Emile Coué was a French psychologist and pharmacist that developed a method of self-improvement called autosuggestion, a very simple process of repeating something to one self. Emile Coué used it to heal his patients by telling them “Tous les jours, à tous points de vue, je vais de mieux en mieux.” (“Every day, in every respect, I’m getting better and better.”). Coué noticed that when he told the patients they were getting better, they would). Emile Coué’s method of autosuggestion worked to incrementally make his patients better and better each day.
As J2 evolves, we continue to make improvements to our company and ourselves as well. Sometimes the improvement is in our process, sometimes in our culture and other times in our Core Values. One of our Core Values is Growth; but we don’t define it as growing J2 in size, though that becomes a byproduct of it. Our definition of growth is: “Become better and leave people better than yesterday”.
Here is the catch to that definition of growth: to leave people better than yesterday, you must be better than you were yesterday. Ultimately, the way you leave people better is to share what you know and what you have learned. Perhaps you’ve been working on your soft skills and developed your ability to listen, being a shoulder to lean on for a co-worker who is vulnerable is a way to share and give back. Or if your self-improvement is done mostly away from your desk by working with a personal trainer, being more confident in how you feel can certainly add to a positive culture at work. Or, even if you are, say, a sprinter, finding a way to shave of a millisecond of your time is achieving your goal and can help you help others reach theirs. Any improvement, however incremental, can leave you and your team better than yesterday.
“My life constantly under construction. There’s always something to improve.” – Anonymous
End this week being better than last.
What are some steps you’ve taken to become better and leave people better than yesterday? I’d love to hear them!
Vijay