Sunday Night Success

I like golf.

I like the anticipation of the game.  I like setting it up with my friends.  I like getting my gear ready.  I like driving into the parking lot.  I like carrying my gear to the first tee.  I even like paying for the privilege of playing.

There is something about the game that has an allure to me.

Turning my cell phone off and having some “me” time.  Joking around with my friends at the tees.  Watching my friends succeed on the green.  Walking through lovingly manicured courses.  The anticipation that the shot that I am about to take may go where I want it to go.

My problem lies in the fact that I am not good at hitting the ball.  As a lefty golfer I have developed a habit of hitting every drive that I make left instead of straight.  Left into the rough.  Left into the water.  Left into the sand.  And not just a little left – I am shooting left by 45 degrees or more.  :S

What happens after I shoot left?  The first 5 or 6 shots I can usually suppress my frustration but eventually it bubbles to the surface and my day is ruined.  Friends cannot console me.  The joy is gone but I play on like a man walking through a rain storm who is soaked to the bone.

So for a long time I did what any man would do.  I would try harder.  I would try to force my body to HIT THE BALL STRAIGHT!!  I would practice harder and more often.  I would contort my body in ways to make the ball do what I want it to do.  I would turn my body so when I hit it left then at least it would be straight (this made it worse). All to no avail.

I just figured out my problem.

My problem is that I care where the ball goes more than I care about the process for getting the ball there.

Now I have a new plan – focus on the joy of the movement within the shot and stop caring about where the ball goes.  My shot may not improve at all but by changing what I consider success to be I will find peace on the course.  And this is my real success – peace.

A number of years ago one of my favourite authors, Douglas Coupland, came to Calgary and my wife and I attended his reading.  His quirky perspective on life has always given me food for thought and comfort.

After he had finished his reading and explaining where the impetus of the book came from he decided to take some questions from the audience.

One such question was, “If you were able to go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice on how to live your life what advice would you give?” Interesting question, no?  So this accomplished author with creativity as big as the sky thinks long and hard about his answer.

His response – “I would tell myself,”When times seem tough and the moment seems to be crumbling in front of your eyes go grab a snack.  You are sugar crashing. Eat a granola bar and then see if that makes your situation better.”

The audience thought it was a throw away comment and laughed, in all honesty, I did too. In fact as my wife and I walked back to the car I told her how I felt that his comment seemed glib.

Years have since passed and I have since continued to read his books.

But as I have gone through my life his advice has stuck with me.  And when there were times that I thought I couldn’t handle the stress or didn’t think there was a solution to the problem that was in front of me instead of falling into despair – I ate a granola bar. Sure enough in 10 or 15 minutes I felt better and in turn solutions began to reveal themselves.

Turns out his advice that I thought was too simple was actually great advice.

So if the next time your are struggling in the moment go grab yourself a healthy snack and see if that makes your outlook better.

PS.  My favourite book of his is Girlfriend in a Coma.  Check it out.

For another great post about tools that you can add to your success toolbox check out this post.

Here at SNS we take action every week to make progress in making our dreams come true. By setting clear defined actions every week, being accountable to others and then celebrating those successes makes our progress focused, tangible and way more fun.

But there are times where we are working on something that is really difficult or we just feel down and need a pick up.  In the past I focused on adding coffee to my body to help in these times. While this is close to the right idea – making changes in your body to help the brain become more active or to help raise your emotions – it falls short.

The following are three things that I do to help myself feel happier and better focused through the day.
- Realize that you can decide how you want to feel – figure out how you want to feel, make a clear decision that you are going to feel this way and say it out loud to yourself 5 times.
- Get out of your desk and do some stretches with deep breathing.  By getting your blood flowing through your entire body every 45 mins to 1 hour you can feel refreshed and focused again.
- Change your body language - instead of being hunched over and looking down while walking try walking like John Travolta at the beginning of Saturday Night Fever.  Not only will you look cool but you will feel 10 times better. See – How to Strut

These are just the beginning.  Yoga, tai chi, meditation and many other diciplines have lots of great ideas on how to feel better that take just a moment to preform.  If you have any other ways to feel better then share them with us by commenting below.

You will have to excuse me as I need to practice my strut.

Jason

Make it a priority.

Every week that goes by I have one or two actions that are a challenge. Challenges are good things. I believe they make me stronger. I believe that pushing myself sends me closer to living the life of my dreams. The truth is that I enjoy the challenges.

But that does not make it any easier to do what you said you were going to do.

Over the past year of working actions off my list I know this one thing to be true – get the toughest one done first. Figure out how long it will take to do and do it as soon as you can. Do it right but do it soon. Having it sit on your list all week does not make it any easier.  Once the action is done all the other actions will seem much easier.

Making all your dreams come true isn’t rocket science. We all have most of the tools we need to live our dreams we just have to start applying them.

So what are you waiting for … get started!

Jason

Hey check out this other Success Post.

Within each of us lives doubt.

Within each of us lives temptation.

One of the temptations that I have seen since I started setting my weekly actions is very sinister. What happens is I get to Friday afternoon and a couple actions would not have been completed. At that point an idea would present itself – I could put “complete” next to the actions that are not completed and my success partners would be none the wiser!

Did you see what happened there?

First of all I felt doubt whether or not I was going to complete a couple actions. This doubt exists within each of us. I view this whole thought process as a good sign. I like the fact that I am challenged a bit in my actions every week. This shows that I am pushing myself and that is what I need to be doing to make my dreams come true.

Second I felt tempted to lie. And technically I am right – my success partners would not have known but I would have known. My pride was getting in my way. In turn this cheapens what it is that I am trying to do because I start to doubt myself and the program.

I learned that it is best to shove the pride and laziness away. Try my best to get the actions completed before our next meeting and if I can’t treat the people that I trust and myself with the respect that we deserve.

We are only human and these feelings are to be expected. It isn’t the fact that we have these feelings that makes us more or less it is how we respond that shows us our real value.

_________________

If you are a recovering pessimist check out this post by Jeremie.

Setting weekly actions is pretty simple but with time we have come to discover that some ways are better than others.

1 – Make your actions clear – Make it easy for you to know exactly when you have achieved your action.  Have a clearly defined end.  For example “Give the dog a bath”.  When your dog is running around your home all wet and shaking himself off then you know that this action is complete.  One that doesn’t work is “Work hard this week on limiting negative thoughts”.  How do you know when you have finished this?

2 – Put only one action in a weekly action - Make it easier to achieve by having only one action. One that didn’t work very well for me was “Go to bank, pick up dog food, go to library and pick up pens from Staples”.  This didn’t work because the day that I went out to do these chores I ran into a big traffic snarl and did’t have time to get to the library.  So did I really achieve this action?  If I had broken this one into four actions then I would have at least achieved 3 of 4 actions which is much better than not achieving anything.

3 – Put yourself in control – Try to focus the actions on things that are only dependent on you not on others.  A good example is “Meet with my Banker”.  What if your banker is not available this week?  Then you did not achieve the goal.  Try “Contact the banker to set up meeting” instead.

There are lots of tips we can give you but these are just a few that can be used to help you in the short term.

Here is a previous post on Sunday Night Success that also has some great ideas on goal setting.  Link

Cheers.

Jason

Big is the problem

I use to have a big problem with achieving my big goals, mostly due to the fact that the big goals were my big problem. The goals I set for myself were these huge ideas with no clear road map as to how I was ever going to achieve them.

I started succeeding in reaching my goals when I started to change my focus from the actual big end goals and started focusing on the action steps I needed to take to move towards these goals.

I believe this is one of the biggest problems people have with setting goals. Too often the goals are too large in scope, and it is unclear what actually has to be done to make the goal a reality. There are two basic steps to solving this:

1. Break the larger goal into bite-sized chunks.
2. Add a verb to these smaller chunks.

Bite-sized chunks

By breaking the larger goal into smaller pieces achieving the goal seems more realistic, more doable. Instead of being faced with a daunting final result you can deal with each step one at a time. This makes each step simpler to achieve, and gives you a feeling of success. The more steps you achieve the easier it becomes to finish the next step. Completing smaller steps helps build momentum in achieving the larger, overall goal.

Add a verb

Giving each step a verb changes the step from a statement to an action. We cannot “do” statements, but we can “do” actions. Turning each step into an action helps us to clearly understand what must be done to complete that step, allows us to measure when the step is complete, and prepares us to move onto the next step. This makes it easier to complete the step and, if it is easier, we are more likely to do it.

Compare the following two situations:

Goal: Make a list post about goal setting for Sunday Night Success.

Goal: 1) Read Problogger post on “Writing List posts”. 2) Read examples of list posts from other sites. 3) Write out ideas for possible list posts. 4) Choose a topic to write list post. 5) Write list post. 6) Edit list post. 7) Post list post. 8 ) Tweet about list post.

Which goal do you think you would be more likely to complete?

For more help with your goal setting check if you are setting the best time frame for your goals.

Welcome to Monday Goals at Sunday Night Success

One of the main reasons I have had success in achieving my goals is accountability (see Wednesday’s post for why). One of the main reasons I started Sunday Night Success was to help others achieve their goals as well. So, with both of these in mind I would like to welcome you to the first regular feature here at Sunday Night Success: Monday Goal Setting.

What is Monday Goal Setting?

The concept is simple really: every Monday I will be posting the goals I have set with my success group on Sunday night. I set weekly goals, so every Sunday I will re-post my goals for the week and show which ones I completed and which ones I did not. Each week I will keep track of my achievements and take responsibility for the goals I missed.

What do you do?

It would be fabulous if you joined me in this endeavor. Every Monday, in the comments section of my goals post your own goals for the week, then on the following Sunday re-post your goals and let me, and others, know how you did for that week. Repeat this process and I guarantee you will see an improvement in what you achieve each week. I was super surprised at how this process changed my life and want to share it with as many people as possible. My first goal setting post will appear later today and you can join in then.

I hope we can all work together to start achieving the results we all desire.