Coach Amitava

Achieving targets is all about goal planning, adaptability, action and self-discipline.  Nothing has put those skills to the test like the COVID 19 pandemic. Considering the dynamic global environment and knowing how fast things can change, personal life coaches in India have started proposing strategies/new plans that will help to succeed in this ‘new normal’.

From news to the economy, from social interactions to business meetings, everything around seems to be negative and uncertain. In such an environment, it’s easy to forget that there might be a silver lining – here could be some opportunities worth exploring. If you act now and rework new plans, you can help your business/work become more flexible and resilient in the long run, and you could achieve your goals, come what may!

Let us take you through important lessons that help in startup CEO coaching. It is called the FOCUS method. One needs to FOCUS on these five ways to create a new plan in the new normal:

Focus on Local

The current pandemic can be viewed either as a crisis or as a unique opportunity to evolve casual local customer relationships into lifelong bonds. Considering that it has become difficult to source services and products from outstation, people are relying more and more on their local communities, service providers and neighbourhoods. Thus, it’s time to understand just how important local businesses are to communities and cities. Now is the time to connect with your local clientele.

Online Marketing

Amazon has seen sales go through the roof during the Corona pandemic! One could take a cue from the e-commerce giant, even if one’s business model isn’t suited to online sales. In fact, this could the perfect time to improvise your website and use the power of online marketing.

·        Review your website content and rework it so as to ensure that it reflects changing customer needs.

·        Update your website and let people know about changes in your working model, making it more user friendly and conducive to current times.

·        Post details of your Safety Plan against COVID 19.

·        Reconnecting with your customers through email newsletters or value letters.

·        Ensuring your site is optimized for search so people can find you online, easily, at the click of a button.

 Competitive Advantage

Many consumers are judging businesses—large and small—based on their response to this crisis. Consider how you can stand out and be different from your competitors. You could consider the following:

·        Be an active part of your local community/ clan.

·        Ensure that your customers feel safe when doing business with you.

·        Make sure that customers can buy your services or products easily.

·        Last but not the least, excellent customer service is the key to success.

Unlock Your Business

Almost overnight, businesses have been forced to adapt to the new normal. From launching online services to managing a remotely operating workforce, the transformation is unprecedented. As the global economy starts to carefully unlock and open up, take some time to just pause and simply reflect on what has changed.

You take this an opportunity to look for ways to permanently improve aspects of your business operations.

For instance, you might have adopted tools – such as online communication, remote project management tools or order booking or delivery services – that improved your efficiency and productivity during the lockdown. Can these tools become a part of your system even as you ‘unlock’ your business? Can your delivery service be more seamlessly integrated into your business permanently? Could adopting ‘work from home’ staff even after COVID-19 save you money on office space?

Strategize on New Ideas

In recent times, one may come across innumerable examples of businesses pivoting during COVID-19 because they had no other choice. Now is a good time to look towards the future and work out well thought of, long-term business opportunities in the “new normal.”

When circumstances change, the ripple effect can be rather significant. As you look ahead, think about tactics that could help you revive your business or consider new ideas.

Start by answering the following questions:

·        What are the new problems people in your community are facing due to the pandemic?

·        COVID 19 has created new wants, needs and requirements? Study and research what are the new customer needs in the new normal.

·        How can your business or organizations offer solutions to these new problems or meet these needs?

·        How can you help your target market get back on their feet?

‘Workplace Stress’ is more than just the anxiety of a difficult project or a looming deadline. These may certainly trigger stress, but ‘workplace stress’ actually refers to feeling constantly overworked, uncertain and under-supported.

If you’re stressed out, you are bound to be less productive and far from being in your ‘peak state’.  You are more likely to be low on motivation, drive and focus.

Moreover, it can cause various physical symptoms like headaches, stomach problems, high blood pressure and chest pain, and sleep deprivation; not to mention its role in mood disorders, such as anxiety and depression, and lowering life expectancy.

The key to managing stress at work is so to keep it within a healthy level while ensuring that the situation doesn’t become overwhelming. Well, that’s easier said than done, right? But with proper executive leadership coaching, you can achieve your short and long term goals.

So, here are twelve tried and tested tips for overcoming stress at work and delivering results :

Workplace Wellness

Your workplace environment should be such that it supports your sustained wellbeing all throughout the day. You must experience more energy and less anxiety. Some excellent ways to facilitate this are:

·        Greener Spaces

It’s a good idea to add indoor plants to your desk or workspace. Including ‘greenery in your scenery’ will not only improve the quality of air in your workspace but also have a soothing effect on your mind, making you feel calmer.

·        Stay Hydrated

Maintaining your hydration levels throughout the day helps to keep your brain alert. Besides stimulating creative thinking and problem solving, drinking more water also ensures that your body keeps reminding you to get up and move since you need to use the restroom often! This change in physiology, changes your attitude towards work, making it less stressful.

·        Light up

order to support your mood and productivity, you could create a bright and naturally lit-up workspace. A hidden benefit here – it saves energy costs since natural light replaces the need for artificial lighting during daytime!

·        Aroma

To uplift your mood and awaken your senses, try using a scented candle or a diffuser with some essential oils. This can work as an excellent mood elevator and enhance your productivity.

Prioritizing Tasks & Goal Setting

The most effective way to handle workplace stress is to schedule your tasks by prioritizing tasks/goals and organizing your calendar. Here’s how to do it:

·        Smart Clear Goals

Before organizing and prioritizing, it is important that you set clear objectives. Sit back calmly and list out all your goals for the month/year. Ensure that your daily activities and tasks are well planned and lead you to your goals.

·        Prioritize Tasks

Set your priorities with clarity too. Make a to-do list and list out all important tasks to be done. Now, the importance of every task can be evaluated based on your goals.

To evaluate the priority of each task, just ask yourself the following question: Will it take me closer to my goal or further away from it?

If the answer is “closer to”, then it is a high priority task.

·        Focus on One Thing

Which means that your focus should be on your most important goal and just two or three tasks each week, which take you towards that goal. This approach will have the biggest impact on your goals.

·        Set Deadlines

It’s well known that if one does not have a deadline, the task will get pushed aside and will never see the light of day. Thus, it’s important to set realistic deadlines for everything. Once you have a deadline in place, your task is bound to get accomplished.

·        Schedule your Calendar

Plan your calendar so that you maximize your productivity. Plan out your next week on Friday or even Sunday evening. Don’t forget to schedule breaks in there!

Mental Wellness

Managing workplace stress is primarily about your attitude and your mindset. Your ability to cope with everyday ‘stress triggers’ largely depends upon your outlook. Changing your mindset by using the following stress busters can work wonders:

·        Stay Positive

The best way to stay positive is to express gratitude. When you start recognizing the people and things in your life that you’re grateful for, can create abundance and positive energy in life.

·        Resist Perfectionism.

Instead of fearing mistakes, learn from them. Your stress spike and your self-worth plummet when you run behind perfectionism. Remember that failures are just opportunities for learning and growth; they don’t define a man, they define his future course of action.

·        Focus on Effort & Attitude

Most of our fears and anxiety stem from uncertainty; which in turn is caused by things which are beyond our control. If we were to focus only on the things that we can control – like our effort, our attitude, and our behaviour – rather than worrying about the outcomes, most of our stress would disappear!

When you’ve been in a crisis like the current COVID-19 Pandemic, for a while, you often feel weighted at the bottom of a black hole. It feels as if you’ve been stuck there forever, without any scope for personal or professional growth.

In times like these, the best thing to do is to start leadership coaching courses to learn self-reflecting and recognizing ways, in which you have changed and grown, against all odds.

Self-reflection and realization are often difficult to practice, especially if you don’t know where to start. The key is to find the positive in the experiences you’ve had even during turbulent times and identify the best way to show that you’ve grown from these experiences. That’s when you realize that you’ve accomplished a lot more than you thought.

Growth is all about gaining new skills and experience. Professionally, you could relate your development to your current role or the role you want to take-up next.

In fact, personal development always fits alongside professional growth. So if you have progressed in your career, you would’ve developed personally first. You would’ve dealt with your fears and inner demons, before taking on more responsibility and succeeding with greater challenges on the professional front.

Just take a few minutes and think. During self-introspection, you could list out the following points and recognize how you’ve grown in the year 2020:

1. List down at least three things that you have accomplished in the last six months. Make a list of all your achievements, big or small, that you’re proud of!

2. Write down that one thing you have done this year (in 2020) that you will remember for the rest of your life.

3. Which aspect of your life do you feel more accomplished/successful in and why? It could be work/ friendships/ family/ mental health/ relationship or financial status. When you write down the reason, you get more clarity.

4. What are the three things you did to help someone else recently, and make a difference in their life?

5. The Corona Crisis and the subsequent changes have been a unique experience for everyone across the globe. It has opened up new ways of doing things. List out some things that you do differently now, as compared to previous times. There would be a long list of tasks that were difficult earlier and have become easy recently because you discovered a new approach. Appreciate and acknowledge yourself!

6. Who is one person who has made the biggest impact in your life this year? Why?

7. Lockdown learnings – What are the three most important lessons you’ve learned in the past year?

8. What advice would you give to your younger self, based on something new that you have learned over the past year?

9. What are your strengths and what are the traits which helped you hold the fort during these testing times?

10. What is the one improvement you have made, which has created a positive impact in your life? Instead of berating yourself for tasks or goals you could not accomplish this year, start highlighting the positive personality traits you possess and the actual growth you have experienced this year.

By writing down the answers to the above questions and listing out your achievements, you will realize that you have actually changed and transformed and grown as a person.

This realization will help you change the way you think of how you choose to handle situations when you come across new obstacles. You’ll soon forget your struggles and focus on the improvements you’ve made.

Learn different methods for self-realization and work towards achieving goals through leadership development coaching from Coach Amitava. To know more, kindly drop your enquiry at 

[email protected]

‘Workplace Stress’ is more than just the anxiety of a difficult project or a looming deadline. These may certainly trigger stress, but ‘workplace stress’ actually refers to feeling constantly overworked, uncertain and under-supported.

If you’re stressed out, you are bound to be less productive and far from being in your ‘peak state’.  You are more likely to be low on motivation, drive and focus.

Moreover, it can cause various physical symptoms like headaches, stomach problems, high blood pressure and chest pain, and sleep deprivation; not to mention its role in mood disorders, such as anxiety and depression, and lowering life expectancy.

The key to managing stress at work is so to keep it within a healthy level while ensuring that the situation doesn’t become overwhelming. Well, that’s easier said than done, right? But with proper executive leadership coaching, you can achieve your short and long term goals.

So, here are twelve tried and tested tips for overcoming stress at work and delivering results :

Workplace Wellness

Your workplace environment should be such that it supports your sustained wellbeing all throughout the day. You must experience more energy and less anxiety. Some excellent ways to facilitate this are:

Greener Spaces

It’s a good idea to add indoor plants to your desk or workspace. Including ‘greenery in your scenery’ will not only improve the quality of air in your workspace but also have a soothing effect on your mind, making you feel calmer.

Stay Hydrated

Maintaining your hydration levels throughout the day helps to keep your brain alert. Besides stimulating creative thinking and problem solving, drinking more water also ensures that your body keeps reminding you to get up and move since you need to use the restroom often! This change in physiology, changes your attitude towards work, making it less stressful.

Light up

order to support your mood and productivity, you could create a bright and naturally lit-up workspace. A hidden benefit here – it saves energy costs since natural light replaces the need for artificial lighting during daytime!

Aroma

To uplift your mood and awaken your senses, try using a scented candle or a diffuser with some essential oils. This can work as an excellent mood elevator and enhance your productivity.

Prioritizing Tasks & Goal Setting

The most effective way to handle workplace stress is to schedule your tasks by prioritizing tasks/goals and organizing your calendar. Here’s how to do it:

Smart Clear Goals

Before organizing and prioritizing, it is important that you set clear objectives. Sit back calmly and list out all your goals for the month/year. Ensure that your daily activities and tasks are well planned and lead you to your goals.

Prioritize Tasks

Set your priorities with clarity too. Make a to-do list and list out all important tasks to be done. Now, the importance of every task can be evaluated based on your goals.

To evaluate the priority of each task, just ask yourself the following question: Will it take me closer to my goal or further away from it?

If the answer is “closer to”, then it is a high priority task.

Focus on One Thing

Which means that your focus should be on your most important goal and just two or three tasks each week, which take you towards that goal. This approach will have the biggest impact on your goals.

Set Deadlines

It’s well known that if one does not have a deadline, the task will get pushed aside and will never see the light of day. Thus, it’s important to set realistic deadlines for everything. Once you have a deadline in place, your task is bound to get accomplished.

Schedule your Calendar

Plan your calendar so that you maximize your productivity. Plan out your next week on Friday or even Sunday evening. Don’t forget to schedule breaks in there!

Mental Wellness

Managing workplace stress is primarily about your attitude and your mindset. Your ability to cope with everyday ‘stress triggers’ largely depends upon your outlook. Changing your mindset by using the following stress busters can work wonders:

Stay Positive

The best way to stay positive is to express gratitude. When you start recognizing the people and things in your life that you’re grateful for, can create abundance and positive energy in life.

Resist Perfectionism.

Instead of fearing mistakes, learn from them. Your stress spike and your self-worth plummet when you run behind perfectionism. Remember that failures are just opportunities for learning and growth; they don’t define a man, they define his future course of action.

Focus on Effort & Attitude

Most of our fears and anxiety stem from uncertainty; which in turn is caused by things which are beyond our control. If we were to focus only on the things that we can control – like our effort, our attitude, and our behaviour – rather than worrying about the outcomes, most of our stress would disappear!

Your mindset, your beliefs and your thoughts affect everything in your life – from what you think and feel to how you act and react to the world around you.

In all my years as an executive business coach in Mumbai, I believe that one of the most important prerequisites to achieving your goals is to match your mindset with your aspirations, otherwise, it might be limiting you from reaching where you want to reach.

Here are three effective ways to bring about a powerful mindset shift:

Change your Words

Your thoughts create your feelings and your feelings lead you to taking or not taking certain actions- which in turn creates your reality. Changing your inner thought dialogue and the conversation you have been having with yourself, could help break your limiting beliefs. These conversations are a direct reflection of your mindset. If you keep telling yourself that you’re “not good enough”, your thoughts will create your reality and your mindset will hold you back from achieving your dreams. To create that mindset shift, you need to change your negative self-talk into an empowerment speech. It may sound cliché, but telling yourself “I can do this” or “I got this”, really works in encouraging a growth mindset.

In fact, by changing the way you talk to other people could be instrumental in transforming your mindset. Instead of complaining and talking about your problems, make it a habit to talk about the things that are going well in your life. This will help you move from a space of fear and lack, to a world of abundance and growth.

Train Your Brain

Determine a goal that you aspire to achieve. Understanding your goal will help you find deeper motivation to shift your mindset. Now, just take a moment to ask yourself a simple question: “What is the mindset that I need to achieve this goal?”

Once you have determined the mindset you need to have, start creating a new habit pattern and operating from that space. In this manner, you can basically ‘train your brain’ into adopting a new mindset and reinforcing it with your actions, thus, causing a mindset shift and achieving desired results.

Circle of Influence

Do you wish to acquire a mindset that leads you to growth and success? Start surrounding yourself with people who are very successful at what they do and seem to have accomplished their goals. Growth and success come to the one who is inspired enough to go for it!

It is easier to adopt a new mindset and bring about the desired change when you witness that it is already working for people around you. Pick up their positive traits, observe their thought process and adapt yourself to the daily habits that match your new mindset. Your ‘circle of influence’ can have a major impact on your mindset.

Integrating these powerful daily habits will definitely lead to a mindset shift you desire and reinforcing your new thinking with complimentary actions, will ensure that you succeed.

Whenever you’re feeling lost or uncertain about the next steps to take, you can always come back to these three steps to change your mindset. Your new mindset will act as an internal compass, always pointing to the right direction, helping you to move forward towards greater success!

Are you working towards shifting your mindset towards a more progressive state? Coach Amitava Pal, a life and leadership coach in india, can help you transform the way you think and the way you will assess opportunities and challenges in the new normal of entrepreneurship. Learn how to train your brain from the top business coach in Mumbai and navigate the new normal of entrepreneurship with confidence and credence.