Question: One of the toughest things about chasing the dream is managing the disciplines of persistent action and hopeful patience that are required to ultimately see the vision come to be. This is an area of huge tension. How do dream chasers manage that tension and thrive?

Fulfilling your dreams and your ability to thrive in the areas of your life that matter most can be simplified by breakthroughs—a moment in time when the impossible becomes possible. If anyone wants to thrive in any area of their life, they have to reach a point of breakthrough where they will not settle for anything less than extraordinary in that area.

Whether someone wants a breakthrough in their:

• Business
• Intimate life
• Emotional well-being
• Health
• Finances
• Career

There are only three areas to break through in order to feel lasting success.

One breakthrough area is your STRATEGIES. I personally live for finding strategies—those shortcuts that help people get more done in less time. What is it that gets some people to succeed while others fail who seem to have equal enthusiasm or passion for the tasks at hand? They have insights, distinctions, and strategies that allow them to achieve more quickly.

For example, take someone who was born very poor, without an education, and had emotional and financial challenges but found a way to be highly successful and living an inspired life. I don’t believe that’s lucky—luck is what you do for a day or a week—strategies are what make it consistently happen for decades. A strategy can be found in the simplest or slightest distinction and it can happen in an instant.

As I described above, there are three elements that effect the long-term success or failure of a person and whether they break through or not. For example, there are hundreds or even thousands of strategies out there for losing weight, and frankly most of them are proven to work—if you work them! We’re not hurting for strategies. There are fitness clubs on every street, dieticians, health coaches, training videos, audios, books, etc. Yet 65% of the United States is overweight and 33% is obese, and those numbers are only growing geometrically. I would suggest to you that the problem for most people is not that they don’t have a strategy—it’s that they’re not using a strategy that works for them or acting upon it. Why? Because they have a disempowering STORY.

We all have stories—narratives we tell ourselves about why we can or cannot do or achieve something in our lives. Whether we believe we can or can’t, we’re usually right, because our expectation controls our focus, perceptions, and the way in which we feel and act. When a person succeeds it’s because they have the right strategy, and they found it usually because they have a story that it was possible or they could make it happen. Often people are not losing weight because they have a simple story that says, “I’m big boned.” With that as your core belief system you are never going to find a strategy, and even if you do you won’t follow through on it.

Your story may be true—you may have been through a horrific experience–but that’s not the reason why you can’t have the life you want. For example, you might have had a bad breakup five years ago, but that’s not the reason you haven’t found the passionate and loving relationship you deserve.  A disempowering story is one of the things that controls people and makes them stuck in their beliefs.

Most people tell a story in a selective way so they don’t have to ever maximize their effort towards a strategy because they’re afraid they will fail. In order to get out of a story you have to be triggered by hunger and desire—if someone wants something strong enough they will break through the story that’s limiting them.

Of course, whether you have an empowering story or disempowering one is influenced most powerfully by the mental and emotional STATE you’re in at this moment in time. As human beings we all develop emotional patterns—moods—that are mental or emotional states that tend to filter how we look at our lives.

This influences the stories that we make up about who we are, what we’re capable of, or what’s achievable or not. The states we go into most often then become the most powerful filter of all that will determine whether we find the strategies necessary to succeed and whether we come up with a story that will empower us. The big question then becomes, what is it that we can do to change our state of mind when we’re not able to maximize our true potential? One of our greatest scientific discoveries has been that you can change your emotional mood by a radical change in your “physiology.”

For people who are experiencing stress at any given moment, a form of relief can be to simply change your physiology—take a couple of deep breaths. Most people only use 20% of their lung capacity taking small short breaths, but 70% of the body’s toxins can actually be released when taking a full breath! By taking the time to fill your lungs and release, you can not only improve your health but also radically decrease the anxiety related to that moment. There are many ways to change your physiology and in our seminars we prove this time after time by taking people who feel depressed and having them make a radical shift. Intuitively we know this can be changed not only by the way we move, but our breath and body temperature as well.

The second thing that affects our state is what we focus on. For example, if you’ve been at a funeral honoring someone you cared about and everyone is in a sad state and afterwards someone shares a story or anecdote about something that person did that was extremely humorous, suddenly everyone goes from tears to laughter. In an instant our states can be changed by what we focus on. What’s wrong is always available—but so is what’s right. Whatever we focus on effects our state and our state then effects the story we have about who we are, what’s life about, what’s possible and what’s not. From that story we will often determine whether or not we will maximize our capabilities and the strategies that will help us achieve what we’re truly after in a sustainable way.

Learning to put yourself in a peak state consistently is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself and your life. It can transform your stories and give you the strategies to breakthrough. This is a huge focus that we just don’t tell people but what we train people to do with their minds and bodies in an instant, on cue, so they can shift the quality of their performance. Whether it’s a peak performance athlete like Serena Williams, MMA champion Jon Jones, a president of a company, a parent, or someone in prison—if we’re going to shift our life it comes down to these three fundamentals.

Change your strategy, change your result.

Change your story, change your life.

Change your state—you change it all!

Top Ten Things Successful People Do Differently

1. Be specific! Knowing exactly what you want to achieve gives you a better idea of what success looks like. For instance, “lose weight” or “sleep more” are vague. What specifically do you want?
2. Seize the moment to act on your goals! We’re busy folks and it’s easy to not find the time to act on goals. Decide when and where you will take action you want to take, specifically. For instance, work out Monday, Wednesday and Friday before work for 30 minutes. Studies show this helps your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by about 300%!
3. Monitor your progress. Know exactly how far you have to go and adjust accordingly. Check your progress honestly and frequently–weekly, or even daily, depending on the specific goal.
4. Be a realistic optimist. Engage in lots of positive thinking regarding how likely you are to achieve a specific goal.  Believe in your ability to achieve! Don’t underestimate how difficult it will be though. Any worthwhile goal requires effort.
5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Most of us believe we are what we are and can’t change that so we focus on goals that prove that. Our belief in fixed ability is just wrong. You can change and reach your full potential! Enjoy the ride in developing and acquiring new skills.
6. Have grit. Grit makes all the difference in any challenging situation. Effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.
7. Build your willpower muscle. Build up your self-control muscle by exercising it regularly. Start with one activity you’d rather not do and plan how you will deal with roadblocks. For instance, when you get a sugar craving, eat a piece of fruit. Over time, your muscle will grow and it will get easier.
8. Don’t tempt fate! Don’t overtax your willpower muscle. For instance, by dieting and quitting smoking at once. Don’t make reaching a goal harder than it is by being overly confident in your ability to resist temptation. Pace yourself! Be kind.
9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won’t do. If you’re planning to stop a bad habit, focus on what you will do instead of the bad habit. For instance, if you’re working to control your temper, you might make a plan like “If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down.” Plan your replacements in advance.
10. Review and celebrate successes, even small ones. Often highly successful people focus on what’s not done, nothing is ever good enough. List all your positive steps to get a sense of progress. It will help keep you from getting discouraged.

These are crazy times. I had an opportunity to speak about resilience last month to a group of unemployed HR professionals.  Being in this job market is no fun. Being able to adapt to stress and adversity is critical to maintaining your balance, even your sanity! Resilience won’t make your problems go away but it will help you see past them and find some enjoyment in life.

What goes hand in hand with resilience is motivation. Resilience and motivation are two critical skills successful people strengthen through deliberate practice. It’s that deliberate practice part that gets most of us. Discipline is required. This month we will explore the difference having these two will make in adapting to the many losses, failures and bad situations we all have faced lately.

Use Your Brain!

Developing a winner’s brain can be achieved!  In previous issues, I have mentioned using the power within–your brain–to achieve results no matter the circumstances that surround you.

PRACTICE.

When you start a new habit, you are actually making new pathways in your brain. Winners know this and through deliberate practice, control their thoughts and focus in.

FOCUS.

Winners are adept at tuning out distractions and choosing the best way to focus on a task to achieve a desired outcome. Their brains even “light up” differently when they’re focused. Many are able to get into “flow” despite distractions. This world has distractions!

ENERGY.

Winners know how to keep the pump flowing. They can embrace a bottomless supply of energy. And believe it or not, they know how to nap when they need to! Yep, sometimes you just need to let go and let your brain figure it out!

PERSISTENCE.

Average people have limited persistence and winners keep at it! They just can’t let a problem go unsolved and are able to muster up even more energy to get the job done!

Talk to Yourself!

We all talk to ourselves. Winners seem to have an optimistic explanatory style rather than a pessimistic style. People can be taught to be optimistic and resilient by changing their explanatory style. They don’t fall into helplessness with their thinking. They say things to themselves like “I can handle this” vs. “This always happens to me”. No victim mentality for them!

I believe that leaders in today’s organizations need to take a look at this whole resiliency and motivation thing. Looking toward the future with optimism, painting a picture of that vision for their companies, is critical in these chaotic times.

Life isn’t about what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens. It’s a choice. It can be made a better choice if we practice.

I’ve been asked to speak to a local association on the generational gap at work. Because the subject of people is my thing, I’ve noticed all sorts of information coming my way about generations and parenting since saying yes. Do you ever find that to be true for you? I think it’s the same phenomenon as when you buy a limited edition car; suddenly you see them all over the place!  It’s like your eyeballs have a filter on them. In reality, we all have filters, but that’s another story!

So if you will indulge me, I’d like to approach this a little differently. I’d like to compare the Boomers to the upcoming generation “Z” (I made that up but it may be true). I’m big on understanding people in the context in which they grew up. And ask anyone who has ever done a team building process with me or even an interview for a job, I love to ask “what was most challenging or difficult for you growing up?” (a la Lencioni).  It says A LOT about you!

Tiger Moms and Choppers

If you haven’t heard of Tiger Mom, you’re still hibernating. This Asian Mom, (Amy Chua) , is another rendition of Extreme Parent, the total opposite of Parens heliocopterus. Nancy Gibbs, a regular gig in Time, says the main difference in the two styles of Tigers and Choppers is :

• Tigers fixate on success (defined as achievement) while Choppers are obsessed with failure or pain and preventing it at all costs.
• Tigers operate in a culture of discipline; Choppers in a culture of fear.
• Tigers see kids as “tough” and able to take the ” abuse” while Choppers see them as “precious, to be raised under glass”. They may even get mad at the teacher for a bad grade!

In Gibb’s article (Time, January 31, 2011) she quotes Edward, Duke of Windsor, as saying of Americans: “The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children”. And he knew a thing or two about indulgence!

Could the Chopper’s fear of failure actually assure it if their children never get clobbered by a challenging teacher or learn some of life’s tough lessons–the very things that “build character” and build resilience and resourcefulness for a competitive adult world out there?!

OK, to my point, I know I get off subject at times, I’m thinking about the environment that shapes us as kids, when our personalities and values are most impressed. How could this affect the future workforce, this Gen Z????

Back in MY Day!

My world was different. As a Boomer, my parents came together after a World War. It was kids, home, stationwagon and the American dream. Things moved fast after that: civil rights, man on the moon, Cold War, sexual revolution, hippies, Vietnam, weed, Television, and assassinations to mention a few in my teenage years.
Some things that contributed to being the worker bees we are (and I’ll use past tense because that’s how many Boomers feel: past tense!) :

• We had curfews, expected study times, bedtimes, household chores that taught us discipline and time management. Most of us got paddled if we broke rules. We respected authority.
• We sat around the family table for dinner and communicated face-to-face, learned manners, learned  what was an appropriate topic or not,  so later we were socially competent, good team players and especially good and effective leaders.
• We earned allowance for contributions to the home, learning independent life skills like laundry, ironing (remember irons?), yard maintenance, cooking, babysitting, lemonade stands, and neighborhood haunted houses. We learned engagement, independence and team contribution that served us in adulthood.
• When we got that allowance, we would save for things we lusted after, like a bike or tickets to a movie or clothes like our peers wore. We learned to budget, consider profit, and delay gratification. It meant something when we finally got our goal. We learned to earn promotions and recognition. Hard works pays off…right?
• It was OUR fault when our grades dropped and we faced our disappointed parents. We got grounded. Some had to stay back a grade and redo it til they got it right.  Therefore,  we also learned to be responsible adults who can be accountable at work. And very dependable and dedicated. You don’t find that kind of loyalty much any more. Boomers worked into the night.
• We had free time and we used it to climb trees, dam up creeks, build snow igloos, and watch tadoples turn into frogs. We eagerly explored our world and moved our bodies outside. We learned about cycles of nature and later cycles of business and economies. We learned to get quiet in nature so we could get in touch with our bodies, imaginations and intuition. As adults, we were creative and self aware.

Where is this going?

I am concerned about the future US talent that will fuel our economy and compete with the global world of work.

In addition to fragile financial foundations, Helicopter parents today think reading the right books or asking the right expert will somehow crack the parenting code when they just need to relax and think about the behavior they are enabling in relation to independent adult  behavior. Will it help or hinder? Will it instill a tenacity or responsibility, a drive for breakthrough, pride in work done well, global collaboration or will it evoke the whine of the entitled or the pampered?

What do you think? Deep in my heart I believe mankind always corrects itself. Am I naive? Will we be OK?