5 Ways to Have More Best Days at Work

Good days begin with being proactive, not reactive.

Teala Wilson

Think about the last time you had a “best day” at work. What happened?

For some people, it involves being a problem-solving hero. Others like being a valued contributor of a team working on a particularly challenging project. A really great day at work could even be a time when someone is trusted to get things done within a team.

Whatever the reason, something about your best day just clicked. And having one can be energizing and invigorating. It also makes you want to have more days like that.

If you could have more control over how many best days you have, I bet you’d jump at the chance. In fact, many people would. In 2016, The Conference Board, a global business research association, found that more than 50 percent of American workers were unhappy at work.

Why should you want to have more best days at work?

Back in the 1980s, the concept of work-life balance gained popularity as a way of separating the personal from the professional. Before that, the common term was work-leisure balance.

Both terms are a little misleading. The idea that you must balance work against life or leisure leads many to think that the scale tipping too far in one direction or the other means they’re shortchanging employers and colleagues, or friends and families.

The bigger problem is that 30-plus years of pitting work against life has us forgetting too often that we’re still living life when we’re at work. Our work ambitions are often rooted in personal ambitions. We are personally attached to the work we produce. We take personal pride in our work accomplishments and want to talk to our friends and families about them, and we want to talk about the great things happening in our life with the people we work with.

It makes sense that we want more best days at work because we want more best days in life.

What can you do to have more best days at work?

Let’s say you get a solid eight hours of sleep every night. That leaves you with 112 waking hours per week, more than a third of which you spend working if you’re a full-time employee. Having some control over whether those hours are good is important. Think about it. For you to enjoy life, and for your employer to benefit, it all starts with having someone who enjoys what they do for a living.

Here are some ways to help yourself have more best days:

1. Understand why your work matters.

If you walk into work every day without knowing how your work contributes to achieving team, department and organizational goals, it can feel like you’re spinning your wheels with no real purpose. Even if you feel clear on how you fit into the big picture, take some time to sit down with your manager and discuss it. You might even get some insights about what you bring to the table that you hadn’t realized before. Better yet, you’ll begin to understand your why, something very deep and personal that can really open our eyes to realizations you might not have considered.

2. Ask for opportunities to grow.

Whether it’s taking a course that teaches new skills or assignments that build your knowledge and abilities, seeking out opportunities shows your willingness to meet new challenges. When you have a growth mindset in your approach to life and work, you can learn from everything you do.

3. Work with people you like and trust.

Working with a connected team that is invested in the work they’re doing is a gift. When trust is strong, people are more open to ideas, information and even being challenged. There’s a collective interest in achieving the goals of the team. Building solid relationships on teams can open the door to more opportunities to grow. It’s not about working with your best friends. It’s about working with people who help you be better.

4. Be confident in being yourself at work.

No one should have to put on a work persona when “clocking in.” It’s stressful to hold back parts of yourself or hide them out of fear you won’t be accepted. There’s some evidence it can hurt your career but it can also damage companies that don’t value inclusion.

5. Speak up when there are issues.

Just like certain aspects of our lives, work can be tough. But nothing will change if you don’t stand up to say something. Before you assume the answer to what you want is a no, have a conversation about it, especially if you’re considering looking elsewhere for work. Need more time with your manager? Ask. Not sure how you’re doing? Ask. Having a hard time with a project or another person? Speak up.

You can have more best days by staying authentic, honest and curious. When you take an active role in seeking out the opportunities, feedback and information you need to grow, you’ll feel more connected to the people around you and to your work, and more invested in the goals you’re working to achieve.

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4 Ways to Quiet the Emotional Enemies in Your Mind

I have a recurring nightmare that has plagued me since my days at Georgia State University where I was working toward an MBA. A lot of people tell me they have the same dream: It’s the last day of finals and I’m failing my exams. I didn’t prepare enough. Every time I wake up panicked, imagining a scenario in which I have to start over. Of course that didn’t happen; it was just a dream. But I learned an important lesson about myself when I started having this nightmare: I’m more motivated by the fear of failure than the desire for success. If I’m doing something, I don’t want to let myself or others down. It drives me. 

No matter what motivates you, there will always be emotional enemies lurking in the corners of your mind waiting to derail you. The three major lurkers are fear, uncertainty and doubt. These impostors live inside you and keep you from even trying to achieve your dreams. But I have a few tips to help you fight back.

1.Put things in perspective.

You will never completely overcome your fears. If you let them, emotional enemies will hijack your success and leave you paralyzed and unable to move forward. The truth is we all take ourselves a little too seriously. When was the last time you spent hours of sleeplessness worrying about an upcoming deadline? Imagine the worst-case scenario because nothing is as important as we make it.

2. Separate the rational from the irrational.

Most of our fears are irrational. Just like my college nightmare, there will always be times when you question your capabilities, your strength, your courage, your success and the entire direction of your life. Pull those pesky thoughts to the front of your brain and assess whether they’re rooted in reality. More often than not, they are simply playing up your insecurities. When you’re struggling to confront your emotional enemies, write a list of your biggest accomplishments and place it somewhere obvious as a reminder. Personal affirmations are the best way to reinforce the positive things about yourself that you already know to be true.

3. Choose wisely.

I have an intense, lifelong fear of heights. Does that mean I’m going to go climb Mount Everest to overcome that fear? No, because overcoming that fear doesn’t serve my goals or push me toward a better life. But I have overcome my fear of public speaking, and I’m better off for it. Be smart about which of the emotional enemies you choose to face.

4 Fill your brain with positives.

Every day we give up a valuable resource: our attention. Who are you giving the keys of your mind to? Filter out the negative and give your attention to uplifting, positive messages. When you feel as if emotional enemies are taking over, remember that life is what you make it, and like those exams, it’s going to be just fine.

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Why Being Alert Is Essential to Being Successful

Craig Impelman

The second block in the second tier of Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success is Alertness. He defined this trait as: “Be observing constantly. Stay open-minded. Be eager to learn and improve.”

Coach considered alertness essential to growing as a person. He often pointed out that Abraham Lincoln once remarked, “I never met a person from whom I did not learn something; of course most of the time it was something not to do.” Coach would then add, “But that’s learning just the same.”

He said, “We must be alert and alive and be observing constantly, seeing the things that are going on around us. Otherwise, we are going to miss so many things from which we could improve ourselves. We must not get lost in our own narrow tunnel vision and selfish ways.”

 No matter how knowledgeable or experienced we believe we are on a subject, there is always something more to learn.

Beyond observing all the time, however, is the important detail of staying open-minded. Coach Wooden always stressed the importance of being open-minded in everything in order to take advantage of every opportunity to learn something new. “The assistants were free to disagree,” he said about his coaching team at UCLA. “Some wouldn’t disagree that much while others frequently disagreed. I wanted them free to make suggestions. I think a yes-man as an assistant is absolutely no good at all. You need someone who is going to take issue. I wanted them to have ideas of their own and yet, at the same time, know that only one can make the final decision…. If the decision that I made was contrary to what they believed, they had to accept it as if it were their own, even though they disagreed. That’s something I learned in coaching, whether it be with assistants or players: When you disagree, don’t be disagreeable about it.”

In fact, it’s rather interesting to see just how open-minded Coach really was in terms of welcoming suggestions, and how he encouraged his assistants to be open-minded, too. A number of former assistant coaches offered comments about Coach Wooden’s willingness to listen to their ideas and to learn from them if they might help the team improve:

• Eddie Powell: “Yes I was free to disagree; in fact, he encouraged me to speak my mind.”
• William Putnam: “He was always looking for help, comments and any kind of disagreement.”
• Doug Sale: “Oh yes, I was very free to disagree. He encouraged it.”
• Gary Cunningham: “We were free to disagree. He did not want yes-men. He wanted people who would express their ideas.”
• Jerry Norman: “Coach was a great person to work with in that respect because he was very open-minded. He’d challenge you on a lot of these things—he was very challenging—but not on whether he liked it or not, but on how much you’re sold on it.”
• Denny Crum: “He was always open-minded and willing to try something if I could justify it in our meetings.”

The third part of Coach Wooden’s definition of alertness: “Be eager to learn and improve.” He felt that a person must be ready and willing to embrace whatever lessons—positive or negative—that life threw in their way. It is the surest way to grow.

No matter how knowledgeable or experienced we believe we are on a subject, there is always something more to learn. Coach Wooden believed this firmly, dedicating himself to learning something new every single day. As he was so fond of saying, “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

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 3 Realities of Powerful Goals

I’ve got a reality check for you: There is a fundamental difference between a goal and a list of resolutions.

I am not a believer in a year-end list of goals. I mean, let’s be honest. All you’re doing is writing down a list of things that you won’t do. I don’t think anything is accomplished by making marks on a piece of paper. That list of resolutions might make you feel all warm and fuzzy about your future, but it’s no guarantee that next year will look any different than this year.

In my experience, there are three realities of powerful, achievable goals.

1. A goal is not the same thing as a resolution.

A real goal is when you decide you’re going to get something done no matter what. The word “decide” ends in -cide, like homicide and suicide. You really decide to make a change when you’ve reached the death of all other alternatives. I believe a true goal, not a list goal, is incredibly powerful. But that means that you’ve got to make a fundamental decision that not getting it done is not an option. You’ve got to make it happen.

2. There is only one real way to accomplish a goal.

You must do three things: apply relentless effort, call upon your deepest reserves of energy, and acquire the ability to change course and direction to get to where you want to be. No matter what happens, you have to adapt and keep going . When a door closes, you’ve got to find a window.

In life, getting from point A to point B is never a straight line. It’s never going to go the way you hope it does or plan for it to go. The cleanliness of theory is no match for the mess of reality. Things happen in life and business that throw you off course, that make your goal seem unreachable, but you have to make it happen. You’ve got to figure out a way.

3. You’re either tough enough to reach your goals or you’re not.

My experience in life is that it will give you what you will accept. The other side of that truth is that life will also give you what you’re willing to fight for. Are you one of the people willing to fight hard enough for what you want?

When I was co-CEO of a financial services company and we were in a long fight for the IPO, people didn’t always like what I had to say. I had to be tough. But they knew I was going to be a battering ram, that I was going to be relentless to get us to the right place. When it comes to goals, that’s how you have to be: tough enough to see it through to the end.

Here in the United States, we recently celebrated the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor. The generation of people who fought in World War II is going away every day. I truly believe they were the greatest generation, and here’s why: They were children of the Depression. The Great Recession we had is baby food compared to what they went though as young people. Unemployment was almost 30 percent. The world collapsed around them, and most of them were raised in complete, abject poverty. Right when they were becoming young adults, the world went into a world war that they had to fight both at home and abroad. Then they came home and built the American economy and the prosperity that we still experience today. They were tough. They were relentless. They were unwilling to fail no matter what.

Life is hard. Reaching your goal isn’t easy. Everybody would do something great in 2017 if it were easy. Well, guess what? It isn’t. Some people win, some people lose. Some people get it done. Some people don’t. Those are the facts.

If you look at what you want to accomplish next year, I hate to break it to you, but a list isn’t going to get it done. A goal is something that you’re going to relentlessly pursue until it’s reached. You’ve got to decide. What’s your decision going to be?

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