you want to accomplish. This list should consist of things that need to be done to maintain your life, as well as things that will bring you closer to achieving your goals.
   • The first step to self-accountability is a to-do list that you take seriously.
2. Make a schedule. A list of tasks isn’t enough. When are you going to do each item on that list? What is most important? What needs to be done first? Create a schedule and hold yourself to it. Start each day with a plan.
3. Review your performance. Review your performance each day. You can review at the end of each task or review all of your tasks at the end of the day. Make note of your successes and failures.
   • What can you learn that will make you more effective?
   • What do you feel good about?
   • What embarrassed you about your performance today?
4. Reward and punish yourself as appropriate. When you do well, give yourself a reward. When you’re not performing up to your standards, punish yourself. Most people don’t have trouble thinking of rewards, but here are a few ideas for punishments:
   • Don’t allow yourself to watch TV for a week.
   • Give money to a charity you don’t approve of.
   • Don’t allow yourself to ride your motorcycle for a month.
   • Embarrass yourself publicly.
   • Snap your wrist with a big rubber band.
   • Force yourself to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a week.
   • Make yourself watch a news channel that you despise.
5. Be clear on your goals. Your to-do list is largely dependent on your goals. It’s easy to sit around and accomplish little if you don’t have well-defined goals. You can’t hold yourself accountable without something to hold yourself accountable to.
   • What are your five most important goals? Make a list and review it at least once each day. Be able to recite them without thinking.
6. Have others hold you accountable. Whether you’re training for a marathon or trying to buy your first rental property, let others know your plans. You might be more inclined to take action rather than suffer the public embarrassment of failure.
   • Who will hold you accountable without trying to sabotage your efforts? Who really wants to see you be successful? This person could be a great accountability partner.

It would be nice to be assigned a drill sergeant to hold us accountable each day. Unfortunately, we have to manage ourselves.

What would you be capable of accomplishing if you could hold yourself accountable each day? The sky would be the limit. However, we allow ourselves to get away with regular displays of mediocrity and simply sigh as a response.

Today is the day you can begin to hold yourself responsible in all areas of your life. Be accountable to yourself and you’ll be amazed at what you can achieve!