Posts filed under 'Improvement'
Are you comfortable? Can you go through your day on auto-pilot, not having to think to deeply or work to hard? Does your job seem routine, with only minor issues popping up now and again? Do you sometimes feel a little stagnant?
Everyone gets stuck in a comfort zone now and again. It’s easy to do, and it’s comfortable. We let our routines and habits become our masters. We show up at work, “zombie” through the day, and return home to spend another night the same way as the night before.
I’m not saying that any of this is bad mind you. When you’re life is going well and the status quo doesn’t seem to be all that bad, it’s easy to get trapped by daily routine in a good way. We don’t look at our job or our life and say, “Man, things could be so much better…” We look at our job and our life and say, “Man, I’m doing pretty good right now.”
Getting stuck in a comfort zone is an impediment to personal and professional growth. If you’re comfortable, you’re probably not striving quite as hard (or maybe at all) to get to that next level. You’re probably not raising the bar higher and higher because things feel pretty good right where they are.
So why should you care about breaking out of your comfort zone, and why is it so critical you do?
Success and achievement often comes from failure and being told you can’t do something. It takes energy, motivation and action to create these successes. When you’re down and out it’s a lot easier to build up massive energy and gather massive action and put it to bear on building yourself back up.
No one wants to be at the bottom; people naturally want to excel and grow and make themselves and their lives better. When a failure has set you back or an obstacle has been placed in your way it’s a challenge to build the action necessary to build yourself to that next level.
Once you’ve built yourself up a few level though, you’ll find that things are getting better. Life isn’t quite so hard, maybe not as much of a challenge. You’ve proven yourself by overcoming the obstacle that was put in your way. You start to get comfortable, and once that happens your growth and development slows to a crawl.
So if you want to take your life to the next level you have to be prepared to step outside of your comfort zone. You have to be willing to demand more for yourself, and you have to be willing to undertake tasks that may be difficult to start growing again.
There are three reasons you must break out of your comfort zone:
1) You’re not growing
If you want to grow and develop you have to keep yourself challenged.
When you’re completely comfortable with your job or your life or your relationship - with whatever in your life is totally comfortable - you won’t be growing.
It’s very difficult for us to be in a state of non-motion. When we humans aren’t growing up, we’re slipping down. Sometimes this can spur a burst of activity to get back to your comfort zone if you slip below it too much, but rarely will you bust above your comfort zone without conscious effort and action.
2) You’re not learning
Every time I’ve forced myself outside of my comfort zone I’ve learned something very interesting and useful. It’s true, I might learn what doesn’t work, but I’m still learning.
Life is one big learning opportunity. Every outcome, every success, every failure, everything has something we can learn from. If you’re comfortable and maintaining the status quo, I suspect you’re not learning anything terribly useful.
When you step outside of your comfort zone you will end up learning, and you’ll keep yourself in a state where you continue to learn as your circumstances and situation are continually changing.
3) You’re not leading and inspiring
While you’re busy pulling yourself up something interesting happens; when you move up and perform at a new level there will be people at the level you just left who are looking for leadership and inspiration to help them build themselves up as well.
No matter how high you develop your skills and talents, and no matter what exceptional achievements you have, there will always be other people that will look to you as a leader and as inspiration for achieving and growing their own abilities and successes.
Being a leader and inspiring other people is part of the job requirement when you use your unique talents to grow your life in a positive and fulfilling direction. It’s part and parcel of every development and achievement minded person’s journey.
As you achieve and succeed and develop your own life, you will eventually begin to feel a powerful desire to help others.
Once you’re comfortable it can be intimidating to step out of that zone. You have to have the perseverance and desire to take action even when your brain is telling you, “Hey, no need to change! Things are going pretty good right now, just relax and enjoy!” Once you take charge of yourself and generate the motivation and action to take the first step and move outside of your comfort zone you’ll find that it gets easier each time.
I recently decided that I needed to go back to school and get a degree. I have done pretty well for myself without a college degree, but it’s something I wanted to achieve. Having not been in school for over ten years, I can safely say that walking in to the class room last week was definitely stepping outside of my comfort zone.
As the professor was presenting the information on the syllabus I kept thinking to myself, “Are you nuts? You’ll have homework! You haven’t done homework in ten year! You won’t have any free time, you’ll have to study, you’ll have tests! What were you thinking?”
After being in classes for two weeks now I have committed myself to my goal and I’ve grown a little in the process.
Deciding to write this web site was a step outside of my comfort zone. I’ve opened myself up to public scrutiny and possible taunting and ridicule. I’ve created a site where I have to create a stream of fresh content on a regular basis, in addition to fulfilling the responsibilities I have in my professional and personal life.
But I believe that more people will find the articles on this web site information, useful and (hopefully) entertaining. I believe that I’ll help other people by providing them ideas and tools they can use to build themselves up. Again, now that I’ve moved outside of my comfort zone I feel I’ve grown and improved myself a little more.
All you have to do is keep finding comfort zones you have and making a conscious decision to step out of them. When you do you’ll feel it, but the reward and the personal growth is well worth it!
January 19th, 2006
Recently I was talking with my wife about this web site; asking her thoughts about it. She told me that she thought the articles were good, but she didn’t see anywhere on the site where I mentioned her. Why wasn’t she one of my passions?
I have to admit I was taken aback - how could my wife think she wasn’t one of my passions? Of course she is - she’s supported me through every half-baked, half-cocked or hair-brained scheme I’ve undertaken since we’ve been together. I thought she should just know she’s one of my passions.
But when I started to reflect on it a little more, and really reviewed my site with an eye towards her feelings, I realized that I haven’t really said anything about her or my passion and love for her.
Even thought I thought it was a given, I hadn’t said it. I wasn’t providing enough support myself to the people that let me be successful. Without her support, encouragement and help I wouldn’t be half as successful as I am today. When I think I can’t achieve something, or I’m not as good as I want to be, she’s there, supporting me, encouraging me and making sure she sets me straight when I get too negative.
How often have you done this - taken the people who are your support system for granted? It’s easy to do, and once you start letting these relationships erode, you’re doomed to wander down the path to failure! So how do you keep the relationships in your success support system in tip-top shape?
Not taking a person for granted sounds easy in theory; making sure you never do it in practice is a little more difficult. As people live and work and share close relationships it’s easy to slip into a routine where the status quo and the rigors of daily life keep us focused more on our own needs and wants than on those of others around us.
How you keep focused on them and not yourself isn’t difficult; there isn’t any magic formula or 5-step “secret program.” In the words of a famous advertising campaign; you “just do it.”
Every day do the following for the people that support your success:
- Encourage them
- Challenge them
- Excite them
- Congratulate them
- Help them
- Praise them
- Love them
- Teach them
- Learn from them
- Support them
The easy part is the “doing.” The hard part is keeping your passion for them forefront every day!
I’ll admit for myself that it’s a struggle sometimes. At the end of a long week I have been known to think of myself first and my wife second. I’m ready to relax and unwind and be left alone. But it’s my wife’s support, encouragement and help that gets me through the week in the first place!
Like everything else you can make a habit out of keeping yourself aware of your need to support those that support you. After our conversation I took a small card and wrote, “I keep my wife first in my mind; I support, excite, challenge, help, love, teach, learn from and encourage her every day!”
I keep this card in my wallet and I look at it each morning when I put my wallet in my pants and each night when I take my wallet out of my pants. It’s a constant reminder to not take her for granted, and with time the behaviors will become a habit.
How many people in your life would benefit if you created a card (and habit) like this for yourself?
January 15th, 2006
How many ways can you save time each day? One easy way is to really take a long look at your daily drive.
I suspect that most people have more than one possible route they can take to get to their daily destination. If so, are you sure you’re using the most efficient route when taking into account the time of day and traffic levels?
I have two primary routes I can use to get to my office. I’ve always used one in particular because it seemed faster; there was always less traffic because it led me through quieter streets. It’s peaceful. The other route, which I never really used, kept me on the highway longer and then directed me through an industrial area with nothing to look at on my drive but huge, grey, concrete buildings.
If you look at a map and trace out these two paths the first route - through the quiet neighborhoods - looks like the clear winner in terms of distance and time. The second route takes me farther and through busy, industrial areas.
But I wondered if my assumptions were true; was my preferred route to my office really the quicker route? I decided to put it to a test; I drove each route for a week while I timed the trip.
A strange thing happened; I realized that my assumptions were completely incorrect!
My preferred route actually took an average of 7 minutes and 25 seconds longer to arrive at my office. Further, this time was pretty stable whether I was headed to my office or to my house. I was spending fifteen minutes more in the car each day than I needed.
I know what you’re thinking, “Big deal, you saved 7.5 minutes going to work and another 7.5 minutes going home. That’s not so much.”
You’re right, it’s not much. But think about that time in bigger terms; If I continue to take the longer route over the course of a work-week it’s an extra hour and fifteen minutes I’m stuck in the car. Over the course of a month it’s an extra five hours in the car. Over the course of a year it’s an extra sixty hours stuck in the car. I don’t know what your time is worth, but for me sixty hours lost costs me a lot of money.
If you’re earning $75,000 per year, losing 60 hours “costs” you $2163.60 - think in terms of what each minute lost costs you and you’ll quickly learn to seek out and eliminate lost minutes.
I also suspect there are a lot of places in my day I can shave additional minutes that will add up to extra hours in a short amount of time; I’m willing to wager this is true for you, too. Additionally, this “recovered time” not only gives us the freedom to spend it elsewhere, it also reinforces the skills of productivity, efficiency and resource management - skills we should all be practising at every opportunity!
Every lost minute reclaimed is an extra minute you can use to do something you want, or use to continue to build wealth and work to achieve financial Independence.
If I can save a few minutes a day, that time adds up quickly. Anything that gives me a few extra minutes of my day back without taking any additional effort on my part is exactly what I keep myself open to.
I challenge you to find your own ways to “shave and save.” What will you do with the extra time you reclaim?
January 10th, 2006
I love the saying, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” It’s memorable and true, and often very overlooked in life.
I’ve always been a video game fan; I like the big, epic tales involved. Over the long, New Year holiday, I picked up a game on which I had read rave reviews. So with some free time to myself I decided to give it a try. I readied by character for battle and I plowed into a group of monsters - I was happy to be hacking and slashing away! My zest for adventure didn’t compensate for my character’s weaknesses as a new player in the world; the group overpowered me in moments and without much effort on their part I was dispatched back to the bone yard.
I recovered myself and tried again, “Have at you!” was the battle-cry running through my mind. Again, moments later I found myself back at the bone yard. I tried again and I found myself dead just as quickly.
In my excitement to try out the game and become a fierce warrior I had let myself fall prey to repeating the same, unsuccessful patterns over and over. I was doing what I had always done (rush into the mob), and I was getting what I always got (a quick trip to the graveyard). About thirty minutes into charging, dying, recovering and charging again I realized I was stuck in this pattern. Once I recognized this, I was able to apply myself differently - by drawing out the monsters one by one - and I handily defeated the mob.
Do you do this in real life? Do you rush in, always doing things the same way, but expecting a different outcome? If you don’t pay attention, it’s very easy to slip into this behavior.
We are pattern machines. Our brain loves habits because they feel comfortable. It’s very easy to experience a little success performing a behavior and it’s very easy to expect we can always get that result. Our brain is also very hopeful - it wants us to have the best things, the perfect relationship, or be amazingly happy. This combination of loving habits and wanting the best can lead us to expect that we’ll get better and better results from the same action, every time we perform the action.
The action of wanting to lose weight is a great example. Months ago I cut out non-diet soft drinks from my diet because I didn’t want to keep consuming all the empty calories. An unattended side effect was that I lost a little weight in the process. Jumping ahead several months, I caught myself drinking the full-calorie soft drinks again. I made another effort to stop, thinking that I might even take off a few more pounds and be able to put on some old clothes that were now too small. Again, I lost a little weight, the same as before, but I didn’t lose any more weight. At first I was a little upset, then a little angry with myself. It was only when I stopped and realized I had expected a different outcome from the same behaviour.
You should keep in mind that your brain wants to perform its habits - when it does you feel comfortable. You also should keep in mind that if you’ve tried something several times and were unsuccessful in achieving your desired outcome you shouldn’t keep trying to achieve your desired outcome the same way - it won’t work. You also shouldn’t expect that you’ll suddenly achieve significantly more than you did doing the same thing.
I know for myself it’s not always easy to keep this in mind. It can be a habit (a good one) to just remember to check your assumptions when asking why you’re not getting the result you expect or want. It’s easy to slip into old habits of trying the same thing over and over while expecting to achieve more or different results.
Try some of these ideas for a week and see what shaking up your patterns can do for you:
- Wake up 30 minutes earlier than normal. You would be amazed at what an extra half-hour will do for you in the morning.
- If you’re an office worker, don’t check your email until mid-morning at work. Trust that nothing is so critical it can’t wait for 2 hours before you reply. If something really is that critical, they’ll find your office and tell you. You can get a lot more accomplished when you don’t spend your morning checking and replying email.
- Read a book or a newspaper in the evening instead of watching T.V. - If you already do this, listen to an audio program instead.
- Challenge yourself to make one new introduction a day. If you’re in the grocery store, introduce yourself to an employee you recognize. You never know when it will pay off big to know that person.
These are just a few ideas to force you to shake up your patterns and hopefully make you realize that by doing things just a little differently you’ll get a new result, not the “same-ol-same-ol” you might be used to achieving!
January 7th, 2006
There is a fancy sounding term I like; reticular activator. You have one, I have one, everyone has one. It’s a little part of your brain that focuses in on the things you tell your mind to pay attention to. It’s your mind’s filtering mechanism. When you consciously (or subconsciously) think about things, it’s your reticular activator that filters out examples of what you’re thinking about and brings them to the front of your conscious.
If you’re thinking about buying a new car and you’re really drooling over a new VW Beetle, you’ll very likely notice them everywhere you go. If you just bought a new leather jacket you really wanted, you’ll very likely notice everyone else seems to be wearing leather jackets too.
If you’re sitting at home reading in your living room, you’re probably aware that your kids are playing with the dog, that you wife is in the kitchen and that the TV is on in the den, but you’re not really focusing on any of these inputs - they’re filtered out. Though if your daughter falls and starts crying you’ll be instantly aware of it.
This is your reticular activator at work. It can not only help filter in, but it can filter out as well. If you understand how it works, you can use literally use what you think about to shape yourself.
Years ago there was a sign hanging in the computer lab of my high school; it read “Garbage In, Garbage Out” and was there as a reminder that a computer was only as good or as “smart” as the person putting data into it.
We don’t think about it much, but our brain is really just an incredibly powerful computer running software we call our mind. If we ask the right questions we’ll rarely fail to get a good answer from our mind. If we input bad data, our mind will process it and produce bad results. We too can be the victims of “garbage in, garbage out.”
And this garbage will literally drag your personal performance into the trash (no pun intended).
How? When you put in bad data you mind starts to setup limiting beliefs. When someone tells you, “You can’t start your own business, you’re too young.” or you hear, “You can’t get a promotion, you don’t have a degree.” you’re getting garbage as an input. If you don’t use your reticular activator to focus on other, positive inputs your mind will happily work on processing the garbage.
Then it spits out a result - a limiting belief - and suddenly you believe you really can’t start a business because you’re too young!
So how do you use your reticular activator to focus on good inputs to your mind and eliminate bad inputs?
The first step is to start “feeding” your mind with positive material; information that will help you develop new skills or reinforce skills you already have. For me, the easiest way to “eat” this positive material is through books. Audio programs are a good way to bring positive and useful material into your routine. I usually alternate between talk radio (I’m an NPR junkie) and audio books when I’m in the car.
The second step is to be aware that people will feed you “garbage” without meaning to. You need to be aware that this negativity exists out there and be ready to stop listening to it when you notice it. Again, use your reticular activator to tune out negative inputs.
The third step is to create positive inputs and suggestions that you constantly review. There are a lot of books out there that will tell you to write your desires over and over or to use positive talk to achieve your goals. I don’t believe that either of these processes alone will cause you to succeed, but when used in conjunction with good (written) goal setting and the regular input of positive material these positive suggestions can help you enhance what your achievements already are telling you.
Using these tools, and being aware that your mind will readily work on any input you let your reticular activator focus on, you can “think” yourself into becoming what you have outlined in your goals and focused your mind towards.
January 3rd, 2006
Do you let negative people poison you with their limiting beliefs? Do you have people in your life that don’t seem to have anything positive to say when you share a goal, dream or plan? If you do, you’re probably letting their negativity bring your level of performance and achievement down - even if you don’t think it’s happening!
In my life I’ve had people around who were not positive when I shared with them a business plan or a goal I had set. Sometimes they were even negative when we were talking in general. I’m guessing that you probably have someone like this in your life - hopefully you know who it is (sometimes figuring out who’s your “negative nelly” can be tricky). Once you know who it is (or who they are for some of you) you need to figure out what steps you need to take to make sure their negativity doesn’t cause you to start to doubt your own abilities, plans and successes.
Let me share an example; years ago when I was just out of school, I had a friend who was pretty happy with his station in life. Let’s just say his station involved playing a lot of video games, living at home for free, and not working any harder than he needed to in order to pay his car payment. He wasn’t what you would call “ambitious.”
He was always negative when I would talk to him about my plans. He had fifty reasons my business wouldn’t succeed. He had all the reasons why moving into an apartment when I didn’t have a guaranteed paycheck was a bad idea. He knew exactly why he wasn’t able to get ahead himself, or find a better paying job; society was keeping him down.
I never thought I took any of his negativity to heart. I would try to let it roll off my back, and for the most part I think I did a pretty good job. I did start a business, I did move into (what was for me at the time) a pretty expensive apartment. I was doing all the things that he said I would fail at. I thought I was doing great!
But over time I realized that every now and then this little voice would pop up and say, “Maybe Joe was right about this. Maybe it’s a fluke that things are working out for you…” By listening to, and being around, a negative person I had picked up a limiting belief that wasn’t even originally mine. He had passed it on like a cold!
I was fortunate enough to find and work with a mentor and business coach during this time. I really began to realize who around me was genuinely trying to help me by questioning my assumptions and statements, and who was just negative and trying to tear my goals, hopes and dreams down.
After several years I decided that “Joe” was bringing me more pain and negativity than I wanted or could handle in our relationship. I decided that the best thing to do would be to stop spending time with him. I had to take a very drastic step and “fire” a friend. When you don’t identify negative people around you early, and take steps to minimize their negative influence on you, you sometimes have to take drastic actions like stopping the friendship.
You have to be careful too when looking for negative people. Not everyone who disagrees with you is being negative! Also, some people who seem to be negative are really supportive, they’re just challenging you with, “how.”
If you tell your negative friend you’re going to earn a million dollars they might say, “You can’t earn a million dollars, you never went to college.” A supporter would say something like, “It will be very difficult to earn a million dollars - impossible without the right plan.”
If you stop listening after your supporter says this, you’ll miss their follow up comment; “Lets talk about your action plan to see if it makes sense to reach your goal.” A lot of times the distinction between someone being negative and trying to tear you down, and someone being supportive, but asking hard questions, won’t be so clear.
So, how do you handle people in your life who are chronically negative that you can’t “fire?” You can try to understand why they’re being negative. Is it the result of a bad experience they’ve had with a goal you’re trying to achieve? Are they worried you’ll fail and make a fool of yourself?
I’ve often found it’s the latter. Many times you’ll find the people who are most negative are the people who love you the most. I don’t believe it’s because they are trying to poison you, but they’re afraid your failure to achieve a goal will be too much to bear (but for you or for them I don’t know).
The best thing I’ve found to do with people who are negative for these reasons is to start small, share your cemented successes, and build up the goals and dreams you share with them slowly. If you burst into the room and exclaim, “I’m going to be president of my company in 2 years!” They’re going to slip into “negative nelly” mode. If you burst into the room and exclaim, “I just got promoted to manager of my department! I’m going to start learning how I can keep moving up in my company. I would enjoy being at the top someday.” you’ve shared with them an absolute achievement - you received a promotion - and you’ve set the stage to start talking about your rise to the CEO’s office.
It’s much harder for your constantly-negative loved one to poison you with limiting beliefs if you take this approach with them.
To enhance your success, goals and personal development, stop listening to negative people who want to tear you down. They’re not being negative to warn you away from disaster, they’re being negative because they’re jealous of your ambitions and goals. Share your small successes - if you keep them in your life at all - and make sure you supplement yourself with positive material on a regular basis. There are so many great resources on the Internet, in your local book stores and at the library that you’ll have more material available than you can use in one lifetime!
December 30th, 2005
How high do you place the “bar” when you set a goal for yourself? When you define the outcome you want to achieve for your goal, do you go ahead and use it, or do you raise it up?
If you’re not raising it up, you’re not getting the maximum benefit out of yourself when you work to achieve your goal.
My mentor used to challenge me with what she called the “rule of ten” when we talked about goal setting. Whatever outcome I had defined as the successful completion of a stated goal, she would challenge me to raise it by a factor of ten.
I know what you’re thinking, “That’s crazy, I’ll just set myself up to fail!” I thought the same thing when she first started pushing me to keep raising my expectations of myself and definitions of a success achievement of a goal…that is until I tried it and it started working!
You’re probably familiar with the S.M.A.R.T. method of goal setting; goals should be “S”pecific, “M”easurable, “A”ttainable, “R”ealistic, and “T”imely. When first challenged to set a goal and then raise your expectations by ten times, many people worry it violates the “realistic” test of a S.M.A.R.T. goal.
Please remember that “realistic” does not mean “easy.” Realistic means that the outcome is possible to achieve and is somehow within the grasp of your abilities even if at the time you set the goal you’re not quite sure how. A realistic goal should significantly challenge you without being impossible.
If you set a goal that’s too easy to achieve - what I call “gimme goals” - you won’t get the same satisfaction when you achieve the goal, and it tells your brain that you’re only capable of attaining “gimme goals.” It sets you up to create and reinforce limiting beliefs about yourself.
If you set a goal and then raise your expectation of the outcome by ten times, you set your subconscious mind up for a challenge that it’s really good at - figuring out how to deliver on your request. Your subconscious mind loves to do this, it’s what it’s built for, and it’s one of the things it does best. When you pose a really challenging question to your subconscious - and state it in a positive, non-limiting way - your subconscious will get to work trying to create an answer.
If your original goal is to write a book in twelve months, try raising the bar and setting the goal to write a book in a month and a half. How can you write a book in a month and a half? That’s the challenge you want to put your subconscious to work on. It’s certainly not impossible. You might - for example - devote an hour each morning and an hour each evening to writing. Over the course of a month and a half that would be 92 hours of writing - depending on your subject you could very well have a finished book on your hands.
I recently heard an interview on the radio with Neil Diamond. In the interview he recalled that one of his best known (and most requested) songs - Sweet Caroline - was written in about 40 minutes while he was eating breakfast before a studio gig. He had to have three songs to record and he only had two. Talk about setting the bar high!
If you set a goal to close $5000 in sales, what would you have to do to close $50,000 sales?
Years ago I was working on some proposals and I thought I would close about $3000 in sales. What did my mentor do? She challenged me to think about closing $30,000 in sales. By raising my bar, I opened myself to re-evaluate how I was handling the projects. I thought one client might want to spend maybe $1000 or $1500 on their project, but I had neglected to really sit down and listen to what they wanted. In one of our final meetings, I started asking some very open ended questions and listening!
It turns out that I had completely misunderstood their desires. They were looking for a prestige project to set them apart in their industry. I was busy trying to sell them a bare bones solution - get the “yes” and get out - and they wanted all the bells and whistles! In the final meeting I outlined all of the features they had talked about and they said, “Yes, that’s what we want!” I knew it would be a $12,000 project - not $1500. I balked a bit, not wanting to throw out what I thought was such a huge number. When I finally did, they didn’t bat an eye. They asked where they needed to sign to get started. You can bet I was on cloud nine as I walked out of that meeting!
Would I have gone back and really sought out what they wanted if I wasn’t being challenged to raise my bar? I don’t think I would have. It was a very uncomfortable thing for me to do at the time (I was way outside my comfort zone), but at the end of the day it couldn’t have been easier to actually get the project.
I didn’t make my ten-times goal overall, but I did with that client and I felt great about my achievement. Originally I was thinking I would close about $3000 in sales and I closed $12,000 on just one client by raising my bar. Did I close the whole $30,000? Nope. Was I thrilled to close $12,000? In light of my original $3000 goal you bet I was!
I want to challenge you to raise your bar. The next time you set a goal, try raising your expectations of a successful outcome by 10 times and see what happens. If you really put your mind to work on the goal, and open yourself to the new possibilities such a challenge can bring, you can be more successful than you initially thought possible; even when your first thought is, “How the heck am I doing to do this?”
December 28th, 2005
Years ago I was involved in a sales training program where one of the sections was titled, “What you ‘R’ is not who you ‘I’.”
It was a quirky title and it’s stuck with me over the years not because it’s just quirky, but because it’s a memorable way of remembering a powerful concept.
What is means is this; do you let yourself be defined by the roles you have in life, or do you define your roles by how you see yourself conceptually?
A role is simply a part you play. Most people have many roles, and in our culture when meeting new people often the first question they’ll ask after introductions is, “So…what do you do?” We tend to subconsciously group people according to their roles.
If I asked you to define yourself, how would you start? If you’re like most people you do it by listing out your roles:
- I’m a son
- I’m a technology worker
- I’m a husband
- I’m a friend
- I’m a photographer
- I’m a student
- I’m an avid reader
- I’m a writer
- etc., etc., etc.
There are an endless number of roles you could list if you had the time. But should these roles and your performance in them define you and how you feel about yourself? No!
Why? Because no matter how hard you work to improve yourself there will always be someone else out there in a role who is just a little better at it than you are. You won’t be the world’s most perfect son, you won’t be the world’s most perfect husband, you won’t be the best programmer; you may hold on to such a title at some point in your life - like a Michael Jordan or a Tiger Woods - but eventually someone will come along who is better.
And if you define yourself and your identity by the roles you fill you’ll eventually get to a point where a bad day in a role will result in you having a bad day.
So why should we try to separate ourselves from our roles, and a bigger question you might be asking is, “What the heck is left if not for my roles?”
What’s left is you. And just like every other person (sans-roles) your “you” is perfect, it’s always operating at a “10″ and it is the framework from which you hang your roles.
Because I’m not the world’s best technology worker, there will be days where I perform really badly in that role. I shouldn’t come home and let poor performance in my role as a “technology worker” cause poor performance in my role as a husband. Invariably though this is what happens; a bad day at the office is brought home and turns into a bad night at home. When this happens, we’re letting ourselves be defined by our roles.
The goal then should be to not let our view of our self be scripted by our performance in our roles. Just as professional athletes have bad games, they shake them off and keep working on having a great game - we should strive for the same!
This is a tough concept to understand and to accept. What are we if not our roles?
We need to create a clear concept of who we are, without the “R” - as an individual. I think of myself as an individual who constantly seeks to improve myself, to learn and continue to expand my knowledge. I seek to develop new skills that can benefit me in all aspects of my life and in all of my roles. I am constantly seeking passion in my life, in whatever form it comes to me.
I still have bad days as a technology worker. I still am not the most sensitive husband or the most thoughtful son. I still have arguments with friends. But at the end of the day I try to remember that these are just my roles and not “me”.
I would like to challenge you to work on separating your roles from your identity and remember that your “I” should always be at a 10 even if your “R” is in the basement.
I’ll leave you with a closing line from my sales training days; “You can perform in your roles (R) only in a manner that is consistent with how you see yourself conceptually (I).”
If you’re not at a “10″ conceptually, you’ll never perform at a “10″ in the roles you assume!
December 21st, 2005
I’ve been keeping a journal for over 9 years. I don’t know what prompted me to start writing, but one day I decided it would be a good idea. At the time I had an old, beat-up laptop with a copy of MS Works for DOS and I kept my journal in a text file.
Over the years I’ve tried various journaling techniques, I’ve used software specifically for keeping a diary or journal, I’ve used pen and paper, I’ve used MS Word and formatted my journal more like a book, complete with index and cross-references.
But the bottom line is this; no matter what the technology, I’ve keep a written record of my life for the last 9 years.
I didn’t know at the time what my intention was - it wasn’t to be able to look back and chart my growth (a benefit I stumbled on later) - but it felt like something I should be doing. In hind-sight I’m so glad I started.
How about you? Do you keep a journal of your life? If you don’t, it’s something you should seriously consider starting.
What is the purpose of keeping a journal? I find that when I write I’m not consciously thinking about the future, I’m usually just recapturing major events and changes in my life. It just so happens that in doing this I usually get a pretty good snapshot of my mood, my attitude, and the major “pain” areas of my life.
As I grow and change, I find that my “pain” areas change. As I improve my attitude or my outlook changes, I find it impacts my writing too. Nine years ago many of my journal entries were about what I thought I was going to do in life. Seven years ago many were focused on money (or my lack thereof). Five years ago entries covered some rough business situations and relationships I was in. Three years ago I wrote about how my life had changed since getting married. Now I find I write a lot about my future and goal setting.
I can look back through my journals and get a sense of where I was and what my major life-obstacles were at almost any point in the last 9 years.
You also can’t manage what you don’t measure. By writing about the issues (both positive and negative) as well as tracking my successes (or failures) in achieving goals and keeping commitments I am constantly measuring myself. This means I can manage my success, development and personal improvement much more easily than if I didn’t journal - and the same holds true for you too.
I also find that I write more often when things are really tough for me and life is throwing fastballs. I am not a daily writer, but I may write two or three times a week when I’m especially frustrated about some aspect of my life. It’s therapeutic to get my thoughts and frustrations out on paper.
Once I can see them written out, they don’t seem quite so overwhelming. Once I’ve emptied out my head and put everything in writing I find my brain seems to churn out ideas and solutions more readily than when it’s carrying all thoughts and ideas that I’ve written. I’ve recently read about this in “Getting Things Done” and “Ready for Anything”, David Allen attributes this fountain of ideas to having an empty brain. Once you empty it out, your brain will start to generate new ideas to fill itself back up. This is definitely true for me, and I use this to my advantage by journaling and getting as much out of my head as possible.
The only journaling issue I constantly struggle with is this; what is the best way for me to journal? I started with a plain ‘ol text file in a computer. I used paper journals for a long time (my favorite is the “Anything Book” and a nice fountain pen), and lately I’ve been using MS Word to collect, index and reference my thoughts. I like the allure of pen-and-paper, and you don’t need to worry about hard-drive crashes, but keeping a journal digitally is just so convenient! I’ll leave the best method of keeping a journal as an exercise to you.
Starting a journal is extremely easy too; grab some paper and write about your day. I’m not formal, I don’t start entries with “Dear diary…” I write as if I was sending a letter to someone - in this case myself - because that’s ultimately what I’m doing. I’m sending a letter to myself in the future. I put the date of the top of a blank page and then just start getting thoughts out of my head. Spelling and grammar is optional, unless you want to preserve your writings for your children or grandchildren.
And that’s another benefit of keeping a journal, passing some intimate history down through the family. My sister has our grandmother’s journal from when she was a young lady. It creates a special connection and provides a real-life window into the history of our family.
If you currently keep a journal, congratulations! You’re ahead of a lot of people in your pursuit of personal development and improvement. If you’re not yet journaling on a regular basis I would like to encourage you to give it a try. Promise yourself you’ll write weekly for two months, set some goal for keeping a journal and give it a try. Remember, you can’t manage what you don’t measure; start measuring yourself so you can maximize your ability to successfully complete your goals and continually improve and develop yourself.
December 19th, 2005
My father-in-law has a saying of which I’m fond; he maintains, “Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.”
In his hey-day my father-in-law was a competitive archer, and he likes to tell stories from competitions past, but he always stresses that what he accomplished during a tournament wasn’t the result of luck or wishing or wanting to win “real bad.” It was the result of hours and hours of practice…perfect practice.
My father-in-law never called it this, but a large part of his practice was visualization. He visualized the bow in his hands. He visualized the arrow settled in the rest. He visualized the tension as he drew the bow. He visualized the arrow as it flew from the bow and, most importantly, he visualized the arrow hitting dead-center on the target.
He saw all of this happen in his mind before he ever drew back the arrow or even picked up the bow. He did all of this over and over in his mind before each and every shot he took.
Visualization is an extremely powerful tool, but it alone won’t make you a super-star. For that you need a coach. My father-in-law did have some luck on his side, he caught the attention of one of the top archery shooters who took on the role of a coach; his mentor.
His mentor taught the base skills, how to technically be a perfect archer. The rest was up to my father-in-law and that’s where persistence, visualization and perfect practice comes in to play.
So what did all of this perfect practice and visualization do for my father-in-law? Well, he didn’t pick up a bow until he was an adult and in the course of only a few years was at a point where he had to decide between turning pro and spending all of him time on the road, or keeping archery as a hobby and spending time with his children. That’s a pretty powerful accomplishment for someone who won his first bow in a raffle.
There are two keys to being better at whatever it is you do. The first key is finding a coach. You have to get your technical skills down so you can practice perfectly in the first place. The second key is visualization, using your mind to create a perfect reality in which you cannot fail at anything you attempt.
When you visualize an outcome in your brain, the chemical reactions fire just like they do when you actually attempt the same activity in real life.
When you visualize in your head, you have the ability to break the rules. It’s your own miniature “Matrix” - you can bend the rules in your favor.
You can visualize giving the perfect speech over and over, you can visualize sinking that 20 foot putt over and over, you can visualize anything you can imagine. When you couple your visualization with the skills you learn from your coach you create a situation where you’re practicing perfectly, and you’re getting better at whatever you’ve put your energy and effort into.
And through small improvements you can see a huge change in your life. If you can improve just 1% a week on whatever aspect you’re turning your energy you’ll see a 52% improvement in the course of a year.
That’s a huge return on your investment! Wouldn’t you be doing back-flips if your stock portfolio turned in a 52% return in a year? Wouldn’t you be doing back-flips if your personal-development portfolio turned in a 52% improvement in a year?
When you work with a coach or mentor and you put to work the power of visualization you unleash a tremendous amount of energy that you can direct to personal development; if you want a better than 50% return don’t settle for a 1% improvement each week, strive for a 1% improvement each day. The sky’s the limit when you put these tools to work for you!
December 13th, 2005
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