Posted on

Life Outside the Comfort Zone

7 Principles for Personal Excellence

Life Outside the Comfort Zone

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone” — Neale Donald Walsch

The following is an excerpt from my book: EXCELLENCE: You CAN Get There From Here!

It is important that we continually stretch ourselves to try new things and reach higher levels of performance. In order to try new things, we have to move outside the comfort of our routine to have new experiences and with that comes the anxiety of the unknown.

Simply put our Comfort Zone is a place where our activities and behaviors fit a pattern that minimizes risk and stress. It provides a mental illusion of a state of security characterized by regular happiness, low stress and low anxiety. It feels comfortable and routine. It is everyday activities that we are used to that keep us from feeling anxious, uneasy, and unsafe.

In order to push ourselves to learn and achieve more, we need to move from the routine, safe Comfort Zone to a place that fosters improved learning and engagement, which is an area just outside our Comfort Zone. This area is sometimes referred to as the Learning Zone. As our anxiety level increases we move from the Comfort Zone into the Learning Zone and finally the Panic Zone. The idea is to find the proper balance that helps us increase our performance without moving into panic driven anxiety.

While anxiety is not something we typically go looking for, studies have indicated that a small amount of extra anxiety move us into an area of increased learning and performance. When we mix feelings of success with a limited amount of anxiety we find that we are more engaged, creative, energized and ultimately satisfied than living in our Comfort Zone.

In the Learning Zone we will find that we will have an easier time dealing with new and unexpected change. One of the worst things we can do is pretend that fear and uncertainty do not exist. By taking risks in a controlled manner and pushing ourselves to do things beyond what we would normally do we become accustomed to living with uncertainty and change in a controlled environment and realize our greater potential.

We will find it easier to brainstorm and channel our creativity. While not a fully quantifiable benefit, it is commonly agreed that seeking new experiences, learning new and improving existing skills and opening our thinking to new ideas can inspire us in ways that few other things can. Learning new things and comparing that knowledge with our previous experience can lead us to explore and seek out even more ideas. As we see old problems with a new perspective we find new solutions and we find that it brings greater energy to our curiosity.

Stepping out of our comfort zone into the Learning Zone enhances our ability to grow. Our Comfort Zone is really not about comfort but about avoiding risk and anxiety. We have overcome our fear of risk by redefining our measure of success such that as long as we learn we are successful. Living in our Learning Zone is a no-risk proposition for us and is a key part of our foundation for supporting our journey to excellence.

Learn more about the 7 Principles for Personal Excellence in my book EXCELLENCE: You CAN Get There From Here! available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

Thank you for taking time to join our community. I look forward to exchanging comments with you on this topic.

Thanks,

Skip Gilbert

Posted on

Play From the Same Sheet of Music

4 Tips to ensure alignment

Play From the Same Sheet of Music


Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent alignment. — Jim Collins

Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone seemed to be headed in a different direction on the same topic? Ever been in a situation where nobody seems to agree on what we are supposed to be doing or what we are trying to accomplish? I think we have all been there and it is not only unproductive, but demoralizing. When we experience this, we know we are a long way away from being a high performance organization.

When everyone has a different interpretation of what is being asked or does not really understand the vision, we do not have alignment on what we are trying to do or where we are going. Without clear communication and leadership we are all left to wander around the topic trying to persuade others to join our solution when in fact we are not even all working on the same problem. Just having a vision is often not enough, we need to have alignment around the vision to come to a common understanding.

So what is alignment and how do we describe it? According to Wikipedia, “Strategic alignment is the process and the result of linking an organization’s structure and resources with its strategy and business environment (regulatory, physical, etc.) Strategic alignment enables higher performance by optimizing the contributions of people, processes, and inputs to the realization of measurable objectives and, thus, minimizing waste and misdirection of effort and resources to unintended or unspecified purposes”.

There is a lot of substance to this definition and more than we can cover in a single article. For the purpose of this discussion let’s focus on the second part “…higher performance by optimizing the contributions of people, processes,…” When we take the time to ensure we have alignment around where we are going or what we are trying to accomplish (our vision), we enable resources to focus their energy on developing a solution rather than debating the objective. It creates a better efficiency in our use of resources and ultimately allows them to produce a better result in less time.

Though sometimes overused, the metaphor of the relationship of the orchestra conductor and the musical score to the musicians is a great example of alignment. Imagine a conductor in front of a sellout crowd at the music hall stepping up to the podium and expecting the orchestra to play a complicated piece of music without anyone actually having a sheet of music. While the highly talented and experienced musicians probably have familiarity with the music in concept, there is no way for them to join together or even know where they are at any point in the performance. The conductor may think he is leading the orchestra, but in fact all he is doing is waving his arms. Without the sheet music, there is no way for the orchestra to be in alignment even though they are assembled in front of a leader.

Much like the conductor, we need to make sure that everyone has the sheet of music (alignment) to create a solution. In addition we need to be sure that everyone is at the same place in the music with a full understanding of where we are headed and what we are trying to accomplish. By taking time to make sure we have alignment, we are ensuring that we are producing an environment that will allow our resources to work more efficiently and produce better results.

Here are 4 tips for ensuring we have alignment:

Posted on

Keep Moving Forward

4 Tips to keep moving forward

Keep Moving Forward

“We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” — Walt Disney

Are there times when you just feel overwhelmed? How about those days when nothing seems to be going right, have any of those? Have you or someone you known faced a significant heath or financial crisis? Most of us have at one point or another and we are likely to face more in the future. Sometimes life throws some big challenges our way. What can we do?

We will all most likely face stressful times and hard decisions in our lifetime. These events will happen, usually not by our own making, and most often without warning. As these things occur we have two choices. We can either face the challenge and find ways to keep moving forward or we can surrender. We can either assess the situation and find a way to get to the next day, or not. Clearly the or not option is not a viable solution, so it really leaves us with the move forward option.

People who have faced difficult challenges tell us that the only really solution is to find the strength to move forward. Today may appear bleak and perhaps even hopeless, but if we can find the will to make it to tomorrow we will find that we are one day closer to our solution. When we are able to focus on getting to tomorrow we are in the process of moving forward.

There are many people facing difficult circumstances everyday and if we are one of them then we know the challenge of moving forward. Fortunately, for most of us we are not facing dire circumstances and we should be grateful for that blessing. Nonetheless, most of us feel the stress of things not going our way and have the same feelings as those in dire circumstances though perhaps to a lesser extent.

When we face difficult circumstances either personally or professionally, the best thing we can do is “put one foot in front of the other” and keep moving forward. There is no future in looking back, after all the future is in front of us. Looking back allows our emotions to relive the event and does nothing to help us get to the next opportunity.

Most of the things we fear never happen to us, they are just projections of our imagination. Sometimes we tend to view our current circumstances through a negative lens and only see more negativity in front of us. The reality is that most of the things we fear will not actually happen to us. Our fear is mostly driven by projecting ourselves into other people’s difficult situations. Our empathy for them can make us feel as though we are there and allow us to relive an event that we have never truly experienced.

Our worry is just wasted energy. Worrying about things that most likely will never happen engages us to focus on things that fortunately we will never experience. When bad things do happen, they usually happen in unexpected ways. And here is the thing, we are so resilient that when something bad happens, we almost always find a way to rise above the issue. We would not have gotten this far if our first action was to surrender.

When things are not going our way, the best thing we can do is to keep moving forward. Find a way to get to the next day and things will be better. Hang in there and give ourselves a chance to find a solution. Tomorrow will open a new door and we need to see where it leads.

Here are 4 tips for helping us continue to keep us moving forward:

Posted on

Trust is Essential for Success

4 Tips for establishing and maintaining trust

Trust is Essential for Success

Do we trust those around us? Do those around us trust us? How does trust impact the performance of our teams? How does trust impact our success? These are great questions and the answers have a great impact on how we are perceived and our success. Trust is the fundamental currency of leadership.

Trust is the foundation of high performance. Before others are willing to go the extra distance to help us achieve our goals, they must be able to trust that our interest aligns with their interest. If we are not trustworthy or those around us are not trustworthy then the basic foundation of high performance is broken. There must be a firm belief in place that what is good for us is good for me. Without that firm belief there will always be doubt and reservation around the risks we are taking and the result it may produce. Where there is doubt or insecurity at the personal level, people will not give their best. In order for people to put it all on the line for a result they must trust that the result will be in their best interest.

So what is trust? Dictionary.com defines trust as “Firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.” Essentially, trust is believing in something or someone to such an extent that they can be taken at their word. If they say it or convey it, then it can be believed. The “it” can be a vision, request or most any action, but the key is that people are willing to follow because they have faith in the reliability and credibility of the person making the request. We are more likely to follow a leader because they are trustworthy. We are more likely to achieve what they ask because they have earned our trust.

The benefits of trust are quantifiable and are significant. Organizations that are led by leaders that can be trusted significantly out-achieve those where their leaders are not trusted. Research conducted by The Forum cites 10 years of findings that high trust organizations have some major advantages:

  • 16% greater profit margin
  • 19% greater operating margin
  • 18% greater productivity
  • 2.6 times the earning-per-share growth of less-trusting companies

These are significant findings. These are core business metrics that all businesses are striving to achieve. As we can see trust in leadership has a direct correlation to superior business performance. Building and maintaining trust in an organization should be one of the core goals and key metrics to measure the success of the leadership of any organization or business. It has a direct link to business performance and the bottom line.

So how do we build and maintain trust? It starts with keeping our word. People need to believe that we will keep our word and deliver on our promises before they will fully trust us. When we make a commitment, we must keep it without excuses or failure. Even the way we make the promise is important. It must be clear and solid. It cannot be built on vague words that sound good on the surface but can be bent to have different meanings. Our statements must be clear and precise. If people are to have trust in us, they must have faith that we mean what we say and that if we say it we will do it.

We must always tell the truth and be transparent. Misleading in any way or not telling the whole truth or misleading by not including key facts will diminish trust. Our word becomes our currency and if our word is not rock solid, it will not have value. We have to be careful not to make promises that we cannot keep. In the event we find that we cannot fully deliver on a promise, we must come forward with full transparency and help others see that the results were from circumstances beyond our control. To say one thing and do another will severely diminish our credibility and trust will go out the window.

Employee trust is strongly connected to the organization’s transparency. Studies have shown that as organizations become more transparent they will become more trusted and therefore produce better results. Being transparent means doing a good job of sharing information with our teams and not hiding problems. Often we can produce better results by openly explaining the problem and including our teams in the problem solving. This serves not only to build trust, but leverages ideas and involvement which will yield better results with deeper ownership of the solution. By being transparent and open about the issues and solutions and in effect “showing our work”, we build trust and credibility with those around us.

The net result is that building trust through being open, honest and consistent allows others to invest in our ideas and actions and yields better results. Leadership is most effective when everyone is pulling together toward a goal without fear or reservation. As leaders, trust is perhaps our most valuable asset in creating commitment and producing results. Trust builds relationships and unlocks the future. It is one of our biggest levers; it should be one of our biggest concerns.

Here are 4 tips for establishing and maintaining trust:

Posted on

Trust Our Intuition

4 Tips on trusting our intuition

Trust Our Intuition

Have you ever been faced with making a quick decision without all of the facts? Have you ever had a feeling that one path was better than another? Or have you ever gathered a lot of information but it is still not clear what to do, yet you have to make a decision anyway? I know I face that situation on a regular basis, either there is not enough time or information and a decision needs to be made now. In times like that we have no choice but to follow our intuition.

So what is our intuition and how is it different than instinct? Intuition is a process of using our knowledge and experience to know or decide something without analytic reasoning. On the other hand, our instinct is a feeling or hunch in reaction to a specific event or situation.

Both are valuable and helpful when used appropriately. Our instincts are probably more deeply rooted in our DNA and past experiences. The word instinct comes form the word “instinctus” or “impulse” meaning the body’s biological tendency to make one choice over another. They are things like the gut feeling we get when we see an event or react to a threat. It doesn’t require thought, it is a reaction to a stimulus. Our instinct will be to duck if something is thrown at us. It is the way we want to react when insulted, it is our first reaction when something quickly changes in our immediate surroundings.

Intuition on the other hand is our thoughtful immediate decision making process without utilizing a process of fully balancing the pros and cons. It is our first response when confronting the need for an immediate decision. The word intuition comes from the word “intuition” or “consideration” formed by beliefs, experiences and memories. It leverages our past experience and the result of similar situations in the past to project a preferred action in this situation. In the situation requiring an immediate decision our mind races through all of our previous experiences and gives us an instant decision. It allows us to make the best decision we can with the limited information we have at the moment.

Everyday we are confronted with the need to make decisions with imperfect knowledge or information. Whether it is a key business decision or deciding what to have for dinner or even which way to turn to avoid this traffic situation, we have to make decisions quickly. Many times we do not have the opportunity to run a full analysis on the situation and chart out all of the risks and benefits. There is simply not enough time to fully analyze each decision against the multiple outcomes.

At some point we have to make a decision. We cannot wait at a stoplight and run a full spreadsheet analysis of the impact of our decision to turn right. We just have to make the decision and see what happens next. The inability to make a decision without intense scrutiny and analysis leads to “analysis paralysis”; the inability to make quick decisions.

Fortunately we have a built-in decision making tool called intuition. Our intuition gives us the ability to make a pretty good decision based on what we have experienced before. The decision will not always be perfect, but it will be right most of the time. It will allow us to move forward and see what happens next. It will be right a high percentage of the time and we should feel confident that without the opportunity to gain more information, the decision we make now will be the best decision we could make at the time.

We can improve the quality of our intuitive decision making by continuing to improve our knowledge and experience through our growth as we pursue excellence. As I pointed out in my book “EXCELLENCE: You CAN Get There From Here”, by planing our growth we build on our skills and talents providing a basis for even better decision making in the future.

Since intuition is based on combining our past experience and knowledge to allow a decision at the moment, it is not likely that the decision will yield a great new approach to the problem. That is not to say that our intuition doesn’t play a role in breakthrough thinking, in fact it is quite the opposite. Most breakthroughs require an injection of intuition to push us past the apparent facts. The very nature of the analytical process is that every answer yields two new questions. At some point an intuitive decision is required to decide which branch of research should be followed.

The net takeaway is that our intuition gives us the ability to make pretty good decisions with the information at hand at the time. We can have confidence that when forced to make a decision with incomplete information we can rely on our intuition to fill in the missing data and yield the best decision we could make at the time, and that decision is better than no decision at all.

Here are 4 tips on how we can use our intuition to help us everyday:

Posted on

EXCELLENCE: You CAN Get There From Here!

New Book Release!

Now available from Amazon!

Kindle and Paperback

buy1._V192207739_

EXCELLENCE: You CAN Get There From Here!

A practical journey to personal success.

For many years I have been searching for examples of excellence and the things that lead to excellent results. Through my search I have found that excellence is not something that can be acquired through training, but it is an attitude or way of thinking.

Overall excellence is a journey from where we are to the best we can be in every aspect of our life.

After years of study I have found that the difference between success and mediocrity is not defined by a big advantage in talent or opportunity, but stems from a relentless pursuit of better.

The pursuit of excellence is the root of that difference and it is available to all of us. The difference comes down to perspective, planning and persistence.

This book provides a perspective and practical framework to enjoy the benefits of the pursuit of excellence including:

  • Overview of the benefits of pursuing excellence
  • The Excellence for Life and The Excellence Project Lifecycle program
  • 7 Principles for Personal Excellence

We are each running our own race. Let EXCELLENCE: You CAN Get There From Here guide you on your journey to personal success.

buy1._V192207739_

Posted on

Changes in Gratitude Changes in Attitude

4 Tips for adopting an attitude of gratitude

Changes in Gratitude Changes in Attitude

Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation. — Brian Tracy

Life is challenging and we do not have to look far to see bad things are happening around and even perhaps to us. It is a fact that bad things happen to good people. We don’t know why, but things still happens. What if we discovered that in spite of the bad things that are happening, there are far more good things happening than bad and that our happiness is just a decision away?

Have you ever met someone who truly had every reason to be upset and bitter who had a remarkably positive outlook? That person who is in the midst of a terrible challenge, perhaps struggling with a life-threatening health situation, or surrounded by financial and family crisis who yet seems to be the person smiling and encouraging others? How can they do that? What is the secret? How can we get some of that perspective? It turns out that our gratitude may truly impact our attitude and it is true that happiness is just a choice after all.

It turns out that people who routinely acknowledge gratitude by taking time to reflect upon things they are thankful for experience more positive emotions, feel more alive, sleep better, display more kindness and have stronger immune systems. They have more happiness, deeper relationships, greater productivity and are more relaxed.

These are more than just wishful claims. There is a huge body of research and studies to support this as more than just a theory. According to research gathered at happierhuman.com they claim the following:

  • A five-minute a day gratitude journal can increase your long-term well-being by more than 10 percent. That’s the same impact as doubling your income!
  • Gratitude generates social capital – in two studies with 243 total participants, those who were 10% more grateful than average had 17.5% more social capital.
  • Gratitude boosts our career. Gratitude makes you a more effective manager, helps you network, increases your decision making capabilities, increases your productivity, and helps you get mentors and proteges.
  • Gratitude makes us more optimistic. Gratitude is strongly correlated with optimism. Optimism in turn makes us happier, improves our health, and has been shown to increase lifespan by as much as a few years.
  • Gratitude improves your sleep. Gratitude increases sleep quality, reduces the time required to fall asleep, and increases sleep duration. Said differently, gratitude can help with insomnia.
  • Gratitude keeps you away from the doctor. Positive emotion improves health. The details are complicated, but the overall picture is not – if you want to improve your health, improve your mind.
  • Gratitude increases your productivity. Gratitude has been shown to increase self-esteem and reduce insecurity, this means that it can help us focus and improve our productivity.

There are studies that indicate practicing a routine of expressing gratitude may even change how our brain works. According to research reported at nymag.com, psychologists at Indiana University have published results indicating that people who practiced gratitude techniques brought a range of benefits such as feelings of increased well-being and reduced depression that often lingered well beyond the exercises (of the study). Another study found that acting happy, regardless of feelings coaxes one’s brain into processing positive emotions.

Even Oprah Winfrey writes in her personal blog that for years she has been advocating the power and pleasure of being grateful. She reports that gratitude is a powerful force in her outlook. She writes, “I know for sure that appreciating whatever shows up for you in life changes your personal vibration. You radiate and generate more goodness for yourself when you’re aware of all you have and not focusing on your have-nots.”

So how do we gain the benefits of gratitude? Here are 4 tips for adopting an attitude of gratitude:

Posted on

Stay Positive

4 Tips for staying positive

Stay Positive

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will. — Zig Ziglar

How often have you heard or thought the following? I have never seen things this bad. Things are really messed up. I am not surprised that happened, bad things are always happening to me. That can never work, it has never worked before. I really don’t see things getting better. I am really worried, the last time something like this happened it was really bad. I know I hear them quite frequently and often times find these things running through my own thoughts.

We have a natural tendency to seek the negative. It is probably in our ancestral DNA as a leftover defense mechanism for detecting danger. It may have helped our ancestors remain alert to hidden dangers and gave them an edge when facing a physical challenges. For us, it is a part of our nature that can get out of control and actually create danger for us. As this negative thought process tends to support worry and stress, it can drag us down both physically and emotionally. This leads to a chain reaction of worry and stress that consumes our energy, reinforces unrealistic concerns and robs us of our creativity. Ultimately, it robs us of our ability to appreciate and enjoy today.

In fact, this negative worry and stress cycle can lead to a condition called rumination. This is a term used to describe a process where by we relive a past negative experience including the emotions involved in a never ending cycle of preoccupation. We relive a single emotional event over and over again, remembering all of the bad things that happened and how that felt. This puts us back in that same situation again bringing those fear emotions to the surface that were originally meant to stir our action for survival. However, now they serve no purpose because we no longer need them. We survived. We are not currently in danger, but we make ourselves feel that way repeatedly. We have to break the cycle.

Negative things happen all around us everyday, we can’t avoid them. Ultimately we need to find a way to stay positive or we will be forever drawn into the worry-cycle that robs us of our happiness. We have to reprogram ourselves to see the positive. There are many techniques available to us to help us see the positive and stay that way. However, first we have to break the rumination cycle and stop letting our survival emotions keep us from achieving perspective on our past event and let us process it away.

One of the best techniques to break the rumination cycle is to reflect on events in the third person as it helps to remove the emotion. We no longer need the emotion, we are no longer in danger. We do not need the adrenalin boost to get out of danger. We just need to be able to process this event like any other event. A very helpful technique is to restate the situation from the perspective of a bystander also known as third person. State the event as if we are an observer. Say it simply and without emotion. After all, through the eyes of a third party, it was just another event. This is not meant to minimize the seriousness of the event, but just get us out of the action.

We will be surprised at just how much different the event replays when it is no longer happening to us. We will then see it without the fight or flight emotion of being the victim and be able to engage our reasoning to work our way through this event like we would any other event. Typically, we are able to analyze our experiences, learn what we can and abandon the rest. We do not dwell on the past or even relive the event, we just add what we have learned to our library of experiences.

To be happy there is very little other choice.

Here are 4 tips to help us stay positive:

Posted on

Our Reputation is our Currency

4 Tips for managing our reputation account

Our Reputation is our Currency

“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” — Benjamin Franklin

One of our greatest assets is our reputation. Our reputation is a reflection of our character and our calling card for our future. Our reputation is the current accumulation of the impression others hold of our accomplishments. It is the net result of what we have done and the way we have done it. Even those who have chosen to produce nothing have a reputation. We each have a reputation. There is no escaping the fact that others consider our credibility and set expectations based on our reputation, and that either opens or closes doors for our future.

Our reputation serves to provide opportunity or stand in our way to our next success. In a way, it serves as a form of currency. We add to our account when we accomplish something that produces respect in the eyes of our observers. When we complete a task or activity or produce something of value, the net result of that accomplishment gets credited to our reputation. Completing a project with excellence, helping someone in need, taking time to teach another, producing a better widget, all are things that get credited to our account in a positive way. Think of these as a net deposit to our account.

We make withdrawals from our account when we do something that damages our reputation. Claiming someone else’s work as our own, not meeting our commitment, not completing the work we were paid to produce and other things of that nature, withdraw from our account. The rate of withdrawal may be much more rapid than the rate of deposit of positive experiences.

We borrow from our account when we ask other people to trust us or to trust someone else based on our recommendation. When we ask people to move forward with something they are not sure about, they do so based on the value of our reputation. If in their eyes we have proven knowledgable and trustworthy then they will take a risk based on our advice. We have loaned out our credibility and reputation in the form of trust. If our advice proves trustworthy then our account will be credited with interest. If our advice proves not to be trustworthy, then we will have lost the value of their trust and reduce the balance in our reputation account.

Everything we do or say impacts our reputation and impacts how other people see us. With every interaction we are either adding or subtracting from our balance. We either continue to prove our trustworthiness or we diminish it. Every transaction either adds or subtracts from our account.

More than ever our reputation is being measured in public. Social media like Facebook and Twitter make it extremely convenient for others to vocalize their opinions of us. Metrics are available such as likes or retweets. If we publish, our readers may make comments. When we produce something our product may be reviewed on Amazon or Yelp and our comments may produce reactions. Consider that even our credit rating is a measure of our reputation. All of these things drive the total picture of who we are and either raise or lower the balance in our reputation account.

Our reputation is earned, not inherited or purchased. There is no amount of money that can buy a good reputation. Money may be spent to create positive messages, but in the end it is the people that we interact with that determine our reputation. Eventually, our true character will filter through the publicity and set the tone of our reputation. Our reputation is driven by our actions and how they are perceived by others.

It takes a long time to build a positive balance in our account but we can throw it away in a few minutes. We need to be careful how we spend our reputation. Do we continue to use it as capital to build greater success or do we throw it away by compromising our values?

Here are 4 tips for managing our reputation account:

1) Live our values. Ultimately our true values will be revealed. We are better served to understand our values and live up to our standards. Anything else will eventually be revealed in our reputation.

2) Think before we act. Is this action something that we could be proud of or does it fall short of our character? Pause to evaluate our action and not just follow the crowd.

3) Consider how our actions will be perceived. We need to act according to our values, but we need to do so in a way that considers how it will be received. Act in a manner that is encouraging and uplifting, even if the action is providing adjusting feedback.

4) Learn from our mistakes. We are not perfect and it is beyond our capability to be so. However, we can strive to do better next time. As we demonstrate our commitment to following our values our failures will be diminished and our reputation will be reinforced.

In the end it is all about living up to our values and making sure our actions reflect that. The accumulation of the net of our deposits and withdrawals from our account sets the value of our reputation.

Thank you for spending time with me today. I am very interested in hearing more about how you spend your reputation account.

Thanks,

Skip Gilbert

Posted on

Get Out of Our Own Way for Success

4 Tips for getting out of our own way for success

Get Out of Our Own Way for Success

Have you ever felt like things are just going too good, there must be something bad around the corner? Or things are starting to go well, I’m afraid to change anything because I may mess it up? Or how about, things seem to be stable now, but I know something bad is about to happen? I know at times I have had these thoughts, how about you?

If we are having these thoughts, we need to get them under control. Anticipating that something bad will happen just because nothing bad is happening at the moment is a formula for failure. We are expending energy focusing on things that may (or may not) happen rather than enjoying this moment of success and pouring our energy into creating more success. Sometimes we just need to get out of our own way.

We may find that we are afraid of success. We dream big and develop good plans that are leading to success and then as success approaches, we become apprehensive in accepting the results of our success. As an example, we may have developed a great breakthrough that will significantly improve a critical process at work. As we move forward with implementing our idea, we are overwhelmed with anxiety around the small risk that it will fail. The pressure builds as we realize that we will have to make a number of presentations to the executives to get everyone to follow the new procedure. All of the energy we put into worry is just wasted effort. Our effort will more than likely be successful and our anxieties are usually overblown. We need to maintain the same confidence we had in ourselves at the start of the effort all the way through the end of the effort and things will be just fine.

When we sabotage ourselves we may find our impending success is not as impactful as it could be. We may find that we are pursuing something that will bring success and we either knowingly or subconsciously start doing things that will limit the success. For example, we may be pursuing our big breakthrough project and then stop doing the follow-through on our communications as effectively as we are able, such that the success may not end up being everything we know it could be. Again, our fear that the results may be bigger than we are or may expose our perceived shortcomings causes us to try to diminish the level of success. We are just getting in our own way.

By focusing on the negative possibilities we risk bringing on the negative consequences we are projecting. Much like when learning to ride a bicycle for the first time, we see the hole in the road and are so afraid of hitting it we actually drive right into it. When we become overly focused on the negative, we lose our perspective and end up being drawn into the thing we are trying to avoid.

Basically, we are on a path for success and we get in our own way. The solution is to get out of our own way! The things we do to produce the success are the things we need to do to secure the success. We are more than able to follow-through on our good ideas. The success that comes our way as a result of our hard work is success that we deserve and we should enjoy it. Don’t stop short of the finish line, we are actually about to win the race!

So what can we do to get out of our own way? Here are 4 tips to help us.

1) Be consistent in our approach. Keep going with the things that have brought us this far. Keep going when we are starting to feel the pressure of success.

2) Maintain our confidence. Battle our own insecurities with confidence. Be complete in our preparation for the challenge. If giving a presentation, be sure to take time to develop it and rehearse. Be in the position of knowing the subject better than anyone else and we will have nothing to worry about. We are the expert and it will be apparent that we know what we are talking about.

3) Continue to be bold in our thinking. Bold thoughts put us on this path, bold thoughts brought us this far, bold thoughts will take us across the finish line.

4) Recognize those that helped. Chances are we are not the only ones involved in the success. Be sure to share the success with everyone involved. Do not make the success about us, but make it about everyone who helped and the success will flow back to us.

We did the work, things are looking good, now bring home the success! We deserve it and so do those around us. Be the leader all the way across the finish line, we are winning the race!

Thanks,

Skip Gilbert