Manage Yourself

You alone possess the power to control your actions. While there are many external forces influencing your professional success, you are not without power.  Your emotions and thoughts dictate your actions. Those actions create your reality. To manage yourself is to be in control of your feelings, thoughts and actions.

“The key to leadership is self-management.” ~ John Maxwell, expert on leadership and author

Before you can manage yourself to act with intention, you need to spend some time being honest with yourself. Ask yourself these questions:

• Am I able to control my emotions and not let them get the better of me?
• Do I keep my word? Can people depend on me?
• Do I get work done well and on time? Or do I talk but never follow through?
• Am I able to bounce back from setbacks easily? Do I find ways to learn from them?
• Am I able to recognize stress and do something to diminish it?
• Do I make plans and get things done, or do I let things happen to me?

Could any of these be getting in the way of your professional success?

Your actions are the proof of your talents and values. What others observe forms their understanding of who you are. Want people to trust you? Act with integrity and be consistent. Want something to exist? Make it. Seems so straightforward but we all know someone who wants something but avoids it. For example, the department head who wants his staff to behave differently but never gives them any feedback, or the person who always asks for more responsibility but consistently misses deadlines.

Can you recognize your reactions to different situations and not let them derail your actions, relationships and confidence? Daniel Goleman, who writes extensively on emotional intelligence, said “Out of control emotions make smart people stupid.”

If you are feeling stuck and powerless, enlist a trusted friend  or hire a coach to help you understand how you get in your own way, make a plan and stick to it, and make yourself a better self manager.