Saying no to mediocre opportunities is easy. Saying no to good opportunities is hard.

I used to make long ‘to do’ lists. Today I put more emphasis on what not to do. What can I remove altogether, what can I delegate, what can I push…

Don’t allow your time be all about fighting fires or being hypnotized by new, dazzling projects… or you risk paying the price of never getting to what actually moves the bar.

Saying yes to something should make the future easier, not harder. The problem is that a yes tends to feel right at the moment. Perhaps we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, perhaps we feel awkward and forced to explain our no. But the cost of yes is often larger than “just that one meeting” or project. It means your time is not allocated to what really matters to you or your business.

It’s the same when we try to establish new habits or behaviors. We tend to focus on what we should do ‘in addition to’, or ‘instead of’, rather than letting go and stop doing! Stop multitasking, stop using words that diminishes your value and your achievements, stop deflecting praise…

We all have the same number of hours in a week. What makes a difference is how we use them.

Allow 2023 to be the year when you start scrutinizing how you use yours. 😊

This requires access to the “right” people, which typically require networking skills. Most of my male clients don’t have a problem with networking for the sake of strategic and transactional purposes. Quite the contrary, it is seen as expected and part of the game.

I spoke to a client about this the other day, and like many women she has a different view; namely by placing a lot of value in the relationship and seeking out personal friendships, rather than cultivating connections chiefly for future, strategic, use. Some even see this behavior as the proof that they are an honorable and trustworthy person.

The career impact is clear; networking and the ability to create allies is a key component for career progression!

The issue with this mindset is also that it assumes a degree of powerlessness. The underlying ‘you help me and I’ll help you’ actually states that you have the potential to become useful to the person you’re engaging. You’re not some poor soul asking for help. You’re going places. You’re a potential resource that the other person would be fortunate to have in the years ahead…. Not doing it suggests that you don’t see yourself as having this kind of power!

In a new job, you control your starting position more than you think. For specific advice, find someone a step or two ahead of you. For general advice, find someone older who can put things in perspective.

Need a first ‘next step’? Define who you can learn from and start by inviting to casual coffee meetings!

When was the last time you completely unplugged from work and truly relaxed while on holiday…?

When we constantly have this idea of wanting to “optimize” ourselves and our time, it can be difficult to switch off. But I have good news for you! You can “improve” yourself (boost productivity, increase creativity etc) while enjoying your holiday!

This is how you maximize the benefits of holiday on your brain:

The brain prefers a mix of 1) “relaxed wakefulness” – that state of meditative bliss that generally requires being unplugged – and 2) “play,” which occurs when the brain is engaged in some fun, new activity.

1. Being unplugged means switching your phone off as you will engage in deeper, more meaningful conversations this way. The mere awareness that a phone is turned on and close by leads to distracted, lower-quality interactions as even just wondering about what might be happening on your phone – even if you don’t look – means your brain is multi-tasking. The reason why we have better conversations when the phone is turned off is that we are most efficient when we are focused on one thing at a time. And devoting our full attention on something is like meditation. You know that feeling of being in a flow when biking for hours… or whilst playing the piano- it’s the same thing.

The benefits are the same as if you were meditating: anxiety levels go down, you look at things from a more rational, logical, and balanced perspective, and you boost your ability for empathy and for evaluating situations from someone else’s perspective.

Allow your brain to wander and you’ll be rewarded with greater problem-solving abilities, better ideas, and, potentially, important breakthroughs!

2. Engage in a new activity! It’s a great way of getting rid of the kind of tunnel vision that a tired mind can develop after a year of going through work tasks and family routine. Your mind needs variety to recalibrate and dig new neuropathways that will freshen and broaden your perspective. So, stay away from work related content!

And – why not try a new sport activity?

… now that you’ve read this, turn off your phone and go put your feet up! 😊

“The environment is the invisible hand that shapes our behavior” (James Clear)

I recently had lunch with the founder of company, which happens to be spread across the globe, leaving him rather lonely in his Copenhagen office.  As with the majority of founders, his business is his “baby”, his life, his No 1 priority right now.  We spoke about loneliness, how it sneaks up on you without you really realizing.

That’s also the case with stress. Being ambitious, hungry… perhaps suffering from imposter syndrome or being an insecure overachiever in any type of business, will also put you at risk. All of a sudden you feel yourself at the bottom of a hole, and it can be a long, slippery way up.

So do yourself a favor. Ensure the environment you operate & live in supports you – gives you energy – and remove the ‘energy drainers’ where possible!

Consider:
1. Your Physical environment: Reward and enable good behavior! As an example, make it easy to be healthy by having healthy food at home. (Don’t have potato chips lying around if you know you can’t resist them!)

2. Who do you choose to hang out with? Are they giving you energy, or are the draining you? Ensure you see people outside of a business context, people where you use other aspects of yourself, and people you admire and who inspires you! And – let’s not forget solitude – maybe you get energy from being alone

3. What do you feed your brain? What do you read, watch and listen to? The content you consume shapes the thoughts you draw upon and the decisions you make …

4. Organizational; The routines, patterns, rewards… and the culture at your company- what is the impact on you?

THEN ask yourself- are the standards and the success criteria you set for yourself supported by your system above?

If not, you’re swimming up-stream, rather than letting the river carry you.

Once we start working on the next goal it can be tempting to assume that as “I’ve gotten this far with my current skills and attitude, I’ll just copy paste that” … Subject to the goal, it might be fine, but if it includes a transition of some kind, perhaps landing a more senior role in a different company, or to launch your business in a certain market, then we may need different skills and know-how to get to the next level.

What we have developed over the last couple of years may not serve us so well in getting to the next level.  In this process many of us fail to see our own blind spots.

Past successes can make us lazy and overly confident…

Getting praise can be dangerous because it becomes easy to delude yourself when all you hear are positive things. Delusional self-confidence causes you to resist change, and all of a sudden you start surrounding yourself with yes-people…

We should of course build on, and use our past experiences and the knowledge already acquired! But try to leverage what you already have with what you need to further sharpen your edge. Is it a new Mentor or Coach, is it a new Advisory Board, new team members, or perhaps to replace part of your Board with the relevant people that can help you with market knowhow or specific skills?

What do you need in order to optimally build on what you already have? What skills do you need to acquire? What can you outsource and delegate as to keep your focus?

Always, always keep an open mind… Acknowledge that your skills as a leader, and as a person, never will reach a ‘finish line’; keep adopting, exploring and learning!

That mindset is what will get you to your next goal! 😊

As humans, we need progress, goal pursuit, achievement… Just keeping ‘status quo’ in a group or in a work environment, does not reward us on a neurological level. It’s how we are wired- our emotional circuits can’t measure absolute levels of achievements, we can only sense progress.

The good news is that, anything that feels like progress will make us feel happy. At work, any type of promotion or recognition will help. And in our community, helping others will also make us feel good.

All type of progress actually matters- as the impact on us is the same. So even just achieving those ‘low hanging fruit’-tasks will make us feel a sense of fulfilment.  (Although, at some point you will feel the impact of not dealing with the bigger tasks, but that’s a different topic 😊).  The opposite of progress is stagnation: in ourselves, our growth as people, in our career, in our relationships. Stagnation makes us slow down, reject input & feedback, it makes us inflexible and negative…

We can’t be progressing in all areas of our lives at the same time, but if you are low in one area, ensure you are developing in others.

In learning and developing, it is common to refer to the ‘S-curve of Learning’. When we first learn something, we are at the Launch Point phase, then we enter the Sweet Spot, and last, the Mastery Level. The Mastery Level is obviously where we’re masters at what we do.  But if we stay for too long at the Master Level, we get less of the desirable dopamine; because we are no longer progressing. That’s when it’s time to jump to a new S-curve, and find something else to learn or develop…

In what areas of your life are you progressing, and in what areas are you standing still?

“Reflective thinking turns experience into insight” (John C Maxwell)

It’s not often we get the chance, but this Holiday period could offer the opportunity most of us need. To reflect. On the year almost gone, and the year to come.

The past: What has the last 12 months given us in terms of insights and opportunities?
–       What was our starting point, what goals (if any) did we set ourselves, and where did we end up?

–       What opportunities saw the light, and what were the highlights?

–       What did we achieve? Rather than rushing past our achievements in the name of chasing the next, allow yourself a moment to stop and see what you actually have accomplished, both professionally and personally.

–       Learn your lessons: What situations can we learn from? What skills or know-how do we need to acquire or develop in order to succeed next time?

–       Gratitude: I invite you to open up one more page in your journal and write down all the things you are grateful for over the last year. Gratitude is the single most powerful tool that will help you appreciate the past year!

Next year: where do you want to go from here…?
The above exercise might give you some unexpected insights of what the most important goal/s should be for next year… 😊

Also…. Research published in 2014 by Harvard University shows that employees performed 23% better after only 10 days of practicing reflection at the end of their working day! So maybe more time for reflection should be added to your 2022 routine…

Wishing you a Wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Napoleon Hill wrote about the different ways of stimulating the brain already back in 1935. The stimulus he mentioned were among others; love, desire, music, friendship, fear, narcotics and alcohol.

Personally, I opt for a run or a bike ride to get my ideas flowing! To just ‘sit and think’ tends to have the opposite effect and just blocks me.

Alcohol, can (as suggested in Thomas Vinterberg’s ‘Druk’ movie) be a good stimulant, as long as we can keep it to the magic level of 0.5 per mille.  That’s the tricky part, and it comes with other issues…

We can be much more deliberate in our creative process!
Albert Einstein once said: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Intuition is a subconscious process, which brings information, solutions, and understanding on how to proceed into the conscious mind.

So how can we tap into, and make use of our intuition and subconscious mind?

There are 3 steps to it:
1.     Think about the problem at hand. What is it you are trying to solve?

2.     Be clear about all the facts you have. What do you know; what are the facts and thinking to date?

3.     Ask yourself the very question again and then let your subconscious mind process it. How? By ‘just being’, by not thinking hard about it further. You can do a long meditation session, or you can go for a run- or something entirely different. Let your subconsciousness process it for you.

This is when some people are starting to look blank. But it actually works. Our subconsciousness is at play all the time, this is just a model of being more aware of it, and hence more receptive to the outcome. Something will be returned back to you. Either now, or after a few days. As a thought, a voice or an impulse. You can evolve the idea further and go through the cycle again, and of course use your rational mind to ‘test’ it.

That’s the power of disciplined intuition. Do your legwork, use your brain, share logical arguments and use your intuitive powers. 😊

Yet what do we experience when we are performing at our best? The exact opposite. Everything becomes effortless. We act without thinking or even giving ourselves time to think. We stop judging our actions as good or bad and observe them as they are. It is often called being in the zone or flow.

We can spend an abundance of time and energy monitoring how we appear to others, however, during flow any concerns for the self dissipates as we become one with the activity.

Flow tends to be a fleeting state, where we are either interrupted by an external factor, or by our own inner critical voice… So, what can we do to remain in flow? Well, one aspect, which is always within our control, is to train our mind to master our ‘inner critic’. This is what professional athletes practice in order to handle pressure when it really counts. But it is equally useful during a conflict, a negotiation… or actually at any time in life when you face a challenge.

Why is it that we often feel the most alive when we escape reality; the chores of the day, the responsibilities and the racing mind that never stops?

No wonder sports have become more extreme. We keep looking for ways to push our personal boundaries and find the limits of our capabilities. And maybe we also look for that space between exhaustion and pain – where we can find an almost trance like state. Where it is silent and we really feel ourselves.

Fully concentrated on the present moment. Where we are more in our bodies than in our minds/heads.

Meditation also gives you access to that state, amongst other things… As Ray Dalio (founder of Bridgewater) once put it: ‘it allows me to keep above the blizzard’. I couldn’t agree more, and I can’t recommend it enough…:-)