3 reasons you need more than success to be awesome

3 reasons you need more than success to be awesome3 reasons you need more than success to be awesomeDuring my four months in the FBI Academy, I shot over 3,000 rounds of ammo in firearms training, spent untold hours in the gym building up enough muscle to pass the fitness test, and endured an endless number of mock interrogation sessions.We spent hundreds of hours practicing real life situations so that when we hit the streets with our badge and gun as newly minted FBI agents, we would be successful.It didnt take me long in the real world of hard knocks to understand that practice doesnt always make perfect. Just because Id practiced how to be a federal law enforcement office in training, it didnt mean Id be successful. Those long hours of practice were notlage enough if I lacked the other attributes Id need for ultimate success.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreThe 10,000 hour ru le popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his bookOutliersreally rankles me.He seduced readers into thinking that practice does make perfect- if we just keep hammering away at it along enough.To begin with, just because we put 10,000 hours into an activity it doesnt mean weve made progress and become an expert. We all know people who have shuffled to work every day for 40 years, punched a time clock, and put in well over 10,000 hours. Many of them were neither successful nor an expert. To become an expert means that we move the marker down the line to show progress has been made.We all understand how failure provides ample opportunity for growth and progress, both partally and professionally. What we fail to understand, however, is that its very difficult to learn from success. Too often, success is where we stop on our journey to the realization of our full potential. We tischsettle for where we found success rather than pursue what is truly meaningful to us.Here are 3 reasons you need more than success to be awesome- in both life and business1. Success lulls us into comdistributions-mixncyOne thing FBI agents learn early on in training is its not the streets or guns that will kill you- complacency is what will put you in harms way Always be alert and aware of what is going on in your environment.When you pursue things you love, it produces passion, and passion brings motivation. If youre to the point where you just go through the motions, complacency has set in. Complacency is where you go to wither up and die.The biggest battlefield in the world goes on inside our mind. Its the place we make life and death decisions about the way we live, whats meaningful to us, and what were willing to do in order to live the life we want.Complacency will cause you to stray from the path of growth and progress, which may not sound like a death sentence at first. But it is where you will go once you no longer care about improvement, either in business or life.The tragedy of lif e is often not in our failure, but rather in our complacency not in our doing too much, but rather in our doing too little not in our living above our ability, but rather in our living below our capacities- nestkken E. MaysHow To Make It Work For You Go back to the drawing board and write down what truly inspires you to get up every morning. To be effective, it must transcend money or success. You may make money and achieve success along the way, but remind yourself of why you love what you do. Be a student of your passion and youll jettison complacency from your mindset.2.Success makes us overconfidentLook no further than Alan Greenspan and the financial meltdown in 2008 for an example of how success can make us overconfident. In October 2008, Greenspan admitted to Congress he was shocked that his financial models had failed. He no longer looked at them with a critical eye because theyd worked in the past.Alexander Pope once said that a little learning is a dangerous thing. Studies have shown that just a little learning is enough to make people feel theyd learned the complete task. Its called the beginners bubble. My training at the FBI Academy gave me just enough knowledge to feel overconfident in my abilities. What I quickly learned is that I needed more than my puerile successes at the Academy to be an effective FBI agent I neededmental toughnessto keep going, whether or not I felt confident, if I wanted to make a difference in my profession.After we move up a few notches on the ladder of success, the beginners bubble is replaced by a victory bubble. Our success leads us to believe were better decision makers than we really are. It also fails to remind us that the market and environment around us constantly change.Researchhas found that doctors learning to do spinal surgery usually do not begin to make mistakes until about their 15th iteration of the surgery. Similarly, new pilots rarely get into accidents, but their accident rate begins to rise until itpe aks at about 800 flight hours, where it begins to drop again.The biggest challenge after success is shutting up about it- Criss JamiHow To Make It Work For You Overconfidence is a common character flaw in those who lack humility. To be humble is not to think less of oneself, but to think of oneself less. Work to develop your emotional intelligence. If you do, youll be more aware of yourself and others around you. Emotionally intelligent people focus outward as they absorb more information about the people and situation around them.Are you mentally tough? Take thisFREE mental toughness assessment.3. Success causes us to ignore adviceIf were successful and in a position of authority, we tend to shut down criticism or those with opinions that differ from our own. We place more weight on our own opinion than on the opinion of others because weve used our judgement to get to where we are in life.And it works Until it doesnt.When you ignore the advice of others, you may miss innovations, fail to recognize a dip in the market, or ignore the rumblings of a demoralized team. Maybe you had the winning formula back in the day, but times have changed. You may need to update your views on how to make progress in an environment that constantly changes direction.There are many reasons why successful leaders dont welcome advice from others. First, the ego takes a hit because you admit you dont have all the answers. Well, that just means youre human so get over it. Second, advice often means change, and no one welcomes change except babies- and thats only because they know what to expect. But change is the breeding ground for growth and progress.Every person that you meet knows something you dont learn from them- H. Jackson Brown JrHow To Make It Work For You Seek feedback because its the best path to improvement, growth, and success. When you ask for advice and feedback, it shows everyone that youre willing to learn and become better. And that is always progress.This article originally appeared on LaRae Quy.

Is it possible to re-engineer a sick company culture

Is it possible to re-engineer a sick company cultureIs it possible to re-engineer a sick company cultureA healthy company culture can be a draw to an employee choosing a place to work. Its also essential to how a workplace functions Harvard Business Review recently wrote that culture influences how people spoke up or if they didnt.A bad culture can make the news for example, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank recently promised to improve his companys culture after a Wall Street Journal articlechronicled strip-club visits and inappropriate treatment of women at the company. But what happens when a once-happy workplace culture becomes negative?C-Space is a Boston-based company with several international offices that works directly with consumers to co-create new products for brands like Heinz, Bank of America, and Samsung. When things went wrong with their company culture, reports Quartz at Work, they decided to audit it, coming out on the other side with a series of slogans to live and w ork by. And when that went wrong? They went back to the drawing board and did it again, proving that culture is continuously in flux.Starting out as a smaller startup called Promise, they were acquired by an advertising firm Omnicom in 2012, and then merged with another company, becoming C-Space. Thats when things started to feel wrong. By the end of 2015, 30% of the staff had left, and just 56% said they felt proud to work there.Design for livingThe first four set of slogans that the culture committee employees from different areas and levels of the company came up with includedOnly accept awesome.Ive got this.On the surface, the meaning was clear. Only accept awesome meant to do your best work, and accept only the best from your coworkers. Ive got this meant taking ownership of a task or project.Yet, after about a year, employees began to embrace the mantras a little too much to the point that they became corrupted. Only accept awesome had created a new culture of overwork. Ive got this led to tasks going to the wrong people as over-eager employees wanted to be seen performing well.Do-overThe culture had changed, but not for the better. So C-Spaces culture committee brainstormed two more slogansOpen up and listen.Tell it like it is.While two sentences cant change a group of people, they did reportedly help. If anything, the C-Space experiment shows how delicate company culture is, and how difficult it is to engineer a group of people working together. Perhaps the best solution is not changing course completely, but the Japanese workplace concept of kaizen, which means, simply, continuous improvement.

This simple mental hack could help you overcome anxiety

This simple mental hack could help you overcome anxietyThis simple mental hack could help you overcome anxietyImagine youre doing something that gives youanxietyor causes you stress. Maybe youre about to have adifficult conversationwith your boss, or perhaps youre getting ready for a party where youll bump into people you havent seen in ages. If your heart is starting to beat faster, youre elend alone. But what if a simple perspective shift could help you manage the clammy hands and racing heartbeat that come with your anxiety - and even help you to be a little thankful for what youre feeling?When it comes to negative emotions like stress, anxiety, and even depression, your perception matters Theres scientific evidence that how wethinkabout our emotions drastically affects how wefeel. Have you ever noticed that focusing on how stressful something is makes it feel even mora stressful? The reverse can be true too. By focusing on the positive parts of an experience, you can actuallyred uce stress.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreThe concept is called cognitive reappraisal, and the gist is that by shifting our perspective on emotions, we can actually reduce the duration and intensity of feelings like sadness and anxiety. A2014 studyfound that reappraising anxiety as excitement helped people with wertmiger zuwachs anxiety more than merely focusing on staying calm.Another study from 2010shows that emotional regulation, another term for cognitive reappraisal, can help reduce symptoms of depression.While cognitive reappraisal has been extensively studied with conditions like clinical anxiety and depression, the same principle could hold true for everyday stress, saysElizabeth Cush, LCPC, an Annapolis, MD-based therapist. How does it work? Rather than focusing on the negative emotion, Cush recommends turning the table with a simplemindfulness exercise. The first ste p Pay attention to how you perceive your anxiety. If you view stressful emotions as the enemy, Cush says its likely youll try to outrun them - which can result in even more stress.People go to great lengths to avoid feeling or being anxious. Busyness, exercise, perfectionism, meditation, substance use and self-criticism, are just some of the strategies people use so they dont have to deal with the anxiety. Ironically, it turns out that all the strategies we commonly use so we dont feel our anxiety can actually make the anxious feelings more intense. As a result, you might even end up experiencing panic attacks, Cush says.Instead of thinking about your anxiety as your enemy or as something that shows up to make you suffer, try thinking of your anxious feelings as a healthy reminder that something might need your attention, she says. Maybe youre feeling sad or lonely. Maybe youre struggling to meet your own emotional or physical needs. Maybe youre afraid youll make a mistake and be j udged. No matter what is making you anxious - and the reason might not be clear - remind yourself that youve felt this way before and that it will pass.Then - and this is the important step for re-framing your anxiety - talk back to it, whether you simplyjournal mindfullyabout how youre feeling or actually speak to yourself out loud.Try telling the anxiety youre happy that it showed up, because now you can pay attention to your needs, Cush says. By tuning into and welcoming the anxiety, youre creating the space to feel the feelings beneath the anxiety with openness and without judgment. And that trick lessens the intensity and power of the anxietyThis article was originally published on Brit + Co.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an intervie w, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong peopleThis simple mental hack could help you overcome anxietyImagine youre doing something that gives youanxietyor causes you stress. Maybe youre about to have adifficult conversationwith your boss, or perhaps youre getting ready for a party where youll bump into people you havent seen in ages. If your heart is starting to beat faster, youre not alone. But what if a simple perspective shift could help you manage the clammy hands and racing heartbeat that come with your anxiety - and even help you to be a little thankful for what youre feeling?When it comes to negative emotions like stress, anxiety, and even depression, your perception matters Theres scientific evidence that how wethinkabout our emotions drastically affects how wefeel. Have you ever noticed that focusing on how stressful something is makes it feel even more stressful? The reverse can be true too. By focusing on the positive parts of an experience, you can actuallyr educe stress.The concept is called cognitive reappraisal, and the gist is that by shifting our perspective on emotions, we can actually reduce the duration and intensity of feelings like sadness and anxiety. A2014 studyfound that reappraising anxiety as excitement helped people with performance anxiety more than merely focusing on staying calm.Another study from 2010shows that emotional regulation, another term for cognitive reappraisal, can help reduce symptoms of depression.While cognitive reappraisal has been extensively studied with conditions like clinical anxiety and depression, the same principle could hold true for everyday stress, saysElizabeth Cush, LCPC, an Annapolis, MD-based therapist. How does it work? Rather than focusing on the negative emotion, Cush recommends turning the table with a simplemindfulness exercise. The first step Pay attention to how you perceive your anxiety. If you view stressful emotions as the enemy, Cush says its likely youll try to outrun them - which can result in even more stress.People go to great lengths to avoid feeling or being anxious. Busyness, exercise, perfectionism, meditation, substance use and self-criticism, are just some of the strategies people use so they dont have to deal with the anxiety. Ironically, it turns out that all the strategies we commonly use so we dont feel our anxiety can actually make the anxious feelings more intense. As a result, you might even end up experiencing panic attacks, Cush says.Instead of thinking about your anxiety as your enemy or as something that shows up to make you suffer, try thinking of your anxious feelings as a healthy reminder that something might need your attention, she says. Maybe youre feeling sad or lonely. Maybe youre struggling to meet your own emotional or physical needs. Maybe youre afraid youll make a mistake and be judged. No matter what is making you anxious - and the reason might not be clear - remind yourself that youve felt this way before and that it will pass.Then - and this is the important step for re-framing your anxiety - talk back to it, whether you simplyjournal mindfullyabout how youre feeling or actually speak to yourself out loud.Try telling the anxiety youre happy that it showed up, because now you can pay attention to your needs, Cush says. By tuning into and welcoming the anxiety, youre creating the space to feel the feelings beneath the anxiety with openness and without judgment. And that trick lessens the intensity and power of the anxietyThis article was originally published on Brit + Co.