No matter what your title, it is most definitely how you think, what you say and your behaviour that really matters!

To be a successful Assistant, learn and practice the following HABITS:

H is for habit   

We all have certain habits that relate not only to our personal life and to our work life as well as this is the way our brains save energy. We work on our habits and rituals and routines via our subconscious mind 90-95% of the time and therefore we need to make sure we have the most efficient and effective habits that are the most productive, keep you positive and help you be successful rather than consistently repeating the habits that hinder your success.

You may have heard it takes 21 days to change a habit well that is nonsense. It takes each person the time it takes them, whatever that is, which could be a day, a week, 6 months or even a year but what you have to be, is tenacious and passionate about changing a habit and eventually, sooner or later it will happen for you.

A habit is triggered by a particular cue, situation or event therefore in order to break the habit be self-aware and notice the trigger for your unwanted habit. You could eliminate your trigger and then consciously and mindfully keep on repeating your new desired behaviour until it becomes the norm realising it will take as long as it takes so you know that you should never give up.

A is for Attitude

Your attitude to your work, your colleagues and even your life will determine whether you are successful or not!

We are all naturally negative (whether you are an optimist or a pessimist) as our brains are simply looking for whatever may be a threat to our survival and this includes real or perceived ‘threats’. A threat could simply be your boss shouting your name in an aggressive way and asking you to get into their office immediately. When this happens our brains decide that we either want to flee, fight, freeze or flock to our friends and talk about it. We need to change our negative thinking into positive thinking in order to enable our thinking, logical, rational part of the brain to kick back in.

Here are some quick and simple things you can do:  

Change a negative word into a positive word whether you are saying it to yourself internally or speaking to others for example, if you are feeling nervous change it to say “I am feeling excited”, if you are feeling tense change it to say “I am feeling alert” – when you say positive things to yourself you will feel the change in your attitude and your resulting behaviour will be more productive. 

Think about positive and happy memories and that could be about a place you love to visit or people that make your heart melt or make you smile. 

Listen to cheerful music that makes your heart sing and your mind happy.

Simply put a smile on your face and look up to the ceiling because your brain listens to your body language and doing this makes your brain think you are happy whether you are or not and will start reducing your cortisol levels (the stress hormone).

Keep your confidence – no one can take this away from you unless you allow them to! Think positive and act positively, be a “will-do” “can-do” person and at the same time this means having the ability to be assertive and say what you need and want and have the ability and confidence to say ‘no’ when appropriate in order to get the important and urgent things completed and ticked off your ‘to-do’ list. Remember: every time you say no to something it really means you are saying yes to something else that you have prioritised – just make sure you are prioritising correctly and go with your convictions.

To keep your confidence you can also keep a “confidence file” where you can put all the ‘thank you’ and ‘well done’ emails that you receive. You can also write up your own notes of achievements such as costs you have reduced, time you have saved through creating a new system or anything you might want to bring up at your appraisal for improvements you have made. Take a look at your file whenever you are starting to feel negative and doubting yourself and change your mind back to being positive as you realise that you really are good and have done some excellent and worthwhile work. 

Do what you say you are going to do – stop procrastinating when you know you should be doing something else that adds value at this moment-in-time – say to yourself: “Is this the best use of my time right now?” and “Am I adding value with what I am doing?”

Procrastination does have it’s place however, as your brain needs a break several times a day so you need to consciously give yourself a brain break which might mean doing tasks that require less thinking power like filing and making coffee and that may be the best use of your time at that moment. 

Be aware of yourself, your thoughts, your actions at all times and when you realise you are being negative you need to take positive action to eliminate it and replace it with positivity.

B is for Behaviour

Behave the way you would like others to behave and set an example – be the leader of yourself, your boss and your family and behave in a way that others want to be like you. Be the person you want to be and not the person who develops through bad habits. You get what you focus on so focus on what you want and not on what you don’t want.

People only see 10% of you, which shows itself as your behaviour – they do not see the 90% made up of your values, thoughts, feelings etc so make sure that the behaviour you display is actually your intent and that you are perceived in the way you want others to see you. Self-awareness is one of the most important traits you can have because if you know how you are being perceived by others you may change your ways. How we perceive ourselves may not be the way others perceive us.

Ask people for honest and open feedback and show them you truly want to be the best person you can be and as a confident person you can take this helpful insight to change your habits to be the person you want others to see and know you as.

I is for Implement Sue France’s 25/75 rule:  

We all have self-talk and sometimes it can lead to sabotaging yourself and you may say to yourself “I’ll leave that until later as it’s not happening until next week or next month” etc and then all of a sudden it’s here and you are not prepared. Events and meetings that are already on your calendar should not be allowed to sneak up on you! Many meetings need to be planned and booked well in advance, travel organised, cars ordered, printing sorted, people invited, agenda sent out and lots more. So all you need to do in order to be organised, create momentum and be prepared is to spend 25 minutes, two or three times a week, looking ahead over the next 75 days and preparing whatever it is you need for those upcoming trips, appointments and events which may even include diarising the next step of organising whatever it is that you have to do in the following week. Remember Sue France’s 25/75 Rule!

T is for Thinking patterns

Think in chunks – you brain performs best when you split your work up into chunks – for example organise to do your telephone calls in one chunk, organise to read and answer your emails in one chunk, organise to do your filing in one chunk, etc.

Think using your conscious, rational, logical, decision making mind and not just leaving it to your subconscious habitual mind in a routine way. We only use our conscious mind for 5-10% of the time because your brain uses up 20% of the energy you put into your body even though it is only 2% of your body mass. Therefore you need to make sure you eat nutritious, healthy foods and never skip breakfast or lunch. You also need to take regular ‘brain breaks’ in order to reboot your conscious mind as well as switch between hard and easy tasks.

Take a break and incubate - stop thinking about a problem when you have been stuck for 15 minutes

Have you ever thought of a solution when day dreaming? Have you ever been in the shower or driving along and something has come to your mind that you had no idea you were thinking about it? Have you ever woke up in the morning and know exactly what you need to do where as the night before you were worrying about it? Your subconscious mind works for you whilst you are not consciously thinking about something and even when you are asleep. So whenever you want to solve a problem a come up with a creative solution you can write your problem down on a whiteboard or type on to your schedule or jot it down in a notepad or dictate into your phone, so you feel secure in the fact that you know you won’t forget it and then tell your subconscious mind to work it out for you whilst you get on with something else. You can take a walk and get your lunch, tidy your desk area or do a different task and this even works at night before you go to sleep and when you wake up in the morning your mind will be much clearer and have ideas. Taking a break may be the best use of your time!

S is for Set a timer for 25 minutes

Spend 25 minutes on a task – this is the maximum amount of time your thinking, logical, decision making brain can work effectively.  This is especially useful when facing a daunting and difficult task as once you begin a huge task even if it is a only the first chunk of it then the rest becomes much easier. After 25 minutes take a break or switch to an easy task that you don’t have to think hard about to give your conscious rational, logical and decision making part of your brain a rest and time to reboot. You only need a few minutes to reboot so you can do some filing, make a coffee, go for a walk etc. 

One excellent use of your time would be to do a 3 minute mindfulness exercise which calms your brain down, helps to get rid of cortisol and allows you to start thinking rationally and logically again. Mindfulness is about being in the moment because you cannot control the past or the future but you can control the present! The more time you spend in the ‘present moment,’ the less time you spend on automatic pilot and therefore the more control you will have of a stress free life!

If you would like to download a free mindfulness exercise and other useful documents then visit my website www.suefrance.com and you will find many FREE downloads which are for my book “The Definitive Personal Assistant & Secretarial Handbook” 3rd edition all of which will help you to form the habits of a highly successful Assistant.