How Your Life Gets in the Way of Vision

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Vision and Crisis

It’s a natural thing.

As you go through your daily life, you sometimes lose track of where it is you wanted to go. I do it; highly likely you do too. Also likely that the most successful person you can think of does it as well.

Dreams get lost in the shuffle of daily living. Crises appear, fires need to be put out. People are demanding our immediate attention. Things crowd in and as they say you have trouble seeing the forest through the trees and we just lose track of where it is we wanted to go.

There’s the old joke about the engineers that when you are up to your ears in alligators its hard to remember your initial objective was to drain the swamp.

And so we sometimes let our daily activities get in the way of our goals during the crisis of the moment.

Lead Through Crisis

As I said, it’s only natural and like the saying above, certainly not original. We can easily excuse our lack of focus on our vision away using daily goings-on as a crutch. After all, nobody would blame us, right? You gotta survive, right?

But this is the opportunity for you to step up! The opportunity to come forward and be the leader you were meant to be by bringing that vision back to the forefront!

This is the time to shine!

So here’s a couple of steps you can take to move positively in the direction of keeping your vision in front and getting yourself in place to accomplish those goals.

USE THE UP-DOWN METHOD. Write it down and post it up! Write that vision down on a piece of paper and post it up where you are going to see it on a daily basis. That serves as a daily reminder of what it is you are trying to accomplish.
ASK FOR HELP – FORM A TEAM. Take your strengths and your weaknesses, find people whose strengths compliment your weaknesses. And team together to help accomplish that goal.
SHARE THE VISION OFTEN. If you continually share the vision in words and actions to your team, that helps keep them focused on where it is you want to go.
ADJUST THE PATH AS YOU GO, BUT NOT THE VISION! Things will get in the way and won’t always go the way we want them to go, but we need to keep that vision at the forefront; the final destination of where we want to go.
HELP THE DREAMS OF OTHERS. As you bring team members on, they are going to have dreams of their own. See where your dreams mesh, where there are opportunities to work together for a win-win where everyone accomplishes their dream. You may find it is going on to greater things then you ever imagined possible.

Keeping that vision before you AND your team is critical.

Dissatisfaction and discouragement are not caused by the absence of things but the absence of vision.

Where will you go with your life or career? Anywhere a strong vision takes you.

How Does a Frog Show Discipline?

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Why You Are Stuck

Are you finding that something is holding you back from getting to where you want to go? You know you need to find your place, but don’t seem to be moving any closer to discovering it. Or perhaps you know what you want but can’t seem to make progress towards getting it.

If you are like most people, what you are going to find is holding you back is that you don’t want to do the things that you MUST DO in order to move forward. In addition to doing what we LOVE to do, we also have to do many things we DON’T like to do.

It’s Called Discipline.

The word gets a bad rap. We think discipline and we think of visits to the principal’s office leaning with our hands on the desk while a wooden paddle crossed our hindquarters a few times for errant behavior.

Yeah, I’m aging myself with that one. Not that it ever happened to me or you! (right!).

But the word discipline takes it root in instruction and order. Jesus called his followers disciples, because they received instruction, learned order and self-control. We need that in order to move forward and succeed, because it gets us past the barriers of things we don’t want to do or fear doing.

Let me emphasize here: I am as guilty of this as anybody. I will not tell you that I have mastered this. Like you, I am fighting this battle every day.

No Job is Perfect.

I LOVE what I do!

I love the opportunity to get up and talk before groups of people, to share knowledge with people, to help them improve, to help them grow. But there are parts of the job that I don’t particularly care for.

But I have to do them anyway.

Frog Legs? Yeah. But the Whole Frog?

We are all going to have things that we dislike doing, but we are going to have to do them in order to move ahead. Your success comes from doing it anyway; as Brian Tracy says,

You have to eat the frog!

Identify those things that are particularly distasteful or that you dislike and DO THEM ANYWAY!

Zig Ziglar says when we do the things we need to do when we need to do them, the day will come when we can do the things we want to do when we want to do them.

Actions Steps to Success

DO UNPLEASANT THINGS FIRST. Do them before you do anything else. There is a psychological aspect to this. By doing things you don’t like first and getting them out of the way, it provides a relief factor that allows you to be more effective the rest of the day. In addition, any thing else seems pleasant by comparison. It also gets them done.
DO NOTHING ELSE UNTIL YOU COMPLETE THE MUST-DO TASKS! Even if it means you just sit in your chair and stare. Don’t do anything else until you accomplish the things you don’t like to do. This is a tough one but it’s where we learn discipline. If you are faced with the prospect of doing something you don’t like or just sitting there all day staring into space, which are you going to choose? Even if you initially choose staring into space, you will tire of it quickly and break down and do the unpleasant thing. When I was a kid, like many other kids, I didn’t want to eat my vegetables. My parents made it clear I was not leaving the table until I did. I was faced with the prospect of getting it over with and going to watch Batman on TV or just sitting there. It didn’t take me long to break down and do it.
REWARD YOURSELF FOR DOING THE RIGHT THING. You want to provide a positive impact for making the right choices and doing the right thing. It provides motivation and makes doing the things you don’t like to do that much easier. Some argue you should also provide consequences for not doing it. Timothy Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week and other books, shared that if he didn’t get things done during the day, he would intentionally wake himself up at 2 a.m. and force himself to work as a consequence. I think simply not doing anything else is consequence enough.

What about you? What do you do to practice discipline and accomplish things you don’t like to do?

Where’s Your Value?

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Measuring Up

As we enter a new year, have you assessed where you are and where you need to go? Has success been eluding you? Are you where you thought you would be at this point in your life? It’s a common feeling. So don’t let it hit you hard because you are not the only one thinking that way.

A lot of times its just a little change in focus that can make the difference for you. There is a secret to it and here it is.

ADD VALUE DAILY!

Albert Einstein said,

“try not to be a success in life, simply try to be a person of value.”

How do you be a person of value? You do what John Maxwell says;

if you want to feel valuable, add value to other people.

The more you focus on adding value to other people on a daily basis, then you don’t worry so much about where you are or whether you are measuring up because you are making a difference in the lives of other people. It also makes you change you way of measuring. You define success differently.

Adding Value

So here’s a few steps you can employ to help move in that direction and add value to other people:

LOOK LOCAL FIRST. A lot of times people worry about what’s going on elsewhere on the other side of the world but there are a lot of things going on right now in your own backyard where you can make a difference. Your home, for instance. Adding value to your spouse or to your children. Adding value to your co-workers in the office or your boss. Adding value in your daily encounters with other people as you go through the day; the people who work in the grocery store, the people who handle your dry cleaning. All of these people are looking for someone to add value to them and you can be that person.
CARE ABOUT PEOPLE. Focus on what you give to other people and that will make a huge difference in the world.
EXPRESS GRATITUDE. Express gratitude to people for what they have done for you. To the person who takes your money at the grocery store, express gratitude for the work they do.

What’s Missing in Your Drive to Success?

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Enter the Holidays!

Well, we’ve come up on that time of year where people the world over are celebrating this great event: Christmas. Even people who aren’t particularly faithful will celebrate Christmas. We give gifts, we buy gifts for others, we receive gifts from others, we spend a lot of time with family. And we celebrate Christmas because of the importance of the event and what it means to us; even people who don’t follow it very strongly really understand what Christmas is all about.

Most of us, at least, take a break from our daily working and driving to success to get in a little down-time and relax. Still there are many that can’t (or mostly won’t) even take a break for one day. The entrepreneurial mantra is that you are working every day, even on holidays.

Questioning Your Motives

But one question to ask yourself is WHY.

WHY are you sacrificing relationships for your work?
WHY are willing to put everything else aside to achieve your goal?
WHY is it important?
WHY are you not able to take a brief respite from driving towards success?

And then one big WHAT question to ask:

WHAT is the REAL reason you are driven to meet your goal or achieve success?

Is it to serve yourself or to serve others? Is it out of deep caring and concern or a need for personal achievement?

I have written before about self-fulfillment motives versus being motivated by the service you provide. The key to focusing on serving others is to really, sincerely care for others and believe in others and seek to add value to others.

At the core, what we do has to apply a little bit of the REAL meaning of Christmas to the rest of our lives.

See, at the core, what Christmas is really all about is LOVE! It’s about how we love others! How we care for them and nurture them and seek to help them achieve their best.

And this is the opportunity that our purpose presents to us: the opportunity to love others. To put the focus on other people in our daily activities – not just once a year but throughout the year – so we can care for them and add value to them.

So here’s a few things that I want you to take from this holiday season apply throughout your life and the coming year to share that love.

Do something for someone else who can never pay you back. Focus on that, look to do that daily; something for someone who can never pay you back. That’s what love really means; when you don’t expect a reward or a payback, what can you do for others.
Take time out to appreciate the gift of everyone you encounter. What’s special about the people you spend your time and relationships with? Tell them. Tell them what they mean to you and that will make a world of difference to them!
Look around you and appreciate the LOVE that the creator has shown you by surrounding you with blessings! Even when you don’t necessarily see them.

You have to see value to add value. That takes time and reflection. Focus on the value around you and the opportunity to make it every greater.

That’s your success in 2014!

Why Gratitude Makes Things Happen

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Gratitude No Matter What

It’s been a weird week. Holidays tend to get in the way of other things sometimes and we had a few things pop up to throw monkey wrenches into the works. My Mother-in-Law had a little stint in the hospital this week and that required immediate attention and schedule adjustment. On Thanksgiving Day I managed to put a deep cut on my hand that required 7 stitches at the Emergency Room and that also threw our schedule way off. To be fair, I did get a blog post done as a guest on another blog (Linked2Leadership, see it here) but not much here.

I mention this not to excuse myself, but rather as a reflection. Because you see despite all the disturbances in our week, the family was able to spend time together and to celebrate Thanksgiving and share a large, very filling meal. Rather than harp on the inconveniences, we instead focus on the good and positive things that happened.

That’s what gratitude is all about. Gratitude in practically the ultimate in positive thinking. It doesn’t ignore the fact that there are problems, it doesn’t disregard that we are not where we wish to be or who we wish to be, it rejoices in what we have been blessed with so far, no matter how big or small. That in turns gives us hope and leaves us open to possibilities. It’s not turning a blind eye to our lack, it is opening our eyes to what is.

The Healing Power of Gratitude

Gratitude produces a healing power and, even more so, an almost miraculous circumstance of making better things happened. Norman Vincent Peale discovered this in his own journey dealing with some very persistent issues in his life. He observed

[snaptweet]In some unfathomable way, the acknowledgment of past blessings seems to be the activator of blessings.[/snaptweet]

When he focused on gratitude for how he was blessed in the past and blessed in the present, he found more blessings arriving his way.

Gratitude or Lack?

Too often, we have a lack mentality. We focus too much on what we don’t have, what we haven’t accomplished, the traits we were shorted, the things we were denied. The more we keep our minds fixed on what we don’t have, the more we tend to believe that not only do we not have it but we don’t deserve it. We also close our minds to any circumstance around us that may provide an opportunity to change things. We close things out and instead draw all of our focus strictly on what we lack. We project into every other circumstance. We can’t have, we can’t do, we can’t be because we lack money, because we lack skills, because we lack the right situation or timing or luck. We then ignore opportunities, resources, and situations the present themselves to help us dig out of that pit.

There is the old story of a flood that hits a town. One man, finding the water rising so high, climbs up on the roof of his house and prays to God to save him. “Lord, please,” he says, ” just rescue me from this desperate situation!” After a short-time, a neighbor comes by in a canoe and tells him, “I’ve got room! Climb in and let’s get to safety!” The man tells him, “No, I’m waiting for God to save me!” The water continues to rise up the roof, almost covering it. A woman comes along in boat and says, “Let me help you. Get in and let’s go before the water gets much higher!” The man says, “No, I am waiting for God to save me!” Eventually, the water has covered the roof completely and is so high it is up to his knees. A helicopter flies in overhead and a voice on a megaphone says, “I’ll lower a ladder! You can climb up to safety!” The man refuses, “God is going to save me!” The water rises to his chest now and in desperation he cries out, “Lord, I asked you to save me! Now I’m doomed! All is lost! Why haven’t you helped me?” A voice booms out, “I sent you a canoe, a boat, and a helicopter. What more do you want!”

Gratitude Out Loud

Gratitude, when properly practiced, becomes a way of life and a way of thinking. Instead of lack mentality is promotes abundance mentality. Some would call it pollyannaish. I gladly accept that definition. If you have ever seen the movie, Pollyanna DID make positive things happen around her. What’s wrong with that? The proper practice of gratitude is to engage in it daily. Waiting until the holidays to express gratitude or waiting until one day a week in your church, temple, or mosque to express gratitude is not the appropriate application. That’s called ritual. What we want is authentic, heart-felt thankfulness for how your life has been blessed and how others have influenced you positively. In fact, the key to effective gratitude is to remember that gratitude is loud and persistent. The more often you promptly proclaim your thanksgiving and the more openly your share it, the more blessings multiply and opportunities appear and actions yield results.

[snaptweet]The key to effective gratitude is to remember that gratitude is loud and persistent.[/snaptweet]

The way many people accomplish this is by keeping a gratitude journal. Use a notebook that your carry with you, or use a technology option like Evernote or Penzu, and each day (preferably first thing in the morning) record at least one thing for which you are thankful. It has to be something different each day. Do that for at least 30 days. The first few days will be fairly easy but after that you will have to think about it more. And that’s the idea; you want to spend more time discovering what really does exist in your life as a blessing.

The thing is, a gratitude journal is great for you, but I am a big believer in doing things that not only benefit you but provide value for others as well. With that in mind, a few weeks ago I initiated the Gratitude Live Project. Beginning earlier in November, I invited a select group to join me in the project up until Thanksgiving Day. Each day, each participant would contact someone who had a positive influence in their life and thank them for it. But it wasn’t enough to just say thank you, they had to be very specific about how and why that person influenced them positively. The results were overwhelmingly positive! Everyone found it not only made them more mindful of how others have influenced their life, but the recipients of the gratitude found felt better and more important; they felt like they made a difference! Project members reported the revival and strengthening of relationships! It went so well, I have decided to continue the project indefinitely, but modified out to a weekly instead of daily practice.

Just think, one small expression of gratitude making huge differences in people’s lives. That’s how gratitude makes things happen!

Action Plan

Start your own gratitude journal, beginning today and through to the rest of the year at least. Each day, first thing in the morning (including weekends), write down ONE THING for which you are grateful. Note how your attitude changes and how your connections with others changes as well.
Join me in the Gratitude Live Project. Make a difference in not just your life, but the lives of others as well. There is no charge for this. Click the link to begin.