SigmaU Blog

We all want more out of life, we want deeper relationships, we want more money, energy, opportunity, meaning!

To have more, we need to activate our potential by sharpening our edge! How do we go about doing that?

Reflect

Reflecting on past successes, failures and missed opportunities are great ways to think through our patterns. What have we done that works well? Reflecting gives us a chance to strengthen our resolve too! When I work with coaching clients who are in a slump, the first thing I have them do is create a success list of things that they have overcome, successes they have accomplished and challenges they have risen above. This reflection is an important reminder that in the past we have been able to sharpen our edge when it’s necessary to rise. We can sharpen our edge in the future to rise even higher!

Plan

The next powerful step is planning for success. Sharpen your edge by stretching your goal a little bigger than the original target. This stretching will expand...

Habit stacking is an incredible hack that I learned about in Atomic Habits by James Clear. He teaches the formula in which you take an existing habit and add a new habit to it to make it easier to tackle.

Examples of habit stacking that I do include:

Meditation while I’m stretching! It can be challenging for me to slow down and meditate so my hack is to meditate and do visualization while I’m stretching after a run.  I’m on my back anyhow, so why not build on it!

Getting my 10 pages of personal development read is done while I’m having my breakfast. Adding 24 oz. of water to the reading and eating helps me tackle my water consumption challenge which can trip me up. If I leave it too late in the day to get my gallon in, I’m up all night. So habit stacking at breakfast is imperative for me.

Habit stacking could be as small as saying something that you’re grateful for out loud as soon as your feet hit the floor in the morning.

There’s no...

Having congruency with your intentions creates a strong sense of self confidence, peace, and a greater sense of purpose. We know that high performers are deliberate with their actions. They set intentions each day and likely before transitioning to each new activity.

High performers map out what their top priorities for the day are, what their focus needs to be on and how they would show up as their best selves.

When I coach with clients, one of the very first things I have them do is to select 3 words that would describe their best self. These words may not necessarily reflect who they are today, but rather who they are becoming as they work towards growing and transforming into a high achiever. Some clients can come up with the 3 works quickly, they are sure about who they are and what they would want others to describe them as. For others, this is an introspective process that takes time.

What’s most important is making sure that future actions align with those 3 words. I...

I didn’t realize just how vehemently I am committed to personal growth and development until I was challenged and told that it was selfish. I stopped dead in my tracks and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This individual said “ya but have you considered the flipside of personal development. It’s actually selfish.”

Well, no! I must admit that I’d never considered investing in myself to be selfish and it got me wondering if people hold back from growing because they have bought in to this myth as well.

Here are a few reasons why I believe that personal development is not selfish.

1. You’re human which means you have an inherent need to grow.

See, most people stop living well before they’re dead. I look at some of my own family members who consume hours and hours of news and television and stopped growing years ago because they learned “all that they needed to know.” For me, that’s a sad existence.

I believe that...

Getting started is often the hardest part about accomplishing a goal. We know what we want but the task seems like a huge undertaking and daunting. We start doubting ourselves and our capacity to take on the challenge and another day slips by with our dream of becoming a new person! I’ve been there and so I wanted to share a few steps you might consider taking to make your next goal a reality!

#1 - Act right away!

Take one small action immediately after you set a goal. Example. I’m going to pay my house off by 2025 is a huge goal! Its great to have that on our vision board, read it out loud daily but if we stop there chances of paying off that bad boy is slim to none! One action step that could be taken right away would be to cancel your weekly cleaning services and have the $125/week come out of your chequing and go directly on to the principle of your mortgage. Now you’ve taken action on that big goal with a small task that will reap huge rewards!

#2 - Set...