How often do you find yourself leaving your office, walking into another room and then not remembering why you were in there? It happens to the best of us. We can “blame” age or too many things in our brains or too much stress, etc. Whatever the reason, keeping your brain sharp will help you in your business life and in your personal life as well. I mean, really, don’t you want to stop walking into a room and forgetting why you’re there!?
What can you do to increase your brain’s capacity for remembering? Here are a few steps to take and you can start today:
Do something every day that scares you! You don’t have to ride a roller coaster or run in front of a speeding bus, but you can try a new food, take a different route to work, attempt to complete a task in a completely different way. If you keep doing things in the same way, it all becomes routine and doesn’t give your mind a chance to react or interact.
Take up a new hobby. If you’ve always wanted to learn to play the saxophone — what’s stopping you? Learn to knit — many people find that when they knit or crochet, they tend to pay more attention to what’s going on around them, especially if they’re in a meeting.
Learn a new language. Go online and look for programs that will teach you to speak a foreign language from the comfort of your home.
Get out of the comfort of your home! If you work from a home office or if you telecommute, you need to get up, get dressed and interact with new people. Stay connected — in real life — not simply on the computer.
Read a book. When is the last time you’ve spend time with a book? If you typically read non fiction, shake it up and read fiction.
Interact with people who are not in your industry. If you’re continually talking to and spending time with people who do what you do, you’re not opening yourself up to new experiences or new knowledge.
Volunteer. Take time out of your busy week to give back to the community or to a group that you feel drawn to.
Make a date with a friend and attend a poetry reading or view the new exhibit at a local art gallery.
Travel. Whether you’re a world traveler or if you want to visit a different state in the United States, make a plan and make it happen. Even going to a new state will be a learning experience and help boost your brain power.
Complete a cross word puzzle or Sodoku
Keeping your brain agile is something that everyone (not only business owners) need to do. This will help everyone as they age and keep your mental acuity sharp.
Goal setting isn’t just a January 1 setting your resolutions for the year ahead type event. Goal setting is something that business owners should do on a regular basis. Yes, you will have goals that may take a year to achieve, but I bet that you have mini-goals that you want to achieve weekly or monthly, right?
How can amp up the probability of your achieving your goals? Here are steps you can take to help make them happen:
Choose a concrete goal. One that is achievable. Don’t set a goal that will set you up for failure.
Write the goal down. Whether you write it on a file in your computer, on a note book or a sticky note by your desk, having written it down makes it not only visible but helps give it a life of its own.
Don’t keep your goal a secret. Announcing your goal — whether to a loved one, a business colleague or on a social media page will help hold you accountable.
Get to work on it. It doesn’t help to set a goal if you do nothing about it. Once you’ve determined what it is and have written it down and shared it, get to it!
If you don’t know what goal you should focus on or are at a loss as to which goal you should do first, contact me and we can work through the goal setting process so you will be on your way to goal achievement!
If you want to secure speaking engagements or have clients find you through your blog or website or your social media pages, you need to have a robust business bio. You also need to not only have a robust bio (by that I mean it should have searchable terms for your business niche) but it should be complete.
Having a LinkedIn or Facebook or Trade Business page, but not having a complete biography or profile will not help you be found. In fact having incomplete profiles may lead a prospective client to wonder, “if he hasn’t completed that, will he complete what I want him to do?”
Here are my best bio-building tips:
A bio or your profile is not a one-size fits all. Adapt your profile and your bio to the audience you’re interacting with.
What are your highest value qualifications? Is there a particular niche for which you’d like to be known? Use those words in your bio. Think “Google search” when planning your business profile.
If you have specialized training, note that in your bio and especially on your website’s About Page.
Don’t forget, when you complete your bio that you have your contact information front and center. Don’t make a prospect have to become an amateur sleuth to find you!
Add a photo. If you’re in business, chances are you have access to a professional headshot or can get one. Don’t leave this blank.
Check your business profile and make sure it is complete.
Stress happens. Not to be flip or cliche, but in every life, whether you’re an entrepreneur or not chances are you will experience stress. How you deal with that stress can make a difference in your overall health and productivity.
Here are my tips for dealing with stress in both work and life:
Take a hike. I love being in the out of doors — away from electronic devices and work. I hike the mountains, clear my mind and come back refreshed. Additionally, exercise helps you maintain overall physical and mental health.
Breathe deeply. If you can’t get away from it all and take a walk, push your chair back from your desk and take some deep breathes. When you’re stressed, you tend to take shallow breaths and this leads to muscle tension.
Eat a healthy diet. Eating potato chips when you’re in a stressful situation, won’t help alleviate it. Eating an overall healthy diet, though, can cure a lot of ills and can help boost your immune system and may help you deal with stress better.
Get involved in a hobby. Whether you read or swim or crochet or do woodworking or pottery, having a hobby that you love gives you something to focus on and helps relieve stress and tension.
Stay connected with your friends. When you’re in a highly stressed state it is tempting to isolate yourself. Staying connected, getting out of the house and having coffee at a coffee shop is much better than being alone. Pick up the phone and connect with a friend who is far away. Ask for support if you need it in a stressful time.
At the very least, I recommend taking a ten minute break every hour or two to simply reconnect with yourself, take a walk around the house or the office. Relax. Recharge.
With the new year soon to be upon us, it’s a time to reflect and and set resolutions for your upcoming successful year. The sad fact is that many people make resolutions only to see them fail. As I’d written in a previous post, “A goal unrealized can have the power to take you down a path of despair and the inability to complete other tasks on your list.” However, if you set a goal aka resolution and meet it, the success of that will feed further success and achievements.
How can you keep your resolutions? Here are three ways:
Write down the end goal. Break a large goal into bite sized chunks. Set deadlines to keep yourself on track. Build in a cushion and make allowances for interruptions and meetings you didn’t plan for.
Write a to-do list and feel power you realize when you cross a task off. Daily progress documentation keeps you on target amps up the motivation.
Find a trusted colleague to pair up with and work to keep each other on track. Report in several times a week. Share successes. Discuss setbacks. Move forward from a “failure” and look at it as a learning experience — ask your accountability partner to help you brainstorm potential reasons for and solutions to any deadlines you may have missed.
