Sunday Night Success

I have had a fabulous start to 2010:

Everything has been going better than “according to plan”.

Funny how that is such a precarious place to be.

Positive results and silly thoughts

With all of these positive results I made a decision a couple of weeks ago that I would put building my private practice on hold and focus on my contract work. At the time it made perfect sense: the contract work is paying my bills and a little bit more, it is most important, full steam ahead.

Which was followed by an even sillier thought: I can start building my private practice again if the contract work slows down or comes to an end.

All the cogs in the machine

Most of you have already seen the complete gap in my thinking process, funny how it took me a few weeks, and some prodding from my SNS group and my own coach, to catch on.

Why stop helping people just because things are going well?

Why wait for something to go wrong before building up another income stream for my business and my family?

The contract work is great, but it is only a piece of the overall vision for success. I am having a lot of fun with the work and learning a lot. The opportunities just keep opening up and it is fabulous. However, that does not mean I don’t need the other piece of the vision, my private practice, spinning inside the machine.

If I am having great success with one aspect of the plan, why not work on having even more success by continuing to work on all the parts?

Gratitude for my support network

The thanks for this realization goes to those relationships that provide me with the support that has helped me with my recent success. Without their questions and gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) prodding I would be moving forward but leaving some important pieces behind.

Now it is time to refocus and get back on track.

What is one area of your own life that you may be feeling too comfortable with? How would things look different if you shook things up and put some energy back into this area?

At the start of each year, and over the course of each year you may set specific goals for yourself. When you set these goals you have the clear intention to complete each of them. Over the course of the year you can accumulate a number of different goals, and by the time the end of the year rolls around you may not be able to achieve all of them.

End of the year focus – pick one goal and do it

I am writing this post on Thursday, December 17, 2009 exactly two weeks until the end of 2009. This past year was the first year I moved forward with a clear strategy on goal setting and goal achievement. As can be expected, and is not a bad thing, I set myself too many goals, and have a number of them still on my list to get done before 2010. There are two strategies I think I can use for the next two weeks:

1. Work on all the goals and try to get as much done as I can, with the risk that I only partially complete each of the goals.
2. Pick one of the remaining goals and put all of my energy into completing this one goal. I will only work on a different goal once my focus goal is finished.

As you can probably tell from the words I used in each possibility I am favoring the second option.

What is your focus goal?

Setting some of my other goals aside is going to be difficult, but I am excited with the prospect of getting one of the really big, and really important goals completed before 2010. My focus goal for the rest of 2009 is:

Complete all of the class and written requirements for my coach training certification

That is my commitment, and that will be the only major project, unless I complete it, I will be working on for the rest of 2009. There is a definite lightness, excitement, and energy I am feeling now that I have made this decision. The weight of the other goals has been lifted, and I am ready to focus on this one goal.

How would the end of 2009 be different for you if you chose one focus goal and did nothing but work towards its completion?

Share your focus goal in the comments section below and let’s get to work on ending 2009 with a successful bang!

If you need help with being accountable for you goals check out this post on accountability.

Have you ever wondered why you find something that works really well, and then quit doing it?

Maybe you start going to the gym three times a week after work, and then decide that switching to the weekend might be better and stop going.

Or, you switch to drinking one cup of coffee a day, feel 100% better, then one day decide that you can have two, which leads to three, then four.

Maybe you set time aside each day to write, start getting a ton of writing done, then switch to a different system, and it all falls apart.

Something was working really well in your life and you decided to change it.

For me it was meditation.

Sufi Remembrance

At the start of August I took Mark Silver’s “Remembrance Challenge” to give meditation a try. The Remembrance is a Sufi tradition involving getting in touch with the Divine. You can find an excellent description by signing up for the challenge at Heart of Business.

I had never meditated previously, and to be honest, I was of the mind that meditation was a load of “hippy garbage” that had no value to offer my life.

Well, I was wrong. Big time wrong. Carrying out the Remembrance made a HUGE difference in my life: I was more in control of my emotions, I felt less stressed, I was having some amazing ideas, and I was making some really great decisions about my business.

The Remembrance worked.

Switch to Shahmbala Mindfulness

My eyes were opened to the world of meditation and I wanted to experiment more. I decided to give the Shambhala tradition of meditation a try. I bought some books, read the books, and signed up for a weekend retreat.

In the end I was unable to attend the weekend retreat, but the books were very interesting and I started to practice meditating the “Shahmbala way.”

I didn’t like it. It just didn’t work for me.

So, I did the only logical thing I could: I stopped meditating.

Quitting what works

All right, so that doesn’t make a lot of sense. I had a very successful support environment in my life with the Remembrance. I experimented with Shambhala meditation, which didn’t work. So I stopped using a meditation environment all together.

Not my brightest moment I admit.

Months have gone by since I practiced the Remembrance. I have been feeling more stressed. I have felt blocked in moving forward with my business. I have been less patient with my family. Every benefit I was feeling from practicing the Remembrance was gone, and yet I still pushed forward, never making the link between stopping the Remembrance and the way I was feeling.

This past week I started using the Remembrance again.

It felt fabulous. I am now working my way up, once again, to a daily practice and it is already doing wonders for how I am feeling and how I am thinking. I am thankful that I have found this environment again.

Why do we quit?

I think maybe, once we create a helpful environment for ourselves, and begin a supportive habit we get overconfident. We attribute the success we are having to something inside of us, instead of something in the environment we created for ourselves.

You think it is willpower that makes you go to the gym, not something as simple as selecting the right time to go.

You think your self-control is strong enough to not have three cups of coffee, so two seems safe.

You believe you now have the ability and skill to write whenever you want, and don’t realize it was the structure of how you were writing that helped you be successful.

Willpower and effort are great, but they are not enough. It is the environments you set up to support yourself that lead to your success. So, next time you are having some success in your life, don’t just give yourself a pat on the back, acknowledge everything that surrounds you and has supported you in being successful.

Think of a time when you were successful and try to identify some of the people, things, and structures that helped you be successful. How could you incorporate these success environments into a project you are currently working on?

Check out Jocelyn’s post on vision boards for another great way to build up your success environment.

Here are my actions for the week:
1. Investigate mailchimp
2. Work with Dad on Blog theme
3. Plan out SNS changes
4. Make pencast of SNS changes
5. Change coach website to subdirectory
6. Point URL to new “under construction” coaching site
7. Download Ecto trial
8. Download Fastpencil documents into Writeroom
9. Pack business necessities for Calgary trip
10. Write 30 minutes 7 times for NaNoWriMo
11. Write “Homepage”
12. Write “Is this you” page
13. Write “How it works” page
14. Write “Last Ditch” page
15. Write “About” page
16. Write “Sign up” page
17. Write “Contact” page
18. Write “Archives” page
19. Write Coaching Model
20. Write Power Tool
21. Reorganize goals for end of year

Check back on Sunday to see how I did.

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

I have been experimenting with some methods to help jumpstart my motivation. One of these was a suggestion that came from Jason during the weekly discussions with the group. I was, yet again, struggling with an action that is frequently on my list, because if it wasn’t on my list I would never do it: monthly budget. Blech. I hate doing it, but it is a necessary evil in my mind, as it is obviously important for me to know what I am spending each month, where my money is going, and how much I have coming in and out. It is particularly important to me right now, as I am purchasing a home and need to be very sure as to what I can afford. As I always seem to put off doing my budget each month, mostly because I find it tedious and boring, Jason suggested that I look for the benefit in getting the action done. That meant looking for a reason more meaningful to me than just negative reinforcement (ie: I have to do _____ or else I won’t have ______).

Positive reinforcement, as it turns out, is much more motivating. As the saying goes, you catch more flies with honey… By coming up with a benefit to getting my budget done, ie: if I get the budget updated, I will be more prepared to submit a mortgage application, and the sooner I’ll be able to look for my new home). As it is exciting to be looking for potential homes, just changing the focus of the action to the positive outcome it would bring me made a huge difference in my interest in getting the task done.

I also found that combining this with a previously-mentioned technique, breaking the job into baby steps, helped me to complete the action with greater ease. I began by gathering my monthly pile of receipts and simply sorted them into the appropriate categories. Once I had done that, it was easier to enter each of the piles into my budget spreadsheet, and before I knew it, I was all caught up.

Does anyone else use a similar method, focusing on the pluses, to get themselves through the tough tasks? How about the “baby steps” method? I’d like to hear your comments on what helps you get things done.

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.

The best laid plans….

The method that I use for setting my weekly actions has been mostly successful, and I have been moving forward towards my goals faster than ever before. Recently, I found myself getting extremely caught up in the process and was pushing myself harder and harder to achieve my weekly actions. By setting and trying to complete ten actions a week I was starting to over-focus on the process and forget the purpose.

Then one of the instructors at the International Coach Academy got me thinking when he suggested “there is a big difference in letting actions RUN your life and setting actions to enthuse your life.”

I was definitely at risk of letting my action setting run my life. I needed to make a change. In the end I decided that the main issue was trying to achieve too many actions each week. Why were ten actions a week causing such a problem?

Should help build momentum

The purpose of weekly action setting, other than to get things done, is to build momentum that will move you towards achieving your goals, and, eventually, your vision. Momentum is created by successfully setting and completing your actions each week: as you move through the week you are able to tick each action off of your list, and with each tick, you feel success, and with each success you build up a desire to complete more actions and achieve even more.

If action setting is written in stone each week, with a set number of actions to achieve you are setting yourself up for failure, and failure destroys the momentum you are trying to build. Originally I would set ten actions for myself and my expectation for success each week was to complete all ten actions. When I didn’t, there was a sense of failure, and I would get upset with myself. I had set myself up to fail and I was ruining my momentum.

Helpful not obsessive

Action setting is meant to help you move towards the larger goals you have set for yourself, it is not meant to take over your life. However, when I started achieving all ten of my actions each week I found myself starting to focus more on the process of setting and achieving the actions than I was on what my overall purpose was. I started setting actions that were easier to achieve so that I could quickly tick them off my list and feel successful. I lost sight of the overall ideas I was working towards and was focusing only on my list and getting it done.

I was manipulating the overall process so I could FEEL successful instead of using the process to actually BE successful

Actions should be a part of your week, not your entire week

The ten actions I set each week are certain tasks, or smaller steps in much larger goals, I am going to focus on that week. On top of these actions I need to spend time on other tasks that need to be done, events that need to be attended, and with my family having fun. What I found was my weekly action list was starting to interfere with me accomplishing all of the other important things. My over-focus had allowed my action list to take over my week instead of being a healthy part of the week.

What to do?

I needed to change my approach. After reflecting on the process I realized that one way I can prevent my action setting from running my life is by making the process open for flexibility. Next post I will explain some of the methods I have started to use to make my action setting flexible and much more functional.

Check last weeks post on making action setting sustainable for more help if your weekly actions are running your life.