Always be a student

Ego is the enemy

(a book written by Ryan Holiday)

Some weeks ago, one of our members in Hanoi Entrepreneur Community asked us about how to reduce our ego?

Ego is different from self-confidence, while self-confidence helps us do things better, ego stops what we can achieve.

I remember when I was a student, I met a guy from Spain at a conference and after our conversation, he told me that I had a high ego. I thought it was a compliment and yes, it seemed he complimented. But as I grew up, I found lot of times, my ego became an obstacle of my growth. For example, when my close friend gave me feedback, I heart a voice that he would say something I already knew that I experienced long time ago. It is interesting because ego comes a lot from being insecure about ourselves which means we are not fully confident about ourselves that we are scared of being hurt. That is why if we just think we are a student, always learning then we do not feel that much insecure.

Here are 3 thoughts to help us be confident but not letting the ego stop you from learning from anything or anyone:

- Always be a student, have a friend who is much younger than you and a friend who is much older than you and listen to what they have to say about their dream and their thinking for any topic

- Always be a student, before entering any meeting/event/seminar/conversation, always position yourself as a student that you will be open to what people share (and yes, knowing that you have a choice to choose which one to apply in your life but be open and thankful for the information)

- Always be a student, when hearing anyone give you feedback, listen and ask yourself what do you learn from it (and yes, you have a choice which feedback to apply in your life)

And yes, this picture below reflects a great learning in my speaking journey, each time I have a chance to speak on stage with other amazing speakers, having a mindset of being a student helps me learn best from them

Build your squad

I came back to Vietnam in 2014 and really wanted to start over my personal development training business. I was on fire.

But after 3 months staying in Vietnam, I ran away. I felt nobody supported me. I went to work as a consultant in Malaysia.

I then went to the UK and learned more about the industry and prepared mentally stronger. I went back to Vietnam last year and I am still in Vietnam now, I haven’t run away anywhere yet. One of the main reasons is because I have a team and you with me!

Thank you team - AWESOME TEAM! Lucy, Smiley, Rose, Ha, Hoa, Eri, Inny. You have made me feel home in Vietnam. Thanks to every single of you coming to my events, I believe more that my mission is helping someone.

Having someone who believes in our mission and vision can help us multiple our belief in our mission and vision. Having a supportive group will help us to be stronger in the long run.

In the best selling personal and leadership development book based on a 10—year study, Brendon calls the supportive group - “Squad” shows 5 ways to level up your squad:

· Add one more awesome friend

· Volunteer

· Play sports

· Seek mentorship

· Earn it - master what you do, be really good at that!

Thank for being my squad. I am grateful to have you as an awesome friend to our personal and leadership development group - Cspeaking gym! Thanks for your coming last time and looking forward to seeing you on Monday!

love and cheers,
Jen,

Break or Form a new habit

Here is a summary of steps to take to break or form a new habit (adopting from the POWER OF HABIT book):

Step 1 – You want to change the habit?

• Yes? List down all the great things you gain by changing the habit!

• No, you can read the following when you want to change

Step 2 – Get excited to do research to identify the cue

When you feel the urge for your habit, ask yourself with the 7W:

• What time is it?

• Where are you?

• Who else is around?

• What did you do right before?

• What image or thought came to your mind?

• What emotion are you feeling?

• What ….

One of the things is the cue triggering your habit! Picking up the most common pattern by observing it over time.

For example, maybe the habit of eating late – I came back from work, I didn’t eat before the whole afternoon so I told myself I should get reward by eating!

Step 3- Identify the craving – reward

• What craving after taking the action – the habit?

• Replace the reward by another way to satisfy the urge

For example, instead of eating, I let myself to think about great thing I have done or write something meaningful because I love writing

Step 4 – Insert a new routine that can satisfy the urge

• Putting it into 5W model – what when where what why who to do it for

Step 5 – Small wins

Congrats you after each time you take the new routine!

Communication is the long-term strategy for long-term connection

I used to be a really bitter kid. I always felt there was a pressure on my heart. Anytime my mom told me that I didn’t do things well, I kept silent and told myself I had to try better. Anytime at school, I made a mistake, I kept silent and told myself I had to try harder. Anytime I argued with my sister, I kept silent after hearing her argument. I normally chose silence to solve conflicts. And yes, it is the best SHORT- TERM strategy but the worst LONG-TERM strategy to personal freedom.

The negative energy was built up overtime after each time I didn’t feel convinced  by others and I kept silence. Thankfully, I started speaking up after I finished my high school, I started speaking it out, my feelings not to blame but to share and to not assume things.

The more difficult we feel when expressing what we feel, the more important to do it to ensure there will be no negative energy built up subconsciously in our relationship.

I have interviewed different entrepreneurs and leaders, they all shared the key factor helping them building their team is COMMUNICATION.

The more we communicate, the more we understand each other, the more we can move forward without negative hidden energy.

COMMUNICATION creates long-term connection!

3 Top habits that help you make a change possible

Habit 1 - Own your golden hour

Do you often feel rush in the morning to go to work? or to answer somebody? or to check-in your social media because you look for something to fulfill your feeling?

Do you feel that you are living in a responsive mode instead of being proactive?

Then it is time to get back the control of your morning.

I would like you to leave all the excuses behind and try to get back the control of your morning.

Excuse 1: If you don’t answer people, you will be late

No, it is an excuse that your old self tells you to let you make an easy choice to check in social media and emails then you don’t need to think about how to make the best out of your day. You let your day in the hand of other people when you are living in the responsive mode.

And if it is really urgent, schedule to answer it after checking in yourself first.

If it is needed, going to sleep earlier to wake up earlier to check in yourself first.

Excuse 2: It is my job, checking emails and social media

But it does not need to be the first thing you do when you wake up, you have your whole day!

So, let’s get into the 3 Gs for mastering your golden hour - the first hour when you wake up:

(1) Goals: Plan 3 goals to achieve on the day

(2) Growth: Exercise (Body), Meditation (Mind), Read/Listen to books/audio books (Brain)

(3) Gratitude: 3 things that you feel grateful for and send love to one person you feel grateful for

Habit 2: Transition time

Between activities, release tension and set intention

Habit 3: Prime your sleeping with gratitude

Before going to sleep, letting your devices take a rest, reflecting on the day and thinking about what do you feel thankful for.

Be Curious to be more Competent and Confident

You want to be more competent at certain skills such as speaking?

You want to be more confident about you?

But there will be time you may feel doubtful about yourself, feeling scared of giving a try? or maybe you feel lack of confident when seeing others people who are so good at what you want to learn and you think maybe “it is for them, not for me?”? or maybe you feel scared of judgment?

Because of these doubts and fear, you may not take positive action to develop you to be more competent then confident!

How can you turn these doubts and fear to become EXCITEMENT to make you then take action then be better - more competent then you feel more confident about you?

One of the practice is to use CURIOSITY to trigger that EXCITEMENT!

• When you feel doubtful about yourself: be curious to ask yourself “why do I feel that?” and listen to the story behind the feeling - you acknowledge the feeling and its story. Right after that, tell yourself that you don’t need to be in that state of mind, change your focus to another question “what is the one thing I can do to make me feel better, right now?’ The one thing can be going for a walk, thinking about one achievement you did in the past or right away practice a technique to be better at what you want to be better.

• You are not confident about you when seeing other successful people: you may start your learning journey, you look for expert and you see their performance, you start comparing yourself and feel “you are no where now” and you overwhelm yourself with that comparison and jealousy. Acknowledge these feelings and be curious about “what is the one thing I can learn from these people” or “what is the story behind their achievement”. When you ask the curious questions, you have the answers of the process that creates their success, you choose one action to take, one step at a time.

• You are scared of judgement: maybe you want to speak up but you are scared of people judging you - you imagine about it and get overwhelmed with it, you decide to protect you by not trying. At that time, be curious about the feeling, acknowledge it and be curious “what is the one thing you can learn from their feedback to be better?” Always being curious to listen and critically evaluate to see if you want to take their feedback ultimately to be better.

Have a curious week my friends,

Join our CSpeaking gym weekly meeting to practice on CURIOSITY muscle together!

Join our public speaking course to unleash your confident speaker identity!

Love live give,

Jen,

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!