February 2012
1 post
“Play the “What If” game to stretch yourself”
– Most people tend to live and act well within their comfort zone. It’s a natural thing. There may be plenty of moments when you would like act in a way that’s outside your comfort zone, but it’s hard to do. Anything that’s outside your comfort zone will by definition make you...
November 2011
1 post
“Do what you love to do”
– You should do what you love to do. That’s an often heard sentiment (or advice) when people talk about work. Of course you know it isn’t that easy. Can you really make money, doing what you love?
A better question is should you make money? A lot of people only consider doing what they love if they...
August 2011
1 post
“Don’t follow your passion. Take it along wherever you go.”
– Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs)
July 2011
2 posts
“DARE - overcome fear of failure”
– Whenever you want to achieve something, there is a chance that you will not achieve what you set out to achieve. You can see that as failure, and failure is painful. Fear of failure is what is keeping most things from getting done. A different mindset about doing, achieving and failing can help you...
“Past, Present and Future: Be a Time Traveler”
– How can you take control of time and make the most of it?
What is time? I can’t tell you what time is exactly. It’s something you have or don’t have. It’s something that you can’t get back, once it has passed. It is a concept to think about what has been, what is now...
June 2011
5 posts
“Create an “I’m Awesome, because…” document”
– If you’re like most people it’s easier for you to name your defects than your assets. I’m from the Netherlands, where talking about how good you are is frowned upon. And yet, to be able to do great things, I think you have to be great. Or better: feel great.
Every single person...
“Don’t let your fear of failure become a fear of doing”
– Fear of failure is good. What!? I’ll say it again. Fear of failure is good. It is a signal that something important is on the line for you. And when something is important, you care about the result. And you know what result you don’t want, because that’s the failure you’re...
“Script your inner voice”
– Would you like to take control of how you react to events in your life and how they make you feel?
What you do and how you feel is partly determined by what you say to yourself. We all have an inner voice that’s talking to us, even if we don’t listen. What’s your inner voice...
“Be Thankful For Hard Times”
– Nobody likes hard times. Having trouble making ends meet? Problems in your relationship? Losing a loved one? It’s part of life but we’d like to do without it.
So why should you be thankful for hard times? Well, it’s in hard times that we learn the most important lessons and...
“An Important Skill: Stop!”
– If you’re a procrastination junkie like me, you search the web for information and tips on how to get started on important tasks. Maybe that’s even what brought you here. While it’s good to find ways to get you started, I think it’s equally important to know when and how to...
May 2011
11 posts
“Back to square…two!”
– Have you ever tried to start a new habit or stop an old one? And have you ever fallen back and had the feeling that you were back to square one? Well, you don’t fall back to square one. You fall back to what I call square two.
Square two is the place where you have experienced success and...
“Tackle those scary activities with Déjà Vu”
– Do you have an important presentation coming up? A negotiation with your boss? A job interview? We all have things that make us nervous, because we’re not sure of our abilities, we feel a lack of control or we’re just scared of everything that can go wrong.
The antidote to fear is...
“Discover your talents: The Talent Journal”
– How to gradually discover your talents in a few minutes a day
It’s good to think about what your talents are. Your talents are the things that you’re not only good at, but which come natural to you. In fact, sometimes those things are so natural that you don’t even see them as...
“TIP: Visualize your super productive state”
– To be super productive and knock out action after action, you need to be in a super productive state. It will be different for everyone. For me, it means I have to be fearless, focused, pumped up and determined. I don’t need to be in very good spirits, because I do some of my best work when I...
“The status quo you’re holding on to is what you resisted before”
– I’ve done a lot of change management in companies and it’s always funny to see how people hold on to their current situation. Before the current situation, there was a different situation, and if I ask how the change from the past to the current went, I mostly find that people resisted...
“100th Post: What I learned from blogging random wisdom”
– When I started this blog or idea pad, whatever you want to call it, I didn’t know how long I would keep going. My intention was simply to have a place for these random ideas I have regularly. I’m a thinker. I see things, have ideas and opinions, and keep them to myself most of the time....
“Creating A New Habit? Start Over Every Day”
– Creating a new habit can be hard work, especially if it is meant to replace an old habit. Habits are mighty powerful and they will resist any disruption. I like to think of an old habit as someone lurking in the dark, waiting for an opportunity to trip me and take over again.
So my new habit is...
“Add this field to your contact list: Tagline”
– A tagline is a branding slogan that aims to capture the essence of a brand. What tagline would you come up with to describe your mother, father, siblings, friends, colleagues…? Add the field to your contact list or just do it in your mind. Try to find a few characteristics that describe them...
“Uncertainty is not a valid reason for not starting”
– Ok, I know I shouldn’t use double negatives, but trying to put it in a different way kept bringing me back to this.
What holds us back from starting something, is the uncertainty about being able to finish it with satisfactory results. We may be uncertain about our abilities, our resources...
“Listen with Purpose”
– Listening is an important skill in all communication. Listening is not just receiving the message. That’s hearing. When you listen, you actively interpret the message, you give feedback and you take part in the conversation. Good listening is very intensive.
To make your listening more...
“What cleaning up a messy room taught me about productivity”
– Yeah, I did it! My once incredibly messy room is clean. I can actually see the floor now, and I’ve thrown out a lot of stuff that I had not even touched for years. It took me 4 days of hard and tedious work to get it done and I had many moments where I wanted to quit. But I found different...
April 2011
2 posts
“Share your standards”
– We all have standards that we live by or at least want to live by. Your standards are made up of beliefs and values. These are mostly internal, and they rule your behaviour. You exercise because you believe that people should take care of their body. You hate negative gossip, because you believe in...
“Strolling, Straining, or Stretching? Which are you?”
– When you think about your current activities, where do you see yourself at the moment?
Strolling: Everything comes easy to you. The tasks at hand are generally comfortable, safe, without too many surprises. You may feel satisfied and confident in what you’re doing. You may also feel...
March 2011
3 posts
“Challenge your long time beliefs”
– Once you know something or think you know something, you don’t give it a second thought. Sometimes this is a good thing, because it would be a drag to have to think about everything anew. Things change, however. So it’s a good idea to challenge your long time beliefs. How did you come to...
“Success is scary”
– We all want to be succesful, right? Well, it would seem like that, but in reality fear of success is a very common cause of procrastination or settling. The defining factor is the meaning that you give to success. You can see it as an obligation to stay successful or to be even more successful. You...
“Practise Confidence with simple things”
– One of the most common problems that people bring to a coaching session is lack of confidence. They might lable it fear or insecurity, but what they want is to be confident in what they need to do.
What is confidence? It’s a mental and physical state, that happens when you think and feel...
February 2011
5 posts
“Every moment you’re alive is special!”
– If you try to get your head around how life and the universe works, you can only appreciate the miracle of being alive. I saw an exhibition today with pictures of microscopic cells and pictures of the universe. Pictures of an embryo inside the womb. It just made me realize that each one of us is so...
“If you decrease bureaucracy, don’t sacrifice predictability”
– Bureaucracy has a bad rap. The word is mostly used to describe an administrative process that is unnecessarily slow and complex. While that is often the case, bureaucracy was actually invented in the best interest of the client, to make sure that a process was predictable and rightful for each and...
“Complainer or Whiner: Ask them one question”
– I think it’s almost universal in people, whether we like it or not: we like to complain. It’s a way of venting our feelings about something in the world not being as we would like it to be. Especially when incompetent, insensitive or (your word here) people are involved, we are ready to...
“Make a “Should Do” list”
– Tony Robbins says that people have to turn there “should” activities into “must” activities. This means that as long as you should be doing something there’s no unstoppable drive to actually do it. While I subscribe to that notion (who am I to disagree with the big TR)...
January 2011
5 posts
“Free = No Value?”
– (This rant is brought on by comments on mobile apps, complaining about certain apps not being free, costing a whopping 3 bucks…)
These days, let’s call it the internet age, the value of some things seems to diminish to almost zero. Especially digital things, when I think about it....
“You Don’t Know The Future”
– Relax. You don’t know how they’re going to react. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know what the future brings. All you have is Now. Use it to your best ability. Think about the future, prepare for it, but instead of worrying about the future, live now.
“Dealing with critics: Be curious (and check your ego at the door)”
– You can learn from anyone, no matter what level of experience, knowledge or even relevant skills they have. Some of the best people to learn from are your critics. Critics come in all shapes and sizes. Some of them are very mild and have your best interest at heart. Others are very harsh, but still...
“Plan your actions for somebody else”
– When you want to achieve big goals, that have a risk of failure, you need a great plan. Big goals require massive action, perseverence in tough times, and guts to step outside your comfort zone and do whatever it takes. If you’re like most people, there are things that you don’t like to...
“From ‘I Should…But…’ to ‘I...”
– When you procrastinate you know very well what you should be doing. A feeling of procrastination comes when you know you’re not doing what you should be doing. Procrastination helps you hide from that task. One way of overcoming this, is to make explicit what it is you should be doing and why...
December 2010
7 posts
“The Project Problem: You focus on getting from A to B, when you really want to...”
– I’ve been involved in a lot of IT projects as a consultant. Most of these projects had to do with setting up a new website or IT system. In the pre-sales stage I would talk with the client about goals, requirements and such. And in almost all of the cases the goal was an installed IT solution....
“A creative mindset: Distinguish the What from the How”
– Part of a having a creative mindset, is thinking about your task in terms of What and How. What are you trying to accomplish? What is the desired result? How can you get those results?
Creativity can be used particularly well in the How. Many times when we prepare tasks for ourselves or others, we...
“It’s easy to sell something you’re proud of”
– So make sure you are proud of what you’re trying to sell. Whether it’s product, or a personal service, if you’re heart is in it, you can’t wait to tell people about it. You’re enthusiasm will be genuine and that well lead to people trusting and believing you.
It...
“How will I WOW?”
– We’re living in a world and a market place where it is increasingly harder to stand out and make a difference. Knowledge and resources are available to a lot more people, so there’s a lot more competition out there.
To make your mark and be more successful you have to WOW! Wether...
“Don’t worry about the billions you’re not reaching. Care about those...”
– Trying to reach and please everyone? Guess what, you won’t. So instead of putting your focus on the people you don’t reach, focus on the people you do reach and create positive value in their lives. If it’s thousands, tens, or even just one.
“Know your expectations (and those of others)”
– In any relationship (or contact between people), whether intimate or work related, expectations govern our feelings of satisfaction or disappointment. Each and every person has expectations. Some of these expectations are conscious, others are subconscious.
If you’re dealing with people, in...
November 2010
2 posts
“Starting Over is part of the process”
– The hardest part of changing your habits is sticking with it. It’s easy to fall back into old habits. Now the important part is what you do after you fall back. Many people just give up. It didn’t work, so too bad.
You need to be aware that falling back is part of the process. We are...
“Are you ready for “How are you”?”
– It’s the first question you get when you meet someone you know. Of course, most of the time people don’t want to actually know how you are. It’s protocol, so you’re expected to say you’re fine. But in the occasion that someone is genuinly interested, do you know how you...
October 2010
5 posts
“Change Your Past For A Better Future”
– A lot of our actions and attitude towards situations are determined by our experiences in the past. You had a fight with your spouse yesterday, so today you still come home in a bad mood. Or your last five prospects said no to your proposal, so you hesitate to reach out to new prospects. When you...
“Today is World Procrastination Day”
– Ok, it’s not an official day or anything. Every day is World Procrastination Day. Each and every day a lot of procrastination goes on. Why not set a day aside to celebrate it? Today, or any day you choose, immerse yourself in procrastination. Stop feeling guilty, surf the web, scratch your...
“Be a Learner”
– A Learner looks for lessons in everything that happens, including his own actions. To a Learner the world is filled with situations and people that teach us, if we choose to open our mind.
Next time you run into an obnoxious person ask yourself: what is the lesson I can take away from this. When...
“The Preparation Habit - your key to improvement”
– When you do something over and over again, you get better at it, right? Well, that’s true to a certain extent. Repetition does make things easier to do. It becomes a routine and you can do it with your eyes closed, so to speak. Routine is good, because it leads to predictable results.
The...
“A flash of inspiration seems to strike more easily after a healthy dose of...”