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The Buffet at Langhams
I recently had the opportunity to indulge in the fantastic buffet at the Langham Restaurant in Melbourne (thanks boss).
Being a person who likes his food, I was reminded of the following analogy from Brian Tracy’s excellent book on Goals. The analogy is based around the idea of long-term gratification.
You see, many people treat life like an a la carte restaurant. They eat limited portions from a limited menu and then have to pay afterwards.
Alternatively, successful people treat life like a buffet. They pay the price at the very start and then can gorge themselves on everything that is on offer.
There is no doubt that the interview process can be a challenging one for many people. The anxiety and nervousness that comes with this process can be distracting and debilitating, causing some of us to perform below our best. Some people have had such negative experiences that they dread the thought of interviews and either have an increase in stress or don’t apply for new roles, limiting their potential and sense of well-being.
Over the years I’ve helped many people to deal with their nerves in an interview situation. Here are my top 8 tips:
One of the things that I have noticed over the years is the distinct difference in mindset between people who consistently succeed in life and those who struggle to break through.
These mindsets are entrenched habits that have a significant impact. The good news is that they can be changed if you are willing to acknowledge them.
I’ve identified four scenarios in which the difference between winners and whiners really come to the fore.
Photo courtesy of flickr
Once upon a time, five blind men came upon an elephant.
“What is this?” asked the first one, who had run head first into its side.
“It’s an elephant.” said the elephant’s keeper, who was sitting on a stool, cleaning the elephant’s harness.
“Wow, so this is an Elephant! I’ve always wondered what Elephants are like.” said the man, running his hands as far as he could reach up and down the elephant’s side. “Why, it’s just like a wall, a large, warm wall!”
Henry Ford once said, “If you think that you can do something or think that you can’t you’re probably right.”
Most people understand that having an optimistic attitude is an important key to being successful. Having a positive outlook is easy when everything is going well, but unfortunately when we come across an obstacle, pessimism can come to the fore and short-circuit our chances of reaching our goals.
Martin Seligman has identified three elements of pessimism that hold us back from being successful when things don’t go right, so let’s find out more about the 3 P’s of pessimism.
I’m sure that we’ve all been to seminars and workshops when you’ve reflected a couple of weeks later and realised that nothing’s changed. The experience was a good one, the facilitators and presenters were excellent, you took notes and thought that you had learned something, but in the end, you went back to doing things the same old way.
I recently had the great privilege of sitting in a 5 hour workshop that was facilitated by the excellent Buck Rogers from Church Resource Ministries (CRM).
In this workshop, while Buck was facilitating he was also giving some excellent tips on how to facilitate similar workshops and one of his best tips was how to set up a personal plan so that attenders walk away with something tangible that they can action.
When I first started blogging, one of the scariest things that I did was to click on the “Publish” button. My finger would hesitate over the mouse and the heart-rate would increase slightly, partly out of excitement and partly out of fear.
A myriad of questions came up for me:
“What if no-one reads it?”
“What if what I’ve written is wrong?”
“What if I offend someone?”
“What if I can’t keep it up?”
“What if there are lots of spelling errors that I’ve missed?”
As you can see, none of these questions were particularly resourceful. Even Life Coaches and Pastors can have their doubts sometimes, especially when it comes to their own work.
Photo courtesy of Flickr
I recently had to go to the dentist.
Not for anything dramatic, but I was experiencing some discomfort, so an appointment was made and I went along to get my teeth checked out.
Dentist appointments are one of those things that we dread going to as we are never quite sure about what is going to happen.
There is one thing that we can be sure about, if we put it off and try to ignore the pain, it won’t get better by itself. You have to get it seen to, even if there is pain involved.
This is true of many other matters in life as well.
