We all have moments of self-doubt, crises of confidence, or worst of all full-on imposter syndrome. Our minds play tricks on us telling us we aren’t capable of doing something, or we just aren’t good enough. The best way to fight this is with facts. It’s a trick called building the evidence to build confidence. It helps you develop self-efficacy which is just a psychology term for believing in your ability to achieve your goals.

Consistency is more than just about your habits or routines; it extends to intrinsic motivation and showing up for yourself.

We often think of values as abstract concepts that are sort of there in our subconscious and guide us in how we decide what to do. But they are so much more if we think about them intentionally. They can guide us on where to direct our physical and mental energy so we can thrive.

You don’t grow and change from your comfort zone or by having a fixed mindset. If you want to reach your goals then you need to move away from just surviving, to taking action and thriving.

Failure is a part of life. Things won’t always go according to plan. Sometimes it’s a head-in-hand, embarrassing mistake and other times, it’s an epic fail. It’s what you do with failure that counts. You have to learn to develop an acceptance of failure in order to grow. You don’t give up on the first try, or the second, or even the third. Most failures can be viewed as a learning experience if you let them be.

Oh, procrastination my old friend. You would think that with all the articles about how to deal with procrastination and the productivity apps out there, this one would be easy to conquer by now. It isn’t. Battling procrastination requires constant work and check-ins on why you’re doing it.

Lessons to take into the new year.

Looking to your past can help you look to your future, especially when setting goals for the long term.

Tips to manage and avoid burnout.

There is so much free content out there though that you have to filter through it all to get to some of the good stuff and who to follow. So, for this post, I’m copying the “copy my homework” mantra from one of my new favourite follows on social media and sharing my homework with you to copy.

I love winter but it’s probably because it’s the precursor to spring. It’s that in-between season where you can lay the groundwork to transition into summer with a new mindset. The saying is summer bodies are made in winter. Well, perhaps we could say summer minds are made in spring?

I love being busy. What I love more though is being productive. There is a difference. We all know those people who are constantly busy at work, but we hardly ever see the results of that busyness. Those busy people are often the people who also seem overwhelmed and stressed because their to-do lists are ever-growing and never-ending. To be productive, you need to work smart, not hard and for that you need systems.

Change can be external but a transition is far deeper, internal work.

On the importance of building your ‘pack’.

Career change sometimes means quitting a part of your identity. If you have been working in a particular field or had certain interests for a long time, then changing your focus is like saying goodbye to your past self.

In futures thinking, we usually work with ten-year timeframes because it gives you enough time to think about what you want to change for the future. You don’t feel pressed for time, and it also feels like enough time to make a change. We also like to look to the past to inform the future. This post does a bit of both, but slightly in reverse.

You can have a seat at the table, but it is of no use if you do not have a voice at that table. Your presence will be diminished. You will be forgotten. You will be labelled as something that you are not.

The linear progression of finishing school/university, getting a job, staying in said-job, and moving up in your career as you gain some on-the-job skills is a thing of the past. The world is changing so rapidly that you need to build a range of skills even if you do decide to specialise rather than be a generalist. This goes for personal development as well as professional development. You can’t always rely on your employer to do the latter for you.

The world is returning to ‘normal’ even though the pandemic hasn’t ended. South Africa is in its fifth wave and the US has now recorded one million deaths from Covid. Companies want employees to return to the office even though the world of work has fundamentally shifted during the pandemic – certainly from the perspective of the employee. Many organisations don’t seem to have recalibrated properly for that future. This should have been an opportunity to rethink how we work but it seems, particularly in South Africa, that we are going to be stuck in the past for now.

However, I want to write about the other impact of Covid that isn’t widely mentioned, but personal to me, when we talk about ‘return to work’ – Long Covid. Like the pandemic, it hasn’t disappeared and will continue to impact how people work and if they can work.

There are, in general, two reasons why we procrastinate – either the task is unpleasant, boring, etc. or we think we won’t be good at it or will fail. You hold yourself back from doing many things because of the last reason.