, Author at Paul Duxbury

Is Detachment the Key to Better Self-esteem?

When you think about the word “detachment” you may have a negative impression. After all, when we use the word we often think about people that are disconnected from the world and from others. But the truth is that detachment can play a very important role in your success, as well as your happiness.

Let’s take a look at what we mean by detachment and then talk about how it impacts your self-esteem.

What Is Detachment?

The dictionary definition of detachment is a lack of emotion or of personal interest, and/or the act or process of separating something from a larger thing. That’s all fine and good, but how does it relate to self-esteem? Let’s look at an example:

You’re at work and a co-worker criticizes an email that you sent to your team. Detachment means that you’re able to hear her criticism and take any relevant and useful pieces to make positive change, and let go of the rest. You don’t let her comment impact you emotionally, nor does it affect how you feel about yourself.

Sounds pretty great, right? How wonderful would it be to hear feedback and criticism and not have an emotional reaction to it? You’d be able to learn and grow but not take a hit to your self-esteem. The same is true for praise. When you’re detached, you’re able to receive praise without it affecting your self-esteem.

Isn’t Detachment Bad?

Not letting others impact your emotional wellbeing and self-esteem isn’t a bad thing. It’s perfectly okay to separate your self-worth and self-esteem from others. Your self-esteem is answered by the question, “How do I feel about who I am?” It doesn’t get answered by, “How do I feel about how others think about me?”

Detaching from what others think about you and how they communicate with you is a good thing. After all, whether someone thinks you did a good job or a bad job doesn’t impact who you are, right? You know who you are, so hold on to that.

Speaking of knowing who you are, have you met people who may have too much self-esteem? In the next post I will attempt to answer the question, “Can you have too much self-esteem?”

3 Tips To Improve Your Self-Esteem

I have written quite a lot over the years about self-esteem and this post compliments a post I recently added to LinkedIn looking at What Is Self-Esteem? Here, I want to take a look at how to improve your self-esteem.

Our self-esteem, or how we feel about your worth, impacts our daily life. Admittedly, our self-esteem can change from day to day. Some days you may wake up feeling great about yourself and the world. Other days, you might feel like nothing you do or say matters.

Think about those days for a second – the down days when your self-esteem isn’t so great. How effective and productive were you? How well were you able to communicate with others? Chances are, when your self-esteem has taken a hit, you aren’t able to function on a high level. Your personal and professional life can suffer.

The good news is that there are simple tips you can embrace today to help turn those bad days around.

1. Find the Why

Why has your self-esteem taken a hit? What’s impacting how you feel about yourself? It can be anything from a bad night’s sleep, to a mistake, to criticism from someone. When you can identify your reason for low self-esteem, you can approach the solution logically.

2. One Positive Thought

You have a choice here. When you’re feeling down you can stop, take a deep breath, and identify one positive thought about yourself. Alternatively, you can keep a positive thought in your back pocket.

For example, when someone criticizes you at work, you can pull out your positive thought and read it. It can be anything that makes you feel better about yourself. For example, you might pull out a statement that says, “I am a kind and loving person who always does their best.”

The benefit of writing down a statement and keeping it with you is that sometimes when you’re having a particularly difficult day, it can be hard to think something positive.

3. A Little TLC

On the difficult days it’s always a good idea to pamper yourself a little. Identify one small thing that can have a big impact. For example, you might give yourself a facial, read a book on the patio, or go for a jog in the park. Whatever small self-care step that you can take, do it. It will make a significant difference on how you feel and how you feel about yourself.

Becoming aware of your self-esteem and noting when and why it may suffer can help you make a change. Treat yourself well and remember what makes you wonderful.

Ten Healthy Habits That Can Help You Fight Stress

We hear a lot about stress nowadays and the profound impact it can have on an individual and those around them.

Whilst there are many degrees of stress and some can have a crushing impact on our lives and require medical intervention there are ways to deal with the normal stresses of home and especially work. If recognised early then that stress in the workplace doesn’t have to get you down. Instead, learn to handle it from the word go. The first step is to take control of your life. Below are ten healthy habits that can actually help you fight the threat of stress.

Stress can prove to be harmful when the effects are prolonged. The body sustains a lot of wear and tear, leading to degenerative illness. But, it doesn’t have to get that bad. A few proactive steps can lead to a greater balance overall.

Ten Habits to Cultivate for Stress Reduction

1. Find a sounding board – Friends and trusted family members are great for this. Let them know what they are in for before depending on them for this much-needed support.

2. Laughter is the best medicine – Laughing releases endorphins and helps you to smile more often. Read a funny book or watch your favorite comedy movie. A laugh a day could keep the doctor away.

3. Reduce your workload – Plan for activities only one day each weekend. Plan to leave work at a certain time each day as often as you can to begin family time and leave the office behind.

4. Find a physical activity that you like – Exercise should be beneficial and fun. The “fun” part is what will keep you coming back for more. The release of endorphins improves the mood, and stronger muscles protect you as you get older.

5. Organize your life – Set time to get things done as well as time to spend alone in pursuit of relaxing activities. You could actually get more handled in a day when you plan well.

6. Volunteer – Sometimes, getting out of your own head is the best way to reduce your stress levels. Pay attention to someone else who needs it more.

7. Eat a balanced diet – Food, especially raw and fresh food, can provide your body with antioxidants and vitamins needed to keep your body working in tiptop shape.

8. Get enough sleep – Depending on your age, the amount of sleep needed can range from six to as much as nine or ten hours a night. During sleep, the body shuts down all non-vital systems in an attempt to repair itself. A restored body can handle whatever the new day brings.

9. Take a breather – It is okay to take a mini vacation. It could be only a weekend, but use it to clear your head so that you can move forward with your life.

10. Acceptance – Everything is not within your control. When you accept what you can’t change, a weight is lifted. Stress over worrying about unnecessary issues is wasted time and energy. Channel your efforts into more constructive pursuits.

Fight back against stress in the best way – with healthy habits.

Learning From Your Customers

As my experience today with EE has shown, organisations can learn a lot from their customers if they are prepared to listen. One of the dangers for any organisation that uses Social Media is that if you get it wrong when you are dealing with your customers the story gets told far and wide. You lose control of the story you want to tell and then you let others create the impression that your customers and potential customers have of your organisation.

If you want to get it right then training for your social media staff is essential – including responding to the questions the customer asks and not simply ignoring them when they are clearly unhappy. But equally important is the training and support you give your support/back office staff and that’s where I am going to focus in this post.

Let me share some of the poor experience I had with EE and as the good Learning & Development Professional that I am(!) I will also share my thoughts on where there are learning points for them to improve their customer service:

Placing The Order

I did something last night that I thought would be fairly straightforward. Having been a loyal customer of EE in its’ various incarnations for many years I decided that I would upgrade and recontract with them for my mobile broadband and also my partner’s mobile ‘phone. I have two mobiles with them as well as my mobile broadband service so they earn a not unreasonable sum from me each and every month.

I decided to do the upgrades through their online chat facility as it seemed the easiest and most straightforward approach. Initially it was and the Online Chat Advisor appeared to be helpful. But that’s where it ended!

Having placed an order for both the new mobile ‘phone device and the new mobile broadband device I was advised by the Online Chat Advisor that I would receive a text message to my mobile “that gives you your 1h delivery time slot, if you want to change the delivery day or time you can respond to the text directly, (not the address though, just the day or time).”

Feeling Let Down

This morning I did receive a text message which gave me a link to the couriers website. No mention of a 1 hour delivery slot. I then clicked through to the website only to find that if I wanted a one and a half hour delivery slot I would need to pay £10! So in order to ensure delivery when we would be available I reluctantly paid £10 and assumed that this related to both devices.

Sadly that transpired not to be the case and an hour later I received another text with the delivery information for the second device. Again I was expected to pay £10 to get a guaranteed delivery slot. So two separate parcels from EE, both being delivered by the same couriers no doubt at the same time and a charge of £10 for each. During a tortorous telephone conversation with their Customer Service Centre and having been passed through 5 different individuals I was advised that the message wasn’t correct because it assumed that I was buying during the week and then it would be right!

#LearningPoint for EE – ensure that your systems work, the information your advisors give out is correct and that your advisors are aware of differences in your operating procedures if they are different at various times of the week/day.

Feeling Like A Hot Potato

The telephone call I made this morning was painful in the extreme. As I mentioned in the comments above I was passed through 5 different individuals before I got something even vaguely resembling a resolution – although I have to say I wait to be convinced:

When I spoke to the first individual (having paid their fee to be put to the front of the queue!) I started by explaining calmly and politely that I was an unhappy customer and would like to explain why. I started to do this but he kept interrupting me mid-sentence. I asked him if he would listen to what I had to say and was met with “well when you have done!” #LearningPoint – this is basic customer service stuff – if a customer tells you they are unhappy let them talk – get their story and then summarise back to them what you understand are their issues. Never, respond to them in a way which is bound to aggravate them even further!

I eventually managed to finish advising this individual that I was unhappy, felt I had been misled, had not received any confirmation emails about my order and was being charged twice for the delivery of both parts of my order. Their response was frankly amazing given that they are effectively a technology company. It appears that any dealing via the internet are not updated onto their systems for at least 7 days. So if you place an order online the people who answer the calls to their Contact Centres will have no information about it. Frankly if that is the case then I am staggered. However, if it is the case then there is a very clear #LearningPoint – get your systems joined up so that the people who are dealing with your customers have instant access to the information about those customers.

After this initial discussion I was then passed through 4 further individuals. Each of whom I had to repeat my complaint to because there was no handover of the call from the previous person. Indeed it felt like my call was being treated like the proverbial “hot potato” made all the more obvious by the fact that each time I was placed back in a queue to be dealt with. #LearningPoint equip your staff with the skills to handle calls, give them access to the information they need to ensure a first time fix in the majority of cases and ensure that your staff tell the customer what is happening.

In an ideal world I wouldn’t deal with an organisation that treats their customers in the way I have been dealt with today. But it’s not an ideal world because invariably with an organisation like EE we are tied into contracts which they would make us pay for to get out of. But these organisations need to change their attitudes because treating people badly when you think you have them tied into contracts is just storing up lost business for the future and leads to loss of new business right now from people who hear about how others have been treated.

If there is one overall #LearningPoint it would be treat your customers like you would want to be treated and ensure your systems, processes and procedures enable your staff to do that.

Simple really isn’t it! Are these Learning Points that the Leadership Team at EE are prepared to take on board and action? Only time will tell!

Read All About It!

There are few of us who, including those of us who work in Learning and Development, who can change or move forward in their lives without some kind of help. It might be help in the form of a coach or mentor to help you grow. It could be support from friends and family who keep you motivated. Another form of help and one of my personal favourites is reading about whatever you want to change daily to stay motivated.

How can reading about something keep you motivated?

Reading blogs and books about the very thing you want to change helps you learn the way others have overcome that same challenge and gone on to meet their goals. Reading can give you inspiration to continue striving toward your own goal. It gives you the ideas and steps you need to take to reach a certain goal.

Books and blogs are a great way to do some research on what you want to do. Reading about what you want to change or achieve grounds you so you know what to expect. Books about your subject will give ideas about the difficulties you might face while moving forward.

If you want to gain new skills, read about how others have successfully developed themselves and how they have applied them.
If you want to build a successful business, read about successful business people.

Knowing what others have experienced in similar situations lets you adapt and try their solutions along with your own. Their stories can help lessen the worries and challenges you might face along the way.

The Types of Reading

Quotes. Reading inspirational quotes daily can motivate you to continue to take action on your goal. Put your favorite quote on your screensaver. Post quotes on your wall or your whiteboard. Have motivational quotes on your smartphone or tablet.

Read motivational books. Books that help you change your way of thinking can be a great source of inspiration when your motivation is failing. Build a library of motivational and personal development books. If you don’t have time to read them all, get them on tape to listen to while driving or walking. Here are a few notable authors with insights on motivation:

The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz
The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale
Unlimited Power by Anthony Robbins
Great Motivation Secrets of Great Leaders by John Baldoni
Leadership Plain and Simple by Steve Radcliffe

Read inspiring stories. Read inspiring stories from others who have already done what you want to achieve, or are in the process of doing it. Read stories on blogs, in magazines and in books. Those who have already achieved what you are attempting can guide you through the pitfalls and give insights on what to expect along the way. You can get inspiration from their struggles and wins.

Reading books about what you want to change daily, or about self-improvement and inspiration, is an excellent way to stay motivated. They can inspire and motivate you to continue.