Category: Growth

Creating Goals for the New Year Ahead

Pamela Ayuso January 6, 2020

I always love the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. It is a chance to look at and drink in all the accomplishments and growth from the prior year. As always, not everything will have gone as planned. But as I look back, I try to learn from everything, the good and the bad. And I often find successes which are unexpected—these are my favorite ones.

It is also an opportunity to plan for the next year. The new year is always promising; it represents hope and something fresh, which I think is why it is the most popular date for making resolutions. Of course, these dates can come and go, just like any other date in the year, but you can use them to launch your new project or start a new routine.

When Something Goes Wrong, Try to Get Something Good Out of It

Pamela Ayuso December 2, 2019

We’ve all had to deal with situations that we would not have chosen. Failures or bad turns of events are uncomfortable, and the easiest thing to do is to solve them and then move on. However, there is always gold hidden inside these events, even if it is just a sliver. Whether we are responsible for the circumstances or not, if something unfavorable happens, we can always learn from it and improve our world in ways we may have not appreciated before.

The more uncomfortable the circumstance is, the more beneficial it is to try to find the silver lining. It can give the event meaning and can help you move forward more easily than you would have otherwise. Sometimes finding a positive outcome from a disagreeable circumstance can be a struggle because some things are simply unpleasant or even sad, but again, there is always something to be learned.

Get to Know Yourself and Understand Your Strengths

Pamela Ayuso November 11, 2019

There are many options are available today for getting to know your team and how to best work together. I think, though, that these exercises can be more useful for getting to know the person you will always have on your side: yourself. Sometimes it is hard to see ourselves as others see us and as we are, but these tests can help us see what we may have never understood before and to learn more about our preferences and how we act in different situations.

Understanding Professional Roadblocks and How to Persevere

Pamela Ayuso October 14, 2019

Along with the joy of starting a new project, job, or journey to achieving a dream comes the hard part: discipline, work, patience, and perseverance. The path is not all pleasant, as that’s just how the territory is. You can expect many highs as you see the fruits of your effort or marvel at discoveries. During the evolution of your project, however, it may sometimes look like nothing will come of what you are doing.

Nevertheless, if you are confident in your vision, keep going. The end goal may not happen exactly as you may have envisioned it, as the result may come from a different direction altogether. The only way to discover that outcome is to keep going and maintain the goal in mind.

This is My Journey as a Writer: Applying What I Learned in the Corporate World

Pamela Ayuso September 23, 2019

I have always dreamt of writing a book. I told myself I couldn’t write, however, and that I wasn’t a good writer, even though I had a writer in my family. My paternal grandmother was a poet. She was known as the Poetess of Retalhuleu, a small town in Guatemala where my father’s family is from. The last time I saw her, she gave me all her books, and to this day, I keep them in a drawer as the most special gift I have ever received from her. I told myself she had a special talent — writers are born that way.

So, I continued my path following what I thought I was good at: accounting and finance. I built an entire career around numbers, and today I am the CEO of a real estate development firm. Still, it’s not all I wanted to do.

Four months after my youngest daughter was born, I felt a little voice inside of me that I had never heard before. It told me to write. I didn’t understand where it came from, and I still don’t. I just knew it was there, and it wouldn’t stop telling me to write. I tried to reason with it. I was too busy and tired with three young daughters at home, one of them a newborn. I had also just co-founded a company less than a year prior and was in the middle of setting up the new company while maintaining my role at my prior company. There was no way I could start writing.

Achieving Better Clarity for Your Business in the Middle of the Chaos

Pamela Ayuso August 19, 2019

The demands we face today can feel overwhelming. Our to-do lists are never-ending, and the pace of technological changes continues to accelerate. It may seem as though as soon as we have adapted to a new technology, we must learn something new. Although there are certain basic, underlying principles that never change, the noise around us is constant.

Before the Internet, all that we had access to was the information physically available around us, like newspapers, books, television, or even conversations with colleagues and friends. Today, many barriers to information have been removed, and this, combined with the creation of content by previously silent communicators, makes it difficult to sift through what matters and what is simply clutter.

Maintaining Faith: Build It and They Will Come

Pamela Ayuso July 8, 2019

If your product is built right for your client, they will come. More often than not, it will work out as you envisioned.

How to Make Sense of This Crazy World

Pamela Ayuso June 17, 2019

I used to think that I could build a perfectly structured company in which everything would be neat and tidy. I tirelessly designed and organized the company to ensure the structure would be failproof. Little by little, that idea was slowly torn apart as I discovered how little is actually in my control. The world and life itself can change in an instant. An organization will be put under stress and sometimes experience failures no matter how organized it is.

At times the changes may come slowly and are easier to adapt to. Other times, a circumstance may be a game changer and can present itself unexpectedly, to which we have no choice but to adapt. Given that this is how the world operates, how can we succeed in the middle of all this uncertainty? How do we operate effectively in a world that sometimes makes no sense? I don’t have all the answers, but I do have some strategies I’ve been experimenting with for some time.

Why You Need to Practice Perseverance to Achieve More of Your Goals

Pamela Ayuso June 3, 2019

Perseverance is one of the key ingredients to accomplishing anything worthwhile in life and professionally. Growth is not always linear: there are usually ups and downs. Sometimes it may even feel like you took two steps back when what you intended was to move forward. At times like these is where perseverance is most useful; it encourages us to keep going. You may not know for sure when you’ll get there or what you will discover along the way, but perseverance will ensure you keep going long enough to find out.

According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of perseverance is:

“continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties, failure, or opposition”

Setbacks happen often enough that it is difficult to stay on track. Part of growth is persevering: having the ability to face challenges and move past them. The problems we encounter can either be defeating empowering. Instead of pushing us to quit, they can help us grow in our capacities as professionals and leaders. Once we achieve our objectives, we will be able to handle more.

How to Set Up Your Peer Coaching Group for Success

Pamela Ayuso April 15, 2019

Peer coaching groups are one of the most useful mechanisms you can design for your career. Growing a career/business is complex, and it is much easier to face challenges with others who are in the same boat as you. In a peer coaching group, you and a group of professionals can come together to listen, learn, and share your career paths and projects.

During these meetings, the group members discuss goals, challenges, or simply what is happening in their professional lives. In between sessions, you’ll have a group of people you can rely on for support during the projects you are embarking on.

You may not be in a location where a group is readily available, so you may have to set one up yourself. In any case, to have the greatest impact on your professional life, it’s imperative to make sure your peer group is the right one for you.