How to Improve Your Personal and Professional Life through Awareness

Resolutions. Goals. Intentions.

What’s your philosophy? You may write some at the beginning of each year only to break them several weeks later. You could decide to forgo resolutions. You might record several and accomplish one.

There’s not a “right” or “wrong” way to approach making positive changes in your life. In fact, you can start any month, day, or hour!

Regardless of your philosophy on goals, I’d like to challenge you to experiment with an alternative.

Let’s make the coming months a time of life improvement. The sky’s the limit! Only you can decide how you want to enhance your personal and professional life.

We’re going to start with a basic concept: AWARENESS.

Bet you didn’t see that coming!

When you want to make a meaningful improvement in one part of your life, you’re really talking about developing meaningful habits. And the best way to change routines is to be aware of what is and isn’t working for you right now.

Let’s dig in with a definition and some examples.

Awareness means to be informed, knowledgeable, and cognizant.

Personal example: For years, I was a “glass-half-empty” gal, even if things were going relatively well. My ability to see the big picture, as well as the details, of most situations means I can see all the ways that something can go wrong.

In 2016, when my life became a series of medical diagnoses, both for myself and my aging parents, I knew that always seeing the negative side of situations wouldn’t be useful in managing my life.

Over several months, I started two helpful habits which I continue to this day.

Mindfulness. I’d heard about the benefits for years and decided to give it a try with a free trial from the Calm app. Their offerings helped me become more present and gave me some tools to deal with stressful situations.

It didn’t happen overnight! I used a technique called habit stacking, which means that I added mindfulness to an already existing morning routine. I started with short lengths of time. I was motivated by keeping up my streak of daily practice since the app tracked how many days in a row I practiced mindfulness. I hated breaking my streak! It happened quite a few times in the beginning and I would always start again the next day.

Gratitude. I’d heard about practicing gratitude but I diminished as too “woo.” Then when things got really crazy, I decided that I might as well give it a try. It certainly couldn’t hurt and it might help!

Again, I employed habit stacking and added my gratitude practice to an already existing evening routine. I started small. I got a 4″x6″ spiral notebook because I knew that if it was any bigger, I would either feel like I needed to fill the whole page or I’d get discouraged and not do it at all. Each night I wrote three things I was grateful for that day. A couple of things to note: I didn’t distinguish between grateful and thankful because I knew I’d get too caught up in the differences and it might prohibit me from writing anything. I didn’t have to write complete sentences; phrases or even single words were fine. I started a new page each day. I also followed the advice of a friend and allowed myself to periodically be thankful for things like flush toilets and air conditioning if my brain just couldn’t see anything positive about the day.

I won’t say that the mindfulness and gratitude solved all my problems. However, I know that both have really helped. I also won’t say that I do each perfectly every day. There have been times, especially during deeper depressions, when I’ve done them more out of habit than out of usefulness or impact. I’ve also been known to occasionally only write one or two items I’m thankful for.

Professional example: Nelly (not her real name) runs a statewide sales team. She’s a Vice President in her mid-50’s. She contacted me when she became aware of the following:

• Nelly is good at her job, however she was working at a fraction of which she felt capable. Nelly recognized that ADHD impacted her work, yet she knew that with strategies suited to her, she would be able to improve her productivity.
• She “essentially had no real system at work.”
• Nelly realized that she needed coaching and accountability “to effect true, long-term change.”
• She discovered she meets the criteria for chronic disorganization when she answered the “Are You Affected by Chronic Disorganization?” questionnaire (FS-001: free from the Institute for Challenging Disorganization).

Over our seven months of working together, Nelly experimented with different tools and systems to uncover which worked best for her. Nelly’s level of awareness, both prior to contacting me and during our work together, helped her become more intentional in completing tasks.

BTW, the italicized words in the Nelly’s details are from an (unsolicited) testimonial that she gave me permission to share.

Your turn! Decide one personal or professional area you’d like to improve. Yes, only one!

• What habits, if any, do you currently have in this area?
  • Functioning habits: what makes them work?
  • Non-functioning habits: what sabotages them?
• What is one, small factor you can change to be more successful in this area?
• What will keep you motivated to continuing work on this area?

Let me know your answers in the comments below. I’d love to cheer you on!