The Pace of Change

This is my cuckoo clock.

It’s from Germany.

It rings every 1/2 hour.

It can be quite annoying, especially when I am on the phone at 12 noon when it carries on for almost a minute.

But it’s a good reminder. Time is passing. Get to work.

It’s also a reminder in another way.

All things take time. Hard things take longer than easy things. Some things take more time than I have. Some things are not worth giving time to.

Changing things takes time. Changing oneself takes a lot of time, energy and focus. It has it’s own schedule.

This clock is also a model for how to manage change.

I have to wind it every day. But I don’t take it apart each day to see if it’s working correctly. I wind it and let it run.

Good lesson for personal change here:

Check your progress daily but don’t disassemble your entire life each day to make sure all the parts are working. They’ll be fine. Focus on the 1 or 2 areas that are limiting your growth the most. Leave the rest for later.

Once a year I take my cuckoo clock down and give it a thorough cleaning. Then I put it back on the wall, wind it, and leave it for another year.

Lesson here too: Once a year set aside some private time and really analyze all the parts of your life – both the ones that are working well and the ones that need maintenance or repair. Reward yourself for the parts that are working – you deserve the approval. For the areas that need attention, be kind to yourself. You are a work-in-progress, and the finish line for this work may be well into the future. Choose the 1 or 2 areas you will focus on in the coming year, reassemble your life and move on.

You’ll be ready for another year.

Wind daily.

Repair yearly.

Cuckoo.

Want More Success? Choose the Right Yardstick

One way to feel really depressed about your life is to use someone else’s yardstick to measure your success or progress. We all do it, often without realizing that we are doing it.

He makes more than I do.

She’s more attractive than I am.

He’s more outgoing.

She lives in a nicer house.

Their children are so successful.

None of these are healthy thoughts. You’re busy tearing down your own life because you are using someone else’s yardstick. And you are using only one way of measuring other’s success and happiness.

Comparisons may be interesting and we can admire other’s achievements and talents. But measuring happiness by a single dimension is misleading.

Get your own yardstick. Measure what matters to you and the people you love and support. And measure all the dimensions that matter, not just the ones that you see in other’s lives.

And remember that most of the things that we envy about other’s lives in themselves do not guarantee that these people are happy.

 

 

 

Real Toughness Is Keeping Your Word

It’s easy to admire the soldiers who have completed the grueling training required for earning the Ranger Tab or the Navy Trident. These soldiers have taken on a challenge and completed a program designed to test them both mentally and physically. They made a promise to themselves and their teammates and they didn’t quit.

For me this is real toughness. I can admire the physical challenges that these soldiers faced, and the strength and determination it took to overcome these challenges. But what I really admire is that they kept their word. They didn’t quit even when they felt they could not go on. They pushed themselves to do things that at first seemed impossible. And they reached levels of physical and mental performance that they most likely believed were beyond them.

So you want to be tough? Keep your word. When you make a commitment to do something, know that it will probably be harder than you think. You’ll think of excuses to cut corners or back out. Other priorities will seem more important. Your decisions in the face of these obstacles will determine how tough you are.

Yes, there may be times when you cannot keep your word; but when you have to break your commitment, do it with honor. Acknowledge that you cannot follow through and then do everything to can to help those who were depending on you achieve their goals. Quitting doesn’t mean you can avoid responsibility.

Real toughness is doing what you say you will do. Do this, and you will lead the way for others.

“Sometimes I think he tries too hard.”

This comment still haunts me, nearly 40 years after I first read it.

It was a single comment on a report card for a history course I took in high school. I got a 100 in the class, and at the end of the year this was the teacher’s lone comment on my performance.

I think he tries too hard. But he got a perfect score.

How does someone try too hard? Is this like giving 110%?

The wisdom in this comment has become apparent to me over the years. Yes, someone can try too hard.

Too hard to please someone who won’t be pleased.

Too hard to become something that doesn’t fit your personality or skill set.

Too hard to follow someone else’s path to success.

Too hard to make someone love you.

Too hard to become a better person.

I’ve learned to see when I’m trying too hard. When I’m trying to force an outcome that isn’t healthy or realistic for me. It most often leads to my failing.

Try hard enough. Learn to see where “hard enough” ends and “trying too hard” begins.

It’s usually about the same time you start beating yourself up for being a failure.

 

The future is never what we expect it to be

When I was growing up, I knew what I wanted to do for a living. I knew what I was good at doing. I went to school for years to become better at it. So why have I spent the last 25 years working in a completely different field where I had no training, limited experience and where I never expected to work? What happened?

What happened was the future. What happened was that I had to make choices that I never anticipated. I had to choose between making a career in a field that was highly political (and didn’t pay well), and getting into a field that would support my family and bring me some satisfaction. Then I had to choose between moving up the corporate ladder and giving my family some stability. Now I’m looking at choosing what to do next as my options are becoming more limited in the field where I work.

No one ever told me that the future would turn out this way. I’ve learned the hard way. Circumstances that I could not control forced me to make choices I never anticipated. I don’t like this. But I’ve learned that I can’t change it.

Despite the fact that I didn’t ask for the life I have and that sometimes I feel very dissatisfied with it, I have learned some useful lessons. Here are a few:

• If we knew what would happen to us in the future we would not be happy, since we would have no choice about it.
• Uncertainty is built into our lives, and while this may make us uncomfortable, it also gives us opportunities to grow and develop.
• Some things we can control; others we cannot. Knowing the difference between these is crucial.
• Other people’s choices impact our lives, often in ways we don’t like.
• It’s better to have a plan and try to follow it – even if it fails – than to leave things to chance.
• Your attitude toward your life is independent of your circumstances.

Yes, the future is never what we expect it to be. And we can become better people than we ever dreamed possible by accepting this fact and choosing to respond to our circumstances in a positive manner.

Here’s an example of what that life might look like:

“There are those whose faces are so alight with life that they serve as a blinding reminder, amid the darkness of our time, that joy and charisma and hope still exist. These are the energizers, the cheerful individuals who inspire and enliven those around them even though their own backgrounds, genetics, and environments would give cause for them to be apathetic and detached. They, too, might have come from a broken home or poverty. But instead of choosing bitterness, they seem blissfully aware of, and deeply thankful for, their blessings, even when those blessings are fewer and more meager than others. These few, the energized and happy and thankful among us, are not “lucky,” nor are they to be envied. For their treasures are available to all of us. Their treasure is freely chosen attitude.”

(From The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard)

Your choice.

 

 

Emotional Tripwires

In an earlier post (12/13/2011) I referred to the Golden Moment – that instant of time between our decisions and our actions – that allows us to change our habitual ways of responding to people and circumstances in our lives. When we have time to think clearly about deciding on doing or saying something, we can usually avoid trouble. But what about the times when we don’t see the emotional trip wires in our path? What about those times when our emotions outrun our thoughts and we do or say something harmful?

The solution I have found is to pay attention to those times when my emotions are aroused – when I’m reacting more from feeling than thought. I stop and pay attention to how emotionally aroused I am as I go through a day. I usually find that I experience a range of emotions – from calm to alert to irritated – all in the course of a single day. I have learned that I have predictable reactions to different types of events and people. Disorganized and unfocused meetings usually make me irritable. Unplanned changes to ongoing projects tend to make me feel stressed. Taking time to discuss how to better manager a difficult project or individual usually makes me feel more in control of my workload

By regularly observing how I tend to react to these situations, I have learned where my emotional trip wires lurk.

I think we’re less likely to be blindsided by our emotions when we can recognize how active they are at any point in our day and act accordingly. If you know when you are emotionally out of balance you can delay taking actions or saying things that you may regret later. But if we don’t learn where our emotional trip wires are, we will likely continue to be tripped up by our immediate emotional reactions that can cause us so much trouble and also cause others to think less of us.

So if you take some time to learn your own emotional range in time you will be able to see the trip wires that so often cause you to react in ways that often defeat you. Your emotions may still surprise you and at times get the best of you. But you’ll be better able to manage them instead of allowing them to continue to trip you up and embarrass you.

Learn to Say Goodbye

I used to hate airports.

It seemed to me that every time I was in an airport, I was saying goodbye to someone.

I said goodbye to my parents at JFK when I left to live and work in Europe. I said goodbye to my wife when she flew home after helping me move to another state. And I watched my wife and 2 daughters get on a plane and leave for Ukraine for an 8-week vacation. To me visiting an airport always meant someone was leaving.

What I learned from these experiences was that life brings many opportunities for leaving someone or something. We often have no choice in these situations, and they can be hard. And I also learned that parting can be an opportunity for growth.

I never would have mastered Swedish, made many new friends and come to enjoy life in Sweden if I hadn’t said goodbye to my parents on that May afternoon and flown off to a country I had never seen before. I would not have had the opportunity to work for one of the largest companies in the world if I hadn’t moved to the Midwest. And my wife and daughters would have missed the vacation of a lifetime if we hadn’t been willing to part company when they set off for Kiev.

So I’ve learned that learning to say goodbye is important. I’ve also learned that sometimes we need to deliberately say goodbye to people and things in our lives that are not positive, and are not making us happy and more effective as human beings.

We can say goodbye to bad habits that trap us in behaviors that stifle our growth.

We can say farewell to people who bring negative energy into our world.

We can say adieu to ways of thinking that don’t serve us or others.

Not only can we say goodbye in these situations; in some cases we must say goodbye if we want to grow. It’s not easy, as it usually seems more comfortable to work around people, habits and patterns of thinking that are already a part of our lives rather than walk away from them.

But the things we tolerate control us.

Bad habits may seem comfortable to us, but they often blind us to new opportunities for growth.

Negative people may seem like our best friends but they can drain us of our emotional energy that we can use elsewhere.

And thoughts that undermine us and limit our effectiveness may seem comfortable and familiar, but they are traps that keep us from seeing new opportunities.

So I’ve learned to say goodbye to the things, people and situations that don’t serve me well. Sometimes I have to temporarily tolerate things that are not healthy for me, but in the long run it’s best to leave these behind.

I still don’t look forward to saying goodbye to people I love and circumstances that make me effective. But I’m learning that having the courage to say goodbye to something that doesn’t serve me well is often what opens the door to something new that enriches my life and helps me become a better person.

Top 20 tactics so far – a checklist for personal growth

For those of you who like lists, here’s a checklist of topics I have covered in my earlier entries:

1 . If you don’t define success for yourself, someone else will.
2. Good intentions are not enough.
3. Change before you have to.
4. You always have choices, even if you don’t like them.
5. There is no success without discipline. Success is not an accident.
6. Find out what doesn’t work, and then don’t do it.
7. You are only a victim if you choose to be a victim.
8. Never be in a hurry to lose.
9. Criticism is never welcome, but it can help you know what to work on.
10. Setting goals requires both a “what” and a “why”.
11. Feeling fearful is normal. It’s usually a sign that you need to take some action.
12. Fail better. Success rarely comes without the lessons failure provides.
13. Build structure to support your efforts to grow and change. Willpower is overrated.
14. Know the difference between success and satisfaction.
15. The fear of failing is often worse than actually failing.
16. Your habits will make or break you. Choose them wisely.
17. Real and lasting growth comes through small changes.
18. At all times tell the truth about your life.
19. Take some action every day to move toward your goals.
20. Have a personal code to guide your choices so you don’t get trapped by circumstances.

7 things you can do today to improve your life

If you are looking for some simple but effective ways to improve your life and feel better about what you do each day, try incorporating one of these actions into your daily routine:

1. Smile. Not only will others appreciate this, you’ll feel better as well!

2. Say “Please” and “Thank you” consistently – and be sincere. It’s good for you to recognize that others are helping you, and it’s also good for them to feel appreciated.

3. Look people in the eye when you speak to them. Don’t stare – this isn’t a contest. Look at them for a few seconds and then look away to one side. Don’t look down – it makes you look weak.

4. Use a person’s name when speaking to them. Don’t overdo this. Just remember that people like to hear their names. Adding their name now and then pleases them, helps them focus on what you are saying and makes them feel important.

5. Allow others to talk about what interests them without competing with them. Let them tell their stories without adding your comments about how your own experience might be similar or ever better. See the next point.

6. Stop trying to win all the time. Let others go in front of you in line when they are in a hurry. Let the rude drivers have their way – they’ll get their own reward. Winning may feel good, but too much of it will make you an unpleasant person.

7. Listen 2x longer than you usually do. If you usually listen to others only long enough to put together your own response, add an equal amount of time to think about whether your response is really appropriate. You can add value to a conversation with a little thought or a thoughtful question.

Real personal change comes from consistently applying a few tactics rather than trying to change your whole life all at once.

Tell the truth about your life

If you are unhappy with any part of your life, the first step is to tell yourself the truth about it. This sounds simple, but it’s often very difficult. But without knowing how you really think and feel about something, you won’t have a clue about how to change it. So the first step in this process is to confess how you really feel about the things that are bothering you.

We often discount the truth about these hard situations because we are afraid that we can’t change them. And in some cases this is true. We can’t always change things that we don’t like. For example I can’t change the fact that my job is in Atlanta but all my extended family members live elsewhere. I simply have to live with this and adjust the best I can. I can, however, choose how to think about this situation so that I don’t make myself miserable. I can choose to see this situation as beyond my control, and plan to call or visit family members whenever possible, so that the connections remain strong.

But we frequently let ourselves off too easily when we don’t take the time to find out the real causes of our discontent. So here’s a technique for getting to the root of your feelings about a situation.

Complete each of the following sentences honestly:

When I think about this situation I feel….
What I dislike most about this situation is ….
If someone close to me knew about this situation they would tell me ….
The one thing I wish I could change about this situation is ….
If I didn’t have to deal with this situation I would be able to ….

Each one of these sentences forces you to look deeper at the situation and confess a little about how you feel. By slowly unwrapping the thoughts that surround it, you are moving closer to the core issue. Now pick an area of your life where something isn’t working and ask yourself these questions. You may be surprised to find that the real reason you are unhappy is quite different that the reason you tell yourself at first.