Incomia

How loud is your inner critic these days? It’s a good question to ask yourself in 2022 to take stock of the beliefs you held in 2021. After all, you don’t want those old narratives holding you back in the new year. Instead, you’ll want to tame the doubtful voice in your head and the stories it tells. “If we’re not careful, these stories can lead us to a place we don’t want to be, and if we’re intentional, they can lead us to some really great places,” Kindra Hall says. In this episode of Brilliant Thoughts , Hall talks to SUCCESS People Editor Tristan Ahumada about controlling your personal narrative. As a storytelling expert, Hall knows a thing or two about false narratives, success stories and the gap between the two. Her new book, Choose Your Story, Change Your Life: Silence Your Inner Critic and Rewrite Your Life from the Inside Out , is a manual for crafting your best life. Ready to reclaim your story? Here’s how to choose your personal narrative. 1. Catch the bad story as s...

Organizations of all shapes and sizes have one thing in common: people.  But if you ask leadership experts Three and Jackie Carpenter, they’ll say people aren’t just part of an organization—they’re the most important.  It’s a timely message. As the pandemic and advances in technology have led to mass resignations and increased volatility in the labor market, the Carpenters are advising leaders to approach their organization’s people with greater intentionality.  The trick? Seeing people as more than just employees, but also as human beings. The Carpenters’ new book, People First: The 5 Steps to Pure Human Connection and a Thriving Organization , is for the leader hoping to do just that.  With decades of experience managing businesses in the private club industry, the Carpenters could write the book on providing premium customer service. But their experiences also gave them insight into the cultures at great organizations.  One of these is the concept of t...

On this week’s episode of SUCCESS Line , I talk to a very special guest and member of the SUCCESS family: Madison Pieper, host of SUCCESS Stories . Madison also manages all of the social assets for SUCCESS. Overseeing accounts with a reach of 4.5 million people is no small task, and Madison has learned a thing or two about how to excel in the overwhelming world of social media along the way.  So this week, I asked Madison on the show to pick her brain about a question that has come up time and time again on the SUCCESS Line : How do we achieve maximum impact on our social media channels? If you’ve been asking yourself this question, too, read on for Madison’s top five tips to developing a successful online brand identity.  1. Find your fit.  Madison’s first piece of advice was an important one: If you are looking to develop your brand identity, you cannot try to do everything and be everywhere at once. You will become a jack of all trades and a master of none.  ...

Sorry is supposed to be the hardest word, yet many of us live in a constant state of apologizing for who we are. Especially marginalized people. We’re sorry for being too opinionated, too talented, and for not meeting other people’s expectations. Luvvie Ajayi Jones is done with apologizing, and she wants more people to join her.  You may know Luvvie from her best-selling book I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual , published in 2016, or from her TED Talk, Get comfortable with being uncomfortable . She’s also an in-demand speaker and has released a second book, Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual . Or maybe you read the blog that started her career as a rebel with a cause. Finding success hasn’t made Luvvie sit back. She’s now not only fighting to make her own voice heard, she wants to empower others to unapologetically follow their dreams. “We spend a lot of time trying to make sure we don’t disappoint other people, and we end up disappointing ourselves,” she sa...

As the new year approaches, it’s tempting to think about all of the ways you’re going to overhaul your life and make this “your year.” But before you go all out changing every aspect of your life, remember that trying to focus on more than one thing at a time can waste a lot of energy, and before you know it, you’re burnt out and right back where you started.  Instead of setting multiple goals that leave you feeling scattered and frustrated, consider concentrating on building the habits that will become the foundation of your goals.  Listen to this week’s episode of the rich & Regular podcast as we discuss setting financial goals in 2022, and keep reading for ways to build habits that can help you achieve those goals.  Understand what you’re doing and why. While goal setting can be fun and aspirational, habit building often gets into the nitty-gritty of how your life and brain work. Instead of thinking about what could be, habit forming is the work it takes to g...

As examples of good customer service, we chose brands most of you will know. Although the companies are large, the principles of great company service are universal. Tailor these successes to even the smallest startup, and keep your clients coming back for more. Surprise customers with a gift. The little, personal touches delight customers and increase feelings of brand loyalty . Consider even the cafe where the waiter brings an extra side order such as a cookie or slice of desert. Not only will you likely tip especially well that day, but that cafe has created a more loyal customer. Online pet supply center Chewy took gift-giving to heart. When one customer needed to return a package, Chewy asked her to send a photograph of her dog with the return. What the customer later received from Chewy both surprised and delighted her: a commissioned oil painting of her pet from Chewy. In fact, it is widely reported that Chewy provides approximately 1,000 paintings a week to its customers. P...

Her name is Polar Seal. She’s 40 feet long, bright white with a thin blue stripe down each side and a monochromatic logo of a seal at the helm. To the sailing community, she’s a 2007 Beneteau Oceanis 40 with a two-cabin layout. To Ryan Ellison and Sophie Darsy ( @ryan_and_sophie_sailing ), she’s a vehicle to carry them across the Atlantic (for the third time); she’s an office for their respective careers; but most importantly, she’s been home for nearly four years. They are what’s known as “liveaboards,” a breed of digital nomad on the water, with Sophie managing their digital brand, Ryan & Sophie Sailing , while Ryan works as a business development consultant. Before officially shoving off in 2018, Ellison and Darsy led what some might call typical lives. They met on Tinder in 2015 while living in Sweden as expats: Ellison, an aviation sales director from Des Moines, Iowa, and Darsy, a human resources systems specialist from Paris. They quickly connected over a shared love of ...

Here they come. Holiday feasts followed incongruously by healthy eating tips, after which we will be inundated with advice as to which diet will help you shed the weight you put on over the holidays. What if—hear me out here—you just said, “Screw it, I’m going to eat what I want this holiday season?” What if you walked past the plate of fudge, stopped, cut yourself a big ol’ piece, stuffed it in your face, and didn’t feel guilty about it, didn’t run extra laps to make up for it, didn’t do anything but thank Whoever It Is You Thank for creating fudge in the first place? What if—more crazy talk coming—you adopted a similar attitude all year long? What if you let your weight be your weight and didn’t obsess with myriad complicated, expensive and ultimately ineffective ways to control it? Christy Harrison, a solopreneur, author and intuitive-eating coach, wrote Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating after struggling with disordered eatin...

(Editor’s Note: The SUCCESS Interview tests the foundational principles of this 125-year-old personal and professional development magazine against modern realities. Editor-in-Chief Josh Ellis will sit down with newsmakers, opinion-shapers and undisputed achievers to find out how we can all thrive in a world changing faster than ever. In this edition, Ellis chats with Sarah Jakes Roberts, founder of the Woman Evolve ministry and movement and New York Times best-selling author of Woman Evolve: Break Up with Your Fears and Revolutionize Your Life . A hugely impactful motivator and spiritual influencer in her own right, with an online following north of 2 million, she is the daughter of former SUCCESS cover figure Bishop T.D. Jakes and the wife of Pastor Touré Roberts, both of The Potter’s House. This Q&A has been edited for clarity and space considerations. To view the interview in its entirety, join our social network, Achievers, at Achievers.SUCCESS.com or by downloading the...

The thinking was that Facebook might quickly go the way of MySpace, or Instagram would just be another Friendster—here for a good time, but not for a long time. The mediums have continually evolved, but by now it has long been clear that almost every business, no matter how small, needs a strategy to keep up and connect with customers socially . Over the past year I’ve been able to grow my presence on social media dramatically. I experiment. A year ago I didn’t quite understand TikTok. Now, two of my short videos amassed over 1 million views combined within weeks, and earned more than 70,000 likes.  If you’re anxious or unsure about how to grow your social media presence, and thus your business’s reputation, let me help you. To start, let’s talk about how most businesspeople approach these mediums. The biggest concerns I hear when it comes to social media are, No. 1, finding time to create content and, No. 2, knowing what to create as content. The latter problem is easier to solv...

The term personal development first entered my world as a teenager when my father gave me a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Of course, the idea of getting better occurred to me long before then, which is why I’ve always thought it was a little funny that there’s a name for this genre. I’m not sure we need an official category for the things we often do without conscious thought. It’s natural for humans to strive for more , so we try to eat healthier, move our bodies and learn new things. What I’ve come to learn, though, is that this field of personal development acts as a reminder or reinforcement of our potential beyond what we see around us every day. If we measure our opportunities based only on what we see around us, we’re fairly limited. But if we can measure our opportunities based on what we can imagine, the opportunities can be limitless . Of course, there are factors outside of our control that can affect our ability to achieve, but I trul...

Beyond Happiness: How Authentic Leaders Prioritize Purpose and People for Growth and Impact By Jenn Lim Author Jenn Lim knows a little something about happiness . She co-founded the workplace culture company Delivering Happiness with Tony Hsieh, the late CEO of Zappos.com. Their goal? To teach businesses how to make their employees happier while also improving their ROI. Since its inception, Delivering Happiness has helped over 400 organizations in 110 countries.  Lim’s book breaks down Delivering Happiness’s model for how companies can improve their culture and help employees connect to their purpose, all while still remaining profitable in the process. The book is divided into five sections, with easy-to-digest, actionable tips for how to put Lim and Hsieh’s ideas into practice.  “This book is about understanding the authentic self in our work-life journeys,” Lim writes. “It shares how we can get back to the core of who we are and live the purposeful l...

Creating a budget doesn’t have to mean setting yourself up for a life of restriction. By improving your money management , you can focus on making your money work for you. That means spending more on the things you want while still staying in control so you can achieve your long-term financial goals. The right spreadsheet and budgeting technology can help you create and track your financial budget. There’s no need to invest big bucks in complicated and confusing financial technology. Read on to learn about some simple personal budget management tools that can help. How money management helps you meet your financial goals You likely have some financial goals in your life, whether it’s improving your net worth, paying off your college student loans, or achieving FIRE (financial independence, retire early) . You might also have smaller, more short-term goals, like saving for your dream wedding or buying a luxury car. Smart money management can help you achieve those objectives. Man...