Smell of success

Again, some positives coming through. The European MD of my company, who has been recently appointed, is coming over for a visit. The MD of my division asked me to prepare a presentation about the division, big figures and also key achievements and issues/opportunities to tackle.
I put quite a lot of work into it:
1. I organised myself well, sumarizing the presentation at hand and all the info I needed to get in an excel spreadsheet, like I do for projects.
2. I then chased people early for the stuff that I needed.
3. And I worked on the pres, I really put some effort behind it. Meaning couple of late nights.
The results were really good. My MD really loved it. A couple of guys from the board were also there and they were really impressed, to the point of making positive comments to me.
We then went on to show it to the country MD who was impressed to the point of sending it to other divisions for them to use as benchmark.
Great stuff, made me feel great.
And also showed me a couple of things.
+ it's good to work on things that you do well. I have always been good at presentations, and when given this opportunity, I jumped on it, as I am cravin a bit of success at this point.
+ putting work in usually brings you results.

To top a really nice day, the country MD came up with the proposition of showing of 3 of my projects in the meeting room where the meeting will take place! Just what the doctor ordered...

Getting back to sleep with the help of meditation and NLP

I've read bits and pieces about NLP - Neuro Linguistic Programming - though I'm not a great believer, I can see the usefulness and merit behind most of the techniques.
Tonight I had a great experience on how they can work!
I woke up at 4am. I arrived late yesterday from a long weekend away, and I guess I was still a bit revved up from the flight and a bit anxious from going back to work.
I did the usual stuff I do to get me back to sleep: ate some cookies, then read for a bit... but to no avail. In fact, I was getting more anxious, as I knew I had a lot of work to cover the following day.
Then I tried something: I forced myself to take deep long breaths. I wanted to take at least 6 in a row. It wasn't easy (!), sometimes I got to 2 or 3 and my mind wandered to one of my problems! But as I was patient and eventually managed to calm the breathing, slowly I noticed parts of my body releasing tension. One of my hands had a really tight grip that started to loosen up... and so on. Simultaneously my mind started to get a lot calmer and rested. In a few minutes, I was getting back to sleep!
It's a great learning! Basically it takes a bit from meditation, the deep breathing to refocus and quieten the mind; and also a bit from NLP.
One of the most popular techniques of NLP is the act as if. For example, if you want to be more confident, act as if you are confident. Stand up straight, look people in the eyes, and so on. And then you will start to feel more confident.

In this case, though my mind was overactive, I started breathing as if I was calm... and the mind soon followed!

Great quote

"When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery."
Maxim Gorky (1868-1936), Russian novelist, short-story writer, dramatist

New beginings

I am just over 3 months and the current job and yesterday finally had the feeling that I am coming to grips with it and can start laying my rules!
Basically 2 things drove this feeling:
Yesterday we had a category review meeting, basically all the categories were presenting their grwoth plans for the next 3 years to the board, for discussion and ultimately resource allocation.
1st, I felt totally confortable presenting the stuff I am managing and it was great seeing that the comments from the board were exactly in line with what we me and my team have been discussing! Also, I felt in my depth in all the discussions that were happening. I remeber my first meetings in this new job, where half the conversations I did not get at all!!! It's a great feeling now.
2nd, I was in a chat with a group of people in one the breaks and found myself strongly defending arguments in a couple of subjects. Meaning I was confident and new enough about the subject to be doing this. Knowing myself, I only do it when I know what I am talking about, no point in making up just for the sake of shining a bit.

It's a great feeling.
And a learning too. It's easy to put ourselves under pressure in the begining of a new job, but there will always be a need for time to soak in all the information and the new reality.
You need to give yourself time! Plan for it. Plan time to adapt.

Competence

I was reading yesterday a book from an entrepreneur, where he said (about one of his first jobs) that he was enjoyinng because he was good at it.
And I couldn't stop thinking how true this is.

You enjoy doing something when you are competent at it. It's good to be and feel competent at something. It's good to have people asking for your help and advice or admiring what you are doing.
It's good to feel that you are doing a really good job.

Obviously there are passions as well, things that you get easily engrossed in and as you do them, time just flies without you noticing. These are the things that you should be doing to be on purpose!

But it is also great to do things you are competent at.

The learning for me is that it is absolutely normal that when you start a new job, the 1st months will be difficult. Because you will be dealing with people that are doing it for years and are much more confortable. Because you are in a learning curve, and are not competent yet. Because people expect a lot and it will be difficult in the beggining to meet and even more so to surpass expectations.
But that is normal.
When changing a job, it is important to plan:
- what you want to achieve on the 1st 90 days; detailed plan of what to do, who to go out with, what things to understand, who to meet
- where you will be (what level of knowledge do you want to have); what things you expect to have achieved by then

It's important to do this plan to put things in perspective.
It's also probably a great idea to share it with your boss, to set his expectations as well.
But most of all, it's important to you, in order to limit the pressure you put in yourself!