Success

What Young Employees Get Wrong About Asking for Advice

In my research on adaptability, the youngest employees (under age 35), were the LEAST likely to ask for advice, help, or mentorship when making decisions in an uncertain situation.

Fear of “looking stupid” may be a factor causing young employees to hold back. Or feeling like they should already know the answer might contribute. But whatever the cause, young employees put themselves at a disadvantage when they don’t ask for advice.

The research is clear – getting guidance from other people who have different experiences than you helps you make better decisions. Holding back on getting input from others because you think it makes you look more competent has the OPPOSITE effect.

Check out the research in my new book ReVisionary Thinking, wherever you buy your books (including Amazon and Barnes and Noble).

How to Find Fulfillment in your Job

If you want to feel fulfilled in your job, you need to keep that spark of excitement, even once you’ve been in your role for years. How do you stay fulfilled and find your work meaningful? There are two simple ways to reframe your mindset and continue to be excited by your job: Think Back and Tie Together. Learn how to follow those steps and get more enjoyment out of your work week!

5 Advantages of Accepting Change (Instead of Fighting It)

The world is always changing: trees grow and trees get cut down. The “latest” technology becomes outdated in months. Even YOU aren’t the same person you were last year.

 

We know change is a given. But one of the hardest things for many people to grasp about change is that it happens with or without your consent. You can fight against changes, or you can begin accepting change and figure out a way to make the most of it. The easiest way to get on board with change is by recognizing the advantages that change brings.

 

Five Advantages of Accepting Change

1) More time.

Most people who resist change find that their resistance efforts are futile. Your time is important, and it could be put to so much better use. So, why waste time resisting change?

 

2) Less misery.

Change may feel miserable at first, but fighting a losing battle also results in misery. Getting on board with change produces less stress in the long run, and gives you a chance to make something good come of it.

 

3) Increased progress.

When you get on board with change, you have the ability to make the most of your new situation. Change offers new opportunities and choices.

 

4) More control.

Fighting change reinforces a sense of lack of control over life circumstances. When you turn your focus inward and spend your time controlling what you can control in the situation, you’re likely to realize a more favorable outcome.

 

5) More opportunities.

Change can feel paralyzing. But successful people are more likely to use change as a springboard to a new, brighter future. No, those opportunities don’t happen by default. It takes work to discover them and nurture them. But it only happens if you actually reframe change as full of possibility.

 

It’s okay to feel intimidated by change. The unknown is always scary! But the quicker you commit to taking that first step forward into change, instead of trying to avoid it, the quicker you’ll get to take advantage of the success that change can bring.

Get Comfortable with Change using this Strategy from the ReVisionary Thinking book

Author of the book ReVisionary Thinking Courtney Clark reads an excerpt from Chapter 1. Learn how to develop a “tolerance for ambiguity” that will help you be successful in uncertain and new situations. Tolerance for ambiguity is a key predictor of success even when you’re dealing with change.

How to Generate Solutions to a Problem

How do you come up with GOOD solutions when you’re faced with a problem? There’s a simple, 2-word question you can ask that’s guaranteed to help you be more successful.

Courtney reads an excerpt from her upcoming book, ReVisionary Thinking, that includes a case study from Procter & Gamble’s product development team, and how they broke the mold by asking questions.

The book is on shelves May 17th, 2022!

This is Why You Hate Receiving Feedback

There’s a reason you don’t enjoy getting feedback (and it isn’t because you have a big ego!) It’s because feedback challenges your mental concept of yourself.

Here’s what you need to know to be a little more flexible and get better at receiving feedback.

It’s Cooking Light’s Fault. (Aka: how I was trying to solve a problem all wrong)

When I married my husband, he was really good cook. I could feed myself but I was not (okay, I still am not!) what anyone would call a really good cook. I am the person who lit the toaster oven on fire when I was in college! Apparently, too much cheese dripped down into the coils. But the good news is I learned how to use a fire extinguisher that day! That’s a life skill.

 

When my husband and I got engaged, I thought, “I am going to learn how to cook. I think that would be a good skill for me to have. I’m going to learn how to cook.” I started taking cooking classes. I learned how to roast a chicken. I learned how to hold my knives, learned the most efficient way to chop an onion. I felt like a real grown up. My cooking got incrementally better with practice, but it was still just… okay. I was practicing all the time – I worked fewer hours than he was, so I’d pull out the Cooking Light magazine and cook us dinner most nights a week. He’d cook about once a week, and his food was just better than mine. Significantly better. He was so confident in kitchen, and his food was so full of flavor.

 

And then we went on our honeymoon.

 

We ended up in Italy, where I ate 5 meals a day, 4 of them pasta. Our first Sunday home after we got back from Rome, we were grocery shopping. There, at the checkout, was a copy of Gourmet Magazine: “The Pasta Issue.” And the photo on the cover was of penne salsiccia, which I’d had a LOT of in Italy. I thought to myself, “Oh, this is a sign.” I threw that magazine down on the conveyor belt and committed to reading it cover to cover.

 

The next Sunday, I had my grocery list ready. I was going to make that Penne Salsiccia from the cover. I was so excited. My husband and I were going around the grocery store shopping. We pick up the sausage. We pick up the cheese. I grab the heavy whipping cream. It was when I was putting the heavy whipping cream in the cart that he looks at all the heavy ingredients, looks back at me and he goes, “Is this from Cooking Light?”. Since that’s where almost all of my recipes came from, he was surprised.

 

I said, “No, this is not from Cooking Light. This is from that gourmet magazine. We’re going to make real Italian pasta like we had on our honeymoon.”

 

That evening, I was so excited to get started.

 

6pm. I’m starting dinner. This recipe calls for VERY expensive, very fragile threads of Saffron to be soaked in water. I’m trying not to panic.

 

6:28. I’m trying not to scald the heavy whipping cream in the pan.

 

6:47. I’m trying not to overcook the pasta

 

6:52. I carry the plates out to the table. I set them down with a deep breath. For a moment I consider letting my husband take the first bite and tell me what he thinks but then I think FORGET THAT THIS WAS MY IDEA I MADE THIS MEAL. I put the bite in my mouth and I turn to my husband in shock.

 

I can’t believe what I’m tasting.

 

“I don’t stink at cooking! Cooking Light must stink at cooking! Because I. am. AMAZING” I would have said more but I needed to use my mouth for the important work of eating my phenomenal pasta.

 

Here’s what I realized: I had a materials problem. I had been trying for years to solve it with more skills training.

 

I’m sure nothing like that has ever happened to you has it? No workplace of yours would EVER try to solve a materials problem with more skills training, right? <wink, wink>.

 

But that’s what happens when we jump to solve a problem too quickly, “Oh, I know what the problem is. I know what the problem is.” Action bias is a common impulse. It’s a feeling of being compelled to act quickly and solve a problem, and psychologists think it happens in order to regain a sense of control over a situation. There’s a cultural conditioning that can occur, where we learn as children to favor action over waiting, because waiting could be interpreted as “laziness” or “indecisiveness.” So action bias isn’t just internal – there’s a lot of societal pressure to take action! In some cases, we can even be rewarded tangibly for being the kind of person who leaps to action and solves problems quickly.

 

If we want to thrive and be successful in an uncertain environment (like we’re all in in 2021!), we need to give ourselves time to experiment. Time to think about what the problem could really be and what else we could really do about it so that we’re certain we get to the right answer. If the past two years have given us anything, it’s the opportunity to take a moment to make sure that we’re solving problems the right way and not the wrong way.

Four Habits Happy People do Every Week

If being happy was easy, everyone would do it. Instead, there’s a lot of disagreement over what makes true happiness and how we should achieve it. One thing is clear – real long-term happiness depends more on individual interpretation than the specific situation. Two people can have the same experiences, and one person can report being happy while another person reports feeling unfulfilled.

 

So if happiness depends on how you interpret your life, are there ways you can choose to be more positive? The answer appears to be yes. There are specific habits and practices that happy people have in common. By choosing to adopt these strategies, you’ll be more likely to reframe your life experiences (both positive and negative!) in a way that can allow you to be as happy as possible.

 

Give Back

 

Helping other people is one of the fastest ways to get perspective on your own problems. When I started researching my first book, The Giving Prescription, I expected to find that volunteering helped people get perspective after going through a trauma. But what surprised me was WHY. I assumed that the reason volunteerism helped was because of something called “downward perspective,” meaning when you volunteer, you’re around people less fortunate than yourself, and being exposed to the less fortunate makes you feel grateful for what you have. That can play a role, but it’s not the biggest factor.

 

A major reason volunteering boosts perspective is because when you give to someone else, you’re increasing your personal power. Sometimes in life we can start feeling helpless or powerless. It may feel like there’s nothing we can do to fix our situation. But when you give back, you have the opportunity to realize that you could have just changed someone’s life. And that boosts your sense of personal power, which increases your self-confidence. Whether you formally become a volunteer through a nonprofit, or you make it a regular habit to give back your community, volunteering will give you the perspective you need to start on your path to happiness.

 

Take Care

 

Practicing self-care is on a lot of happiness lists. Some people recommend you work out and eat healthy. Others say you should meditate or take daily bubble baths. It matters less WHAT you do, than that you do it at all. Taking care of yourself isn’t optional for happy people.

 

A friend of mine once told me “you can’t pour from an empty cup.” I was running myself ragged trying to succeed at work and at home and in my volunteer life… and I was exhausted. I was happy that other people were pleased with my efforts, but I wasn’t HAPPY. How could I be happy, when I was miserably running myself into the ground? I had to realize that making other people proud of me wasn’t the same as being truly happy within myself.

 

What does “taking care of yourself” mean to you? It can be physical, mental, or emotional… as long as you find your own version and seek it out.

I had to realize that making other people proud of me wasn’t the same as being truly happy within myself.

Give Thanks

 

When I first heard of gratitude journals, I admit I thought they sounded a little… fluffy. Like, kumbaya, let’s all hold hands and talk about what we’re thankful for around the campfire. Then I hit a period of feeling depressed, when the bad things in my life felt ever-present, and the good things in life seemed to evaporate. In the middle of a rant to my husband about how terribly my life was going, he said “whatever happens, you’ll always have my love.”

 

That moment stopped me cold, because I realized what I was saying to him. If “everything sucks and nothing good ever happens to me,” I’m insulting my marriage. I’m saying his love isn’t something to be grateful for. That day, when I picked up a pen to vent in my journal about my frustrations, I made sure to balance every negative out with a positive. I didn’t do it in list format. I just noted my struggles as usual, but then afterward I wrote about one strength to balance out each struggle.

 

I have a friend who writes a thank you note every work day. Her postage stamp budget must be through the roof! But that’s how she spends time expressing gratitude. Maybe prayer is a good way for you to express gratitude. Heck, even a text message is better than nothing! But at least once a week, do something to reflect on (and hopefully express) what’s going right. When you focus on what’s going right instead of what’s going wrong, it’s much easier to foster happiness.

 

Take Time

 

We live in a world of speed. The faster we can make decisions and solve problems, the better. Moving on quickly in the face of an upset is considered a skill. There’s even a name for it: action-bias. We’re primed to want to move fast and put our problems behind us.

 

But…

 

When we move quickly, we aren’t always taking the time to make the best choices. For the past 3 years, I’ve been researching how people can successfully move on when situations in their life change. One common thread I found in my research is that making smart decisions (especially in uncertain environments and changing situations) takes time.

 

We’re all busy people, but thoughtfulness matters. When you resist jumping to action just to be in motion, and instead pause to gather information, you’re more likely to make smart choices. Don’t do the next thing on the list just because it’s the next thing on the list. Don’t get caught up in accomplishment for accomplishment’s sake. Happy people take time to reflect on whether their choice is the right choice for long-term good.

 


 

Happiness is elusive. It’s more of a regular practice than a destination. Work these 4 habits into your regular behaviors and try to think about them at least once a week. If you do, you’ll be on the path to building happiness in no time.

Courtney Clark first name signature keynote speaker

 

Are Naps Good for You?

Do you know the truth about naps and success?

I’ve always been a big fan of naps (I got it from my Dad), but I recently read something VERY interesting about naps and our brains.

If you love naps or you hate naps, this is probably something you should know!

Because of something called the “default network” in your brain, your creative problem-solving is at it’s peak right as you drift off to sleep. Plus, if you’re tired, your brain shifts into threat mode, and the resulting linear thinking isn’t very good for being creative.

So feel free to take a nap – research shows it’s good for you!

Why Choose Courtney for a Keynote?

If you’re wondering “how do I choose a keynote speaker for my conference?” you’re not alone. It’s a tough job to find a speaker who will keep your audience engaged, teach them something, make them laugh, and motivate them – ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

 

Courtney Clark isn’t your average keynote speaker.

 

She’s inspirational, for sure. She’s high energy, interactive, and fun. But she also grounds all her work in research. She offers what she calls “content-based motivation,” so when you work with Courtney, you’ll create a customized blend of research, strategies, interaction, humor, and stories. Your participants will leave with both the *feelings* and the *skills* to be more successful in today’s fast-changing world.

 

If you’re looking for a keynote speaker on change, resilience speaker Courtney Clark will bring your group the tools and attitude they need!