Bouillabaisse For Personal Effectiveness

Bouillabaisse is a traditional Provençal fish stew originating from the port city of Marseille , France. This delicious dish is a seafood soup made with various kinds of cooked fish, shellfish and vegetables, flavored with a variety of herbs and spices.

There is also a bouillabaisse for personal effectiveness, which, with the right ingredients and flavoring can assist you on your life long journey of personal growth and development. These are the must have ingredients. A list you can supplement and spice according to your taste – according to your station in life and your personal needs.

The basic ingredients for the bouillabaisse of personal effectiveness:

-       100 % Awareness of yourself (such as your beliefs, your strengths and weaknesses, your feelings and responses), awareness of others, and awareness of your environment. Without it there is little (self) knowledge, understanding, connection, and influence.

-       Ripe values that guide you in good and in difficult times and that show others what you stand for. Your values influence every decision and how you came to this decision. Your values are the essence of who you are. They help you choose a career, an organization, a partner, and much more. And if they do not, you will end up unfulfilled, disappointed, ever searching, or any other type of imbalance.  

-       A strong sense of purpose so that you and others know where you are heading and why. People seek purpose and people gladly join and follow someone who lives and acts with a clear and communicated purpose. A purpose statement defines your vision (where you want to go), your mission (what you do), and your strategy (how you get there, how you do it).

-       A healthy appetite for humor and play: laughing about yourself and laughing with others releases tension, puts things into perspective and is a fun thing to do. Laughter is a strong medicine for mind and for body and therefore another necessary ingredient for the bouillabaisse of personal effectiveness. And besides, laughter is known to lower blood pressure, reduce certain stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline, it increases memory and learning, and it improves alertness, creativity, and memory just to mention a few health benefits of laughter.

Ready for your delicious bouillabaisse of personal effectiveness? It all sounds so easy but let’s put you through a test: Can you list your beliefs, values, purpose and the amount of time spent laughing, all without much thought and in 2 minutes? If not, you might want to explore and work on these ingredients because you should not have to think about them or have difficulty formulating them.

Enjoy the soup, but more so, the process, the journey, the cooking.