Tag: daily

Growth Like a Weed

Posted on by

Growth Through Blogging

In my accountability group this morning, I brought up the fact that I was blogging daily.  I began this a few weeks ago based on a suggestion that Seth Godin once made that you should blog daily and have something to say about your business.  I hasten to add that while I thought on it from Seth’s suggestion, the decision and reason are mine (which I will get into in a minute).  You will never be at peace fulfilling someone else’s plan for you; it has to be your plan and your reasons.

My Reasons

One of the members of the group asked me why I was doing it, what was the purpose I hoped to accomplish.  Had I attracted a lot of traffic for it?  Did I hope to build traffic or clients through it?  My response surprised them a bit.  No, that is not my objective at this time.  While I welcome people to the blog and while I do work some SEO features into it, building my list or traffic is not currently my primary objective of blogging daily.  I had two big reasons for doing it:

  1. I had a goal and it was an ambitious one.  I not only have to have something to say every day but I have to have a sufficient amount to say about it.  If you think it is easy, try it sometime; although I will say once I get going have enough to say rarely is an issue.  But it was important for me to set an ambitious short-term goal and accomplish it.  So far, so good; haven’t missed a day yet.
  2. It gets me to put my thoughts on paper, as it were.  Topics I think you might want to read about it because, quite frankly, they interest me as well.  It forces me to think on what I have know and what I have learned about these subjects and organize them.  It also forces me to explore a little more and see different perspectives and increase my knowledge.  Who knows, perhaps all this may wind up in a book someday.

growth through goal achievement Both of these reasons have little or nothing to do with building lists, increasing traffic, making sales, or gaining clients.  It has to do with growth; an intentional plan of growth to prepare myself to be able to add value to others more and serve better.  Setting and reaching an ambitious goal is a growth initiative as it not only requires discipline to accomplish it but reinforces self-confidence when I achieve it.  As Henry Thoreau wrote,

 What you get by achieving your goal is not as important as what you become by achieving your goal!

So I am seeking to achieve more to become more and the reverse is also true, I become more to achieve more.  It stretches me and makes me reach higher and deeper.  In addition, putting my thoughts down helps me create and improve content that has garnered through years of experience and research.  Getting it all down prepares me to turn around and share it with others.  All the knowledge in the world is useless unless you can share it with someone else and help them grow.  According to John Maxwell, the idea is to

be a river and not a reservoir.

And what I got into this business for is to Cultivate Growth.  It is my primary purpose for all I do, to foster growth within others to become better leaders, better family members, better employees, and better citizens of their community.  To do that best, I must also cultivate growth within myself.

Cultivating Growth

For growth to really work, your growth has to be like a weed.  A weed grows daily and it grows regardless of what is going on around it.  It takes whatever it can feed off of and keeps going.  Your growth needs to be the same as the weed and more.  It needs to be

  • daily
  • intentional
  • undeterred by circumstance
  • measurable

growth by 1% a dayEvery day, keep 1% in mind.  Commit to grow yourself by 1% daily.  I used to say that if you do that the after one year you will have grown by 365%.  Actually, however, it is not additive, it is exponential.  You get 1% on top of 1% on top of 1% and so on.  Large amounts of growth through a daily commitment.  Make that growth in measurable areas where you can see the changes; that builds confidence and reinforces the movement towards progress.  The progress is key.  Keep going, keep growing.

Be a 1%er!

Action Plan

  1. What are you doing specifically and intentionally to foster your own growth?  If nothing, what are you willing to do?
  2. Track your progress on a daily basis.

The Lie of Experience as the Best Teacher

Posted on by

Experience Happens

You have probably heard it said hundreds if not thousands of times during your life.

Experience is the best teacher.

Every day, from the moment you rise until you put your head on the pillow, you are going through a series of experiences.  Some experiences are what we would call good; nice things happen, we feel happy about it.  Others….not so much.

See the Ah-Ha! Moment of the Week on this topic.

Mistakes are painful when they happen, but years later a
collection of mistakes is what is called experience.
-Denis Waitley

Here’s the thing:  if every day we ALL have experiences then why is it that most of us don’t get any smarter?

More Than Experience

someecards.com - They say experience is the best teacher. That's why I'm so smart. I've screwed everything up at least twice.If experience were truly the best teacher, then would it not logically follow that each of us would be getting smarter every day and would never repeat the same mistakes because our experience would have taught us better?  Is that what happens in your life?  Is that what happens around you?  You know what I am talking about, the people who keep making the same mistake they made yesterday and the day before, getting the same results, and not getting that it ain’t gonna work that way.  Why?  If experience is the best teacher, then they should have already learned not to do that again.

I have to admit to being hardheaded this way sometimes.  I’ll do the same dumb thing over and over again, somehow expecting different results.  I might rationalize it, excuse it, or simply learn the wrong lesson from previous experience.  I’m not an idiot, I am a fairly bright guy.  Why isn’t experience teaching me anything?

Experience Plus

The truth is that experience alone is no kind of teacher at all.  It is REFLECTIVE EXPERIENCE that really makes the difference.  It is how we analyze what we experience that allows us to draw the appropriate conclusions and lessons from what happens to us and engage in positive behaviors to prevent it from happening again.  That reflection needs to be timely; it needs to happen within a short period of time after the experience.  It should not be rushed.  The best approach is usually to spend a little time at the end of the day thinking about what good things happened, what not so good things happened, and examining them.   Ask questions about each experience:

  1. What was good (or not so good) about it?
  2. Who was involved?
  3. What was the outcome?
  4. Was that the outcome I anticipated?
  5. What would have been a better or ideal outcome?
  6. Why did it happen that way?
  7. What can I do differently to change the outcome?
  8. How can I use this to add value to someone else?

Experience as an Even BETTER Teacher

The last question leads to the last point.  As the Denis Waitley quote said above, mistakes are painful.  So even if we are learning from our mistakes, we still have to go through the pain.  Just a show of hands out there, who likes to go through pain?

Yeah, didn’t think so.

So how can we avoid the pain?  Simply by learning from others experience.  In fact, I believe that other people’s experience can be absolutely the best teacher for us.  Examining the experiences of others allows us to be more evaluative about it because our minds are not clouded by emotion or pain.  We can assess the decisions, the process, and the outcomes and attempt to come up with practical applications to help prevent it from occurring in OUR lives.

One of the best ways to allow people to share stories with you.  Stories allow experiences to be personalized; we connect with them better and connect with the people involved.  Reading the biographies (and autobiographies) of people we admire also is an excellent way to do this.  If they have any level of transparency, they will readily share their mistakes in their stories and we can derive great lessons from people we know to be accomplished persons.

Action Plan:

  1. How are you going to implement regular reflection on your experiences?
  2. Pick at least two people that you want to learn from this month.  Get books about them, publications, web sites about them, or just sit down over coffee (or drinks) and talk to them.  Make notes on what you learn

How to Rejoice Always

Posted on by

Rejoice – Enjoying What We Have

We All Ride a Roller Coaster

I try to be transparent with what I share here.  The more you can see me, warts and all, then the more likely you are to realize that success in business and life is attainable; that we all have flaws, shortcomings, and challenges we face.  Steve Jobs, despite his incredible vision and gift for marketing, had big character flaws.  Same with Bill Gates, and many others.  Ray and Maurice McDonald didn’t have the vision to make their restaurant a household name; it took Ray Kroc to do that.  We ALL have hurdles to face and have up times and down times.

I share that because recently I have been having a down time.  For a variety of reasons, things have not gone well in different parts of my life and I have gotten down on myself and doubts began to creep in.  When that happens for me, I go back and look for things that remind me to re-focus and think positive.

Warning:  The rest of this post will have a decidedly spiritual bent to it.  I apologize if it offends you; I do not apologize for who I am and what I believe.

REJOICEI ran across this:  I have a card I received at a men’s group meeting years ago that I keep around. It is shaped like a stop sign and, in fact, on one side looks like a stop sign.  On the other it carries this verse from the Bible, specifically from Philippians 4:4-7:

“Rejoice in the Lord ALWAYS (emphasis mine)!  I say again, REJOICE!  Let your gentleness be evident to all.  The Lord is near.  Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.  And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Changes in Attitude

For me, of course, it is a reminder of where I have put my faith and my life.  It is also a reminder that no matter what else I have things I can take great joy in throughout my life daily.

Let’s expand it beyond and see what we can find for everyone.  When we have an ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE, we are better able to keep things in perspective.  When we rejoice in the things we have that cannot be taken away, that the world cannot touch, then we provide a solid base for how we regard everything else that happens in our life.  Once we have that perspective and are thinking in gratitude, therefore thinking positively, then we are better equipped to handle the crisis and not only survive but come out ahead.  Zig Ziglar often said

“The more you express gratitude for what you have the more you will have to express gratitude for.”

gratitude - thank youAdopting the principle of rejoicing yields big returns; perhaps not always in the way we expect.  Certainly, we all wish we had more money, more resources, more opportunities, more clients, more of whatever is on our mind right now.  Yet when we rejoice in what we do have, we see that not only do we have a full cup but that it actually overflows.  On the other hand, when we focus on what we don’t have we can lose what we do have.   I remember years ago watching a comedy sketch where a man asks another man who is holding a cup of coffee for the time.  The second man turns his wrist to look at his watch and pours out his cup of coffee.  Like the man, we lose focus on what’s in our hand to look at something else.

Consider This

What would your life be like if, for say at least a week, when someone asks you how you are you respond with “I am rejoicing!”  Don’t reflect on what people will think about you, center on what it will do for you.  Certainly it would be hard to say that continually and be negative.

I am going to try that for the next two weeks.  I invite you to try it with me and let me know how it goes.

Action Plan:

  • Begin a gratitude journal.  Get a notepad or journal or use an online one like Penzu.  Every day for at least a month, write down at least one thing you are grateful for.  Each day you have to enter something you have not previously added; in other words, each day is unique.  Look at the list often.
  • Respond to any greeting of “how are you” with “I am rejoicing!” for at least a week.  If someone asks you why, use the gratitude reason of the day or some other response if you wish.

I welcome your thoughts here about the ideas shared in today’s post!

Dream Your Way to Productivity

Posted on by

Daily Productivity

Wave a stick around and you are bound to hit a pinata full of productivity tips somewhere on the web.  Everyone has their special tips on how to make your day more productive as an entrepreneur or small business executive or simply as a worker bee.  Some of them are quite good.  I am especially a fan of Helen Raptoplous (also called Helen Rappy).  She provides practical, easy to apply steps to manage your day more effectively and increase your productivity.  When you can get more out of yourself in a day, whether working for yourself or someone else, you will be more be productive.  You will achieve.  You will get noticed.  And you will be in demand as a result.

Dream to the Next Level

Dreams
http://www.dreamstime.com/future-look-stock-photography-imagefree90202

It’s been my experience that the ones who are most productive are driven; and they are almost always driven by a dream.  They have a vision of who they want to be, what they want to do, how they want to add value to others.

When you feel that you have something special you can offer people in this world and it can make a difference in their lives and yours, you are more inclined to look for ways to be more effective about it.  

No doubt about it, living your dream creates a new world with new possibilities and leads to to find out how to best share it with others.

That’s not to say that the dream alone is sufficient.  You still must focus on daily growth, learning more about what you do and how you do it.  You must learn to be intentionally productive.  Many times we are “accidental achievers”; things get accomplished and we are not exactly sure how.  What we want is to not only achieve our desired results, we want to know how we got there so we can repeat it.

Start that Dream

So, if the best way you can be highly productive is to work to realize your dream, then take a look at what you are doing today.  Ask yourself these questions:

  • What am I doing, small or large, to work towards my dream?
  • What one thing, my 1%, can I use to grow today?
  • What will I do tomorrow to build on that?

Why Dolly Parton’s Song Lied About Work

Posted on by

Workin’ 9 to 5

It may be a way to make a living but it’s not a way to make a career.  Or a life for that matter.

Quote of the Day on Hard Work

Hard Work WinsI shared the following on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as my thought of the day:

“Hard work spotlights the character of people;
some turn up their sleeves,
some turn up their noses,
and some don’t turn up at all.”
-Sam Ewing

It’s important to note that it doesn’t speak to building character as much as revealing character.  It’s similar to how many say that a crisis builds character; but it doesn’t, it simply reveals it.  Hard work reveals character by the way in which we react to it.  When we have been trained that hard work is a part of life and a vital part of getting things done, we are apt to dive in and lend a hand when the time comes.  Even more to the point, if we jump in without first being asked, it speaks to our character even more.

Hard Work is Beneath Me

As the quote also points out, some refuse to be a part of it.  Hard work is beneath their station or status.  This is especially prevalent in the workplace.  The manager who deals out the work assignments, closes the door to their office, and focuses simply on the end result.  Now, I will point out that thinking is very hard work as well.  When you are looking ahead, anticipating problems, mulling solutions, brainstorming ways to move your company and your employees forward, searching for new, innovative ways to add value to those you work with; all of that requires, even demands, a managers attention.  It is a hard working manager or leader who spends time in the hard work on thinking.  The problem is that in most cases management generally doesn’t do much of that either.

Those who think that hard work is below their station or their position are not really in touch with the reality of their business.  It also misses that most of the most successful businessman and entrepreneurs spend their time in both mental and physical hard work.

  • Sam Walton was well-known for going into the trenches, visiting stores, working with and talking with employees on all levels; stock persons, truck drivers, greeters, and all.  He spent time paying attention to the details, thinking of  new ways to offer more and create a better experience for his customers.
  • Mark Cuban was a dot com sensation, but few know that in his first startup he worked long hours and didn’t take a vacation for seven years.
  • Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsico, worked overnight shifts as a receptionist while completing a degree at Yale.  She often puts in 13 hour days in the office, takes mail home to read (not recommended), and, by the way, raises two daughters.
  • William “Biff’ Comte, CEO of Accentcare, habitually “job shadows” employees and asks questions about their work to understand what he can do to best serve their needs and provide the best experience for employees and patients.  In addition to all those other CEO duties.

Hard work is essential to our success.  Sometimes that is get the hands dirty work and sometimes it is put the mind in high gear work.  In fact, the most successful spend more time in the mind in high gear part than the other.

It’s Hard Work Time, Where’s Fitz?

Then, of course, there are those who simply don’t even bother to show up when it’s time for hard work.  Having in the past worked for a few government organizations and enterprise-level companies, you will find quite a few there.  They seem to be everywhere but at their desk; not because they are engaged in work but because they are engaged in anything BUT their work.  Curiously enough, they are typically the most negative people you will work with.

Avoid them.  They will just suck the life right out of you!

The Hard Work of Thinking

So, as we discussed, our most productive hard work and the work that will be help us fulfill more of our potential is the time we spend in thought.  Here’s a few ways to be more effective at thinking:

  1. Block out time on your calendar for “Thinking Time”.  Guard it ruthlessly.
  2. Have an agenda for what you plan to think about.  Otherwise, you will just have random thoughts
  3. Always be positive.  Think positive.  Look for positive lessons and results from your experiences.
  4. Think in gradual time frames.  Think a week ahead, a month ahead, a year ahead, five years ahead.
  5. Focus on what you are doing right and should continue to do and what you need to change

Your hard work on thinking your way through things brings clarity, focus, and purpose.

Call Now