If you want to get that next big promotion or your dream job, Dr. Yvonne Williams-McMillan and Erika Williams of Color Your World Personal Development & Coaching, LLC., suggest three things you should do before you start filling out applications. Become exceedingly knowledgeable about who you are and what your priorities are; use a journal for self-reflection and insight; and establish habits of success.
1 – Be Very Knowledgeable About Who You Are and What You Stand For.
Their Women’s Leadership Series focuses on helping women gain self-awareness. Williams and Williams-McMillan believe knowing who you are, your purpose and passion in life, your potential, and what core principles guide you, are indispensable to success.
Examine your values, beliefs, thoughts, words, and actions so that you understand why you do the things you do. Readily recognize and capitalize your value and articulate it to others to transform the way you express yourself and find meaning in both your personal and work life.
2 – Record and Monitor Your Transformation.
Self-discovery is not like taking a course for a few weeks and you’re done! Rather, it is often a slow and steady and an ongoing process that contributes to your personal development and growth.
As you transform, your new awareness motivates and changes you; encourages you to reinvent and embrace the best of who you are and who you’re striving to become. However, it is important to be aware of the changes you experience. One way to do that is to journal on a consistent basis.
Journaling is a great tool to explore issues that affect your life and gives you space to reflect on occurrences that happened to you on any given day, the emotions you experience, and the insight you hope to gain from them.
3 – Establishing Productive Habits.
Every habit you have — good or bad — can be categorized as a motor habit, intellectual habit, or habit of character. Muscular (motor) habits are physical actions such as sitting, standing, or walking; intellectual habits include mental abilities such as thinking and reasoning, and character habits are emotional expressions such as empathy, kindness, trust, and fairness. While not all of our habits are “good” or productive habits, we can and should cultivate habits that create breakthroughs in our life. Such habits are called keystone habits.
According to author Charles Duhigg, habits are not conscious decisions; they are routines. Once we establish a routine around the habit we want to add – and practice it diligently and consistently until it becomes natural to us – we are then able to experience exponential changes in our lives with less effort.
