Posts filed under 'Success'
Don’t review your goals on a regular basis? If so, don’t expect to achieve them.
Most people - once they actually get started - enjoy the process of goal setting. When done properly it’s fun, self-reinforcing, and allows you to dream big. The hardest thing is get people started actually writing their goals, but once they’ve started - watch out! - most people can fill pages and pages with goals.
And that’s super, it really is, but how many of you write out wonderfully detailed and thought out goals - goals so real you can taste and feel and see them - and then stick them in a drawer, never to see the light of day again?
Can I get a show of hands? Yep, I’m raising my hand too; I’ve been guilty of spending time on the “fun” part of goal setting (the actual “setting” of goals) and then skimping on the regular review of my goals.
And you know what? I find I don’t usually achieve those goals, or if I do it’s at a level much lower than it should be. So why do we do this to ourselves?
Our brains are amazing works of biology and engineering. When we ask our brain for an idea it’s like that take-a-number dispenser at the license branch, always ready to spit one out. Our brain is also muscle-like; the more we use it the stronger it gets. As we strengthen our imagination, we get stronger and stronger ideas.
So when we set goals our brain has a grand time. It revels in the good feelings that really visualizing our dreams, wants, and achievements create. When you visualize a goal using NLP (think, Tony Robbins) you are flooding your brain with signals that it likes. You are literally creating a reality in your brain that it doesn’t know isn’t real…yet.
But once your goals are written that sense of excitement and pleasure passes. It may last a day or a week, but eventually it passes. This is why you see 5,000 people in the gym on January 1st, but by the 7th the gym is empty again. That sense of excitement, motivation, and action has become routine and our brain is off to find something else to give it those pleasurable feelings again.
It’s difficult to keep a goal in your mind and keep it vivid enough to continually build this sense of excitement every day. This is why a written goal is so important.
You spend the time and energy creating a goal and you capture it while you’re brain is energized and excited. Once the goal is captured, there isn’t any room for improvisation when you come back to the goal at a later date. You’ve done all the hard work and now you can immediately put your brain back into that excited state by reviewing and re-visualizing your goal.
It’s this review process that keeps your brain (and yourself) stimulated and excited. It should consist of a daily review of your goals. Actually, it should be a several-times-a-day review of your goals.
Some people advocate reading your goals every morning when you get up, and again every night before you go to bed. I don’t have the discipline to do that - I’m not a morning person and by bedtime I’m ready to hit the sack. So here are some easy ways that I make sure I keep my goals available for daily review:
1) Keep your goals with you always.
One thing I find very helpful is to keep my key goals with me - I write them on a blank business card and keep it in my wallet. I see them as I put cash or receipts in my wallet - usually at least two or three times a day. The trick here is not to hide the card down in a credit-card slot - make it so you can’t miss it when you’re in the main part of your wallet.
2) Keep your goals present in your environment.
I have a cork-board that - when I’m sitting at my desk - fills my field of vision when I look to the right. I keep a single 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper with my goals tacked up so it’s the first thing I see on the board. I find that I look at this all day long.
3) Keep your goals present where you can’t possibly miss them during the course of a day.
I’ve also been known to write my goals on “Post-It” notes and stick them to the bathroom mirror. I see them every morning when I get ready for the day and every night when I get ready for bed. I’ve found that putting material goals on the bathroom mirror is helpful; I write a blurb on a “Post-It” note and clip a small picture from a catalog or magazine and add it. The image is usually more powerful than the words when I’m getting ready for work - and I can visualize my goals while relaxing in a hot shower. Now that’s a powerful way to reinforce your goals, the pleasure of a hot shower beating down on your while you get yourself excited and motivated by mentally reviewing and re-visualizing your goals!
4) Keep reminders in interesting and unusual places to shake up your patterns.
Finally I have written at the top of my white-board on my office at work; “Have you reviewed your goals today?” in bright, blue marker. Every time I look up to see who has come into my office I see my white-board. Every time I look to the left I see it. I’ve got myself covered if I look to the left or to the right!
As you begin to regularly review your goals a curious thing will start to happen; your perspective of your goals and yourself will change. You’ll start to notice that working on your goals just seems to happen; you find time to squeeze in a little more effort here and there.
It isn’t magic, it’s the power of you. You’ve given a command to your brain, you’ve made it “real” as far as your brain knows, and you’re regularly reviewing your goal. Your brain can’t help but make progress on your goal, it’s what it does.
As you start to achieve your goals and set new goals, you’ll naturally start to raise the bar on your new goals. You will experience growth!
After you go through this cycle a few times, the regular review of your goals will start to become a habit and it will be easier to remember to do (and actually do). As you grow and develop, you’ll find that your goal setting and goal review process becomes a feedback loop. This feedback loop creates even more growth and development.
Your growth and potential are only limited by yourself and your imagination…and the constant review of your goals that brings you constant growth of yourself!
January 25th, 2006
There is a quote I like that says, “Perfect is the enemy of good.”
I often find myself falling into the trap of trying to make a plan “perfect,” often when it’s good enough. In the pursuit of perfection tomorrow, it’s easy to miss out on opportunities available today.
I am a plan maker. I love to script out a project, layout action items and milestones, and create exquisite plans that exist on neatly hand-written pages. For me the planning process and working for perfection it seductive.
And while I’m busy chasing the beast named “perfection,” my contemporaries that know “good” is what is needed are moving ahead of me.
Do you let your desire for perfection create immobility in your life? Do you wonder why you can never seem to get a thing “perfect” or why you’re never 100% happy with a project? If so, you might also be suffering from the affliction that is perfectionism.
I’m going to tell you why you should strive to be merely “good” instead.
As a perfectionist, let me first tell you that I sympathize with the pain you’ll feel when you make sure your work is “good” and not “perfect.” It’s tough to let go and cast off the shackles of being a perfectionist.
But here’s something you should know; while you’re trying to be perfect, your competition is busy beating you to market with products and services that are good enough (sometimes even great), but never perfect.
Something that I’ve come to learn is that no matter how many hours I pour into my proposals, no matter how many expertly crafted charts I include, no matter how many perfectly worded and phrased arguments I make, no matter how many pages I write to show mastery of my subject - others very rarely care beyond what information is relevant to them. Decisions will likely come down to a face-to-face meeting anyway.
About six months ago I crafted a proposal for a new technical service I believed my company could employ to great benefit. The R.O.I. and cash analysis was a little tricky to understand, so I wanted to make sure the proposal was perfect to help our senior executive team understand all the ways the project could benefit the company. I spent two weeks writing the proposal and a third week editing and re-writing.
I left copies with the relevant members of our senior management team and I waited anxiously for their reply. After a month ticked by with no reply, I started talking to the senior executives, asking them what they thought of the proposal.
Several were able to poke holes in my “perfect” plan that they wanted to see addressed, and our key decisions makers were far to busy to do more than skim over my proposal. They wanted a sit-down meeting anyway.
When I sat down with our key senior executives and outlined my thoughts - a process that was far from “perfect” and took only 30 minutes - they said, “Why are we sitting here talking? Let’s do it!”
In my pursuit of perfection I let two months slip past me with no action that benefited the company taking place on this project. I had planned myself to death!
When a recent project appeared on my radar screen, I typed up an executive summary and passed it around with a hand-written post-it note that read, “I think we should sit down and talk about this.” I was able to get that project reviewed and approved in a week.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t create plans and you shouldn’t do things consciously and with care - you should. I’m saying you should know that a mediocre plan with action taken will beat a perfect plan every time, because there is no such thing as a perfect plan.
So how much is too much planning? That is a tricky thing to define. You want a good plan - even a great plan - without tipping over that edge towards trying to create a perfect plan. For me, there are a few tell-tale signs I’m slipping into my perfectionist habits - I suspect some will ring true for you too, and that you’ll have your own signs to add. I now try to notice when I’m acting on these behaviours and correct myself:
1) I can’t get something “just right.”
Usually I will be stuck on an aspect of something and I’ll revise it and not be happy; I’ll revise it again and not be happy. If I don’t notice myself doing this, I’ll keep doing it over and over again. When I do catch myself doing this, I put that work away for a few hours or a few days and I’ll come back to it once. If I still can’t get it right, it’s very likely “good enough.”
2) I’m getting long winded.
I never seem to have a problem filling pages and pages when I write a proposal. I am a very detail oriented person, and I have a tendency to want to fill my proposals with details. I try to employ what I call the page-to-title ratio; I limit the number of pages in my proposals to the same number of letters in an executive’s title (CEO, CFO, etc.).
This helps me force myself to be succinct, plus it keeps our senior executives happy because they are already inundated with informaiton. I’ve fount nothing makes a CFO crankier than handing them a thirty-page proposal. If he wants more detail, he’ll ask for it.
3) I lose sight of why I’m working on something.
If after working for a period of time I realize that I’ve lost sight of the end goal or I’ve lost perspective on why I’m working on something, then I’ve probably let myself get buried trying to make it “perfect.” When this happens it’s usually a good indicator that my perfectionism is starting to emerge. Always keep your end goal in mind!
With all I’ve said about the evils of perfectionism, is there any place for it? I think there is, but only when you (and you alone) control and dictate the results. If I’m trying to photograph a flower, I may spend hours getting the image I create to be a perfect match to the image in my mind. I don’t depend on photography to pay my bills, I’m creating my own vision of perfection for myself.
For the vast majority of the things you do, you’ll find that “good” or “great” is far better than “perfect.” You can take action on a good plan today. You can take action on a great plan today. If you look for a perfect plan, you’ll always be waiting to take action.
January 21st, 2006
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
I really hate pushy salesmen - the ones who use high-pressure tactics and try to “hard sell” me. Because of salespeople like that I always wanted to distance myself from sales. I never thought of myself as a salesman, and when I did have to wear that hat as a business owner I always tried to let my product do the work for me. I didn’t like “selling.”
But as I got a little older, I came to realize that the old saying, “Everyone in this company is in sales!” isn’t true. The saying should just be, “Everyone is in sales!”
Everyone is selling all the time. If you want to go to Outback and your friend wants to go to Red Lobster, one of you will be sold. When you meet new people you’re going to have to sell your personality. When you want a new job you’re going to have to sell your potential employer on your skills and experience. Everyone is always selling…always.
And what is the number one question you’re asked across all facets of your life? The number one question that starts all the selling in the first place? That question is; “So, what do you do?”
That’s the lead-in question asked when introduced to new people in social settings. That’s the lead-in question asked when you meet new people at business conventions. It’s the lead-in question people ask. And it gives you a perfect opportunity to sell without selling. It gives you an opening to present your “30 second commercial” to get their attention.
Why do you want a 30 second commercial? What will it do for you? How do you write one? Great questions! Let’s start with why you want to have a polished 30 second commercial ready to go when meeting new people.
Why 30 seconds?
Studies show that most people form their first impression of you within the first thirty seconds of meeting you, and first impressions are tough to change. So you want to keep your introduction short - enough to pique their interest without boring them.
If you’re brief, articulate and present some interesting “pain hooks” in your introduction, they’ll ask questions and keep the conversation moving along. They’ll also likely create a favorable impression of you as someone who’s “with it” and “put together.” In business, this can make or break a relationship.
What will a 30 second commercial do for you?
If you’re well rehearsed you will appear extremely confident and poised. You can sum up yourself and your product or service in just a few sentences, many people just ramble on and on and on and on - boring! Even if you’re not feeling particularly sophisticated and confident, this is the appearance you’ll give to others.
It’s also a great way to present your services (or your company’s services) in a way that’s easy for the other person to absorb, digest and respond to. You’ll give them two or three things that can prompt further discussion. If you’ve done your job well, the other person won’t be left scratching their head at your response, while an awkward silence lingers between the both of you.
Your goal should be to give them enough information to keep the conversation flowing smoothly and to make them want to get to know you better.
How do you write a 30 second commercial?
As promised, here are five easy steps to use when creating your 30 second commercial:
1) Start by creating five or six “pain hooks” to use as a starting point. A pain hook is designed to elicit a pain response from your listener (emotionally). It should make them reflect on some business or personal pain they’re currently experiencing.
We try harder to avoid and move away from pain. This drive to avoid pain is much stronger than our drive to find pleasure. If someone has a business pain, your pain hook should make them think about that pain and show them how you can solve their pain.
2) Once you have your pain hooks, you need to find the thing you do that can solve all of them. You might have multiple ways of solving the problems, but you have to make sure you can solve the problem.
3) Pick your top three pain hooks - the strongest ones - these will be the base of your 30 second commercial. These should be the pain hooks that the people you meet most likely encounter.
4) Work your pain hooks into a professional sounding sound-bite and write it out. Keep it shorter than you think you should, when spoken it will take you longer than you think to say everything and you don’t want to sound rushed.
5) Rehearse your 30 second commercial until it feels and sounds natural, and rolling it off your tongue is second nature. You don’t want to sound like you’re reciting a memorized script - you should ad-lib as needed and adjust it to the people you’re presenting your 30 second commercial. Be loose, be fun, but be prepared.
You should get into the practice of using your 30 second commercial whenever you meet new people; they will inevitably ask, “So, what do you do?”
Five years ago I ran an Internet company. We sold dial-up, high-speed, web hosting, web design, application design, and more. Our informal motto was, “If it touches the Internet, we do it.” Of course, most people are not highly technical, and lots of buzz words would make their eyes glaze right over. So I had to have a good 30 second commercial to not confuse people when telling them what we did.
My 30 second commercial sounded something like this:
I own Qserve Internet. We’re a small Internet company and we service both home and business users. A lot of our customers like us because we don’t have busy signals. Others like us for our reasonable web-hosting rates. But I think our biggest advantage is our commitment to quality. We work to maintain a high level of quality so when you do get connected, you stay connected! Plus when you call us, you always talk to a real, live person, not a machine.
In my 30 second commercial I had 4 pain hooks; they were:
“No busy signals” - Our geographic area in the late 1990s experienced an explosion in Internet usage. A lot of the local Internet companies couldn’t keep up with the growth, and busy signals were common. We always worked hard to keep our user-per-line ratio favorable without generating busy signals. It was a metric we monitored like a hawk, and while we didn’t “guarantee” no busy signals, we rarely had them. It was one of the main reasons our referral business was so good.
“Competitive web-hosting rates” - At the start of the Internet explosion web hosting rates in our area were sky-high. As competition came to town the prices came down, but there were a lot of places where the price was much higher than average. We focused on being competitive, but offering a good deal for our customers. We had a lot of customers who moved their web site to our company for this reason.
“Staying connected” - Being in a Midwestern state, we had a lot of rural areas we served. We invested heavily with the phone company to have all digital lines back to our main data center. We had a very good reputation for keeping calls connected, while our competition was only “so-so” at this. It was a big pain-point for a lot of people in our area, and solving it won us a lot of business and a lot of accounts.
“Talk to a real person” - We always answered the phone. We believed that it made a difference since our biggest (and bigger) competitors used auto-answer phone systems. Over the years we received a lot of compliments, email and letters from our customers because of this. We also got a lot of business, and it was not uncommon to get an account solely because we were one of the only companies in town who answered their phones.
I would also tailor my message depending on who I was speaking with. If I was talking to someone on the street, I would emphasis home-service pain hooks and mention business pain hooks. If I was in a networking group, or a business meeting, I would emphasize our business pain hooks and depending on the group I might not even mention home service at all.
The key though was that I was prepared with a handful of pain hooks that I could use. I was also rehearsed and I practiced my 30 second commercial often enough that I sounded very natural, confident and “put together.”
Today I work in an entirely different industry, and I have an all new 30 second commercial. My position isn’t directly involved in sales, but I still use my 30 second commercial and work in pain hooks when answering that oft-asked question, “What do you do?”
I challenge you to create a 30 second commercial for yourself. It might not land you that million-dollar account, but it will certainly make you stand out, sound poised, confident and in control to everyone with whom you’re introduced!
January 9th, 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
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
How much are you worth? How much is your time worth? If you’re like most people, I can guarantee you think and act like your time is worth less than it really is; in some cases much less.
When I ask, “What are you worth?” I don’t mean net worth (which is important). I mean, how do you value yourself and how do you perceive the value you add to the relationships you’re in?
If you earn $75,000 a year and you’re being compensated for a 40 hour week, your time is worth $36.06 per hour. If you didn’t add at least $36 per hour in value to your business relationships, you probably wouldn’t stay employed for long.
But do you think of your worth in terms of dollars and cents on a daily or hourly basis? If you don’t, why not? Lawyers sure do, doctors too. Good businessmen and executives know their worth - their value - to the penny, and so should you. Why? Good question!
Consider this scenario; you’ve put in a hard week working (your value is $36 per hour remember?) and you’re ready to relax on a beautiful, sunny Saturday. Right about the time you open a frosty beverage and sit down to relax your wife reminds you that the yard needs to be cut. It takes about two hours to cut, trim and rake the yard; you would rather be golfing or fishing or napping - anything else - on this beautiful, sunny, warm Saturday afternoon. You know the neighbor has a kid who will cut the yard for $30 - should you pay him?
If you know what value you bring ($36 per hour), you can make a much better evaluation as to whether this is a good value. In the scenario above, it would take you two hours to cut the yard; that’s worth $72 of your time. You can get the job done for $30. If you value your time, it might be a good investment to pay to have the yard cut unless you really enjoy cutting grass.
This is a simple example to be sure, but think if you could use that time to generate extra income, or improve yourself a bit more. If you could “earn” your value while paying to have the yard cut, you would be $42 ahead. This is a powerful way to maximize your time and your value.
Knowing your worth is also extremely helpful when you have to make decisions about committing your time to projects. If you have a firm understanding of your value, when someone asks you to take on extra projects at work, or clients ask for more of your time, or your community center wants you to chair an event you can ask yourself, “Knowing my value is $X - is this a good and worthwhile use of my time?”
If you can’t answer “yes” to that question, or it’s not a task or cause you feel extremely positive about helping, it might be better to graciously pass on the offer.
If you don’t know your value, you can’t make an assessment like this; you will likely get stuck with another project or involved in another group from which you may not find (or provide) value.
You can also use your understanding of your value, to steer your behavior. An excellent exercise is to ask, “If I were worth $300 per hour, how would I behave?” Using the power of visualization, you can create a state where you do earn $300 (or $500, or $1000) dollars per hour - you can visualize you’re earning like a high-end New York attorney - and you can visualize how you might behave if your value were at this much higher level.
This gets you more comfortable thinking about money and larger sums of money. The ultimate goal of your visualization is to get yourself to feel completely comfortable believing that you do bring a value of $300 per hour (or more) to your business dealings. It’s a new concept for many people to think this way, and it’s usually uncomfortable to start thinking of yourself providing this level of value. If you don’t feel comfortable, you won’t believe in yourself; and if you don’t believe in yourself - that you truly do provide this high level of value - you won’t be successful; it becomes a limiting belief. Remember the words of Henry Ford; “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”
- The first step is becoming aware of what your value is today, and use that knowledge to steer your decisions.
- The second step is to get yourself comfortable with the idea that you provide a much higher level of value. Use the power of visualization to practice this and set a high goal for yourself; try for at least 10 times what your “today” value is, really stretch your visualization muscles!
- The last step is to truly believe you are worth this much higher value, and that you do provide this level of value. When you really believe this, it’s not difficult to earn $300 per hour, or $1000 per hour, or even $10,000 per hour. Consider real-estate; it’s possible for almost anyone to buy real-estate and sell it for a profit. All it takes is research on which piece of real-estate to buy. If you figure out your value for a transaction like this, it’s very possible your worth will be several hundred dollars per hour.
When you’re aware of your worth - and you use the power that knowledge brings - you can increase your worth. When you visualize a worth you want to obtain, you can learn and condition yourself to act (today) as if you do bring a higher value to your interactions with people. This will - in fact - lead you to actually having a higher value in your mind and in others’ minds. Once you open you mind to such possibilities, it’s freed and ready to help fill in the detail of how to make it happen.
But only if you know what you’re worth!
December 26th, 2005
My primary goal in starting this web site was to create articles to help people and to share ideas about success, passion, personal development, purpose and goals. My primary goal was not to generate money from the web site or to make a quick buck. A secondary goal was to create a vehicle that provides passive income which would eventually provide for my time to write these articles.
Passive income - income that generates itself for you - is a very powerful path to wealth.
After working on this web site for less than a month I’ve finally earned my first dollar with the on-line advertising. Sure a dollar isn’t much - it won’t even buy a large coffee at Starbucks - but it’s income that my efforts here have generated. It is also income that will continue to be generated long after these articles have been written. Hopefully you get excellent value and insight from this web site - that’s my primary motivation - and in return I’m hoping that as traffic to this site grows it will generate more passive income to allow me to create more content.
Throughout life you have to be aware of how you can build passive income streams. You have to keep yourself open to the potential opportunities around you everywhere. You also have to be willing to pay the price required to create the income stream (in my case, creating articles to provide you value, and keeping in mind the primary goal of inspiring people).
I want to sincerely thank everyone that has read the site so far. My pledge to you will be to continue to write what I hope will be insightful, useful, inspiring articles covering topics like passion, productivity, goals, improvement, time management and more. I also hope I can help inspire you to seek out and successfully find your own passive income streams. Please keep reading, and I’ll keep writing!
December 24th, 2005
I found an excellent quote, when I read it my first thought was, “That’s exactly true!” I know several people who put themselves into the “loser” category exactly because of this behaviour.
“Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.”
–ARMONK, NY ( Aug. 8 )
How do you measure yourself? I’ve certainly been guilty of comparing my own successes to those of others. The times I did, I was never as happy with an accomplishment or an achievement as I was when I compared my successes against my goals.
It’s difficult not to be influenced by the success of people around us. It’s difficult to not try to use their achievements as a measuring stick for ourselves. But when we do that we set ourselves up for disappointment. No matter what you achieve, there will always be someone who achieves a little (or a lot) more.
So goal setting is extremely powerful not only for having a specific picture of the things you want to achieve, it also serves as your “yard stick” when it comes time to measure your success in achieving your goals.
This is why setting specific and measurable goals is so important. If you don’t have a specific idea of exactly what you want, and you don’t have a method of measuring it, you’ll never know if you succeeded in achieving your goal!
And if you don’t know if you achieved your goal, you’ll probably look to the success of people around you to see how you “stack up.”
And you know what? You won’t be happy with what you’ve achieved because you’re not using your own goals as the deciding factor of success, you’re using someone else’s goals as the deciding factor of success.
So make a commitment today to stop letting your sense of accomplishment be dimmed by comparing yourself to others. Make a commitment to set written goals and use those goals to measure your achievements!
December 9th, 2005
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