Ten Ideas (Behavioral) that Will Improve Your Life
Modern life has made our lives more complex. In your relentless race against time to earn more, live better, and scale higher in your chosen field, unorganized and stressful life, tension, and other problems catch up with you, thus making it difficult to achieve the most important goal of your life—happiness. Some take a toll on your health and emotional welfare. What’s more, they affect your loved ones and those with whom you share proximity.
However, you can overcome this problem if you change how you look at life. Gradually, day by day, you can change your life. Happiness, peace, and timeless knowledge are the fruits of this exercise.
The ideas I will share with you are the gems that can help you achieve all the fruits of life, and all it takes is a few minutes every day and much practice. Read this passage every day for a week—once in the morning, once during the day, and once aloud before you go to bed. At the end of the week, look back and reflect. You will discover little changes beginning to show. Change is beautiful. Begin now.
1) Self-Reliance
The dignity and pride of doing things yourself are values to embrace and cherish.
The popularity of DIY is proof to this, but DIY should go beyond your plumbing and electric at home.
It is about not bothering others when you can do it yourself. It is about engaging yourself in individual pursuits. It is about being self-reliant. It is about developing yourself into a self-reliant being.
It is about developing muscle to face all situations alone.
2) Anger Management
Anger strains relationships, personal or professional. Anger displays your ugly side to the world. Anger triggers violence. Allowing yourself to be angry allows you to be unhappy.
Managing anger is not about being nonconfrontational or walking away from trouble; it is about looking at the problem positively. It is an opportunity to solve the problem creatively.
Anger has never achieved anything, except more despair, agony, and violence.
3) Self-Examination
Self-criticism is not always negative. Use it as a learning process. This is about putting your actions under the microscope. It is about scrutinizing and investigating your deeds of the day.
Why did you do what you did? Would you do it differently given a second chance?
Learn from every one of your past actions. There are gems to be learned in all these.
Look at yourself as you would someone else. Put yourself on trial, and give yourself a fair trial.
Remember, this is not about punishing yourself for actions past; it is about preparing yourself for actions tomorrow.
4) Don’t Be a Control Freak
Let others do what they were delegated or destined to do. Give them clear guidelines and deadlines… then leave them alone to do what they were asked to do.
Trying to control them only hinders their natural style, making them less creative and, thus, less productive.
Don’t try to rein in them. Instead, watch and enjoy people around you in their natural form, not leashed to perform as your alter ego.
5) Accepting Mistakes
Mistakes, like failure, are the stepladders to success. To make that happen, prepare to accept mistakes in yourself and in others. It shows your humane side, your humility to accept your mistakes, and your graciousness to accept mistakes in others because mistakes are great teachers. Listen, observe, learn hard… and you will never make that mistake again.
6) Listening Effectively
Great listening skills are not a natural gift; they are the hard-earned fruit of practice. Whether you are the audience to a child, a fellow commuter, a client, or an octogenarian who wants to talk, they all demand undivided attention or listening with your heart. Listening is more than keeping your ears open… it is about thinking concurrently, laterally, and on many planes simultaneously.
Listen to outsmart or outwit others, and you defeat yourself.
7) Problem Solving
A problem-solving mind is a well-oiled, well-worked-out, lean, mean machine. It says your mind constantly seeks to solve problems. It challenges status quo. It questions the answers. It looks beyond existing benchmarks, working toward a better way. It focuses, never gets distracted, and rests only when the problem is solved to your highest expectations. Although every generation has its share of innovative problem solvers, you, too, can be one in your way, whether to find solutions to everyday problems or ones that touch all humankind. Remember; someone is toiling to prevent AIDS or ozone depletion right now.
8) Learn from Others
If you don’t learn from others, you don’t learn at all, and if you don’t learn, you are dead.
No one is too young, weak, or different to learn something from. There are lessons to be learned from nature, the seasons, from every little thing around you. Look, observe, feel, study, and you will be richer. Learning doesn’t have to be formal. You learn from others by observing their actions, their lives… and you know from their mistakes that you would have done things differently and saved the day. Keep your eyes, ears, and mind open. Learning from others is continuing education, and it comes free for your lifetime.
9) Time Management
Time management is about effective scheduling of your day and prioritizing tasks. It is about sidelining ineffectual chores and bringing to the fore jobs that require more of your attention and, thus, more time. Put the tasks for the next day in front of you. Prioritize them with the tough ones first. Allocate time for each. Here, it pays to be objective. Start fresh. Stay well within the deadlines you have set for yourself and never miss a deadline because you set the deadline for yourself. Remember, if you don’t manage your time, no one else will. What’s lost is lost forever.
10) Taking Risk
A life without risk is like traveling on a road without landscapes—no pit stops, no check-ins, no nothing.
If you don’t take risks, you don’t challenge status quo. You conform; you accept destiny with eyes closed.
Risks are the salt and pepper of life, and they add dimension and depth to life. If you don’t take risks, you don’t climb the world’s tallest mountain or discover the depths of the ocean. Every challenge for a non-risk taker is an impenetrable wall, a sign to curl up and die, to accept fate with open arms, losing an opportunity to change destiny. Take a few risks. Enrich your life.
Create a powerful day!
Cherry A. Collier, Ph.D., MCC, CNLPMC, RCC, CPCC
Chief Collaboration Officer, Master Certified Executive Coach & Inclusion Strategist
Personality Matters Incorporated provides many services including coaching, leadership, and organizational development. It is Personality Matters, Inc.’s goal to help facilitate the necessary resources and tools to help individuals and organizations grow to achieve their goals.
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Dr. Cherry A. Collier
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