Tag: leadership
No Success Without External Focus
Elusive Success
Is Success the Focus?
Action Steps
Here’s a few thing to get you started in that direction:
- CARE FOR THE PEOPLE YOU ENCOUNTER. Whether you encounter them once in a lifetime or whether you encounter them on a daily basis, learn to care for those people. Learn to connect with them. To find out more about them. To be naturally curious about other people. And from that, you are going to be able to seek to add value to other people to make a difference in their lives.
- LISTEN TO PEOPLE. Listen to their concerns, listen to what their dreams are.
- SHARE YOUR DREAM WITH THEM. You may be able to build relationships out of that which may seem to be a one-time thing but become lifelong, mutually beneficial relationships. People can’t add value to you unless you open up to them and make yourself vulnerable by sharing your passions and dreams.
If you need help getting started or even continuing your journey, I would love the opportunity to walk along side you. Call me at 321-355-2442 and let’s see how I can help.
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.
Why You Are Stuck
It’s Called Discipline.
No Job is Perfect.
Frog Legs? Yeah. But the Whole Frog?
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?
Measuring Up
ADD VALUE DAILY!
“try not to be a success in life, simply try to be a person of value.”
if you want to feel valuable, add value to other people.
Adding Value
- 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.