- Your mind is stronger than your body
- Your mind is stronger than any drug known to man
- Your mind is stronger than any situation you’re currently going through
Tag: goals
I Will Weigh 157lbs. Hold Me Accountable!!
- Hold me accountable. Don’t let me off the hook.
- Identify a goal that’s important to you that you haven’t been able to achieve. Make sure you have a specific goal, and then, do something scary to hold yourself accountable. Don’t let failure be an option.
Why Goals Aren’t Enough: What’s Your Purpose?
I talk a lot about goals. Goals are important. Without specific goals and ways to measure your progress, it’s tough to know if you’re getting anywhere.
However, if the focus of your life is on achieving individual goals, you will remain unfulfilled. Here’s the problem…
When I ask people when they feel they most fulfilled and happy, most tell me it’s when they fulfill a worthwhile goal. However, when I ask them how long that great feeling lasts, they tell me it may only last a matter of minutes.
Why? Think about it…
Let’s say your goal is to make $200k per year and you reach that goal. For most of us, the next thought is “wouldn’t it be great to make $250k?”. Your euphoria will last a few minutes before you’re striving for the next goal. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with aggressively striving for the next goal. I just think we all need a way to feel fulfilled and happy every day, not just for a few fleeting moments after achieving a goal.
That’s why most people we know are frustrated, even if all outward signs show them to be successful (great house, nice car, large bank account).
So how can we feel fulfilled more consistently?
The answer is to discover your life’s purpose. Your life’s purpose is not something that can be “achieved”. You “achieve” goals, you “live” your purpose. By understanding your life’s purpose, or being able to answer the question “why am I here?”, you can strive to live every day in a manner that is consistent with that purpose.
Most people, however, have no clue what the purpose of their life is. Is it to finish my list of ” to do’s”? Make a certain amount of money? Make everyone else happy? I don’t think so.
So how so we figure out what our purpose is? Stay tuned for my next blog and find out!!
What’s Your Recipe For Positive Energy?
When we think negative thoughts our brains automatically scan our environment for things to justify these thoughts. That why some days start bad and just seem to get worse.
When we think positive thoughts the same thing happens. Therefore, it’s critical to know how to shift your energy from negative to positive at any moment.
What’s your recipe for creating postive thoughts and positive energy in the face of negative circumstances?
Here are some things that work for me:
- Taking a long walk in nature (this seems to clear my mind and bring new ideas, seemingly out of nowhere)
- Listening to high energy music (for me, nothing beats AC/DC’s “Back in Black”)
- Reading an inspirational book or passage
- Thinking about all of the things I’m thankful for
- Exercising
- Using affirmations first thing in the morning, before I go to sleep at night and anytime I feel down throughout the day
- Meditating
- Visualizing the life I’m committed to leading as if it’s already happened
What works for you? If you know, do it! If you don’t, experiment and come up with your own recipe.
I’d love to know what works for you. Please reply to this and let me know!!
You Get What You Accept
- Identify the situation in your life that are unacceptable
- Create a vision of what your life MUST look like in the areas of finance, career, family, social, mental, physical and spiritual.
- Understand and document why that vision for your life is a must.
- Re-read your life’s vision and the “why” at least once per day.
- Take massive action!!!
Invest In Your Best
When creating and giving employee evaluations, how much time do you spend on strengths versus weaknesses? If you’re like most managers, you rack your brain to find every possible weakness and development need for the employee you’re evaluating. I remember having a hard time writing reviews for my best performers since it was more difficult to find areas of weakness. Telling them where they were doing a great job was almost an afterthought and not much more than a pat on the back.
Focusing on weaknesses might help an employee become a bit more “well rounded”, however, being “well rounded” is incredibly overrated. Employees will rarely become strong in an area of weakness. The best we can hope for is that they will rise to become mediocre. However, where an employee has talent, they can become world-class. In addition, focusing on maximizing those areas where we have true talent is incredibly motivating.
This doesn’t mean we should ignore weaknesses. By all means, if weaknesses are getting in the way of doing the job, you need to find ways to manage around those weaknesses. These can include looking for ways to get them to acceptable levels of performance, changing their responsibilities or counseling them out of your organization. But don’t expect them to become “expert” tomorrow in those areas they’re weak in today.
Manage Your State
What is your state of mind as your reading this?
Are you tired? Energized? Frustrated? Confident? Bored…I hope not!
Our state of mind changes dozens of times throughout the day; a boring meeting, a difficult phone call, an accepted offer, a misunderstanding with a demanding client. We know that all of these things affect our state and, as a result, our performance. But, do we understand how it affects our co-workers and staff?
As a manager, you can’t afford to let your state manage you; you need to manage your state instead. Teams tend to mirror, and even magnify, the emotions of their manager…positive and negative. If you’re confident about a situation, they’ll trust things will work out. If you’re worried about business performance, they’ll fear for their jobs.
Managing your state is not always easy. After all, we’re human and a right to be angry, frustrated or worried. My rule is that I’m allowed to get emotional about a situation for 5 minutes, behind closed doors. Then I take a deep breath and change my state. Here are some of the ways I’ve learned to change my state:
- Smile – Sounds silly but it works. The next time you’re in a negative state, take a deep breath and smile real big. You’ll notice a change in state almost immediately.
- Be Thankful – Think about all the things you could be thankful for; family, friends, home, situations, etc. Being thankful will help you to forget the problem of the moment and take a longer term view.
- Ask The Right Questions – “Why me?” is the wrong question. Asking negative questions makes matters worse by causing you to dwell, unproductively, on the problem. “How can we achieve this goal regardless of the issues?” is the right question. A positive question will lead to productive, creative answers.
- Pick a Song – After a very difficult situation last week, I was incredibly frustrated. Five minutes after blasting AC/DC’s Back in Black, I was a different person. Pick songs that “pick you up” and use them as medicine for the mind.
Learn to manage your state and you’ll be surprised at the result in your own productivity as well as your teams.
Have Response-Ability
A business owner’s worst enemy is BLAME. It’s easy to blame other people or situations when things aren’t going well. It’s especially easy during this current economic downturn. “My business is slow because of the horrible real estate market” or “This credit crunch is killing me”. The reason blame is so dangerous is that it takes our focus off of what’s really important – the things we can actually control.
When coaching my clients my goal is to focus them on having greater Response-Ability. Response-Ability is the ability to respond to any situation with the right action.
The first step in having Response-Ability is to stop blaming other people and situations. You need to own your results. That means, first, identifying a result in your business or your life that you’re not satisfied with. You then need to ask yourself what behaviors and attitudes led to those results. Not someone else’s behaviors and attitudes but your own.
This is often the most difficult step in the process. It’s hard for us to admit that we are the cause of our own struggles, even for a coach.
I have a fourteen year old son with Asperger’s Syndrome, which is a high functioning form of Autism. He has some really good weeks and really bad weeks. After a particularly bad week, I had a conversation with my coach. She asked me what I had done to cause the bad week. Excuse me? I didn’t cause the Asperger’s! It’s not my fault! However, being a good coach, she continued to push the issue. Finally, she helped me to understand that the biggest difference between my son’s good weeks and bad weeks was me!
The level of stress I was under in a given week affected my attitude towards him and his actions. If I was having a bad week I had very little tolerance and would “explode” easily, resulting in a very difficult week with my son. On a good week, I was much more accepting of his idiosyncrasies, resulting in a joyful and rewarding week with my son. This was an incredibly empowering realization. It was also very upsetting, realizing how many bad weeks I had caused.
Only YOU are responsible for the results in your life. Be at cause in your life, not effect.
Have a Good Fight!
Does your team get along great?
Do you always seem to agree with each other?
Do you have trouble remembering your last major team conflict?
This may seem strange, but if you answered yes to these questions…you’ve got problems. A team needs conflict to evolve.
Think of it as Darwin’s theory of evolution for business. If good ideas don’t crush bad ideas, and great ideas don’t crush good ideas, a business (and its employees) will grow stagnant and die.
Why do some teams have no conflict?
- Lack of direction – If a team has no clarity around their identity and direction, productive conflict is difficult. As the saying goes…”If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there”.
- Lack of talent – Meaningful challenges will rarely occur if you’re consistently the smartest person in the room. Successful teams need a complimentary assortment of strengths.
- Lack of trust – Challenges will be silenced unless your culture is one of trust and openness. Team members will be resistant to speaking up if they’re afraid of hurting each other’s feelings or jeopardizing their job.
So go ahead, have a good fight and evolve!