EQ Training: Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Employees

EQ Training: Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Employees

Uncover The Benefits of EQ Training for Employees To Bring Your Company’s Success To Its Full Potential

 EQ Training Unlocking the Full Potential of Your Employees<br />

Emotional intelligence is your ability to recognize and understand emotions in yourself and others, and your ability to use this awareness to manage your behavior and relationships. – Travis Bradberry

Employee EQ (emotional intelligence) training is an invaluable tool for any organization. In today’s highly competitive business environment, the ability to understand and manage emotions is increasingly becoming a crucial factor in workplace success. Developing emotional intelligence can help employees become better communicators, build stronger relationships with colleagues, and ultimately lead to more productive work teams. This article will provide an overview of EQ training and its benefits, as well as outline how organizations can go about offering such training to their employees.

Benefits of EQ Training 

EQ training can have a number of benefits for an individual or organization. At its core, EQ training helps individuals to become more self-aware and better recognize the emotions of others. This can lead to improved communication, collaboration and productivity within an organization. 

With EQ training, employees learn how to effectively manage their emotions in order to reach their goals. They are taught how to identify their own feelings and understand the feelings of others in order to better connect with them. As they understand each other’s feelings more deeply, it creates a greater sense of trust between colleagues which leads to increased engagement and morale in the workplace. 

EQ training also teaches problem solving techniques that help people navigate difficult conversations or situations more constructively rather than reacting with emotion.

How can EQ Training add value and boost productivity?

#1 – Empathy improves communication 

Highly emotionally intelligent individuals are able to adapt their communication style to suit the person or group they are communicating with. As a result of their heightened self-awareness, they better listen to and understand a conversation, rather than just conversing through speaking.

#2 – Adaptability promotes problem solving and innovation 

Highly perceptive employees are able to pick up on the emotions of the people and their surroundings and are able to modify accordingly, so they are adaptable and open to change, to new viewpoints, and to exploring new solutions. Highly adept in appropriately applying emotion to manage and solve problems, they accept constructive feedback and criticism well, using it to create something positive.

EQ Training Unlocking Potential of Your Employees.

#3 – Their intrinsic motivation gets things done

Emotionally intelligent individuals have a tendency to be very driven and determined. They are often also referred to as natural leaders, as they’re great at uniting and inspiring their peers, motivating them to do better, and improve performance.

What are the challenges in EQ Training?

EQ training is a highly sought-after skill set in the modern workplace. It can help employees develop better interpersonal relationships and increase productivity by improving communication and collaboration. However, there are several challenges to implementing successful EQ training programs in organizations.

First, it can be difficult to accurately assess the emotional intelligence of an individual or group. EQ is usually measured through surveys, interviews or assessments which can provide insights into how the person behaves around other people but that does not necessarily reflect their true emotional state. Second, effective EQ training requires active participation from all parties involved – both trainers and trainees need to commit their time and energy to ensure that everyone takes part in the program fully. Finally, it is important for companies to create an environment where employees feel comfortable expressing themselves freely so they can benefit from the training more effectively.

How to implement EQ Training?

Here are a few pieces of advice on what EQ training for employees should involve:

#1 – Identify the specific EQ Skills that need improvement

Before starting the training program, it’s important to assess the current level of emotional intelligence among your employees and identify the specific skills that need improvement. This can be done through self-assessments or through feedback from managers, colleagues, and customers.

#2 – Customize the training to fit your organization’s needs

EQ training should be tailored to the specific needs of your organization and the roles of your employees. This will help ensure that the training is relevant and applicable to their work.

#3 – Incorporate a variety of training menthods

EQ training should be designed to be engaging and interactive. Incorporating a variety of training methods, such as role-playing, case studies, and group discussions, can help keep employees engaged and increase their understanding of emotional intelligence concepts.

#4 – Provide ongoing support and reinforcements 

EQ training should not be a one-time event, but an ongoing process. Providing ongoing support and reinforcement, such as coaching and mentoring, can help employees continue to develop and apply their emotional intelligence skills.

#5 – Evaluate the effectiveness of the training

It’s important to evaluate the effectiveness of the EQ training program to determine whether it’s achieving the desired results. This can be done through surveys, feedback from employees and managers, and performance evaluations. 

 

Overall, EQ training can be a valuable investment in the development of your employees and can lead to increased job satisfaction, better teamwork, and improved performance.

Key Takeaways

While adhering to these tips may be hard to do all the time, you will make progress if you adopt them some of the time. Just as with other coaching techniques, the goal is not to change your nature but to replace deleterious behaviors with more beneficial behaviors to form new routines that replace old tendencies and improve how the people see you.

Take your team to a whole new level of EQ training that can truly change their behavior and increase sales this 2023. 

Next steps to consider

We help you learn all of this and more in our groundbreaking neuro-performance programs.

This 12-week transformation profoundly benefits every aspect of your life: career, daily performance, health, wellness, cognitive function, habits, relationships, energy, emotional growth, and beyond. That’s because unlike any other program, we focus on the brain - the root of all change.

Unlocking your full potential is about learning, knowing, and transforming into your highest self. Our trainings help you unleash yours. Explore our programs now. 

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3 Best Cognitive Skills Elite Athletes and Successful Entrepreneurs Share

3 Best Cognitive Skills Elite Athletes and Successful Entrepreneurs Share

Along with the right mindset, the best cognitive skills and their foundational practices are ones you should cultivate to reach the top.

cognitive-skills-for-elite-athletes

Whether it’s about winning gold medals, getting venture-backing or reaching some new success milestone, both groups not only adopt similar mindset traits, they both possess a critical cognitive skillset. 

If you want to accelerate your performance and progress, aim to prioritize these practices daily. 

Before we discuss the 3 Best cognitive skills, let’s touch on a few attributes of a winning mindset.

1- People at the top take the time for clarity. You must know what you want to achieve. It’s important to take the time to understand your goals whether that task is big or small. This way you have a clear objective to work towards.

2- Once you’ve done that, act without a fear of failure. The idea of failure is a fallacy. The only time you really fail is if you don’t bounce back.

When something goes wrong, you don’t need to stagnate or obsess. You can learn, adapt quickly, and move forward. This mental agility is seen again and again at the height of success, no matter what the game or venue. 

3- Healthy competition or pressure can be helpful when approached without self-criticism. Don’t berate yourself or unduly compare yourself to others. Look at the leaders in your field and learn from them. In a gentle way, allow their success to fuel your own growth, feed your passion, and foster your drive.

Keep these mindset traits at the forefront and you’ll have the drive to go forward and the stamina to reach your goal. Now let’s focus on the cognitive skills that elite athletes and entrepreneurs share, and that you too can develop to flourish. 

What are the Best Cognitive skills?

First, let’s start by understanding cognition simply to then digest why the following are the best cognitive skills. Your cognitive abilities can be defined as your mental capacities to: remember, reason, hold attention, solve problems, think, process, learn, assimilate new ideas, and make decisions. Amazingly, because of the brains remarkable neuroplasticity — your abilities are never in a state of stagnation. In fact, to keep your brain healthy, it’s essential to practice these skills and evolve.

This is why cognitive ‘skill’ is a more apropos term than ‘ability.’ They are flexible, and no matter your baseline — very much in your control.

In sum, cognitive skills are core skills that your brain uses to process information, learn, think, evaluate, decide, and act. But these skills don’t exist alone in their own silos. Rather, they are cultivated by developing habits that nurture them.

In that sense, the following three must-haves may be better understood as foundational practices that will help you exponentially enhance all your other best cognitive skills across the board.  

Let’s talk about the three must-haves cognitive practices:

#1 – Supreme Focus

Supreme focus or sustained attention is one of the most important skills that you’ll find common in both high performing athletes and successful entrepreneurs. This is so critical that without it, you’ll deplete other essential (and finite) resources like energy, time, and stamina — often without even realizing it.

To illustrate the point — consider for a moment how often you’re working on something important, and the next thing you know an hour is lost because you followed the trail of a random thought down an internet rabbit hole? Or perhaps you gave priority to a silly interruption? Maybe you answered an email or texted someone to the same end. Perhaps afterwards, you even rationalized your lost time as well-spent because you managed to tick off some admin task or other back burner item.

But when you’re honest with yourself, you know the original, high-value objective got neglected and all because you seeded your focus to something much less important. 

Further, engaging in distractions actually fractures cognition and thrusts the brain into ADD-like states. These neural pathways cement themselves the more you engage in distractions while working.

On the flip side, when you learn to channel focus like a laser beam, everything becomes much easier. In a practical day-to-day way, you find yourself excelling at meaningful work. This kind of laser-like focus also gives you an endorphin rush, boosts happiness, and helps you feel fulfilled. Think about how much easier life would be if you could just keep your eye on the prize — the task at hand in front of you. No one but you is usually stopping you. 

I refer to athletes because they’re a great source of inspiration when it comes to practice, dedication, and focus. Their visual and conscious attention is always on what’s happening now. Not what took place five minutes ago or the anticipated challenges that might show up later.

Why? Because they realize the game is being played each moment. There is no room to jump timelines into the past or future. Similarly, you must stay present and concentrate on each play as it happens, not mindlessly multitask or prioritize interruptions. 

Supreme focus is not an easy skill, but it is the most rewarding. Use a pomodoro timer, ignore all distractions (even the tempting ones like viral videos or funny memes) and concentrate fully for each interval. This is the only way to use your talent effectively. This is how to get to the top with ease.

#2 – Consistent Reflection

Another vital skill both entrepreneurs and athletes share is regular reflection. This takes self-awareness, a desire to improve, and devoting regular time.

Top athletes are often known to watch video footage of their past games. Rather than being harsh, they look at their abilities and actions with a growth-minded approach. This is key.

Similarly, entrepreneurs often create MVPs (minimal viable products) or prototypes when they first develop a new product or service. When they do this, they know they’re not going to get it right on that first shot. In fact, they don’t even aim to because they know that to create the best version of their idea in the end requires a bit of ‘failing’ at first, reconfiguring and optimization.

Choose the right neuroscience training for you

We too can adopt this practice of regular reflection. It’s as simple as bullet point journaling for five minutes each evening. Think back on your day. Jot down two or three learning lessons and make a point to highlight what you did well. Be kind, honest, and balanced in your assessment.

Doing this will enhance your understanding of self. It will also give you parameters for what to improve, elevate your confidence because you took the time for well-deserved acknowledgement where you excelled, and boost your cognitive abilities across the board. 

#3 – Daily Training

For athletes, intense daily training is a must. They know, you know, and I know that practice is a part of their jobs. The G.O.A.T.s (Greatest of All Time) athletes like Michael Jordan are upfront about the number of free throws or layups he practiced before he was able to score his average 65 points a game.

But many of us working professionals forget that daily training is just as imperative to our own success. The first step is to break down our skills into the key micro-habits we need to excel. Here are the ones that I help clients and students work on no matter their field or area of expertise. You can cultivate these too.

Train yourself on: (1) how to learn; (2) how to remember effectively (short-term and long-term); (3) how to process new information without bias; (4) how to challenge your own ideas; (5) how to be creative in your problem-solving; (6) how to work in flow; (7) and how to make quick rational and intuitive decisions without constantly second-guessing yourself.

Of course there are others as well as ones that will be specific to you, but this is a great place to start. When you take the time to train daily, you not only keep your brain healthy as you age, but you’ll also maximize your performance from a micro-level to the big-picture just like an athlete improves the elements of her game. Put in the daily training and you’ll redefine your own limits.

The benefits of developing cognitive skills

Cognitive skills are both active and constructive. They can help improve every type of workplace situation. Some of the key benefits of having cognitive skills are:

Recognize and address patterns — You are able to recognize patterns by blending logic and reasoning skills. The brain loves patterns. When you work in patterns, every thing else becomes quicker and easier. 

Consistent goal achievement — Cognitive skills help you become highly productive and enact the goals you want to realize.

Confidence — By developing cognitive skills like that of an athlete or an entrepreneur, you are able to improve your confidence in your own abilities. You know no matter what challenge presents — you will find effective solutions.  

Of course, the benefits of heightened cognition are virtually unlimited. This is the space of genius, flow, and creativity.

CREATING MOMENTUM WITH PRACTICE

From our assessment, you can see that the underlying framework here is practice. Cognitive skills in both elite athletes and entrepreneurs don’t magic their way onto a court, field, or boardroom. They take dedication and blossom with time.

Keep your three essentials in mind to get started: develop present-moment heightened focus, be consistently reflective, and build in time to train daily.

This right here is the key to making it all work. Your implementation — your action. Once you get going, you’ll feel no desire to turn back. 

 

ACTION Steps to Cultivate

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10 Game-Changing Executive Training & Leadership Development Program Benefits

10 Game-Changing Executive Training & Leadership Development Program Benefits

Leadership development helps align purpose, performance, and people for radical individual and organization-wide benefits. 

executive-and-leadership-training

A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” John C. Maxwell

Successful leaders can transform businesses by guiding employees, proactively solving issues, and creating meaningful efficiencies — all while working towards the big picture goals of your organization. Luckily, these are not fixed traits but rather skills we can cultivate with training.

Leadership training is essential in the modern workforce

First, what is leadership development training?

It’s a professional training program, course, and/or coaching that cultivates a broad spectrum of essential cognitive, executive, and soft skills in employees.

Cognitive skills are how to learn, think, brainstorm, problem-solve, and more. Executive skills include management of people, time, resources to effectively execute a goal. And so called soft skills (the term is a misnomer, these are critical) are self-direction, drive, motivation and interpersonal skills. 

An ideal leadership development program would also include stress management, emotional intelligence (EQ) training, and habit training.

These are imperative because you need your leaders to be calm, focused, excellent during challenges and emergencies, and have the framework ability to learn and automate new skills. Without these, individual health suffers, burn out is eventual, and productivity drops over time — all of which bleed out into the moral and efficacy of the larger team or staff. 

With the help of leadership development training, organizations can hone the abilities of their current leadership, as well as identify and cultivate the future leaders. For any business to succeed long-term, this is imperative. The value of robust and agile leaders cannot be overemphasized and when absent, the ripple effects spread quickly to others. Before we look into the advantages of leadership training, let’s take a look at some of the reasons why a business should consider a course or program for a broad range of their professional employees — investing early and often towards mutual collective success.

Organizational benefits of leadership development programs

In different career stages, a professional workforce can benefit from an excellent training program in myriad of ways with both direct professional benefits and indirect personal benefits that impact stamina, mindset, and more, and thus improve work. 

Early- or mid-career professionals, new leaders, and even entrepreneurs or those who ‘lead’ themselves are all ripe to take advantage of such programs. The below are just some of the highlights — a solid program will instill multiple skills so the benefits are vast in practice. 

#1 – Increases productivity

This one happens at many levels. A good program will enhance cognitive abilities, and the outcome of better cognition is productivity. But it’s also impacted by the change in the individuals thought patterns, emotional signatures, beliefs, and attitudes. 

For example, in my course, I start by teaching the science of the mind, perspective, and perception. This is followed by how to re-cue triggers that cause destructive internal loops. EQ and stress training follow, and then we release the past at all subconscious levels allowing, creating the space for new cognitive processes. Only after we do this, do we focus on direct cognitive and executive skills because finally there is brain space and energy for this work to be impactful 

As you can imagine, this approach is groundbreaking when it comes to productivity because the internal bandwidth of the human has entirely shifted from past habits to present awareness and finally to skills for the future. 

#2 – Impacts the corporate culture

When you invest in leadership training, you are investing in your organization’s human capital — your most valuable resource. This will send a message to your employees that the organization cares about their development too. It also helps you reduce staff turnover and increase employee engagement. Finally, you’ll see a boost in employee morale as they feel a sense of autonomy and ownership in their work; balance in physical and mental health; and pride about improving their performance. 

#3 – Better risk management

As you train employees to be leaders, they make better decisions in every state. If you take a look at the cognitive triad, you know that every thought and belief influences feelings, which influence action and choice. You want people to think efficiently and outside of the box. You don’t want people that feel like sheep. Even if they aren’t in a current management role, you are creating their toolkit for them to take one on later while helping them in their day-to-day.   

individual benefits of Executive leadership training

“Leadership is not about title or designation; it’s about impact, influence, and inspiration.” Robin Sharma 

As this quote highlights, executive training or leadership training is essential for any individual that wants to grow impact, influence, and ability to inspire others. So if you’re a professional or entrepreneur — there are a host of personal and internal benefits to you directly that make investing in yourself worthwhile whether or not someone else (an employer or otherwise) decides to invest in you or not. 

In fact, as I say — your brain is your MVP. You should invest in it before and beyond anything else. If people cannot see your value now, it will soon stare them in the face. This makes you more desirable to everyone in the business food chain. 

#1 – Build self-confidence

Once you are not reactive, but rather proactive — your confidence radically changes. You also learn how to learn from perceived failures, stay in the right mindset, and keep your eyes on what’s next as opposed to the past. 

#2 – Improved emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is imperative to build interpersonal relationships within the team and outside.

When you are self-aware of your emotions, you become more capable of responding to every person and situation effectively.

This is a characteristic every leader must have and can be developed when you start with decluttering and enhancing your own headspace. 

leadership-training

#3 – Effective leadership style

While personality plays a huge role in leadership style, your character traits can be changed for the better. Indeed, character is shaped by your deepest beliefs, thoughts, and actions. Once all of these move into states of heightened function, you’re able to listen and interact with others at a whole new level. You also know and remap your internal triggers, making you more affable to others. People can bring you ideas without anxiety and the benefits of this open collaborative climate yields a host of benefits.  

#4 – Enhance communication skills

As above, communication is key to influencing others. Active listening should be reflexive. But on top of this, you want to know your own intuition and harness that as a stabilizing force. This means that when it comes to bidirectional communication, you’ll excel. You’ll be able to hear feedback but also stay strong in your own seat of power when that is required. This is a game-changer. 

#5 – Effective utilization of time and resources

A huge part of leadership is time management, resource allocation, and identifying priorities.

These must be aligned with the goals of your organization. Only an effective leader can direct themselves and the team to evaluate those resources to prioritize meaningful tasks. When balanced with the big picture vision of the organization, this is critical in moving the needle forward. 

#6 – Effective problem-solving skills

You want to problem solve quickly and rationally. To do this, you need to be confident, well-versed in the problem, and be able to think in nonlinear ways. Especially when it comes to the more complex scenarios, leadership training pivots your foundational practices to be more creative and useful in application. 

#7 – Future growth

When an organization invests in a leadership training program for their employees, they are preparing their next-generation leaders to lead with operational effectiveness and workforce cohesion. You are also preparing for your future growth by engaging in your own training. It’s essential if you want to break out of states where you’re stagnant in your practices, daily habits, or learning. Even if you are reading articles and watching videos to learn, an effective program goes beyond this. 

It’s about actual active transformation, not mere information collection. 

CREATING MOMENTUM WITH PRACTICE

Leadership skills are often considered essential when recruiting new employees. While some claim to be natural-born leaders, leadership just amounts to a robust set of cognitive, executive, and soft skills we can all develop. All can develop it with the right executive training or leadership development programs. 

Many skills are ripe for nurturing. The ideal training not only makes you self-sufficient and confident, it also makes you capable of handling change and challenges without compromising on productivity. 

Remember, even if your organization is just you – there are massive benefits to training yourself to be a more effective entrepreneur, creative, or freelancer. These are internal skillsets that apply to every micro action of your mind. So consider following through – it might be the best decision you make in your professional career.  

Next steps to consider

We help you learn all of this and more in our groundbreaking neuro-performance programs.

This 12-week transformation profoundly benefits every aspect of your life: career, daily performance, health, wellness, cognitive function, habits, relationships, energy, emotional growth, and beyond. That’s because unlike any other program, we focus on the brain - the root of all change.

Unlocking your full potential is about learning, knowing, and transforming into your highest self. Our trainings help you unleash yours. Explore our programs now. 

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How to be Successful – Develop 3 Key Executive Skills

How to be Successful – Develop 3 Key Executive Skills

The 3C’s have worked to skyrocket professionals in all fields to the top. 

Executive-success-skills

Great executives that run a sustainable, scalable and profitable operation share a number of common skills that support their success. Three of the most prized toolkits are what I call the 3C’s of Executive Success – Clarity of Vision, Arrow-like Concentration, and Cognitive Flexibility.

Focus on mastering this trifecta, and you’ll catalyze your growth. 

Consider this – you might be a charming salesman at a Fortune 500, or the genius idea guy at your startup, or the woman with unparalleled technical expertise — but your existing attributes will only take you so far. 

Why? Because truly successful people — at the top of their fields — have to do a bunch of things at once. They need to inspire and they need to execute. They need to see the big picture and understand how the pieces fit together in everyday operation.

You must wear the roles of many, taking them on and off as the particulars require. And all this must be happening in your head, lightening fast, in order to perform with expertise and ease. 

That’s where the 3C’s come in to guide your growth and mastery. Cultivating the 3C’s will not only help you get to the top, but they will help you fulfill the role with grace once you get there. 

How to be successful — your 3c roadmap

While there are several traits that round out any leadership success story, these three C’s really do much of the heavy lifting. The reason is simple: other skills will help you get, but in the absence of these, you’ll end up in a survival state — burned out, lacking in internal resources, scrambling — instead of thriving.

Eventually that catches up and you can’t sustain an upward trajectory. In fact, this is how most people flat line in their careers.  

How to be Successful #1 – Get Your Clarity 

An executive leading a high-performing team must-have clarity of vision.

Clarity is about knowing your: (1) Purpose – the why?; (2) Plan – the how?; and (3) Projection – the what? 

(1) Your Purpose is two-fold. First, find and refine the big picture purpose you have. You can explore our 5-step clarity roadmap to help you do that. Then get specific about the purpose of the task or challenge at hand, and how that feeds into the big picture. Do this with all your undertakings to practice the method, and turn it into a habit.

(2) Your Plan is about taking the purpose and transforming it into a step-by-step guide. Of course, you’ll have to amend it as problems arise, but the more detail you put into what this plan looks like, the more likely you won’t get exhausted, lose yourself in a fruitless rabbit hole, or lose sight of what’s next.

(3) Your Projection is the endgame. Be confident you know what it looks like or you won’t know when you’ve reached it. This might be obvious for a client deliverable, but it’s harder when it comes to more complex goals. Even when it comes to your personal life, projections are key.

While clarity of purpose tells you why something matters, clarity of plan gives your team a working roadmap. The projection outlines the endgame.

It’s essential to have clarity of vision for your own goals and especially as a leader of others. Don’t just manage people, keep them motivated, inspired, accountable and excited.

How to be Successful #2 – Harness Concentration Like an Arrow

To give attention to a task at hand and ignore distractions is perhaps the most valuable skill for any professional, and imperative for a leader.

In this fast-paced, tech-fueled world, we are constantly interrupted and distracted. The brain is overstimulated and cognition is fractured each time. A lot of energy and time is wasted getting back on track so start developing your concentration skills now. Don’t wait until you have even more responsibility.

critical-executive-success-skills

We can borrow here from sports psychologists, Kremer and Moran, who highlight the five principles of effective concentration:

 

  • Concentration is a deliberate choice that requires mental effort. Don’t force it, but choose it. 
  • You can only focus on one thing at a time (despite all the multitasking myths). 
  • Form a mind-body connection. Even if you’re sitting at a desk and typing, close your eyes. Visualize what you want to achieve. Imagine your head and fingers coordinating to get you there. 
  • Forget everything else but the task at hand. Jot down other thoughts or to-do’s but don’t let them compete for attention. 
  • During moments of anxiety, redirect your focus to a physical act like breathing or walking for a few minutes. 

How to be Successful #3 – Practice Cognitive Flexibility

This is definitely the hardest of the three C’s. Cognitive flexibility is your ability to perceive, think, problem-solve, take action, and engage with others in new and nontraditional ways. It’s a nonlinearity inside your head.

Part of the reason why it’s difficult is because it’s so abstract. What does it mean to do something non-traditionally? How can you think creatively instead of using only direct logic?

Well you get good at it, the more you practice it. A few recommendations:

(1) Be flexible often. If you always do things a certain way, take steps to try new ways. Get a little uncomfortable. You won’t know what you won’t know until you know it. 

(2) Use other industries for inspiration: look at someone in a whole different field and imagine how they might solve your problem.

(3) Don’t isolate yourself in belief bubbles. This is the antithesis of making new neural connections, which require as a prerequisite that you learn new things. If you’re in an echo chamber, you’ll own cement what’s already there. This doesn’t bode well for success because eventually you will come across an obstacle that needs out-of-the-box thinking. Additionally, you’ll narrow the pool of people you can learn and engage with to those that already think like you.

CREATING MOMENTUM WITH PRACTICE

Hopefully, it’s clear why cultivating the 3C Executive Skills will accelerate your professional growth and help you lead with ease once you’re at the top. As this becomes part of your mental toolkit, you’ll find that the benefits expand into your personal life as well. Imagine how much faster you would achieve your life goals with the 3C’s skills embedded into the way your brain works. Just practice!

Remember, implementation is the key to making it all work. Your action creates momentum and once you get going, you’ll feel no desire to turn back. 

 

Next steps to consider

We help you learn all of this and more in our groundbreaking neuro-performance programs.

This 12-week transformation profoundly benefits every aspect of your life: career, daily performance, health, wellness, cognitive function, habits, relationships, energy, emotional growth, and beyond. That’s because unlike any other program, we focus on the brain - the root of all change.

Unlocking your full potential is about learning, knowing, and transforming into your highest self. Our trainings help you unleash yours. Explore our programs now. 

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How to Achieve Flow State: Practice 5 Key Steps

How to Achieve Flow State: Practice 5 Key Steps

Learn how to achieve flow state and reap the benefits of focus, joy, creativity, ease, and fulfillment in your work.

practice-achieving-flow-state

‘The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times…The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something worthwhile.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow – The Pyschology of Optimal Experience

While the science of flow is still being researched, read on for our 5-step roadmap to help you reach this super state faster.

Flow State – a Quick Breakdown

Have you ever experienced a moment when you felt ‘in the zone’, so focused on the task in front of you that all the noise and chaos in the background seemed to melt away? Flow is all about immersion, which requires present-state awareness to the exclusion of everything else. And everything else here is not just limited to the external. It is all your other thoughts, ideas, compulsions, and obligations.

This is what makes flow so powerful. It requires (1) the pursuit of a worthwhile, meaningful activity that challenges our mind or body; (2) unification with that activity such that our conscious and subconscious minds also become united. At this stage the experience itself, rather than the product or outcome, becomes truly enjoyable.

You’ve probably experienced flow before doing something you love. Now let’s talk about how we can get you there faster, and with regularity. Heads up, it’s not easy. For any mental super state, practice and patience are a must. 

How to achieve flow state – your 5-Step daily Protocol 

Achieving Flow State Step 1: Choose a Worthy Priority 

Let’s get honest with ourselves first. 80% of tasks are not ‘exciting’ enough to achieve true flow state. Now there are many similarities between ‘flow’ and ‘zen’ states. And indeed, you can and should get zen with anything you do. For example, sweeping the floor or chopping your vegetables are tasks you can be fully present, calm, and enjoy doing. This is what zen is all about. Simply bringing the light of awareness to a task.

Being zen means being mind”full” instead of mind”less”. But true flow, and the unparalleled joy it delivers, requires a few extra components. It requires choosing an activity that is both (a) meaningful to you; and (b) challenging.

(a) Deciding what’s meaningful to you can take some time. You need to most past the reactive mind and get to know your deeper self. What gives you purpose? What makes you feel alive? How do these tie into your work, passion, or hobby? Take time to explore the answers.

If you can, find the meaning in every area of your life — especially your work. Writing and finding new ways to explain and teach concepts, for instance, is very meaningful to me.

(b) Choose something that is challenging. Perhaps you want to reach the next level of expertise at something you’re already proficient at. Or maybe you want to pursue something new that always felt just out of reach. For example – I often see in my male clients, a proclivity to enter flow state when they do something supposedly gender non-conforming (at least per the social conditioning they may have received). Learning how to dance is one I often recommend. It requires full focus, challenges subconscious bias, engages brain-body coordination, boosts learning and memory, and much more. All of this works together to push them into and through the unfamiliar and into flow. They feel more alive than ever. And their confidence and self-esteem shoot up as a result. 

Mihaly Csikskentmihalyi, who is credited with coining the term flow state and is a notable positive psychologist, observed:

“Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person’s skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding.” 

Achieving Flow State Step #2: Alert Your Brain and Body to Exclusive Focus  

Now that you’ve chosen a valuable activity to induce flow state — let’s communicate the message to your brain and body that upcoming is a session of worthwhile exclusive focus. In an ideal situation, we wouldn’t have to add the limiting descriptor of ‘exclusive’ since focus by its nature should be targeted. But because we’ve been misled into believing multitasking is a talent, and conditioned by the internet along with the modern workforce to continually multitask (especially in our minds), we must specify this message of ‘exclusive focus’ to the brain until it relearns what focus is all about.

I suggest you communicate this message by creating a flow state ritual in a few important ways:

(1) State your intention to yourself clearly. Be specific here about what you’re about to do and why.

(2) Relax. Use deep breathing to ease any tension. Anxiety and stress are roadblocks to flow.

(3) Do a physical activity that you reserve for flow. Drink a specific type of tea, jog in place for a few minutes, or listen to a particular type of instrumental music.

By combining the above three steps into your own unique flow state ritual, you are creating a trigger to alert the brain and body that deep focus is about to follow. This new habit will help you cue flow mindset soon. 

Achieving Flow State Step #3: Ignore Distractions at Every Turn

To make progress at inducing flow, you must train yourself to stay in a ‘single-track mindset.’ 

This means ignoring both external and internal distractions. Start by doing this for a specified amount of time. For example, a single pomodoro session of 25 minutes. Then work your way up to several pomodoros or ideally until a preset chunk of your activity is completed. 

how-to-focus-on-a-task

External distractions like emails or phone calls are easier to avoid.

Internal distractions that come in the form of pesky thoughts, unsettling emotions, charged memories, future worries — these are much harder to ignore and take methodological training. That’s because they get wired into automation by the subconscious.

In my neuroperformance course, I help clients identify, understand, resolve, and redirect all kinds of these negative internal habits. One of the huge benefits is later when we cover how to achieve flow state, they’re able to do it with ease. 

Achieving Flow State Step #4: Learn Your Peak Performance Times

While it’s not easy to understand the nuances of your energetic state, which is influenced by dozens of variables and is often in flux, it’s important to start noticing it. Start by identifying your natural proclivities when it comes to difficult tasks.

For most of us, mornings are ideal. We are rested, with a fresh and alert mind. This is the best time to take up challenging work suitable to achieve flow.

On the other hand if the activity isn’t work-related, early evenings are excellent. At this point in your day, you should give yourself permission to get fully immersed in your hobby or passion. Go all in and don’t fret about work the next day or any other obligation. Fretting is one of those pesky internal intrusions that will zap you right out of flow.

Also, start to pay attention to what foods, exercise, and stress-relief works best for you. These are what I call daily keystones and they highly impact your energetic state. When you are in low-energy or low-mood, flow is next to impossible.

Recognize your peak performance times and patterns to help your mind get and stay in flow state. 

Achieving Flow State Step 5: Get Reflective About Your Flow

This final one is essential to answer your own how to achieve flow state. Consider this — you need to understand what it feels like for you. To reach somewhere, it’s much easier to know where you’re going. Perhaps the first few times you get lost (before google maps), but eventually you learn the signs and hallmarks of the journey to your destination.

The more we practice achieving flow, the more we’re likely to get ‘there’ and stay there. But after a while you must know what ‘there’ is right? So take the time to reflect on this journey and endpoint daily. It can be a stream of conscious journalling or as simple as jotting down a few bullet points in whatever note-taking app you use.

Soon you can review this and figure out what to add to your own how to achieve flow roadmap. A few moments to contemplate and reflect will go far in guiding your way.

Creating momentum with practice

Initially, it might not be easy to achieve the Flow state, but with constant practice, you can achieve the Flow state. Start with a shorter time frame, and train your mind to stay focused. At first, you may find yourself wandering off to do other tasks, but stay away from temptations and don’t get discouraged.

Remember, right there is the key to making it all work. Your implementation — your action. Once you get going, your momentum will soon propel you forward. Each step and each day will be easier and smoother than the one before it. 

Next steps to consider

Unlock your true potential through our groundbreaking neuroperformance programs, where your secret genius comes to life. In just 12 weeks, experience a comprehensive transformation that touches every aspect of your existence: from career and daily performance to health, wellness, cognitive function, habits, relationships, energy levels, and even personal and spiritual growth. What sets us apart is our unwavering dedication to the brain—the very foundation of all transformative endeavors.

Genius knows no bounds and comes in various forms, and our program is designed to help you tap into your individual brilliance by fostering learning, knowledge, and profound personal evolution. Discover the incredible journey that awaits you by exploring our programs.

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