Sunday Night Success

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

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.

Weekly actions result in feelings

Every week I set my action list at the start of the week, carry out my actions during the week, and review my actions at the end of the week. This is a very analytical process that helps me to see whether I am successfully working towards the larger goals I have set for myself. However, this past week I realized that, although I find a great deal of value in the analytical part of the process, the feelings I get from the process are an excellent method of guiding me in the right direction.

Each week is unique, and results in a different spectrum of feelings that occur as I complete the actions on my list. I have started organizing these feelings, and the associated actions into three general groups:

Relief Actions
Neutral Actions
Energizing Actions

Each of these three feelings tell me something important about the actions I am setting for myself and how they relate to my overall goals.

Relief Actions

The fact that completing relief actions gives no real sense of accomplishment, and no added energy to my life probably signifies that these actions are not in alignment with my values and vision. They may be necessary, or have seemed necessary at one time, but they are doing nothing to move me in the direction that I want my life to be taking. These actions are worth taking a look at and asking some hard questions:

“What value is this action providing in my life?”
“What value is the goal associated with this action providing in my life?”
“What would happen if I stopped this action and abandoned the associated goal?”

Depending on the answers to these questions I can reevaluate these actions and figure out the next steps I need to take to either make them a positive part of my life, or, if possible eliminate them.

Neutral Actions

These actions don’t really elicit any sort of response in me. These actions are just there, need to be completed, and most likely serve some menial purpose in my life. I would classify most of these actions as the tasks that I need to complete. They don’t advance a larger goal, but they are not associated with something I don’t want to be doing. They aren’t overly exciting, but they need to be done.

Energizing Actions

The actions that build up my energy are the ones that I think are the most important to take a look at. The fact that these actions take energy to complete, but in the end add energy to my overall week shows that they are important to me. They are most likely important because they are associated with something I find enjoyable, and they are in alignment my values, my goals, and my overall vision. When I complete an action and get a feeling of increased energy I need to take notice of what that action was and what overall goal it is associated with. Whatever goal that is, that is an areal I need to put more energy into. That is a goal that is worth working on and moving forward.

Action radar

With this new realization I now have a sort of weekly action radar that I can use to help me alter my course as needed. Relief actions need to be minimized or eliminated, neutral actions are a part of my life, and energizing actions need to become my focus.

I am interested to know how you feel about some of your actions. In the comments below list a recent action you have completed from each of these three categories, or, add a category of your own.

Check out last week’s post on flexibility in action setting for more help managing your energy.