How to Become a Better Person

Every day is a golden opportunity for self-improvement. As you strive to become the best version of yourself, it’s important to be a little bit better today than you were yesterday, in both your personal and your professional lives. Here’s how to get started:

1. Continue your self-development. Within each of us lies greatness, and we should exercise that greatness towards service. To that end, do something every day that scares you. Continue to focus on becoming your best self and uncovering your innate talents. This will get you in touch with the extraordinary gifts you have to offer the world.

2.  Only compete against the person in the mirror. Focus exclusively on your path – no one else’s. Don’t compare yourself to others, and don’t compete against them. Be your own biggest motivator.

3. Give back. A huge part of becoming a better person involves giving back to others without asking for anything in return. Every day, look for ways to use your innate gifts to inspire, empower, and help others.

4. Aim to brighten someone else’s day. Every single day, aim to be a positive influence for someone else – whether it’s a family member, a colleague, or a complete stranger. The joy you receive from making a positive difference in someone else’s life is priceless.

How to Create Meaningful Relationships

Relationships can either be nurturing or toxic. When you’re in a meaningful and nurturing relationship with a spouse, friend, or colleague, everyone benefits from the positivity and mutual support that’s created. On the other hand, when you’re in a toxic relationship, everyone involved feels drained, negative, defeated, and debilitated.

As the famous motivational speaker, Jim Rohn, once said, “You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Think about it. You begin to emulate the people you spend time with – and that includes the good and the bad behaviors, and the positive and the negative emotions. With that said, here’s how to create more meaningful and nurturing relationships:

1. Connect with yourself first. The most important relationship you have is with yourself. You have to be a true friend to yourself first before you can attempt to be a friend to others.

2. Build trust with others. Spend your time with honest, dependable people, and learn to build your trust by being vulnerable with them. This is critical, because you cannot create meaningful relationships without trust.

3. Enhance your communication skills. Become a stronger communicator, either by reading books about communication or working with a coach. This will enable you to connect with others in a meaningful way.

4. Be genuine. You can’t create truly strong and lasting relationships if you’re not being yourself. Be genuine in all of your interactions. Understand that as you become more honest about who you are, people will respond more favorably.

5. Accept people as they are. Don’t try to change the people in your life, and don’t expect them to “improve” with time. Accept them exactly as they are, and your relationships will flourish.

How to Grow as a Leader

We have often heard the one prevailing question surrounding great leaders, and that is: are they born or developed? This is an argument that has endured for many years, and it continues to this very day. As a coach with many decades of experience, I believe that leaders are both born and developed. I believe that all leaders are born with innate qualities and the gift to effectively empower others, and I believe that these individuals were able to achieve success because they committed themselves to developing their leadership capabilities.

Regardless of the innate gifts you were born with, you can still grow as a leader by developing key qualities that will enable you to empower and inspire others. Here are five ways to get started:

1. Read leadership books and articles. Reading books and articles by successful leaders is a terrific way to grow your own capabilities, because it exposes you to alternative leadership styles and techniques that you may not have encountered otherwise.

2. Invest in a leadership coach. Working with a coach is one of the best ways to grow as a leader, because your coach can open your eyes to your blind spots and provide the personalized guidance you’ll need to rapidly improve.

3. Identify a mentor. Looking to a mentor is another great way to grow as a leader. When you’re not sure how to act or what move to make next, you can think about how your mentor would handle this situation, and that can provide you with some much-needed insight.

4. Surround yourself with leaders who inspire you. Network with leaders you one day hope to be like. Surround yourself with inspiring individuals, and you’ll unconsciously push yourself to perform at their level.

5. Volunteer in a leadership role. Practice your leadership skills by volunteering in a leadership capacity at work, in your community, for a local civic group, or at church.