…personal development for smart professionals
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Why New Year’s Resolutions Don’t Work
53 days
by Lee
in Uncategorized
photo credit: drewzuckerman
I recently read a statistic which indicates as many as 75% of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned within a week of New Year’s Day.
Albert Einstein once said “you cannot solve a problem with the same mindset that created it.” The problem with New Year’s resolutions is it takes more than just making a quick list of things you want to change.
You may genuinely want to lose weight. The problem is, the short-term pleasure of eating junk food and sleeping late overpowers your desire to adopt a healthy lifestyle conducive to weight loss. What would happen if your doctor told you, “adopt a healthier lifestyle or you will be dead in 30 days.” Could you do it? Of course you could! The immediate threat of death over one’s head is a powerful motivator. Suddenly the pain of the end of your life is stronger than any short-term pleasure attained by living an unhealthy lifestyle.
Your present mindset and your reactions to life’s circumstances has set the stage for life as you know it. There is a constant dialogue going on in your head. This dialogue is so powerful and automatic most people barely even notice it.
Here’s how it goes: January 2, 2011 and your alarm is set to go off an hour earlier so you can go to the gym to workout or take a brisk jog around your neighborhood. Beep, beep, beep: wakie-wakie: up-and-at-’em Sunshine! At that instant, something happens in your mind that happens so quickly you might be too groggy to even notice it. Your internal dialogue quickly asks “Do I REALLY want to get up this early?” Unfortunately, the answer for the newly resolved exerciser is, “not today, maybe tomorrow.” Before you realize, it’s late December and time to make new resolutions.
The way to fulfill your resolution to get up early and exercise is to change your internal mindset and dialogue. What if the question that sprang to mind was something like “what’s the healthiest thing for me to do right now” or “how much better am I going to look and feel once I lose 20 pounds and have a healthier body?” To fulfill a New Year’s resolution to get up early and exercise requires a different mindset. It requires you interrupt your normal thought process that allows you to make excuses in the first place. Interrupting and replacing your internal dialogue isn’t easy but it can be done by deliberately focusing your attention on the existence of the dialogue in the first place. Once you are aware of your internal dialogue and how quickly and easily this dialogue sabotages your efforts to change, shifting that dialogue to a more productive and empowering line of questioning is much easier.
You mind is pre-wired to ask questions and immediately seek out answers to it’s own questions. The trick is, reprogramming your mind to ask questions that empower change.
How to find Success
65 days
by Lee
in Uncategorized
Success is easy to find. Just drive toward St. Louis but turn left before you get there. Really, it’s that simple. Simple, unless you are not looking for a small town in rural north east Arkansas with a population of just over 200.
We often think of success as something that is tied to big accomplishments, when in fact, an abiding sense of success is rarely tied to big accomplishments. That feeling of achievement is rarely felt just a few weeks or even days later. Achieved goals are, more often than not, followed by the setting of more ambitious goals and the trek toward the new ‘ultimate’ goal. It’s a vicious cycle that in reality, never results in a deep sense of contentment.
Research has shown that a deep sense of accomplishment is more likely to be felt by individuals with a steady stream of small accomplishments than those who express interest in only major accomplishments. Our internal sense of success is rarely tied to a specific event, positive or negative. Our self-concept is based more on our beliefs about who we are and what we are capable of achieving both at home and work. Certainly, specific events can be crucial, but it is our response to those events and not the event itself that is the determining factor.
Some of the most outwardly appearing ‘successful’ people in the world are up to their ear lobes in debt, have few deeply fulfilling personal relationships, and never experience a feeling of contentment. I coached and counseled hundreds of people who, despite tons of professional and personal accomplishment, are never happy and never able to just enjoy and afternoon off without feeling guilty because they aren’t chipping away at that ever-present to-do list.
Success is, plain and simple, an internal feeling of contentment that no accomplishment, job, amount of money or person will ever give you. If you don’t feel successful where you are right now, no amount of accomplishment will be able to give that to you.
You cannot look at a person and discern how successful they are any more than your outward appearance is any indication of how successful you are. Despite what you see in TV commercials, success is truly an inside job.
Sheryl Crowe put it best in her song Soak up the Sun, “Its not having what you want, its wanting what you’ve got.”
7 Quick ways to beat Discouragement
1223 days
by Lee
in Uncategorized
Entrepreneurs and self-employed professionals tend to be a different breed. Most of them don’t mind being out there on their own. Its part of what makes self employment so appealing in the first place. Not having someone looking over your shoulder is the most commonly reported benefit to being self-employed.
Sometimes, even creative geniuses get discouraged when it feels like you’re out there on your own. That is one of the pitfalls of being self-employed. The good news is there are some simple things you can do to beat feelings of anxiety that accompany discouragement and overwhelm.
- Make a To-Do list. Having a plan of attack starts with a list. Some things on the list will be discarded once the list is complete. Consolidating your “to-do” items on one list allows you to examine the importance of each task in the light of the “big picture.”
- Action Alleviates Anxiety. Do something! The inertia and momentum of action has a powerful psychological effect on your emotions. Taking action, even if it’s small, will help you regain a sense of control and make you feel better. Grab something on that To-Do list you just made and knock it out.
- Network. You’re not the Lone Ranger. You aren’t the only self-employed person in the world. Other people have faced the challenges you face and are very often willing to lend a supportive ear.
- Exercise. GET MOVING! The more strenuous, the better. Exercise decreases stress hormones like cortisol and increases endorphins which are your body’s natural “feel-good” chemicals.
- Meditate. Find a quiet place, clear your mind of work, and mentally go to a happy place. Sounds silly, I know. Numerous scientific studies have shown that meditation actually changes the physiology of the brain and greatly enhances creativity.
- Focus. Multitasking is OVERRATED. Multitasking actually decreases the mental energy devoted to all the tasks you are juggling. Doing one thing at a time maximizes creativity and mental energy. Theres a reason brain surgeons and bank tellers don’t multitask.
- Vacation. All work and no play not only makes Jack a dull boy but it hurts his performance. Leisure time is the most neglected part of the life of a self-employed entrepreneur. Leisure time serves as a ‘reset’ button for your brain.
Discouragement doesn’t have to be fatal. By using these ‘discouragement busting’ techniques, you be back ‘in the zone’ in no time.
If you’re in a private practice as a counselor, massage therapist or personal trainer, following this list will help prevent burn out which is so common among sole practitioners and sole proprietors.
No Guts, No Glory
0252 days
He which hath no stomach for this fight, let him depart. -William Shakespeare
Being an entrepreneur requires courage, tenacity, and guts. No Guts, No Glory is not just the title to a Molly Hatchet album but really gets to the heart of what it means to be an entrepreneur.
Harry Walenda of the great flying Walenda’s high-wire act never fell until shortly after he began working with a safety net. It was almost as if, once the possibility of falling entered his consciousness, it became a self-fulfilling prophesy. Shortly after working without a net for the first time, Mr. Walenda fell to his death.
Working without a net puts you in a position where you must to MAKE things happen -your very survival depends on it.
The payoff? Breaking free from the human-sized hamster wheel and corporate slavery. As an entrepreneur, you work just as hard, no doubt about that. In fact, most entrepreneurs work harder than people who don’t work for themselves. Ask any entrepreneur about a 40 hour work week and you’ll hear laughter. The payoff in terms of emotional gratification has more value to any amount of money.
Staying on the corporate hamster wheel isn’t as safe as many people think it is. Really, sticking with the safety net of the status quo, corporate job doesn’t offer any more security than sticking your neck out and risking failure. I’ve worked for large corporations that have gone belly-up in a heart beat -nothing to do with me or my shortcomings, some corporate jackass made some bad decisions and I was suddenly unemployed. Trust me, I know the pain of suddenly finding myself unemployed because the safety net of working for a large corporation wasn’t really a safety net after all.
From the time we are born to the instant we draw our last breath, we are programmed to avoid failure. The most serious side effect of that programming is our tendency to avoid risk. The most successful people in the world are the people who break free from the hypnotic programming of our culture to avoid risk. Overcoming fear of failure is absolutely critical to your success.
Look Outside
0294 days
by Lee
in Uncategorized
How difficult is it to look around at your competitors and replicate what they are doing? Not very! Most savvy business people stay abreast of their respective industries by reading industry publications and going to trade shows and conferences.
Real Estate sales professionals read magazines that are written specifically for that industry. While I do not discourage the reading of such magazines and attending trade shows and conferences, I submit that doing so really doesn’t really lead to innovation.
Knowing what everybody else is doing is important. Especially if your industry has adopted new technologies and you’re lagging several years behind the rest of the pack.
The innovators in virtually every industry I can think of are looking outside their industry for fresh ideas. Examples abound of fresh innovative approaches to business OUTSIDE your industry. The secret to having competitive edge is finding ways to adapt innovations to your industry and leading the pack by doing things nobody else in your field is doing.
