Hart Coaching Academy

As a life coach, I often speak with my clients about achieving happiness, finding love and living a life of authenticity. Naturally, a topic that comes up quite often is that of work. For the majority of us, work is a large part of our lives. How we spend our time at the office, whether that office is away from the home or at it, impacts all other areas of our lives. If you’re looking to make the most out of all aspects of your life, including the hours spent at the office, I encourage you to read through the following list and recognize whether or not you may be committing any of these life coach no-nos. If you are, I challenge you to break the habit and begin taking strides towards greater happiness.

Not Knowing When to Ask for Help

Today’s society constantly tells people to strive for perfection. Be the most beautiful you can be. Be the smartest. Never show weakness. Never ask for help. But, in reality, life would be pretty darn miserable if we all chose to live that way – not to mention lonely! Knowing when to ask for help or when a task is beyond your immediate abilities is not only not a sign of weakness; it’s actually a sign of capability and leadership that many employers look for in employees.

When you feel you could use clarification, benefit from a helping hand or simply can’t take on additional workload – speak up. You are not only doing yourself a disservice, but are also doing a disservice to your teammates, when you live in fear of asking for help.

Not Taking Credit For Your Work

You work hard to produce high quality work and bring good ideas to the table. When you brush off your abilities or downplay your contribution, you are showing the outside world that you don’t value your contribution; and if you don’t value what you bring to the table, why should your employer or team?

Allow yourself to take credit for the work you have done. When you share a report in a meeting, use language that demonstrates you have put time and effort into creating the report. When sharing an opinion or idea, use language like “I believe I have an idea” instead of “Maybe this would work”. On the flipside, I encourage you to always own your mistakes. Accountability for both negative and positive situations is necessary for the successful running of a healthy team and will help you become the best person you can be, not only between the hours of 9-5.

Not Voicing Your Opinion

Your skills, background and mind are all reasons you were hired, so I urge you to not forget the value you bring to the table! Your opinions and ideas are valuable, so when you sit quietly through meetings or offer to take meeting minutes instead of remain an active participant in a discussion, you’re holding back.

The next time your Manager asks for your thoughts on a matter, take a moment to collect them and then share what you think. When people ask for your opinion or thoughts, they typically aren’t asking to simply be polite. They value and appreciate your mind and skills and authentically want to receive a response.

Not Praising Your Coworkers

Many workplaces foster a culture of competition. While competition can be great to encourage you to continue growing, regularly strive for higher goals and produce high results consistently – it can also make you feel like it’s you against your teammates. By allowing yourself to feel as though you’re “in it for yourself” or it’s “you against the world”, you miss out on crucial opportunities to strengthen your team, your place within the company and you end up experiencing more negative thoughts.

The next time your coworker receives recognition for a job well done, offer your sincere and authentic praise. Take a moment to thank your coworker for his or her contribution to the team and let them know that they are appreciated by you. When you remind yourself to show appreciation to others and celebrate their wins, you become a better person yourself. Plus, others will take notice of your praise and begin delivering their own – a smile is contagious and all.

Not Praising Yourself

Lastly, I want you to stop forgetting about praising yourself. Yes, you should feel grateful to have a job that allows you to support yourself when so many struggle to make ends meet. But you’ve also earned your position through hard work, dedication and the ability to produce quality ideas. In between practicing gratitude towards others, I urge you to recognize your own accomplishments, strengths and triumphs.

Praising yourself can be as easy as saying a self-affirming statement such as, “You are confident, capable and have worked hard to be where you are.” It could also be allowing yourself to swing by the grocery store and pick up your favourite dessert as a special treat. Or, it could be treating yourself to a quiet, relaxing spa day. However you choose to celebrate yourself, be sure to thoroughly enjoy it and thank yourself for the gift.

To your authenticity,

Love, Christine

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There’s a time old adage that teaches that happiness begins within. While it may seem at times that finding happiness in the right now is impossible, I can’t stress enough how much control you truly have in your own emotional well-being, in the path your life takes and in your experiencing of true joy. To help you achieve joy and happiness, I want to share my list of four self-sabotaging habits you need to stop now. One of my greatest joys as a life coach is seeing first-hand how my clients are able to effectively change their outlooks on life, personal happiness and achieve success. I won’t say that it’s an instant change, because it’s not. But, it’s a change that is entirely possible and that I believe that you, too, can make.

Avoid Autopilot Behaviour

What do I mean by this? Well, there are many behaviours that can easily achieve autopilot status under the right (or, in this case, wrong) circumstances. Some examples are mindless eating, binge watching television, losing hours to vying over your ex boyfriend’s recent trip with his new girlfriend… these are all examples of actions or behaviour that happen without a deliberate intention. They just get into autopilot.

Allowing yourself to carry on a life in which you regularly simply tune out and allow yourself to engage in autopilot behaviours can have a negative, direct impact on your happiness. It’s so incredibly important to be aware of this "brain habit" and consciously catch yourself. This way you can, in the moment, choose different thoughts.

When you allow your life and your mind to be filled up to the rim with unintentional thoughts and actions, you end up without any room for positive intentions. A life filled with deliberate, thought-out and intentional actions will ultimately lead to a much more fulfilling and happy day-to-day.

Avoid Criticizing Yourself

Believe me when I say that everyone experiences self-criticism, just simply of varying degrees. At the end of the day, we are all only human. With that being said, regular self-criticizing behaviour can have major negative impacts on your self-esteem, self-confidence, outlook on life and happiness.

When you feel yourself beginning to pick yourself apart, take a moment to breathe. It’s imperative that you follow that breath with a self-affirming statement. For example, not feeling beautiful today? Remind yourself that you are special (and gorgeous) in your own unique skin. Feeling down because a presentation you delivered at work didn’t go as well as you hoped? Remind yourself that you are capable, intelligent and will rock the next presentation twice as hard.

Avoid Isolation

When you’re feeling down, it can be tempting to throw on the sweats and retreat to a weekend filled with Netflix, delivery food and just about nothing else. Allowing yourself to remain in isolation, particularly when you’re feeling especially down, can have more negative impacts than healing ones. While “me” time can be very fulfilling and productive, the difference between that and “isolation” really comes down to purpose.

The next time you’re tempted to cancel on friends with plans or decline an event invitation, ask yourself if you truly intend to spend the time working towards greater self fulfillment or if there is now a larger likelihood you will feel worse through isolating yourself. Again, I fully believe in recharging by spending time alone but we just have to be careful of when and how we do it.

Avoid Putting Everyone Before Yourself

Have you ever been called a “people pleaser” or thought of yourself a “yes man” or “yes woman”? Generosity and devotion to others is not a characteristic to be ashamed of, nor is it a negative. However, if you regularly put everyone else ahead of yourself to the point that your own needs and wants are not being met – chances are that you’re not as happy as you could be.

Spending time focused on working towards your own happiness will result in a lift in happiness of those around you. Everyone wins when you put your own happiness as value numero uno. This joy has influence and will emanate to those around you.