The more courageous you are, the longer you can go

I have some successful friends. Quite a number of them have changed their career a few times, say five to seven times.

When I asked them what have made them to switch from one industry to another industry, or one field to another field, their answers including: freedom, intuition, following my heart…

None of them has mentioned that courage is the one that leads them to their success.

However, for every step of their way, for each career change during their journey, the courage is all over place.

They are brave to take a less travelled road – most of them have studied or worked overseas, not even thinking of the language and cultural challenges during this journey.
They are brave to change to a new field to learn from others, to try new things and take initiatives, not even thinking of the challenges of integration with new team, new boss, new culture and new politics.
They are brave to change their identities for any new jobs they do. They don’t want the past to define who they are. They build their new characters, they keep growing , discover their potentials and express them physically and vocally.

I am grateful to know and have this kind of friends in my life. They enrich my life. They make my life feel meaningful

All successful people have one common trait – they are courageous.

The more courageous you are, the more experience you can gain, the closer you become to your goals, the longer you can go on the road of your career.

Your success and your long career can be measured by the degree of your courage.

So I will challenge you:

if you want to one courageous thing today, what could it be?
If you will go off your comfort zone, what will you do?

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Another area of courage is about decision making.

When you decide to do something, what makes you to do so? Did you hear you are telling yourself to do so because you want to it, or you should do it, or something else?

When your vulnerabilities are exposed to the public, how do you take your next step? Will you make your steps based on your will, your should, or your could?

Successful people do things by telling or feeling themselves to get to do, will do. When “should” comes up, they will sit down and analyze where the should comes from.

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In Summary:

Courage is a choice.

Successful people choose to be courageous.

Courageous means you get to meet all challenges and joy all the way. Courageous means that you make your own decisions and own them

The more courageous you are, the longer you can go on your career.

A New Day

One of my best friends, Linda, comes to visit me.

I am very happy to see her, because she has something that is attractive to me, makes me excited and looking forward to seeing her.

Linda is a lifelong learner, with curiosity, sympathy and determination. She is a strong person, yet you will tell at first meeting with her. Because she speaks softly, with gentle smile and clear voice.

Linda is an Entrepreneur. She does consulting, executive coaching and training. She is also a public speaker.

To many women, Linda is a role model.

Linda has rich working experience. As an executive, she worked for multinational companies in various countries. She has in depth understanding corporate operation and culture.

With Linda’s visit, a New Day starts.

She brings a lot inspiration and encouragement to me.

A New Day is coming.

A toast to 2019

1. Successfully survived with many learning, experience and more connections.

2. Successful relocation.

3. More clear with who I am.

4. I appreciate all the people I have met in 2019. They are all my good teachers.

5. A year of growth in a hurry.

6. A year of confusion world wide politically, led by the UNited States. No more politics in 2020.

7. A year of yoga.

8. A of self care.

9. A year of reading.

10. A year of awaking.

1% better towards to your confidence

English is my second language.

I think my English is good. Yet I am not confident from time to time, especially when some native speakers do not understand what I say.

Today I was chatting with a few friends. When I mentioned there is trivia night in town, they could not understand what I said till I explained and said it the second time.

The problem was my pronunciation with the word trivia. I pronounced “i” in trivia like “ai” in like. That is confusing for them.

However, I don’t feel awkward to chat with them again no matter I make mistakes or not, because they are my friends I feel safe. And this helps me to improve my oral English

My confidence of speaking English shows through 1% better or a tiny bit progress. And this rule applies to my many areas of life.

My goal is to make a little bit progress – 1% better today than yesterday. I believe this tiny little step will compound over time. I will reach my milestones over time.

Successful people are not becoming success over night. Their success come though many hours of dedicated work and creativity.

10,000 hours of work can lead people to become an expert in one area. And every little tiny step adds up to 10,000 hours will turn you, me into a new person with more skills, experienced person.

We will discover our confidence, express the internal confidence through small steps.

1% better is the way to go.

The choices make us who we are

Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you will get.

Someone said this to me long time ago. My interpretation was that our life is colorful, welcome whatever comes to your way.

But, today when this same saying comes to me again, I have new interpretation: we do have choices to choose which chocolates we want to eat.

We do have choices.

We can make our own choices in life.

Scenario one: We face challenges, losses, setbacks. We can choose to face them or to hide them

When we don’t allow ourselves to grieve our losses, wounds, and disappointments, we are doomed to keep reliving them. We do not set us free.

Freedom lies in learning to embrace what happened. Freedom means we muster the courage to dismantle “the prison”, brick by brick. To strengthen our muscles by facing our wounds and vulnerabilities.

Courage is a choice.

Scenarios two: In our daily life, we are hungry for approval, attention, affection. We are hungry for the freedom to embrace life and to really know and be ourselves.

Live a life with presence and appreciation is a choice.

There are many choices in life. We are driving the car of life. Life is beautiful, colorful and tasty. The choices we made become who we are.

Confidence is a choice

One of my friends Ying, who is a coach now, has made seven transitions in her career. She was a consultant, a finical analyst, a startup entrepreneur, a business partner, a freelancer, a general manager. In 2018, she chose to become an executive coach.

When people asked her, were you scared to switch from one industry to another industry? Why you are so confident to move from one career to another?

Ying said, “I look back. What I see is someone pursuing her passion, following her heart, finding meanings in her life. She makes choices that give her energy, give her meaning and get her out of the bed everyday.”

Does this mean Ying’s life has been smooth? It is nothing like that.

Ying has many sleepless nights. And those nights also gave her many rewards to learn, to experience and to grow.

All those years of life experience has made who she is today.

Ying had times when she was intimidated by unknown, by the exposure of her vulnerabilities.

How did she handle these down times?

Ying told me during those periods that she bites her teeth tightly and asked herself to make one small step or one thing each day to make herself feel good about herself. She limited her thinking to make a small progress each day and focused on small wins each day. Surprisingly after a few days she saw improvement.

These began her cycles of upward spiral structural psychology. Whenever she has the churning stomach feeling, she asks herself quietly to go back to the spiral structure. And this has been her secret weapon and source of her confidence.

Confidence is an option we can choose to have.

Confidence is to face our vulnerability, admit, learn from others and move forward.

We are born with confidence. Confidence is us. Confidence is our potential. We have unlimited confidence in us. It’s matter of choice for us to be confident.

I have many ideas and assumptions

Yesterday there are two bright and smart new graduates came to my house for dinner.

I asked them what are their plan after graduation. One has solid plan and plan B for her next step. The other one, claimed with charismatic personality, has a lot to talk.

He talked about his views on the world economic development, what technology can do for the world and it might go. It seems glamorous and grandiose.

Then I asked him, “How these development are related to you, to your situation?”

He seems stumbled with the question.

He is not alone. Many of us including me have many ideas and assumptions. These ideas and assumptions create little value till we form assertions and test them in life.

When we are confident to do things, we know we can test our confidence in action. We do things through trials and errors to get where we want.

Having ideas and assumptions are actually a good start. It may be your step one.

Step two is to form an assertion with them.

Step three is to bring the assertion to test in action.

For example, my assertion is: with the fast pace of technology development, our life becomes busier and may be stressful. People may be stressed out and lost their sense of direction, or even self. Therefore, business coaches or life coaches will become highly demanding in the next decade.

How do I test this assertion?

I will join various networking groups to check the feedback and their needs. Next step is to fine tuning to understand which areas are really people need help for.

With the above knowledge, I can form some tests and go back to the groups for further feedback.

I even can test my assertion online and through social network.

With the review I can get from my tests, I might be able to move some where and get some work done.

In the middle of the road

When you are in the middle of your long march, or long run, what is going on in your mind?

When you are in the middle of your challenge and tough project, how do you feel?

When you start your New Year’s plans many times, what is happening with you in the middle of the year?

We all feel the struggles, the tough challenges we face in the middle of our destinations. The middle road is the period that tests our endurance and grit.

I remember my grandma told me that donkeys are bland-folded when they are milling rice or wheat to prevent them distracted and to increase their focus working.

Sometimes, we need “blindfold” ourselves not to be distracted by social network etc. This is especially important when we are in the middle of the road.

We need focus.

We need endurance.

We need hanging on there a little bit more, a little bit more…

Do you remember that when you workout hard in the gym, your muscles are aching, you are sweating, you body is shaking…

Then you come back to the gym again, again, day after day.

Days turn into months, then years.

You get a good body, a good health and good spirit.

If you have stopped after three days, you will not make a big change to your body, mind and your spirit for long run.

Your reputation creates your habits. Your habits create You over time.

When you have a goal in mind. It calls your determination. It calls your tough mindset. The most important thing is that it calls you to create your New habits.

To create your New habits, you need have a new imagine in mind. And then work towards to the imagine until you become it.

You are I the middle of the road, look the imagine you have had in mind, walk towards it without distraction, one step at a time, one day a time, 1% better a time, you will get through it.

Forget your personality test result now

You are ambitious and want to move forward with your career.

You want to know yourself better, what kind of person you are. You take personality test. The test result states what kind of person you are from different aspects.

Many people trust their personality test results and believe that who they are. Therefore they follow that person described from the test to do things, communicate with others and live their lives.

Now, I want you to forget your personality test result.

I want you find a quiet moment and ask the internal you: what do you want in 2020? What makes you excited? What makes you getting up from the bed every day? What keeps you going even when you feel like quitting? What are the drives?

What do you see yourself look like that gives you joy in 2020?

What do you wear that makes you feel energized in 2020?

Whom are you with that makes you feel inspired in 2020?

Where will you be in 2020 that makes you feel at home?

…

Put all your answers together you will create a new you. A new you with different personality in 2020 will have a new identity, therefore a new personality.

Researchers have shown that every ten years you can change into a totally different person. Your personality will shift different in six months. It could be sooner if there is dramatic changes occurred to your life, such as sudden life change, job change, live environment changes etc.

Your personality is a moving target.

You don’t need to stick with your current personality. You can create a new personality. You are in charge of your identity.

So the action is:

1) answer all the questions above.

2) create a new identity for yourself for 2020.

3) make a daily practice to create a new you!

All the best for 2020!

You will not have happiness everyday and all the time

When you are happy, what exactly you feel?

You feel content, you feel you want to hold the moment forever, you feel you don’t want anything to disrupt and change this moment.

You want to preserve the moment, the state.

“Happiness is simply absence of desire.” James Clear said.

However, happiness is a fleeting. Because we are human. We always have desires and wants.

When we have desire, we have struggles, challenges and failure. We want more, we want to achieve more. As human, it’s natural for us to have desires all the time. It’s in our DNA.

Desires move us from happiness to worries, hope, stress, joy and satisfaction.

We live in a dynamic world.

When we are happy, we need to preserve the treasured moments. Because happiness the space between our desires. They do not last and may not come easy.

This does not mean we should not have happiness. It simply means that happiness is a state. Happiness is not a goal.

Happiness is dynamic. It moves from time to time. It depends on the environment and context you may experience different degrees of happiness.

For example, when you had your first chocolate, you may fall in love with its taste and fell so happy. You become in love with chocolates. You like it. But the degrees of happiness each time you have one chocolate may be different depending on when, where, and with whom you have it.

You will not be happy all the time and everyday. But, you certainly can create more moments in your life to appreciate any happy moments you have.

Here are a couple of tips for creating more happy moments in your life:

1) when you are happy, savor it with your heart, your spirit and your body. Remember how this happiness makes you feel, smell and taste.

2) reflect the peak moments or happy moments you have had when you are down and feel flat. See how can you “repeat” or regenerate it. This can bring you more happy feeling and release some frustrations in your life.

With these two tips, have a happy day!