Positive Mindset

Before I graduated from my diploma course in 1994, I secured two job interviews.

One was with a bank as a PR executive, prestigious location with nice looking workstations plus excellent career path. I had shared with the PR manager who interviewed me that my goal was to be in her role in a few years.

The other was for a position as an events executive with a local SME located in an industrial area. There was no clear training pathways or career progression.

Both offered me the job. I chose the latter because the people I bumped into at the company were warm and friendly. Whereas, the environment at the bank felt sterile.

That was my first taste of an aspect of “work culture” as I now understand it.

A positive environment will lead to dramatic benefits for employers, employees, and the bottom line.

Work culture refers to the beliefs, thought processes, attitudes of the employees, ideologies, and principles of the organisation. The culture determines the way employees interact with each other and how an organisation functions.

To a large extent, management sets the tone for how the culture is and evolves. For example, if the management has a fixed mindset and extols virtues of competiveness, then the culture will be one where individuals and teams put their personal survival and gain as priority instead of synergising with others. In the past, good employees often stay on in spite of culture, for the sake of their rice bowl.

It is now a different landscape.

If a company does not keep up with increasingly loud call for a positive work culture, then business owners will have difficulty attracting the dream team he or she desires. A talented high performing individual will naturally choose a company that is aligned to his or her values. If she or he places teamwork and supportive colleagues high on the values list, then a company known for its positive work culture would be the top choice.

As a business owner, how would having a positive work culture benefits you?

A large and growing body of research on positive organizational psychology shows that not only is a cut-throat environment harmful to productivity over time, but that a positive environment will lead to dramatic benefits for employers, employees, and the bottom line.

In a Harvard Business Review article, the authors wrote about how positive work cultures are more productive. It shared about a research article published in the Journal of Applied Behavioural Science in which Kim Cameron and his colleagues at the University of Michigan found that a workplace characterized by positive and virtuous practices excels in a number of domains.

Positive and virtuous practices include:

• Caring for, being interested in, and maintaining responsibility for colleagues as friends.
• Providing support for one another, including offering kindness and compassion when others are struggling.
• Avoiding blame and forgive mistakes.
• Inspiring one another at work.
• Emphasizing the meaningfulness of the work.
• Treating one another with respect, gratitude, trust & integrity.

Cameron and his colleagues explain that there are three reasons these practices benefit the company. Positive practices:

• Increase positive emotions which broaden employees’ resources and abilities by improving people’s relationships with each other and amplifying their creativity and ability to think creatively.
• Buffer against negative events like stress, improving employees ability to bounce back from challenges and difficulties.
• Attract and bolster employees, making them more loyal and bringing out the best in them.

There are bottom-line benefits as well. Summarizing the findings, Cameron explains that: “When organizations institute positive, virtuous practices they achieve significantly higher levels of organizational effectiveness — including financial performance, customer satisfaction, and productivity”.

There are many small steps you can take to start building one that is vibrant and positive – where employees feel valued, engaged and are proud to be your company’s ambassadors. They will become the dream team that you have envisioned.

But first, it starts with you making the decision on culture. That will set the stage for what follows next.

For ways to build a positive work culture, contact us to find out more about our Positivity at Work programmes.

Thanks Lady Boss Asia for the article!

Read “Mindset, the new psychology of success” by Carol S Dweck recently. Wished I had read this in 2006 but hey, awesome to have read it now. 😊

The author Carol Dweck, a Standford University psychologist, shared how having a growth mindset as leaders, teachers, parents, coaches etc can motivate people to reach their goals and success. That by praising effort rather than talent has long term positive effects.

I like to share about my art teacher Diana who demonstrates this growth mindset when teaching her students and the immense impact it has.

I was terrible in art in secondary school and believed that I had no talent. Then in 2012, a friend connected me with Diana as I was interested to learn how to paint.

The Heart (main picture) was completed at my first lesson. It was only possible because Diana shared that everyone can learn how to paint. So I focused on picking up the techniques required rather than on my past experiences of scoring low marks on art.

Through the subsequent lessons, I discovered that the times when I could be immersed in the learning process was when I enjoyed it the most. During the moments when I focused on whether the painting was pretty or not, was when I became stressed and felt like giving up (fixed mindset came to play).

The more I became interested in the painting process rather than questioning myself if I’ve talent or not, the more ‘in flow” I became. I would choose a different focus each time in order to learn different techniques eg painting koi fish, the sea or lace curtains.

The fixed mindset believes that intelligence is static which leads to a desire to look smart and therefore, a tendency to:

• avoid challenges
• gets defensive or give up easily when faced with obstacles
• sees effort as fruitless or worse
• ignore useful negative feedback
• feels threatened by the success of others

As a result, they may plateau early and achieve less than their full potential.

On the other hand, the growth mindset believes that intelligence can be developed which leads to a desire to learn and therefore a tendency to:

• embrace challenges
• persist in the face of obstacles
• see effort as the path to mastery
• learn from criticism
• find lessons and inspiration in the success of others

As a result, people with growth mindset reach ever-higher levels of achievements.

And we may have a growth mindset for one aspect of our lives, and a fixed mindset in another. For example, we may have a growth mindset as a manager but a fixed mindset when it comes to our relationship with our spouse.

To me, the most important information is that we were all born with a growth mindset! Babies do not stop learning to crawl, to stand and to walk because they decide it is too hard and not worth the effort. They fall, they get up and barge forward.

As soon as children become able to evaluate themselves, some of them become afraid of challenges. They become afraid of not being smart.

Carol studied thousands of people and in one of them, she and her researchers offered 4 years old a choice: they could redo an easy jigsaw puzzle or they could try a harder one. They found that even at this tender age, children with the fixed mindset – the ones who believe in fixed traits – stuck with the safe ones. “Kids who are born smart don’t do mistakes” they shared with the researchers. They want to make sure they succeed. Smart people should always succeed.

Children with the growth mindset  – the ones who believe you could get smarter – chose one hard one after another. They thought it was strange that why anyone would want to keep doing the same puzzle over and over again. Success is about stretching themselves. It’s about becoming smarter.

Understanding about the growth mindset has many useful applications for us both on a personal and professional level.

The way we self-talk/ self-coach, handle situations and relate to people will be totally different depending on the choice of our mindset. The way we motivate ourselves and others will also be entirely different.

Much food for thought and great insights for moving forward.

After spending huge amount of time and money on business plan, branding, hiring, set up, marketing, sales and all that is necessary, a company is ready to rock and roll. Let the big bucks roll in.

But often, there’s one critical mistake that many businesses make. They forget about the customers.

They forget about designing a positive customer experience, to provide wow moments of truth. They forget about ensuring that their teams are positive ambassadors for the brand.

No customers = No business

Bad customer experience = giving the customer to others

Long gone are the days when one single company will continue to have a monopoly on services or products. Customers have choice. And when there’s choice, then every single customer interaction is a precious opportunity to create a fan for your business.

Example 1, imagine spending money on digital marketing to create leads. When someone finally calls your company with an enquiry, what would be his or her first impression of your company?  Tip: make a call to your own hotline to assess the customer experience.

Example 2, think of your recent experience at a retail or F&B outlet. What was the experience like? It blows my mind that business owners would invest in $$$$$$$$$ to open shop but can totally forget about the ingredients for creating positive customer experience. Nice looking shop with lousy food/ products and/or surly staff = another new shop taking over the place in time.  Tip: conducting well-designed mystery customer/ shopper audits is a powerful way to affirm or wake up your team.

All successful entrepreneurs will share that placing customers at the core of their business strategy is what makes them successful. 

What about you?

If you are your brand’s customer, would you be a fan?

What’s true wealth?

Everyone differs in their search for and needing of it.

For me, wealth has always resided in the building of meaningful loving relationships. Through the years, I sought to accumulate that, and right now where I am in my life, I feel so very wealthy.

Happy family relationships, great friendships, healthy working relationships and enjoying the song of my heart.

Understanding your heart’s definition of wealth enables you to work towards that. And more importantly, to appreciate it when you have it regardless of the amount experienced at that given space and time.

A common feedback given by participants at my workshops, motivational talks or coaching sessions is that they never expected the sessions to be this fun!

I started training, teaching and mentoring since I was 18 years old. And right from my very first session, I strove to make it enjoyable regardless of how ‘dry’ the topic might be or who the audience might be. Students, educators, parents, professionals, bankers, home makers… it does not make a difference.

This probably stem from the fact that as a student, I often fell asleep during lessons. Auditory learning is my least preferred choice and coupled with the hot stuffy classroom (we did not have air conditioned rooms back then) plus non interactive mode of teaching, falling asleep was the most natural result. And what naturally transpired next is a chalk smacking into my face. Yup, the age of non whyteboards.

So when I became a ‘teacher’/ trainer, I decided that I will:

• make my sessions enjoyable and relevant for the participants
• incorporate useful learnings and activities; no silly exercises or activities
• respect the participants’ time so no fillers activities just to waste time
• use a blend of methods so that all learning preferences is included

One of the great things about starting my own practice is that I can decide the direction of Dream Catalyst and the projects that I am involved with. So I can be choosy about who I work with. As such, it gives me immense delight to work with organisations both non profit and businesses that serve to make a difference in the lives of others. These organisations genuinely incorporate training programme as part of its mission to better the lives of their members or employees. Increased productivity and efficiency is the bonus of happy team members.

Yup, learning can be fun! Why not? 🙂

Its your road, and yours alone.
others may walk it with you,
but no one can walk it for you. ~ Rumi

• Practice gratitude for all blessings both big and small
• Practice deep breathing and allow the emotion of envy to surface and dissipate into the air when it pops up
• Practice being happy for others and be present to their joy
• Practice laughing more and crying less
• Practice patience as life begins to attract goodness into your life

Release envy and positively change your life.

This is a teaching worth absorbing.
This is a practice worth living.
This is a path onto total bliss.

What do you believe in?

Does it propel you forward or keep you trapped in the past? Does it gift you joy or lock you in pain? Does it let you take desired action or paralyse you with fears?

Understanding about beliefs, how they affected me and changing my limiting beliefs was one of the key transformative tool for me. That was about 8 or 9 years ago? And to-date, it remains an important tool for inner awareness and change.

Non useful beliefs are called limiting beliefs eg “I am stupid”, “I am a failure”, “I’m lousy at Maths”, “Life is painful/ difficult”, “I’ll always be a failure”, “I suck at relationships”.

Beliefs are never absolutely true. For every belief, there is always a counter belief.

While flipping though The Peak, an interview with Jeffrey Seah, South-east Asia CEO of global brand communications group Starcom Mediavest caught my eye.

“My hope is that every Singaporean will be a jack of all trades and a master of 10. It is not easy to be an all-rounder, as everyone wants to excel in one particular field. Having this awareness and a positive reaction to such stimuli will be the true application of Darwinism. The marketing and communications industry in Singapore will benefit with such mindsets.”

What an interesting positive spin on an adage that could be perceived as a limiting statement and belief!

When someone has a multitude of interests and skills sets, they are often encouraged to focus so that they can master one or two of them. But there are some of us who simply enjoy learning new skills and acquiring new portfolios and hats.

Take for example, my publisher Kok Hwa from Candid Creation Publishing. 4 years after our first meeting, he is now an Action Learning Coach as well as a trainer with his own workshop ‘So You Want to Be an Author?’. The expansion and continuous mastery of new trades have opened up new opportunities and an exciting new world for him.

Singapore’s ‘Mother Teresa’, the late Teresa Hsu who passed on in 2011 aged 113 is another example. At aged 47, she enrolled and was accepted into a three- year nursing course in London meant for students under 25. At 67, she founded one of the first home for the aged sick in Singapore in the 1960s where she worked until she was 85 years old. She picked up yoga at the age of 69 and started teaching it to the young and old at temples, associations, hospitals and schools. Truly inspiring!

And there are many other examples.

The key operative word here is mastery. It is not simply a shallow interest or shallow application but a deep desire to delve as deep as possible, and apply the new skills to its best possible use whether for one’s personal development or the betterment of the world around us. An on-going attitude of curious and open learning not limited by age nor the naysayers surrounding us.

It makes life all the richer for ourselves, and those around us.

If we celebrate the years behind us they become stepping-stones of strength and joy for the years ahead.

It is two days before the dawn of 2015. A perfect time for reflection in preparation for a brand new year.

Here are three suggestions for reflective activities:

What Would You Like 2015 to be Like?

For the past few years, I have set a new year resolution for example, my resolution for 2014 is to be anchored in bliss, feel bliss, gift bliss and be bliss. While people often cite that resolutions do not work, and studies show that most people fail, I believe that resolutions can work for you if you decide to be guided by it as much as possible. I did not feel pressured nor restricted by it so it became easier to follow.

I used to set specific goals but since 2011, I started to set intentions instead which works very well for me. The intentions provide a ‘roadmap’ for what you want to do, to be and to have. For those of you who work better with setting specific goals, please do so. Utilise the system which works best for you. 🙂

Tip 1: when you are setting your resolution and intentions, please feel happy and joyous doing it so that you are amplifying happy energies!

Tip 2: State what you want and not what you do not want.

What Makes You Happy?

For those of you who are in a stormy period of your life, perhaps this reflective exercise of knowing what makes you happy would be useful.

If you do not know what would make you happy then most likely, you will find yourself caught in an endless web of unhappiness. If you do not know what would make you happy, then it is challenging or near impossible for anyone else in your life to help give a little nudge.

If you are feeling unhappy right now, take some time off for yourself. Have a cup of tea or coffee, relax and then start thinking about what would make you happy. If your mind starts to go “but I can’t achieve that”, “how can I get that” etc, STOP and bring your attention back to what would make you happy.

During the session, if your mind is a blank when it comes to what would make you happy, then that’s an important realisation and insight for you isn’t it? If that happens, then recognise your new insight and start to focus on the future.

For those who are experiencing severe pain and this is an impossible exercise to do…be brave to seek and accept help. Confide in a friend or make an appointment to speak with a counsellor, coach or therapist. Everyone deserves to live a life of joy and dignity.

Creating Your Dream Boards

In 2007,my dear friend M encouraged me to put up my vision (dream) boards – not just the typical one that most people do but three separate boards for me to paste pictures of the things I’d like to be doing, having and being.

The boards forced me to reflect on what I truly wanted in life at that given point in time (you have to think before you put stuff up!), allowed me to dream bigger and gave me that extra dosage of sunshine when I felt down.

Bit by bit, month by month, year by year… what I like to be doing, having and being became a manifested reality. Some quicker, while some took a wee longer. The boards helped me to creatively energetically Visual-Realise my dreams while embarking on the many learning journeys helped to accelerate the transformation of my life.

Instead of 3 boards, you could combine them into one. Besides pictures, you can also include written words or phrases. You can review and change your board(s) along the way.