Train Your Mental Toughness #1/4 - Thrive in Everything You Do

If there is something I’ve learned about success and achievement, is the importance of your mental strength over any other ability or quality you may possess.

We’ve all heard the quote “mind over matter”, and it is quite true; you can achieve anything if you set your mind to it.

For the next 3 weeks, we’ll be delivering 4 blogs with tips on how to build your mental toughness, and the topics will cover the following:

1. Focus on yourself first
2. Discover your purpose
3. Define your path
4. Create a supportive environment for your new purpose

So, let’s start with the first one then:

Focus on Yourself First

If you want your mind to become an undefeatable weapon at your service, self-awareness is the place to start.

Self-awareness is the ability to look at yourself without any attachment to what you’re going to find. You just look at what is there; emotions, thoughts, patterns… you evaluate everything objectively.

This is the only way to know where you actually stand, what is your starting point. One way to establish your self-awareness is using a journal.

Find a quiet place and use least some 10 minutes a day to write about your thoughts, feelings, etc.
This will be your starting point.

Now you need a destination; something to move towards to.

There is a great tool widely used by the renowned coach Jack Canfield called Vision Board, which can help you define your “destination point”. In it, you simply add pictures or drawings of the things, events, and situations you’d want to achieve for you.

Before taking on these exercises, try doing some deep breathing to center yourself, and spend some time reflecting on who you are, where you are, and what you want for your life. These two points of focus (your actual and your future self), when practiced as a reliable habit, will give you enough knowledge about yourself to move on to the next step in this path to mental toughness: Discover Your Purpose, which we’ll be covering it next week.

Until then, keep going, stay strong

Cheers!

One of the core values we have as a company is to inspire and empower people in all aspects of their lives. Additionally, if you want to read about our Custom Software Solutions and Consulting Services, please visit www.isucorp.ca

The Right Mindset for Successful Networking (Part 3/3)

In previous blogs, we mentioned that successful networking requires the right mindset. We also mentioned that n order to create the right mindset you have to:

• Become a member of the club
• Don't keep score
• Define what's your mission
• Build it before you need it

We will now discuss the fifth block required to build the right mindset:  Audacity

The genius of audacity:

• People with a low tolerance for risk whose behavior is guided by fear, have a low propensity for success
• Mustering the audacity to talk with people who don't know me often simply comes down to balancing the fear I have of embarrassment against the fear of failure and its repercussions. For me, I either ask or I am not successful. That fear always overrides my anxiety about rejection or being embarrassed
• Find a role model - need someone to unconsciously affirm our own behaviors
• Learn to speak
• Get involved
• Feel most comfortable when you're doing something you enjoy
• Being a leader in life takes practice, so practice
• Get therapy
• Might help you address your own fears and social anxieties in a more productive way
• Just do it
• Meeting with one new person a week
• FAIL, FAIL AGAIN, FAIL BETTER
• State the situation. You go right in and hit them with how you see it in the cold light of day, without being too inflammatory or dramatic. You need to know where you stand
• Communicate your feelings - encounters take on depth and sincerity
• Deliver the bottom line
• Use open-ended questions - less threatening 

One of the core values we have as a company is to inspire and empower people in all aspects of their lives. Additionally, if you want to read about our Custom Software Solutions and Consulting Services, please visit www.isucorp.ca

The Right Mindset for Successful Networking (Part 2)

“Work actively towards becoming a member of a network “ and “ don’t keep a score” were the two actions we mentioned in our previous blog in order for you to create and maintain the right mindset for building successful networking relationships.

The following are another two additional actions which are required:

Identify your Mission

Would you tell me please which way I ought to go from here? That depends a good deal on where you want to get to

The more specific you are about what you want to do, the easier it becomes to develop a strategy to accomplish it.

Key is to make a setting goals a habit. If you do that, goal setting becomes a part of your life. If you don't it withers and dies.

Step one: find your passion

• A goal is a dream with a deadline
• Look inside
• Important about conducting an internal review is to do so without constraints, doubts, fears, and expectations of what you "should" be doing
• Dreams and goals (make list)
• All the things that bring me joy and pleasure, the achievements, people, and things that move me
• Ask the people who know you best what they think your greatest strengths and weaknesses are. Ask them what they admire about you and what areas you may need help in
• Look outside

Step Two - putting goals on paper

• Connecting the goals to the people, places, and things that will help you get the job done. Determine the best way to reach out to the people who will help you accomplish your goals.
• Connecting with others really just involves having a predetermined plan and carrying it out, whether you want to be a ninth-grade history teacher or start your own business.
• Goals must be in writing. Have a conviction to put your intentions to paper. An unwritten wish is just a dream. In writing, it’s a commitment, a goal.
• Goals must be specific, measurable, have a due date, be believable, be challenging and demanding,
• Take action

Step three - create a board of advisers

Build it before you need it

• Know that you must reach out to others long before you need anything at all
• Start finding future clients today. Had he thought about what kind of industry he wanted to be in? Had he thought about where the top people in that industry hang out? Next step is to go hang with this group of people
• Get to know these people as friends, not potential customers
• Volunteer your time to a nonprofit organization they're involved in, or aid in publicizing a school fundraiser their kids are involved in
• Once you've got an established client that will provide references and create some word of mouth you're halfway home
• But to be constantly creating the environment and community you want for yourself, no matter what may occur.
• Offer out knowledge and work ethic to small companies, learn about new industries, references and contacts when we graduated
• It's easiest to reach out to those people who are at least tangentially part of your network
• But the first step has nothing to do with strangers, you should start connecting with the people you do know.

One of the core values we have as a company is to inspire and empower people in all aspects of their lives. Additionally, if you want to read about our Custom Software Solutions and Consulting Services, please visit www.isucorp.ca