Ask-Corinne-Torres

Strategies 4 success when resolutions don't stick

By the time you read this, you will have made and, quite possibly, already broken a New Year's resolution. It's a fact of life. 

We vow to get in shape, lose weight, quit smoking or reduce our dependence on plastic.  We undertake to earn more, spend less and pay down our debt. Mending relationships at home and at work, are also very high on everybody’s agenda too.  But invariably, we get sidetracked.

Why don’t these resolutions stick? 

That’s because they are based on wishful thinking, rather than commitment.  There is a gap between our intentions and our actions.  Often, not enough time was spent pondering exactly what you hope to achieve in the year ahead, how you plan to do it and where the resolutions fit into your overall picture.

Kick start your detox

There is always an emotional base and unconscious drives to everything we do or don’t do.  It often helps to have a friend who's made the same resolution; so you support each other.  But your reasons for doing it might differ greatly.  To maintain your focus and motivation, here are a few questions to help you discover and harness your unique motivators.

1)   What kind of New Year’s Resolutions do you typically set?  Are your resolutions money, health, self-improvement, or relationship-orientated?

2)   Why do you set these particular resolutions?  

3)   Why are these resolutions important to you? 

4)   What do you hope to gain by achieving these resolutions?  

5)   If you are procrastinating, what is the downside of achieving your resolution? What is the upside of continuing to procrastinate?

6)   Do you believe you will be happier next year on December 31, 2010 if you are successful in achieving your resolutions?

7)   What will you do to be successful?

Strategies to succeed

To maximise your chances of keeping those promises, it is essential to construct a plan of action to focus on.  Here are some insights to develop practical strategies.

• Write down your goals and make sure they are about you. The desire has to come from within for you to succeed.   When the goals are down on paper in black and white you'll have something to refer to later.  It will be easier to adjust as you progress.
• Be realistic and be specific. Rather than; 'I want to lose weight', make it' 'I want to lose 15 kilos, at an average of 3.5 kilos per month, so I get down to my ideal weight of 70 kilos in 16 weeks.   Think long term and take easy small measurable steps.  If your goal is too big or unrealistic, you might be defeated before you get started.
• Work out the nuts and bolts of actually implementing your goals.  You may have to acquire the skills to achieve.  Consider self development courses or working in collaboration with someone else with the expertise you don’t have. 
• Good habits take time but set deadlines and a time framework to reach your goals. Don't try to do too much at once or you're more likely to fail on all counts.
• Part of the change process is setback.  Take a look at past actions.  You may not like what you see but you can learn from mistakes and setbacks. View them as lessons for growth and make adjustments as you go along.  Avoid perfectionist thinking and be overly critical of yourself and present situation.
• Keep a diary of your progress.  Keeping a record (weekly or daily depending on the resolution) of what you've done well and what you could improve on, makes it more likely you'll stick to your resolution.  Put a reward system in place when you reach a milestone or when you keep your focus after experiencing a setback.

New Year's resolutions can be both troublesome and rewarding. Many people make them, but few make a real commitment to them.   Your effectiveness lies in spending time developing goals which truly reflect who you are and in your reasons for choosing and committing to a structured path.

Focus of this blog

How do you take business and corporate effectiveness to the next level?

The answer is simple yet often overlooked. Business and corporate effectiveness rely on personal effectiveness.  By optimising your own personal performance and your employee performance, you are building a long term solution for the challenges you and your corporation will face. Behind every successful home based business or larger company, there are behaviours that drive that success. 

In the next 6 months, I will be sharing my views and clues on performance, in the areas of:

• change management,
  
• leadership training, and
  
• communications and negotiation skills.

This blog is my opportunity to reflect, to crystallise my thinking and to share my knowledge in a format that is the most useful to you.  Stay tuned!

Ever tried to learn a second language?

Have you ever tried to learn a second language only to find that your enthusiasm wanes long before you have a firm grasp of the language? Sounds familiar, then consider this:

As adults we may think it is difficult to learn another language, but how is it that every child learns to speak his own language very well by the age of 6 without the help of books and teachers?

As adults we need to put our analytical mind aside and not get too bogged down by grammar at the beginning.  They are of course important but can be an absolute incentive killer.   After all, children don't learn to read and write when they are learning to speak!  Children learn their first language by mimicking their parents and siblings.  They learn how to form sounds, create sentences, and read non-verbal communication by listening and observing those around them. Picking a second language as an adult is no different.

 

Becoming totally fluent in other languages is a tremendous achievement and very much a personal journey.  When asked to share my own experience, my tip du jour was OBSERVE. By becoming a better observer, I noticed a huge decrease in my frustrations and a corresponding increase in freedom.  Freedom and choice and thus satisfaction in creating meaning and understanding but also in the way I was being understood. My speaking ability seemed to grow more out of a good foundation of understanding than “practice” speaking and which words I used.

Discovering new words is always a fun thing to do but words can limit our perception of the world around us.  For example, Eskimos have some seventy different words for “snow”.  They are able to make distinctions about the quality and structure of snow that are beyond the abilities of most individuals in the rest of the world.  So, if you were going to stand side by side with an Eskimo and chat about the snow, it would be difficult to understand each other without observing, because when you and your Eskimo look at the snow, you do not “see” the same thing.

Let's be honest. Grammar is a dry subject. Learn enough at the start to get you by.  The adult ability to translate, memorize, and practice does not produce as good of results, as naturally learning a language can.  By becoming a better observer, you will unlock your ability to learn naturally. 

Rapport demystified: the key to building trust

As creating rapport is one of the one of the most important characteristics of unconscious human interaction, I thought I would attempt to shed some light on the topic for you. 

Firstly, have you ever considered how different personal and business communication would be, if people knew intuitively how to be “in sync” with each other, or “join” a person in their views or “walk in their shoes” or being “on the same wavelength” as the person with whom you are talking?

 

It's not always easy to “connect” with other people, but it is a useful skill to master.   So, why is creating rapport such a tricky affair?

 

Reason 1: Rapport is a process of responsiveness, not necessarily "liking". 

What does this mean?  Rapport begins when a person gets the sense that he is being understood that he and the other person are speaking the same language.  It does not mean that both parties have to agree.  They can in fact disagree on the outcome of a situation and still be in “rapport”.  What is important is the process, how the exchange between the parties happens, trusting that the content of what is being communicated comes from the best intentions.  Think for a moment about the people in your life whom you consider to be influential.  This ability to influence you and others is based mostly on the trust given by those who believe they are “understanding”.  True, a business deal cannot be sealed unless there is agreement.  But you can only have agreement between parties when there is a mutual trust based on the belief that each party is being understood by each other.  Trust is also a necessary condition in a personal relationship, between lovers, a parent and a child or two best friends. 

Reason 2: Being understood can be a difficult process, as some elements of communication are within our conscious control such as speech and gestures, and some are less obvious, completely outside our conscious awareness, yet very powerful.  These unconscious elements, such as the values you hold, the beliefs you have, your purpose in life, or your own “emotionally-laden” experiences, act like filters, which go on “inside” each of us all the time.  It is common to be confused and find ourselves having to “go inside” to understand what is being said.  This is this ability to “tune in” which allows you to share and receive a great deal of information rapidly without needing to fill in all the missing pieces.  This self-exploration is a valuable process because it assists you in gaining more choices in both behavior and perception, hence expanding the limits on how you feel and how you are understood.

So, how do you create rapport? Creating rapport and having the ability to elicit the belief that you understand is not a lottery.  There are a number of techniques in Neuro Linguistic Programming, you can explore to establish consistency in building rapport.  Beneficial and relatively easy to integrate are learning how to match someone’s body language (ie posture, gesture and so forth); maintaining eye contact, and matching breathing rhythm.  The theory is that effective communication is an integrated process. Communication is 7% words, 38% tonality and 55% physiology. The words you use are important, of course, but the way you use your posture, your gestures, your facial expression when you speak, matter greatly.  You may feel that the person you are talking to, may not "like" the words in your sentences or the tone of your voice whilst in reality, this person may be "responding" to your physiology, to the frowning of you eyebrows, or the lack of expression in your face.

As always, the best way to test the theory, it is to put it into practice!  Experiment by changing the tonality of your voice or your physiology and note the difference in the results you get or the experiences you have.  Change the tonality of your voice by being more conscious of its volume (loudness), its speed (tempo) as well as its tone (pitch).

The thing to remember is when you talk to someone, the desired outcome to effective communication is to be able to establish rapport with the person you are talking to. It's not always easy to “connect” with other people, but creating rapport is a useful skill to master -- for your personal life as well as for your professional one.  It starts with recognizing that each person is different, and by responding to these differences with greater awareness.