Hundreds of thoughts go through one’s mind at any given time. Your work may be challenging, or you have been fired, or you are facing problems in a relationship. These thoughts often have no particular direction. You need to rise above your thoughts, to become the “sky” in the metaphor. That way, you become the objective listener to your thoughts. This sets you on the path of self-awareness.

Awareness is the starting point of every quest. Without awareness, we flounder along the path. Awareness removes digressions and shows a clear path ahead.

However, being aware is not a goal—it is an ongoing practice of mindfulness. So how do we increase our awareness?

Awareness demands that we have greater clarity and honesty in all aspects of our life. We understand what others are trying to communicate to us at a deeper and more realistic level. We’re able to be honest with ourselves about our faults and our positive traits, and we have a greater ability to lead. The benefits of heightened awareness include accepting that we are responsible for our actions, expectations and beliefs and how they influence what we do. It helps us notice our patterns [good and bad] and work towards channelling our negative emotions into constructive actions.

Why we judge others

People often judge others, yet most people don’t really know themselves. It is difficult to know yourself, and almost impossible to know another person completely. This is why so many people are intent on judging others—they’re afraid to learn about themselves. Aristotle has thus rightly said: “To know thyself is the highest wisdom.”

Heightening awareness can seem like a tall order for those of us who block out the world in order to focus on our own life. But heightened awareness won’t take your attention away from the necessary tasks in your life. On the contrary, there is a huge upside to this in terms of progress in the corporate world, and you getting more respect from your colleagues, clients and family.

A simple way is to write a regular journal. It can be as little as jotting down a few bullet points before you go to bed. Ask yourself: What did I learn about myself at work today? What did I learn at home? What made me happy and what made me unhappy today and why? What are my goals?

Heightened awareness also helps us differentiate between reality and wishful thinking. Many people lead an illusionary life [a life built on how they wish things would be, but not how they are], which prevents them from getting to the root of problems. As a result, they fail to deliver. For example, when you get angry with another driver, you believe your anger has been triggered by his poor driving. But in reality, you are stressed out because you have missed the deadline for an important project. Awareness allows you to be mindful of what is really going on and why you are reacting the way you are.

Do you listen actively?

Awareness is also practised through active listening—listening with your eyes, ears and heart. Give your undivided attention and remain non-judgmental. Your relationship with your family can be tenuous without active listening because a deep understanding of each other is missing. The same applies to business relationships; with customers, colleagues or other stakeholders. You can enrich every relationship with active listening.

In the corporate world, being aware of the moods of individuals and teams can offer valuable insights. You need to know if your employees feel valued or de-motivated. Heightened awareness helps you fix situations where your employees may feel less than great.

Awareness also means you have a deeper understanding of what is going on in your business. You are aware of what is most important to you. Being aware means not only that you are clear about your vision, mission, values and strategy, but also whether your team and your actions are aligned with them.

Ways to develop a heightened awareness

1. Accept that your awareness can always be enhanced.

2. Ask yourself: What frustrates me? What bothers me?  What excites me? What do I do well? What can I do better? What does success mean to me? What makes me happy? What takes me away from who I am?

3. Have one-to-one meetings with associates, customers, family members, colleagues and your spouse to find out how they’re feeling. Keep an open mind during discussions and listen actively. When you’re upset about something, ask: what else could it be?

4. Sharpen your awareness of your team members: are they putting in their best? What are the gaps between actual outcome vis-à-vis the expected outcome? Who are the performers/non-performers? What will take them to the next level?

5. Deepen your awareness of your business. Evaluate what is being achieved from a qualitative and quantitative standpoint, and have a mechanism for evaluation. Then determine the one thing you can do which gives you the highest leverage on your time, and focus on it. Set weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly goals and evaluate your progress regularly.

6. Develop a deeper awareness of your offerings: What are their strengths and weaknesses? Which products and services do clients really like and which do not add much value?

7. Be aware of your customer mix: Who are the 20 per cent customers giving you 80 per cent of the business? Give special attention to those customers.

8. As noted earlier, write in a journal—about what’s going on in your life—to get to the root of any problem. Write in a journal before addressing a problem directly with the person concerned, or read your journal before going for an important meeting. Soon after you begin writing, you’ll find that you’re more aware of your behaviour, your business and people around you. As little as 5 – 10 minutes a day spent writing can help clarify issues.

The post How fine-tuning your awareness can make you more successful appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

Unfortunately, even though there’s research to suggest this, what most of us experience as employees is much different. Even though 80 – 90 per cent of organisations have some form of employee recognition programme, the levels of job satisfaction have declined, and negative, even toxic, workplaces are increasing. Why?

One foundational reason is that most employees receive little positive feedback regarding their contributions. “If I do my work well and complete it on time, I don’t hear anything. In fact, the silence is deafening,” reported one accountant. “But,” he continued, “if I make a mistake, they let me know about it immediately.”

Secondly, the recognition communicated is generally perceived as impersonal, contrived and inauthentic. “Way to go!” “Good work!” “You all are doing a great job!”—all are common phrases used by supervisors. But they communicate little value to the individual who stayed late to get the data entered for today’s report.

Emotional wellbeing and relational health

Communicating authentic appreciation [as opposed to “going through the motions” employee recognition activities] leads to a greater sense of emotional wellbeing for individual team members and relational health for workplace relationships.

Emotional wellbeing: When team members learn how to communicate authentic appreciation for one another’s contributions, the individual employees begin to develop a more positive view of themselves, their abilities and their contributions to the organisation. Additionally, a sense of wellbeing grows from being supportive and encouraging of others, by celebrating others’ strengths and accomplishments, as well as receiving praise for your efforts.

Relational health: When individuals feel truly valued and appreciated, we get along better with others. We become less irritable, less easily offended, and more gracious in relating to others. Also, a greater sense of connectedness and camaraderie develops when colleagues can genuinely communicate how much they value their co-workers.

Communicating authentic appreciation

One foundational concept is to understand that not everyone feels appreciated [or supported] in the same ways. For some, a word of encouragement is meaningful. For others, “words are cheap” and they feel valued when others choose to spend time with them. We have found that there are five languages of appreciation used in the workplace, and that the languages are valid across cultures [although the individual actions within each language varies from culture to culture].

Core conditions for staff to truly feel appreciated

Four core conditions have been identified that need to be present in order for employees to truly feel appreciated [which differs from recognition just being communicated]. Team members will feel valued when appreciation is communicated:

Regularly. What is “regularly’’? It varies depending on the work setting, the frequency of interaction between co-workers, and the nature of the relationship. However, “regularly” clearly implies more than once a year at an employee’s performance review, or when someone receives the “Staff Member of the Month” award.

Utilising the “language” and actions important to the recipient. The key word is “recipient”. Most of us tend to communicate appreciation to others through the actions which we value—like giving a verbal compliment or sending an email. But not everyone feels appreciated in the same ways. Some people appreciate words of affirmation, while others are encouraged when someone helps them with a task. Spending time is another way to demonstrate support, like stopping by a colleague’s office to see how they are doing or bringing a colleague a cup of coffee when you know they’ve had a long day. Even a “high five” or a “fist bump” can be a form of celebration when a difficult project has been completed.

In a way that is personal and individualised. While group-based recognition is a good start [“Way to go, team. Our client satisfaction ratings improved significantly last quarter.”], if the appreciation doesn’t relate to what the individual team member did to help achieve the goal, the communication can fall flat. Team members want to know that what they have done is valued—that you are aware and appreciate that they stayed late after the special marketing event to help clean up.

In a manner that is perceived as genuine and authentic. If the communication of appreciation is not perceived as being genuine, nothing else really matters. Actions of recognition can appear inauthentic when:

• the actions suddenly appear after implementation of a training session on employee appreciation
• a person’s tone of voice, posture, or facial expressions don’t seem to match what they are saying
• how a person relates to you in front of others differs from how they interact with you privately
• the individual has a history of “saying one thing and doing another”
• there is an overall question of the motivation of the deliverer—do they have an ulterior motive?

There are other potential factors that undermine perceived authenticity, but these are some of the most common mentioned.

Improving individuals’ emotional health and relational wellness is a realistic goal to pursue. Beneficial results happen when individuals feel truly valued and appreciated for their contributions: employee relationships are less tense, communication becomes more positive, policies and procedures are followed more, staff turnover decreases, and managers report enjoying their work more. Clearly, when supervisors and colleagues begin to communicate appreciation in ways that are important to the recipients, encouraging results are not far away.

The post Are you doing this one thing for your team’s morale? appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

What is happiness?

What is happiness, you ask. It is something to seek within—a state of mind. It’s a harmonious balance of the various spokes in the wheel of life. My definition of happiness is to achieve my mission statement:

To be with family and friends, leave a legacy, achieve and maintain mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, professional and material wellbeing.

Meaningful relationships with family and friends make life worth appreciating and sharing. Leaving a legacy for future generations helps make the world a better place. ‘Busy hands are happy hands,’ says an old saying. But I reckon that the moment one has some free time and resources, it is important to give back to society. It is important to actively work for and espouse various causes, and pass the baton to future generations, so the good work gets carried on. Enjoying the ‘here and now’ might confer temporary happiness, but enduring happiness comes more easily out of thinking and acting for others.

Happiness is realising that learning to live a life goes far beyond simply making a living, and that the simple pleasures of life are priceless—enjoying a beautiful sunset, hearing from a long lost friend, watching a tiger in the wild, an eagle soar…

Learning from history should not mean carrying the burden of unhappy experiences. It is also important to remember past successes, to reinforce confidence, while enabling the visualisation of future successes. A bright and successful future awaits the person who decides to learn from the past and look ahead in life, with all the health, wealth and happiness life has to offer. This enables us to live in the moment and experience the joy of living, as well as look forward to a future of boundless, endless possibilities.

Happiness is also about understanding and applying The Law of Attraction. Eloquently brought out in the movie ‘The Secret,’ it says that thoughts manifest into reality, and we become what we think about and focus on most.

What is motivation?

The dictionary defines it as, “a force that drives character to overcome conflicts or a set of forces that cause people to behave in a certain way?” Motivation is simply “a reason for doing something.” In a rousing commencement address to Stanford University students in 2005, Steve Jobs shared some very personal stories about his life. Given up for adoption when he was born, Jobs was fired from a company he started, and diagnosed with terminal cancer. Tremendous motivation led him to unbelievable efforts, resulting in him being recently named ‘CEO of the Decade.’ He said, ‘Sometimes life hits you on the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. You’ve got to find what you love.’ Indeed, wonderful lessons in motivation –‘Find what you love’ and ‘The triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity.’

Most of us spend a great part of our life working. It is critical to foster an atmosphere where the best talent is recruited, retained, nurtured and unleashed. An environment with open and honest communication, mutual respect, fair recruitment and appraisal policies, growth opportunities, customer orientation, and a strong set of values and ethics go a long way in creating a strong sense of belonging towards an organization. The best workplaces promote meritocracy, and have an environment that promotes collective responsibility, ownership, mutual cooperation and benefit, unimpeachable integrity, camaraderie and a win-win proposition for the employer and employee. The result: inspired employees who take individual and organizational performance to another level, where everyone works with passion, honesty and inspiration.

Productivity and motivation in an organization are greatest when there is a confluence of the heart, mind, body and soul. Organizations should strive to create that environment where employees bring not just their bodies and minds, but also their hearts and souls to work. Once that is achieved, we can have a paradigm shift, from employees heaving a sigh of relief every Friday afternoon (‘Thank God it’s Friday’) to a charged up ‘Thank God it’s Monday’ – where all employees want to and are able to give their best, every moment. Motivated employees relish the prospect of both challenges and opportunities.

Motivation and happiness are inter-related. Motivated people are far more likely to feel happy, as they have a purpose and direction in life, and are far more likely to actively seek happiness.

The post Happiness and motivation appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.