Archive for February, 2006
Zero-sum is an interesting concept. It’s the idea that you can only have gains or losses that are balanced by gains or losses by others. Poker is a zero-sum game; if you win $10, someone else has to lose $10. If three people in a five person game win $10 each, the other two people had to lose $30 between them.
Of course, this is game theory and not everything in life is a game. But using the concept of “zero-sum based thinking” can help you gain clarity and make decisions - or at least make it a little easier to decide on a decision. It’s still difficult to actually make some decisions.
It’s easy to use zero-sum based thinking too. All zero-sum based questions should begin, “Knowing what I know now, and all things being equal, would I make the same decision?”
It’s binary - yes or no - all you have to do is answer “yes” or “no” to the question. That’s the easy part. The difficult part comes when you have to actually make a decision based on the “yes” or the “no.”
Zero-sum based thinking is a good tool to use when evaluating making a change. If I were torn between staying involved in a business relationship or leaving, I might ask, “Knowing what I know now, and with all things being equal, if I could start over would I get involved with this business relationship again?”
It shouldn’t be very difficult to answer this question. If things are going well, you would likely answer “yes!” If things were going badly or you dreaded getting up in the morning and facing your business relationship you would probably whimper, “no.”
Again, it’s easy to come up with your “yes” or “no” answer. Actually making the decision to terminate your business relationship will likely be a much more difficult decision to make.
The reason this is zero-sum is because you’re going to make a decision that causes a gain for one party and a loss for another. In some cases both parties will be you, but the net result has to balance out. If you to say “yes” to one option, you have to say “no” to the opposite when making a binary decision.
I can give you a good example of this working in my own life. Some months ago I had become extremely frustrated by some circumstances at my day job. I finally asked myself, “Knowing what I know now, would I take this job offer if I had to make the decision all over again?”
In light of a question like that the answer was “yes.” In general the job was great, it was just a small, but extremely frustrating set of circumstances that had me completely boxed up and ready to walk away. I wasn’t able to make a rational decision because I was far to emotionally involved.
However once I realized that, overall, I enjoyed the job and I didn’t want to have to go find another position in another company I realized that I just needed to get a handle around the circumstances that were causing me pain. It took me some time to do that, and it involved some not-so-comfortable conversations with people regarding the cause of my frustrations, but ultimately it worked out and now I’m much happier.
And I didn’t just make a snap decision and walk off the job because of frustration. I analyzed my stay/go options and realized that I didn’t want to go. Once I had made that decision, I could focus my choices on how I could limit my frustrations and fix them.
It’s a useful tool to use when you’re struggling with a decision because zero-sum based thinking allows you to take at least 50% of your options off the table. If you’re struggling with your relationship with your spouse and ask, “Knowing what I know now, would I get involved with this relationship if I had it to do over?” will net you a very clear “yes” or “no” answer.
If the answer is “yes” then you can 100% clear out worrying about all the questions and decisions you would have to face if the answer were “no.” Instead you can focus on finding the root of your disagreements and fixing the gaps in the relationship.
The next time you’re stuck and frustrated, see if you can break your options down to a “yes” or “no” question and try applying some zero-sum based thinking to your own situation.
February 28th, 2006
Everyday as I drive to and from work I pass a small house that’s been converted into an office. There is a sign in the front yard, right by the road, with the company name and below that a place for those gas-station-style letters.
There is always a positive quote or saying on the sign. Every three or four days there is a new saying.
The company isn’t a sales-training firm, marketing firm, dot-com venture or any of the other types of businesses you might think would do something unique like this. The company is Metzler Plumbing and Heating.
For the last three years I’ve driven past this sign - twice a day - and been positively influenced by it. The owners don’t know me, I don’t have any sort of business relationship with the company - yet they’ve found a way to reach me - and in a positive way to boot!
How often do you have an influence on other people? The answer is “all the time” unless you live a hermit’s life with no human contact at all.
But how often are you not even aware of the influence you have on other people? Everything we do and say speaks to others about the quality and content of our character and our beliefs. It’s up to us to choose to be mindful of our influence.
The truly enlightened are not only mindful of their influence, they go out of their way to make sure their influence is positive, uplifting, and constructive - even when there is no direct connection. This is certainly the case with the owners of Metzler Plumbing and Heating.
As I was writing this article, I realized that it applies to me too. If I’m going to promote SuccessMinders as a resource for success-minded people, I have to be mindful of my influence on people not only at this web site, but at any other web community in which I participate.
It’s the same philosophy as being nice to everyone with whom you interact, because you never know who you’ll meet. Have you ever realized - after an introduction and your first impression has been made - who the person really was? You probably spent the next few seconds racking your brain, trying to make sure your impression and introduction was positive (i.e. you had a positive influence).
Being mindful of your influence is the first step. You should know how you reach and touch people within your sphere of influence (as big or small as it may be). The second step is making sure that in that sphere of influence you’re a positive influence!
Being a positive influence can be easy or it can be difficult. It all depends on you and whether you have people who positively influence you. There is no such thing as “winning” the game of life - there is always another obstacle to overcome or a bigger goal to achieve, or a higher notch you can set when you raise the bar.
It’s easy when you have your own positive influence network building you up. There are people in my life that don’t just make small talk or complain about their latest defeat in life. They put the question to me and ask if I’m on track with my goals, how I’m doing in school, how this web site is going. They’re encouraging and supportive and have a direct positive impact on me. When I’ve spent more time around these people, I find it much easier myself to turn around and try to encourage and build up the other people in my life.
It ends up being a big circle, where each person is pulled up and built up by those that positively influence them, and then in turn they pull up and build up others in their sphere of influence. And think how powerful it is when you can pull up and build up people en masse.
Today’s message on Metzler’s sign was a good one and one that I was able to personally take to heart, so I am sharing it here with you; “Always keep your promises — to both your friends and foes alike!”
Remember to be aware that you always influence those around you even if you’re not aware of it!
February 26th, 2006
How safe should you live life? Well, you obviously don’t want to live so close to the edge that you’re always in danger of killing yourself, but you shouldn’t live always looking for the 100% “safe” option in life.
Because here’s a secret that we all forget from time to time; there is no 100% “safe” option in life.
Did you get in your car and drive to work this morning? 49,000 people in the United States died in auto accidents in 2004. 1.1 million people world wide died in auto accidents, and 38 million were injured.
Even if you’re the most risk-averse person out there, it’s very likely you get into your car every day and drive somewhere - to work or to school. Driving can be a risky proposition, but we all still do it.
We do it because we calculate that we’re pretty likely to be safe, even while involved in a potentially risk activity. We weight the odds and roll the dice.
I love the quote director, screenwriter, and producer Robert Altman:
“To play it safe is not to play.”
–Robert Altman
The people who learn to play are those that excel in life. And when I say “play” I mean learn to take calculated risks while seizing the passion in their lives.
Have you every dreamed about staring your own business, but fear held you back? You’ve played it safe. If you did start your own business, what’s the worst that could happen? You might fail, and depending on how badly you fail you might lose your material possessions.
But you’ll still have your health. And you’ll have something more important and that’s the experience that will benefit you in your next endeavor.
Magicians Penn and Teller have a rule. They call this the rule of NPD - no permanent damage. Before undertaking a risky stunt or a tricky magic routine they ask the question, “Will this permanently cause me damage?” If the answer is yes, they don’t do it.
They are playing and not playing it safe. And they are outrageous and larger than life because they’ll undertake something that’s risky and on the edge. They’re using their rule of NPD to make them superstars - why can’t you?
Let me share a story…
Years ago I started an Internet business. It wasn’t because it was “the thing to do”, but because I really loved the potential and the possibility that the Internet represented. I knew how to make the Internet do what I wanted, but I didn’t know the first thing about running a business. I was a 20 year old college drop-out who had never taken a business class in his life.
It quickly became apparent that while I had all the necessary skills I needed technically, I didn’t have any of the necessary skills to succeed in sales and running a business. Sure, I was able to fake it for a while, but eventually my inexperience caught up to me and it all came crashing down around me. I lost everything I had at the time (which was admittedly not much at all), but I was still alive and I was still looking at things and trying to make the technology connection. I suffered no permanent damage.
So I tried again and put in place better systems to shore up my own shortcomings. And I fared much better. Bad decisions on my part (and my partners’ parts) led to us selling our business at the bottom of the “dot.com” crash rather than at the top (we go greedy). But that experience left me with more life experience and set me up for the next thing I tackled.
If I had played it safe, I probably wouldn’t have started the first company. But I also wouldn’t have had the experience to get where I am today and I certainly would have built the relationships and forged the friendships I have today.
I’m not advising you run out at take stupid risks because I said not to play life safe. I’m suggesting you look at the things you haven’t achieved and the things you haven’t undertaken and ask yourself why.
If it’s fear that’s holding you back, you have to ask if taking action would result in permanent damage. If the answer is yes, then you have to tweak your action or your desired outcome until you can confidently say that undertaking the action will not result in permanent damage.
And once you’ve tweaked and changed to this point, you need to take action! Get your risk under control and then “just do it!”
Don’t live life by playing it safe. Go and be a superstar!
February 24th, 2006
I have been, at times in my life, a spectacular failure. I’ve had a business fail. I’ve had friendships fail. I’ve had ideas fail. I have had personal financial crises stemming from failure. I’ve lost friends over performance failures.
I have experienced a lot of failure in my life, and I’m willing to bet that since you don’t settle for a mediocre life you’ve had your share of failures too.
The important thing about failure is not the failure itself - we will all fail at something, sometime in our life. If you’re not failing, you’re not setting the bar very high. The important thing we learn from failure is the lesson of why we failed, and how to bounce back from failure.
There’s a saying I like; fail faster. Basically, when you undertake a new challenge, you need to get to and through your failures as quickly as possible because you’ll get them past you, and you’ll learn what didn’t work. Learning what doesn’t work can be just as important as learning what does work and you’ll only learn this lesson when you fail.
“I don’t measure a man’s success by how high he climbs but how high be bounces when he hits bottom”
–General George S. Patton
What’s important is to bounce back after you fail. It’s not just important, it’s vitally critical to future success.
Thomas Edison is a great example of someone who bounced. He tried hundreds of times to improve the light bulb and make it practical and workable. He was fond of telling people that he hadn’t failed 700 times to build a better light bulb, rather he had just found 700 ways to not build a better light bulb.
Edison bounced when a design change for a light bulb failed. And with each bounce he moved closer and closer to his ultimate success. And what did his ultimate success entail, a little company you may have heard called General Electric.
It’s the bounce that counts. So, how high do you bounce after you fail? Are you an “Edison” and keep trying over and over until you get it right or do you adopt the slogan, “If at first you do succeed, change your definition of success”?
Learning to bounce up after a defeat isn’t hard, but it’s not fun. When we try to achieve, and get met with failure, we have a tendency to want to stay down and lick our wounds. Years ago I had a bad business breakup because of my own failure to be something I didn’t want to be (a salesperson). I stayed “down” for a couple of days, licking my wounds, until I realized I was only making myself feel worse.
I was dwelling on something I couldn’t change, so I looked at my failure and tried to learn what I could from it. I realized that I didn’t enjoy being a full-time salesperson. I didn’t enjoy cold calling (and that’s putting it mildly - I hated it). I was able to evaluate my situation and then make an intelligent decision to move my life in a direction that I would enjoy much more.
That bounce landed me at my now-present position; in a job I love, working for a great company. It also afforded me the ability to create this web site, not because I have a great insight to life and success, but because I’ve been at the bottom and had to crawl back up.
I bounced.
And throughout my life I’ve bounced. As I said before, I’ve suffered failed businesses, failed personal finances, failed relationships - all standard fare for someone with an entrepreneurial streak.
Do you bounce?
Do you take the time to evaluate your failures to see what you can learn? Every failure is really just a teacher in disguise. The trick is to get past the pain of failure that you’re feeling and uncover the lesson and learn from the “teacher” that’s hidden. Don’t just bury your failures and move forward like they never happened, take the time to really evaluate what led to them. You can only really learn from a failure when you take the time to dissect the failure and understand it.
And this process can take time. When one of my businesses failed, I didn’t admit the real reasons of why it failed for a long time. It took me years to really be able to look back and realize and understand all of the minuscule bad decisions that added up to the colossal failure.
Now that I’ve been in that position, and I’ve looked back at my mistakes and my partners’ mistakes, I realize what I wouldn’t do the next time I open a business.
You can remember what to do when you fail if you know the acronym “FREE”.
FAIL
You have to fail to learn from your failures. If you’re not failing at something then you’re either a) Superman or b) not setting your bar high enough.
Go raise your bar and fail, then come back to the FREE acronym.
REVIEW
You have to dissect your failure and identify what caused you to fail. Was is self-sabotage (it happens more then you think), was it a bad market, was it bad decisions? You need to review your failure and get to the root cause(s) of your failure.
ENLIGHTEN
You know what caused you to fail, so now you need to figure out what you can learn from your failure. It’s time to enlighten yourself. I’ve learned that I detest cold calling and being a “pushy” salesman. It’s not for me. I learned this by reviewing my failure at being a “cold calling” salesman.
EMPLOY
Once you have learned from your failures, it’s time to make changes and employ those changes. I can’t do cold calls. I hate, hate, hate it. I am fine calling on a warm lead or having a sales meeting face-to-face. So I have put myself in a position where I am only really faced with having to do warm sales - that is sell my ideas to an already warm audience. I’ve decided what I wanted to change from my failure, and I’ve employed it in my life.
Now get out there, fail (faster!), learn from your failures and bounce baby…just bounce as high as you can!
February 22nd, 2006
A few days ago I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room, waiting on my wife. They had a TV tuned to a local station, showing the morning news. With my only other entertainment option being to read a 9 month old copy of “Good Housekeeping” - I settled in to watch the news.
There was a teaser right before a commercial block promising a must-see segment on how to protect my baby from RSV. I don’t have a baby and I wasn’t even sure what the heck “RSV” was, but the anchor sold it with such urgency that I knew I must stay tuned to learn these potentially life-saving tips.
When the commercials were over, the lead in promise me that I would soon be thanking the local news team for this vital information about saving my baby’s life from RSV; thus the segment began.
I learned that “RSV” is an acronym for respiratory syncytial virus - the news segment never really made it clear what exactly it was other than a respiratory “bug”.
The “life saving” tips amounted to a fancy on-screen graphic with the following tips (literally):
And with that, the news segment was over. There was no additional information about RSV. There was no additional information about how you could identify if the people around you had RSV so you could avoid them. The entire segment was very superficial and seemed to pander to a “lowest common denominator” viewing segment.
The rest of the time I watched the morning news program I realized that all they were doing was skimming the surface of every topic they covered.
And it made me think about my own interactions with people. Did I just skim the surface or did I dive deep? That is, did I make only a superficial effort with other people or did I really take the time and energy to get to know someone on a deeper level?
I think we make snap judgments when meeting people on whether or not we’re going to skim the surface with that person or dive deep and really get to know them, but why do we decide this? As compassionate and passionate people shouldn’t we want to get to know everyone on a deeper level?
There have been times I’ve been guilty of simply skimming the surface myself. I’ve been to parties or business mixers where I didn’t really make any real effort to get to know the people to whom I was introduced. When I’ve skimmed the surface in the past, those events have never been very meaningful for me.
Conversely when I’ve been at events where I’ve really made an effort to dive deep and put effort into really getting to know people on a personal level I find the events to be much more personally fulfilling and meaningful. And the times I’ve made an effort to dive deep in relationships with people, I’ve made friends and forged very strong relationships.
Some of these relationships have benefited me in business immensely over and over again.
Do you skim the surface in some relationships while diving deep in others? Why? Why don’t you dive deep with everyone? I realize that this is a bit of an idealistic statement - there are times where the other person is only interested in skimming the surface with you, there are times when you just don’t have the energy, etc. But think how many more fulfilling relationships you would have if you tried to dive deep with everyone!
This is where passion comes into play. If you’re passionate about success and achievement and personal development, you should be passionate about helping other people understand your success-oriented message. You can’t do this unless you dive deep and really build a meaningful relationship where trust and understanding is a key part of the foundation.
I don’t know about you, but I get excited thinking about the possibility of building deep, strong relationships like this. I might not be able to help everyone find passion and enthusiasm for personal development - some just won’t be interested - but when I can help that one person who needs help, well the feeling is just amazingly powerful!
And really, diving deep only takes a little more effort than skimming the surface. Think about a situation where you skimmed the surface with someone; what would it really have taken to go deeper? In most cases it will only take a sincere desire to really listen to and understand the person with whom your interacting. And you’ll have the added benefit of really making that other person’s day because we all feel great when we’re talking to someone who’s interested in letting us talk about ourselves!
So the next time you catch yourself skimming the surface with another person, make the effort to dive deep. Who knows, you might just end up building a long lasting relationship!
February 20th, 2006
Most people think there are three S’s in the word “success”, but that’s not true, there are really four S’s in the word “success.”
These four S’s are:
- Set it
- Share it
- Start it
- Stick to it
Okay, I should admit something, these are really the four S’s in goals, but when you achieve your goals you move towards success. Let’s look at these 4 S’s in a little more detail.
Set it
All success starts with a goal. You have to know what you want, and have a plan to get there in order to be successful. This might be something as simple as “make 10 cold calls today” or as difficult as “double my salary in 12 months.”
Both have one thing in common, until you SET the goal, you won’t begin to make any real progress towards achieving your goal.
Last year I had a goal to increase my income by 35% in 2006 - I knew what I wanted my end result to be and I knew that I would have to make some changed to accomplish this. Once I set my goal, I began to work on it and by the end of 2005 I had already increased my income in 2006 by 19% - a pretty good way towards my full goal before 2006 had even started!
Share it
When you’re working towards a goal, you need to let other people know about it - you need to share your goal. But take care to share it with people who will build you up and help you be successful; you don’t want any negative people dragging down your spirits as you work towards your goals.
I have a friend with whom I share a lot of my goals. He is an excellent resource for keeping me accountable to myself. If I share a goal (or even a “want”) with him - even in passing - he’ll keep asking me about it and my progress on achieving my goal. I’m not even sure he realizes he’s so great at goal-accountability, but he is. I’ve accomplished goals before simply because he kept me on track by regularly asking me about my progress.
Find someone who you can share your goal with and who will be excited, positive and share in your success with you!
Start it
You’ve got to take action before you’ll ever achieve results. This step is simply taking the first action towards achieving your goals. This is also the step where many people falter. A lot of people feel like they can’t take action until they’re 100% ready or until they’ve got 100% of the information needed - these become stumbling blocks to getting started.
I’ve always said (and many more famous authors have said it before) that massive action towards your goal will often win over intricate detail. But any action is better than planning yourself to death. Follow the formula of; Ready, Fire, Aim!
About a year ago I decided I wanted to do more with my photography. Instead of hemming and hawing about whether or not I could do it, I jumped in and found some friends who wanted work done - with the understanding that I was (yet) a “pro.” If you’re a pro photographer reading this, you’re skin is probably crawling, but after a few assignments from friends I landed some assignments from people I knew who weren’t friends. That has led to some work by people I didn’t know at all.
If I hadn’t started doing it, I would probably still be sitting around dreaming about making money from my hobby instead of actually making a little money from my hobby!
Stick to it
When you make your actions towards reaching your goals habitual, you are almost guaranteed of reaching your goals. This is hard because sticking to a goal requires a personal commitment and will power - until it’s an ingrained habit you have to constantly condition yourself to stick with it.
This can be easy if you have a huge amount of passion and motivation or it can be more difficult if you’ve not worked yourself up for tackling the goal. If you make sticking to your goals a habit, eventually the behaviors you stick to in order to reach your goals will become habits.
This web site is a good example of this; I had to stick to a commitment of writing articles before I knew if anyone would actually visit the site and read them. I couldn’t write one or two articles and then sit back and way for readers to show up and demand more to read. I had to act like I had a base of readers right from the outset and stick with regularly writing articles. I can tell you that the first weeks were very nerve wracking, I would look at my logs from the week and there would be entire days where I might have one or two visitors (or worse, a day with no visitors). I would worry that my articles weren’t resonating with readers, and I would wonder if the site would be a total flop!
In the end, persistence and sticking with it paid off; today I have an ever growing base of readers and every week my logs show an increase in visits and page views. The site still has a long way to go before my own personal goals for traffic levels will be met, but sticking with it will be key to getting there.
When you combine all of these steps, and follow them as outlined you create a set of behaviors and habits, and an environment for yourself where success is much more likely to be the result. All to often people set goals and don’t have a plan in place to assure they reach their desired outcome. These 4 S’s of “success” are the framework you need.
The next time you spell “success”, make sure it has 4 S’s!
February 18th, 2006
About a week ago Brad Issac had an article up on his web site titled How to Take A Caffeine Nap - and the timing was a bit uncanny with my own experiments with napping and power napping.
So today I tried combining my power nap with a shot of caffeine.
To put things in perspective, I’m not a big consumer of caffeine. I drink the occasional diet soft drink or iced tea, and very little coffee. My drink of choice is ice-cold water.
So today when I sat down for my power nap, I preceded it with a “Biggie” diet Coke from Wendy’s, and tried to get restful and relaxed.
One thing that really struck me was how vivid the images in my mind were - even more than usual. I never felt like I was completely asleep - I teetered right on that edge between sleep and wakefulness - but the images were very vivid and “real” and the thoughts just seemed to flow and swirl around in my head.
I had a bit of grogginess when I first roused myself, but it’s been about 15 minutes since my nap and I feel completely alert and fully rested. I’m not ready to attribute the experience fully to the caffeine after just one experience, but today’s nap was certainly a different experience than my previous naps.
I think some more experimentation with caffeine and napping is required, but after just one go at it I feel like there is something to the idea. If you’re into napping, you might want to give a caffeine nap a try yourself!
February 17th, 2006
Yesterday I had the opportunity to lie down in a comfortable place while taking my nap. Let me forewarn you that unless you have immensely strong will power, this might not be the best idea.
I got comfortable, set a timer for 20 minutes and stretched out, ready to relax. Within minutes I was sound asleep and instead of power napping for 20 minutes, I slept for an hour and twenty minutes! I didn’t hear the timer I set, and finally was awake enough to look at my wrist watch and realize how long I had been out. I felt groggy and “thick headed” because it was too long of a nap.
So a word of caution if you’re power napping; don’t get to comfortable and fall completely asleep. If you’re not careful you’ll end up oversleeping and groggy at the end.
Today was much better - again I didn’t use any music of other aids to take power nap. I’ve found that after a day or two of it taking me longer to get settled down and relaxed, I so far feel like I get a deeper nap when I don’t use any music of the Pzizz software. Today I even noticed some hypnagogic images float through my mind. You can experience hypnagogic images and sounds when you’re right on the edge between being awake and being asleep. They’re sort of a dream you have while you’re awake.
I don’t really recall any specific details, but I realized that I wasn’t asleep and I was dreaming. It was a very surreal experience, not unlike a lucid dream.
I feel much more refreshed this afternoon.
So far power napping is getting two big thumbs up from me. I don’t feel like I’m quite as cranky and crabby in the afternoons because I’m more relaxed. Taking a 20 minute break in the middle of the day for “me time” has also a great stress reliever as well.
February 16th, 2006
If you have a few minutes I encourage you to check out Erik Vossman’s site, “Can you become good at everything?” It’s an interesting collections of articles from one ambitious person - you really get a sense of excitement and passion about life in his writing.
I highly recommend reading about his personal battle against cancer; it’s a powerful story.
February 16th, 2006
We are creatures of habit; for many of us, consistency makes us feel all “warm-n-fuzzy” inside. And we like avoiding pain in life, so we tend to gravitate towards habits that build consistency, which makes us feel “warm-n-fuzzy.”
To put it in layman’s terms, we let our desire for comfort let us get ourselves stuck in ruts.
Five weeks ago I started attending classes in management and mathematics. I happened to sit in whatever seat was available in the first session of each class. At the second session in both classes I noticed that I, along with almost everyone else, was sitting in the same seat we had the week before.
That got me thinking about our unconscious drive for consistency and it got me paying attention to my own behaviors as well as the behaviors of everyone around me.
During the third week of classes - I broke out and sat in a radically different place during my math class. I not only changed my perspective, but I created some dissonance for everyone else! The previous two weeks I had been sitting near the front of the class, right in the middle of a group of students. The third week I choose to sit near the back of the class, in a more sparsely populated row.
Almost immediately I started getting odd looks from those around me who were not used to me being there. I also had a few students I had previously sat near at the front of the room ask me if I wanted them to save “my” seat near them.
The same thing happened in my management class. When I moved radically away from the seat I generally sat in, I got uncomfortable looks from the people I moved near and confused looks from the people I moved away from.
Neither of my classes has assigned seating, this behaviour happened organically. Students picked “their” seat during the first class, and with little exception they haven’t moved since.
I’ve noticed this behavior all my life, but my awareness of it has been more at my periphery - sort of there but not fully in focus. At multi-day conventions I’ve seen people gravitate to the same seats and the same groups. At office events cliques form and hold together at work, during company events, and even at non-company events.
I’m guilty of falling into these ruts, as I’m sure we all are.
And as I think about the people I know who don’t seem to let themselves fall into such ruts, I come up with a list of people which compares almost directly to my list of successful people I know.
My mentor and coach never sat in the same place twice, and never hesitated in introducing herself to new people. She was the very definition of not being stuck in a rut. She was also pretty darn successful.
I look at some of the high-level salespeople I know who have had impressive financial success and they’re the same way. They can reach out of their ruts and connect with new people constantly. They never sit with the same groups from one company function to another.
These people, all successful, have made a habit of not getting stuck in habits. They have identified ruts all around them and they have worked to avoid them. In some cases I’m sure it’s unconscious behavior - some people are just wired that way. But I know for myself, I have to make a conscious effort to identify my ruts and avoid them. I suspect there are a lot of people out there like this too.
How do you identify your ruts?
The first step is awareness; you have to be aware of your physical, mental and spiritual environment and your place in it. If it sounds like I talk about awareness a lot it’s because most people are not aware of their physical, mental and spiritual environment and you must gain awareness before you can begin to make meaningful changes.
So gaining awareness of yourself, your desires and planning an aware-destiny is a key in every improvement or development you’ll make in yourself.
For the next week try to be conscious of why you make the daily, routine decisions you make. Why did you go to lunch with a certain group of people? Why did you sit in your usual place at the staff meeting?
What do you do to get out of your ruts?
At home, my wife is constantly in a state of re-decoration. It seems every week there will be a new rug on the floor or different throw pillows on the couch or the curtains have been changed somehow. She desperately wants to re-paint the main rooms of the house. She does this because it keeps her perspective and her environment fresh.
What would happen if you went to lunch with a group of people you’ve never gone to lunch with? What would happen if you moved the staff meeting from the conference room to a nearby coffee shop?
Would making a change like this change your patterns? Would it force you out of your daily rut - even if only for a short while?
I argue that it will. It might be a little uncomfortable at first, but nothing truly great was ever achieved by someone stuck in their comfort zone.
I challenge you to first work to become aware of the ruts you’re in, and second to create unique and creative ways to get out of those ruts.
When you do, you’ll be in a higher state of awareness than 99% of the people you see around you who are just action out their daily routine; and you’ll be poised to improve and develop yourself at the same time!
February 16th, 2006
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