Sunday, 22 March 2015
Enthusiasm vs. Action Why You Need One More Than the Other
Everybody wants to know the secret to launching a successful business. And, more often than not, any entrepreneur will have the inner dialogue that goes a little something like this: should I be all out there, enthusiastic, getting the word out? Or should I be nose to the grindstone, pay attention to the details, don’t look up?
Enthusiasm or action?
The truth is, you absolutely need both.
I know a lot of people with massive amounts of enthusiasm, but they can’t execute dick. Then, there’s the other side. People that can execute As on every paper, but without that passion, that bravado or fire, they’re only able to get limited return on that investment of execution.
But when it comes down to it, there is one that rises above the other. And that is action.
I’ve written before about how I think we are in the age of the introverted entrepreneur, and that applies here too. There are plenty of resources for you if you find yourself struggling with the enthusiasm part of the equation. Because when it comes down to it, what is more important: being excited about something, or actually doing that something?
People assume that because I am so outgoing, I’m mostly enthusiasm. But my enthusiasm is simply a byproduct of what comes naturally to me. I am far more action than anything else. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have so much going on. You need to put in the work. I pride myself on those skills, and I think my charisma often hides what I really am underneath, and that is: a hardcore executioner.
Don’t forget: I had run a large business before I ever “hit the scene,” so to speak. I was already thirty-years old when I started WineLibraryTV, the video show that put me on the map. I made my business happen, regardless of my personality. That was not the driving force. The driving force was my ability to execute.
So, if you only have enthusiasm, it’s time to find a partner or reevaluate, my friend. If you have the action skill set, use it. Use it a lot. And if you want the enthusiasm, go for it. But don’t waste time betting on your weaknesses. Bet on your strengths. That’s how you’ll win.
Thanks for reading! Do me a favor? Scroll down and click that recommend button. It would mean a lot to me.
This article is from https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/
Saturday, 21 March 2015
Here’s A Great Strategic Plan for Overcoming Any Challenge
Human beings are pleasure-seeking, change-avoiding creatures of habit.
Our minds are geared toward taking path of least resistance; i.e., the easy way. There is a lot of logic and good sense in that. However, life is full of challenges and hard stuff you just gotta do. It is unequivocally impossible to avoid challenges, and it would be remiss of us to try.
Challenge is vital for personal growth; because all the magic happens just outside your comfort zone; because the achievement experienced is proportionate to the challenge surmounted.
There is a general awareness and acceptance of the idea that pushing through challenges makes us stronger, smarter, more evolved and skilled individuals. But we really struggle to embrace challenge with open arms and to mentally push ourselves through the hard times. It is an absolute truism that the only real barrier is the one that exists in your mind.
We are all limited by our mental baggage; fear, doubt, all the useless unhelpful beliefs we carry with us into our future that limits our potential. Those, my friends, are our Mind Monkeys. And its time to get those nasty little blighters off our backs, and out of our heads.
The greatest crime in the world is not developing your potential. When you do what you do best, you are helping not only yourself, but the world.” – Roger Williams
I’ll let you in on a little secret. I am a coaching psychologist and corporate trainer, I am passionate about my career and I am good at it. But for many years I had an internal ‘I hate sales’ mantra going on, and this limited my ability to achieve my professional goal of enriching as many lives as I could.
Because lets face it, without an ability to create business relationships and sell yourself and your services, you severely hobble your chance of succeeding professionally.
So I recognised that I needed to beat that monkey and master the consultative sales process. Here is a strategic plan of how I did it, and you can do it too.
1. Look your monkey in the eye
As any Psychologist will tell you, insight is an imperative precursor to change. After all, we cannot change what we do not accept. It is therefore a fundamental necessity that we do as Sun Tzu said in the Art of War, and ‘Know thy self, know thy enemy’. Spend some time in reflection on the following points and get to know your monkey well.
- What is the focus of your challenging situation? Define the mental challenge you’re in. Is it sales, dealing with confrontation, staying committed, saying No? Name that monkey!
- Why exactly is this situation challenging? This is about identifying the emotions and expectations that are linked with the challenge. Generally it comes down to the specific fears and doubts we hold due to our old thinking patterns. Dig deep and be honest.
- How does this challenge affect you? Fear and doubt unmanaged result in avoidance, otherwise known as procrastination! So identify how this avoidance and procrastination affects the outcomes you get.
2. Create your monkey-beating strategic plan
Once you know your monkey, you can start to develop a plan that moves you forward. This plan helps you to stay focused on why working through the challenge is important to you and exactly what you need to do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis in order to set yourself on a failsafe path of accomplishment. It also identifies the resources and implementation strategies needed, and the accountability measures needed to stay on track.
- Objectives & timeframe. Keep in mind that the focus of this plan is overcoming a challenge and a psychological barrier; getting the monkey off your back so to speak. So the objectives should reflect that. It should be about personal growth rather than material gain.
- Action plan. The action plan is a breakdown of exactly what you are going to do on a regular basis in order to achieve the objective. Jeff Olson used the term ‘simple daily disciplines’ in his book The Slight Edge, and explained that the difference between great success and massive failure lies not in one-off monumental events, but in the tiny almost insignificant decisions and behaviours we engage in on a daily basis and which compound over time. You need to identify two elements in your action plan:
- Skill development. What are the practical abilities and skills you need to improve that are relevant to your challenge?
- Thinking & Emotions. What are the thinking and emotional strategies you will employ in order to overcome the fear and doubt associated with your challenge?
3. Apply the plan diligently
Of course, even the best laid plan is only as good as the action that follows it. So the final phase is to ensure you get yourself in a steady rhythm of daily action.
- Mindset. Adopt a mindset of diligence and discipline. ‘I do it til its done’. Stop stuffing around and procrastinating, and fully commit to the goal. Do the work, and you will overcome the challenge. Tell yourself to do it, and don’t move on to the easy stuff until the daily task is done.
- Routine. Know exactly when and where you will be enacting your plan. Remember we are creatures of habit, so making the tasks a part of your normal routine makes it so much easier to follow through with and dramatically increases your chance of success.
- Accountability. The difficulty with working on personal goals is that we are often not accountable to anyone. So overcome this by setting up a tracking method that records the tasks achieved on a daily basis and marks your progress over time.
Many years ago I decided to move into a training role specifically because I had quite a fear of public speaking. I recognised speaking as such a useful and versatile skill that I thought it was worth mastering. So I took on a training role (before I really had the confidence to do it!), and had about six months of uncomfortableness and self-doubt while riding a really steep learning curve.
And then I got to the other side. Presenting and training is now a strength, and something I highly enjoy. My boss and mentor had a wonderful phrase – she called it Immersion Therapy. You simply keep doing it until hard becomes easy. So if you want to take control of your life, if you want to be free of your mind monkeys, that’s all you gotta do. Just keep at it until hard becomes easy.
It takes a strong person to put themselves in the way of challenge. But it is in surmounting the challenge that we find the benefits gained vastly outweigh perils undertaken.
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something is more important than fear; The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all” – Meg Cabot
So go out there and face your monkeys; you might just find they’re not that scary after all.
Read The Original Article At Addicted2Success
Saturday, 7 March 2015
Friday, 6 March 2015
Thursday, 5 March 2015
10 Ways to Become a Better Leader
How would you describe a strong leader? In one leadership study, qualities such as assertiveness, adaptability, intelligence and conscientiousness were cited as the most important. "Research clearly shows that transformational leaders - leaders who are positive, inspiring, and who empower and develop followers - are better leaders," explains psychologist and leadership expert Ronald E. Riggio. "They are more valued by followers and have higher performing teams."
So what can you do embrace these characteristics and become a better leader?Transformational leaders are usually described as enthusiastic, passionate, genuine and energetic. These leaders are not just concerned about helping the group achieve its goals; they also care about helping each member of the group reach his or her full potential.
Consider some of the following tips for how to become a better leader and think about ways that you can implement these strategies in your daily life.
1. Learn More About Your Leadership Style
Understanding your current leadership style is essential. What are your strengths? Which areas need some improvement? One way to start assessing your skills is to take this leadership style quiz to get a general idea of how you lead. Once you have completed the quiz, read about the major characteristics of your dominant style. Are these qualities helping or hindering your leadership? Once you've determine which areas need some work, you can begin looking for ways to improve your leadership abilities.
2. Encourage Creativity
Intellectual stimulation is one of the hallmarks of transformational leadership. Followers need to be encouraged to express their creativity. Effective leaders should offer new challenges with ample support to achieve these goals. One way to foster creativity is to offer challenges to group members, making sure that the goals are within the grasp of their abilities. The purpose of this type of exercise is to get people to stretch their limits, but to not become discouraged by barriers to success.
3. Serve As a Role Model
Idealized influence is another of the four key components of transformational leadership. Transformational leaders exemplify the behaviors and characteristics that they encourage in their followers. They walk the walk and talk the talk. As a result, group members admire these leaders and work to emulate these behaviors. If you want to become a better leader, work on modeling the qualities that you would like to see in your team members.
4. Be Passionate
Would you look to someone for guidance and leadership if they did not truly care about the goals of the group? Of course not! Great leaders are not just focused on getting group members to finish tasks; they have a genuine passion and enthusiasm for the projects they work on. Start by thinking of different ways that you can express your zeal. Let people know that you care about their progress. When one person shares something with the rest of the group, be sure to tell them how much you appreciate such contributions.
5. Listen and Communicate Effectively
Another important characteristic of transformational leadership involves a focus on providing one-on-one communication with group members. Good leaders should express sincere care and concern for the members of their group both verbally and nonverbally. By keeping the lines of communication open, these leaders can ensure that group members feel able to make contributions and receive recognition for
6. Have a Positive Attitude
Transformational leaders have an upbeat, optimistic attitude that serves as a source of inspiration for followers. If leaders seem discouraged or apathetic, members of the group are likely to also become uninspired. Even when things look bleak and your followers start to feel disheartened, try to stay positive. This does not mean viewing things through rose-colored glasses. It simply means maintaining a sense of optimism and hope in the face of challenges.
7. Encourage People to Make Contributions
Let the members of your team know that you welcome their ideas. Leaders who encourage involvement from group members are often referred to as democratic or participative leaders. While they retain the final say over all decisions, they encourage team members to take an active role in coming up with ideas and plans. Research has shown that using a democratic leadership style leads to greater commitment, more creative problem-solving and improved productivity.
8. Motivate Your Followers
Transformational leaders also provide inspirational motivation to encourage their followers to get into action. Of course, being inspirational isn't always easy. Fortunately, you don't need motivational speeches to rouse your group members. Some ideas for leadership inspiration include being genuinely passionate about ideas or goals, helping followers feel included in the process and offering recognition, praise and rewards for people's accomplishments.
9. Offer Rewards and Recognition
A good leader knows that offering effective recognition and rewards is one of the best ways to help followers feel appreciated and happy. It may also come as no surprise that happy people tend to perform better at work. According to researchers Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, leaders can help group members feel happier by offering help, removing barriers to success and rewarding strong efforts.
Susan M. Heathfield, About.com's Guide to Human Resources, offers some great tips onhow leaders can express recognition and reward team members. Some of these strategies include listening without distraction, putting your praise in writing and publicly thanking people for their efforts.
10. Keep Trying New Things
Who says leadership is a one-way relationship? As you work toward honing your leadership skills, don't forget to look to your followers for feedback an inspiration. Pay attention to the things that have been effective in the past and always be on the lookout for new ways to inspire, motivate and reward group members.
Wednesday, 4 March 2015
Tuesday, 3 March 2015
16 Everyday Habits of Highly Productive People
Most articles about everyday habits offer only the overall, generic advice like: ‘go above and beyond,’ ‘get more organized,’ ‘respect others,’ etc. without offering any doable tricks or examples of what this actually looks like. What many of these articles fail to provide is applicable, basic tips that the basic layman can apply to life tomorrow and instantly feel better about their circumstances. That ends here.
Below you will find a list of 16 tips and tricks that will help guide you to a more fulfilled life.
1. They Make Lists
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the requirements of a dream-like project. Creating a daily list of “action items” that need to be accomplished keeps successful people honest, motivated, and constantly progressing. Start small, and gradually build. (Trick: do this first thing in the morning. Make a brief list of all the things you need to accomplish to make the day a triumph.)
2. They Maximize Down Time
There’s always something to learn, or things that need to get done. Successful people embrace this. Having a time surplus is a good indicator that you’re challenge is either too small or you’re not thinking big enough. (Trick: concentrate on segregating your free time – i.e. one hour video editing practice, half hour reading video editing book, half hour watching beautifully edited films of others, repeat.)
3. They Reflect on Mistakes & Grow
Carol Dweck concentrates on the fixed vs. growth oriented pathways of the brain in her New York Times best selling book Mindsets. When faced with a challenge, overcoming fear, or coming back from a “failure,” successful people are focused on growth more than they fixate on the outcome of failure. (Trick: when feeling letdown, reflect by writing 3 things that went wrong in the process and how you plan to fix them next time.)
4. They Limit Technological Distractions
We live in a world that is constantly stimulated by electronic communication. Text messaging, the virtual worlds of social media, and mobile email capability can become serious time drains if handled inappropriately. (Trick: limit yourself to checking your social media accounts and emails once a day to limit distractions. There’s an app to keep you honest with that.)
5. They Forget About Perfection
Eric Thomas sums it perfectly with his statement, “There will never be the perfect time to do a great thing.” Successful people understand this, and don’t use their perfectionism substitute for procrastination. No matter how inexperienced, uneducated, or unprepared you might feel, right now is the best time to jump into action. (Trick: think of an endeavor you undertook and performed perfectly. No mistakes at all. Difficult? That’s what I thought.)
6. They Collect Their Thoughts Immediately
For many successful people, their best ideas, or what psychologists call ah-ha ‘moments,’ come at inopportune times like during exercise or their daily commute. Collecting those thoughts will allow you to reflect on them later. (Trick: keep a pocket-sized journal in your backpack or purse for note taking. There are apps for this, too.)
7. They Do Nice Things, But Don’t Tell Everyone
One of the many problems mass media has created is the idea that successful people always perform in front of others. As a society we often discredit the amount of hard work, practice, and sleepless nights these phenoms spent alone with their craft, with no one around. (Trick: do something small each day for a whole week to progress your dream. Tell no one.)
8. They Remind Themselves of Death
We have a limited amount of time on earth, and there’s no sense in hiding from how fast time goes. Successful people understand this, and use it as an advantage in letting no day go by wasted or squandered. (Trick: Envision an older version of yourself watching you throughout the day, and do today what you’d regret later in life. Creepy? Yes. Effective? Yes.)
9. They Define Success Themselves
Success is a large word thrown around by many small mouths. It’s a shame and, honestly, it’s a sham. A large bank account, sexy spouse, or lavish wardrobes do not define success in business, life, love, and other. YOU do. (Trick: look to people you idolize. Write down what you like about them. Chances are good that the adjectives and emotions you used are some of their proudest features.)
10. They Outwork Everyone
My mother once told me that, “There will always be someone stronger, faster, smarter, and more capable than you, but you’ll never be outworked.” Though some may view this as counterproductive, I’ve never had such sage and practical advice in my life. (Trick: pretend adversity. I guarantee you’ll want to prove everyone wrong as a result, even if they’re made up.)
11. They Don’t Envy Others
Successful people don’t have time to worry about the successes or failures of others because they’re too focused on what they want. Eliminate envy, and other negative emotions, as you’ll surely free your mind for bigger things. (Trick: talk up and freely promote others you admire, even if they don’t return the favor.)
12. They Heed Danger in Lounging
I’m not here to demonize TV, but studies have shown that success and television viewing have a negative correlation (when success goes up, television watching goes down). In fact, Craig Dewie did a brilliant piece on this some time ago. We only have so much free time in the day, and successful people spend it educating themselves by feeding their brain instead of numbing it.
13. They Believe That Fate Is Fake
Destiny and luck is a product of hard work and sacrifice. Successful athletes, CEOs, and film stars don’t “take days off.” They’re consistently dedicated to bettering each aspect of their life daily. (Trick: don’t overload yourself at once. Take small bites, 7 days a week, and build up.)
14. They Are The Man in the Glass
Successful people know what they want, and visualize how their strengths and weaknesses will play to their favor or downfall. Sure, everyone’s filled with doubt and fear that they’ll flop, but successful people know exactly what it takes to rise above as a result of spending so much time alone. At the end of the day, they are the only person they answer to. (Trick: Be by yourself. No phone. No friends. No roommates. You. Alone. BY YOURSELF.)
15. They Embrace Criticism
Nobody likes being booed, but they normally come from the cheap seats. Instead of getting defensive and immediately dismissing the negative opinions of others, successful people listen, heed those words, and use them to grow. (Trick: next time you’re confronted with negativity, agree and thank them for it. It will completely disarm your hater.)
16. They Always Finish Strong
No one, I repeat, NO ONE is an off-the-bat success. From Muhammad Ali to Mahatma Gandhi, all successes have taken their bruises and lumps, and they kept on going. No matter what happens, or whatever the end result may be, seeing something through to the end will help you develop the resolve to continue taking chances, growing, and bettering yourself.
Next time you’re in the situation of becoming your own worst critic, remember that,
“The road to personal excellence has no end.”
Trust in yourself, keep your head down, and keep moving forward no matter what.
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