How Successful People Stay Productive And Be In Control In Nigeria
A test carried out by TalentSmart on more than a million persons showed that the upper echelons of top performance are occupied by people with high emotional intelligence (90% to be exact). Successful people stay productive mainly due to their very high emotional intelligence.
The major evidence of emotional intelligence is self-control; a skill that unleashes great productivity by keeping you focused and on track.
Unfortunately, self-control is a very difficult skill to cultivate. Self- control is so difficult for most people that when Martin Seligman and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania surveyed about two million people, asking them to rank in order of their strength 24 different skills. Self-control ended up in the bottom of the slot.
Related: How successful people handle toxic people in Nigeria
When you self-control is something to write home about, your productivity level also shoots up.
When it comes to the issue of self-control, it is always so easy to focus on your failures that your success tends to dwindle in comparison. Self-control is solely an effort that’s intended to help achieve a particular goal.
Failing to control yourself, is on its own a great failure. Successful people stay productive and in control because they are able to be in control of themselves.
If you are avoiding to eat that bag of chips after dinner because you want to lose a few pounds and you succeeded Monday and Tuesday nights, only to give in to the temptation on Wednesday by eating four servings worth of the empty calories. Your failure here automatically outweighs your success. You have just taken two steps forward and four steps backward.
We have seen that self-control is of great importance to our productivity. There are many reasons why successful people stay productive and in control. These emotionally intelligent people are on top of their game due to these reasons.
There are twelve major reasons why successful people stay productive and in control. Some of these reasons are obvious, others are not, but all will really help you minimize your failures and increase your productivity.
How Successful People Stay Productive
1. Successful People Forgive Themselves
Successful people stay productive and in control mainly because they always forgive themselves for any mistake and wrong decision they make any time any day. A cycle of failing to control oneself, followed by the feeling of intense self-hatred and disgust is common in attempts at self-control.
When you make a mistake, it is very important that you forgive yourself and move on. Never ignore how the mistake came about so that you won’t repeat it in the future. Don’t let your mistakes wore you down, rather, shift your attention to doing something to improve yourself in the future.
2. Successful People Don’t Say Yes Unless They Really Want To
The more difficult it is for you to say no, the more likely you are to experience stress, depression and even burnout. The ability to say no is a major self-control challenge for many people. “No” is a powerful world that we should not be afraid to always wield. When it’s time to say no, successful people avoid phrases like “I don’t think I can” or “I’m not certain”.
The ability to say no to a new commitment honors your existing commitment and also gives you ample time to successfully fulfill them. You must at all times remind yourself that saying no is an act of self-control that will help your future self-control by preventing the negative effects of over commitments.
3. They Don’t Always Seek Perfection
Those emotionally intelligent people never set perfection as their target because they know that it doesn’t exist. This is one of the reasons why successful people stay productive always. They always remind themselves that humans by virtue of our very nature are fallible. Whenever you set perfection as your goal, you will always be left with a nagging sense of failure to reach your target. You eventually end up lamenting your failure and what you should have done differently instead of moving forward excited about what you have done and accomplished
4. They Focus On The Solution At All Times
Wherever attention goes, energy flows and results show. Wherever you focus your attention, determines your emotional state. Anytime you focus on the problem rather than the solution, you generate and prolong negative energy and emotions which hinder self-control.
When you focus on the solution, you better yourself and your circumstances; you create a sense of personal efficacy that produces positive emotions that improve performance.
Successful people stay productive by not dwelling on the problems because they know that they are most effective when they focus on the solutions.
5. Successful People Avoid Asking The Question “What If?”
“What if?” statements fuel the fire of stress and worry that is very harmful to self-control. There are a million directions that things can take, the more you spend time thinking and worrying about these possibilities, the less time you will spend taking the required action and staying productive. Your ability to stay productive also helps you calm down and keep focused. Productive people know that the “what if” questions will only take them to a place they don’t want or need to be. You should know that scenario planning is a necessary strategic planning technique. The onus lies in knowing the difference between worry and strategic thinking.
6. They Always Stay Positive
Having positive thoughts help you exercise self-control by focusing your brain on the rewards you will receive for your effort. You must always make a conscious effort to think about. Self-control is relatively easy to achieve when things are going well. Successful people stay productive by staying positive always. It is always very difficult to have self-control when things are going poorly and your mind is flooded with negative thoughts.
Whenever you run into this situation, try to identify one positive thing that happened that day and reflect on it. You must always have something to shift your attention to when your thoughts turn negative, so you don’t lose focus.
7. They Eat when due
This one is in the counter-intuitive category, especially when you are having trouble controlling your eating. Your brain burns energy heavily when trying to exert self-control. If you have low blood sugar, you are more likely to yield to destructive impulses.
Taking sugary foods spike your sugar level quickly, leaving you drained and prone to impulsive actions. Eating foods that provides a slow burn for your bodies like whole grain rice or meat, will give you a longer window of self-control.
8. They Sleep Appropriately
Successful people are productive and they have self-control because they have enough sleep. The importance of good sleep to your emotional intelligence and maintaining your focus and self-control cannot be overemphasized. When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, causing you to wake up alert and clear-headed.
Once you don’t get enough sleep, your self-control, alertness, and memory are all reduced. Deprivation of sleep causes stress hormones to be released on its own, even without a stressor present. You may think that you must sacrifice sleep to stay productive, but sleep deprivation reduces your productivity to the point that you are better off sleeping
. At the point of tiredness, the ability of your brain to absorb glucose diminishes. At this point, it is impossible to control the impulses that derail your focus.
9. They Exercise Diligently
Exercising your body for as little as 10 minutes releases GABA, a neurotransmitter that makes your brain feel soothed and keeps you in control of your impulses. Successful people are productive partly because they understand the place of exercise in their life.
10. Successful People Create Time For Meditation
The ability to meditate trains your brain to become a self-control machine. Trying out simple techniques like mindfulness, which involves taking out as little as 5 minutes a day to focus on nothing but your breathing and your senses help improve your self- awareness and the ability of your brain to resist destructive impulses. Buddhist monks and Tai chi faithful appear calm and in control for a reason, try it and watch the result.
11. Successful People Ride the Wave
There are possibilities of desires and distractions to ebb and flow like the tide. When the impulse that you need to control is strong, waiting out this wave of desire is enough to keep yourself in control. At that point where you feel like giving in to that temptation, the rule of thumb here is that you wait at least 10 minutes. You will always find out that the great wave of desire is now little more than a ripple that you have the power to step right over.
12. They Always Squash Negative Self-Talk
The ability to stop negative self-talk in its tracks is a big final step in exercising self-control. Successful people stay productive by always stopping the negative self-talk in the track. Most of the time, the negative talks that you have are just thoughts, not facts.
At that point that you find yourself believing those negative thoughts, stop and write them down literally. Once you take a moment to slow down that negative momentum of your thoughts, you will be more rational and clear-headed in evaluating the truth in them.
You can always know that your statements are not true when you use words like never, worst, etc. If your statements appear to be true for you, take them to a friend or colleague and see whether they agree with you.
Conclusion
It is very important that you always remember to give these strategies a try. You must always recognize those moments where you are struggling with self-control and rather than giving into the impulse, take a look at these strategies and try them before you give in to that temptation. Successful people stay productive and in control by imbibing these twelve strategies above at every point in time.
