Category: Purpose

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The Top 6 Reasons why Leaders Seek Coaching

  1. Creating a 90-day plan
  2. Navigating Organization politics identifying tactics to deal with “politics”
  3. Managing work and life priorities achieving a workable “balance”
  4. Developing a strategy to grow your leadership presence
  5. Accelerating momentum in your current role
  6. Clarify goals and pinpoint how to achieve them

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One of my posts over at LinkedIn “11 Differences between Busy People and Productive People” was turned into a cool infographic by an author at Inc Magazines blog.  Given that it has horses and unicorns on it, I wanted to share it here.

Thanks Inc 😉

Check out the article over at Inc: The Differences between Busy and Productive People

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Do you have a Growth Mindset or a Fixed Mindset?

This video is about the danger of being “good enough” in many things.

As the world grows ever more connected, and ever more complex – those that accumulate a whole collection of “good enough” skills will suffer. Those that can choose to be bad in many things, and dedicate time to truly excel in one or two areas will be those that flourish.

The danger: Our schools inculcate an attitude of good enough. The system of exams fosters an attitude of being good enough for the grade you want, not aiming for a level of ability far beyond the teacher’s ability to evaluate.

If you liked this post, you will also like Performance Excellence: Deliberate Practice and the 3 Models of Mastery and 4 Approaches to Learning a New Discipline. 

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The 3 most Productive per Hour countries are:

  1. Luxembourg
  2. Switzerland
  3. Norway

The graph below gives one particular view of the level of productivity per hour for the world’s countries.  Mexico works lots of hours with little output, whilst Luxembourg work little hours with very high productivity.

The horizontal axis represents annual hours worked and the vertical axis represents annual GDP per capita in U.S. dollars.

Shades of blue represented relatively high worker productivity while shades of red represent relatively lower worker productivity. Worker productivity is calculated by dividing annual GDP per capita by annual hours worked, which yields productivity per hour worked.

My first comment would be that there is a bit of a flaw in how this graph is put together.  Productivity is divided by hours worked, so there is going to be a mathematical effect that showing higher productivity where cultures encourage people to get out of the office quickly.  The graph is still interesting 😉

The data were collected by Expert Market from the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

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I spoke with one of my mentors in Madrid this week.  We spoke about success in business.

What is business success?

  • What price is worth paying?
  • What are the ingredients of achieving success?
  • Is Business Success due to Great Decisions, or is it due to Excellent Implementation?

I share his answer in this video.

PS 99.9% of business (and life) success is due to Commitment, rather than Brilliant Ideas or Decisions

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This is a post shared by Glenn Street on facebook. He attended Date with Destiny with Tony Robbins last week.

Some “Tonyisms” compiled by Zeke Abraham at Date With Destiny last week.

“I challenge you to make your life a masterpiece. I challenge you to join the ranks of those people who live what they teach, who walk their talk.”
– Tony Robbins

TONYism’s

  • Complexity is the enemy of execution.
  • You can only build on success, you can’t build on failure.
  • Our culture reinforces blame of others.
  • Words have a biochemical effect on the body
  • Stress is a code word for FEAR.
  • Stress doesn’t come from the facts, stress comes from the meaning we give the facts. When you come up with a new meaning, you get a new life.
  • Three decisions that we all make, control each moment of our lives:
    1. What to focus on
    2. What things mean
    3. What to do in spite of the challenges that may appear.
  • We are suffering so much because we are overlooking the gifts around us.
  • Trade expectation for appreciation and our whole life changes in an instant. ~Because~
    • You can’t feel grateful and fearful at the same time. Or
    • You can’t feel grateful and angry at the same time.
  • When you are grateful fear disappears and abundance appears
  • Celebration releases stress, it lifts your mood, motivates you, and lastly, it gives you energy. Not only physically, but it gives you energy for life
  • When you adopt an attitude of gratitude celebrating for no good reason, is a good enough reason.
  • The Past does not equal the Future. Biography does not equal Destiny.
  • Our culture wants you to be one thing — to keep you simple.
  • 6 human needs , each can be met constructively or destructively:
    • 1. Certainty
    • 2. Uncertainty / Variety
    • 3. Significance
    • 4. Love / Connection
    • 5. Growth
    • 6. Contribution
  • People will give up their goals, dreams and values to meet their needs
  • Anytime your mind perceives that doing something, feeling something, or believing something meets three of your needs; it becomes an addiction.
  • A Strategy is a system of producing a consistent result.
  • Faith is freedom.
  • A belief is a feeling of certainty about what something means.
  • There is a way beyond the way you’ve been programmed and that’s to program YOURSELF.
  • People who succeed long term live on pull not push.
  • If you don’t like the answers, ask better questions.
  • Life is happening FOR me not TO me.
  • Proximity is power.
  • Who you spend time with is who you become.
  • People’s lives are a direct reflection of the expectations of their peer group.
  • Only 3 things hold you back in business:
    • 1. Failure to anticipate
    • 2. Lack of follow through
    • 3. Our own psychology and mindset
  • Leaders are READERS: Minimum 30 minutes a day. (A book! NOT a fluff piece, social media or magazine or infographic.)
  • Necessity is the mother of invention
  • It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.
  • In life, lots of people know what to do, but few people actually do what they know.
  • Knowing is not enough! You must take action.
  • Knowledge is not power…it’s potential power. Execution will trump knowledge any day.
  • Information is potential power—execution trumps information every time.
  • Emotion is created by motion
  • CHANGE YOUR STATE! (PHYSIOLOGY)
  • Where focus goes, energy flows (THOUGHT = ENERGY)
  • I am a force for good!
  • Step up!
  • DEFY THE ODDS!
  • Say YES!
  • Make your move!
  • If you want to change your life, raise your standards, change your SHOULD’s into MUST’s
  • If you want to take the island, you gotta burn the freakin boats
  • We all get what we tolerate.
  • The secret to LIVING is GIVING
  • Losers react, winners anticipate
  • If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten
  • The path of least resistance will never make you proud.
  • Progress = happiness
  • If we don’t grow we die
  • People are rewarded in public for what they do in private
  • Most people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in a decade
  • Life’s reward system is not fair. We don’t get rewards that are equal to efforts.
    • Good Effort = ZERO REWARDS
    • Great Effort = Good Rewards
    • Excellent Effort =Great Rewards
    • + ADD ONLY 2mm more effort
    • Outstanding Effort = EXCELLENT Rewards
  • If you treat people at the end of the relationship like you did at the beginning, there won’t be an end.
  • What stops us all from moving forward is FEAR: The two primary fears that we all share are:
    • 1. the fear that we’re not enough, and therefore
    • 2. the fear that we won’t be loved
  • The only thing that’s keeping you from getting what you want is the story you keep telling yourself.
  • Whenever you are happy with something in your life, it is because right now, the conditions of your life match your blueprint, or your belief about how life should be in that particular area. When you suffer, that is a signal for you to look at your blueprint. You have two options:
    • 1. Either change your life, that is, do something to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be.
    • 2. Or if you can’t change your life, change your blueprint.
  • The quality of your life is equal to the quality of your relationships.
  • Bottom line, If you’re not happy in your relationship, you aren’t happy (period)
  • Prime yourself daily – if you don’t have 10 minutes, you don’t have a life:
  • Healing | Solve | Strengthen | Celebrate | Serve
  • Discipline weighs ounces regret weighs tons

If you liked this list of Tonyism’s, you will probably like my own list of 158 Conorisms – The Complete Guide to Personal Habits or my earliest “viral” post 17 Daily Habits for a Fulfilling Life.

Originally shared by my friend Glenn:

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This video is about a strategy for focussing your life’s energy and resources into fewer but more strategic projects. (I tell a story that I have never told in class).

How do you ensure that you are dedicating your efforts to what is really important in life, and not diluting your efforts, resources amongst hundreds of small projects?

If you liked this post, you might like The Complete Guide to Personal Habits for Success and The Star Wars Guide to Saying “No” (from Obi Wan Kenobe).

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“If someone followed your life and took 24 hours of film of everything you do for a day and they edited that into a one-hour documentary… the editor could decide to make you look like the worst villain ever or the greatest hero ever… it depends on which parts of your day he puts into the documentary” my friend Raul Aguirre over dinner in Buenos Aires

This video is about a Paradox that we must come to terms with in order to live a full human life. I’ve made it in Montevideo, Uruguay on a trip here to teach Leadership Communications at the IEEM Business School (part of the University of Montevideo).

We need to find a balance in our lives between the forces of external and internal success, between intentional, goal-directed living and a sense of peace within. The paradox – is that these are two forces that clash. How do you find the right balance?

I’d welcome your help on Balance between Ambition and Peace

I need your help- how do you find this balance? Do you have this balance? Do you ever lose control to one side or the other… and how do you recognise this and regain the balance in your life? Thanks… trying to regain this balance in my own life…

If you liked this, you might also like to see my recent video on Finding Purpose and Defining a Vision for your Life (an Exercise).

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Last week’s blog post (Do you have inspiring goals?) triggered a wonderful response in emails and comments. I had many questions. A common question was about how to begin to find a purpose and define a vision for your life.

This video shares a tool I found 8 years ago that had a major impact on my life over the 2 months after I first did the exercise:

If you are reading this via email, check out the video on the blog here: How to find your Purpose

Did you do the exercise?  How did that work for you?  Let me know how this goes…

Download a quick template for this Purpose tool…

Continue with this line of ideas by reading Meaningful Contribution or Start with the End in Mind or What do you want?