CHEER up to increase Confidence and Compassion - CSpeaking Gym 25th Feb

CHEER UP to develop our Confidence and Compassion.

I believe each of us experiences the time of learning something new, a new skill, a new career, a new way of living. And the one string connects our continuous action during the learning journey is to keep the belief on we can make it happen. Having someone cheers us on or we cheer ourselves can help us reinforce our belief leading to positive action. Cheering others is also an exhibition of compassion and the fire of commitment.

In Cspeaking gym, we have different practical interactive activities to develop our 7Cs (Confidence, Competence, Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, Commitment, Compassion) of leaderships and each meeting we choose one topic to reinforce the 7Cs. On 25th Feb, we use the training technique - CHEER UP to train our Confidence and Compassion among the 7Cs.

Here is a summary of how CHEER UP can help us increase our confidence and compassion:

How CHEER UP can increase our Confidence?

When we are in the down moment or lack of confidence, if we are cheered up (either by ourselves or by others), we will believe in ourselves more to take action, action creates experience, experience can lead to competence then confidence.

For example, when we feel that we are not at speaking but our mentors cheer us up "You have potential to speak well. Your current performance does not reflect your future performance. Just keep sharing and you will improve. I believe in you". We then continue trying to speak then we improve then we are more confident. We can act as our own mentor or have a real mentor or a supportive community (CSpeaking gym is one for you) to be cheered up and keep improving.

Not even in a down moment, when we knock down a goal, we deserve to be CHEERed up either by ourselves or others. When we celebrate our achievement, our brain knows what is good to reinforce

How Cheer Up develops Compassion?

When we encourage ourselves or others to overcome difficulties or down moments, we express our care and love toward ourselves and others.

7 Ways to Cheer Up others?

When they feel down?

- Acknowledge their feelings

- Say how much you love them or care about them and

- Ask questions to let them speak

- Listen

- Say "thanks for sharing"

- Ask them to do one thing to change their state of mind

- Make a joke

When they are not confident about themselves?

- Send an inspiring image/video

- Share one image of one achievement they did in the past

- Share one image of one thing you learn from them

- Ask them to share why do they feel that

- Listen

- Say "thanks for sharing"

- Learn one new thing with them

The most 7 cheering up sentences yesterday were:

- I am happy

- I am very happy

- I am truly happy

- I am happy to know you

- I am happy to learn from you

- I am happy to learn to how to improve

- I am happy when you are all happy

This is a collective cheering up that leads to collection action then collective happiness!

Deal with the little voice

18th Feb 2019, CSpeaking officially came back from a long break – thanks to all the gym leaders and gymers who made it happen.

The topic of the day was 'Coming back' stronger despite the little voice to train the 'Commitment' muscle among the 7Cs muscles of Cspeaking gym (Confidence, Competence, Communication, Creativity, Collaboration, Commitment, Compassion). The little voice normally comes whenever we want to do something that is out of comfort zone for example in the case of Cspeaking gym, we want to come back stronger after a long break. Somehow the voice makes us doubt ourselves and not take action to move forward. So to stay committed in our development journey, we need to learn to deal with the voice to take action anyway.

We had a great ‘Little Voice’ play where each team made a story telling about a person overcame little voice to work on realizing their dream or goals.

Here’s a formula to deal with the little voice:

- Acknowledge its presence (identifying it clearly: what does it say to you in which context and how often,…)

- Associate empowering meaning to it: saying THANKS to it and associate good meaning to it ‘Thank for the little voice which reminds us that we are doing something worthy and help us to grow to the next level’

- Take the first action to get out of our head and the little voice

- Have a clear action plan and model successful people

- Take the first step to just move forward

- Celebrate small wins to reinforce the empowering results then thoughts and beliefs then action

Cannot wait to meet you in the next week on the topic of ‘Cheering up’

Talk soon,

Nonstop love live give,

Jen,

Kill procrastination

We had a great time to discuss on the topic of Killing procrastination at HEC.

Here is a take-away summary! What are your favourite strategies?

1) Why we procrastinate?
5 Main Causes Of Procrastination:
- A Fear of Failure
- Low Energy Levels
- Excessive Perfectionism
- A Lack of Focus
- Overwhelming

2) Solutions

- Revisit the reason you want to do the project you want to do 
Is the project worthy doing?
Are you 100% sure that you want to do it?
What are 3 feelings you have if you crush it?
Keep revisit these feelings everyday
(Book: Start with Why of Simon Sinek)
- Win back your morning Routine 
Energize you: exercise, stretch
Plan: What are 3 main outcomes of today?
Prime your mind: 3 things you feel grateful for?
Learning: reading or listing to learn 3 new things?
(Book: )
- Break down a project into small tasks then using Block time to schedule it
From Monthly tasks, weekly tasks, daily tasks, hourly tasks to block time tasks (e.g., from 6am to 7am: doing a task 1; take a break 5 mins; then continue another block time with task 2)
- Accountability
Having an accountable partner (e.g., coach, mentor) or a growth friend to keep you accountable

What are your favourtie strategies?

Finish 2018 strong

BOTTOMS UP!

Around this time one year ago, I was thrilled to conduct EMPOWER YOU seminar on the topic of starting a new year strong. I shared a metaphor that I actually never thought about before that still motivates me whenever thinking about finishing something strong to start something strong - BOTTOMS UP.

Yes, bottoms up to finish a year strong to start a year strong (just bare with me, I will clarify it ^_^).

Just imagine that the 'bottle of water' is your capability and 'water' represents for whatever you want to achieve and your job is to change water after each year. Now, if you don't 'bottoms up' the water of the current year; you cannot get the full bottle of new water of the next year. If you 'BOTTOMS UP' 2018 - finish the year 2018 strong - you get ready to BE fully welcoming the whole ‘bottle of new water’’ in 2019.
Here are some ideas to support us finish a year strong:

1. Re-define the 3 main projects

2. Move all other potential projects to the next year if they are also important

3. 100% focus on your 3 major projects in the rest of the year

If 3 projects make you overwhelmed, choose one only. The idea is to BOTTOMS UP at least one main project in 2018 that you gain the feeling of completing something instead of being half way that will not be a full start for a new year.

Here are some tools to help you fully focus on the main things in the rest of the year:

PRINCIPLES of the mind to help you achieve your goal (facts):

4 principles to collaborate with our mind (particularly to create the alignment between our conscious - which controls less than 10% of our behaviours  and subconscious mind - which controls more than 90% of our behaviours)

1. Interest: Our mind works the best with what we are interested 

2. Pain and pleasure: Our mind helps us to avoid pain and gain pleasure 

3. Images: Our mind works best with images 

4. Familiarity/Habits: Our mind acts upon what is familiar 

TOOLS/TECHNIQUES to develop and sustain your performance to finish the year strong (you need to try to see which one is working the best for you)

1. Managing your state of mind with visualising techniques before entering an important event or making a decision or when you have negative feeling (for example, thinking about what do you feel thankful the most, step in that moment of feel them with all senses). This technique primes our SUBCONSCIOUS mind to positive grateful state. Our mind cannot focus on 2 different feelings at the same moment, either positive or negative. From that point, you can make a decision or take bolder action to create better results.

2. The power of perspectives: Looking at things in different perspectives (re-framing techniques) to take better action or change from negative to positive things. You can use 3 questions to re-frame most of any events:

+ How do I/you know that?

+ Redefine the concepts with different words (our mind works the best with certain words, you need to find what words work the best for you)

+ Think from the time aspect (how do you see the things differently with the past, present, future)?

3. Empower empowering beliefs: We need to acknowledge our eliminate our limiting beliefs but we also need to emphasis them and amplify them:

We can use 3 questions for strengthening one empowering belief:

+ What does it mean?

+ How do I know it is true?

+ What make me do that well or be that person?

4. To feel centered and content in the here and NOW:

You can use 3 principles for meditation:

+ Be comfortable 

+ Awareness and focus 

+ No attachment with outcomes 

5. Reflection to take bolder/better action

Reflect after each day to see what can you do better and what you have done to continue reinforcing it.

Calming

You work hard. You enjoy working. You keep working. Then there would be a moment you feel not so fresh and vibrant. That is when you may want to calm your mind, refresh it so you can continue working effectively - that ensures your sustainable performance and happiness.

Here are some my favourite ways to calm my mind down:
• Take a walk in nature
• Observing people walking
• Acknowledging where we are standing or staying, what we are seeing, what we are hearing, what we are feeling – being in the here and the now.
• Self-reflection: writing out our thoughts • Smile at someone

After 15-week nonstop-working on different topics of Leadership development, tomorrow our Cspeaking gym will have a calming time with the topic – CALMING. 
Looking forward to discovering this topic together in speaking gym tonight 

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,