Kick-Start Your Year by Educating Yourself to Improve Your Work Life & Personal Life

The Importance of Lifelong Learning & How to Use it to Advance Your Career and Overall Life

Know Yourself to Lead Yourself

To get yourself to where you want to go, to where you want to be, or to what you want to do in life, you first need to know where you stand. And more importantly who you are. What are your dreams? Your goals? Your strengths? Your fears? Your weaknesses? What makes you YOU. 

You need to know yourself to lead yourself.

After you do some reflection and get to know yourself a bit more, you’re going to need to take the answers to the questions above you asked yourself and find a way to squash the negatives. The negatives are the things like your fears—  which are getting in your way of being on the other side of you. It’s about creating a way to go from the doubtful you to the confident you. Or the lazy you to the ambitious you. Or the scared you to the courageous you. 

Building a Strong Foundation Starts with Mindset

There are several personal development books, trainings, and courses out there that offer varying perspectives and advice. But one underlying theme, and the universal key to everything, is mindset. 

To put it simply, you need to lose any apparent “I can’t” attitude, and take on Marie Forleo’s “Everything is Figureoutable” attitude. Because here’s the thing— as long as you think you won’t be able to do something, well you won’t be able to do it. If you thought the principle of mind over matter was just bogus, well I beg to differ. 

There are many things you can do to work on developing a positive mindset. I suggest starting with creating a morning routine to set yourself up to have a successful day. This could include journaling, meditation, affirmations, and can be anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour or more. Really it’s whatever works best for you. 

Ultimately, your mindset is the most important thing in establishing your confidence. And confidence is pretty vital when it comes to improving and advancing your professional life.    

Fear is Your Enemy So Learn How to Conquer It

If you want to climb your way to the top, letting go of fear is vital. Maybe you have a fear of failure. Some people even have more subconscious fears such as fear of success. Whatever your fear or fears may be, gaining confidence is necessary if you want to conquer them. 

And confidence is rooted in your mindset. So when you work on your mindset and figure out a morning routine that works best for you, don’t try and ignore your fears. Instead, try turning them into positive affirmations. For example, let’s say you are scared you don’t have the skills or qualities to be promoted to manager at work. Well,  take the opposite of this and make that an affirmation for yourself. “I have all the skills and qualities I need to be an effective manager at my job.” 

When the doubts and fears come creeping up on you, as they naturally will, turn to your morning routine to strengthen your mindset. 

Consistent Small Steps Is The Way to Success

So you’ve created a morning routine to get you in the positive mindset you need. And you pushed your fears to the back of your mind to establish a strong sense of confidence. Now what?

Well, even with confidence and the right mindset, the idea of getting from where you’re at to where you want to be might feel like climbing Mt. Everest. Extremely daunting. 

But the wonderful thing is, you don’t need to make huge leaps and drastic changes. Instead, focus on small steps that you can do consistently. Jeff Olson shows you the power of taking tiny, consistent steps overtime in his book The Slight Edge. If you haven’t read this, do yourself a favor and get a hold of a copy of it today. He demonstrates this through the idea of compound interest. 

Turning a penny into a fortune may seem impossible, but compound interest proves otherwise. The same thing goes with any goal we might have. If you take action toward that goal— even if it’s just half an hour a day, well in 3 months you’ll have made progress towards it. Hey, maybe you could even achieve it in that time, depending on the particular goal. 
So you’ve created a morning routine to get you in the positive mindset you need. And you pushed your fears to the back of your mind to establish a strong sense of confidence. Now what?

Well, even with confidence and the right mindset, the idea of getting from where you’re at to where you want to be might feel like climbing Mt. Everest. Extremely daunting. 

Success vs Failure

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill

Achieving Success Isn’t the End of The Road

When you set goals for yourself, it’s important to keep in mind Winston Churchill’s words. Once you achieve your goal, or reach success, then what? You shouldn’t look at success as an end goal, rather it’s a series of building blocks. Whatever you define success as, well you need to have a plan for once you achieve that. Ask yourself— what’s next? 

The Slight Edge introduces us to the idea of the ‘success curve’. It’s the notion that you are actually never standing still in life. You’re either on the success curve, moving forward in life or on the opposite path— moving towards failure, stuck in the past perhaps. 

Keep yourself on the success curve by continuously taking those small steps and building habits that set you up for success. Those good habits that serve you— that move you one step, however tiny, closer to your dreams and goals.

Failure Is Also Not the End… It’s The First Step Toward Success

Just as success isn’t the end of the road, failure is also not the end. But unlike when you succeed, when you fail, it may feel like the end of the world. It may seem difficult to push yourself forward on that success curve. But here’s a little secret— every failure you face actually moves you one step closer to success. 

Don’t believe me? Well a very successful man himself, Thomas J Watson, founder of IBM, once said “The formula for success is quite simple: double your rate of failure.”

Having the resilience and confidence to stay focused on your goal after failing time and time again, is a quality that makes for a good leader.  

So let’s say your goal is to work your way up to a leadership role at work, maybe that’s manager, president, or head of department, well you already have one leg up on others when you embody the principle of staying on the success curve despite facing failures along the way.

Because most people get discouraged, burnt out, and lose sight of their goal.

Some of the most successful people failed countless times before reaching their biggest success.  Walt Disney, Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Stephen King, just to name a few  Keep this in mind whenever doubt creeps up on you. 

Keep Going and Don’t Give Up

So if you know from the get-go that as you embark on the success curve, you most likely will encounter some failures, or setbacks, then you can be prepared. Don’t let failures throw you off track or deter you from reaching for success. You have to keep going and don’t give up.  

How do you do this? Always remember the 3 C’s for Success: Confidence, Courage, & Commitment. 

And each failure is a chance to examine your plan. It’s the idea that if plan A fails, move to plan B. You have to be the judge of when it’s time to try a different path to get you to where you want to be. But just trust that you’ll get there— it may just not look like how you initially imagined. 

But if you stay clear on your why and are confident, courageous, and committed, you will come face to face with success eventually. And focusing on your why and the 3 C’s will help you enjoy the journey to success. Sometimes we need to think about presence over productivity so we aren’t operating on autopilot and forgetting to enjoy and fully live our lives. Don’t let your goals keep you from enjoying life. Because ultimately, life is about your journey, not your destination. 

Learning is a Lifelong Journey— Make Education & Training are Your Friends

Start with Finding Your Voice

So how do you climb to the top of that mountain where success awaits you? The first step you take to get you from where you are to where you want to be starts with focusing on YOU

Start with finding your unique voice. This may seem like a step that could be skipped, especially if you’re in your 30’s, 40’s or 50’s, and think this was something you accomplished years ago. But sometimes we need a reset, and going back to the basics can be crucial to building a strong foundation for your success.

Your voice is what helps guide you through life. Discover it, build it, and embrace it. Let it serve you. Start now by taking this  FREE 5 Voices quiz to discover your voice. 

Communication

Your voice is vital in discovering your communication style. If you think this might not be significant in achieving your particular goals, think again. We are all innately social beings and building relationships and connections is how we thrive. You will get to where you want to be a lot faster by fostering connections rather than on your own. 

You’ve probably heard it said before that communication is one of the most important things in a healthy successful relationship. Although this is usually referring to a romantic partnership— it is applicable to all relationships. Personal and professional. And I should clarify that we are talking about effective communication. 

You can’t work on effective communication without first knowing your own voice and communication tendencies. Add effective communication to the list of qualities of a good leader.

Effective communication includes the ability to clearly communicate your wants, needs, expectations, concerns, desires, and so much more. Not only will it transform your professional life, but it is essential for your personal life as well.  

Learn to be more self-aware, and others-aware, while discovering and strengthening your communication skills by taking the FREE 5 Voices quiz if you haven’t done so already.

Leadership

Effective communication is just the starting point when it comes to training yourself to be a leader. But what is the significance of leadership in the workplace? “Leadership is the accomplishment of a goal through the direction of human assistants.”  If you think about leadership in this way, it becomes rather clear that leadership training isn’t only for those wanting to be promoted to a management or supervisor role. 

There are different levels of leadership as well. For instance, take a CEO versus the manager of a department within that business. Both roles benefit from having leadership skills. And if we simply associate being a good leader with helping others accomplish goals, well then wouldn’t you benefit from leadership training regardless of the position you hold or aim to hold in your workplace? Leadership training will make you a better partner, friend, mom, dad, sister, brother, teacher, co-worker, you name it.

Fighting for the highest good of others is an amazing quality of good leaders. Begin your leadership training with this Altitude Course offered by CarbonCo. It includes 50 training sessions that will give you practical tools to elevate your leadership skills in just 30 minutes or less.

This training provides a way for you to work on yourself and focus on improving your personal leadership skills. But you can enhance your experience by experiencing the training alongside your team. Whether it’s doing it with a few coworkers in your office or with your entire staff— the ROI of this training is priceless.

The Benefits of Leadership Training Extend Beyond Your Workplace

The beautiful thing about leadership training is that not only will it do wonders for your career and help you move forward on that success curve in your professional life, but it will positively affect your personal life as well. 

The skills you learn and develop will allow you to make an impact through influence, which is the heart of leadership. It’s not about demands and bossing people around. Being able to make an impact through influence is another quality of a good leader.

So do something today to educate yourself. Now is the time to begin leveling-up your skill set. And what better time than a brand new year? Whether it’s signing up for a course, reading a book, or listening to a podcast— increase your knowledge and take educating yourself into your own hands. It’s the first step to being able to make a difference at work, but in the lives of your loved ones by making an impact through influence. 

Start here with your free voice assessment. And don’t forget to rally up your team and embark on your leadership training together with this life-altering Altitude course. 

Remember— learning is a lifelong journey, just like your climb to the top of the success curve is. And don’t tell yourself ‘one day…’. No, it’s TODAY.