Arlene’s Executive Leadership Tips

Creating your Vision

Where are you today?

1. Find a place where you can totally relax, feel safe and will have no interruptions. Be prepared to spend at least an hour on this part of the process. 
2. Start to think about what is and what is not working in your life and career.  Ask yourself what inner knowledge has been poking at you.  It is important to think of this as an inventory that you are taking on all areas of your life. Some suggestions are: career, family, social life, physical and mental well being, and finances. My book, “Say It See It Be It:  How visions & Affirmations Will Change Your Life” has a vision wheel that can help you with this process.  
3. Use a writing journal to write everything down. This process requires you to be totally honest with yourself and feel the uncomfortable feelings that will come up.  Remember your working on creating a whole new way of living.  

Where do you want to be?

The first commitment in vision creation is to learn how to think “BIG”. 

 The bigger you think the better chance you have in creating what you truly desire

1. Now it is time to ask what life would look like without the things that are not working.
2. Be very detailed about how each area will look. Use your journal to write every detail about your vision.  Do a double check when you’ve finished for two things.

a) Did I give enough detail to visualize everything I desire.

b) Am I freaked out?  Good, that means you are thinking big enough!

Happy New Year!!

Arlene’s Executive Leadership Tips

Participating In Purpose
Three Steps for Creating Visions Cont’d

Last week I talked about how visualizations work in our subconscious.  If you believed nothing else but the Universal Law of Cause and Effect, and consistently practiced visualizing your dreams, eventually your whole life would change.  Unfortunately, most of us make an attempt but are not patient, and give up right before we cross the finish line.  If it means that much to you, think big and never give up.  The difference between a truly successful executive, or entrepreneur, and those who reach moderate success is the former never lose site of their passion and continually visualize their success.  Commit to being one of these people. My suggestion is you get support  to help you do it. Use a coach, mentor or support group.

Before we begin the steps of creating a vision, you must do one more thing: become clear on the larger purpose of your life.  Most of us lose touch with our larger purpose, because we are so busy with the details of our jobs, chores, family and possessions, that we forget there is a larger purpose and infrequently give thought to it. The last week of the year is a perfect time to meditate on this subject.   Joseph Naft on his website says, “Participating in purpose brings you the confidence that what you do matters, that your inner work matters beyond yourself.   Participating in purpose brings you the real happiness of a meaningful life.”

Arlene’s Executive Leadership Tips

Three Steps for Creating Visions

Last week I gave you three tips for doing visualization on a daily basis, and told you this is the time to start thinking of your visions for 2012.  For the next Four weeks, I am going to give you detailed instructions on how to write a complete vision, for all areas of your life.  Today I am going to talk about what you need to do to prepare for writing your visions.

THE METHOD

Learn how to use your subconscious mind to achieve the results  you want and deserve in your life.  Last week’s suggested exercise is a great way to get started.   By training your mind to visualize, and imagine your aspirations, and letting go of your fearful thoughts, you will attain new outcomes. Visualizations are pictures of what you yearn for in your mind. When you experience the feelings that go with these pictures, you become confident of your results.

Before you begin creating visions you need to COMMIT to making the time to create your visions for next year.

When you practice the concept of inner reflection, your true desires and passion for them will emerge.   This commitment requires a great deal of soul searching and learning to hear, or feel, the inner urges that are nudging you silently and quietly. No matter what negative thoughts you have, you can change them and let them go, if you are willing to do the hard inner mind, body and soul work. Yes, this means you do need to learn how to sit quietly for short periods of time

Have a Great Week and Stand Strong!

Arlene’s Executive Leadership Training Tips

3 Tips For Creating Your Desires

As we get ready to face the end of 2011, this is the time to start thinking of your visions for 2012.  Is this the year you will take the time to change your limiting beliefs and let them go so you can create the career, job, and life you desire? The key to releasing these negative beliefs is understanding they are false and have been programmed into you by your environment.  It requires a reprogramming of our subconscious and a letting go of our comfort zones.

As young children most of us believe in the magic of the Holiday Season.  We are bright eyed and positive about receiving and creating.   As we grow older we become entrenched in the belief systems of our caretakers and the world around us. Their negativity becomes our negativity.  Their dis-belief becomes our dis-belief. 

Scientific research shows that even the most intrinsic conditioning can be changed—it is possible to grow into a completely new way of thinking.  Below are three tips for getting started:

1.  Develop the ability to create visions of what you desire.  Take five minutes a day to just sit and create the picture of your vision.
2. Feel the emotions of belief and happiness as you see your dreams happening.
3.  Let go of the need to analyze and criticize yourself.  Instead. do your vision work and accept that you are just fine the way you are. 

Have a great week!

Arlene’s Executive Leadership Training Tips

Two Tips For Balancing Leadership and Management

This past year much has been discussed in leadership books for women about the difference between Leadership and Management.  Simply stated managers are responsible for getting the “job done”.  Leaders “set the tone and stage” for it all to happen and “ensure” it comes to pass.  Unless you’re part of a very large organization most managers usually wear both hats. This is not always easy to do and over time usually creates overwhelm and stress. 

How can small business owners and executives accomplish all that is needed to fulfill these roles? First they must understand the difference between being a leader vs. manager. In my executive leadership training I discuss the top skills needed by managers and leaders.  They are below:

Managers:

1. Establish systems and organizational structures
2. Problem solve
3. Manage processes
4. Set goals and enforce the budget
5. Coach subordinates

Leaders:

1. Set direction and mission
2. Create visions for the future
3. Communicate to and align stakeholders
4. Motivate
5. Energize

Two major tips for balancing being a leader and manager follow:

1. Delegate as much of your managerial skills as possible.  Whether you are a single entrepreneur or run a department of 50, you cannot do it all alone.  Find the right people to support you.  Too many entrepreneurs use the excuse of not having enough money.  This is limited thinking.  In the end this is what causes your demise. 

 

2. Devote a minimum of a half to one hour a day towards “thinking and creating”.  This might include taking a temperature check of clients and/or subordinates.  Motivate and energize yourself by reading articles rather than doing emails. If you are motivated, the people around you will stay motivated including your customers and clients. 

Arlene’s Executive Leadership Tip

Three Tips For Building Self-Esteem and Letting Go

“To be beautiful means to be yourself.
You don’t need to be accepted by others.
You need to accept yourself.”     
                                                             Thich Nhat Hanh

During a session with an executive client this week, we discussed his tremendous sense of overwhelm and little time for himself.  He believed that he could only be successful if he did everything perfectly.  My response was that if he continued in this manner his world would eventually self-destruct because of the extreme pressure he was putting on himself.  After much internal digging, this client began to understand that he had been subjected to guilt producing behavior as a child which strongly contributed to his need to be perfect today. Below are three tips I gave him that are part of my “business coaching“ program.

1.  Commit to changing the need to please others by putting yourself first over everyone.  Dig deep as to the reasons that cause your need to please others and be perfect.  At all costs, learn to be yourself.  The pecking order follows:

• Higher Power
• Yourself
• Your Significant other (when appropriate)
• Your children  (when appropriate)
• Immediate family of origin.
• Relatives and friend

2.  Become totally aware of what you are saying and thinking. Take very seriously the statement that, “thoughts create reality”. I pointed out to my client, that I heard him frequently say, “he needed to be better organized and that he was losing his grip”.  When we affirm what we don’t want, we will get what “we don’t want” instead of what “we do want”.  Dedicate yourself to consistently reversing your negative self-talk into positive thinking, statements and actions. 

3.  Work hard at learning to become “messy”.   Becoming “messy” is not just “letting go” of things at home like, making your bed every day and reading every part of the paper.  It is also about “letting go” in your relationships with friends, peers, employees and superiors.  “STOP” needing to have the people around you be perfect.  Understand that the need to control yourself (perfection) and others is a deep rooted fear of your life being out of control. 

Check out my book, “Say It See It Be It” for more detailed help on self-image and letting go.

Three Tips For Expressing Thankfulness Beyond Thanksgiving

 ”He is a wise man who does not grieve
for the things which he has not,
but rejoices for those which he has.“  
                                                   Epictetus

As an executive coach, I observe a tremendous amount of negativity in clients. Many of us were never taught how to see difficult situations and events in our world through positive eyes.   One of the best ways to create power and abundance in our lives is to adopt and understand the habit of gratitude, even in the most dire of situations. 

Looking back on my own life a storage warehouse fire had significant positive effect in my life.  At first, it was devastating to see what was destroyed.  After some time passed, this event was the catalyst for a permanent move to Arizona where I presently live in joy and prosperity.  For more details you can reference my book, Say It See It Be It.

Below are three executive leadership training tips which explain how to create a practice of thanksgiving for every day not just on Thanksgiving Day.

1. Make a commitment to start focusing on being grateful for the many things that happen to you during the day (even the difficult ones).  It will become a habit that will bring about a new appreciation of your life. In addition it will activate the law of cause and effect which will trigger more positive results in all you attempt.  You cannot be a victim of circumstances when you are feeling gratitude.
2. Keep a gratitude journal and create the habit of writing in it every day (at least once).  The best way is to list 5 things (people/events/situations) that you are grateful for two times a day. This will expand your “heart muscle” and stimulate the continued pleasure with which you see the world.
3. Share your life, money time and talents with others.  This will involve you in the Divine flow of life as “no man lives unto himself”.  The flow is circuitous and will always bring it back to you and more.

 

Have a Wonderful Thanksgiving and remember to Stand Strong!

Two Suggestions for Saying NO to Peers and Superiors

This week several of my clients talked to me about their difficulty in saying “NO” to their staff, peers, friends and superiors.  This seems to be a chronic issue with many people.  What prompts us to say “YES” when we mean “NO”?  The root cause is our need to please others.  Many of us are stuck in the thinking that we need to be perfect so others will see us as smart, likeable, and dependable.

Typically, when we are bent on pleasing others, we wind up sabotaging ourselves.  We become frustrated, stressed and overwhelmed creating behavior that causes us to lose the respect of those we interact with at work.  Often, we are unable to complete projects or can’t give them the attention they need.    As your executive coach, I suggest that you set up the following habit for yourself.

1. When you are being asked to do something, pause and ask yourself, “how do I feel about this or just observe your “mind talk”.  If you experience feelings of negativity, say “no” immediately. If you are not ready to say “no”, then state to the requester, “you need to think about it” or “you need to give it some thought as you already have so much on your plate”.

2.  If you choose to say “no”, then give very little explanation.  Take one of the following actions:

            a)     Explain you have a great deal on your plate at the moment and you do not feel comfortable taking anything more on. Then stay quiet.

           b)    If it’s someone that brings up fear for you, explain that: to take something on you will need to drop something or change the deadline on another project.  Do not say another word or become defensive with any pressure that may be put on you.  The person who stays the quietest wins in the end.

Arlene’s Executive Leadership Tip

3 Tips for Clarity at Work and Home

This week as part of your executive leadership training we are looking at how to create clarity in our lives. I believe in the Proverb that states: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”   Each of us has a “still small voice” within us.  When we become still (quiet) on a regular basis, we can hear this voice and let it guide us.  As your executive coach, I have listed three tips below to help you create peace and success in your life through clarity.

1)    If we are not clear on what we want, we cannot take the actions that will manifest them.  Sit with your desires and become clear on what they really are and how they will benefit you and others.  This can be done with the help of meditation and journaling.

Make an effort to take the time to journal several times a week.  It’s amazing how much clearer you become on your life and how it helps you see the actions you need to take to create what you want.

2)    When you become clear on what you truly want, then create a plan to manifest your desires. Planning is key to the process.  When you have a good plan, you will not fail as long as it is for the good of all.  Most people today are so harried they forget to use this basic tool and then questions why “things” are not happening for them.

3)    When we create a vision we do not have to worry about how it will happen.  Too many people are so worried about the outcome that they forget to follow their plan and just take the next appropriate step(s).

Arlene’s Executive Leadership Training Tip

5 Tips for Staying Positive Inside or Outside Work

This week as part of your executive leadership training we are looking at how to create a positive mindset and pass it on to others. Five tips follow to help you develop the change.

1) Wake up each day with an intention to transcend all the negativity that bombards you during the day. Commit to developing a mindset that will motivate you to enjoy life and your work. Constantly remind yourself of all that you have created and accomplished.

2) Create an affirmation that will help YOU support YOU to create desirable outcomes?  Use it to:
a. wipe out your self-talk
b. erase the negativity you hear around you
For example, I live in possibility thinking and/or I see five new ways to get to a solution on this issue. Avoid trying to change the thinking of others.

3) View yourself sitting in the middle of a large Plexiglas box which is covering you on all sides when you are in negative meetings or conversations. Then, watch the negative words, thoughts and attitudes bounce back to their owners.

4) Stand up for yourself by expressing your emotions (yes these too), ideas and needs with CONFIDENCE. The majority of people do not ask for what they need and then complain that they don’t have it. This is a major concept that people do not “get” and then wonder why they are not put into leadership roles.

5) Allow yourself the time to develop several possible solutions to issues you are facing.
Check out my respond vs. reaction sheet. Use this steps I suggest to practice responding to others.