Business Fit Magazine May 2022 by Business Fit Magazine

May/Jun 2022

Why

Mental Health Matters

Tips to Remember Your Purpose in Daily Life

Is Your Excellence Killing You?

www.businessfitmagazine.com

a r d n Sa Manuela

LaThue Prowaer of your Divine Feminine

Society of Hispanic Entrepreneurs S.H.E is an organization which functions at local, national and international levels to advance women in personal and business development. It focusses on equality for women and girls through advocacy, education, philanthropy and much more. Using SHE’s three pillars of Mindset, Body and Spirituality, we create business with amazing purpose aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for the world.

Join the Ambassador program now and become a leader for Latinas in your community Connect with us. Together is Better info@hispanasemprendedoras.eu | +32 468 21 88 87 | +1 (281) 703-1135 (USA)

Dear Business Fit readers, Welcome back, beautiful Bizfit readers. I feel tremendously grateful to be bringing you another edition, full of amazing content, content that will give you help with how your business is doing, how to become a great leader, and how to thrive in this world full of challenges. So, are you ready to know what we have in store for you? We have an interview with the amazing Sandra Laura Manuela who is an inspiration to many. I had the good fortune of meeting her and becoming really good friends. She will amuse you with her amazing story and her journey to becoming an empowered entrepreneur with the special rhythm of the feminine energy. You will learn to remember how to connect with your inner power. Our bright spot! The new edition of your magazine is a place where we promote conscious businesses to create a better world. It is a new way to think about business and entrepreneurs change history. We are here to inspire you with some amazing content and stories, to help you make an impact on the world. To make this possible, we need your support and participation in our movement for change. This new edition will be focused on promoting those who are making the world a better place through their business and entrepreneurship. We will focus on how they are doing this, what challenges they faced along the way, and what advice they have for others looking to do the same.

We have different challenges nowadays so we will be working towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to help create the world we all deserve. I would especially like to thank our contributors who are always there to support our amazing team - our Editor Claire and our Designer, Leo. We have been publishing the magazine for six years now. Let’s celebrate the years to come and the new supporters of this amazing community.

Together we are stronger Much love

Verónica Sosa Publisher www.businessfitmagazine.com

Your Excellence is Killing You Debra Sunderland p28

Body

Conscious Fitness: Reconnecting with Our Physical Potential Clemencia Montero p58

FIT FEATURES

Pashion Fashion - p48 Life Goes On Ndeye Absa Gningue

Sandra Laura Manuelo p32

Have You Ever Hung Out With the Clouds? Veronica George p10

Pay Attention to your Attention Jane Piper p12

How to Lead Yourself in Challenging Times Tanja Bogataj p20

What Does the Future of Business Networking Look Like? Simon Cox p24

Strengthening Emotional Immunity Viola Edward & Saxa Stefani p44 Cutting the Emotional Umbilical Cord Barbara Roux-Levrat p52 Conscious Fitness Prof. Ona C. Miller p60

How to Navigate your Sales Cycle Malish p40 What Makes an Effective Leader? Don Zillioux p56

Publisher & Founder Verónica Sosa Business Fit International Advisory Board Viola Edward Vikki Thomas

REACH OUT For information on advertising or placing an article in Business Fit Contact us: Email: editorbfm@gmail.com Phone: +32 472 134 230

The Power of Selfmanagement Irmela Neu p38

General Editorial Coordinator Claire Morley

Why Mental Health Matters Sam Cande p6

Art and Design Director Leo Collier-Bett Graphic Designer Adverts Javier Sanchez

Health

How to Align Your Professional Life to Your Purpose Andrea GuZZi p16

Contributors Andrea GuZZi Barbara Roux-Levrat Clemencia Montero Debra Sunderland Don Zillioux Irmela Neu Jane Piper Malish Ndeye Absa Gningue Prof. Ona C. Miller Sam Cande Sandra Laura Manuelo Saxa Stefani Simon Cox Tanja Bogataj Veronica George Viola Edward

Copyright © 2022 by Verónica Sosa. All rights reserved. This Magazine or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.

M-20318-2017

Health

Why Mental Health

Matters

CEO of Responsible Futures, Sam Cande talks very candidly about mental health, she gives us some tips on how to help if we are struggling and asks us all to practice empathy and kindness.

Have open conversations about mental health with those around you

This article has references to suicide which may be triggering. You can get help by going to: www.meandmymind.nhs.uk The last few years have been challenging for everyone. The way we work and live is different now, the war in Ukraine, the price of energy, food, and petrol rising. It is unsurprising that people are struggling. There is a mental health crisis going on and the world is not letting up. We need to work hard on our own mental health and be aware of those around us. Keep everyone close, your family, friends, and work colleagues. Be empathetic and kind in every situation as you really don’t know what is going on in people’s lives. At the end of February, my best friend took her life. I shared her story on LinkedIn which caused a huge reaction. I wasn’t expecting the two million views it got, yet I wasn’t surprised to see so many people that felt the same as Jenni did. Jenni felt that the world was against her, she felt she wasn’t good enough, that she wasn’t accepted, that she was draining, that she wasn’t valued, she thought she didn’t deserve love, and that she was a burden. She wasn’t any of those things, and I, her family and friends told her every day just how much we loved her. Jenni was the most beautiful, caring, kind, funny, capable, clever, driven, hard-working, passionate, adventurous woman I knew. She lit up a room when she walked into it. She was the life and soul of a party. The day before Jenni took her life, she told me that she was okay, she was going to get back to the gym, back to her skipping and cold-water dipping, she was starting a new job, and had so much to live for, she has a loving and supportive family and so many friends who cared and loved her but still, she decided to end her unexplainable pain. Since Jenni died, I’ve spoken to many people about mental health which has brought me to write this article today. I don’t have all the

answers. I don’t think I will ever know why she couldn’t hold on a little bit longer for the clouds to pass and the sun to start shining again but I’ll do my best to try and find out and help others find their way. So here are my tips to help your mental health. I hope it helps.

1. Have open conversations about mental health with those around you. These days the taboo on mental health is no longer there. If you are suffering, make sure you speak to your friends and family. Tell them you are struggling. If you find it hard to speak to them, call a helpline, there is lots of advice and support around. And there is always someone to listen. 2. Find a hobby. If you can find something that

makes you smile, then you will have something to look forward to. It doesn’t have to cost. You can join local walking groups, or environmental groups or sign up to volunteer at your local food bank or see if the local council is looking for volunteers. You will be surprised at the effect meeting new people can have.

Get active. When you exercise, your body releases chemicals called endorphins. These endorphins interact with the receptors in

Health

your brain reducing your perception of pain. Endorphins also trigger a positive feeling in the body.

Meditate every day. Meditation can help rewire your brain. According to Psychology Today, meditation is the strongest mental practice to reset your happiness set point, which turns you into a happier person and rewires major areas in your brain. It can take just 10 minutes. There are hundreds of free guided meditations on the internet.

5. Stay away from negative people and social media. It is really easy to be dragged down by negative people and negative talk. Try to follow positive happy people. Some of my favourite podcasts are Jay Shetty – On Purpose and Fearne Cotton – The Happy Place. Unfollow people that trigger bad feelings. Surround yourself with good vibes.

6. Journal. Try to write every day. Set aside a few minutes every day to write. Make it easy by asking yourself three questions. What will make me happy today? What am I grateful for? What do I want to achieve today? Or just write whatever feels right. Your journal doesn’t need to follow any certain structure. Use your journal as you see fit. You don’t have to share your journal with anyone. By journaling, It allows for emotional catharsis and aids in the regulation of emotions in the brain. It gives you a better sense of selfassurance and self-identity. Journaling can aid in the handling of personal adversity and change, as well as highlighting essential life patterns and growth. 7. Eat a balanced and healthy diet. There is research to show for and against here so I will share my own experience. Whenever I eat a healthy balanced diet, I always feel so much better. Sugar makes me feel sluggish and when I

feel bloated, I feel uncomfortable and low. When I’m eating a well-balanced diet, my clothes fit me better and I look better. My skin looks better too.

8. Drink less or no alcohol. Alcohol is a depressive,

which means it affects your feelings, thoughts, and behaviour by disrupting the balance of neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) in your brain. Because alcohol affects the region of your brain that governs inhibition, you may feel more relaxed, less worried, and more confident after a few drinks. However, these effects are short-lived. Regardless of your mood, chemical changes in your brain can quickly lead to more unpleasant feelings such as anger, melancholy, or anxiety. Alcohol also affects your brain’s ability to absorb information, making it more difficult to figure out what you’re truly feeling and the implications of your actions.

9. Be kind to yourself. Self-talk is so important. Researchers estimate that we think about 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day – and that about 80 percent of those thoughts are negative. That is a crazy amount of negative self-talk! Try to train your brain to think positively. There are lots of ways to do this. I find sometimes writing down the negative thoughts I have and crossing them out and switching to positive ones really helps. 10.

Get a good night’s sleep. It allows our bodies to repair and our brains to consolidate our memories and process information. Poor sleep is linked to physical problems such as a weakened immune system and mental health problems such as anxiety and depression. I find it helps to leave my phone in another room, read for 30 minutes before bed, and if I have exercised that day sleep comes quicker. I also highly recommend sleep meditations. It just leaves me to say again be kind to those around you. You may not know what is going on in someone’s life, so think before you respond and always reach out to those closest to you. It may just save someone.

Be kind to yourself

Sam Cande, iis CEO of Responsible Futures - providing Sustainability and Social Responsibility solutions. She is founder of Sustain Talks Podcast & Responsible Futures Webinars, and Level, a non-for-profit driving parity in the travel industry. She is a partner and assessor with CSR Accreditation and advisor to Eco-Friendly Web Alliance. www.responsiblefutures.info

Mindset & Emotion

Entrepreneur, business consultant, and writer Veronica George has used her fascination with the clouds as a basis to address the hard times she has faced on her entrepreneurial journey and to find the answers to her problems. For as long as I can remember, I have loved to look up at the sky. Not for the stars or its magical blue, but for the clouds. It is in the clouds that my imagination finds release and gallops its way into a world of fascinating imagery. Whether I am on an airplane or just lying on the grass in my backyard, I find my vision constantly gravitating towards this substance. In it, I discover mountain ranges, cities, animals, people, and sometimes ancient army regiments on horseback. I find great beauty in clouds, even in those purposed to bring messages of the bad weather to come.

Have you ever

Hung out with Clouds? 10

It is in fascination that our creative juices flow

Since ancient times, clouds have meant the onset of the rainy season and a time to plant. Clouds have also brought messages of storms born to destroy our livelihoods. Humanity has always respected the clouds as a powerful messenger bringing news of either prosperity or destruction. We have even gone to the extent of creating metrological departments dedicated to the study of these clouds to interpret their messages correctly and inform our choices and subsequent actions. Clouds are a great metaphor for the hard times we all come across on our entrepreneurial journey. Like clouds, some of these hard times signal the onset of great success while others bring messages of disasters to come. Yet most of us are wired to avoid or complain about difficulty. This is ironic especially because it is in these difficult times that our resolve to follow through on our vision, our goals, and our purpose, is tested. Shouldn’t the right response then be to hang out with these difficulties, these clouds? Like our Met departments, shouldn’t we be taught to study them, to decipher the messages they bring and the appropriate response? It took me a while to gain the courage to hang out with my difficulties, especially in business. I always thought that if I could apply optimism to every issue I faced, then everything would work itself out. Well, that never seemed to be the case however long I tried. I then decided to

apply the relationship I had with clouds, to my hard times. I would sit in meditation and hang out with the problem I was facing and just like I did when looking at the clouds, I would allow my mind to wander and gallop into different worlds emanating from this problem. I would hang out with the good, the bad and the ugly, and just like magic, the answers to the problem would crop up out of nowhere. We are at war when we face hard times in entrepreneurship. Hard times can make or break us. These hard times can be seen as our enemy, to be avoided or complained about. As Sun Tzu said, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting” and to subdue the enemy is to understand the enemy. To understand the enemy is to hang out with the enemy until such a time when you know the enemy and each and every way they can attack and destroy you. Once this happens, then your fear of your enemy subsides and when fear subsides, your mind’s eye opens and then you can see how the enemy can be defeated. Hang out with your clouds. Let your mind be your Met department and take the time to study your clouds. Allow yourself to be immersed in them. Allow your imagination the freedom to visualise the good, the bad, and the ugly that would arise from these difficulties. Soon enough, you will lose your fear of them, and you will stop avoiding them. Instead, you will gain a fascination for discovering what the message brought by your clouds could be, and what the message could mean for you and your business. It is in fascination that our creative juices flow. Your message will become clear, the course of action you need to take will surface and just like that, the beauty in your clouds will manifest. “The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.” Sun Tzu

Veronica George is an entrepreneur, business consultant and writer focused on driving innovation on the African continent. She is fascinated by the role our mindsets and emotions play in the achievement of our goals as entrepreneurs. She loves drawing inspiration from nature and the cycle of creation. veronica@executiveassistafrica.com - veronica.h.george@gmail.com

Business

Pay Attention to your Attention

Organisational Psychologist, Jane Piper, gives our readers some tips on how they can best focus their attention to amplify their strengths and achieve their goals, helping them to focus on the task at hand.

Why are you paying attention? We say “paying attention” because our attention is a limited, in fact, precious resource. Our brains are wonderful, but we can only apply our limited attention to one thing at a time. When we are paying attention to something or someone, we have to stop paying attention to other things. When we want to listen deeply to a coaching client or come up with a creative idea for a new campaign or be at our best for a sales pitch, we can only do this if we focus and pay attention to that task.

Whose stealing your attention? Sometimes we let our attention be stolen away by distractions, interruptions, stress, and overwhelm. We can blame some distractions and interruptions on external forces, the notifications that ping on our phones, or the social media feeds that take us down a rabbit hole. Also, our attention can get stolen away by inner chatter from the mundane thoughts around what’s for dinner or anxious thoughts about wars and famine. Trivial or serious thoughts, they mean we’re not listening deeply to that client, or not coming up with the creative ideas or finding solutions.

We can only apply our limited attention to one thing at a time

Amplify your superpower Whatever is your superpower – a creative marketer, a deep problem solver, an empathic coach - you can amplify this superpower by simply paying attention. Focusing on what you do without constant interruptions will make you better at it. Learn how to amp up your attention with A, B, C 1. Avoid Distractions Congratulations if you have read this far in this article without being distracted. Most people are distracted from their main task every six minutes – jumping to answer an email or respond to a text message. You might think it only takes a minute, but the cost of that is it takes 23 minutes to refocus and get back to the original task. You wouldn’t go back to a coach who during your coaching session just quickly answered a text message, or go to a meeting with a prospective client and answer your emails. Do the same when working in your office and create the time and headspace to focus and flow. Protect your attention and amplify your superpower by setting up power hours. These are two-hour time blocks you set aside in your calendar each week. I recommend scheduling at least two or three power hour sessions a week. As you start your power hour turn off all external notifications on your phone, the simplest way is by putting your phone in airplane mode. Then close the door, settle down and get into your deep thinking, planning, creating, or writing – whatever you do that adds value to your customers. 2. Breaks We can’t be in a power phase all the time. The human brain doesn’t work like a computer. We can’t keep processing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our brain works best with a period of intense focus, followed by a short break. The ideal time is around 40-50 minutes of focus followed by a five minute break. Then repeat, once or twice more during your power hour. Most people report they can do one or maybe two really productive power hours a day. Without a break productivity and performance decline. Between power hours use the time to answer emails, do less intense work, go for a walk and recharge for your next power hour.

Business

3. Crystal clear focus Being undistracted is not the same as being focused. Focus means you are working on the right things that are helping you move towards your goal. Get very, very clear on your goal, so you know where to focus your limited attention. It means you need to be ruthless and maybe not return every email, or say no to things you don’t want to do (even though you might feel obligated). In a world overloaded with endless opportunities and information, it is easy to jump from one idea to another. Focusing is easier if you understand what good and meaningful work is for you. Good work is something where you use your strengths and natural talents. Meaningful work has a purpose that resonates with you, i.e., it’s your why. It could be finding a cure for cancer, preventing global warming, or helping people achieve their potential. Good and meaningful work is easier to do and gives you a sense that what you are doing has an impact on the world. With this understanding, it is much easier to pay attention.

Paying attention to your attention Attention is a limited resource that needs to be managed by avoiding distractions, taking breaks, and getting crystal clear in your focus. By managing your attention, you can use it to amplify your strengths to achieve your goals. All these ideas don’t require investment in new equipment or take a long time to learn. These low or no cost, simple changes in your behaviour will help you focus on doing work that will impact your business and your clients. Step by step, start creating the change you want to see in the world.

Attention is a limited resource that needs to be managed

Jane Piper is an Organisational Psychologist and bestselling author of Focus in the Age of Distraction – a book looking at the impact of digital technology on our wellbeing and ways of working. She is interested in the intersection of humans and technology. She challenges us to look at the impact that technology is having on our work, well-being and happiness. pipsy.ch

Spirituality

How to align your professional life to your

PURPOSE

Spiritual Coach and Mentor, Andrea GuZZi gives Business Fit Magazine readers six tips to guide us toward reconnecting with our purpose and remembering it in our daily lives, so we can start living the life of our dreams Have you felt unmotivated at work for a long time? Does your work drain your energy? Doesn’t it fill you up anymore or does it stress you outrageously? Or perhaps you are a businesswoman, and your turnover is not what you expected? Or your company demands so much from you that you don’t have a personal life? If you are going through any of these situations, you should know they all have a common denominator: they show you are not aligned with your life purpose.

But… what exactly is the purpose and how to achieve it? Considering that we are spiritual beings living a human experience, very briefly we can say that purpose is the mission of life our soul comes to develop in this reincarnation. We all come to this life to learn how to transform ourselves from and with love and how to enjoy the journey. You may be wondering how to do it. Well, also very briefly, it is about putting “at the service” your gifts and knowledge, obtained both through education and everything you have been experiencing since your birth. Purpose is the great why of your life. And it gets materialised through different “vehicles”, different concrete actions and projects, depending on factors such as your own consciousness and where you are physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. You will always be evolving and able to go deeper in healing the wounds of your inner child and transcending limitations and fears. As this happens, you will feel better, freer, more you. Although sometimes you may also feel lost because you have left your comfort zone. And this is normal too.

Spirituality In every moment you will find yourself with the knowledge and life experience that you have accumulated so far, and along with your gifts, it will always create a unique mix that only you can offer to the world. And when you do so, when you finally dare to do it, it is when you put yourself “on mission” and begin to shine with your own light, enlightening and inspiring those who need that information from you, through your example. This is when you enter your magical zone and begin to fulfill your wildest dreams.

What prevents us from connecting with purpose? Due to the many conditionings we accumulate since childhood, we move further and further

from our essence. This happens because we want to please and do what is expected of us: our parents, family, friends, teachers, and other people and environments we go through. In this way, we develop the personality, the ego, which, instead of putting itself at the service of our essence, puts itself in charge and does whatever it takes to protect us and avoid suffering. And this makes us apart more and more from our essence, from our innocence, from our joy of living. And on the other hand, since we don’t feel worthy of the good things and the abundance of life, we connect with the energy of struggle, competitiveness, the need for external recognition, and many other sources of internal and external conflict.

And so this makes our original purpose, along with our essence, remain hidden and muted, under so many layers and armours that we put on so that nothing can harm us.

1. Be grateful: for everything you have, material and non-material. Even if it is not yet what you would like to have, begin to value what you already have. Write 10 thanks every day.

Unfortunately, this prevents us from feeling our emotions, disconnects us, and puts us on f*cking autopilot, until we feel like the living dead. Many people tend to identify this as the typical existential void or crisis.

2. Enjoy: learn to see the good in everything instead of complaining, criticising, and feeling like a victim. Even if there are things that you don’t quite like, everything has its good side, if you know how to see it. You will begin to enjoy and feel much better.

For me, one of the positive things about Covid (of course, being sorry for all the negative consequences), is that it has forced us to stop the autopilot and face our automatisms, our habits, making us rethink who we are, what we are doing with our life and what we really want out of it.

How to reconnect with your purpose? To remember your purpose and vibrate again in harmony and enjoyment, you must deactivate what you have created and is preventing you from reconnecting with the magic of life. While this process takes time and work, the good news is that the decision is up to you! Quite possibly, you learned to create a reality in which it was necessary to work hard to “make a living” and have the material things you need. And this separated you from your inner peace, from your joy of living, and from the abundance that corresponds to you by birthright, just for being here. However, the most authentic work is the one you do from your heart because it is the only one that can return the magic to your life and allows you to recover peace, joy, beauty, fullness, and harmony, firstly within you and then reflecting it all in your life as well.

Six Tips to remember your purpose in daily life

3. Feel deserving: life will always be generous to you unless you tell it otherwise. And do it when you think you don’t deserve it, you can’t or you don’t know, when you choose to suffer rather than enjoy, or when you settle for something mediocre for yourself. 4. Trust: you are the co-creator of your life and, as such, you can decide where to put your creative intention: in trust or in doubt and fear. There where you put the focus, you expand the energy and materialise, attracting into your life what you want or taking it away from you. 5. Forgive: yourself and others. If not, the energy of resentment will lower your vibration and will be a great burden that will prevent you from receiving other things life has for you. For the new to enter your life, you need to let go of what no longer works, hurts you or you don’t need anymore. 6. Ask for help: look for a coach or mentor to guide you and accompany you on the path of knowing yourself and remembering who you are and why you are here because you will move forward with more clarity, ease, and speed. Remember, you came here to learn while enjoying and teaching others how to do it. And that the magic of life is always available to you, for when you want to integrate it and flow with it again. Are you ready to discover your purpose and start living the life of your dreams?

To reconnect with your essence and your purpose you need to have more receptive and creative energy. To achieve this, I propose these simple tips to develop both in your personal and professional life:

Andrea GuZZi is a Spiritual Coach & Mentor, Inspirational Speaker and Author. She helps women to connect with their essence, remember their purpose and reinvent their personal and professional lives to become their best version and enjoy this journey. Residing in Majorca, Spain, she works worldwide, and her purpose is to help millions of women to enjoy their lives. www.andreaguzzi.com

Mindset & Emotion

How to Lead Yourself in Challenging Times

Leadership Coach and Leaders’ Consultant, Tanja Bogataj, M.Sc. offers three keys - habits that can help guide and equip us to be able to lead ourselves during challenging times and to search for solutions, not problems. Any challenging situation can be a great opportunity to learn, to find a better way and solution, and to make a better decision when needed. Challenging times offer us the opportunity to choose either to react or intentionally respond, to complain or take responsibility, to feel powerless and limited, or to feel powerful and free to be and do what needs to be done, and what we desire to create. It might sound easier than done. John C. Maxwell has four pieces of advice when facing challenges - to not underestimate the problem, to not overestimate the problem, to not wait for the problem to resolve itself, and if possible, to not aggravate the problem with your activities. When we are faced with challenging situations, we might hear ourselves say ‘I don’t know…’, ‘I can’t …’, ‘If only,…’. We might feel uncertain, uncomfortable, or even afraid at that moment. We might get stuck in thinking and believing that

we are limited, or we can choose to tap into our endless resourceful and creative potential to find or create the solution we need. Based on my experiences, working with leaders, professionals, and teams, I suggest following three principles when we are facing challenges, and searching/creating solutions: 1. Curiosity: If we want to change anything, something needs to change, and it starts with us. If we are curious about what is still available and possible, how something could be solved, created, and achieved, how we can collaborate for success, etc., we open the opportunity to learn and create something new, to find or create a better way, to find a way to succeed. 2. Clarity: What we are aware of, we can change. The more accurate we are with where we are, where we are going, and the gap in between, the better we can address our challenge and find a better solution. 3. Simplicity: Changes are challenging, and we need to help ourselves to make a change, especially if we want to make a change in an empowering and fulfilling way. One way to help ourselves is to make it simple, to choose simple steps of action so we can easily apply, practice, and improve them. Self-awareness is one of the key self-leadership skills

When you know better, do better

A leader is 1) someone people like and trust to follow, 2) someone who helps people to do what they have to do in the most effective and appropriate way, 3) someone who gives them direction, aim, and a sense of success (definition by John C. Maxwell). I believe that leadership starts with selfleadership. It’s about being present and active in our life. It’s about how we use our power and freedom by living, creating, and impacting. In this article I invite you to practice your leadership skills on yourself, so you can be and become the leader you’d follow. “We need to remind ourselves that owning our power is our unique and endless source for life, a source for positive creation and prosperity, and that it is our right but also responsibility

Mindset & Emotion

to use it wisely and assertively. It is not about overpowering others and misusing it for some partial interests and goals, and for some quick ego wins. It is about leading your life from a state of being fully present, and using your power for co-creating a better world.” (Excerpt from my article Be.Here.Now.Lead.Powerfully.; https:// www.bepowerfulandfree.com/be-here-nowlead-powerfully/; 2017)

Questions for exploring and expanding self-awareness: - Using above mentioned Maxwell’s definition of a leader, how would you currently rate yourself as a leader of your life (from 1-10)? - Do you trust yourself? Are you leading yourself in the most effective and appropriate way? Are you giving yourself a clear direction, aim, and sense of success? - Do you have any potential that you can further use and develop? If yes, which one, and how? - If you’d choose to improve one self-leadership skill in the following months, which one is it, and how would your life change because of it?

If we want to change anything, something needs to change

Today do as best as you know how to, and when you know better, do better Every time we go through challenging times, we, individually and collectively, have the opportunity to shift and empower ourselves, and those around us, to be as powerful and free as we need to be, to learn, grow, create, and make a difference we are here to be and do. As a coach, I like using Maya Angelou’s quote ‘Today do as best as you know how to, and when you’ll know better, do better.’. I’m sure we can all agree with it, and yet, we often miss this opportunity – the opportunity to do as best as we know how to, and the opportunity to do it better, when we know better. Here are three keys - habits that can help you grasp this opportunity and equip you to lead yourself successfully during challenging times:

The first key: Daily good practice: Establish a daily morning and/or evening routine and give yourself an intention for the day. Take a moment to acknowledge your start of a day, and your completion of a day. Explore and test different tools, so you can find a good fit for yourself. Establish and nurture a support system (personal and professional) that includes all the elements of your life which are important to you (family, partnership, friends, health, work, leisure, exercise, learning, etc.). Make room in your schedule for a time when you are ‘not working’, time to ‘relax and recharge your energy’, and time to do some ‘good thinking’ about your life, challenges, and solutions. Develop a habit to search for solutions, not problems.

progress per day. Determine your daily progress. Define criteria for monitoring. Track progress and improvement, not perfection.

Third key: Openness to learn and improve - Feedback and Feedforward: Observe and create learning opportunities by identifying past experiences and activities. Develop a habit to reflect on what worked, why it worked, what you’ve learned, what didn’t work, or it was not optimal, and how could you do it differently, better, more successfully in the future. Involve others in feedback to find new and better solutions. Engage those who can support you on your journey of personal and professional development (mentors, coaches, teachers, accountability partners, others). I wish you to be courageous and compassionate enough to make empowering and inspiring choices and decisions on your personal and professional development journey. In a world where you can be anything, I invite you to daily choose to #bepowerfulandfree while making a difference and inspire others to do the same. Sources and references: • • • •

Brené Brown, Dare to lead, Penguin Random House UK, 2018; John C. Maxwell, Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn, Center Street New York, 2013; John C. Maxwell, Become a Leader, Amalietti, 1999; Be.Here.Now.Lead.Powerfully.; www.bepowerfulandfree.com/be-here-nowlead-powerfully/; 2017;

Second key: Make 1-5% progress daily and track your progress: The basis for this principle is in the ‘power of one’ - 1 action at the time, 1 skill at the time, 1 day at the time etc.. Plan and make 1-5 percent

Tanja Bogataj, M.Sc. is a (Self)Leadership Coach and Leaders’ Consultant, Founder of the #bepowerfulandfree® approach, Host of www. bepowerfulandfree.com Platform, Founder and CEO of the Power for Change Institute, G100 Mentoring Chair for Slovenia. Tanja’s motto “In the world where you can be anything, choose to #bepowerfulandfree while making a difference”. www.tanjabogataj.com | tanjabogatajcoaching@gmail.com

Business

What Does the Future of

Business Networking Look Like? 24

Business Network Leader Simon Cox talks about how he sees business networking in the future and how he sees changes within the business networks across Northamptonshire where he is based. Two years ago, those who were used to traditional business network meetings were suddenly entering a new world thanks to the pandemic and diaries were being filled with Zoom and Microsoft Teams appointments rather than wondering what was for breakfast at the next face-to-face business network meeting. Firstly, we have seen a change in how we engage thanks mainly to the increase in technology but also the impact of the pandemic. We all know networking pre-pandemic was about interacting and engaging with people over breakfast, lunch and, occasionally, evening meals but the announcement by the Prime Minister in 2020 soon changed that and, to a certain extent, opened doors for those who network regularly to engage further afield. The local business network I have been running in Kettering since 2015 was switched to an online Zoom meeting and we attracted new people to our online meetings, some from outside our immediate location and some who were unable to attend face-to-face meetings due to transport challenges. It was interesting to “meet” new people and engage with them online, but for me, it wasn’t the same and seemed to take longer to grow a business relationship.

We have seen a change in how we engage

We learned a lot during the pandemic with people turning up online from their bedrooms and kitchens which gave us an insight into people, but then we were also challenged with the technology and those fateful words…. “You’re on mute!”. In the two years of online networking, I only got caught out once, but it did become a bit of fun. Fast forward to now and we have seen business network meetings open up again and people gaining confidence in meeting face-to-face. I started to run our monthly network meetings last August and I remember eleven people coming together in the garden of a hotel sitting around talking business as we started to rebuild our meetings. Just over two months ago, we attracted 106 people to the launch of our new membership organisation as businesses in North Northamptonshire started to climb to another level, and numbers at our meetings since have been healthy.

So what does the future look like? In my opinion, there is room for both. We talk about the hybrid option for business networking as organisations look towards online presence to help support those who are unable to attend face-to-face meetings or those who prefer the online route to business networking and then there is the face-to-face more traditional route where people enjoy the buzz in the room. We’re definitely seeing people keen to engage in face-to-face network meetings and be around human beings, we are social animals after all. People have been itching to get back to faceto-face meetings – it’s where the trust and relationships start to be built and long may it continue.

Will the winter period mean a reduction in face-to-face meetings? Possibly. We know the weather can cause challenges for people to attend especially with an early start, but you could say the same about online meetings reducing during the summer months when attendees want to get out in the sun and fresh air. It’s going to be really interesting

Business

although my thoughts are if a quality meeting is delivered whether it be rain or shine, businesses will attend whatever the weather.

What about a hybrid meeting with a combination of faceto-face attendees and online attendees all at the same time? For me, this is not a possibility. It’s either one or the other. Firstly, there is the challenge of broadband connections when you have people in attendance being able to communicate with each other, but getting frustrated with the technology. I am also a big believer that business happens quicker when you meet face-to-face and the relationships are stronger so for me, it’s definitely one or the other, but not a combination at the same time.

Business happens quicker when you meet face-to-face

Simon Cox has been on the business network circuit in Northamptonshire

since 2009 and has been leading business networks since 2015. He now leads the North Northants Business Network which focuses on Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough and East Northamptonshire and also the NNBN, the Membership Organisation for North Northamptonshire which is helping the local community rebuild and grow.

Body

Your Excellence is KILLING You. 28

Executive and CEO coach, Debra Sunderland, talks about how striving to be seen as excellent is doing us great damage as we discount the very significance of who we are, and who we are called to become. Excellence creeps in the back door and takes over your entire being. Excellence is subtle. It shows up early in our life as a child. It lures us into believing that achieving an A+ is the ultimate way to gain approval from our teacher, our friends, and our parents. And when we fall short of this letter, we are made to feel less-than. Excellence dictates the number rank with which we graduate and determines which universities will accept us. Excellence then says “we have arrived” when we get a job working for an elite firm. Our significance is earned based on how big our bank accounts are, and what the title on our door reads. Excellence points out if you are a winner or loser. Did you win the client? Win the race? Beat the other team? Excellence makes us feel ashamed for failing in a marriage or a relationship. We might even feel ashamed about our looks, our weight, or reaching a certain age. Excellence means that there is always some measure — set by you or someone else — to have to meet. This mark on your head or in your heart becomes quite heavy and even painful. Your eyes tire of scanning social media to rank yourself against what others are doing. Yet, you become addicted to the images you see and the stories you tell yourself about them. Excellence says to be the best. Keep going. Don’t rest too long. There is no safety in rest. Your body falls into bed with partial sleep, as your head swirls with all that needs to be done. Excellence awakens you to another day saying, “Here we go! Get up and get the kids moving (to their excellence)! Get to work on time, get all your work done, and keep my boss and me happy. Then rush a meal into my weary, not-so-active body. Maybe I can check my phone quickly at dinner, and my family won’t mind — because this is important.” I kiss my loved ones and maybe

Excellence can’t hold a candle to your purpose!

remember a long embrace, before I work on just one more thing, before collapsing into my bed that I love, yet see less and less of. And tomorrow, Excellence will prod at your inner being with a new nagging list... “I better start working out again — to lose weight — so I fit into my clothes — and look my best for that wedding that is coming up next month.” Excellence compares you to the “Who’s Who” list and makes you wonder why you are not on the list. Excellence has won at your expense. It takes over your life and causes inner stress. A disconnect that slowly kills you. Headaches. High blood pressure. Ulcers. Cancer. Heart attacks. Death. Winning at excellence steals the joy of just being you! Before it’s too late, WAKE UP to the one and only you who already knows that being at peace with yourself is the greatest win. When we measure excellence based on OUTER approval, security, and worthiness, we discount the very significance of who we are, and who we are called to become. In this moment, would you be willing to acknowledge and accept all of who you are right now? As is. This shift will save your life and give you the most fulfilled sense of accomplishing — because you have found your way back home. To master this practice is a constant noticing of where you are seeking enoughness from. When you notice that you are looking outside of yourself, appreciate yourself for just noticing! Your WHOLE YES to yourself gives abundant life to you and those around you. Living your “whole yes” cancels and releases excellence and says “I AM ENOUGH!” Give these seven steps a try! You have everything to gain by coming back to you.

Body

1. Stop the chatter. Excellence never wants to stop talking. Let go of the rumination and find a quiet place right now. Move to your favourite room, go outside, or look at a flower. 2. Come inside. Close the door. Excellence is not welcome here. Follow your breath. Taking a breath isn’t a prize that you had to win!! Appreciate that your breath is always supporting your life. You were born with it, and it keeps you alive. Thank you breath. Thank you. Welcome a little more of your breath, as you slow down to appreciate that you are taking this time to notice this life-giving simplicity. 3. Take three deep, belly breaths. Start with your sacrum grounded beneath you and feel the base of your belly fill with air — continue, as you rise with your breath — filling your chest — and up through your nose. Hold for a count of four. Exhale in a slower release of your air through your nose, chest, belly. There is no hurry. Repeat three more times. 4. It is normal for our brain to get distracted or caught up in our thoughts when we are practicing our breathing. Don’t judge — just notice the thought — and say “thought” to yourself. There is no need to attach to the incessant stream of thoughts that flood our mind. Let the thoughts pass by like the clouds in the sky. This is your time to come into your breath and honour your life. Just come back to your breath each time. This practice of coming back to your breath actually grows the grey matter in your brain — as a brain exercise that strengthens it. So, even the process of coming back to you builds you up! 5. Rejoice! Locate this deep inner joy in your body. Joy never leaves you. So, it is your inner friend. Remember a moment when you felt joy. Feel the experience of joy that comes from being fully aligned with your inner being. Your head, heart, and body are one. You are showing up as you — enjoy what aligns with who you are. You know what this feels like to be you — trust what aligns with you. Rejoice in the knowing! Rejoice in the feeling!

6. Trust you. Trust your knowing. Take one baby step in knowing your whole yes. Your whole yes is what’s most loving to you, and as you step forward, fear will be there, continue to step forward with fear and love. Embrace all of you. The dissonance you feel between fear and love is the dissonance of excellence and your genius. To come into harmony means to trust your whole yes, coupled with love and uncertainty, while still moving forward. Because LOVE conquers fear. Using all the intelligence that resides in your head, heart and body is your whole yes

— YOUR GENIUS! Alert: this is not something you figure out in your head! There is nowhere to get to. There is nothing to achieve. It is truly and simply a matter of being still and coming inward and rediscovering who you are. Stillness is uncomfortable — and it is in the discomfort that we grow. 7. Discover and rediscover your Genius! You are uniquely wired with gifts, skills, talents, and passions — like no other in the whole world - in all of eternity. Stepping into the moments you are given with a pause to discern your whole yes — in all areas of your life is a best practice for living an abundant life in every area. Test your whole yes knowing. Notice the outcomes when you only had a partial yes — and you went forward anyway. What results occurred and what did it teach you? Keep stepping into your Genius and you will attract others who are doing the same! You will have more moments of joy - because you will be living your purpose. Excellence will nag at you and scare you into measuring up, fitting in, and doing enough. Excellence belongs to the part of our ego (amygdala) that wants to make sure you are accepted, good enough, and safe on the outside. Excellence limits you. Excellence is killing you. Inner trust in your whole yes is yours to choose and master — excellence can’t hold a candle to your purpose! Live your whole yes — to create the life of your dreams

Debra Sunderland’s genius is creating a clear vision for CEO’s and their teams - making that vision a reality. With decades of C-level executive and team coaching, Debra challenges leaders by inviting them to create a collaborative, vibrant, responsible, and joy-filled culture, fostering highly desirable results. Her practice is shared in a diverse range of industries: hitech, wealth management, engineering, healthcare, marketing.

CREATIVELY STRATEGIC. RUTHLESSLY FLEXIBLE. SMOOTHLEY EFFICIENT

We are dedicated to your success. To look beyond what is right in front of you. To carving out a path that, while ambitious, guides you and pushes you and your business to become more, to become what you are destined for.

www.mas-connections.com

SERVICES GAP ANALYSIS & METHOD [r] CHANGE MANAGEMENT

ETHICAL PERSUASSION EXCELLENCE & ECOMMERCE

info@mas-connections.com

Interview

Sandra Laura

Manuela

On a mission to inspire, uplift, and empower

We are very excited in this, our first issue for 2022, to feature an interview with Sandra Laura Manuela Deakin. A global transformational teacher, mentor, and public speaker, she helps sensitive, passionate, and powerful women discover themselves in a new way.

Who are you? Hello beautiful reader! I’m Sandra Laura Manuela Deakin. I live in Antwerp, Belgium and was born to a British father and a Belgian mother. Being born and raised in a family with two different cultures, I have always looked at myself as a ‘global’ citizen and so have always yearned to connect with all people. I have over 35 years of experience as a journalist, writer, speaker, producer, TV, and radio host, and most recently podcast hosting. Today I work as a global transformational teacher, mentor, and public speaker, helping sensitive, passionate and powerful women discover themselves in a new way. I show them how to find that safe, sovereign space inside themselves that gently guides them into being the conscious creator of a life that feels aligned and true for them. My purpose has always been to inspire, uplift, and empower my audience. I love helping women turn their own “blind spots” into “bright spots.” Because I believe every obstacle we face can become the biggest opportunity for inner growth, mastery, and harnessing of our utmost potential. When I started my career in media more than 35 years ago, many of my journalist colleagues mocked me, thinking me too much of an idealist. Yet during that time, I was a pioneer in the Belgian media as I spoke directly from the heart. My listeners and viewers loved the raw honesty I brought them, and it showed in my ratings. And now even today, after all that time, people connect with me on the street just to thank me for all the joy I brought to their hearts. Although my career was thriving, in my personal life I faced several challenges. I battled constant self-doubt. The simplest obstacles often overwhelmed me and relationships turned codependent. Behind the image of ‘a female media trailblazer’ was an insecure, frightened little girl and a wounded woman. Until life gave me a wake-up call.

All these insecurities had manifested themselves in my body. Thanks to the many great souls such as Deepak Chopra, Brandon Bays, and Michael Beckwith I had interviewed and worked with, I learned to look at the body from a whole new perspective. They taught me that the body is the navigator of our life and vessel for our inner power, potential, and brilliance. I learned that our discomfort and pain are beautiful opportunities to become more conscious of what our soul is trying to communicate through our bodies. Once we learn to listen on a deeper level, our soul speaks through our body, and we can liberate ourselves from past thought-patterns and behaviours that no longer serve us. In this moment, the body can tune into its enormous capacity for self-healing. Through learning this, I was able to start liberating my body from past trauma and transform my pain into pearls. I was revitalized! During those intense, dark and challenging times, I developed a deep understanding and inner wisdom of how to embrace and become bigger than my fears. I learned how to have a healthy, loving relationship with myself. I stopped peoplepleasing and instead learned how to set healthy boundaries. I transformed a rather dull marriage into a magical juicy relationship with the same amazing partner. Today we celebrate 20 years of being together and we have never been so happy. This made me realize how we all have the ability to become the creators of our own juicy, joyful, and fulfilled life. My biggest discovery was that we women are designed to be a pure expression of beauty, brilliance and power. We can have anything we desire once we reclaim our body, power, and our sexual energy.

What is the single best piece of business advice which helped shape who you are now and Why? Take action! Just take small steps towards your goals, even if it doesn’t “feel quite right yet.” This is something one of my mentors, and dear friend, Marie Diamond taught me years ago. I used to always wait to take action as it needed to come from an ‘aligned’ place. But if we must wait until we are fully ‘aligned’ it will never happen, because the thing is there’s never a perfect time!

Interview

This is what I see happening to a lot of people. They’ve long had a dream that they never got started on because it was never the ‘right’ moment. But there will always be an excuse not to get started. Do you want to watch your life slip by and at the end of your life think to yourself: ‘What happened? Why did I never….?’ All because you were too afraid to take that one tiny step. Letting go of my perfectionism wasn’t easy for me. I had to learn to trust the process and get out of my own way. I had to learn not to listen to the background noise and become bigger than my shame, fear, guilt, doubt, and worry. By taking action I saw myself becoming more and more that juicy, powerful woman I am today. Life is like a sculpture; we become more than the perfect original idea of ourselves while sculpting the road and taking actions.

How do you take care of yourself on a holistic level? I have learned to listen on a deeper level to my body. This means although I lead a busy life, I carve out sacred time and space to nourish my body with relaxing moments. I love connecting with the elements in a very conscious way through little daily rituals. I have started taking cold showers in the morning to boost my immune system. I also love a good warm nourishing bath. Before I give a webinar or do a public speech or show, I dare to take time off to have my bath and just be nourished by the warm water and my favourite oils. I love my food, yet I always make sure I eat living food and that I cook from the heart. I make sure every meal is a sacred time for me. That means during my meals no mobile phone or other distractions. This makes eating like a meditation and a nourishing moment for the body and soul. Before I start each meal, I also think about something I am grateful for. Gratitude gives the body a signal to receive the nutrition from the food on a deeper and higher level. I also make sure I walk in nature at least once every day, even if I only have 15 minutes to spare. I make sure I create the time for me to connect with Mother Earth. In my life and personal relationships, I have a few non-negotiables. One of them is NO news when I wake up and before I go to sleep. My partner is

a news addict and so I had to make this a healthy boundary in our relationship. As I am a highly sensitive person, I try to avoid negative and toxic energies especially when starting and completing my day.

What is your favourite quote and why? My favourite quote is ‘Beauty starts the moment you decide to be yourself’ by Coco Chanel. I love how Chanel helped women express their unique selves.

How do you remember your childhood and early background? I had quite a happy childhood. I’m an only child so I was showered with a lot of attention and love growing up. However, being an only child meant my parents were hyper-focused on me and I felt the immense pressure to always “be perfect.” I feel I missed the spontaneity and playfulness of being a child because I was always expected to be the “model child.” I did well in school and got excellent results, however, this put even more pressure on me to keep being “perfect.” Later in life this constant pressure to perform and achieve left me burnt out and with an overactive thyroid. I had to go through an intense healing process and learned how to let my inner child play and be spontaneous. The good part about that is that today at the age of 52, I play every day. It feels like I have to catch up on all those years I forgot to play and took life and myself so seriously. I come from a very modest family that had to work hard in life to get that little bit of luxury. My mum and dad made sure I could go to the best schools and had beautiful clothes and there was always plenty of food on the table. Yet, it all came with a lot of struggle and sacrifice. As a child, this put a burden upon me and made me feel guilty. My whole life has been a journey of giving myself the permission to shine and just be me, everything I was deprived of as a child. This is what I teach other women today. It took me years to become bigger than the fears I had inherited from my family and to give myself that birth right to thrive, be successful, healthy, abundant, and

simply happy. I learned how to liberate myself from a certain way of victim thinking and step into my power and own it.

What are you most passionate about and why? I am quite a passionate person. I love to live. I love to love. I love the good life. When I do something, I do it with all of my heart or I don’t do it at all. I am passionate about expressing my true self in the world. My unapologetic shameless self. I am passionate about the true beauty, brilliance, and power of the feminine. From childhood, I have read books about Goddess power and the Goddess Archetype because I believe every woman carries the flavours and colours of all these goddesses inside. We have simply forgotten by living a life that has pulled us out of our core being and nature, who we truly are. The only thing we must do as women is remember we are a goddess and the powerful creator of our own life. I am also passionate about beauty and how to express beauty in life through fashion, lifestyle, elegance… It breaks my heart to see so many women who are constantly looking for beauty outside of themselves. Coming from TV land I have seen so many women abuse their bodies just to fit society’s idea of beauty. This disconnects them from the true vibration of internal beauty. I am also passionate about alchemy, the magic of transformation, and the art of living a juicy life that feels aligned with your true nature. Coming from a modest background it felt like I could always feel that heaviness of life hanging over me. Being highly sensitive at the same time there was always something inside me that could connect to the purest light in dark and challenging times. I did this through meditation, music, or dance. Only years later I would find a way to transform my pain into precious pearls. This is what I call inner alchemy. Each day turning your obstacles into your biggest opportunities is something I have become very passionate about.

It is amazing, the power of giving

Interview

Why is the Sacred Feminine so important and we should work on it? For centuries women have been disconnected from their true inner power and brilliance. True feminine power is deep, dark, mysterious, and incomprehensible. It is the unspoken, it is the silence, it is the mystery behind all that is visible, audible, and tangible. Because we live in a world that is so results-driven we only celebrate what we can ‘explain’ and can ‘see with our eyes’. We miss out on a significant part of life… the mystery. Society often undervalues feminine qualities such as kindness, softness, true beauty, darkness, and silence. To survive in a more masculine world women have adapted themselves so much they’ve been driven away from their true female qualities. Our power as women is our bodies, our deep intuition hidden in our hips and connected with our soul-

heart, and I teach women how to reconnect with all of that. If a woman learns how to embody her full being by having a deeper connection with her body, she becomes a living goddess. She has the power to transform her pains into precious pearls and radiate through her body her unique essence. Living a life deeper connected to your body as a woman helps you step out of the rigid prison of your mind and into a more juicy and joyful life. A juicy, joyful woman can transform, empower, and inspire a whole community just by her presence. This has been my own journey. I learned how to move from the thousands of stories in my head to my heart and sink into my hips. This way I also managed to reclaim my sexual energy and use this special sacred energy inside of me to fuel my dreams and make them come true. We, women, have so much magic and power inside ourselves. We have simply forgotten or are too afraid to reconnect with it because of the centuries of torture, abuse, and victimhood. There is no better moment than today to reclaim it, heal it, and own it.

What is your part at the Transformational Leadership Council? ATL Europe is a heart-based community of transformational leaders founded by Marie Diamond (known from the movie ‘The Secret’). We have one big purpose: to help Europe and the world awaken and become more empowered and enlightened. Twice a year we meet with all the leaders from all over the world somewhere in Europe. This year it will be the beautiful Split in Croatia. We support, empower, inspire, and challenge each other to grow and evolve. About six years ago Marie Diamond asked me to join this amazing group and it changed my life forever. As a highly sensitive person and someone who had done a lot of inner transformative work, I felt rather isolated and different from the people around me. By joining ATL Europe it felt like all of a sudden, I had a soul family, a tribe. They have helped me grow and evolve into the woman I am today. I am forever grateful.

simply act and go with the flow. So, I transformed my business into an online business. I created several online courses for women to transform their lives for the better and to reconnect with their true feminine power. I also started giving online webinars to these women. Today, my business is steadily growing bigger and more aligned. I have learned to follow the flow of life in the ups and downs. Life is often not about what we think it should be, but about surrendering and anticipating and still following your inner truth and voice. www.sandralauramanuela.com www.facebook.com/sandralauramanuela www.instagram.com sandralauramanuela I would love to offer 10 readers of your magazine my online course Tap into your sacred feminine power (value 110 euro/course) Content: Discover the deeper mystery of your sacred feminine power. Remember, reclaim and embody your own power and sexuality as a woman and start living the life that simply feels good!

Tell us about the book? We wrote a bestseller “38 Insights to Manifest Your Best Life. This is an amazing book with 38 stories written by our co-authors about how we turned our obstacles into treasures and how we became the heroes of our own life. My own story in this book is called “Get Nakedly Honest”. One of my biggest transformation lessons has been to get nakedly real with myself. I used to tell myself a thousand stories just not to feel the reality and truth of things because it would feel ‘uncomfortable’. So, I had to teach myself to become nakedly honest. Only then we can create true change and breakthroughs in our lives.

How has COVID changed your way of working? When COVID started I was just spreading my wings internationally as an inspirational speaker and I had started giving my seminars in London. I was booked at several events to speak, and then it all stopped… I decided not to dramatize this and

Spirituality

The Power of Self-Management Specialising in Intercultural Communication Prof. Dr. Irmela Neu informs us about the benefits of self-management and provides us with a checklist of its components with some practical exercises.

The importance of selfmanagement In former times, our ancestors had totally different conditions of life than in our times. Due to the predominance of agriculture, they depended on nature – on the seasons, the rhythms of day and night, the weather, etc. In our modern times and even more with the 4th industrial revolution of the digitalisation, nature became somewhere to find relaxation. These days, working long hours, whether from home or in an office, and the use of e-media challenges our nature. We need to organise ourselves to find a balance between our work and social life, relaxation, recuperation, and hobbies.

In earlier times, the strict norms provided by nature were reinforced by strict social norms. Individualism was almost impossible. Nowadays, in industrialised countries, individualism is part of our lifestyle; the more digitalisation predominates, the more we are free to choose different options regarding our lifestyle with or without partners, our time schedule, our health program, etc. It offers us liberty, but it also represents a challenge; therefore, we need to be well-structured in general and in our daily life. To do so requires intellectual, emotional, and vital capacities. Let’s check it in detail.

Intellectual capacity Our brain, our mind is very competent in analysing, checking what’s going on, making lists, finding words for our emotions, etc. First of all, we should have an overview of what determines our life. Do I feel stressed? What is the main reason? If it is due to the necessity of multi-tasking, a checklist of priorities is needed. Main questions: Do I lose a lot of time, because I want to be

everyone’s darling? Do I have “emotional vampires” in my surrounding? These are people who give me the feeling that I give without receiving. We all know that some people (including myself?) lament constantly because they feel they have been a victim of whatever – and they always find something to complain about. Stop this immediately! Do I really dedicate the energy, time, and attention to my loved ones and to myself? This is so important! Your partner, children, the family, your social life in general, and your friends are crucial for your well-being – and don’t forget yourself! Do you receive what you give in a natural way without establishing an intentional relation between them like “I give because I want to receive”? Life does not exist like this: the energy of our heart is 5000 times stronger than the thoughts coming from our brain! Exercise 1: In a quiet moment or before going to bed, make a list or a design of your time schedule, preferences, and of what you want to change or what you like. Accept what you cannot change; change powerfully, what is feasible for you. Just do it – and be happy.

Emotional capacity Our emotions have a huge range of different feelings. The word “emotion” is of Latin origin. It is a feeling that brings us to movement, which means: it has effects. Anger lets us grow our

Accept what you cannot change

inner fire, we react often aggressively – if we don’t control it we give this emotion the power to absorb our energy. Fear paralyses us so that there is no flow in us, we become like frozen water. On the contrary, trust, hope, and of course, love, vitalize us and make us happy.

What do I mean by “control your emotions”? Not an external control like a norm – this would not help. It is the faculty to feel an emotion then to establish a distance, allowing us to think about the right action. I don’t re-act, I act! I am the master of my action. Internalise the three steps:

1. feel the emotion. 2. establish a distance by breathing slowly in and

out; 3. act in an appropriate way.

What I need therefore, is good intuition, the result of harmony within myself and my surroundings. Intuition lets us grow our creativity. Exercise 2: Introduce these three steps into your life – the more you do it, the more you feel the benefit of it.

Vital capacities Do we give the right place to our vitality? That means asking ourselves if we respect our basic needs of equilibrated nutrition, resting and sleeping sufficiently, and of being mainly happy. What makes me really happy, gives me wellbeing? Do I have a hobby like singing, dancing etc. without any pressure of what I have done or I should do? What about joy in my life? Do I give space for unforeseen events? Vitality empowers our creativity: self-management becomes a pleasure. Exercise 3: Discover what is really vital for you and just bring it into your life. Yes, self-management has become a part of our life, including our work. It is an art that brings us satisfaction, joy, and creativity.

Prof. Dr. Irmela Neu, from the University of Applied Sciences, Munich/ Germany, specialised in Intercultural Communication in Spain and Latin America and has been published in this field. She has worked with UNESCO in the field of Education. She focuses on seminars in Mindful Communication and in body-based teachings to open our heart, combined with Mindful Communication. Her message: Life is lovely. www.Irmela-neu.de

Business

How to navigate your

Sales Cycle

Business Fit Magazine regular contributors Maike Benner and Lilli Rohde give our readers some tips on how they can improve their sales techniques by practicing the sales cycle and closing the deal. The average salesperson is “average” not because of a lack of skills but a lack of commitment to follow up or in other words, to practice the sales cycle. A sales cycle is the tactical and repeatable process salespeople follow to turn a lead into a customer. With a sales cycle in place, you always know your next move and where each lead is within the cycle. It can also help you repeat your success or determine how to improve it. The motivation of most salespeople is to sell to their existing reality, they are just motivated to solve their problems or improve their economic conditions. Many sell only by standards set by others or their quota. Sales is a huge topic with many categories that you must become an expert in. If you consider every salesperson has a unique personality and then add to that, that every customer interaction and customer personality is unique, you see how complicated it can become. You as a salesperson are dealing with personalities, egos, insecurities, uncertainty, economics, competition, and more. In your business, you are either doing the selling or you are being sold to. And that requires more than just an idea; it requires the tools, schedule, rituals, and follow-through. Sales is about certainty and if you aren’t certain you can’t sell. A defined sales cycle can help you to stay in the line and react to unforeseen situations.

Business

To gain this certainty you must understand your sales cycle. Every Sales process follows a specific cycle you need to manage throughout the sale. For sure you’ve heard many of the points already in the one or other seminar, coaching, or training, but we are inviting you to take a white paper and a pen and to re-write your sales cycle and start being the top salesperson you want to be. Let’s dive in and create a new understanding. It starts with:

Understanding rejection The fact that the customer says no and doesn’t buy, is not a reason to be upset unless of course, you don’t have any more customers in your pipeline. If the customer says “no” and there are four more people waiting to buy from you, you may feel relief and satisfaction that you can move on to those that are able and willing to do business with you. In this context learn how to negotiate from a place of agreement. This does not mean that you simply dive in and give the buyer everything they want, it means you use the agreement to keep the negotiations loose enough to be negotiated. Keep the ball rolling so to say.

Have always a proposal for your customer No matter what stage your buyer or prospect is at, you should always present every prospect with a written proposal. A customer wants to see the figures and conditions of your offer on paper. It signals transparency and that you are committed to your offer. A written offer takes the mystery out of what you have to offer. It also gives you the opportunity to use the proposal for a follow-up and to create an ongoing conversation. Depending on the business you are in it could be legally required to provide a written offer. You can and should use templates and technology to create the offer but always add a personal note to the text. Differentiate yourself from the other salespeople. A practical tip – when presented to our customers – is often rejected with the words “I’d rather not give the prospect too much info. He or she might dig in, do extra research, look for reasons not to do business with you”. Our reply is always to try it out and see what happens. In almost all cases your prospect will not go to

the length of reading everything in detail, let alone use external resources. But it gives them confidence, that they are dealing with the right partner.

Provide Options People love options and you should always provide your customer with options, even when it appears your customer is committed to what they have in front of them. Presenting an option will help them view you in a more consultative role as well as opening the door to use inventory/ packages/offerings as a way to negotiate instead of using price. When you present a proposal, make sure you always give your customer two other options on both sides of the target offer. One additional option should be something including fewer products or service that may or may not solve the customer’s communicated problem. The primary goal of doing this is to help the buyer see more value in the initial proposed solution. Do not offer a lower price when the first offer is refused. Customers are more concerned about making a good decision than how low the price is. Keep that in mind. The other additional option should always be a move up or a more expensive or comprehensive alternative to your main proposal. This will likewise either help the prospect see more value in the primary proposal or, show them that the

Think about closing as a problemsolving act for your prospect

next level up may be an even more appropriate solution to their problem. Never present one proposal to a customer no matter what. The only reason you wouldn’t offer options is when you are not convinced or are scared to close the deal.

Power of Follow Up Consider that 48 percent of all salespeople never follow up and that 64 percent of companies admit they do not have any organised way to nurture a lead and you will see follow-up is a massive opportunity. The key here is speed. Do not wait two weeks to follow up. It must be done immediately. Be the first to follow up and try to use different channels of communication for your follow-up. Twentyfive percent of salespeople make two contact attempts, then quit, but you need at least five contact points within the follow-up process (with more and more prospecting moving online – the latest estimates are 30 contact points instead of five needed to get from “attention” to “ready to buy”). Commit to it and create a plan you can apply without thinking too much. There’s a lot of business in the follow-up, executed the correct way it will help you to build a relationship with the prospect and to find out who the influencer is within the company. Have you ever thought about using social media as follow-up tool as well?

Think about closing as a problem-solving act for your prospect. Selling is for sure critical but the close creates the income. You don’t truly provide a service until you close, because only then you provide value to your customer. What you see in your business is the result of your actions. Also, you have to know your figures, because only by what you measure can you change and improve. Be consistent in your sales cycle, most people quit too soon, be a finisher. Excuses are reasons to lose the deal. If you want to re-view, define or create your sales cycle reach out to us and let’s have a look together: info@malish.de

Closing – let´s make it happen Our life is about negotiating and closing a deal is the final step toward a goal. If you fail in closing you have wasted your money, energy, and time. Also, the close marks the finish line of the sales cycle. Keep in mind that a relationship alone does not lead to a close. People need someone to help them make a decision on spending money. And if you close them, this is an actionable exchange of value. A close can only be done with a decisionmaker otherwise it is waste of time. But most importantly you must be completely sold on your product or service. If you do not believe in yourself, your product, or service you can’t close someone. The good thing is there are no born closers. We can all learn it through practice.

Maike Benner and Lilli Rohde founders of MaL!sh Consulting, an international business consultancy and coaching company. Combining their experiences and strengths in people management, financials, tools and system, communication and leadership MaL!sh offers a variety of services for companies and individuals. www.compagneur.com - malish.global/about/malish-business/

Mindset & Emotion

Strengthening Emotional Immunity

Founder/CEO of GRIT Academy Viola Edward and Social Psychologist Saxa Stefani explain to Business Fit readers what emotional immunity is and how it can be useful in all aspects of our life. We are used to hearing terms such as immunity or immune system and even more so in times of pandemic. This concept refers to the biological field and we could define it, in a general way, as the capacity of our organism to defend itself against any internal or external threat. It is, therefore, possible, pragmatic, and necessary to speak of psychological and emotional immunity, as ways to prepare ourselves and improve our ability to face the challenges of everyday life. This preparation would be helpful in the personal sphere, in the construction of our educational and work profile, and in our dynamics at work, as well as in our interpersonal relationships partners, parenting, friendships, or family - in our communities and social interactions and even in our search for vital meaning and our spirituality.

DET and Emotional Immunity The Dynamic Emotional Theory - DET (Stefani, 2021) - proposes that behaviour is based on the emotional sphere - on What We Feel - which is

Emotional immunity is not itself empathy

itself articulated with the cognitive sphere - What We Think - and is activated from the behavioural sphere - What We Do. We know that the way in which we operate emotionally will determine our psychological well-being. Evidence of the influence that our fundamental emotional life has on our mental health is found in the Attachment theory. It is a scientific fact that an unsatisfactory early emotional attachment - visible in insecure attachment relationships - is predictive of future difficulties, not only in intellectual development but particularly in the development of balanced interpersonal relationships later in youth and adulthood. The correspondence between emotional and biological immunity is revealed through the experience between the agent and the host of the dynamics of this interaction. When we come into this world, our self (host) will experience or is at the mercy of a multitude of stimuli and demands that function as excitatory agents, both internal and external, such as sensations of hunger, cold, noise, smells, or contact. All these sensations are organised through the attention given to the child by caregivers (also called attachment figures in psychology). In the early stages, our psyche considers those who give us care as mere “objects”. We consider them in relation to our own needs. Others also exist, either to satisfy our desires, related to survival, or as obstacles to the achievement of those desires. In fact, many people remain fixated without further development stages of emotional construction, characteristics of narcissistic (neurotically attached), and even psychopathic personalities. For the sake of clarity, we include here a brief parenthesis to differentiate between neurosis, psychosis, and psychopathy. The neurotic always has a register of reality, but “overreacts” to it. The Neurosis has different degrees of severity that will be determined by “how much” reality we are able to manage.

Mindset & Emotion

The Psychotic, on the other hand, constructs a “parallel” reality that he lives as real because the one he has is too painful for him. Finally, The Psychopath perceives reality but ignores it because he is pathologically focused on his own need. In fact, how we establish our neurotic personality is closely linked to our first exercise or practice field of interaction in childhood, which has a strong primordial accentuation on the self and the projection of all its material and affective needs. Little by little, and with difficulties along the way, we incorporate a more complete vision of the caregiver and from that primary link, with other people and objects in the world around us. When the communication between the agent and the host, or between our psyche and the objects and people of the outside world takes place, a learning process is generated from the experience. This learning condenses a lot of information, but of all this accumulation of data, what we register, and store is essentially emotional information. The association between what happens, and my emotional perception will build an enduring internal network we will expand and associate with new and future situations. Bowlby refers to a model of mental representation - an internal working model that uses previous attachment information in future relationships. Pichon-Rivière, for his part, proposes the conformation of an operative referential conceptual scheme, or ECRO, which the psyche uses to categorise new situations. It does not matter from which psychological theory we approach this phenomenon, what we can say is that all previous (significant) registers will be used, operationalised in the current situation, so we propose the following formula:

What do we call emotional immunity? It is the capacity to understand or resolve a situation that activates the internal emotional network in a highly functional way. Sensitive resistance is minimised, and the accommodation and assimilation of new information are maximised, facilitating learning from a (more) neutral position. The higher the emotional immunity we perceive, the lower the emotional distortion and the increase of communicative quality and openness.

What do we call emotional immunity?

In fact, emotional immunity is not related to not responding emotionally to stimuli, but rather the opposite: - Placing the activated emotional contents at the service of emotional management - expanding the conscious perceptual deployment of these contents. - Articulating the internal and external recognition of emotional communication. Several authors have treated various forms of emotional communication since Freud with his concept of transference and countertransference, and Jung around the idea of the collective unconscious or more recently social intelligence. To develop or increase emotional immunity in terms of complexity, amplitude, or speed, we must first go from the registration of emotional evocation to the perception of the current situation. Then we can establish a relationship between the two that results in a functional, satisfactory, and healthy behavioural response. In short, emotional immunity implies that we possess the ability to:

(a)

recognise the emotional need that interpersonal or intrapersonal interaction or situation requires.

(b) register the perceived emotions that have been summoned by that interaction or situation. (c) process the information in relation to the type of interaction desired. (d) assess and execute a satisfactory behavioural response.

Therefore, Conscious Breathing and sensory activation are fundamental to managing these processes.

Transcending personal emotional immunity

In conclusion, emotional immunity is not itself empathy. For example, there may be a group of ten highly emotionally immune people in the same room who, nevertheless, have not learned or developed the ability to bond emotionally with others. Therefore, we say that emotional immunity is a necessary but not completely sufficient condition for empathetic interactions to occur, whether they are natural or intentional. Natural empathetic interactions will be simpler, since we tend to easily generate a natural empathetic emotional response when a person “likes” us, evoking pleasant emotions. On the other hand, to produce an intentional interaction with those who are “unpleasant” to us, we must try to bring emotional immunity into play, allowing us an effective and healthy relationship dynamic. Finally, to transcend from the individual to the family and the community, we should not only promote emotional immunity in individuals but also foster spaces of collective emotional health in order to solidify sustainable and emotionally healthy social development.

Viola Edward is the Founder/CEO of GRIT Academy. Multi-awarded personal and corporate advisor/Mentor. A Transcultural Psychotherapist, Mentoring & Breathwork Trainer. Humanitarian, Social Entrepreneur, international Speaker & Connector, Author. Board Member, Ambassador Human Rights’ Ambassador. linktr.ee/ViolaEdward www.GRITacademy.co

Saxa Stefani is a Social Psychologist, Master in Education, and Scientific

Researcher. Founder of ceideps Centre. Author, he has worked in clinical psychology, therapeutic mentoring, human resources, psychiatric and addictions treatment institutions, and education. www.ceideps.org

Pashion Fashion

Life Goes On – Senegalese Fashion

Technology enthusiast turned fashion designer Ndeye Absa Gningue talks about her company ABC, how digital marketing is the way forward, and how her brand has a strong social influence in creating jobs through Prison Break Programs Always with her headwrap like a queen, a style all her own and African to the tips of her fingers, meet Ndeye Absa Gningue, founder of the ABC Brand. ABC is a Senegalese Brand that stands for Aduuna Bul Comprendre (Life goes on) based on a personal experience of the owner. It started on social media (Facebook) and since 2012 the whole community has been an addressable market for ABC. The brand stood out in 2014 when Ndeye Absa was called to be among the 500 Young African Leaders to meet with President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle as part of the Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI). She offered to dress the entire Senegalese cohort which was highly appreciated in Washington. She was featured twice by Voice of America and in 2016, her brand was selected in a prestigious contest organised by the Biggest Telco company: Orange Social Entrepreneurs, as one of the top 10 ventures in West Africa.

Monthly themes are organised around female empowerment and business development services provided to artisans in the Arts and Crafts Industry in particular. Fashion particularly is a huge business in Africa. The combined apparel and footwear market in sub-Saharan Africa is estimated to be worth US$ 31 billion. The textile industry value chain begins with the production of cotton and moves through the spinning and twisting of the fibre into yarn, the weaving and knitting of the yarn into fabric, and the bleaching, dyeing, and printing of the fabric to create fashionable garments worn worldwide today. At each step of the value chain, more value is added, and additional jobs are created. The fashion industry offers employment opportunities through the value chain, from smallholder farmers to fashion designers. When asked, what is the future of Fashion in Africa? Ndeye Absa answers that it is in the Digital. Her brand has been present on social media since Facebook became the most widely used platform on the continent and is the main marketing tool used by fashion entrepreneurs and MSMEs to promote their businesses.

“I believe Fashion goes beyond the Look and Feel and the Lifestyle. Fashion can actually change lives,” says Ndeye Absa. Walking the talk, ABC promotes local craftsmanship and African culture. The brand has a strong social influence as it works with prisoners in Senegal by giving them a second chance and creating jobs through the Prison Break Programs (PBPs). In 2017, ABC won Bronze in the International Design Award in Los Angeles. The creative industries in Africa offer massive potential for continent-wide jobs and GDP growth. The textile and clothing sectors, which employ predominantly women in their workforce, represent the second-largest sector in developing countries after agriculture. In addition, there is great scope to hire the younger generation.

Fashion particularly is a huge business in Africa

Ndeye Absa owns a concept store located in Dakar. It integrates a shop, a studio, and a dining place offering a platform to promote the Creative Industry inspired by Africa Culture.

Pashion Fashion

Fashion can actually change lives

Ndeye Absa’s family owns a Rooftop property, they welcome visitors from France, the USA, the UK, Nigeria & Spain to name a few. Fifty percent of their guests find them through social media, and they also offer them an original shopping concept away from the busy roads of Dakar. They can order items direct from ABC and have them delivered to their room.

Ndeye Absa Gningue is a technology enthusiast and was cloud Portfolio

Channel Marketing Leader for Middle East, Africa and Turkey at IBM. Absa is passionate about African fashion. Her brand ABC-Aduuna Bul Comprendre donates part of her profits to the Prisons of Senegal, financing workshops for prisoners, called Prison Break Programs in homage to her late father, former Director of the National Police.

Mindset & Emotion

Cutting the emotional umbilical cord 52

Europe’s #1 expert in teaching women to become kick-ass, Barbara Roux-Levrat, explains why we need to cut the emotional umbilical cord to our parents and look to ourselves for love and validation. We should love our family. But not be dependent on their love. Most of us have family members who will only accept us if we adhere to their values... if we act the way they want us to… They make it clear that to belong to the clan, we must mimic their way of thinking and copy their behaviour. It is a conditional love that doesn’t allow us to be free. It will cost us our dreams and never feel fulfilled. Because that’s not the love that we need. Not as adults. In my practice, I see individuals who are 50 years old and still trying to please their parents… many times completely torn between acting like their parents expect them to and following their own hearts and desires. I see parents punishing their kids with their silence or their rejection because they don’t want to do “as they’re told”. Even if the “kids” are more than 50 years old.

The more torn you are, the more it shows the following: you are still trying to get the love… or validation... or approval that you need as a human being… from your parents. It is time to grow up, beautiful human. Your parent’s love and validation were a matter of survival when you were a child... But now you need a different type of love if you are to thrive. And this love can only come from yourself! Perhaps you are hoping your mother or father will compensate for the lack of love you felt as a child. However, this will never be. Your parents won’t change. Your parents did the best they could. Now, whatever parenting is still needed must come from yourself!

How do you know how thick your emotional umbilical cord is? - The more personally you take the things that others say to you. When they show disapproval for something that you’ve done, do you get very offended? - The more their reactions hurt you. If they push you away or tell you off, how devastating is this for you? Can you carry on with your life despite their disapproval? - If they have not said/acted in the way you expected them to, how angry do you get? How badly do you want to take revenge?

Enmeshed families are unhealthy and restrictive

The more enmeshed a family is, the thicker the emotional umbilical cord will be. In these families, the individuals in it feel they have the right to tell others what to do, how to act, and even what to think. When a member deviates from the status quo, they are heavily punished for this, in an effort to make them conform. Enmeshed families are unhealthy and restrictive. A family should not be a place to raise clones. A family should be a place where everyone finds acceptance and respect, irrespective of their beliefs, values, and outlooks on life.

Mindset & Emotion

It is the place where we should find the most respect and acceptance. It is the place where we should agree to disagree. It is the place where we focus on the things that are common to us and put aside our differences. Because, in the end, we will always find that the things that unite us are the really important things. Things like love, peace, joy, respect, companionship, affection, warmth, … The things that separate us are always secondary: political views, religious convictions, lifestyle choices… These are the things that are superficial… and they should never trump the deeper, more important things. Whether a person is homosexual or homophobic or chauvinistic or feminist or leftist or rightist or Christian or Muslim should not prevent us from unifying around our common humanity: love, compassion, joy, respect, growth, support.

The difficulty in enmeshed families is that we believe that to love someone they need to be 100 percent aligned with our values. And this is just impossible. Even we are not aligned with ourselves most of the time! How many times are we saying one thing, but thinking another?

We must create a healthier family structure Healthy families welcome diversity. They understand there is one and only one thing to do with people’s differences: respect them. Not try to change them, nor reject them. No. Simply respect them. We can use the wonderful formula of “let’s agree to disagree” and then drop the subject. Even if we think we know better. The truth is, we don’t. Parents don’t know better than kids just

because they have lived longer on this Earth. The greatest gift we can give to our children is to believe in their ability to find their own path. If you find yourself in an enmeshed family trying desperately to feel accepted by them, only to feel even more rejected, then please know this: becoming an adult means that we allow ourselves to be unacceptable to our family! It means that we allow ourselves to choose and follow values that may be different from theirs. It means that their acceptance and approval are “nice to have” in our lives- but are not essential to our well-being.

I love you just because we share a common family… a common humanity. Feel free to cut the emotional umbilical cord with anyone in your life, whether it’s your parents, your siblings, your spouse, or even your own children. Depending on their love to feel good about yourself is costing you your dreams and putting undue pressure on the relationship. Set them free. Set yourself free. And once you do, real, unconditional, accepting, tolerating, sweet love can flourish.

This is what it means to cut the umbilical cord! It means that how they see us and what they think of us does not affect us. Because what affects us is how we see ourselves and what we think of ourselves. Energetically, this feels like putting an emotional distance between you and them. Sure, when we have been raised in enmeshed families, this emotional distance feels strange to us. It almost feels like a separation. And it is, in a certain way. But it is necessary. Because extremes are never good. A family where people don’t care at all about each other is bad. But equally bad is one where the members care “too much” about each other. We need to find a healthy balance, even when it comes to emotional closeness.

Healthy families welcome diversity

And the irony and beauty of this is that when we cut this emotional cord… when we establish this healthy distance… that is exactly when we are able to truly love our family members. Without expectations. This is unconditional love. It is not a love based on how much they agree with us… or how similar they are to us… or how much we approve of them… No. It is a love based on the premise that I love you… even if we disagree on a million things.

Barbara Roux-Levrat is Europe’s #1 expert in teaching women who are “too nice” how to become kick-ass! She was herself “too nice” until she finally broke free and designed the life she always wanted. Since then, it is her passion and purpose in life to help other women break free as well.... because we all deserve an amazing life! You can contact her at barbara@emotionalstrength.com - www.emotional-strength.com - www.noblemanhattan.ch

Business

What Makes an Effective

Leader?

Thought leader and senior advisor in effective change management and regular contributor to Business Fit, Don Zillioux, Ph.D., talks about the qualities that make an effective business leader.

The attitude of the Leader can encourage people to accomplish great things

The test of any Leader lies in action, not in words. An effective Leader does not overstate the promise of success for fear of disappointing others. He is slow to speak but quick to act. He watches carefully over his words. It is a grave error to promise more than one can deliver. The attitude of the Leader, coupled with a positive atmosphere in the organisation, can encourage people to accomplish great things. And consistent accomplishment generates additional momentum. Many times, momentum is the only difference between a winning, positive, growth environment and an acidic, negative, demoralizing atmosphere. •

To be appointed to a leadership position is not sufficient to make you a Leader. You must, after being appointed, take charge, and begin leading.

•

Anything that hinders your team’s ability to perform should be lawful prey... track it, hunt it down and eliminate it! Especially sacred cows!

•

The primary operating value expected of Leaders is to exhibit a bias toward action and a sense of urgency about their business.

•

When things are running routinely, a manager can maintain the status quo. But when there is a crisis, somebody has to take charge....that’s the Leader!

•

Leaders perform for results, not recognition.

•

Leaders must have strong personal energy to get a project up and running. They must also maintain that energy to see projects through to completion.

•

You must get some early victories, some wins! People must begin to think of themselves as winners and part of a winning organisation. Team-building or improvements in meetings or minor processes do not qualify as early wins! Early wins should create models of behaviour consistent with the leader’s vision of how the company should function.

•

Look for early wins where broad operational areas and processes could be changed to result in quick and substantial improvements with a minimum of effort. Maximum bang for the buck.

•

You must constantly seek to build personal credibility, political influence, and business momentum. People must start seeing some early wins. You must promote the perception that the company is going in promising directions.

Don Zillioux, Ph.D. is a recognised thought leader and senior advisor in effective change management and senior leader and chief scientist to SDW’s Worldwide Organization Effectiveness practice. He is the author of The Results-Focused Organization, the soon to be published series of Field Guides to Organizational Effectiveness and Instrument Based Training. Don’s writings and consulting/advisory work focus on planned change. www.sdwnet.com

Body

Conscious fitness: reconnecting with our physical potential through self-love and self-respect

Personal and Team Coach, Clemencia Montero, explains how working out can have a positive and a negative dimension and how by adopting specific habits we can encourage the progression of sport towards the awakening of consciousness. When you think of working out, what is the first thing that goes through your mind?

If it is not a pleasurable sensation, perhaps it is because you have been connecting working out to achieving something (an aesthetic result, losing weight) and not about really enjoying your physical capabilities and the pleasure of MOVING. On a strictly physiological level working out causes three things in our body:

Calorie burning: These calories are obtained first from blood glucose, then from glucose stored in the liver and when this is all used, the body begins to obtain its energy from accumulated fat and muscle mass, it begins to “eat itself”, in a process called autophagy, using the available reserves. Obviously, living in a continuous process of autophagy is not as healthy as using “temporary autophagy” to get rid of extra fat is, because excess lipids in the body cause a lot of diseases.

And it is at this level of consciousness that conscious fitness arises, which seeks to awaken in you the genuine intention to make a profound change in the way you interpret sport and the relationship with your body and make you aware of how and for what you have been training. Whether it is for the ego and its derivatives (aesthetics, low self-esteem, fear of aging, etc.) or in search of the well-being that produces a reconnection with the true nature of human evolution - the development and strengthening of our physical abilities along with the development and strengthening of our cognitive and emotional capacities. There are specific habits that encourage the progression of sport towards the awakening of consciousness: • •

Muscle, bone, and connective tissue microdamage: This is not necessarily negative because when these fibres or tissues are repaired, they increase in size and the whole becomes stronger.

•

Release of hormones of pleasure and wellbeing: It is well known that physical activity, from moderate to vigorous, causes a torrent of hormones to be released that generate pleasure and a sense of well-being, which at the same time can become an “addictive drug” leading us to the dark side of sports practice.

•

In conclusion, working out can always have a positive and a negative dimension. The positive dimension of fitness is congruent with the natural dispositions of our being, but the negative dimension, the one that makes us obsessed, insecure, addicted, and willing to sacrifice health to achieve arbitrary goals, is a direct result of our ego.

•

Do we want to train hard for the intrinsic pleasure of bringing our own body to a stronger, faster, or more flexible version, or, because we want the applause, recognition, and “medals” that the EGO seeks?

•

Train for the simple pleasure of moving. Experiment, do different things, try different disciplines. Slow down. What’s the rush? Let your body and not the clock set the pace. Learn to savour the details - what is yourbody feeling? What happens when you start to work out? The body has a rich and varied language that we have ignored and oversimplified. Don’t set routines or goals beyond the evolutionary and emotional principles of wellness. Live 100% in the present and be aware of your body’s needs today, not in the achievements, times, or medals of the future. Train from the evolutionary instinct that pushes us to live in constant transformation and improvement of our capabilities. “Nothing remains, everything changes.” Trying to prevent things from changing, like preventing aging, or staying at an exact weight, is like trying to cling to a “safe zone,” and self-love does not arise from attachment. Practice fasts, not just food fasts to accentuate the autophagy that is so much talked about for physical health, but also informational fasts to refresh your capacity for introspection outside of the daily pollution of cognitive saturation.

LOVE YOU TODAY. Nothing you can cling to will make you genuinely love yourself. From love there are no attachments, desires, conditions, or attempts to change things as they happen.

Clemencia Montero iis a Personal and Team Coach, she specializes in Conscious Fitness and Conscious eating. She is a Belief’s specialist and the Creator of the TOMMA program, for body and mental reshaping. She is also a Content creator for digital platforms and a SHE Ambassador in Belgium. instabio.cc/ClemMontero

Mindset & Emotion

Emotional

Integrity

Global Educator Professor Ona C. Miller suggests we assess how we feel emotionally regarding situations and circumstances and gives our readers some strategies to help us assess our emotional integrity and some tips to deal with challenges.

For every challenge you face, you become its greatest challenge.

Our emotions belong strictly to us. They are ours and are our responsibility. How we hold our emotions accountable is an inner expression of our emotional integrity. At some point in our lives, we must stop blaming others for how we feel or how we frivolously allow our emotions to rob us of trust, honesty, veracity, and reliability. We are constantly scrutinised, scandalised, and sensitised as female leaders and entrepreneurs. We have been taught and expected to ignore what we feel and keep moving for many years and decades. We have allowed ourselves to become numb to a reality that seems to be never-ending. But what we often do not prepare ourselves for is the day our minds, hearts, and bodies can’t seem to go on or take it anymore. We forget that we are human. We abandon our identity. We diminish our hopes and dreams, all for what we have been told is known as a sacrifice. We never imagined that there would be a day we would wake up and realise what we have previously learned and grown quite comfortable with was all just a façade and a lie we were told throughout generations. Equally exhausting is that we start blaming everything and everyone around us for something that was our responsibility to govern, shepherd, and guard. We should always protect our emotions. Identifying and defining our needs, expectations, and desires is the most crucial and foundational step in Emotional Integrity. Every day is a great time to assess how we feel emotionally regarding situations and circumstances we have experienced. All emotions have a starting point stemming from our past encounters and the relationships we have engaged in. When assessing our status of emotional integrity, it is best to start with ourselves and not look at or view the emotion as someone else’s fault or responsibility. I know that it is easier to try and blame others for how we feel, but let’s do the hard work and dig deep into our own lives and be integral. We agree that there is no “I” in the word “Team,” but there is an “I” in “Individual.” We are individually responsible for our emotions. Our emotions can damage a team and its efforts.

career ceilings, educational obstacles, etc. But it wasn’t until I started looking at why I encountered the situations and what were my genuine emotions from each experience that I was able to experience emotional freedom. Emotional Integrity is the foundation for a great female entrepreneur or leader. Emotional Integrity Strategies: 1. Be conscious and cognisant of every emotion. 2. Properly identify the emotion you experience. 3. Evaluate the legitimacy of the emotion. 4. Decide on how to deal with the emotion appropriately and adequately. 5. Set boundaries and control your environment that fosters viable emotions. 6. Establish connections, collaborations, and partnerships to promote positive emotional interactions. 7. Do not become obligated to the expectations of others concerning your life. 8. Eliminate distractions that cause destruction patterns. Emotional Integrity Maintenance: 1. You will not just attach yourself to anything or anyone. 2. Do not allow just anything or anyone to attach itself to you. 3. Make wise decisions. 4. Speak only when necessary. 5. Choose your words wisely. 6. Some steps you will have to take alone. 7. Don’t wait for approval. 8. Keep moving forward. Emotional Integrity for Challenges: 1. For every challenge you face, you become its greatest challenge. 2. For every obstacle you must overcome, you become its greatest obstacle. 3. For every hindrance you encounter, you become its greatest hindrance. 4. For everything you are facing, let your presence be greatly known. Don’t forget to deal realistically with YOU!

I can remember the hurt and pain I felt from divorce, failed relationships, family dysfunction,

Professor Ona C. Miller is a Global Educator, International Mentor, and

International Author. She is the Founder of Female Civility Initiative™ and National Female Civility Day. Professor Ona dedicates her experience and education to providing wisdom, direction, and advice. Her expertise is in delivering solutions that will change the environment of Female Leadership, Female Global Relations, and Female Societal Positioning.

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Business Fit Magazine May 2022

Articles inside

Conscious fitness:

Pay Attention to your Attention

How to Lead Yourself in Challenging Times

Why Mental Health Matters

Sandra Laura Manuela