Mistrust doubles the cost of doing business.

– Professor John Whitney

In his book – The Speed of Trust – Stephen M.R. Covey wrote: ” The one thing that changes everything is trust. Trust impacts us 24/7, 365 days a year. It undergirds and affects the quality of every relationship, every communication, every work project, every business venture, every effort in which we are engaged. It changes the quality of every present moment and alters the trajectory and outcome of every future moment of our lives – both personally and professionally.”

To build trust with others – we need to first build trust with ourselves. It’s about developing integrity and intent that will make us believable.

Do you trust yourself?

Am I someone others can trust?

Establishing a Foundation of Trust

We can prime our conversations by using the 5 steps below. Changing our mindset can shift and shape our experiences in more productive, innovative, co-creative and intelligent results.

T – Transparency

How can I create a safe environment, be more transparent about desired outcomes, and share threats that may stand in the way.

R – Relationship

How can I establish rapport; prime the conversation for mutual trust, openness, and respect; and established a power – with others context.

U – Understanding

How can I step into the other person’s shoes and see the world from their eyes: share what is on my mind, stay open and non judgemental.

S – Shared Successes

How can I/We paint a picture of shared success – not just my success? How can I lower my attachment to being right, and elevate my curiosity about what is possible.

T – Test Your Assumptions

How can I/We tell the truth with candor and caring? How can we identify reality gaps, and stay open to testing our assumptions?

This will fully activate the trust networks – enable the Executive Brain (prefrontal cortex) and heart to connect and elevate both conversations and influence.

I hope you have enjoyed the 7 ways in 7 days series of articles as much as I have enjoyed preparing them for you.

2021 is the Year Of You and what you can do to make this year great, we can’t keep waiting for others to create our lives for us – we need to be proactive. If you don’t have the skills to do what you want, you can learn them. Anything you could possible want to learn is now on the internet – there is nothing you can’t learn. So decide what you want, and what you need to learn to get there and go for it…

If you feel this has been useful – please share with a friend.

If you are keen to find out more book a call with Ondina.

Conversational Intelligence is what separates those who are successful from those who are not – in business, in relationships and even in marriages.

Conversations are a lot more than simply sharing information, conversations are dynamic, interactive and inclusive. They evolve and impact the way we connect engage, interact and influence others, enabling us to shape reality, mindset, events and outcomes in a collaborative way.

Conversations have the power to move us from “Power-over” others to “power with” others, giving us the exquisite ability to get on the same page with our fellow humans and experience the same reality by bridging the reality gaps between how you see things and how I see things.

To get to the next level of greatness depends on the quality of the culture, which depends on the quality of the relationship, which depends on the conversation. Everything happens through conversations.

If you would like to influence others and build high trust – practice the following:

• Listen to understand, not to respond.
• Ask questions – don’t tell others what they should and shouldn’t do.
• Be transparent – don’t go around the world when you want to make a point.
• Figure out what the issue is and get clear before you dive into the conversation.
• Stick to the facts and don’t make up stories.
• Speak in first person – what do you need instead of what others have to give you.
• Your tone is key – it’s not what you say – it’s how you say it.
• There is no place for judgement in conversations, only awareness and rapport.

I have trained with Susan Scott and Judith E. Glaser on conversations and every day I keep learning.

If you don’t have a copy of Susan Scott’s book, I have linked the book HERE for you to explore conversational possibility.

“When we think of a fierce conversation,

think passion, integrity, authenticity, collaboration.

Think cultural transformation

Think Leadership”

– Susan Scott

If you are keen to find out more book a call with Ondina.

1. First, think of the goal or situation you want to influence.
2. Now think about the experience or result you want to reach in regards to that goal/situation.
3. Create a mental movie of how you picture that goal/situation ideally turning out in the future. Notice the sounds, conversations, visuals and details of that mental movie. Replay it often in your head.

“If you deliberately plan to be less
than you are capable of being,
then I warn you that you will be deeply unhappy
for the rest of your life.
You will be evading your own capacities, your own possibilities.”

– Abraham Maslow

Self-awareness is the capacity to stand apart from ourselves and examine our thinking, our motives, our history, our scripts, our actions and our habits and tendencies.

– Stephen Covey

When I first started my training as an NLP Master Coach, I was told I had to apply everything I was learning to self first. How could help others if I didn’t know myself.

Knowing your own emotions, triggers, strengths, drives, values and goals, and their impact on others is the first step to self-awareness – knowing yourself gives you increased self-confidence and self-esteem. It allows you receive feedback without feeling judged, to accept change, live with integrity and build long lasting trust.

Knowing yourself helps you become the creater of your own destiny.

Ask yourself the following questions…

• How well do I know myself?
• Am I in control of my emotions?
• What triggers an emotional response in me?
• What is the story I keep telling – and is it taking me towards my goals?
• Am I able to communicate clearly and effectively with out feeling judged?
• What are my top three values that I’m living and are they aligned with my goals?

Take the time to journal these questions and time to explore your answers, because this is the deep work you do before you are ready to set real goals.

Self-awareness involves deep personal honesty. It comes from asking and answering hard questions.

– Stephen Covey

Click here to watch Tasha Eurich’s Ted Talk “Increase your self-awareness with one simple fix”.

If you are keen to find out more book a call with Ondina.

Personal Value is the magnet that attracts all good things into our lives.

The greater the value, the greater the reward.

– Jim Rohn

 

Values reflect what is important to us.

Together with our beliefs, values drive our decisions and actions.

Values are priorities that tell you how to spend your time, right here, right now. Our time is a limited resource, once we spend this day, it is gone forever. When you don’t use your time effectively, you don’t get the results you want. Prioritising allows you to be consistent with your actions and keep you on a steady course without becoming victim to constant distraction.

Values act as your GPS to get you back on course every single day, so that you keep moving in the right direction – towards a life which is your own ideal.

When you truly understand your values, you can then tie your goals to those values and have a much greater chance to achieve them.

• How do you know if you are living your values?
• Are you able to clearly articulate them?
• How do you live your value of health or family – What do you do to live that value? What are the actions you take?

Your first step is to decide what is important to you – what do you value – Take a free Personal Values Assessment HERE at the Barrett Values Centre. This takes about 10 minutes, you will get a report back and your work is to do the two exercises in the report.

It’s easier to make decisions when you know your values.

Personal Leadership is the process of keeping

your vision and your values before you

and aligning your life to be congruent with them.

– Stephen Covey

If you are keen to find out more book a call with Ondina.

Let us rise up and be thankful,

for it we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learnt a little,

and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick,

and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die;

so, let us all be thankful.

– Buddha

When my daughter was a baby and learning to speak, one of the first things I taught her way to say ta, then it became thank you and please and then – what’s the magic word?

How often do we ask for something and forget to say please? How often does something we want come to us and we forget to say thank you?

When we get to the end of each day, what are you grateful for? Do you think about what was great about your day or only the things that went wrong?

When you focus on the things that went wrong instead of the things that went well no matter how small – that’s what we get more out of. The fastest way to get what you want in life is to be grateful for what you have that’s working for you, and your brain will show you ways to get more – your job is to stay conscious and aware of what is going on around you. Write down three things that you are grateful for every night before you go to sleep.

Here are a few things you can start doing to create the habit of GRATITUDE which came from Jack Canfield’s blog on Gratitude. Jack is the author of The Success Principles, you can read the whole article HERE.

1. Each morning write down what you appreciate in life.

Start your day this way primes you to be receptive and grateful for everything your day will bring. It also helps you cultivate an air of positivity that makes you naturally more attractive to other positive people.

2. Appreciate at least 3 people every day.

By letting people know how much you appreciate them, you increase their own sense of appreciation and self-worth and encourage them to pay this positive energy forward to other people.

3. Remember to appreciate the smallest blessings.

The best way to activate your gratitude is by acknowledging the gifts most people take for granted. If you have food in your refrigerator, clothes in your closet and a roof over your head, you are better off than 75 per cent of the world’s population.

If you eat three meals a day, you are far better off than the 1 billion people on the planet who eat once a day at most.

Do you have a phone? How about a car that allows you to travel to work or to explore the country? Is your family healthy? Do you have a computer and Internet access to stay in touch with the world, get access to education, and perform work for which you are paid? Do you have clean water to drink?

Celebrate these simple blessings. These daily conveniences are gifts that most people in the world do not enjoy.

4. Appreciate yourself.

Finally, don’t forget to appreciate your OWN positive qualities and accomplishments. In addition to celebrating your big successes, acknowledge your small daily successes too. We all need acknowledgement, but the most important acknowledgement is that which we give ourselves.

Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more.

If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.

– Oprah Winfrey

If you are keen to find out more book a call with Ondina.

This cannot be the year
Of talking
Of wishing
Of wanting.
This has got to be the year,
you get it done.

Eric Thomas

I remember receiving my 2021 Goal Digger Planner. It is my third year of working with this planner and I was looking forward to planning 2021. I took it out of it’s box and admired the newness of it and the possibilities that were in front of me. 2021 is my year.

How do you start planning a year that has already started out to be as unpredictable as the last?

By getting clear about what you want – who you want to be, what you want to do and what you want to have.Clarity is the the product of careful thought, it comes from asking questions continually and refining your perspective on life. Getting clarity to the answers to certain questions:

• Who do I want to be?
• What are my highest values?
• What am I really good at?
• What is the biggest thing I want to achieve this year?
• What is my plan to get there?
• What’s going to get in my way?

People with written goals are 42% more likely to achieve them than people without, and
telling a friend increases that rate to 78%

So plan today what you want tomorrow – grab a note book or buy a Migoals planner, they have 30% off at the moment. It allows you to have everything in one place and you can add to it every day. I start off in pencil so that if I wanted to change anything as I got more and more clear, I could.

There is a reason that there are more and more planners coming onto the market – because there is a big difference between writing it down compared to typing it into your device. Writing it down get’s to the heart of thing.

So make the most of this one life that you have – you can do this, the hardest part is to start….

Some people want it to happen
some people wish it to happen
others make it happen

Michael Jordan

If you are keen to find out more book a call with Ondina.

How can you focus on others when at times
it can be so hard to focus on yourself?

Whether you’re currently at home or at the office – how do you manage others when you are struggling to manage yourself? 

At a time when there are no lines of differentiation between the various roles in life, what are your coping strategies?

As a very proud mother of an emerging artist who was getting ready for her first ever exhibition, I watched my daughter struggle over the last few weeks and almost give up the most important time in her life, in service of others.

The stress kicked in when the state of Victoria went into lock down and her art exhibition was relegated to an online opening. She couldn’t use her studio and was home schooling her 7-year-old daughter. Competing for space at home and having the busyness of the family around while trying to paint and get her exhibition pieces finished in time was nothing short of exhausting. She’d find herself painting till the small hours of the morning when the house was still and quiet, crawling into bed knowing that in a few hours she would have to show up for her family, start home schooling and maintain equilibrium just for her family to function. 

When we get into a stressed state, it is difficult to think clearly.  Routine tasks can be too hard to deal with, fear kicks in and we become immobilised. Taking action becomes difficult and what we would normally do to deal with a particular situation goes out the window.

Fortunately my daughter was open to support from family and friends – asking for what she needed and just talking it through – which got her through.

In the end, the exhibition was a great success and my daughter sold almost all her work.

This story is just one of the many out there of people being full time mothers, fathers, teachers, nurtures, carers, managers and team leaders – all of whom have little time to self-care.

American Author Bruce Barton wrote – “Sometimes when I consider what tremendous consequences come from little things … I am tempted to think, there are no little things”. 

How do I do it? I don’t have children at home and have an independent husband who is able to take care of his own needs. Yet like many – I still struggle. 

I have to remind myself every day, that the only thing that I can control is me. I do the things that I know will influence my health and my thinking, focusing on moving forward and doing something each day that makes me feel good. I feel blessed working with my clients and being part of their progress.

I have been running the Leadership Principles Program based on The 7th Habit of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey for the last three years.  Each time I run this program, I embody the principles more and more.  Covey wrote the quote “To know and not to do – is not to know”.   Applying these principles is a habit like any other. The idea is to start and practice consistently, no matter how little the steps are.