How to immediately change your life for the better

How to immediately change your life for the betterHow to immediately change your life for the betterTheres an old joke where a man says, I really want to go to medical school, but it takes at least seven yearsand Ill be 50 in seven years A wise friend replies, And how old will yoube in seven years if you dont go?If youre not where you want to be in your careeror, for that matter,in your life- never let yourselfbelieve change is impossible.Dont allow your future to be limited by your age or your situation stop being afraid of what might go wrong and departure getting excited about what could go right.Here are 10 ways you can begin right now to steer yourself toward a more fulfilled and happy life1. Address the choices youve made in the past and change the choices youll make in the future.Life is made up of choices - some we regret, some were proud of, some that will hurt us. Everything in your career and your life is a reflection of a choice you have made. If you want different resul ts, start making different choices.2. Speak up with honesty and stop holding back what you think.People may believe that honesty wont win you many friends - but even if that were true, the friends you make with honesty will be the right ones. Honesty is the cornerstone of all success, without which confidence and the ability to perform cannot exist.3. Forgo being a perfectionist. Perfect doesnt exist.Once you realize perfect doesnt exist, you can ease up on yourself. Theres no harm in being wrong or making mistakes, as long as youre willing to make corrections. Just be yourself, flaws and all, and let people see the real you. Each of us is an imperfect human being, aware that we cant push away our failures and our flaws.4. Acknowledge your losses and move on to your success.Remember, winners arent people who never fail but people who never quit. Its important to never let success get to your head or failure to your heart. The secret to getting ahead is to acknowledge your failures and have the wisdom to apply them to new opportunities.5. Remember that its not how many mistakes youve made but what you learn from them that defines you.Accept that you wont always make the right decisions. Youll screw up, sometimes badly. But your mistakes doesnt mean youve failed, only that youre trying and learning in life. If you are not making mistakes it means you are not trying hard enough. When you learn from them, mistakes have the power to turn you into something better than you were before.6. Forgive those who have hurt you but change who you surround yourself with.You can improve your life just by changing the people you surround yourself with. If there are some who have brought negativity or hurt into your life, accept that those actions cannot be changed or undone or forgotten - only forgiven. Take it as a lesson learned and surround yourself with people who stab und sttze you, guide you and make you better than you already are.7. Nurture your mind with great though ts, for you will never go higher than you think.What you think is what you become. And the sad truth is that that most of us are our own worst enemy, allowing our negative thoughts to hold us back. If you load up on positivity and great thoughts, you can create positive and great things for yourself. If you want to change and change fast, start by changing how you think.8. Find success at the edge of your comfort zone.Regardless of our hesitation or fear, humans need change to be happy. Try to do something youve never done every single day. Dont be afraid to try new things and stand in your discomfort zone. If you want something youve never had, you have to do something youve never done.9. Dont compare your own life with anyone elses.A big source of unhappiness is the idea that other peoples lives are better or easier than yours. But when you compare your situation to that of others, youre comparing your complete reality to their surface. No matter how fantastic, how happy, how bril liant everything may seem on the outside, you never know whats going on the inside If you find yourself being jealous of someone, remember that person has struggled with hardships and insecurities just as you have.10. Eliminate the unnecessary and cultivate the essentials.Think of all the things in your life that are important to you - the essentials - then eliminate everything else. This system helps you simplify your life and see what you should focus on. It can work for anything you have in your life, professional or personal. And just the act of letting things go will help you to simplify, to focus on whats important, and to build the life you want.Lolly Daskal is one of the most sought-after executive leadership coaches in the world. ?Her extensive cross-cultural expertise spans 14 countries, six languages and hundreds of companies.This column was published on Thrive Global.com.

Be Real Before Being Virtual

Be Real Before Being VirtualBe Real Before Being VirtualBefore you promote your personal brand on the Web, do some strategizing about what you want that brand to represent.To those of you who are abfluging to build your brand now, the Web seems like an easy place to gain instant visibility. There are lots of consultants out there touting the Web as the exclusive personal-branding tool and recommending that you get as much content as you can online - as fast as you can.But before building an online presence, you need to know who you are, what differentiates you from your peers and what makes you compelling to people who are making decisions about you.Heres the No. 1 rule to remember Branding is based on authenticity.Just as Volvo knows that its promise of safety separates it from other automotive companies, you too need to know how to position yourself and ensure your virtual brand is in line with who you are in the real world.Where to startCorporate-branding projects begin with rese arch, and so must yours. Be clear, constant and consistent in your messaging. Get as much input as you can before building your personal brand online. To do this, ask those around you for feedback review past wertzuwachs evaluations, implement personal assessments, like StrengthsFinder and use tools like 360Reach (one of my companys products) to uncover the brand called you.You must know how the following brand attributes relate to you before embarking on a virtual branding planRational factorsWhat makes you credible?Emotional factorsWhich personality characteristics make you interesting and attractive to others?Then you can write your personal brand statement, and post it somewhere where you will see it every day as a reminder of your unique promise of value.Connect real with virtualLike other technological advances, the Internet didnt eliminate everything that came before it. Just as radio didnt replace newspapers and television didnt replace radio, the Web is no substitute for building relationships in the real world. You still need to show up at those networking functions and make sure people see you and the value you are delivering throughout the office. The World Wide Web offers another route to enhance your brand.In fact, you need to think about how to augment your real-world branding activities online.If, for example, youre delivering a presentation to your local American Marketing Association chapter - a great personal-branding activity on its own - you need to think of ways to deliver value to other colleagues and contacts who cannot be there in person. You can get video clips of your talk and post them on YouTube upload your slides to SlideRocket use free press-release search engines to announce the event and use Twitter to share updates before, during and after the event.In the end, just be yourself. Its easy to start diluting your online presence with tools and lose your consistent message. Concentrate on highlighting your natural strengths and use the Web as one of many tools in your job-search arsenal.

5 simple strategies for making your mark at your next networking event

5 simple strategies for making your mark at your next networking event5 simple strategies for making your mark at your next networking eventLet your true self shine at networking events and walk away with genuine connections.Thousands of people.Hundreds of vendors.Only two bathrooms.How are you supposed to make your mark at your next networking event?Simple. Spend some of the time making a anthroponym for yourself, and spend some of the time helping other people make a name for themselves.Consider these strategies to stand up, stick out and steal the dayLive the brand. You never know when your brand will need to rise to the occasion. Thats why consistency is far better than rare moments of greatness. And yet, living the brand isnt what you think it is. Its not about dressing for success. Its not about converting yourself into a corporate clone. Its not about memorizing some hollow, hackneyed mission statement. Its not about puking your unique selling proposition all over everyone you meet. Its not about integrating a sequence of promises that align with organizational initiatives. All that does is annoy the bejesus out of everybody you meet. The reality is, to live the brand is to leave no doubt in peoples minds about who you are, what you do and what happens when you do it.Do you have answers to those identity elements?Be disarmingly predictable.People trust brands that are predictable. Which means its your job to prove customers right. To confirm their suspicions about the value you deliver and the values you stand for. To become known for a unique way of interacting with the world. Thats all branding is anyway An expectation. A shortcut. A predictable infection. And your challenge is to decide what youre going to breathe into people, then sustain that spirit through every touch point. How predictable is your brand? Because every interaction you have with somebody either adds to, or subtracts from, the overall perception of your brand. What can customers expe ct about your behavior?Make the invisible inescapable. Potential employers dont care what you know, they care how you think, and how your thinking will make their company money. The question you have to ask yourself is How do you express how you think? The good news is, the available tools for doing so are both easy to access and easy to apply. From blogs to social media outlets to public visibility, your goal is to take whats in your head and get it onto peoples radars, under peoples skin and into peoples hearts. Without that, your thoughts will remain just that Thoughts. And all gorgeous gray matter will go to waste. And every branding effort thereafter will be nothing but winking in the dark.How are you branding your thinking in three dimensions?Be a mirror.Sometimes the best way to infect people is to staple your tongue to the roof of your mouth and let them infect themselves. In my leadership council, we regularly employ the practice of becoming a verbal mirror for the presente r. By reflecting their reality back to them, using their exact words, not by summarizing, we allow them to see themselves as we see them. In fact, you might even help people become impressed with themselves.What do you reflect back to people?Mood matters.According to a twenty-year study published in Time, emotions can pass among a network of people up to three degrees of separation away. Your joy may, to a larger extent than you realize, be determined by how cheerful your friends and their friends are, even if some of the people in this chain are total strangers to you. And so, moods are contagious. The question is whether you infect people with the right one. Consider asking yourself When you walk into a room, how does it change? When you walk out of a room, how does it change?If you asked the five people who spent the most time with you, what one word would they use to describe your mood?Ultimately, going to networking events and careers fairs is more than just being the life of t he party, its also about bringing other people to life at the party. Dont just make your mark, help other people make their marks as well.