Sunday Night Success

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.

I have been working a lot lately on building supportive environments in my life, with an extra focus on improving my physical environment: the objects and places in my life that are either promoting or blocking my success.

SNS on the road

My wife, son, and I are on a road trip as I write this. This road trip to visit friends and family will take me away from the internet for a few days. This has given me an opportunity to review some of the important environments that I will need to have success while on the road.

Coaching on the road

While driving to Fernie, BC I needed to participate in my supervised coaching class which is a requirement for my upcoming graduation. To do this we stopped in a small town with cell coverage and my wife and son went for dinner while I sat in the car and took my class.

Upon reflection I realized I had interacted with a number of my physical environments, some that supported me and some that need improvement:

Supportive environments

1. Honda Element: my wife and I own a great car that is in great shape. By owning this car I had the confidence to take this important class while on our trip because I trusted that my car would get us safely, and on time, to a town with cell coverage.
2. Cell phone: my cell phone gave me clear reception so that I could hear my class, and hear my client during the class. My client was also able to hear me clearly.
3. iPod Touch: I had my phone numbers, PIN numbers, and call details stored in my iPod Touch which allowed me to be organized for the phone call.
4. Ashlea: my wife was an important relationship environment as she supported me in stopping our trip for 90 minutes and keeping our son busy while I was on the call.
5. Scott: my client, Scott, agreed to be coached during my supervised coaching sessions. Without his support I would not have been able to complete the class.

Environments that need improvement

1. Headset: as clear as my phone made the call the cheap headset I use with my phone is not very comfortable and needs adjusting constantly. I do all of my coaching on the phone so a better, more comfortable, headset will definitely improve my coaching success.
2. Cell phone plan: I am making more long calls with my business cell now that my coaching business is picking up. I have a feeling this call, and the other calls I need to make while on this roadtrip are going to put me over my current minutes. I could also probably use a better long distance plan. Improving my cell plan will save me money and give me peace of mind: adding support to my success as a coach.

Focus on your environments, then design them

Thinking of your physical world as one big support environment, and then breaking it down into all of the little environments is a perspective that most people never consider.

However, for me it has changed my whole outlook for the better. I am spending less time and energy on being successful, because now my environments are working towards my master plan.

I would like to challenge you to start looking at your physical and relationship worlds as a bunch of small support environments. Then, pick one of these environments and ask yourself:

How could this environment be more supportive of my success?

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.

Have you ever tried to stick to a work out regime all on your own? Most adults have tried and failed.  Excuses come up about the weather, not enough time, or other pressing commitments that were just too important to put off for another week.  Then we begin to justify – “I will work out extra hard next week” or “I had better rest my (phantom) injury” or “What difference does it make if I miss one work out?”  Soon three or four weeks of excuses and justifications have passed and we haven’t worked out even once.  We feel down and dejected.  Perhaps workout regimes are only for other people.  Maybe we will always be unfit.  Ho hum.  Then we just stop trying.

Sound familiar?

Turns out it is very very common.

So what many people do is get a work out buddy.  This is another person who is interested in getting stronger but also struggles with getting their butts out the door. They support each other.  Firstly they can help with dealing with the small excuses just by knowing that this other person depends on you and you have plans.  Secondly they can support you by getting on your case when you try to use an excuse.  Thirdly when you are struggling they can be a shoulder to lean on.

People find great success at their workout regimes by doing this.  They make great friends that last a life time. And they feel stronger not only physically but also mentally because they proved they can stick to it.

This is what we want to be to each other but instead of focusing on working out we expanded it to any actions you want in your life.

When we commit to each other and support each others action and feelings we all become stronger.

Join us – lets get stronger together.

For another great article on Action Setting check out

7 steps to using accountability for goal achievement

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

Recovering Pessimist

One of the main areas of personal evolution I have been working on in 2009 is my pessimistic tendencies as well as my tendency to over-react instead of over-respond to situations. For the most part I have had a great deal of success and have become a much more positive person. On my recent vacation we even had a friend that we had not seen for a long time comment on the fact that she noticed I was much more positive.

I have been feeling pretty good about the changes I have made and have had to spend less of my energy focusing on being optimistic; it has started to feel more natural than it ever has in the past.

However, what I forgot is that I am still a work in progress, and that, by not being mindful of my positivity as much lately I have put myself in a position to have a breakdown.

The breakdown

It happened this morning, and it happened in a big way. After returning from our vacation my wife and I discovered that a bottle of soy sauce had exploded in our luggage and our clothes were covered. One thing led to another and the over-reacting pessimist busted out:

I yelled.
I ranted.
I blew things out of proportion.
I made extreme conclusions.
I announced ultimatums.

I lost it.

In terms of my positive – negative energy buckets, in a matter of minutes I filled my bucket with so much red that there is nothing I could have done over the rest of the day to balance it out with blue. In one uncontrolled negative, pessimistic, reactive moment I made sure that my day was red, with no hope of recovering.

You know what….it’s all right

After the dust had settled and my wife and I had separated for a bit I started to reflect on the situation and got ready to beat myself up for the breakdown. Then I realized there was no point in adding negative feelings to negative feelings and send myself further into a downward spiral. I realized it was all right, the breakdown wasn’t the end of the world. I may not have been able to save that day, but I could continue to improve all of the “next days”.

Improving yourself personally is tough work. Improving yourself personally isn’t something that is going to happen overnight, in an instant. Improving yourself is a process that is going to have its ups and downs, and, hopefully, over time there are more ups than downs.

So, instead of beating myself up and reflecting on what had just happened, I went the route of the optimist and started reflecting on all of the moments in the past year where I have succeeded in being positive. By focusing on the positive experiences I changed my attitude to “more positive” instead of “more negative”. I was also able to focus on how being positive made me feel and compare that to how being negative made me feel.

Perspective shift

Then I had the most important realization of all:

if I wasn’t trying to improve myself the breakdown wouldn’t have been a breakdown, it would have been the norm.

So next time you shift back into old behaviours: being pessimistic, having a smoke or a drink, yelling at your kids. Whatever the breakdown is, remember that you are working on it, and that the fact you even had a breakdown means that you are doing better than you were before you were even trying to change yourself for the better. Then, don’t focus on the feelings of the breakdown, concentrate on how you feel when you are having success with your challenging behaviour. This will help you to shift your perspective back in the correct direction.

And you know what? With this attitude in mind, I apologized to my wife, spent the rest of the day being positive, and managed to turn the overall day from red to blue.

What are you trying to improve in your life? What do you do to deal with breakdowns? I would love to know what works for you.