careeer success coach denver
Success Tweet 91: Live a Healthy Lifestyle
Aug 23rd
I’m really enjoying writing this series of posts further explaining the ideas in my latest career success coach book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less. I hope you’re enjoying reading them. I’m pleased to say that Success Tweets is now in its second printing. You can pick up a copy at your local book store, or online at Amazon.com. Better yet, you can download the eBook for free at http://www.successtweets.com.
Today’s career advice comes from Tweet 91…
The better you feel, the better you’ll perform. Live a healthy lifestyle. Eat well. Exercise regularly. Get regular checkups.
You have to be in reasonable shape if you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve. A reasonable level of fitness will help you deal with the inevitable stress that accompanies creating life and career success. Diet and exercise are the key to living a healthy lifestyle. My best career advice says that you don’t have to be a fitness fanatic, but you do need to get some exercise and pay attention to what you eat.
I’m not the best role model when it comes to a healthy lifestyle. I’ve battled weight my entire life. However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more serious about living a healthy lifestyle. I exercise more and eat better.
The US government revised food pyramid provides great guidance on how to eat healthy. Here are some of the highlights. I try to follow these guidelines. If you follow them, you will be doing well from a nutrition standpoint.
Eat at least three ounces of whole grain bread, cereals, crackers, rice or pasta every day. Look for the word “whole” before the grain name on the list of ingredients.
Eat lots of vegetables every day. I’m lucky here. I love vegetables – even brussels sprouts. Dark green and orange vegetables are the best for you. Dry beans and peas are also good for you.
Fruits are also good for you. Raw fruit is the best. On the other hand, it’s best to limit your intake of fruit juice. It’s often very high in calories and sugar.
Milk is a great source of calcium – something we all need for strong bones. However, whole milk is very high in fat, so it’s best to drink low-fat or fat free milk. Yogurt and cheese are also good sources of calcium.
Eat protein (meat, fish and poultry) is small quantities. Bake, broil or grill – don’t fry – your protein.
The Mayo clinic suggests eating at least three fruits, four vegetables, four to eight servings of grains and pasta, three to seven servings of protein or dairy, three to five servings of fat and no more than 75 calories of sugar a day.
In general, you can eat healthy by eating more fruits, vegetables and whole grains. Reduce your intake of saturated fat, trans fat and cholesterol. Limit sweets and salt. Drink alcoholic beverages in moderation, if at all. Control portion sizes and the total number of calories you consume.
Exercise is the other important component of a healthy lifestyle. It’s best if you can exercise for at least 30 minutes five times a week. Fitness experts suggest that of the 30 minutes 20 should be spent in some form of cardio exercise, five in stretching and five in resistance training.
I find that it’s best to choose a time to exercise and build your daily schedule around it. Some people like first thing in the morning. Others like the evening. I prefer mid day. I find that if I exercise around noon, I am less hungry and consume fewer calories at lunch.
Hydration and circulation are important too. Drink plenty of water. It keeps you hydrated and helps combat hunger. If you spent a lot of time at your desk, take a few minutes every hour to get up and stretch. You can do leg lifts and stomach squeezes at your desk. A little bit of activity can give you a burst of oxygen that will energize you and keep you feeling good.
You don’t have to become a fitness fanatic to be a high performer. However, eating well and exercising will keep you sharp and on top of your game. It will keep your stress in check. And while a little stress is a good thing, too much stress can knock you out of the game.
The common sense career success coach point here is simple. Successful people are high performers. They follow the career advice in Tweet 91 in Success Tweets. “The better you fell, the better you’ll perform. Live a healthy lifestyle. Eat well. Exercise regularly. Get regular checkups.” You don’t have to be a fitness junky to become a high performer. But if you take care of yourself you’ll be more likely to become a high performer, and high performance is a key to creating the life and career success you want and deserve.
That’s my take on the career advice in Success Tweet 91. What’s yours? Please take a minute to share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment. As always, thanks for reading.
Bud
Success Tweet 62
Jul 13th
Competence is one of the four common sense coach keys to career success that I discuss in my new book Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less. You can purchase a copy of Success Tweets on Amazon.com or at your local bookstore, or better yet, you can download it for free at www.SuccessTweets.com.
If you want to create the life and career success you want and deserve, you need to develop four basic but important competencies: 1) creating positive personal impact; 2) becoming a consistently high performer; 3) communication skills; and 4) relationship building.
You create positive personal impact in three ways. 1) Developing and nurturing your unique personal brand. 2) Being impeccable in your presentation of self – in person and on line. 3) Knowing and following the basic rules of etiquette.
Today’s career advice on personal branding comes from Tweet 62 in Success Tweets…
Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but built on integrity. Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking.
There are two common sense steps for developing and nurturing your personal brand.
- Figure out how you want people to think of you.
- Consistently and constantly act in a manner that will lead them to think of you that way.
While your brand should reflect you and your uniqueness, it has to be built on integrity. According to Wikipedia, “Integrity is consistency of actions, values, methods, measures and principles.” Integrity and consistency are intertwined. People who are consistent in their actions are seen as people with a high degree of integrity.
Oprah says, “Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.” This is true. If you practice situational ethics – doing the right thing only when you’re in the public eye — you aren’t really a person of high integrity, you’re just pretending to be one.
Besides, it’s hard to act one way in public, and another in private. So to be safe, resolve to act like Oprah. Do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do – not because you’ll get credit, or avoid getting into trouble.
John Maxwell is a well known business author. One of his books sends the same message. It’s called There’s No Such Thing As Business Ethics: There’s Only One Rule for Making Decisions. According to John, that rule is the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In other words, do the right thing.
There’s a practical side to this too. Mark Twain once said, “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” In other words, if you’re always a person of high integrity, it’s easy to be a person of high integrity; there are no complicating factors – like remembering what you did or said in a given situation.
Polonius gave similar advice to Hamlet. “To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the day the night, thou canst be false to no man.” Roy Blackman, my father in law, passed away a few years ago. This quote was his epitaph. It was on the program handed out at his funeral. Roy embodied it in how he lived his life. It was the only piece of advice he gave his grandson, Matt, as he went off to college.
Oprah, John Maxwell, Mark Twain and Shakespeare are all in agreement on one common sense piece of career advice. If you want to become known as a person of high integrity – and integrity is the cornerstone of any personal brand – act as a person of high integrity all the times – not just when it suits you, or when someone might notice.
Here’s a story to illustrate this point. Cathy, my wife, was a flight attendant for 36 years. Seniority is a very important thing in the airline industry. It governs how you bid for trips, positions on the airplane and vacations – almost anything important to a flight attendant’s quality of work life.
Cathy was very active in her union. And seniority was one of the union’s most sacred principles. A few years before she retired, Cathy’s airline made a big push into the international market. International flights were plum assignments, they went to people with high seniority.
However, the airline realized that it would be to their advantage to have some flight attendants who spoke the language of the country to which they were flying on these international flights. Most flight attendants in her airline spoke English only. The airline proposed putting two “language speakers” on each international flight. Many people, including Cathy, were upset with this arrangement as they felt it violated the seniority concept.
Cathy used to fly from the US to London. One day I said to her, “This whole language speaker issue doesn’t really affect you. You fly to London, there are no language speakers on those flights. Why do you care so much?” She said, “I believe in the concept of seniority. It doesn’t matter if I’m affected by language speakers. It’s the principal of the thing.” That’s consistency – and integrity — in action.
On the other hand, there’s Tiger Woods. Tiger had one of the best personal brands in the world. He earned close to $100 million in 2009 on it. He will earn a lot less in 2010. If you were following the news in late 2009 and early 2010, (how could you miss it) you know that the Tiger brand is in serious jeopardy because of some of his indiscretions which have come to light.
Sadly for Tiger, his integrity is now in question – and that’s being kind. His wife has left him, taking the kids. Several sponsors have dropped him. And, his golf game is suffering. I’m not writing this post to pass judgment on Tiger – enough people have done that already. I am writing it however, to reinforce my point of building your personal brand on integrity.
The common sense career success coach point here is simple. Creating positive personal impact is one of the competencies all successful people possess. You create positive personal impact by developing and nurturing your unique personal brand, being impeccable in your presentation of self, and knowing and following the basic rules of etiquette. Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but it should be built on integrity. Follow the career advice in Tweet 62 in Success Tweets. “Your personal brand should be uniquely you, but built on integrity. Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is looking. As Tiger Woods’s case demonstrates, a lack of integrity can lead to serious consequences for a carefully crafted brand. Now, everyone is looking at Tiger and most people aren’t liking what they’re seeing. So take a lesson from Tiger – one he’s learning the hard way — build your personal brand on integrity.
That’s my take on the career advice in Tweet 62 in Success Tweets. What’s yours? Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us. As always, thanks for reading.
Bud
Success Tweet 56
Jul 5th
Happy Independence Day to my readers in the USA. I hope you are enjoying the long weekend. Cathy and I did a lot of biking and saw a couple of mivies and some great live fireworks on Saturday and enjoyed the Washington DC, New York and Boston ones on TV yesterday.
I’m still enjoying writing this series of posts on the career advice in my latest book Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less. I hope you are enjoying reading them. You can purchase a copy of Success Tweets at Amazon.com or your local bookstore – or you can get a free copy of the eBook at www.SuccessTweets.com.
Today’s post is on Tweet 56…
Self confidence must come from within. Outside reinforcement and strokes can help, but you have to build your own confidence.
“I am not confident, what do I need to do to become more confident?” I get asked this question a lot. Here is how I respond…
Self confidence is an inside job. Self confident people are optimistic. Self confident people face their fears and act. Self confident people surround themselves with positive people. If you want to build your self confidence, focus on becoming an optimist, facing your fears and surrounding yourself with positive people. Let’s look at each of these in a little more detail.
Optimism
Max Moore defines optimism as “the fuel of heroes, the enemy of despair, the creator of the future”. Optimism is the opposite of pessimism which Denis Boyle says is “as magnetic as any black hole, swallowing one good day after another until there are no good days left”. Read that sentence again. It’s great career advice for becoming more self confident – avoid the black hole of pessimism.
In a very interesting article in the March/April 2007 edition of AARP, The Magazine (yes, I’m old enough to be a member) Mr. Boyle makes some great points about optimism and pessimism:
“The essential truth about optimism: the opportunities for it are everywhere. They just get ignored…Pessimism though, is the default state of our psyche, and the easy way out. We tell ourselves there is nothing we can do because life sucks, black holes abound, Murphy’s Law rules. Meanwhile, optimism takes effort. Despites tons of information provided by zealous pessimists, optimists believe everything will turn out fine. They are able to do something no pessimist can: they do their part to make sure tomorrow will be better than today. To subscribe to optimism means that you have a role in shaping your own future. Why is this important? Because it’s how stuff gets done. No successful individual could conduct business with a set of pessimistic assumptions…Work, progress, great ideas all are fueled by optimism.”
I agree with this career advice. I am an optimist. I admit that in these days of high unemployment and oil spills it can be difficult being optimistic, but I choose to be relentlessly optimistic. I believe every day is going to be a good day – and set about making it so. I believe I will succeed in every project I undertake. This optimism fuels my self confidence, and my self confidence drives my performance.
Tal Ben-Shahar teaches a course in Positive Psychology at Harvard. He had 800 students in his course last year. He offers the following three tips for becoming more optimistic:
- Give yourself permission to be human – don’t beat up yourself about mistakes.
- Express gratitude often.
- Engage in activities that give your life pleasure as well as meaning.
Fear
Fear is the enemy of self confidence. It’s also very normal. We’re all afraid sometimes. Usually it’s fear of failure. Fear can be debilitating, paralyzing us into inaction. Over the years, I’ve found how to face up to my fears and to conquer them. Indecision, procrastination and inaction feed fear. Action cures it.
I offer my career sucess coach clients four easy steps for dealing with fear.
- Identify it
- Admit it
- Accept it
- Take action to deal with it
In the post on Success Tweet 46, I discussed these four steps for dealing with fear in detail. Check it out if you missed it.
Positive People
Surround yourself with positive people – people who are both positive by nature, and positive about their success in their life and career. Positive people are optimistic – and as I’ve discussed above, optimism is the first step in building self confidence.
Positive people help you feel good about yourself, because they feel good about themselves and life in general. Positive people are there when you begin to doubt yourself. They help you build your self esteem because they have a strong sense of self esteem. People with a strong sense of self esteem are not threatened by others. They realize that self esteem is not a fixed pie. There is an unlimited amount of it to go around. Therefore, you can build your self confidence just by being around upbeat, positive people.
Self confident people take the time to identify and build relationships with mentors. Wikipedia defines a mentor as “a trusted friend, advisor, counselor or teacher; usually a more experienced person…Today mentors provide their expertise to less experienced individuals in order to help them advance their careers, enhance their education, and build their networks.” Mentors are positive people by definition. You cannot be willing to lend your wisdom and expertise to another person without being hopeful about that person and his or her future.
I have had several mentors over my career: Bert Phillips, Maggie Watson, Dick Pelton, Bill Rankin, Howard Sohn were all trusted friends and advisors at one time or another in my career. I believe that mentoring is so powerful that as I turn 60, I am working with three mentors. Russell Brunson, Stephanie Frank and Nancy Marmolejo are helping me turn the intellectual property that I have developed over the past 35 years into products that can be sold on line.
Mentors challenge you to do better. That’s why they are so important in building self confidence. As they challenge you, they are also telling you that “you can do it”. Having someone who believes in you – like a mentor – is a one of the best ways I know to build self confidence and life and career success.
The common sense career success coach point here is simple. Successful people are self confident. They understand the career advice in Tweet 56 in Success Tweets. “Self confidence must come from within. Outside reinforcement and strokes can help, but you have to build your own confidence.” You can build your self confidence by becoming an optimist, facing your fears and acting and surrounding yourself with positive people. Self confidence is an inside job. You have to create it yourself. But once you do, you’ll find that it’s an upward spiral. Your confidence will inspire you to take on challenges. Your success in dealing with these challenges will help you become more confident – which in turn, will allow you to take on and meet even greater challenges. A pretty good message on Independence Day weekend if I do say so myself.
That’s my take on the career advice in Tweet 56 in Success Tweets. What’s yours? Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment.
Bud
