7 Skills For the Future

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LAUNCHING SERIES 7! Don’t know about you but I’m need of a big boost of energy. Welcome to Rising Up! This brand new series is all about moving forward with positivity and energy as we learn to live with constant change and uncertainty. Starting 21st September packed full with interviews and my advice on embracing change, working from home (harder when it’s more or less permanent), building resilience and mental health, boosting your immunity, how improv prepares you for life’s curveballs (pandemic, anyone?) and lots more. Can’t wait! 😀🎧

Listen to the intro RIGHT NOW!

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Welcome to our final episode in this special series - 7 skills for times of uncertainty. This week - RESILIENCE. We may like to think of resilient people being super strong and robust – to some extent - yes they are - but they also have a lot of strategies built into their lives – strategies that anyone can build.

I think the main trouble is, is that long before this pandemic, we were really not strengthening this skill. Self-care and wellbeing are total buzz words at the moment, as is, very unfortunately anxiety. In recent years there’s been a huge trend towards self-care and wellbeing and the importance of nurturing these but I feel almost in the wrong way. Personally, I think we may have slightly overdone it on the “self-care” front – research shows that we need to have a little dis-comfort in our lives to be healthy and happy. But by avoiding even this, we have nurtured instead incompetence and an inability to be strong and resilient. And now we have really big discomfort!

And we need to build it now - we are in a phase of this crisis where resilience has never been more needed.

#resilience #7skills #strength #covidskills

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When everything around you is uncertain, when you feel anxious and confused, when you are buffeted and swayed by media, news and not sure what to believe.... can you really then still feel optimistic and hopeful? I say yes you can! You see, optimism definitely isn’t about positive thinking and putting a shiny gloss on everything and being happy all the time no matter what. 

Optimism is much more about being able to realistically assess and reframe challenging situations and setbacks, build optimism skills through being proactive and focusing on our internal locus of control. Where you choose to place your energy is critical to your overall wellbeing. Even in the midst of change and high uncertainty it is still possible to feel happy, productive and fulfilled. 

In the last few months, since the coronavirus exploded into all our lives, it’s like we are all living in the worst kind of bad movie, one that’s on continual rerun. There will be times when it can feel very challenging to be optimistic when everything around you is highly uncertain and when you yourself might be going through real hardship emotionally, mentally, financially. And yet, it is also crucial that we can tap into optimism and nurture it even so.

Staying positive is actually a core ingredient in the recipe of successful coping in a crisis. In this episode I explain how we can do that. Listen now!

#optimism #adversity #resilience #uncertainty

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For me being proactive is all about showing up in your own life. There are really 2 aspects to being proactive – in the short-term, focusing on what you can control – also finding the space between stimulus and response - stimulus being anything from the news to what someone says to a disappointment or setback or something unexpected. The other side to being proactive is longer-term and being really clear about your goals, where you want to go and to working towards them in the present. This is then about taking initiative to move towards these goals – and not waiting for opportunities to come – proactively look for them and find them. It’s constant movement and also constant acceptance of whatever your current reality is. And I suspect right now that can be extremely challenging.

Join me for this episode on how to get back in the driving seat of your life, no matter how much uncertainty there is right now.

#beingproactive #locusofcontrol #podcast #7skillsforthefuture

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What role does integrity play in a time of crisis? On first glance it may not seem like it has a big role to play but I really think it does - especially for organisations and governments and any leaders really but also for individuals. Some might argue that now is the time for less specific attention to integrity, as business/individual survival and economic recovery mean that we are very very focused on ourselves right now. But in fact, the stresses of the crisis, and what may be an uneven, jagged recovery, will underline the importance of integrity I think in terms of trust, relationships and managing risks. In today's podcast I talk about why we need to dig deep to use our integrity and to be accountable and why, particularly, NOW we must do this.

#integrity #recovery #survival #crisis #calm #trust #accountable 

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This week I'm talking to Jason Rosoff, CEO of Radical Candor in Palo Alto, California. Jason believes teaching people to be better leaders is at the core of building anything great. As co-founder and CEO of Radical Candor, LLC, Jason helps teams at companies large and small build the best relationships of their careers and achieve amazing results through simple, clear, kind and candid conversations.

When we had our interview the pandemic had wiped out ALL of their business and they were at almost a standstill. But stand still they did not and started figuring out what they could to actively to support their clients, listen and be there for them. They've now turned what they do into online offers and have turned their business model around. Inspiring and insightful, you won't want to miss this great interview on how to handle crisis well, knowing how to tap into empathy and adapt.

#adaptability #businesssturnaround #empathy

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🎧🎧🎈New episode out NOW! SUPERCHARGE EMPATHY Empathy is an important skill to nurture and develop right now both in terms for ourselves and for others. I think we have a great opportunity at the moment to be much more empathetic than we might normally be because we are all living through a shared experience. True - the details of that experience will vary and certainly for some of us there might be immense tragedy and pain - but we are all still going through then same situation together. That is really unusual. Normally we go around very immersed in our own little bubbles and perspectives. The pandemic has led to sweeping changes and disruptions in nearly every aspect of our daily lives so it’s also easy to feel overwhelmed by our own anxieties.

Empathising with others helps you feel less lonely and more connected - the one thing human beings truly truly crave. And we can’t connect face-to-face any more so empathy helps boost our social connectedness and also helps us to regulate our emotions in times of stress. 

Listen to this podcast to learn how to tap into this vital skill

#empathy #selfcare #connection #support #human #compassion

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Producing a list of books that link to the 7 skills was all James' idea actually! But I LOVED the idea of linking the skills with books that may not necessarily be ones I reference in the book.

I feel there are constant reminders of the 7 skills around us all the time. I also think that maybe during this time people ARE reading more and that it’s a good time to delve into some great books. So get ready for a fab reading list - a few surprises on there but all books that, for me, really give great inspiration for nurturing the 7 skills of adaptability, critical thinking, empathy, integrity, being proactive, optimism and resilience. From Aristotle to American Dirt and from Zero degrees of Empathy to a classic story that illustrates adaptability, it's all there. I even read you the story - so get cozy and get listening!

#reading #7skillsforourtimes #lockdownreading #adaptability #criticalthinking #empathy #integrity #beingproactive #optimism #resilience

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Delighted to be interviewing fantastic careers coach Barb Garrison all the way from Boulder, Colorado. We talk about 3 key skills that we feel are absolutely crucial right now: empathy, adaptability and integrity. We first decided to do this episode before the COVID-19 crisis hit and originally we were going to focus on the importance of all 7 skills and how they show up in careers and with the people she coaches. But we decided it made far more sense to connect with the process of what we are all experiencing right now and to zero in on these three skills.

I love Barb's take on integrity and how we relate to that skill for ourselves, the world crying out for empathy right now and the huge, colossal necessity and task of being and learning how to be adaptable.

I hope to meet Barb in person one day. She hails from Colorado where I used to live many moons ago - a place that is very close to my heart. 

More about Barb:

A woman who has experienced successes in every type of career model from starting two of her own businesses, climbing the ladder at a worldwide corporation, managing a team at a national public company to consulting with fast-growing start-ups and family-owned businesses. She is an excellent planner, brainstorming partner and creative problem-solver with two decades of experience as a corporate manager, mentor, business owner and marketer.

Visit https://internalgroove.com 

#crisis #coaching #careers #empathy #adaptability #integrity #7skillsforourtimes

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