Health Archives - Capacity Building Solutions

Leadership Thought #450 – Spend Your Time Wisely

I have always liked the idea as viewing your time similar to currency. You get to decide how you spend it and what types if investments you make. Sadly, just like with our money, many of us make bad or misinformed decisions. Time is finite. There will be a time when it grows short and then disappears. Our children will only live with us a relatively brief time before they grow up and move away to begin their own lives. People we care about will run out of time and all that will remain will be the memories we made with them while they were still here. Our career will follow a natural arc and eventually our lives will be less about what we do for a living (despite our past accomplishments) and we will need to redefine ourselves. Knowing this, what can and should we do differently. I believe it all starts with priorities.

Leadership Thought #434 – Life Can Change In An Instant!

We all know that we meet the same end but we usually don’t know when or why. Most of us avoid spending much time at all thinking about our mortality. It is almost taboo to think about our own expiration date. We stay focused on the moments at hand and feel like our future is open-ended. Why does it take a crisis for us to appreciate the tenuousness of our time here on earth and the true importance of our close relationships? It is a shame we can’t be in this mindspace more often – maybe it would make us all slightly better people. The truth is that we are all living on borrowed time and how we spend that time matters. I heard a speaker comment recently that in every interaction we are either giving life or taking it away. I liked it when he said it then and like it even more now.

Leadership Thought #364 – 12 Decisions That Will Define Your Life

In my line of work, I am constantly on the lookout for life lessons and what leads to happiness and success. Fortunately, I have been blessed to work with some wonderful people who provide me with excellent fodder for my learning. While most of my time is spent on the business leadership front, I do get a larger picture view at times. I have never believed in compartmentalizing important life issues and prefer to take a multidimensional approach to my work since there are no one dimensional human beings. Over the years I found that how you answer the following 12 questions will have a big impact on your overall quality of life:

Leadership Thought #327 – Avoid What’s Not Good For You

When something is not good for you there is usually a symptom or other sign. I was speaking with a colleague the other day and

Leadership Thought #280 – Tips/Tactics To Help You When You Are Feeling Overwhelmed

We all get overwhelmed at times. It’s just part of life. Sometimes there is just too much to do and not enough time to do it in. Instead of stressing out when this happens, takes a step back, breathe, and come up with a plan of action. Here are some tactics/ideas that have worked for me:

Leadership Thought #256 – Don’t Ignore The Danger Signs

Very rarely do traumatic events just come out of the blue for no reason. Usually there have been some lingering symptoms that tried to get your attention, but you were too busy, distracted, or just didn’t want to address the issue. The problem is that avoidance never works and at some point you will have to deal with the consequences of your inaction. Sadly, many people ignore important health signs and end up with a much worse outcome as a result. Your body just like your business is always trying to communicate with you and let you know when things aren’t quite right.

Leadership Thought #250 – The Importance of Personal Discipline

There are way too many things competing for our time as adults. It’s easy to get lost in the fog of responsibility and fall behind. If we are honest with ourself, we end up using our time very inefficiently and often make it up as we go along. As a result, there is usually some level of imbalance in our life as we prioritize what is most pressing or convenient. The problem is that gaps unattended only grow with time and at some point the chasm becomes too difficult to navigate. The very thing we value most, our own independence and freedom, becomes victim to the personal stress created by not being disciplined about our decisions, time and activities. Paradoxically, we end up with the outcomes we most wanted to avoid.

Leadership Thought #234 – Are You Spread Too Thin?

I’ve often heard the saying, “if you want something done give it to a busy person.” While I am an advocate of applying the 80/20 principle in most circumstances, I believe the ratio get even greater in organizations and communities when it comes to overall effort and impact – it is more like 90/10 or higher. Some people just seem to be hardwired to take on more responsibility. They just can’t help themselves and have a difficult time saying “no.” When they find a need they feel compelled to address it. Poor performance isn’t an option for them and they work hard even no one else is watching. While it’s great these people exist, I also worry that we expect too much from these individuals and in the end many of them end up suffering from burnout and/or too much stress.

Leadership Thought #231 – 7 Tips To Prevent and Minimize The Impact Of Adversity

No one is ever completely protected from the bad things that can happen in life. Each of us will have to deal with disappointment, loss, grief and despair at some point. All we can do is protect ourselves as best as we can through a reasonable approach to risk management and an ongoing commitment to personal growth and development. There are obviously many things we can’t control in our external environments including the actions of others. However, we can increase our internal capacity to manage whatever comes our way.

Leadership Thought #210 – What Are Your Outlets in Life?

In the hustle and bustle of everyday living it’s important to have things you do just for yourself. We all need outlets for our mental, physical and emotional stress and catalysts for our personal well-being. We also need to remember not to wander too far away from our true self. It’s easy to lose your individuality and identity as you age and take on additional responsibilities in life. There are many times where there just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in a day. We spend so much time doing what we have to do or think we should be doing that there is very little time to decompress and just be ourselves. Then one day we wake up and wonder what happened.