This thought came to me as I was reading Love + Work by Marcus Buckingham, where he states:

“… to live happily and fully, you have to express your loves… You’ve got to get them out somewhere, somehow. Turn them from loves into actions; from passions into contributions and when you do, your life feels coherent and authentic and you know, you just know, every fiber of your being that you’re on your path. The inverse is also true, though… if you’re prevented from doing it (what you love) then your life starts to feel wrong. During the moments when you start thinking about doing something different because you’re frustrated, angry, concerned, think about what is happening in your current job and what you’re prevented from doing.” 

For any given job or career, there are times when we feel energized and there are times when we feel like quitting (even though we are in the same job). Often, our immediate response to unhappiness at work is to think about our exit plan. Before going there, take a moment to think about what your organization may be inadvertently stopping you from doing that means a lot to you. That insight may help you find a path forward either in your current role or when you look for your next opportunity. 

If you’re not sure what you love, take the free Gift of Standout Assessment. 

Don’t deny what you love and what you’re meant to do because it may just eat you up from the inside.

Inspired by Love + Work by Marcus Buckingham

Photo by whoislimos

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I was catching up with one of my fellow partners after a heated meeting and I found myself apologizing for pushing the team harder than they want to be pushed.

He responded, “Robert, next time, think about this apology before you do what you do. Either don’t push people hard or don’t apologize for it if you feel justified to do so. It’s not effective leadership to keep doing the same thing and apologizing for it.”

This brief comment has been effective in reminding me to think before I act. It has helped me be more purposeful to avoid actions that would require an apology in the future. It has also given me the courage to not apologize for behaviors I don’t feel are wrong.

If you find yourself apologizing frequently for being late, not responding, or being unprepared, think about your apology before you decide to leave your house 15 minutes later, put off an email request, or decide to wing it.

What do you find yourself typically apologizing for?

Photo by Matthew Henry

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These were the questions I asked myself during Professor Stew Friedman’s Total Leadership program at Wharton. What attracted me to take this course was Stew’s concept that work-life balance doesn’t work because it implies having to make trade-offs. Instead of managing life as slices of a pie that gets smaller or bigger at the expense of each other, his alternative was to consider different areas of your life as independent circles that can potentially overlap with each other.

This new construct helped me unlock the creativity to better optimize my life and it has transformed the way I live and work.

Before this course, I felt at the whim of my goals and the needs of my stakeholders. I felt forced to make tradeoffs in one area of my life because of the demands of another area and instead of leading my life, it was leading me. The process I learned in this live workshop with peer coaching helped me gain control over the important areas of my life. You’ll see below five insights that might be helpful to you as you think about leading all areas of your life:

Lead Your Life: Don’t Use One Area of Your Life to Make Excuses for Another Area

Before this program, I would often feel guilty that I did not get home early enough to spend time with my kids. I would use work as my excuse and rationalize that now is the time to focus on my career and once I’ve “made it”, I can carve out more time for family. Along the same vein, I would use my two young sons as the excuse for not exercising. I would tell myself, “How can I afford to work out if I don’t even have enough time to spend with my kids?” Then I would use the time I needed for work, school, family, and exercise to justify why I slept on average only five hours each night.

I found myself often saying how much I wanted to do these things but explaining how I couldn’t because of the many legitimate excuses that I had. Looking back, that was a weak way of living. This experience has taught me to either do what I say is important to do or stop saying it’s important to me. Either way is fine but continuing to make excuses is not.

As part of this course, we all conducted personal experiments. For my experiments, I committed to getting 7+ hours of sleep, getting home before 7pm during most of the work week, and exercising daily, which included running 2x a week. I was initially skeptical since I’ve had so many false starts trying to implement similar positive habits but I’m excited to share that so far I’ve not only sustained these habits but I just completed my first half-marathon after never running a race in the past.

What made the difference this time was clarifying the vision I wanted for my life and taking control to bring that vision to life. Essentially, leading myself to where I wanted to go.

Sleep Really Matters

I was lucky to choose sleeping 7+ hours as one of my experiments because there was no habit change that yielded faster and more drastic results than getting 7+ hours of sleep. I used to subscribe to the “you can sleep when you retire” and “I’m successful because I work harder and longer than everyone else” mantra. I’m beginning to see the fault in this thinking and realizing that I may have spun my wheels more often than I am aware of or care to admit.

After consistently getting 7+ hours of sleep, I noticed my mood becoming more positive and relaxed. What surprised me the most was that I immediately stopped craving coffee (I was drinking about 2-3 cups a day for the last few years).

I also found sleeping sufficiently a linchpin habit. The days when I was well rested, I almost always completed every other habit change along with my work and school goal for that day. It allowed me to exercise more self-control and discipline.

Create Constraints to Force Creativity

Forcing myself to get home early, sleep enough hours, and exercise daily meant taking time away from other areas of my life, especially work. Initially, I was worried I wouldn’t get my work done leading to adverse consequences. What I found instead was the most important work was still getting done and since my deadlines were tighter, I became more effective with my time. Having less time for work began to prevent me from over-engineering my work and school projects.

It also helped me to be more creative about my time. Instead of agreeing to drinks or dinner with a client, I would offer to meet for breakfast or lunch so I can keep my commitment to get home early. I started running and working out with other people as a great way to catch up with them. Interestingly, by creating constraints and forcing myself to keep these new habits, the quality of my life has increased at home and at work.

Be the Building Block for Other People’s Goals

One of the key exercises in the Total Leadership process was to set up conversations with the most important stakeholders in the different areas of your life. The goal is to ask your stakeholders about their expectations for you and how you’re doing in meeting those expectations.

Holding these conversations, I realized that I often see people around me as building blocks to my success and drive our interactions in the direction of my agenda and accomplishing my goals. Hearing people’s expectations of me have made me realize that other people have their own needs and aspirations and to create long-term, positive relationships with them, I need to be the building block for their goals and success.

If you want people to see you as a leader, they first have to recognize that their life will be better because they follow you. There is no better way to do that than to become a critical part in their quest for success and meaning.

Grow the Relationships You Take for Granted

Every year I have clear goals to improve and to grow my career. It seems like the natural thing to do. What’s interesting is when I reflect on my closest relationships, I don’t have the same aspirational tendency. I don’t think about growing these relationships and at best, the relationship stays where it is. The only time I pay attention is when the relationship gets strained and I spend just enough energy to get it back to the original level.

Applying the same growth mentality from my career to my personal relationships, I asked my wife, family, and others close to me what we needed to do to take our relationship to the next level. Just by having these conversations, my key relationships are beginning to thrive and grow and it’s having a positive impact on other areas of my life. When you ask people about their needs and truly listen, they often become open to sincerely understanding your needs. Another benefit to this exercise is it allows you to decide which relationships may not be worth investing in because the other person doesn’t want to engage.

To start this journey, craft the vision for your life and clarify your values. You choose the life you want to have and the key idea is to align your actions to bringing to life your vision. Stay attuned to how you’re tracking to your vision and continue iterating with experiments to find overlap in the different circles of your life.

If you would like to dive in deeper, check out Stew’s Total Leadership book, which outlines the exercises in his process. You can also take the Coursera version of the course.

Photo by Brooke Lark

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Despite varying and sometimes contradicting perspectives on how best to succeed professionally, most leaders agree that a mentor is one of the most valuable people to have on your career journey. Unfortunately, if you’re not sure how to set up and manage this relationship, it can be a waste of everyone’s time. The good news is being a great mentor and mentee is not too hard if you’re serious about it.

The first step to a strong mentoring relationship is setting clear expectations and ground rules. What are the agreed-upon goals for this relationship? How often will you meet and for how long? What will happen when your goals are accomplished?

Once everyone agrees on what’s expected, keep in mind the following role-specific tips:

For Mentors:

As a mentor, your job is to add value to your mentee’s professional life by encouraging them to step out of their comfort zone and marshaling your resources to help them. Your help might come in the form of insightful advice, honest feedback or a connection to someone in your network.

To be a great mentor, be:

• Worthy: Practice what you preach so your mentee will benefit just from observing and interacting with you. Listen closely to the expectations and goals of your potential mentee. Be upfront about whether you can really help. If you haven’t walked the path that your mentee wants to take, you might be better off declining the relationship.
• Available: Your mentee will need you most during difficult and uncertain times. It’s difficult to know when those times will be. If your schedule doesn’t allow you the flexibility to connect with your mentee when he or she needs you, you might want to reconsider being a mentor.
• Caring: If you’re mentoring to check the “I’m mentoring others” box or because you think the mentor label will look good to other people, your mentoring relationship will probably fizzle out soon after it starts. See mentoring as a gift from the other person to you as opposed to a gift from you to them.

One of the most impactful actions a mentor can take is to give confidence to your mentees and help them see that they can perform beyond what they thought possible. In Hamilton: The Musical, George Washington models this by empowering Alexander Hamilton with the line “I know that greatness lies in you.” Try that line with your mentee.

For Mentees:

As a mentee, your job is to make your mentors glad that they’ve decided to work with you. You do this by taking their advice, helping them see your progress and making their lives easier. A few ways to do that is to be:

• Teachable: If you fight or disregard every idea your mentor shares with you, they will disengage. Be open to what you hear and give it shot before you say no or make excuses.
• Prepared: Set an agenda, ask specific questions relevant to your goals and show what you’ve done and learned
• Accountable: Follow through and do what you say you’ll do, then set the next meeting. If your mentor has to chase you to get an update, you’re making them work too hard.

When looking for a mentor, remember this Chinese proverb,

“To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.” 

Find mentors who are just one or two steps ahead of you so they can give you practical advice. The idea is to find someone experienced, available and willing so they can invest meaningfully in this relationship. You can still network with people much more senior to you and ask them to mentor you, but just remember the path they’ve taken may no longer exist and they may have trouble relating to your challenges.

Get mentors for different areas of your life. Look at your strengths and weaknesses and ask yourself whether the person you want to mentor you excels in the area you want mentoring in.

The hardest part is actually getting a great mentor to say yes. To get the attention of mentors, show that you’re worth investing in by showing resourcefulness, exuding a strong work ethic and doing great things. It’s much easier to say yes to you if the other person is excited about contributing to your success.

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In every Olympics including this year’s games, new world records are being set by those who continue to innovate the way they train and perform. In renowned expertise researcher, K. Anders Ericsson’s, book on performance, Peak, I came across this quote that served as a great reminder.

“Progress is made by those who are working on the frontiers of what is known and what is possible to do, not by those who haven’t put in the effort needed to reach that frontier.“

To innovate and be better than the best, first emulate the best (like Ben Franklin).

A few easy-to-understand-yet-difficult-to-do tips:

1. Practice purposefully by staying one or two steps outside of your comfort zone
   • You know you are at the limits of your ability if you are engaged in an activity that requires your FULL concentration and effort
2. Study the best performers in your field and learn their mental representations
   • What are the thoughts and practices they developed about their craft that allows them to accurately assess and fix their own mistakes?
3. Find a way to get concrete feedback for your performance so you can track your progress and pinpoint where you are falling short
4. Believe you can be better than the best
5. Work harder than everyone else you know

“When you want to achieve something and you believe that you can, you work harder”

– Philip Zimbardo, Stanford Psychologistm in The Time Paradox

In your quest to be better than the best, don’t be surprised if you hit a few plateaus. When you do, step further out of your comfort zone to reveal the particular gap in your skill set. Set up your practice to work on the isolated issue only. This should help you move beyond the plateau.

To make the world better, we should all strive to be better than the best. If you follow the steps above consistently and persistently, you have a good chance of getting there.

Photo by Marco Paköeningrat

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You thrive on feedback. That’s how you got to where you are today. You actively seek out advice and insights from your mentors, great books and life experiences.

Since you’re open-minded and motivated to succeed in the shortest time possible, you experiment with all the different winning strategies that you come across. Some working well and others not so much and you keep searching for the holy grail to sustainable excellence.

There is a risk to your openness. By taking on so many suggestions, it’s easy to lose touch with who you really are.

This happens to me from time to time. I speak with a senior executive who inspires me to be one way. I read a book that motivates me to try another way. I run into an old friend who has completely revamped her life and swears by a third way.

And I try all of these ways and they all have their merits. But when I stop to reflect on who I’ve become, sometimes it’s not so clear who I am. In these times, I pull out a quote from Aristotle to help me sort through this uncertainty:

“We are what we repeatedly do.”

To remember the type of person I am, I just need to look at my actions. Our actions directly represent our decisions, which are driven by our beliefs and values.

If you do kind things consistently, you are a kind person. If you exceed your manager’s expectations all the time, you’re a high performer. It doesn’t matter what you say you are, what matters is what you do. I can talk about how much I want to focus on family and be a great father but if I constantly come home late from work and spend very little time with my son, I’m not a great father.

The bright and empowering side of this realization is that I don’t need to sort out how I see myself. I just have to consistently act in a way that reflects who I want to be. If I want to be authentic, I can share my true views and vulnerabilities. If I want to be a writer, I’ll write 1000 words a day. If I want to be bold, I might cold call a CEO to get an interview.

For those of you who plan to make a drastic change around people who know you, understand that it’s hard for people to see past the “old” you. If you’re in this situation. you might want to read this article on upgrading your identity.

If you’re not sure what actions to take, observe those who you want to be more like and mimic their behaviors. You decide who you are by controlling what you do.

Just focus on changing your actions.

Ask yourself:

1. What type of person do I want to be?
2. What actions would this person take?
3. When can I apply these actions?

You can also use the inverse method:

1. Who do I want to make sure I never become?
2. What actions would this person take?
3. When might I be susceptible to these actions?

Photo by Md saad andalib

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This is the most common pushback I hear from my clients when they gain more clarity on what they want in their careers and realize they were meant to do something completely different from their current job. Whether it’s switching into a new career, company or industry, the fear of or actual lack of relevant experience prevents most people from leaving a job or employer they don’t like.

Having successfully switched careers several times to very different roles and industries, I’ve learned firsthand that direct work experience for most careers and industries is overrated and the barriers to entry for a new career is much lower than you think. (Please note: my definition of “direct work experience” is working in the specific industry and role.)

So why doesn’t work experience matter as much as we’re led to believe?

Repetition of work

Many people do very similar work year after year. Employers pay individuals to perform specific functions and the bigger the company, the more specific the individual’s function will be. This creates the common situation where an average performer with 20-years of experience might really only have 1-2 years of unique experience and 18-19 years repeating similar experiences. They stop learning and begin to settle in and coast because it’s easy and comfortable.

This is great news if you’re looking to switch careers because with concentrated effort over a 2-3 year period, you can catch up to many people who have significantly more years of experience than you. You may need to take an initial pay cut to get your initial opportunity but if you put in the work, you’ll soon earn as much as if not more than others in your field because of the extra time you’ll put into improving your skills.

Rapidly changing world

The world is constantly changing. What you learned today will probably be obsolete in a few years. Maybe even a few days. If you’re looking to switch careers, your lack of experience may actually be a plus as firms look to innovate and stay ahead of or at least with the fast-changing times. Your ability to be agile and flexible will serve you better than any specific work experience or title.  Seek to understand the current trends and leverage them to market yourself to prospective employers.

Relationships matter

Most senior executives and business owners I know are on the look out for top talent even if they don’t have a specific job for them (Charles Koch is one of them). As long as you can add value to the company moving forward, your previous experience doesn’t matter as much as your potential. If you build strong relationships and cultivate a network of senior people who know what you can do, you will get opportunities despite your direct experience.

So if you’re looking to switch careers, take time to:

• Understand how the business or organization you want to work for makes money and figure out honestly how you can add value to this process.
• Build the skills you need to add value and find ways to showcase your abilities.
• Network with others in the business and industry you want to be in to gain visibility and agreement that you’re an insider.

If you’re willing to work hard on the right things, your lack of experience is a non-issue.

For many job functions, pre-requisite knowledge or skills may not be required as different companies have different methods and processes. Most likely, you’ll get training from your company and support from your manager to help you learn and do your job well. Any extra work you put in will only fast track your learning and if you sustain your hard work past year 3, you’re going to begin surpassing others with more official experience.

You might also consider developing evergreen skills, skills that are useful everywhere you go. Your ability to communicate, make decisions, size up a situation, lead, motivate, sell and build relationships are core to being successful everywhere you go.

Don’t get me wrong, proper work experience is valuable. Just because experience is overrated doesn’t mean that it doesn’t count. For those who continuously learn and find ways to build on their experience year after year, they are the ones who make it to the top of their professions. The point is that work experience is not weighted as much as you would imagine.

If your lack of experience is stopping you from going after your dream job. Take comfort that it doesn’t take long to catch up and surpass others in what you want to do. The faster you get started, the faster you’ll get there.

Photo by Sabrina

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As a high-performer, you strive to learn new and effective strategies to enhance your life both professionally and personally. As you pick up these skills and insights and gain positive results, you begin to notice when other people are lacking this knowledge or skill set. This awareness puts you in danger of becoming a snob and you are officially recognized as a snob when you begin to judge others as being less than you because they don’t know what you know or do what you do.

This often happens when people gain new knowledge and expertise. They learn “proper” table manners and begin to look down on others who don’t hold their forks correctly. They learn a new religious or cultural custom and begin to show disdain for those who break the custom. They laugh at those not properly dressed for the occasion. This feeling of superiority and lack of empathy for others can hurt not only your relationships but also people’s perception of you.

Another more nuanced way people unknowingly become snobs is when they feel compelled to share their new knowledge with those around them. They do so with the good intention of helping others and there is nothing wrong with sharing knowledge – it’s when and how you do it that decides whether the other person will see you as being helpful or as a snob.

So how can you avoid being a snob when you learn something new?

• Share your knowledge only if the other person wants to hear it – for some people, there is nothing more annoying than unsolicited advice
• Offer your newfound insights as an option to be chosen rather than a rule to be followed
• Understand that the new strategy, mindset or behavior you’re recommending may work for you, but not for others because everyone is different
• Even if experts agree that what you’re recommending is “better”, don’t make the other person feel inadequate by devaluing their views or calling them ignorant

One simple guideline that helps me internalize these tips:

Give the other person choice AND respect their choice.

Share your positive experience and leave it up to the other person to choose what they want to do with it. Don’t see them as ignorant or less of a person because they disagree with you or choose not to adopt what you see as the better way of working. Your sincere respect for others should be reflected in both your words and actions.

Another way to avoid sounding close-minded or elitist, is to stay away from the following words:

• Should
• Always
• Never

Because every one of us is unique, absolutes typically don’t work. To connect with others, acknowledge that we are all different yet equal and entitled to our beliefs and choices. Unfortunately, this point is easy to forget because society rewards certain behaviors and punishes others. What is “good”, “right” or “successful” depends heavily on the context you’re in.

A helpful way to thrive in this subjective world might be to assume that:

Everyone is doing the best they can with what they’ve currently chosen to believe as truth.

This will bring out your empathetic side.

Give it a try next time you:

• See someone improperly dressed for an event
• Disagree with the ideas or policies of your firm’s leadership
• Interact with someone who is missing all of the social cues you’re sending

Final piece of advice to keep in mind:

Your truth is as legitimate as mine – opt to educate as opposed to convert.

Photo by Deutschen Theater Berlin

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“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

You put yourself out there.

That’s why you get the results that you do.

At the same time, you also open yourself up to unsolicited comments and feedback. As a high performer, you’re often at the edge of your comfort zone and depending on the feedback you get, it might propel you forward or cause you to deepen the self-doubt that you may already be feeling.

Not all feedback should be treated equally. Although you may be open to feedback from everyone, you might want to consider giving different weight to certain types of feedback.

Feedback worth listening closely to comes from people who:

• You admire and trust
• Have already achieved the success you want
• Have influence in your career
• Give you hope that you can overcome this challenge

You might want to discount feedback from people who:

• Are not putting themselves out there like you are
• Have not achieved the success you’re looking to achieve (and does not live their lives in a positive way)
• Are chronically negative or cynical
• Are not specific with ways you can improve

Regardless of who is giving the feedback, strong feedback is specific, actionable and forward-looking. You should gain better clarity around what happened and how you really performed and then come away with hope that you can perform better next time.

No matter what the feedback – just respond with “thank you” and then decide what you want to do with it. You always have the choice whether or not to take the feedback and to do what you want with it.

Inspired by Brene Brown’s 99U talk.

Photo by US Army – Medal of Honor – Staff. Sgt. Salvatore Giunta

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To achieve that, you need to know where you stand by getting quality feedback. Although it’s common practice to ask other people for their perspective on us because we fear our blind spots and propensity for self-delusion, it’s not always convenient or helpful to do so. Depending on who you ask, it can be uncomfortable and highly unproductive.

Other thoughts that may cross your mind when you ask someone else to judge you:

How do I know if they are telling me the truth?

Are they credible enough to give me feedback?

What if they are misinterpreting my actions?

Is there a hidden agenda for the feedback they are giving me?

What if they are just jealous?

What if I don’t want to change?

One way to reap the benefits of feedback without all of this hassle is to give feedback to yourself. You can do it at any time and it helps to heighten self-awareness. Also, you’re more inclined to buy into any changes you want to make.

So how do you give yourself feedback?

You observe others and yourself and analyze what you see.

Here are a few effective ways from Marshall Goldsmith’s popular book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, that helped me:

Pay attention to other people’s reaction to you

Instead of asking people to give you feedback directly, pay close attention to what they say and how they act around you.

One great way to collect feedback about yourself is to jot down every casual comment others make about you. Once you have a long list of remarks, assess whether each remark is positive or negative. This will give you a sense of people’s general impression about you. The goal is to increase your ratio of positive to negative remarks.

Once you’ve collected enough of what people are saying about you, start observing how they react around you. It becomes easier to do this if you hone in on their non-verbal communication. The key is to note any differences in how to react to you versus how they react to others in general. Do they smile when they talk to everyone else but roll their eyes when they interact with you? Actions speak louder than words but only if you’re paying attention.

Try this method both at home and in the office. It works especially well during group meetings where people are not aware that you are observing them. You’ll be surprised how much you’ll learn just by arriving early at a meeting and observing where people sit, who they talk to and what physical manner they adopt during these interactions.

Monitor what you say and do

What you say and do is telling of who you are. If you want to learn more about yourself, start by observing your words.

What are you saying to other people? What is the ratio of self-aggrandizing remarks to self-deprecating remarks? What are you really saying about yourself when you make them?

If you’re like most people, you compensate – what you brag about is usually what you’re weakest at and what you’re humble about, usually reveals your strengths. By being aware of your strengths and weaknesses, you can decide what and how to improve. You can also work on becoming less self-conscious about both.

After you consider what your speech reveals about you, take a look at your actions. How do you act around your boss, co-workers, friends, family, relatives and strangers? What differences do you see when it comes to different groups and certain individuals? There is a good chance your flaws at work will show themselves at home and vice versa.

Pick one thing you know you can improve

Whether you’re observing yourself or others, take time to analyze what you see. During your analysis, be careful not to generalize behaviors. One person may act friendly towards you but it doesn’t mean they like you if they act even friendlier to everyone else.

Also, as you pore over this fresh set of insights about yourself, compare it to your own self-image. Would the person you aspire to be talk and act in such a way? If not, what do you need to change?

When it comes to changing your life and sustaining that change, remember two things:

• People change ONLY if they believe it’ll be helpful to them.
• The most productive way to implement change is to tackle one behavior at a time.

So as you start to draw conclusions and find a few things to work on, I recommend that you pick ONE specific thing to improve. Once you decide what you want to work on, take a few minutes to write one benefit to you and one benefit to the world when you successfully make this change.

For those of you who would like help pulling it all together, here is a 6-week regimen that you can follow:

• Week 1 – Make a list of what people are saying about you and categorize them as either positive or negative. Note anything that comes up often.
• Week 2 – Pay special focus to other people’s body language towards you. Watch for any differences in their behavior depending on what you do and say. Also, contrast it with their manner towards other people.
• Week 3 – Monitor what you are saying to others about yourself. Observe the way you introduce yourself, respond to questions and deal with compliments.
• Week 4 – Look closely at how you treat other people. Find trends in your behavior and think about what those patterns say about you as a person.
• Week 5 (BONUS) – Listen to what you tell yourself. When you do well, what do you say? When you fail, what comments do you hear internally? You’re probably your own worst critic.
• Week 6 – Review all the information you’ve gathered about yourself from the last five weeks. Identify three aspects of yourself that you want to change. From those three, choose one that will have the most positive impact on your life and create a plan to make that change.

Giving yourself feedback might feel strange at first but armed with some concrete observations, it is a powerful technique for personal mastery. Good luck!

(originally posted on the Embrace Possibility Blog)

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