Morning Muse
Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently, purposefully, and tenaciously.
The Law of Strawberry Jam
The fewer things we focus on, the greater our impact is in our life and the greater possibility for success in our chosen fields we give ourselves.
Most people live their life according to the Law of Strawberry Jam:
The wider you spread it, the thinner it gets, and the less you enjoy it.
Could you imagine going to a fight, a boxing match, with one hand tied behind your back or trying to play the piano with only every second key?
You would say, that is crazy, you would be insane to try and do that, yet most people spend their life like that.
They are not present in their life.
They are not purposeful with their gifts.
They are not passionate in their pursuit.
They have never stopped to examine their life.
They have never stopped to align their purpose, with their vision, their mission and their values.
So when it comes down to living a life of integrity, living a life being true to themselves, their calling and God given passions, they don’t.
They spread themselves around primarily because they have never felt they had the right to choose, the ability to say yes and the freedom to live with no.
If you are going to live a purposeful, present, passionate life you have to be engaged in the choices that construct your life.
Your life is the result of the choices you have made, the relationships you have built and the words that you speak.
Your choices yesterday have given you the fruit you are living off of today.
If you are going to be able to exercise the full gamete of choices over your present and future destiny, you have to:
a) Examine all the motivation and criteria you use to make choices
b) Become deliberate and fully conscious in your choices daily
c) Be responsive and not reactive in your choices
Avoiding making a decision about something is the same as making a decision about it.
There is a consequence to your inaction to the same degree that there would a consequence to your action.
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Leave Nothing in the Ring
Have you ever wondered what your life would be like if you fully gave yourself to something?
If you just did it.
You didn’t question it.
You didn’t second guess yourself.
You didn’t allow yourself to get distracted.
You didn’t allow others to tell you if you were right or wrong in your dream, you just did it.
And what if you did it with such abandonment, such glee, such a sense of joy and expectation that even if it didn’t work out the way you envisioned, the journey was so exhilarating, the endeavor so worth it that the experience itself made you a better person.
Have you ever played a ball game, a match and got to the locker room, you have lost, and you sit there with your head down and you are thinking to yourself….man I really didn’t give it my best?
You play back the scenes, the shots, the plays and you know in your “knower” that you were holding back or distracted or lazy…and you regret it.
Or conversely…
Have you ever got to the locker room absolutely hammered, you still lost, but you know you gave it everything, you played full out and you left nothing on the field?
Life is like that.
I don’t want to step from this ring and have anything left.
I want to have lived it to the max. Done everything I can to have become all that I could have…
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What is Leadership?
Perhaps the best way to determine the nature of leadership is to look at various definitions of it:
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“Leadership is influence, the ability of one person to influence others. One man can lead others to the extent that he can influence them.” (J. Oswald Sanders. Spiritual Leadership. Marshall, Morgan and Scott. 1967).
Since time began we have been striving to understand what is leadership and how to better develop as leaders.
Here are some definitions, thoughts, musings by great leaders…
John Mott:
“A leader is a man who knows the road, who can keep ahead, and who can pull others after him”.
Lord Montgomery
“Leadership is the capacity and will to rally men and women to a common purpose, and the character which inspires confidence.” .
Harry Truman
A leader is a person who has the ability to get others do what they do not want to do, and like it!”.
Les Pritchard
“A leader is one who has an objective, who knows where he is going and can persuade others to follow; who knows what he wants done and can persuade others to help him”.
John Haggai
“Leadership is the discipline of deliberately exerting special influence within a group to move it toward goals of beneficial permanence that fulfil the group’s real needs”.
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The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success part #4
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Continuing on with looking at Scott Eblin’s book. In the first part of the book he talks about how insecure people make lousy leaders…we can all agree with that.
We continue to look at some great practical tips on how to deal with these personal skeletons in our closets. Personally I think this book is worth the investment of your time.
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When faced with a challenge, a natural response for many leaders is to bear down and speed up. Having chalked up success after success, they see each new challenge as simply another hurdle to jump over. They believe that all it should take is more of what brought them to that point: smarts and willingness to work harder and do more than the competition. The problem with this approach at the executive level is that it is one new challenge after another.If your immediate response in the face of every new challenge is to bear down and speed up, you will eventually run out of gas and crash. Managing the demands of executive life requires picking up regular renewal of your energy and perspective, and letting go of running flat out until you crash.
The transformative challenge for new executives is to learn to take the regular breaks needed to renew the energy and perspective that enable them to perform at their best. Even brief periods of recovery or downtime can make a huge difference in executive performance. For executives who already feel the pressure to get through yet more work, stepping off the treadmill of working seven days a week seems like a leap of faith. But breaking the cycle of continuous exertion allows some time for recovery and reconnection to how they are at their best.
The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success part #3
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Continuing on with looking at Scott Eblin’s book. In the first part of the book he talks about how insecure people make lousy leaders…we can all agree with that.
We continue to look at some great practical tips on how to deal with these personal skeletons in our closets. Personally I think this book is worth the investment of your time.
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Silence Your Inner Critic
It’s important to recognize when your inner critic is speaking. Interference is whatever keeps you from performing in the position of how you are when you’re at your best. Before meetings, practice by asking questions like these:
- What is the meeting going to be about?
- What is my point of view on that subject?
- What outcome do I want from the meeting?
- What ideas will I need to share to reach that outcome?
- What are the top two or three points I want to make?
- How do I want to make them?
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The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success part #2
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Continuing on with looking at Scott Eblin’s book.
In the first part of the book he talks about how insecure people make lousy leaders…we can all agree with that.
We continue to look at some great practical tips on how to deal with these personal skeletons in our closets.
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Get Comfortable with Letting Go of What Brought You to the Dance
Being a successful executive does not require you to change who you are, but it may require you to change what you regularly do so that you are more likely to be operating from the state of how you are at your best. To meet the expectations that your peers and top management have of you, you will have to let go of deep engagement in the day-to-day aspects of your function. To develop the confidence needed to succeed as an executive, you will have to explore fields beyond the comfort of the functional skills that brought you to the dance.
Pick Up Confidence
To play the broader leadership role as an executive, you will have to develop and project a sense of confidence in your judgment that extends beyond functional or technical knowledge. Taking constructive action that moves the organization forward will be a key aspect of how you are assessed as an executive. If you project discomfort or insecurity, your peers will sense it and become uncomfortable with you and your judgment. If you project a confident and comfortable presence, your peers will sense that and will return the favor.
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The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success part #1
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This is the title of a great book by Scott Eblin. It has some tremendous insights that are applicable to people in every sphere of Leadership.
In the first part of the book he talks about how insecure people make lousy leaders…we can all agree with that.
But then he goes on and gives some great practical tips on how to deal with the skeletons in all of our closets.
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PICK UP CONFIDENCE IN YOUR PRESENCE
As you move into the executive level, the first challenge is to keep insecurity from getting the better of you. Unless you are superhuman, your first days as an executive will naturally produce some uncertainty and discomfort. It is critical for your success that you not dwell on thoughts and self-assessments that cause you to doubt your capacity to contribute as an executive. You must build a sense of grounded confidence in your presence and in the idea that you have important contributions to make as one of the leaders of your organization.
FROM TACTICAL TO TRANSFORMATIONAL
Regularly demonstrating your confidence in a grounded and appropriate way will build the confidence of your boss, your peers and your team in you. Building your confidence in your executive role can begin with some tactics that, when you make them part of your routine, can lead to transformational changes that dramatically raise your level of leadership effectiveness. The opportunity you have is to identify the key tactical behaviors that, if regularly repeated, will lead to a transformation in the level of confidence you project.
To achieve and sustain results over the long run at the executive level, strong relationships with peers, top leadership and functional team members across the organization are critical. Your success in managing relationships will stem from the confidence you have in yourself and your ability to work well with others to make things happen.
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Our Opportunity
Every person, every day has the chance to do good or to do bad.
Bad is not evil, bad is simply the absence of good. Bad is not doing all that you can in order to ensure that the good takes place.
What drives our organization at it’s very core is not the need, or the greed to make money, but the need to do good. Every day that we do not take the chance to passionately pursue the opportunities put before us, we have not done good.
3 ways opportunities are very present in our lives:
1) we are in the middle of them
2) we have just missed one
3) there is one coming our way
What we must be alert to is:
a) not regretting what we did or didn’t do in the past
b) not sitting around waiting for what might be coming in the future
c) being passionately engaged with what we have in our hands NOW
Three thoughts on opportunities:
No mistakes, no progress.
Helen Rowland said, “The follies which a man regrets most, in his life, are those which he didn’t commit when he had the opportunity.”
The person who has never made a mistake has never made anything. Today, what sits before you is a new opportunity.
Don’t waste your life wondering about what will be. Seize that which lies before you.
What you have to do today is the greatest thing you will ever have to do. How do I know that? Because we never know what tomorrow may bring. We do know that today we are alive and breathing. This is our opportunity to do all that we can with all that we have.
Seize THIS opportunity.
James F. Byrnes said, “Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.”
The thing which I have seen waste more lives is not sickness or debt or bad decision making, but a total LACK of decision making. It’s people straddling between two fields, concerned more about what might NOT happen instead of seizing the opportunity that lies before them.
Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet wrote, “When one burns ones bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.”
A practice used by great Roman and Greek generals was that when they landed on an enemy’s beach, or crossed a bridge they would set fire to their boats or burn their bridges behind them. There was no way for them to retreat—no way for them to go back. No retreat—no surrender.
You should always look at your options prior to a major decision; but once you make it, commit to it with faith, belief and a positive mental attitude.
Do not dwell on the pain of the moment, but the fruit of the future. Second-guessing is a total waste of time, energy and life.
Success is spelled W.O.R.K.
Thomas Edison said, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
I have worked as a business and sales coach for many years.
The two biggest reasons I’ve seen sales people fail is:
1) greed
2) laziness
IS there big money to be made? Absolutely. But success in a small opportunity and success in a big opportunity come the same way…WORK.
Your reputation may get you the open door to your current opportunity, but only your performance will keep that door open.
What will you do with your opportunity today? Will you do good? Will you passionately pursue what is but before you NOW?
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www.nextfoundation.org/nfblog