I know, I know, I had a post here recently about putting sports to the side to create a clearer focus. However, the city of Chicago was essentially at a standstill this past Sunday from about 2pm on as the Bears defeated the Saints to go to their first Super Bowl in over 20 years. Even some of my mentors decided to reward their normal action habit with watching their hometown team punch their ticket to Miami. In my business, we tend to wall ourselves off a little from the thinking of the world, but sports tends to transcend, especially in areas dealing with leadership, overcoming, and victory.
All year long in Chicago, and actually, across the Country, the starting quarterback for the Bears has been maligned for somewhat inconsistent play. It is statistically true that Rex Grossman had a couple of games that were well below par. I mean, some terrible performances. However, his solid performances outnumberd his bad ones 3-1 and most importantly, he was sound in a first round playoff win and got the job done in the win that put them in the Super Bowl.
So many people will say, "but look at this game, and look at that game," and I agree - I prefer consistency over inconsistency. But, I'll take winning over losing regardless of how you get there. I don't care how good your defense is, if you quarterback is going to lose the game for you, it's going to happen. The Bears are 15-3 right now and although the defense has played a major part, they haven't been all of it. They've won by 26 in a shutout, as well as putting up 40 three times, and between 30-39 points four times. Only one of those eight games was closer than a touchdown. They've also got two other 10 point victories when they didn't light up the scoreboard. That's not all defense and running.
Here's my point: so many of us have been raised on the concept that you have to avoid failure. Most of us are in positions where if we make a mistake it can cost us our job. That we shouldn't even start something until we know where we might stumble. Now if you're a doctor trying to save a life, or a lawyer trying to keep an innocent person from jail, not making a mistake could be critical. But, what do you think that doctor was doing in medical school? You know there had to be some errors in the classroom or in the learning process. Same with law.
If you failed every homework assignment along your way to the final exam, but learned all of your mistakes along the way so that you passed the final exam, you'd probably still get an "F" in the class. Even though you now know what you didn't know when doing the original homework. We leave very little room for failing forward in this Country. Congratulations to you Rex Grossman, for failing forward into your first Super Bowl.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
You Are Worthy (The Core Of Success)
One of the main things I tend to be facing with the new guys I work with, and more importantly, with the guys who've been around a bit, is self-worth. It seems that somewhere in the core of every person, is a level of deserving. It's not the same for every person and what is amazing is that for many people, it's not very high. Knowing that you are worthy of not only the success that happens to come your way, and the success you decide to chase, is to me, the core component of success. If you believe that you deserve whatever successes you have, the odds of you becoming successful grow.
I had heard once that everything has a 'natural' state. Take H20 for example. You can freeze it and turn it into ice, or you can heat it and turn into steam or vapor. The mind also has a natural state and for the majority of the population, it's negative. Left to our own devices, our thoughts often turn negative. Have you ever had a parent or a loved one that was supposed to come to your home only to have them not only, not show, but you can't reach them for an extended period of time? What was your first thought? Concern? Fear? It happens to all of us.
So why is all this important? Success can only occur in a positive state of mind. Anyone who has ever succeeded at a high level in any endeavor had to positively believe they would do so. That is why any book on success worth it's salt usually has at least a chapter on having a positive mental attitude. What's more vital than having a positive mental attitude in what you say to others and how you act outwardly is having one in your internal thoughts and how you feel on the inside. At the core of this is your self-image. Your self-worth.
We have been trained, be it by the limitations our parents put on us ("we're just not the entrepreneurial type - we're blue collar") or by our teachers ("your scores show you should be a janitor.") Over time, we build up what we determine our self-worth is through our associations, our gender, our race, and what we do for a living. Let me tell you right now, if you think your creator has it in for whatever supposed limiting factor you believe you have, you have another thing coming. A higher power is not what determined that you should make $30K/year as a gopher in an office.
Here's what I believe: you're meant for more. There is no way that such complex individuals such as human beings would develop to the level that we've developed to, to simply waste away manning cubicle 74 on the 8th floor of a non-descript downtown hi-rise. Me believing only does part of the trick because you have to believe also. I heard once that the "you" of today is simply a reflection of the "you" of yesterday, and at any time you can make changes to improve the "you" of tomorrow. We so often get caught up in our past failures that we let them control our potential to make a difference in our future successes. We hang on to old desires, old habits, and old thought processes that are at best comforting and at worst destructive.
You have value. You can draw a line in the sand and change the path of your world now. It's a common anecdote, but before Roger Bannister ran the four minute mile, it was considered "impossible." How many people did it take to prove it could be done? One, and now over 1500 people have accomplished the feat. How many people does it take to raise themselves up from nothing to prove to you that you can do it to? Take your reason for previous failure and make it the reason why you succeed now. Let that thing that you hate to remember that you did, be what drives you to become more. I believe in you. You are worthy.
I had heard once that everything has a 'natural' state. Take H20 for example. You can freeze it and turn it into ice, or you can heat it and turn into steam or vapor. The mind also has a natural state and for the majority of the population, it's negative. Left to our own devices, our thoughts often turn negative. Have you ever had a parent or a loved one that was supposed to come to your home only to have them not only, not show, but you can't reach them for an extended period of time? What was your first thought? Concern? Fear? It happens to all of us.
So why is all this important? Success can only occur in a positive state of mind. Anyone who has ever succeeded at a high level in any endeavor had to positively believe they would do so. That is why any book on success worth it's salt usually has at least a chapter on having a positive mental attitude. What's more vital than having a positive mental attitude in what you say to others and how you act outwardly is having one in your internal thoughts and how you feel on the inside. At the core of this is your self-image. Your self-worth.
We have been trained, be it by the limitations our parents put on us ("we're just not the entrepreneurial type - we're blue collar") or by our teachers ("your scores show you should be a janitor.") Over time, we build up what we determine our self-worth is through our associations, our gender, our race, and what we do for a living. Let me tell you right now, if you think your creator has it in for whatever supposed limiting factor you believe you have, you have another thing coming. A higher power is not what determined that you should make $30K/year as a gopher in an office.
Here's what I believe: you're meant for more. There is no way that such complex individuals such as human beings would develop to the level that we've developed to, to simply waste away manning cubicle 74 on the 8th floor of a non-descript downtown hi-rise. Me believing only does part of the trick because you have to believe also. I heard once that the "you" of today is simply a reflection of the "you" of yesterday, and at any time you can make changes to improve the "you" of tomorrow. We so often get caught up in our past failures that we let them control our potential to make a difference in our future successes. We hang on to old desires, old habits, and old thought processes that are at best comforting and at worst destructive.
You have value. You can draw a line in the sand and change the path of your world now. It's a common anecdote, but before Roger Bannister ran the four minute mile, it was considered "impossible." How many people did it take to prove it could be done? One, and now over 1500 people have accomplished the feat. How many people does it take to raise themselves up from nothing to prove to you that you can do it to? Take your reason for previous failure and make it the reason why you succeed now. Let that thing that you hate to remember that you did, be what drives you to become more. I believe in you. You are worthy.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Site News
Sorry all - I've had a computer crash twice on me as I've tried to add new posts, wiping out large portions of them. I should have new stuff up later today. Thanks for being patient.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Goals, Not Resolutions
Welcome to 2007! I've personally entitled 2007 as "The Year Of Abundance," but you're welcome to give it whatever title you like. When I played football in highschool, we often liked to give our season a title or mission statement. Whether it was "Finish Strong" or "Commitment," it was something simple we could put on a t-shirt and wear under our game gear. There is something about being in a locker room putting your pads on and seeing every other guy in there with a t-shirt on that says "No Quit!" I get fired up just thinking back on it and it played a major part in me deciding to give a mission statement/title to my year. I know my fellow blogger, Steve Pavlina has written some wonderful things about goal setting, as have others, so I thought I should at least chime in.
Why do most people fail to maintain their resolutions? There are a number of reasons, but the most prominent is that the resolutions people make are generally too drastic or absolute. "I'm quitting smoking on January 1st" or "I'm going to never eat sweets again as of New Years 2007." I'm not saying these resolutions can't be achieved or maintained, but to make a surface decision without attempting to change the underlying programming causes most people to miss the boat. If you've eaten cupcakes on a weekly basis for the last 10 years, but "in 2007 it's gonna be different!" you might be fooling yourself. The problem isn't necessarily the cupcake eating, but what incites you to want to eat the cupcakes in the first place. If it's your stress or comfort food, you need to set goals to lessen the things that cause you stress, or to find positive alternatives to dealing with your stress. Shad Helmstetter covers this tremendously in his book, "What To Say When You Talk To Yourself." He says to imagine all the furniture in your house being your previous negative thoughts. You move it all out, but the only way to keep from having to go get that comfortable sofa, is to replace it with healthier programming.
The way I've broken my goals down may be a little different than others, but it's a way that I see as being effective for me, which is definitely important if I expect to actually feel like I can accomplish them. When I was heavy into bodybuilding (and that time will come again, once free from a day job,) I routinely built my workout around four major muscle movements: squats, bench press, deadlifts, and military press. Those heavy, multijoint movements had a greater effect on multiple areas of my body than any other exercise and so I used those as the baseline and everything else fit in appropriately around them. My goal setting for 2007 is the same way. My four areas for 2007 include: spiritual, family/relationships, health, and financial. These are four pillars that when I strengthen, will help everything else fall into place. Overtraining one over the others will likely cause atrophy in the neglected area.
Understand, the goal is not necessarily to live my life in balance when it comes to my time. I believe that to become successful, you have to live an unbalanced life to an extent in terms of where you spend your time. My goal is to use the time I spend in each area more efficiently and in ways that create a greater result. I'll give you a couple general examples in a moment, but to kick things off, I even wrote a basic mission statement:
"To maintain a pure and single focus on putting into practice methods and ideologies that will improve not only my spiritual, family, health and financial life, but also the lives around me. "
Here are a couple basic examples of the goals that I set:
Spiritual: Develop education in the word as a backdrop of teaching opportunities.
Family: Create more consistency in staying in contact with my parents.
Finance: Look for better and simpler ways to track finances.
Health: Keep a better record of your daily food intake.
Now, I understand that these can be misconstrued as general goals. They were simply an outline of areas that I wanted to become more detailed with. However, just writing that I wanted to be more consistent in staying in touch with my parents has upped the number of times we've spoken since the New Year. I often times get so caught up with helping people that are part of my business, that I can look past maintaining that basic contact just to say hello.
When it comes to health. I do get more specific with weight goals and how I plan to achieve them. I've dropped 7lb. in the first week of January and I couldn't be more excited about being in better shape. For the most part, my weight has a tendency to yo-yo when I don't focus on what and when I'm eating. We always think slipping a sweet in here and there doesn't hurt. But if "here" is Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday and "there" is Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, we're not really "slipping" anything. It's part of our diet.
For finances, I happen to be a person that dreads using tools like Quicken. I'm the first guy to extoll the virtues of it. I just hate to take the time to do it. The thing is, when I use it, I'm so much more on top of our finances. The issue isn't using the tool. The issue is setting aside the time. The greater detail of my financial goals covers setting aside time (where, when and how much) to analyze and plan our finances.
As far as my spirituality is concerned, I've become more and more a student of the teachings of the Bible and before the secularists go running away, here me out. The goal is to learn more on how to treat the book as a success manual. John Maxwell has a book called the Leadership Bible. I've heard two of my mentors talk about it and I'm reading it this year. Regardless of your faith (or lack of faith,) there are pliable, time-tested teachings on success in the Bible. I just want to learn how to use them better.
So there you have it. An inside look at some of my goals, not resolutions for 2007. What have you decided to turn around or improve on this year?
Why do most people fail to maintain their resolutions? There are a number of reasons, but the most prominent is that the resolutions people make are generally too drastic or absolute. "I'm quitting smoking on January 1st" or "I'm going to never eat sweets again as of New Years 2007." I'm not saying these resolutions can't be achieved or maintained, but to make a surface decision without attempting to change the underlying programming causes most people to miss the boat. If you've eaten cupcakes on a weekly basis for the last 10 years, but "in 2007 it's gonna be different!" you might be fooling yourself. The problem isn't necessarily the cupcake eating, but what incites you to want to eat the cupcakes in the first place. If it's your stress or comfort food, you need to set goals to lessen the things that cause you stress, or to find positive alternatives to dealing with your stress. Shad Helmstetter covers this tremendously in his book, "What To Say When You Talk To Yourself." He says to imagine all the furniture in your house being your previous negative thoughts. You move it all out, but the only way to keep from having to go get that comfortable sofa, is to replace it with healthier programming.
The way I've broken my goals down may be a little different than others, but it's a way that I see as being effective for me, which is definitely important if I expect to actually feel like I can accomplish them. When I was heavy into bodybuilding (and that time will come again, once free from a day job,) I routinely built my workout around four major muscle movements: squats, bench press, deadlifts, and military press. Those heavy, multijoint movements had a greater effect on multiple areas of my body than any other exercise and so I used those as the baseline and everything else fit in appropriately around them. My goal setting for 2007 is the same way. My four areas for 2007 include: spiritual, family/relationships, health, and financial. These are four pillars that when I strengthen, will help everything else fall into place. Overtraining one over the others will likely cause atrophy in the neglected area.
Understand, the goal is not necessarily to live my life in balance when it comes to my time. I believe that to become successful, you have to live an unbalanced life to an extent in terms of where you spend your time. My goal is to use the time I spend in each area more efficiently and in ways that create a greater result. I'll give you a couple general examples in a moment, but to kick things off, I even wrote a basic mission statement:
"To maintain a pure and single focus on putting into practice methods and ideologies that will improve not only my spiritual, family, health and financial life, but also the lives around me. "
Here are a couple basic examples of the goals that I set:
Spiritual: Develop education in the word as a backdrop of teaching opportunities.
Family: Create more consistency in staying in contact with my parents.
Finance: Look for better and simpler ways to track finances.
Health: Keep a better record of your daily food intake.
Now, I understand that these can be misconstrued as general goals. They were simply an outline of areas that I wanted to become more detailed with. However, just writing that I wanted to be more consistent in staying in touch with my parents has upped the number of times we've spoken since the New Year. I often times get so caught up with helping people that are part of my business, that I can look past maintaining that basic contact just to say hello.
When it comes to health. I do get more specific with weight goals and how I plan to achieve them. I've dropped 7lb. in the first week of January and I couldn't be more excited about being in better shape. For the most part, my weight has a tendency to yo-yo when I don't focus on what and when I'm eating. We always think slipping a sweet in here and there doesn't hurt. But if "here" is Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday and "there" is Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, we're not really "slipping" anything. It's part of our diet.
For finances, I happen to be a person that dreads using tools like Quicken. I'm the first guy to extoll the virtues of it. I just hate to take the time to do it. The thing is, when I use it, I'm so much more on top of our finances. The issue isn't using the tool. The issue is setting aside the time. The greater detail of my financial goals covers setting aside time (where, when and how much) to analyze and plan our finances.
As far as my spirituality is concerned, I've become more and more a student of the teachings of the Bible and before the secularists go running away, here me out. The goal is to learn more on how to treat the book as a success manual. John Maxwell has a book called the Leadership Bible. I've heard two of my mentors talk about it and I'm reading it this year. Regardless of your faith (or lack of faith,) there are pliable, time-tested teachings on success in the Bible. I just want to learn how to use them better.
So there you have it. An inside look at some of my goals, not resolutions for 2007. What have you decided to turn around or improve on this year?
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