One of the primary talents leaders need today is the ability to manage and leverage cultural differences. Today’s manager has to work in both international and cross-cultural environments.

Consequently, managers are required to deal with challenges, friction, and misunderstandings stemming from intercultural communication differences. Therefore, successful management in a modern environment demands cross-cultural competency. In order to get the best out of any multicultural team, leading such a team necessitates a very distinct skill set. Being mindful and modifying your leadership style accordingly is the key to success. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

Resolutions? I might take up smoking. So many people quit, at least someone should take it up?
Just kidding of course, I never really liked smoking, just the odd cigar every now and again.
Ria, my wife, and I were joking around at the end of last year, listing all the new year’s ‘resolutions’ we will take up, smoking being top of the list:

• Smoking
• Gaining 10 kilograms
• Spending more time on Facebook
• Grow our pinky nails really long

You know, serious stuff.. and since new years resolutions never last, or the exact opposite happens, this might just work out fine in the end.
seriously though,

Isn’t that the question that start new year’s resolutions? What do you want? Now quickly, before you think too much and your moral goody self pops out, what is it that you want? What was that first thing that popped into your mind?

• more money?
• a relationship?
• that ever elusive job?
• a six pack? (This has been on my list for years by the way.)

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Tony Robbins, actually also tackles this question in one of his books: “what do you want?” The true answer, he says, and I agree, is  to be happy. That is what we all want, we want a happy life, free from worry, stress, anxiety. Right? The real reason we want these things, or people, or adventures, is that we think that when we get them, or have them or do them, we will be
happy.

The catch, as always, is that all these things won’t make you happy.Wishing for that thing, that moment, that person, that job, will never make you happy, not for very long anyway. Happiness is something that only you can create.

Self help really is the only help. If I don’t choose to be happy, to be content, to engage and to live life. If I don’t choose to let go of the past and quit worrying about the future then it is not going to happen.

​Therefore, I resolve to be just one thing, not get one thing, and not be  it by July, but now, today, as you read this. I resolve to be happy. 

Another way to think about it, the relation between freedom and happiness, is to ask the question a different way, what do you need when you are truly content, happy?

Nothing.

So what does one do with this happy, content, smiling like an idiot life?

Skip everywhere?

You could, but no, when one is truly happy, content, satisfied, you cannot help but to become generous, to give, to create. And that is what the world needs, more than ever is truly generous creators.

Of course, this, for many, including me, is easier said than done.

​The trick is to not choose goals that will make you ‘happy’, but chose practices that will make you happy. Gumnasia (goom-na-see-ah), is the greek term for gymnasium, where men trained physically and mentally (in the nude, but that is another story). And this is fundamentally what this blog is about, training, training to be happy, training to be human.

Relook your new year’s list and write at the top:

1. Be Happy.

Then write down at least two or three practices that will amplify this choice:

1. Eat healthy
2. Exercise every day.
3. Meditate
4. Go see a therapist.

​or whatever you need.

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Post by Pierre du Plessis, originally appeared on Gumnasia, Happiness is a skill.