Tag Archive for: personal development

reviewing the year before moving on playing full out rita hyland

Reviewing the Year Before Moving On

reviewing the year before moving on playing full out rita hyland

Listen to the full podcast episode to learn the simple practice to review the year that can help you grow in every area of your life.

What I am profoundly aware of is that there have been many times in my life when I have – in the simplest terms – been wrong. 

For the longest time, I believed that I would hit a certain age and magically everything that I wanted would happen. For years, I believed that it would all just come together and I judged myself when it didn’t. 

I now realize that is not the truth – that wisdom doesn’t just arrive based on time, age, or even some external situation, but it requires deliberate actions to learn and grow.

I realized that my thoughts on success were all wrong – success is an inside-outside job. The most successful people are those that feel good in their skin, have humility and confidence, forgive themselves, and have the awareness to reevaluate their lives. 

And that last one is what I am discussing today.

Reevaluation is absolutely necessary as our old ways are not always our best ways. Without reevaluation, we make things a lot harder on ourselves as we continue to repeat things we’re unconscious that we’re doing. Conversely, there are also our achievements, our successes, and our positive habits that deserve and require our acknowledgment.

So, at a time like the end of the year when there is a collective pause, it’s important to step back, review what worked in the past year and what didn’t work well, and consciously identify what it is we want to carry with us into the new year. 

To help myself and my clients do so, I implement a simple practice I call Catch & Release each year. The practice will help you know exactly what it is you want to take with you into the year ahead, what you want to let go of and why. Let’s get into it.

  1. Celebrate your wins and accomplishments

    1. My suggestion during this step is to grab your calendar and go week by week reviewing gatherings you’ve had with family and friends, projects you accomplished at work, improvements to your house, and any other experiences you have had in the past year. This is very helpful because, if you’re like me, you may forget all the great moments you’ve experienced. 

  2. Acknowledge your mistakes and challenges with grace

    1. Just as we have reviewed our wins, we want to also take a moment to review our mistakes or difficult moments of the year. These may be goals you didn’t reach, projects you didn’t finish, or something that didn’t go as planned. Although these can be difficult to look at, they may actually become gold for you in designing the year ahead.

  3. Identify insights from both lists

    1. Once you’ve made these two lists, go through them noting next to each what insight or lesson has come from that experience. Nothing happens without a purpose, so ask yourself, “What did I learn from this?” It may have been to ask for more help or for what you want, to delegate and let go of more, or to set bigger boundaries. Look at the themes you can notice with each win and setback. 

  4. Forgive someone or yourself

    1. Forgiveness allows us to make space for other things to enter. When we’re holding grudges or judges, they retain and take energy which depletes us of the fuel for other great endeavors and dreams. What is it that you need to forgive and release so you can welcome something wonderful and extraordinary?

  5. Ask “What do I need to say goodbye to?”

    1. Maybe you’re ready to say goodbye to a relationship that isn’t serving you or to pleasing someone that’s too difficult to please and you’ve realized that’s no longer your responsibility. Being conscious of what you need to say goodbye to allows you to take the next step toward what you’d like to have.

Once you’ve gone through the Catch & Release practice, you can create your master list listing what you’re going to “catch” on the left side and what you will release on the right. As an added bonus, cut off the Release side and burn it. Perform a ceremonial goodbye and officially release those things from your life entirely. 

Once you do this, you will find more freedom to design and pursue your ultimate future.

Before you sign off on the past year, thank it for everything: the positives and the messiness. Express gratitude. Each year is another opportunity to expand ourselves.  

There is much to come in the year ahead!

Your Call to Action this week is to give yourself the gift of a break to recharge.

Take this opportunity to rest and review the past year before you move into the year ahead. The pause is a requirement to reenter the game of life with strength. 

 

In this episode I share:

  • My go-to 5-step practice for reviewing the year or evaluating the end of any significant cycle to ensure growth and success in the upcoming year
  • Personal lessons I’ve learned in life that only came from a practice of reevaluating  
  • How this practice has impacted both my life and the lives of my clients over the years

 

Resources and related episodes:

 

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts for more tips, tools, and inspiration to lead the optimal vision of your life, love, and leadership. Remember, a half version of you is not enough. The world needs the fullest version of you at play.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

___

About Rita Hyland

With over 20 years of experience as an executive and leadership coach, Rita helps leaders — emerging and established — excel in corporate and entrepreneurial environments.

Rita believes if leaders were more clear about how transformation really works and more intentional about creating what they want, their impact, success, and influence in the world would be unstoppable.

Through her coaching programs, private coaching, and masterminds, Rita shows leaders how to win consistently and create the impact and legacy they desire.

Central to Rita’s work is the understanding that you will never outperform your current programming, no matter how strong your willpower.

When you learn to use Rita’s proprietary Neuroleadership Growth Code, a technology that uses the best of neuroscience and transformational psychology to hit the brain’s buttons for change, YOU become both the solution and the strategy.

Her mission is to end talented, hard-working, and self-aware leaders spending another day stuck in self-doubt or confusion and not contributing their brilliant work and talent the world so desperately needs.

why who you are matters just as much as the work playing full out rita hyland

Why Who You Are Matters Just As Much As The Work

why who you are matters just as much as the work playing full out with rita hyland

Listen to the full podcast episode to learn the 1 thing I wish someone had told me and 1 of the most common mistakes I often see being made by people in leadership, business, and entrepreneurship.

This week, during a podcast interview, I was asked, “What 3 things do you wish someone had told you?” It inspired me to share with you the most significant one and also the most uncomfortable one for me to relive and share publicly.

Early on in my career, I was hired to present a keynote for a product company. As I organized my thoughts on what I would include in my speech, I was hung up on something. There were thoughts and images of very well-known speakers who I’d seen do successful keynote speeches in the past and I began to compare myself to them. 

Since I had never given a presentation to this amount of people before, I was suffering from a bout of imposter syndrome. 

Looking back now, it makes me squirm thinking of how I approached that presentation. But, the issue didn’t come from what I was speaking on or the words I chose to use. The real issue lied in who I was being as I presented.

Imposter syndrome led to self-doubt which pushed me towards attempting to mirror what I admired in other speakers. Now, there is some logic to this. We always hear “Success leaves clues. Watch what others are doing and repeat it.” However, in this case, my attempt to mirror someone else completely overshadowed the most important thing: who I truly was. 

Each of us has the instinctive capability to sense a disconnect between who a person is behaving as and who they truly are. When this happens, we immediately lose trust in that person. 

Here’s what I wish someone had told me: Who you are matters just as much as the work you do. People want you just as much as they want your strategy, your service, or your product. 

My coaching clients love working with me because there’s a trust and knowing that they’re going to receive the real, authentic me – transparency, imperfections, and all – as we work together. It seems simple enough, but it’s actually one of the most uncommon things to experience. 

Being true to yourself, being who you really are takes time to fully grasp. It takes each of us a unique amount of time to fully realize it, choose to be vulnerable, and implement it. We must be intentional about being true to ourselves, especially as we grow and become leaders in our industry. As the number of eyes that are on us grows, the harder it can be to stay true to who you are. 

But it is so irresistibly attractive to be authentic because it is so uncommon. When you are able to truly be yourself, it easily shines through to others due to your humility and confidence. You don’t need validation. You realize you are special and enough just as you are. 

The sooner you can realize, accept, and own that you are special, the sooner you can progress with helping those you are here to serve.

This will lead you to enjoy a greater deal of happiness. If you’re ready to do so, here are 3 steps to guide you in getting there:

  1. Set the intention to share yourself vulnerably, to not be so rigid in sharing who you are.
  2. Pay attention to how you talk to yourself. Remember: words really do matter. 
  3. When someone tells you that you’re special, accept it, own it, and say “Thank you.” Don’t deflect or dismiss. 

What can you expect to happen? For me, I began to share more of who I am and it’s led me to becoming a person more focused on how I can help others instead of concerning myself with what they will think of me. When I do this, I’m real and the experience is much more comfortable, authentic, and real for both parties. 

In this episode I share:

  • One of the most important things I wish someone had told me long ago
  • A practice to instantly defeat a bout of imposter syndrome when it strikes
  • A personal story recounting a cringeworthy time in my life where I wasn’t authentic
  • The idea that people want YOU as much as they want your smarts, strategies, and solutions
  • Why becoming truly authentic requires some initial personal work

Resources and related episodes:

 

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts for more tips, tools, and inspiration to lead the optimal vision of your life, love, and leadership. Remember, a half version of you is not enough. The world needs the fullest version of you at play.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

___

About Rita Hyland

With over 20 years of experience as an executive and leadership coach, Rita helps leaders — emerging and established — excel in corporate and entrepreneurial environments.

Rita believes if leaders were more clear about how transformation really works and more intentional about creating what they want, their impact, success, and influence in the world would be unstoppable.

Through her coaching programs, private coaching, and masterminds, Rita shows leaders how to win consistently and create the impact and legacy they desire.

Central to Rita’s work is the understanding that you will never outperform your current programming, no matter how strong your willpower.

When you learn to use Rita’s proprietary Neuroleadership Growth Code, a technology that uses the best of neuroscience and transformational psychology to hit the brain’s buttons for change, YOU become both the solution and the strategy.

Her mission is to end talented, hard-working, and self-aware leaders spending another day stuck in self-doubt or confusion and not contributing their brilliant work and talent the world so desperately needs.

relationship-will-last

The #1 Sign Your Relationship Will Last

relationship-will-last

Listen to the full podcast episode to learn the 1 simple thing that will show if your relationship will last, what you need to do to improve the health and longevity of your relationship, and how to apply this same principle to ANY relationship you may be struggling with.

None of us have taken a class in life that tells us how to have healthy relationships, but most of us don’t need much convincing that happy relationships are key to a successful life. Despite the importance of relationships to our overall well-being, happiness, and success, often we navigate through relationships on our own and learn as we go through a lot of trial and error. We don’t really know how to tell if a relationship will last or how to make sure a relationship lasts longer.

Today, I want to clear that up for you by sharing the science found by two marriage and relationship experts that will help you understand what it really takes to make sure your relationship will last. The best part is this principle can also be applied to your relationships with coworkers, family members, and with anyone else you may connect with in life. 

Lately, several people have described the struggles they are experiencing in their relationships.

For some, the connection in their marriage has waned. For others, they aren’t clicking with a fellow coworker. These experiences got me thinking of something extremely interesting that I learned years ago.

There are two psychologists – John and Julie Gottman – who, within 15 minutes of meeting a married couple, can predict if the couple will stay married or they will divorce… and with 94% accuracy. When I heard this, I thought it was crazy! I had to learn how they could figure this out.

John and Julie Gottman have determined that the outcome of a couple’s relationship comes down to one simple factor: the balance of their positive and negative interactions. They call this principle The Magic Ratio (or P&R, the Positive-Negative Ratio). 

In The Magic Ratio, couples with a Positive-to-Negative ratio of 5:1 are likely to have a relationship that will last.

This means they have 5 positive interactions with one another for every negative interaction. This counters our common belief that we only need to have a 1:1 ratio when a positive interaction happens to resolve any negative one. Unfortunately, that’s just not how science works.

Let’s put this in perspective. Say you’re having a bad day and you take it out on your spouse throughout the day: once at breakfast, once in mid-afternoon, and once around dinner. According to The Magic Ratio, you have to have 15 positive interactions to actually make up for those 3 negative interactions. Can you see the multiplying impact of having a bad week? 

If this science is true for romantic relationships, it can also be applied to other relationships in our lives. The Gottman’s applied The Magic Ratio to predict marital success and there is more academic research conducted by Heapy and Losada that found that the average ratio for high-performing teams was 5.6:1, 2:1 for medium-performance teams, and -3:1 for low-performance teams. 

The Magic Ratio is such an easy way to gauge how your relationships are going and if you want stronger relationships, you know that your number of positive interactions needs to increase. 

This week, I challenge you to take notice.

Choose one relationship in your life and look at your Positive-to-Negative Ratio with that person. Notice how many positive and negative interactions you have with them within a week. Then, be intentional about increasing your positive interactions. All it takes is a little intentionality. 

I want to invite you to tune into this week’s podcast episode as I take this topic even deeper to discuss the impact that negativity has on our interactions and the important role we each play in bringing a bit more positivity to this world. 

In this episode I share:

  • The #1 predictor of your relationship lasting or ending
  • Examples of how to use this principle in different types of relationships
  • What I believe to be each of our responsibility to the collective frequency

Resources and related episodes:

 

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts for more tips, tools, and inspiration to lead the optimal vision of your life, love, and leadership. Remember, a half version of you is not enough. The world needs the fullest version of you at play.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

___

About Rita Hyland

With over 20 years of experience as an executive and leadership coach, Rita helps leaders — emerging and established — excel in corporate and entrepreneurial environments.

Rita believes if leaders were more clear about how transformation really works and more intentional about creating what they want, their impact, success, and influence in the world would be unstoppable.

Through her coaching programs, private coaching, and masterminds, Rita shows leaders how to win consistently and create the impact and legacy they desire.

Central to Rita’s work is the understanding that you will never outperform your current programming, no matter how strong your willpower.

When you learn to use Rita’s proprietary Neuroleadership Growth Code, a technology that uses the best of neuroscience and transformational psychology to hit the brain’s buttons for change, YOU become both the solution and the strategy.

Her mission is to end talented, hard-working, and self-aware leaders spending another day stuck in self-doubt or confusion and not contributing their brilliant work and talent the world so desperately needs.

a simple practice to elevate your personal brand playing full out rita hyland podcast

A Simple Practice to Elevate Your Personal Brand

a simple practice to elevate your personal brand playing full out with rita hyland podcast

Listen to the full podcast episode to understand the important role self-awareness plays in your personal brand and learn my simple 3-step practice that will help elevate your personal brand experience.

We are all familiar with companies and their different brands. Brands instantly connect us to certain feelings and expectations. Take Tesla for example: this brand is all about cutting-edge innovation. The Disney brand is a joy and delight. When you think of Disney, you know what experience you will have.

Just like well-known companies, do you realize that you as an individual have a personal brand experience, too?

I didn’t think I’d be sharing this, but I want to tell you about my experience with a recent purchase from a new brand. I ordered a purse from an online company. When it arrived, I opened the box and there was a message reading: Your experience begins.

There were many layers to the opening experience. The purse was wrapped as a gift to me with a personalized letter in a handwritten script, there was a lot of beautiful tissue paper, and it was all inside a gorgeous, luxurious, and royal navy blue box. The company also included a surprise gift — a credit card case. Inside, they’d placed a high-quality business card from them with a lifetime guarantee and an address to use if the purse ever needed to be fixed. 

The company had strategically placed two of these cards in different places which signified to me how much they cared about my delight with my experience of their product. I’m exposed to many different brands, but this one really got me thinking about brand experiences.

Let me explain how you have a personal brand experience, as well.

When coaching leaders at companies, I often interview the individuals who work with an individual within the company and I ask them this question: When you think of this person, what one thing comes to mind that describes your experience of them? What I find amazing is there’s always repetition in the answers that I collect. I may interview 6-8 different individuals and there’s always a theme. 

In essence, the interview process hones in on the individual’s personal brand.  It ultimately answers the question: Who are they to others? Notice I didn’t ask how their work, product, or services are. Although the product we create or the service we perform is important, what’s just as important is who we are being in the delivery.  What is another’s experience of us? Why?  Because you yourself are an experience. 

When you understand this, the next natural question to ask yourself is, “What experience do people have with me? What do I bring beyond what I’m doing or providing?”

I can’t tell you how many people don’t know or have ever even considered this before. 

One of the traits of a conscious leader is that they realize it’s not just what they accomplish or achieve, but who they are being while they do it.

In other words, how do people feel in your presence?

Does your personal brand delight others?

Fuel others?

Elevate others?

Or, does it drain them? 

We all know someone in our lives who after interacting with them, you feel more exhausted or drained than elevated. The worst part is the individual usually has no idea of what they’re known for.  

Each of us has a responsibility to be awake, to be conscious and this begins with becoming more self-aware each and every day.

I believe the answer to all of our problems from a national level to a personal level is this: our ability to be self-aware and awake. 

If you haven’t given thought to your personal brand, I have a practice that you can use to hone in on the experience you bring to all of your interactions so that you can elevate your personal brand. 

The first step is to ask yourself: Who am I being while I do what I’m doing?

In your daily interactions, are you simply focused on getting it done, or are you deliberate about the experience you bring as well? To do this, simply look back at the interactions you’ve had within the last 24 hours. What do you think those on the receiving end felt when they were with you? Is that an experience you want to be associated with you?

Since it can be difficult to see ourselves accurately, I also recommend a more straightforward approach. Ask a friend or a trusted coworker this: If you had to describe who I am known for being, what comes to mind? If you had to describe what your regular experience is with me, what is that? 

The second step is to identify the personal brand you actually want to promote. 

How do you want people to experience you? Maybe you want to be the go-to expert, the person who sweeps people off their feet, or the one who gets things done. There is no right or wrong answer to this question, but you do need to know how you want because you can’t hit a target you can’t see. 

This step is where you identify who you are, what you’re bringing to the table, and the experience you want others to have with you.

The third step is to make a list of the 5-7 things that will help you bring forth that experience for others consistently and elevate your personal brand.

An important aspect of elevating your desired personal brand experience is to be intentional. To do that, you have to know the things that will deliver that experience on a day-to-day basis. 

How will you surprise and delight others’ experiences with you? There are so many ways to surprise and delight in your workplace and your community. This step calls you to get specific on what those will be. 

Just like the company that sent me the purse. They defined the 5-7 things that they do to surprise and delight their customers and they did them. That’s what I’m asking you to do. 

Some of those things may look like this:

  • streamlining a process
  • making something easier because you saw the opportunity
  • sharing a compliment publicly at a team meeting
  • grabbing a coffee for someone who has been sitting at their desk fighting a tight deadline
  • doing something that needs to be done even when you haven’t been asked 

All-in-all, your personal brand is a pulse check on who you are being and how people experience you.

This matters because it either elevates others — your co-workers, clients, or family members – in the organization, in the community, or in your family — or it diminishes them. There is no neutral. You either contaminate or contribute. The last thing you want is to be unaware of who you are as an experience to others. 

Our #1 responsibility in this lifetime is to wake up and elevate the consciousness of the world. That may seem lofty but it can be done every day in each of your interactions by bringing a little surprise and delight. 

You are more than what you do or the products or services you provide. Who you’re being matters!

In this episode I share:

  • 3 actionable steps to improve self-awareness and elevate your personal brand
  • Self-reflective prompts to analyze others’ experiences of you
  • My personal experience of surprise and delight while shopping with a new brand
  • Several ways to add surprise and delight to your personal brand experience

Resources and related episodes:

 

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts for more tips, tools, and inspiration to lead the optimal vision of your life, love, and leadership. Remember, a half version of you is not enough. The world needs the fullest version of you at play.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

___

About Rita Hyland

With over 20 years of experience as an executive and leadership coach, Rita helps leaders — emerging and established — excel in corporate and entrepreneurial environments.

Rita believes if leaders were more clear about how transformation really works and more intentional about creating what they want, their impact, success, and influence in the world would be unstoppable.

Through her coaching programs, private coaching, and masterminds, Rita shows leaders how to win consistently and create the impact and legacy they desire.

Central to Rita’s work is the understanding that you will never outperform your current programming, no matter how strong your willpower.

When you learn to use Rita’s proprietary Neuroleadership Growth Code, a technology that uses the best of neuroscience and transformational psychology to hit the brain’s buttons for change, YOU become both the solution and the strategy.

Her mission is to end talented, hard-working, and self-aware leaders spending another day stuck in self-doubt or confusion and not contributing their brilliant work and talent the world so desperately needs.

how to boost your patience enrgy progress and do the best work of your career playing full out rita hyland

How To Boost Your Patience, Energy, and Progress So You Do the Best Work Of Your Career

blog graphic displaying podcast title: how to boost your patience energy and progress so you do the best work of your career playing full out with rita hyland

Listen to the full podcast episode to learn how to boost your patience, joy, and purpose-driven work so that you bring your masterpiece to life. By using this strategy, you will truly help a whole lot more people as you do the best work of your career.

Recently I was speaking to a client named Tom. Tom is a goal-oriented, productivity-minded, high-achiever who continuously strives to improve his productivity and efficiency. Yet when it came time for Tom to be promoted, he was passed over.  

When I first met Tom he was frustrated, to say the least. Tom had been successfully leading a team and couldn’t understand what exactly was holding him back. So, he wanted to work with me to figure it out and be able to accomplish and impact even more.

As I listened, I could tell he was a top-talent employee, but something was missing and it wasn’t a lack of stress and frustration. He wasn’t reaching his goal as partner fast enough and was frustrated that people who were, frankly, not as intelligent as he had passed him by.  

I asked Tom some questions to explore what his relationships and interactions with others looked like.  I noticed they seemed more like transactions than interactions.  It was clear that Tom’s attention was focused on accomplishing and achieving  – the faster the better — and then getting the next thing accomplished.  

We all do this at some point.

It’s easy to get caught up in the busyness of our daily work and life. People are expecting things from us, we have responsibilities, we feel like we are in a race against the clock, and the days and weeks just become a blur. Our life’s focus becomes all about getting it done and how efficient we can be in the process. This is particularly the case for left-brain dominant high-performers (like Tom) who pride themselves on productivity and accomplishment. 

What Tom had forgotten was the mission behind what he was doing. He insisted that all he wanted to do was be able to help more people, but his actions reflected something different. 

He began to notice how his loss of patience and his approach to work was negatively impacting his reaching the next level. He had been over-valuing what he accomplished and under-valuing who he was “being” as he did it. 

I presented the opportunity for a much simpler solution. I asked Tom to consider setting a very deliberate new intention for his day-to-day interactions that would take him in a new direction.  

Here is the approach I asked Tom to consider: be on a mission to bring joy and serve one person at a time, one interaction at a time, one day at a time.  

Too often our intentions in this goal-driven society are to “get it done.” Our days become purely transactional until we notice we are exhausted, frustrated, and unfulfilled.  Perhaps the worst part is that the experience is anything but joyful, and the stressed-out state limits the creativity you need to build your masterpiece!

So, again here is the approach that will elevate your patience, your energy, and your productivity: be on a mission to bring joy and serve every single day. 

When you understand your mission and deliberately set an intention to bring joy and serve each person in each moment, you will build your masterpiece and impact a whole lot of people!  You won’t have to race to accomplish it either! As you know, masterpieces take time. When we begin one person at a time, one interaction at a time, that impact will ripple out and you will succeed at your work and life’s greatest mission.

 

THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE

Set your intention for the next two weeks to truly help others moment to moment in each interaction you are in. Whether that’s checking out at the grocery store, sitting down to write your next email, or interacting with an upset customer or colleague, bring joy and serve. That is the purpose of life and the reason you are here.

 

Tune into this episode of Playing Full Out to reassess the mission you’re truly operating from and set the intention that will change everything and get you closer to your masterpiece with ease and joy. 

 

In this episode I share:

    •  A simple game-changing approach that will boost your patience and energy especially when things don’t seem to be moving fast enough 
    • An easy way to know if your interactions with others are more like transactions and how to change that
    • What many high-performers forget about their work and a brain-based tool to use so that you don’t
    • The #1 thing  those who create great things and impact a whole lot of people always have in the front of their mind 
    • The story of a top-talent client, Tom, who even though he was ‘getting it all done’ and ‘doing it all right,’ still wasn’t making the progress he wanted and how he changed that.  

Resources and related episodes:

 

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts for more tips, tools, and inspiration to leading the optimal vision of your life, love, and leadership. Remember, a half version of you is not enough. The world needs the fullest version of you at play.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

___

About Rita Hyland

With over 20 years of experience as an executive and leadership coach, Rita helps leaders — emerging and established — excel in corporate and entrepreneurial environments.

Rita believes if leaders were more clear about how transformation really works and more intentional about creating what they want, their impact, success, and influence in the world would be unstoppable.

Through her coaching programs, private coaching, and masterminds, Rita shows leaders how to win consistently and create the impact and legacy they desire.

Central to Rita’s work is the understanding that you will never outperform your current programming, no matter how strong your willpower.

When you learn to use Rita’s proprietary Neuroleadership Growth Code, a technology which uses the best of neuroscience and transformational psychology to hit the brain’s buttons for change, YOU become both the solution and the strategy.

Her mission is to end talented, hard-working, and self-aware leaders spending another day stuck in self-doubt or confusion and not contributing their brilliant work and talent the world so desperately needs.

SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES

© 2024 Rita Hyland | PRIVACY