Do you take FEEDBACK constructively?

Some friends and clients asked me 'how to be more self-awareness so we can know what to reinforce and what to improve to be our best self!'

One of the ways is to do self-reflection based on feedback. Feedback either of our own view or of others. In my recent leadership book, I interviewed business owners and asked them the same question. They recommended to get feedback from different people with different perspectives and find the common patterns (or someone call 360 degree feedback theory).

But we need to make sure we take FEEDBACK in a constructive way, otherwise we can minimize ourselves and feel less confident and become fearful of judgement. It is normally because we take feedback become our IDENTITY while it is actually reflecting our BEHAVIOR at that time or overtime then it becomes a habit which means it can be changed with the same process if we want to.

And trust the right people - people who have been successfully in a journey or TRUST in your potential and challenge your potential.

This video was made in the day I felt resonated the most with the feedback that I have received from my team and people I know that I should be more direct in some conversations. And it is a good chance to evaluate and change the behavior to be better.

Join me to practice the 3 ways to receive feedback constructively:

- Don't take it personal (it is not your identity, just behaviour or habit and it can be changed if you want to)

- Ask the reasons the why behind the feedback

- What can you learn from you and if different people who trust you say the same and your best self feel that, make a plan to change it

Our ability comes from our daily training

My take-away learning messages from the meeting: • We don’t know how creative we are until we give us a chance to try: all the teams created different kinds of products to solve environment problems such as paper bins or bags to reduce the use of plastic bags
• We don’t know that how well we can work with others until we give it a try: people came from different ages and didn’t know each other before but worked well together to achieve a common goal • We don’t need to have an innate ability either speaking or leadership as we always can train it with daily gym practice 
In CSpeaking gym, we celebrate everyone as a great gymer in training their 7Cs muscles: Confidence, Competence Critical thinking, Communication, Creativity, Collaboration, Commitment and Compassion.

Creativity

A story triggered me the most about creativity is in my first self-help favorite book 'I can do it'. She said if you create a bank account, you are a creator. It sounds simple. But that simplicity made me know that 'we can if we do'. That simplicity is simple enough to break the limiting belief in someone who does not believe in themselves. When they break that barriers, they take action then they can make it happen.

So, no matter what do you believe, you want to allow yourself to have a chance to try, you don't know how much creative you are, you don't know how much you can do until you try, try, try even more.

In the context of our life, we are the creator of our life! Let's create a life that we are proud of that when we look back we know 'I have done my best'.

Some scientific-practical-based ways to embrace creativity:

1. Draw, paint, doodle, watercolor

2. Do something physical like exercise

3. Do reflection

4. Watch Ted talk or listen to a podcast or read novels

5. Traveling, going to nature

A possible process of creativity

(CPS’ of the CPS framework stands for ‘Creative Problem Solving’ of Alex Osborn):

• Opportunity-finding

• Data-finding

• Problem-finding

• Idea-finding

• Solution-finding

• Acceptance-finding

Lets dig deeper in this CREATIVITY topic on 23rd Oct at CSpeaking gym.

Listening (Cspeaking gym week 13: Cultivation)

Mary, my close friend at university, often called me to join her for a meal late at night anytime she met any problems. Although I didn’t eat, she didn’t mind to have me join her as long as I would listen to her. Mary would tell me what she had been thinking and all things happened in her daily life anytime we met.

There was no other special reason why Mary often wanted to go out with me rather than I would listen and understand her. I didn’t say anything but just listened (which sounds not really believable because the ‘speaking’ identity part of me is really strong).

But the reason I could just listen, not speaking much because the feeling of being shared was a true happy feeling. I could see how passionate she was to speak when having someone to listen to her passionately. It is a beautiful feeling. Have you ever felt it? Being truly listened or truly listen to others!

I notice that any close friendship or relationship of mine comes is because of the same reason – truly listening.

And yes, there is a time, especially recent years, where I speak more than listen but I do know if I can listen more, the conversation or relationship is more effective. Listening is always a skill that I cultivate everyday.

In our CSpeaking gym (personal and leadership development community), even though we have the word ‘speaking’ there but we believe effective speaking or communication goes closely with effective listening.

Yesterday, we talked about ‘cultivation’ of skills/mindset and I found everyone did a great job in cultivating their speaking and confidence ability. Someone didn’t speak anything, now dared to share their ideas freely. Together with speaking, I found one skill we can cultivate better in our gym is ‘listening’.

Let’s cultivate it together!

Tips on listening

Effective active listening (a conversation context) – the golden rule ‘ Listen and hear rather than waiting to speak’:

- Paraphrase the speaker’s words back to him or her as a

question:

“I see/hear/feel like you∙ are afraid of…”, “It seems

like she really confuses you.”

- Clarifying: Bringing vague material into sharper focus “Let

me see if I’ve got it all...”

- Perception Checking: Request for verification of your

perceptions.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right. You said you feel the project

is important, but at the same time you find it frustrating.

Is that what you are saying?”

- Validation: Acknowledge the individual’s challenges

and feelings.

“I appreciate your willingness to talk about…”

- Summarizing: Pulling it all together, organizing and

integrating the major aspects of your dialogue, “So it sounds

to me as if...”

- Empathy: Reflection of content and feeling.

“Your feel (state feeling) because (state content).”

- Remember that silence (as well as long pauses) can be golden.

You were born with two ears and one mouth for a reason.

—Epictetus

(so that we can listen twice as much as we speak)

Lets listen, listen, listen more to develop together!

See you next Tuesday weekly meeting (6.30pm)or Saturday group coaching (6.30pm) at Lancaster, 20 Nui Truc.

Cultivation

Working in the field as one of the main activities when I was a kid. Seeing and involving in farming work, I have learned great lessons related to the power of cultivation.
Every season, my family would choose one particular fruit or plant or vegetable to grow. Despite the differences, the process seems to be repeated.
Here is a simple process (where I take one of my favorite fruits -watermelon - as an example):
1. Decide to grow watermelon (e.g. identify the characteristics of the season (e.g., hot, cold) to make sure it is suitable with the watermelon)
2. Select good watermelon seeds by referring to experts 
3. Prepare the land (e.g., making beds, weeding, fertilizing) 
4. Planting the seeds 
5. Watering and weeding 
6. Repeating the 5th step until having watermelon fruit 
7. Give some nice fruit to our neighbors and relatives 
This process can be related to a process of growing a person or a capability or a mindset! Let's take 'speaking' capability as an example.
1. Decide to develop the speaking identity - the speaking 'seed'
2. Modeling from successful speakers 
3. Make a speaking plan/Join a like-minded group to practice speaking 
4. Speak everyday 
5. Eliminate negativity or limiting beliefs making us feel not confident in speaking; reinforce empowering beliefs making us more confident 
6. Repetition of speaking with different distinction 
7. Share with others, support others 
Maybe you have another way of interpreting? But we all can agree on one fact is that - if we want to have 'result's, we need to cultivate thoughts, action and beliefs toward the results we want!
You can be a great public speaker/leader and most importantly a person! In Cspeaking gym, we help you to cultivate that identity!
Lets do it together every day! And tomorrow we celebrate this topic CULTIVATION together at CSpeaking gym!

Coherence

COHERENCE in personal development context!

If you ever feel that you are not your best? Maybe it is where you can practice the ''coherence' muscle - the physical mental emotional and spiritual work toward a goal!

Here are basic practices to reinforce the 4 factors creating the coherence of us:

• Physical: Do exercise to increase our physical flexibility (e.g., running)

• Mental: Learn one thing new everyday; stay focused, one task at one time (e.g., learn about 'coherence' today)

• Emotional: Cultivate one positive thought every day (e.g., I am grateful to have my family/team)

• Spiritual: Help one person per day (e.g., share my ideas on coherence to inspire people to be more coherent)

Join us tonight we discuss about coherence together in Cspeakinggym
Jenvuhuong.com/cspeakinggym

Managing change

“Change is disturbing when it is done to us, exhilarating when it is done by us ”, Rosabeth M. Kanter (Harvard Business School, 1992).

We will discuss change in organisational level and individual level today.

ORGANISATIONAL LEVEL

Why manage organisational change?

… and 70% of all change projects fail (in some way)

… nature of failure

28%  are abandoned before completion; 46% are behind schedule or over budget; 80% changes are not implemented in the way intended or not used at all six months later; three out of four mergers fail to achieve their financial and strategic objectives ; costs escalate and benefits fail to appear (Cameron & Green 2012)

Solution for managing organisational change?

One of the popular model to manage change Kotter’s 8 Step Model:

1.Establishing a sense of urgency

2.Forming a powerful coalition

3.Creating a vision

4.Communicating the vision

5.Empowering others to act on the vision

6.Planning for and creating short-term wins

7.Consolidating improvements and producing still more change

8.Institutionalizing new approaches

INDIVIDUAL LEVEL

WHY DON’T WE CHANGE? 3 MAIN REASONS:
- Fear of the results (e.g., the new job will not be as good as the current job)

- Fear of the process (e.g., it is difficult to get the job)

- Fear of the lost (e.g., I will lose friends and things that I have now)

STEPS TO MAKE A CHANGE:
- Fear of the results (e.g., the new job will not be as good as the current job)

- Think about all the benefits that you may gain; list it out; imagine it; feel it to let it integrate in your identity (e.g., imagine the new workplace with new awesome co-workers and bright office)

- Fear of the process (e.g., it is difficult to get the job)

Take at least one action to feel that you are progressing toward the goal (e.g., researching on new jobs)

- Fear of the lost (e.g., I will lose friends and things that I have now)

You don’t lose anyone, you just develop you to be better. Think about new habits that you gain after changing.

Confidence to take action - 5 second rule

The situation is that you have a moment of feeling doing something, you want to do it but you don’t feel doing it. There are something stopping you call it either fear or doubt or lack of confidence. For example, you want to raise your hand to share what you think in front of a group of people but you may scared of judgment.

The 5 second rule (of Mel Robbins) provides us a solution to overcome the feeling of not to do. This rule suggests that when you have the moment of wanting to do but not feeling to do, you have a window opportunity within 5 seconds - if you don’t move then your brain will kill the opportunity.

You just need to count 5-4-3-2-1 that activates your brain’s prefrontal cortex that gives you the control of the situation! So in the example of the beginning of this sharing, you can count and stand up at the same time or raise your hand at the same time or shout “'I”, you take back the control at that moment - all doubts and fear disappear!

And each time you do it, you become more courageous - your confidence muscle gets stronger and stronger!

So let’s count 5-4-3-2-1 more today to take action to be more confidence to reach your full potential instead of reaching full of the fear!

Getting more materials and online course on Confidence here: jenvuhuong.com/confidence

Concentration - Cspeaking gym week 11

I was sitting in front of the laptop for hours but nothing was completed. I opened the laptop, I opened the phone, I opened my notebooks. I just kept opening things and closed them. I thought about one project and the thought about the second project came and the thought about the third project came. Hours by hours, I just kept thinking about all things I had to do without doing anything!

Have you ever felt that? You just keep thinking about all the things that you need to do but not doing them? While you do one thing then other thing comes, you do other things. It goes on and on.

It sounds not so exciting but it does happen sometimes I believe! But the good news is that we can always have the way to get back on track - to do the things instead of worrying about you have to do them!

Pomodoro or Blocktime is the technique that I have used to overcome the overwhelming time - keep worrying but not actually doing the things! And it works! There will be other ways and other factors that we need to master to stay focused but let’s master one technique by one technique. Let’s check out the Pomodoro or Blocktime today! If you know it and have used it, share it and inspire others to do the same so we can be more focused to achieve our high performance!

This technique suggests us to:

• Divide our time into different slots

• Each important project will be allocated in one slot time (recommended is around 50 minutes for each slot)

• Between different projects we will take a break (either going for a walk or doing a quick meditation or going to wash our face or going to talk to someone), the idea is that we need to detach from the intensive time to re-energise to move to the next project (or the other part of the same project)

We can set up a trigger to remind us about 50 minutes up and break time up so we can go back and re-focus!

If you do it at the first day, maybe you don’t get used to it. So do it again, slowly as training a muscle in the gym, it will get stronger!

This week on Tuesday Cspeaking gym 2nd Oct we will practice different activities together to be more concentrated in doing our work (including speaking)!

Nonstop love, live, give,

Jen,

P/s: this technique is also mentioned in one of my coming books jenvuhuong.com/theyoujournal - really looking forward to sharing it with you soon to support you reach your highest performance!

The power of Intention

Have you felt like after a week or a day or a conversation, you didn't feel you did know what did you do?

Yesterday, we practiced the solution for that situation through the technique 'setting an intention'.

Setting intention about the feeling we want to experience and the outcomes we want to achieve help to direct our energy and behaviours then results.

A new week is a great chance to practice that together!

Your prop for setting an intention for the next week:

Your 3 outcomes of your new week are...

3 feelings you want to experience next week are...

3 ways you can do to achieve the outcomes are...

More videos at https://www.youtube.com/c/jenvuhuong

jenvuhuong.com/theyoujournal

Plan

Don’t start a journey until it planned

There is one thing from different trips that I notice is it is always planned in advance. The reason everyone feels planning in advance as it is a trip. A trip is a trigger to make people plan. And the reason we do it because we can save our resources for going around and being confused of what to do due to lack of information. If we can apply it into everything we do – a day or an hour – plan in advanced we will also maximise our resources.  

There are some important things of a plan:

·         Outcomes and purposes

·         How-to achieve the outcomes

o   Resources (budget, human resources, partnership, transport,…)

o   Timeline

o   Places

Let’s break-it down together:

·         Outcomes act as the most important of a plan – it is like a rope through the event connecting all the things together – everything is to move the trip toward to the outcomes. Any activity needs to be judged whether adding values to the outcomes. Purposes act as spirit of the outcomes/the trip – why do we want to achieve the outcomes? Purposes guide our spirit –state of mind

·         How- to achieve the outcomes: We need to identify our resources then knowing which resources are capable of helping us to achieve the outcomes, which ones need to be improved or complimented by outsources or partnership. For example, the embassy in the trip found that they need one trainer sharing about environment topic so they asked me join in the trip.

I believe any trip needs to have elements of work and entertainment. Combining activities to highlight these aspects important. Last days, we went to 4 different provinces (Thai Nguyen – Bac Kan – Cao Bang – Lang Son) and in each province, we did event and went to different natural places to learn about the culture and food.

The most important lesson that I always learn is to be grateful for the trip – reflection after each day and feel grateful that we have a chance to experience it and having chance to spend time with others.

Renew Your Life

I have experienced a great course of my mentor Brendon on renewing your life and here are some takeaway that we can practice together:

• Bring back the ambition to be a better you

Have greater emotional connection with your best. Feeling doesn't generate itself, we generate it by focusing on it. 

(1) What is a feeling that you want to have more of in your life?

(2) How can you generate that feeling on purpose?

For example, for me one time was 'peace' so I decided to add yoga into my daily practice. 

(3) Raise the standard in your relationship 

What is the one thing that you can do to charge your relationship?

For example, to improve the relationship with my family, I visit my family every week.

• Prime your day

Get your morning started on the right food by creating your own personalised routine such as going to do exercise right away when you wake up or maybe you can practice affirmation 'reading out loud thing that makes you feel excited' such as your goal

• Witness Beauty 

Write down what you love and you feel grateful for. Being intentional in reinforcing beautiful things happened around us. It can be something that is really simple like you see a beautiful flower. 

What did you see that it was beautiful?

What did you say that was beautiful?

What did you hear that was beautiful?

• Bring the joy 

Decide to bring joy, positive energy, vibrancy 

What do you need to do to show up with positive energy?

• Remove non-essentials 

Check the following list:

Need: Do you need to do it?

Ownership: Is it your problem?

Passion: Is it your passion?

Growth: Does it make you grow?

Challenge: Cspeaking Gym Week 9

Challenge: 'Something that needs great mental or physical effort in order to be done successfully and therefore tests a person's ability' _Cambridge dictionary.

Since I was a student, I started deeply engaging into personal development books and I found the word 'challenge' is one of a really common words that most authors shared in their books. They said 'Challenges make us grow'. And one of my favourite authors Tim shared his Ted talk about 'creating a fear list' (not to-do list or goal list). He suggested to do a thing that we felt fearful - a challenge every day to develop ourself to another level. That stuck me! It has been a really favourite practices for me anytime I feel I don't grow I know I need my 'fear list' or 'challenge list'.

What is your challenge list?

I believe you have the ability to overcome challenges and you have done it. Each time we overcome a challenge, our competence muscle gets stronger and stronger. If you found speaking in front of public challenging then just allow yourself to take one step forward to speak then the time after that you will feel easier to speak. And if you don't like what have you performed, it is ok as you are developing, the more you know the more you may feel you don't know.

There are 3 practical steps to tackle a challenge that I found working well for me and my clients:

• Re-frame the challenge: Re-frame by the word itself, instead of saying 'challenge' we say 'opportunity'. Think about the challenge as an importunity to grow.
• Re-frame our role: Imagine in 10 year time, we will be more mature and better. Think about one thing that future self will tell us to do in the current situation to deal with the challenge.
• Change our state of mind: Just do one thing to change our state of mind to become a good state of mind (either going to do exercise or going to meet our mastermind group or doing one thing to feel we grow) then from that point, re-think about the one step to tackle with the challenge. 

This Tuesday  in Cspeaking gym we will create a challenge list to tackle together so we can develop as a more confident person/speaker/teamplayer/leader.

Looking forward to seeing you!

Love live give,

Jen,

Clarity - CSpeaking gym Week 8

Have you ever used GPS to find the way to go to somewhere? I bet you have or at least you know about the way it works! We need to know the starting point and the ending point. And if we don't know one of the points or none of them, it would be a challenge. If we don't have that clarity, it would be a challenge. 

It is similar to our life, we need to have a CLARITY about who we want to be and what we want to do - the THERE we want to get to and where we are now - our current beliefs and behaviours then we can get from HERE to THERE. 

I remember when I changed my career from being an engineer to a writer and a speaker I had a strong belief that I could do that even I didn't know how. But as I had that clarity of my feeling and who I wanted to become, I found the way to make it happen. 

I found my mentor who is an international speaker and trainer as well as a best selling author and I have learned from him the 'how' since then. And the one lesson and first and foremost lesson he always taught me was 'clarity'. Although my journey has just started and there several challenges and things to learn but I know the clarity of becoming a great writer and trainer to empower the best from people will guide me and assure my fulfillment during the journey. 

If you have a dream or a feeling that you want to do something but you may don't feel it clear enough or strong enough, you may want to work on the clarity. If you want to be a great public speaker but you still feel that you lack of clarity whether you can do it or not, you need to identify the 'great' definition - what does it mean to you? Knowing that, you always can work to achieve that 'great' level. For example, you may define 'great' to you mean 'inspiring, passionate, authentic' or 'confident, authentic, humurous'. From having that clarity you will define what do you need to work on the achieve these characteristics. 

A framework to increase 'Clarity':

Three words that describe my best self are…

…..                                                     

….

….

Three words that could define how I want to treat other people are…

…

…

…

The main feelings I want to cultivate in my life are…

Congruence - CSpeaking Gym Week 7

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” – C.G. Jung

Have you ever felt that you are not truly you that make you don't have the feeling the authentic confidence? Have you ever felt that you have to change you in each context to satisfy others? You don't feel the alignment between the person you want to become or what you do. You don't feel you have the congruence!

• Why it is hard to be congruent 

Different parts of us are engaged at different times. Depending on different contexts, we may change our identity, personalty, states and behaviors. We might be a great team player at work but a bad partner at home. We may be really talkative when being with others but silent when being with ourselves. It is natural for us to be different in different contexts. 

However, to feel more congruent, we need to be more conscious about who we are, who we want to be and what we want to do. We have to intentionally create the identity we want. 

• There are some practices to be more congruence: 

Be honest and vulnerable to share our dreams/weaknesses/difficulties

Let your emotions out: If you feel something, just express them but not let them make you behave in not a good way

Share your dreams with your mentors or the people you believe and have succeed

Be responsible and live fully

Celebrate you: celebrate even small wins, give yourself credits when you complete something and then continue trying more!

Let's celebrate you in CSpeaking gym on 28th Aug!

Nonstop love live give,

Jen,

Connection - Cspeaking gym 21st Aug

We talked about 'connection' and most importantly we demonstrated the 'connection' between each other. I felt so loved and connected with everyone today despite their ages and professions. 

Thanks to everyone. Here are some lessons that I learned today about connection:

A framework of connection that helps us to connect with others better then we can feel more comfortable and confident.

Connection = Be curious + Be present + Be supportive + Be thankful + Be true

• Be curious

Always being a learner to learn new things;

always consider everyone is a good teacher;

being genuinely interested in knowing others

• Be present:

Fully concentrating on being with others, be in the here and the now, not being held by the past or hanged by the future

• Be supportive 

Respect and support other dreams;

Provide support either emotional support or information or contact support to help others realise their dreams 

• Be thankful 

Gratitude helps us to focus on positivity and happiness; being thankful toward others make others feel appreciated so they will feel more open to connecting with us

• Be true 

Be true to ourselves can help us to connect with the true self of others, the connection will be more authentic and deep and sustainable 

We also learned a lot from the five teams today:

• Teamwork, making everyone being heard and being able to speak 
• Share supportive feedback to help others improve 
• Listen to understand and appreciate others 
• You have one idea, I have one idea, we share, we have two ideas 

Cannot wait to see everyone next week with the topic 'Congruence' 

Connection

Have you ever felt you lost the connection with others?

I have since I was a kid.

I was a silent kid. I would not talk to my friends much. I would not talk with my neighborhood much. You may think that I was a shy kid. 

No. I was not. I was just a kid who wanted to protect my goal of going abroad with a full scholarship and help people around me - the goal was laughed by many people when hearing my sharing. 

People often gave up on telling me to be realistic because of my silent without much argument. Thanks to the silence, I wholeheartedly focused on my goal, studying hard everyday. And yes, I made it. I got scholarships for working in an International company and later on 2 top world scholarships to study 2 Masters and being the best performance in each Master program,

I also changed from a silent person to become a non-stop speaking person that what my friends often call me. After high school, I started speaking non-stop to get out all the things built up over the years of being in silent. And the silent years taught me to speak well we need to listen well. 

I thought I spoke well as I nonstop did it everyday. I would go to public speaking club and nonstop gave speech. I felt I developed into a great speaker and trainer identity. However, I still felt something missing. I felt there was an empty part not filled yet inside me. Anytime I spoke, I was full of me. But after that, I always felt the disconnection between me and the audience. The feeling was built up day by day. 

One day, my mentor told me that frankly people didn't really get what I said in general except for the energy. I was so confused. I didn't know what happening. Despite my consistency of speaking, it didn't lead to anywhere. 
Thankfully, my mentor read my mind. He helped me to connect with my purpose of speaking to empower people instead of focusing on the doubts. He made me realised the 'silent stubborn kid' part was the block wall between me and the audience. 

I realised that the invisible wall built between me and the outside since I was a kid make me speak in my head instead of the audience's head. I realised the unconscious fear of being not understood deep inside me built since I was a kid.

That was a powerful realisation. Since then, I slowly took down a 'brick' in the wall by connecting with the audience from my heart instead of only with my head. I started sharing my truth. I started sharing my ambition. I trust in the connection with others. I trust in the connection with the world. I felt connected more than ever with people around me. That's powerful. I feel my journey of speaking to empower people has just started, everyday. I feel without connection with people, my life journey is a no purpose journey. No matter the silent part of speaking part in me appears, they both look for the connection with people, with you my friends.

Thanks for connecting with me by reading these words. If you have felt a lonely time - lacking of connection with the world, this is the time to connect with people again.

Some practices for us to feel connected with others then ourselves:

1. Be our true self: If we are not our true self, others may not be themselves when interacting with you. We loose the true connection

2. Be curious to learn about others 

3. Respect and support others

4. Be present in any conversation with others

5. Be grateful for others 

Courage

Fear,

Doubts,

Struggles,

Have you ever 'been' friends with them? I believe we all have sometimes, either in a short moment or long time. These things - fear, obstacles, struggles - often come when we try new things such as learn a new skill especially the skill that people often tell us that 'it is terrifying' like public speaking; or when we decide to pursue a challenging goal such as going abroad or start our own business. 

We often think these things are our 'unwanted friends' but we still give them lots of time, energy to think about them that somehow makes us feel demotivated to achieve what we want to do.

The reality is that these 'unwanted friends' are our long-life friends, they will be always there everywhere every time we do something that is worthy. They actually send us signals that the things we do are something challenging that we can grow and get out of our comfort zone. If we never speak in front of public before, when we want to do the first time, we may feel fear and that fear tells us that is a challenge and prepare for that. And when we have the courage to just do it anyway, these 'unwanted friends' vanish into the air.

I remember the first time I spoke in front of hundreds people, all the 'unwanted friends' in my head told me 'what if others will laugh at me? what if they don't like what I say? what if I don't remember?' All the what if came, but when I just did it, it disappeared. 

I believe you have the courage to do whatever it take, and when you do it all unwanted friends vanish into the air.

Lets gather together to speak up, demonstrate our courage.

P/S:

To increase the 'muscle' of courage, we can do some practices everyday:
- One thing that I can do to honor my struggle is...
- One person that I can share my ambition today is...
- One thing that I am scared of but I will do today to grow is...

In this video, how demonstrating more courage can help us do things differently to get better results

Summary CSpeaking Gym week 4 7th Aug- Consistency

If you were given a choice between taking $3 Million in cash this very instant and and a single penny that doubles in value every day for 31 days, which would you choose? And why? (an example from the book 'The Compound effect'). 

If you have done this exercise before, you may know you should choose the penny. With the compound effect, at the day 31 you get $10,737,418.24 which is almost 3 time more than $3 Million. 

Or just take an example of your reading habit. One scenario is you consistently read one page every day and double the page after each week. Other scenario is you read 10pages/one time/per week. After one week, it seems the first scenario does not bring much payoff, you only finish 7 pages while the second scenario makes you feel you complete more with 10 pages. However, after 1 month, the first scenario makes you read around 56 pages while the first scenario make you read 40 pages.

With consistent action everyday and compound effect, you achieve your goal in the long run. The small choice you make everyday with the consistency over time create habits then lead to results in the long run. 

In the week 4 of CSpeaking Gym, we discovered another 'C' topic - Consistency especially its role in our life formula: 

Your Choices (decisions) + Consistency (often seen in your Habits) + Compound Effect (Time) = Goals.”  

• Small choices

Choice is a door opening the next steps you take leading to results either good or bad. For example, your everyday choice of what to eat, what to drink influences your health. If you choose to eat apples instead of candy, you give your body healthy inputs resulting in better health of you. If you choose to use staircase instead of elevator, you consume more kcal resulting in a healthier body or losing weight. 

The choice you made to come to CSpeaking gym instead of staying at home led to your speaking performance in the group resulting in a better improvement in your speaking and personal development journal. 

• Consistency

What you consistently do every day decide who you become. When you make a choice, you take action. If you consistently make the choice and take the action, it becomes a habit then influences the results you get in life. 

If you keep making the choice of eating chocolate instead of apples, you eat the chocolates and it becomes a habit resulting in your unhealthy body. 

If you make a choice to practice a speech everyday, you finish 7 speeches after 1 week, 365 speeches after a year; you master your speaking journey. 

• Time - Compound effect

When to start staying consistent in doing something such as speaking?

The earlier you start, the better it is.

Imagine if you start doing public speaking since you were 10 years old, everyday you give a speech. When you are 20 years old, you have given 3650 speeches. But if you start giving speech only when you are 20 years old, you may need to catch up the person who starts at their early age.

Having said that, it is never late as long as you make a decision and take action most importantly stay consistent. 

Joining our mastermind group - how to stay consistent by email to askjenteam@gmail.com

Life formula with 'Consistency'

The famous author Darren who wrote the book 'The compound effect' proposes a life model where consistency is one of the keys to achieve our life goal:

Your Choices (decisions) + Behavior (action) + Habit (repeated action) + Compound Effect (Time) = Goals.”  

I believe that chances we can agree easily on the formula but it seems not that easy to practice it, to stay consistent.

To stay consistent either in going to the gym or practice speaking every day, we need to:

- Regularly emotionally connect with our goal. If you want to be a better speaker, you need to find a reason why do you want to do it, maybe you want to inspire people, maybe you want to be a better teacher. You need to make the reason clear and emotionally connect with that. You want to wake up everyday to visualize you stay persistent then improve your speaking ability then be a better speaker or teacher. You can even see the audiences enjoy listening to you. When you are emotionally connect with that, you brain will activate your body to take action.

- Use block time. Each 50 minutes, you just focus on one task then take a break about 3 to 5 minutes. By doing it, your brain is refreshed and you don't feel burned out that you can be more persistent.

- Creating the triggers such as your alarms or some notes that remind you to stay consistent 

- Give yourself credit for each small win so you accumulate the momentum to stay persistent 

- Creating an accountable environment to keep you consistent, for example joining a group of people who have similar goals as you 

We have a CSpeaking gym happening every Tuesday to help you stay consistent in the journey of speaking. 

https://www.facebook.com/speakinggym/