Tag Archives: goals

Start your journey to personal empowerment now

You want to be in control of your life, right? Personal empowerment enables you to make positive decisions, and to take action that will bring you closer to achieving your goals and ambitions.

Don’t just talk, make it happen

Thanks to Mind Tools we can start the process of personal empowerment right now. Here’s a summary of the process https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/personal-empowerment.htm

To become more self-empowered, use this four-step process:

• Know Yourself: understand your motivations, and your strengths and weaknesses.
• Identify Your Goals: identify the aspects of your life that are the most important to you, and where you can create meaningful change.
• Develop Your Competencies: focus on the skills or qualities that will allow you to reach your goals.
• Claim Your Space: take your first few steps! Then review and reflect on your achievements so far, and adjust your approach if necessary. If it’s appropriate, seek feedback from the people around you to ensure that you stay on track.

Re-ignite the positive force within you

But how? Personal Empowerment Exercises

The following techniques and exercises can help to support you during the self-empowerment process. Find the ones that suit you, and practice them regularly!
• Journaling . Keeping a record of your progress enables you to see how far you’ve come – and to remember where you went wrong!
• Cognitive restructuring . Challenging the beliefs that underpin a sense of powerlessness can enable you to view your situation in a different light.
• The ABC Technique enables you to see the consequences of negative thought patterns, and to become more optimistic.
• Affirmations . Repeating positive thoughts to yourself can give you a greater sense of well-being and self-belief.
• Exercise . Take a walk. Go for a bike ride. Work out at the gym. When your body feels good, you feel good. And when you feel good, you’ll feel more powerful.
• Find an inspirational role model. Learn how this person overcame his or her own challenges – if they did it, so can you.
• Talk . If you need an instant boost, talk to a supportive friend or colleague and let them tell you how great you are!

We all need to feel empowered so start working on it. If you’re feeling helpless or confused consult a life coach, and Mind Tools has a vast library of courses that assist people to live and work better, empowering lives.

Advice for matriculants: keep dreaming, planning and doing

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Passed? Where to now?

In the past week, I’ve been bombarded by articles on matric results, with people giving their take on how to deal with this never-ending problem and the way forward.
If I’m feeling overwhelmed by all this, what of those poor matrics, having to cope with their success, achievements, failure, the future and joblessness?
Let me add my bit, gleaned from all my article readings…… My advice for school-leavers:keep moving, dreaming, creating and doing…you’re in the driving seat. Three key words: purpose, creative thinking and doing.
1. Agency
“Are we pilots or passengers” asks, Are we just drifting or directing our lives? The word agency is defined as “our power to affect the future” and the writer goes on to say we all have more agency than we think we have and we need to realise this and use it to steer our lives in the direction we want to go.
Using the ideas of Albert Bandura, We are advised to focus on our intentions, vision and purpose for our lives and then use our agency to work towards achieving our goals. We do have the ability and power to make things happen by planning and acting.
So, school-leavers entering the real whole need to be guided in some self-reflection to tap into their own purpose or goal and to plan how to fulfil it in a relevant way.
2. Daydreaming
Another article, based on an education and entrepreneurship report in the UK, focused on the value of daydreaming or “relaxed attention” in exploring alternative solutions to challenges and problems. Our school systems neglect this type of thinking and hence produce matriculants who can’t think for themselves, critically and creatively. This is a key ingredient in developing innovators, entrepreneurs and motivated citizens and engaging them in the social and economic (and yes, political) sectors of our society.
3. Operacy
“From Thinking to Doing” explores the ideas of Edward De Bono, the creative thinking guru. The three aspects of thinking: “what is; what may be; and what can be” are used to show how creative ideas emerge from changing what is already known to a new idea or product. “Finding a different use for an existing product or developing it into something completely different is what entrepreneurship is all about.”
Without detailing the cognitive process, suffice it to say that according to De Bono, “In education we are concerned with literacy and numeracy. That leaves out the most important aspect of all, ‘operacy’. The skills of action are as important as the skills of knowing. We neglect them and turn out students who have little to contribute to society.”

Moving on with purpose, creativity and action

Solution
Change our education system, focus on skills of thinking and action, and we won’t experience this annual crazy frenzy of opinions about the state of education and how students should learn and be taught to become useful and productive. Students would feel more empowered to steer the course of their lives in ways that suit them, their knowledge and skills, their circumstances and their own goals for their future.

And, by the way, everything I’ve said applies to young, old, individuals and businesses too….. have a brilliant 2015!

Putting humanity back into Business

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Putting humanity back into Business

People create businesses, people are businesses, people drive businesses and people break businesses. So why overlook people and the human aspect of business?

This is the information society and we need to change our tactics!
People know more than we think. People have more power than we think. So why should they choose you? It’s time to change how we communicate and connect with our people, change our marketing, advertising and PR practices and change the entire ‘ecosystem’ of our company.

Accessibility to technology and media saturation has informed people and empowered them to engage in the public sphere. If they feel strongly enough about an issue they can garner huge support to oppose or protest against it. The growth of this ‘civic’ power has seen the rise of advocacy and social pressure groups and, their actions could cause losses for a company. Consider, for example, the role of anti-alcohol-abuse groups to bring about a ban on alcohol advertising in SA.
Big business is beginning to acknowledge its interdependence with other groups; it can’t act irresponsibly or unethically and not be accountable – what it does affects others and if it impacts negatively on them, there could be negative consequences. Hence, as companies are part of society, they should act like social and economic entities, become corporate citizens and change how they do things.
To survive as part of a greater system: A business or organization should focus mindfully on the following:

1. Know why it exists. Get to its ‘source’ and develop a goal and values-driven mission which must be turned into a written statement by which it conducts itself. If a mission statement is only about sales and profit, customers will go to someone who CARES. It has been proven that people support companies not only for their prices, they choose them because they understand them and their needs.

2. Do some research and planning to develop strategies, objectives and tactics to guide your communication (SWOT and PEST analysis will help to set you on the right path). There is nothing haphazard about PR and integrated marketing communication. Plan and strategize to achieve your goals.

3. Develop an identity and brand that is unique to you and your goals, is recognisable & memorable. Based on cognitive psychology, visuals like logos and slogans can attract people and create associations that are positive, based on their own good experiences which are often emotional not rational.

4. Identify its key target groups or stakeholders, not only customers, but community, media and environmental groups. Understand them and their needs and connect with them based on this knowledge. Ask what information they need about your product and your company. And use all platforms, traditional and online, to share relevant and focussed information with them.

5. Connect proactively with your stakeholders or targets. Engage with key target groups thru’ managing the flow of relevant information sharing (not giving) to build relationships and reputation. Don’t engage in ad hoc marketing communication activities. It’s an ongoing dialogue to influence the perceptions people have of your company which impacts your image and company reputation.

6. Keep communicating, creating ‘stories’ for exposure, identification and image. Position your company within the stories. Add to the narrative regularly so as to attract attention and convince them of what makes you different from others and tell what you have been doing to make their perceptions of you better, or their lives better.
7. Manage your reputation – thru’ messages, behaviour, employees, CSR et cetera. Use the media (editorial not adverts) to create news and publicity about you and what you do. If people perceive you in a good light, your image improves and your reputation grows stronger.

8. Keep all the pieces of the Marketing Mix together. Plan for integrated campaigns that ensure that you speak with ONE voice and your products and services uphold your promises. Your actions and communication must be in unison. Contradictions confuse people. Don’t try to pull the wool over their eyes by giving information for your own ends, rather share it collaboratively. No longer are companies seen as the owners of information – there are no ‘fundis’ – everybody is a learner and a teacher.

Today people can access whatever information they want about a product or service and they can verify the information gathered. They ‘google’ a product or service, get thousands of companies doing similar things. But what makes them choose one and not the other?
Do things differently and see the difference!