Can you state your purpose?…Or is that not practical enough for you?
To have a purpose is to have resolve, determination, and an intrinsic reason to act. It enables intention to meet action so what you do, has meaning. When someone is clear on their purpose, they have a spring in their step, an air of confidence about them that is powerful, unique and engaging. Without purpose, time can stretch so a moment morphs into a day, and a day bleeds into a week and before you know it, you are chunking time in decades or more, and while a lot has happened most of it wasn’t really intentional. It’s so easy to get caught up in the fast lane that you end up getting carried with the momentum of everybody else…so much so that you forget about purpose altogether. It’s how our brains ensure we survive, like a herd of Wildebeests running from danger, all moving in the same direction to limit their chances of being attacked. Much of society and culture is about moving with the herd to ensure survival. The problem with this? if you do happen to get isolated or marginalised, you’ll need your purpose more than ever.
Break-ups are ugly: Why losing your job and being dumped by your partner can feel the same
Right now, there a plenty of people are losing their jobs, facing uncertainty and feeling like their worth has been questioned…and let’s be honest…it has. When leaders of organisations facing challenging times have to make the tough call to let people go, they don’t do it lightly. In fact, regardless of how ruthless some people can be, terminating employment is still up there as one of the toughest conversations you’ll ever need to have with somebody. Nobody likes it, it’s never easy and the person on the receiving end is usually devastated.
How to express yourself without losing your SH!T
Following on from a conversation I had with a client recently, we discussed a uniquely human challenge that all humans face. That is, how do we honestly express ourselves without losing control to the point of yelling, screaming or engaging in a physical display or our emotions. In other words, how can you express yourself without losing your sh!t?
Do you 'Serve' or do you 'Save'?
When working in the human services - I’m talking about psychologists, Human resource professionals, counsellors, executive coaches, or social workers- there is a common thread that unifies them all in what they do; to be of service to others. While this sounds fulfilling, and it is, it’s often confused with ‘saving’ others and as you can imagine there is a huge difference.
Unearthing Your Creative Intelligence
A couple of weeks ago I was a guest on James Barrow’s Podcast, the B-side, which is all about finding insights that help unlock your creative potential. We had a great chat covering a large variety of topics which really got me thinking about creative intelligence or the ability to go beyond what you know to create novel and interesting ideas. During the conversation, James asked me to share something that people don’t know about me. My first response was that I’m pretty open and tend to write about my experiences in my weekly blog so there wasn’t much that I hadn’t already shared. That’s when I remembered a whole chapter in my youth that I’d completely forgotten about, one that was all about creative intelligence and inspiration. If you’d like to listen to the whole episode you can find it here.
Taking the F'ire' out of your feedback
With such massive disruption to the normal flow of work, it’s likely that some of the less ‘urgent’ tasks have taken a back seat over the past few months while the world has been reeling with the spread of COVID-19 and subsequent economic fallout. One of these ‘non-urgent’ but ‘important’ tasks is providing feedback on performance, particularly when performance isn’t aligned with expectations.