Hey, guys, and welcome back to Change Wired Podcast, the podcast for leaders, change makers and anyone tired of growing everything and everyone except themselves. You'll understand what I'm talking about. Today's episode, guys, is a reminder. We plan everything deadlines, calls, workouts. We try to optimize, maximize the value of every minute, every hour, every piece on our calendar. But when's the last time you booked a meeting with yourself to work on yourself, to explore your character, to grow your character?
Speaker 1Guys, we spend decades learning about the world through schooling First school, then university. Then we learn at our job. We learn how to become better experts, how to solve problems in businesses, at our workplaces, and less and less time, if ever, in close to zero time. While we are at school, we spend close to zero time. We spend on developing ourselves, on getting to know ourselves, on becoming wiser, and then we wonder why is it that we don't understand ourselves often, that we don't know what our purpose is? Did you know that number three most common use case of chat, gpt, according to Harvard Business Review? Research is figuring out your purpose, and that's not because it's the most complex subject, it's because the subject that we Like when did you last spend time? When did you put a meeting, a date with yourself on your calendar to figure out your purpose, like. So it literally would say figure out my purpose. This episode is about what happens when we don't do that. This episode is about how to start the journey, the work on ourselves, on developing, on growing our character. Because, again, how many hours you spend in your life on developing your knowledge, your expertise, on developing your career, on learning to be getting good and greater at what you do Like, how many hours do you spend on that? And then on taking care of other people, on helping others, on doing all of these things to be a valued member of society, and then we spend close to zero time to take care of the one that makes it all happen you.
Speaker 1I was chatting with a client of mine and I mentioned setting a meeting on the calendar with herself. So she works on self-reflection, or developing some self-knowledge, or developing the self-awareness that she wants to develop, to be more focused on her path versus all of the other things that other people do. She said I love this idea of setting a meeting on my calendar with myself and I told you that's actually what we talk about with a lot of my clients learning and putting into practice this habit of setting the date on your calendar with yourself to not work on someone, even though sometimes it's around career and it is what we're trying to do in life but even more so it's about dedicating time to working on us, on you. A lot of my clients would tell me, angela, you know the shift, the major shift that happened to me when I decided to start your coaching is that I finally decided to dedicate purposefully, intentionally, time to working on myself, and that's what this hour together every week is about working on myself, growing myself as a human being, working on those character traits, on those personality traits that I care about. So I don't just do assessments and tasks, like what often happens at work, but actually work on those things and actually work on things that matter in my life, whether I do my career or not, things like courage or discipline, a confidence, something that I personally am working on. Confidence, something that I personally am working on, and just like you would work on something career-wise. There has to be a system for that growth to happen. You can spend hours on becoming greater in whatever it is you do.
You got through training and then you practice it at work. Many. You got through training and then you practice it at work many, many times and you applied it to solve problems and you got feedback and you probably got rewards and you probably got a lot of constructive feedback when you didn't exactly deliver what you thought you could deliver or what was the expectation, and then you adjusted and you tried again and then you improved and you got better and you grew and you probably got improved and you got better and you grew and you probably got promotion and you got more payment for that. So many things went right for you to be able to grow and grow and grow in your career. And let's now get back to personal development. And now let's say you work on your courage. Let's say you work on your discipline. So what's the system for that? What is the training for that? When do you apply that to real life problems? When do you train? When do you put in the reps? When do you get feedback? When do you get success indicators? When do you get some reward? When do you acknowledge to yourself that because of that, your life's quality improved? When did you spend time reflecting on what's working and why, what's not working and why and why do you need to wear? What do you need to adjust to get better so you do get the reward in life that you seek? It's always easier to explain through example Courage.
Speaker 1Why am I working on my courage? I'm working on my courage because when I go to events, when I meet amazing people, when I am in front of potential customers, I often don't say the things fully, the ones that are in my heart, in my soul, the ones that I know are important. I don't promote or push what I truly believe and can be beneficial for them because I lack that courage. I'm more in my head like what is this person going to think of me? What they're going to like, what I have? Should I, should I not? Courage is taking the step and doing what you know feels right, what your heart sings for, what is in your soul, like. I want to be able to say that I believe in that, seeing that, despite what might happen, that what courage is, or in relationship, it's approaching this person and putting yourself out there, not having any guarantee that there's going to be any positive outcome whatsoever. And yes, they might think you're the most weird person in the world, but that's what takes courage to put yourself out there, not knowing what the result is going to be, but being true to yourself, to your essence, and that's where you attract your best opportunities. And I feel like I've missed out and still missing out on a lot in my life and in my business and the impact I can create in the world, because I am not courageous enough. And so I'm working on my courage, and the next assignment for my work on my courage is the next event plan to come up to that person, specific person, and then tell them that specific thing, specifically for me creating, setting up a meeting to talk about synergy that we might have to build a relationship. I missed out on so many relationships because I just never took the right kind of step. And so, for me, the assignment next time, at the next event, when you see that person that you are scared to talk to or you feel like they might think about something or they'll be too busy, et cetera, just come up to them, say something thoughtful and create an opportunity to follow up, to meet up to talk about those potential synergy and building something up from there, not from your selfish perspective, but from the perspective of what it is in it for them and how you create more value together. So that's my courage development assignment to myself.
Speaker 1Another thing that I'm working on is discipline. Not discipline like to go and work out and eat healthy. It's plenty of discipline for that, but that is actually. There is a difference, and Rich Deviney, a former Navy SEAL commander, high-performance trainer, in his book one of his books 25 Hidden Drivers of Optimal Performance Attributes so that's the name of the book he talks about how there is inner discipline when we are disciplined to follow through with our routines or get healthy eating, exercise, sleep, et cetera. And there is outer discipline when you say to someone this is what I'm going to do and you figure out a way, no matter what, and you eliminate the path to excuses and because of that, you're going to become more careful about what you promise, because you know that you will have to follow through on delivery. So that discipline I am working on developing and that means slowing down before I say yes or give any promise. And if I do give any promise, then give the kind of promise that I plan to fulfill and I cut out all the past two excuses right. So for me, every time when I have this urge to say, yes, I'm going to do that. Just stop yourself and tell myself I'm going to look into that and I'm going to get back to you later so then I could evaluate whether I can actually deliver that. And then the second thing to deliver, no matter what. That's how you build trust with people and with yourself that you're the kind of person who delivers on every expectation and every promise. So these are specific situations where I'm going to be practicing being more courageous and disciplined. In order, guys, that is all.
To say that, just like working on your career, you need to have systems, specific behavior systems to work on your self-growth. First of all, you need to understand what it is you want to work on. Is that being more self-aware? Is it being more courageous? Is it being more confident? Is it being more disciplined? And you got to also spell it out to yourself. Also spell it out to yourself. What does it mean when I become more successful, when I grow in those areas? What kind of opportunities and better things, better quality of life, do I unlock by developing this?
Speaker 1Don't develop things because everybody says you should do that, or it's a good idea to be, let's say, more kind, but do you really feel like kindness, for example, is something that's missing in your life. And if you do, what are you missing out when you don't have these kind behaviors consistent in your life? Maybe just feeling like you are not contributing to the world you want to see around yourself, or maybe you are not creating or giving back as much as you'd like to to be the kind of person that you say you want to be, and maybe that doesn't allow you to build the kind of relationship that you want to build. Whatever it is, what is it going to give you and what are you missing out on because you don't have this quality developed? And then the next thing the system for developing any trait, whether that's character or career, is number one. Create a trigger. Basically ask yourself when am I going to practice that? How am I going to remember to do so? What is going to be different that will remind me to take a certain action to train my, let's say, kindness? The second thing is what is my system that will allow me to practice more kindness, like, specifically, what it is I'm going to do to practice being more kind or to practice being more courageous? You got to spell it out, you got to write it down. What exactly am I going to do? Being more kind or more courageous is not an action. You need to be very specific about action and then you follow through with this action and sometimes you fail, sometimes you succeed, but then that's where opportunity to grow comes in.
Speaker 1If you succeed, how did it happen? What contributed to that? How can you make more of that? How can you expand that win?
Speaker 1And if you failed, what went wrong?
Speaker 1What can you do better? What kind of systems? And if you failed, what went wrong? What can you do better? What kind of systems? Reminders, things to slow yourself down, to take a different action, to respond differently. What kind of system do you have to get better the next time? Just like a professional athlete would train their moves to perform better the next time, what is your system of performing the next move better? And if you succeed again, you also need to stop and reflect well, what contributed to the success this time? What did I do differently? So then I can replicate and repeat it. And then you design a new experiment.
Speaker 1Okay, so this happened failure, success. I know my why's and I know what I want to test the next time. And then you set up the next trigger. What is the situation when I'm going to try to do it better? In what situation? How exactly? What's the action? And it's a never-ending loop until you're like, okay, I developed kindness, it's my new default now. Or I developed courage or I developed outer discipline, whatever that might be.
Speaker 1So systems for changing your character, for growing your character, are the same as systems for developing your career. And, just like with career, you would have trainings on your calendar. You would have specific situations where you're going to apply the skill if you really want to develop it. You're going to have feedback systems and then you're going to put in the work and the reps. The same thing is true for developing your character. It's just because the outer world doesn't ask you that much about. You know how's your courage this week or how's your kindness this week, and you don't get a lot of reinforcement positive or negative from the world. That's why you kind of keep running through loops. And again, that's not because you are stuck or there is something wrong with your psychology. It's just because the feedback loop is not as apparent and accurate in front of your face as a feedback loop for your career, like when you're wrong at your job. You would know that people will tell you and you're probably gonna be either rewarded or punished for doing it, right or wrong. So do you have that same for your character traits? Probably not, and that's why you need to set up the feedback systems. And that's how and why a lot of my clients hire me to develop their character, to introduce this feedback loop, because then I give them assignments and I'm going to follow up and I'm going to ask all these questions Well, did it work? Why did it work? If it didn't, why didn't it work? What can we do better? Does it still matter? How does it contribute to the quality of life that you want, the person that you want to become? All these questions I'm going to ask, and that's why a lot of leaders hire me at quite mature stage of their life. They're like, yeah, without system, nothing going to change or grow. So I need someone to help me with that system and that accountability Systems for character growth, systems for personal growth, dates and meetings with yourself.
This is what this podcast is all about and, to sum it up, to give you very practical value Again, if you want to develop any character trait, any personality trait let's say you got your latest career, or Enneagram, or StrengthsFinder, whatever that assignment assessment is. You got it. Now you have certain things that keep repeating and keep coming up, keep coming up, keep coming up. Now you ask yourself, okay, what it is you want to work on? What it is I want to work on, choose one thing, just one thing. You're already busy and overwhelmed. If you choose 10 things, none of them will happen. So there is actually a research on how, when you choose more habits or more things to work on, the probability of success on any of them will diminish proportionally. So if you choose one thing, you are so much more likely to succeed than if you choose 10 things, which is why most people's resolutions never happen.
Speaker 1So get one character trait that you want to work on. Then you ask yourself, okay, how exactly am I going to work in? How will I know if I succeed at developing it? How will I know if I fail? Get some definitions around that. What does it mean to you to be more courageous? How is it going to show up in your life? In solution-focused therapy? There is this miracle question If tomorrow, all of a sudden, you had magic wand and you wished it and you became more courageous? How would you know? It has to be very definable. So if I put a camera to that action, I could actually see it. So how would you know if you become more kind and more courageous?
Speaker 1What is the behavior that you want to work in Specific situation? I would go even further what is specific situation where you want to be more of X Confident, courageous, kind, whatever that is? So describe the situation and then create a behavior design loop, trigger. How are you going to remember to do a certain action to develop this character trait? So trigger what is the system Basically, what is the situation, what it is exactly you're going to do? So you know whether you succeeded or failed at moving forward that character trait development. Right, the situation, the trigger. How will you remember the specific action?
Speaker 1And then, once you complete the action, or once the situation comes and you either do the action or don't do the action, you spend some time to give yourself feedback. Did it work? If it worked, how can I make it better? How can I make it more consistent? So write it down. If it didn't work, why didn't it work? How can I try better next time? So, positive and negative, both. And then, based on that. Okay, now what's the next action plan when I'm going to work on this character trait?
Speaker 1And at the beginning also, guys, give yourself some mark, let's say, on a scale of 0 to 10, what is your courage level? Is it 5?, is it 4?, is it 3?, is it I don't know 7? And you're almost there. So then I'd say, every two weeks or every month, you can evaluate and you can give yourself a different mark, so you actually see that you're moving forward and also define ideal state. What again, like you did at the beginning, what does it mean to be courageous? In what situations, how you would show up and you know yes, now I'm courageous to the extent that I want. And then, once you have your feedback, get back to what am I going to do next time? When is the trigger, how am I going to remember? What is the action, what is the situation? And then you do that, you go through the situation, you get the feedback and then what's the next step? And then, every couple of weeks, evaluate okay, what is on the scale from zero to ten? Where am I? Where do I want to be? How, what does win state? Look for me, am I there? No, how am I gonna take the next action, etc.
Speaker 1So this is a loop, behavior design loop, a system for developing your character trait.
Speaker 1Guys, hope, I hope this helps.
Please come back to this episode whenever you need to work on any of your personal development character traits, anything that you get on your assessment. Come back to this episode and walk yourself through this loop again. If you want to have a session to walk you through different methodologies to develop any of your character traits or anything on your assessment, then please schedule this session with me. The link is in the show notes and during that hour I will walk you through different exercises to work on that specific character trait that you've been wanting to work forever but couldn't really make any measurable progress. So check this out. Link is in the show notes. Please do share this podcast episode with at least one other person, one other person who might want to work on their character but not really sure how, and they've been stuck forever not having a good enough system. So share this podcast episode. Let's change the world a couple of years at a time. Great review Can't wait to connect with you on our next episode and until next time, keep tuning in and keep growing.