Success:
Posted by Amy Hale on April 23, 2010 at 6:00 am
“Wishing is a way to remove oneself from what is going on now. Hope is how most of us avoid growing up.” – Dr. Brad Blanton
I love that quotation from Dr. Blanton. It really puts wishing and hoping in their proper infantile place.
I was having lunch with a friend who is writing a book and as we reviewed the remarkable successes in his life coming from nothing, no advantages, an underdog, how he succeeded academically and in business and in many other ways. I asked him his secret and he said, “Action. Nothing beats action.”
One of the reasons I believe the Owner versus Victim distinction connects with people so quickly and deeply is because ownership is all about action. Taking creative action in the face of challenges and opportunities. Instead of complaining.
Victims spend their days and nights complaining. About how they were not “GIVEN” what they thought they deserved. They are out of action. And I love it when the news delivers a story like the one about the college student who is SUING HER COLLEGE for a full refund of her four year tuition because she “can’t find a job.”
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Posted by Amy Hale on April 5, 2010 at 6:00 am
Rarely do people walk down a simple, straight path to our goals. To help myself keep to the straight and easy, I’ve been using a version the G.R.I.N. model. This model helps overcome procrastination and keeps my feet moving along the detours to my vision.
G is for Goal - What do you want? Stop. What do you REALLY want? What would be even better than that? Imagine that you’ve already got it – what are you seeing, hearing, and feeling? Bring as many senses into it as you can.
R is for Reality – Where are you in relation to your goal? What resources do you have? Who can you ask for help? What have you accomplished or tried so far? What have the results been?
I.N. is for Identify Next Steps – What’s the very next action you can take NOW (not next week or next month). What can you do NOW to bridge the gap from where you are to where you want to be?
A nice thing about the G.R.I.N. method is that you can drive your success with any goal and at anytime. Your state of mind doesn’t matter, nor do your circumstances. Why is this?
a. You can always have a goal
b. There will always be a current reality
c. There is always a next step
This Week’s Experiment:
Pick 3 goals and run them through the G.R.I.N model then ask yourself:
- What do I want?
- Where am I in relation to that?
- What’s the very next action(s) I can take NOW in the direction of my goal?
Take those actions, notice what results you’re producing, and keep shaping your success.
Let us know how you do.
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Posted by Amy Hale on March 26, 2010 at 5:43 am
Success is simple. It’s our thinking that makes success over-challenging. Success can actually be achieved in two steps. The first step is to decide what you want. The second step is to act on that decision. The best description of the second step I’ve ever read was written by Og Mandino:
“I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.”
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Posted by Amy Hale on March 24, 2010 at 5:25 am
So many people speed past all kinds of opportunities that they can’t even see because a speeded-up person is always in the future, where nothing exists.
Trying to do too much too quickly leaves everything incomplete and you end up looking incompetent. And when it’s not complete, it kicks you where it counts. Speed is not the antidote to overwhelm, speed is how overwhelm gets created.
The great Thomas Merton said it this way, “To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys his own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
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Posted by Amy Hale on March 19, 2010 at 2:01 pm
If you’re on the right path, you’ll get to where you want to go. Consistent commitment keeps you on the path.
The hardest thing for people to unlearn is the short attention span that’s been shaped by television, entertainment, letting the kids rule the roost, and by letting pernicious, untrue self-victimizing thoughts snuggle up into our belief systems. And this inability to be flowingly calm and ‘real’ is really just the inability to return the mind to the most important thing it can be thinking about in the present moment. It leads to a lot of much unfinished business. The unfinished business then leads to drama. The drama leads to self-dramatization including wild stories about how other people make us unhappy or destroy our dreams. This self-dramatization replaces the committed life.
As Steven Pressfield writes in, “The War of Art,” “Sometimes entire families participate unconsciously in a culture of self-dramatization. The kids fuel the tanks, the grown-ups arm the phasers, the whole starship lurches from one spine-tingling episode to another. And the crew knows how to keep it going. If the level of drama drops below a certain threshold, someone jumps in to amp it up. Dad gets drunk, Mom gets sick, Jenny shows up for church with a tattoo. It’s more fun than a movie. And it works: nobody gets a darn thing done.”
Please share your thoughts & converse with me.
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Posted by Amy Hale on February 11, 2010 at 5:48 pm
I talk out loud when I drive. I don’t worry about what I look like or who might notice. I don’t care if they think I’m on the phone or not. When I talk in the car, I talk to my inner team or to a customer who I want to make sure gets what I am wanting to convey. I might even sing a tune.
I learned to do this when I recognized how much I beat myself up while driving. Have you ever looked around and noticed that most people who are driving, if they’re not on their cell phones, their faces appear worried or angry. Or maybe their listening to all of the bad things in the new on the radio.
How do you want to feel when you’re driving to your destination? Do you want to bully yourself, hear more about a crummy economy or would you rather engage in a conversation with your team to make it the best day you’ve ever had?
Personally, I find that using my driving time to build myself up instead of using ways that break down my mindset is far more useful to me. When you hold worries and anger inside your head, it brings on headaches, ulcers and more worry and anger. Your whole nervous system goes wild.
Plus, if you’re not use to hearing your own voice or you want to practice moving toward fearless public speaking, the car is the perfect place to speak out.
Just think, your competitors don’t do this. They’re listening to their negative self-talk, terrible news or swearing at traffic. So speak to your inner team and step out from the crowd and make success happen – one drive at a time.
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Posted by Amy Hale on January 21, 2010 at 10:35 am
I was thinking this morning how beneficial setting goals and visions for our lives can be. It’s great, we know where we’re going, we can make better plans and the Universe knows where to meet us. But what about those people with procrastination challenges? People who procrastinate have a tendency to not make it to their goals and they sit around frustrated or doing something to escape the reality of self-imposed failure.
Earlier last year, I wrote about using a “have done” list, rather than using a “to do” list. There are many benefits to using this method to achieve short and long term goals. (You’ll need to subscribe to my ezine for the archived newsletter if you want to know the other great benefits of a “have don” list can bring.)
I’ve been thinking about subconscious goals vs. conscious goals lately. Subconscious goals usually override conscious goals. They are at the backbone of sabotaging the conscious agenda. If you have a subconscious goal or belief that doesn’t coincide with something that you consciously want to accomplish, you find it extremely hard or impossible to achieve what you want to achieve.
How many of us have ever made a list of goals or even just a “to do” list of the day. We get going and then stall out, never reaching the goal or it takes years longer to get to. If you’ve been a procrastinator and/or have had this experience over and over, you’ve trained your subconscious mind to react to goal setting as a goal failure. The subconscious habit/belief system sets in that when you write down the goal, you won’t achieve it.
So, for procrastination clients, I’m beginning to ask them what they want to accomplish but don’t write it down. Pick one or two goals, get a good picture or movie going in your head about how life will look when the goal is accomplished. It’s easy to remember what one or two goals are without writing them down. Then before going to bed, play the movie again and again until you fall asleep.
When you tell your subconscious mind what you want, during sleep it will figure out how to get it. Often you’ll wake up with what you can do first. But don’t write it down if you’re a procrastinator or if you often fail at achieving steps toward your goals.
Make the mental decision that you are going to take at step toward your goal that day. Then as you go about your day, write down what you’ve accomplished. You’ll also be including things that don’t appear to be related to the goal set in mind.
My clients have been finding this powerfully motivating. When they see everything that they accomplished, their confidence builds and their procrastination dissolves. Plus the subconscious begins to work with your conscious desires.
It’s been pretty cool. Coming from the standpoint of previously being a procrastinator, I get so much more done and it feels empowering.
I’d love to know if you experiment with this and the results or just leave a comment. Maybe you’ve used this or other methods. Please share. I look forward to commenting with you.
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Posted by Amy Hale on January 4, 2010 at 10:36 am
Fear comes in many forms. It’s hypnotic and no one entirely escapes its grasp. People rationalize their fears which helps them excuse themselves from moving forward with their goals and visions for themselves.
Hate is a form of fear. Where there is one, there is often the other. “I hate meetings” could mean for some, “I’m afraid of speaking up in front of my boss because he is mean.” It turns into, “I’ll speak up next time,” but that next time doesn’t seem to ever come.
Some people tend to look at some of their fear on the bright side. “At least I won’t look foolish” or “if I say that, then I open myself up for being put down.”
But then a week goes by and everything is still the same. The person hasn’t spoken up in order to be noticed enough to be a credible part of the team. So s/he stays in the same old cubicle.
Are things better off than a year ago?
If not, things aren’t going to improve by themselves. It’s time to stop putting on the brake and really take some initiative to move ahead? Do you want to spend the next 40 years of your life feeling the same way? How many years are you going to let yourself just hang there in the same place in the hellish dungeon of rationalization?
If you want your life to move, you’re going to have to move it. No one is going to save you. If they were going to, they already would have. So, what are you waiting for?
Un-optimistic fear tends to get people moving forward. I can’t believe how many people come to see me when they find out they might be cut from their job or their doctor just diagnosed them with diabetes. They didn’t move until they were afraid.
So here’s an idea, define the worst thing that could happen if you didn’t accomplished what you want to accomplish? What are you putting off because of fear and what is it really costing you – financially, emotionally, and physically – by postponing taking action?
What are you waiting for? If you say you don’t have time or the time is not right, I can almost guarantee that fear is standing in your way and your rationalizing it so that you stay in the same place.
This post is intended to be a wake-up call for you and the wonderful life that awaits you. By thinking about the worst thing that could possible happen by not taking action – like being miserable or bored in the same job, not being able to make ends meet and feeling like a worthless pile or even living with someone you just don’t even like anymore – you can motivate yourself to take action.
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Posted by Amy Hale on December 1, 2009 at 2:59 pm
As we’ve crept closer and closer to 2009, I have been asked the ultimate question for my business and personal life, “What does success mean to you?” In the past month, I have heard, seen and participated in more contemplation than previous years. Hmmm, going through the
se challenging times – has it helped us become more thankful for what we have?
When asked what success is to me, I usually sum it up as “getting up in the morning and looking forward to the day.” It’s absolutely fantastic to feel the energy every morning knowing that I can conquer challenges, fulfill another goal and help other people feel more confident win life and business.
But it doesn’t really stop there. I love being able to spend quality time with my family and friends, go places whenever I want to and choose the projects I want to work on. That’s real wealth.
In business, the biggest success for me is to be able to choose which clients to work with. I realize I cannot help everyone and being able to choose allows me to help people even better. It’s incredibly rewarding when I read and hear the triumphs of people who came to me to help them overcome a challenge or move past an obstacle. I love hearing their reports on how much happier and free they feel.
My work gives me a sense of achievement and when a client tells me of their success, I feel successful, too. It feels so good to be able to help others succeed, that I just couldn’t not do it.
What does it take to succeed in life? It takes prioritization. I prioritize each day what it is I want to accomplish, as well as, help other to accomplish – whether it’s family, friends, or clients. I have found my own road, now make sure you make “real” success a priority for you.
Asking yourself, “what does success mean to you?” is a great place to start. I’d love to hear what success means to you.
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Posted by Amy Hale on November 11, 2009 at 1:19 pm
This week has been a whirlwind for a client of mine – a good one. Historically, this person has been so
meone who reacts to events in her life instead of taking ownership for her situations and creating solutions. However, she has recently discovered something completely different. Over-responding is much more desirable, healthy and emotionally profitable than over-reacting.
Last week, her landlord sold the building she had been renting in since the inception of her business and gave her 30 days to move. Even though that event was a huge shock, she decided not to over-react but over-respond. I reminded her that she is an entrepreneur who knows what she wants and goes for it. In fact, this past week when we set our minds to moving her into a new space, everything fell into place quite effortlessly. We expected to have to wait for movers to move her, however, when she called them, they said the only time they had available in the next few weeks was Saturday (four days after her call to them.) It seemed like magic.
The best part is before she even moved in, she was meeting new people and finding joint ventures with her office neighbors – something she was still challenged with at her previous space.
I truly believe in over-responding. As my good, late friend Thomas Leonard would say, “Anytime something big happens, whether it’s good or bad, do something bigger and you’ll continue to reach success.”
This week has been a whirlwind for a client of mine – a good one. Historically, this person has been someone who reacts to events in her life instead of taking ownership for her situations and creating solutions. However, she has recently discovered something completely different. Over-responding is much more desirable, healthy and emotionally profitable than over-reacting.
Last week, her landlord sold the building she had been renting in since the inception of her business and gave her 30 days to move. Even though that event was a huge shock, she decided not to over-react but over-respond. I reminded her that she is an entrepreneur who knows what she wants and goes for it. In fact, this past week when we set our minds to moving her into a new space, everything fell into place quite effortlessly. We expected to have to wait for movers to move her, however, when she called them, they said the only time they had available in the next few weeks was Saturday (four days after her call to them.) It seemed like magic.
The best part is before she even moved in, she was meeting new people and finding joint ventures with her office neighbors – something she was still challenged with at her previous space.
I truly believe in over-responding. As my good, late friend Thomas Leonard would say, “Anytime something big happens, whether it’s good or bad, do something bigger and you’ll continue to reach success.”
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