Here’s a puzzle: Even though people talk about leadership all the time, and roughly eight kajillion leadership books have been published, we’re still plagued with fair to poor leaders in many, perhaps most, organizations.
Why is this? Part of the problem is that most of us, deep down, don’t really think it’s possible for an okay leader to become a great leader. We believe leadership ability is inborn. Either you have it or you don’t. Unfortunately, thinking something is impossible makes it very difficult to accomplish.
The other difficulty is that most adults aren’t very good learners. In order to become the best leader (or, actually, the best anything) you’re capable of being, you have to become a great learner. Here are the three things most required to be that kind of powerful learner: keep reading…
Minimalism is less about the things you remove and more about the things you add. The joy of minimalism lies in what you choose to pursue with your life rather than material possessions.
Don’t settle for a relationship that won’t let you be yourself. – Oprah Winfrey
When it comes to change, people are more apt to do it for others than for themselves. It was no different for me when I morphed myself to be the “right” kind of friend, the “cool” girlfriend, or the “most dependable” employee. In each of those instances other people really liked me, but I didn’t like me very much…(read the rest)
eating whole foods (instead of junk foods) became normal
meditating every morning became normal
having less stuff and a simpler home became my new normal
reducing and eventually (mostly) eliminating sugar became normal
and so on: no car, walk and ride mass transit, do less, becoming content with myself, working for myself, etc.
In fact, you could say the last 8 years of my life has been a constant adjusting of what’s normal. Adjusting normal is my normal now.
However, for most people, changing is tough because there’s some pain in changing. When you have a problem, there is the pain it causes in your life, but there’s also a pain of trying to change it. When the payoff of trying to change is outweighed by the pay off of continuing the old way, people stick with what they’re comfortable with.
How do we overcome this problem of the pain of change? It’s the mantra of this site: Start small, start with one thing at a time, and make the change easier. You want to make changing the path of least resistance, because change usually isn’t for most people.
If you make a drastic change, it feels really hard and really different, and not something you can stick to for very long.
But when you make a change easier, it makes it easier to take that all-important first step. Once you take that first step, you have a bit of forward momentum. And it’s much easier to be consistent and stick with something for a long time.
Let’s take an example: I used to drink coffee with lots of added sugar. I used to think there was nothing wrong with that, but eventually I realized I was making an excuse for putting crap in my body. So I started by putting half a teaspoon less in my coffee. At first, it was slightly less good. But after a few days, it taste exactly like normal, like what I was used to. And then I took out another half a teaspoon, and it was slightly less good for a while, and then after a while it was exactly what I was used to.
Our minds tend to adjust over time. That’s my change process — I gradually adjust what’s normal to me. Eventually I didn’t need any sugar in my coffee, and it was just as good for me, I didn’t have all that crap, and I enjoyed it the same.
You can do this with anything — exercise, meditation, procrastination. Gradually adjust what feels like normal to you.
Here’s the process:
Start small. What’s the smallest increment you can do? Do this for at least 3 days, preferably 4-5.
Get started. Starting the change each day is the most important thing. Want to run? Just get out the door. Want to meditate? Just get on the cushion.
Enjoy the change. Don’t look at this as a sacrifice. It’s fun, it’s learning, it’s a challenge.
Stick to the change. Notice your urge to quit. Don’t act on it. Keep going.
Adjust again. When the change becomes normal, make another small adjustment.
This is the process of creating a new normal. It’s beautiful and simple.
“After a couple of years of self-doubt and continuing to work for other people, I realized that if I put my efforts into building my own business, I could be just as successful as I was making others.”
For a long time, I thought I had to choose one thing and just focus on that. I also fell into the trap of believing that I should get a “good job” and the rest of my life would fall into place. During my twenties, I worked as a Retail Store Manager and a Financial Adviser. I was good at my jobs but I wasn’t passionate about them. Although everyone considered me a top performer, deep down I knew I wasn’t putting in nearly enough effort.
When I became pregnant with my son, I took about a year and a half off to focus on mommyhood. I quickly realized that I wasn’t going to be a stay at home mom because I missed being involved in business decisions. However, I didn’t want my son to spend the majority of his day in daycare. I was consulting on the side and began thinking seriously about doing it full time to become a work at home mom. After a couple of years of self-doubt and continuing to work for other people, I realized that if I put my efforts into building my own business, I could be just as successful as I was making others.
My other business ventures - writing, hosting and ministering - fit into my belief that you can have it all: personal, professional and spiritual development. Many women have been led to believe that they have to choose. You can’t be a sexy minister or you can’t be a ‘good’ working mom. I believe that it’s possible to be all the things you want to be if you figure out what is most important to you.
Finding your passion and/or being successful is no longer about society’s definition of those things but about what really makes you happy. At one point, people thought having a lot of money would solve all of their problems so the focus was on acquiring external things. I believe a shift is happening in our society where people are starting to refocus on internal fulfillment.
Why do you like it?
I love having control over my life. I love baking cupcakes for my son’s first grade class. I love sitting down and writing for hours. I love meeting new people and introducing them to the thousands of people in my network. I really love that I am in a place where I am being the person that I want to be. I may not have a lot of stuff or money but I have peace, joy, happiness and love. I have all of the things that money can’t buy.
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Growing up I wanted to be a lawyer. Although I graduated with a BA in Political Science from Vanderbilt University; I realized that I didn’t like reading as much as I loved to write. I do still enjoy a good debate, especially about politics ;)
“Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.” – Thomas Edison
Your subconscious loves to do work while your body performs other tasks that are easy. I can prove this very easily by asking you how many good ideas you have had while driving or in the shower. When you are relaxed yet slightly distracted, your mind is often at its best.
Using subconscious requests will…
Improve your motivation.
Help you become happier.
Increase your emotional intelligence.
You’ll see improvement in less than a month.
My last request was…
“Please give me more patience when commuting to work and allow me to even enjoy my time in the car.”
Within a month I was enjoying my ride to work.
My latest request is…
“Let’s find creative ways to grow my blog.”
I took this approach because it’s going to take a request to my subconscious and action in my waking life to make this happen. This request is only a few days old, but it’s already working. Instead of just asking people to help vote for my blog on social sites that rate articles such as Stumble Upon and Digg, I’ve change my communication. I now friend someone, give a compliment (only if they are worthy) and tell them that they ever need any help to shoot me a message. They are much more willing to help me out.
Mindset
My mindset is changing by setting my subconscious on a certain issue. I start to see new angles that I’ve never seen before. This subconscious request works for personal issues as well as work related concerns.
The 3 step request only takes five minutes:
Step 1: Before you turn out the light, close your eyes and take one minute to make a request to your subconscious. It can be anything. I would start small and make it open ended. I wouldn’t request to be an astronaut by the end of the month. Your subconscious is good, but not that good.
Step 2: Take two minutes to visualize yourself actually able to do this thing. Whether it is getting the motivation to jog before work or eating a healthy snack, you must visualize yourself doing the request that you asked your subconscious. Let’s say you want to jog before work: imagine yourself getting up a few minutes earlier than usual, putting on your exercise clothes and jogging shoes, and heading out into the crisp air. Then you start jogging, watching the sun rise over the buildings, the birds chirping, and you are feeling good.
Step 3: Take two minutes to imagine the feeling that will occur when you are able to accomplish this new thing. How do you feel when you walk back in your front door after a morning jog? Energized? Whatever feeling you want to achieves imagine that you have already created this emotion inside of yourself. Let it sink in, then go to sleep and let your subconscious do the rest of the work.
Your subconscious mind wants to help you improve your life; you just have to trust its vast resources and allow it to do its thing.
The Change Blog Recommends:
Action Makes Your Request Real
You may not want to go jogging after the first subconscious request, but try to visualize yourself going through the motions the first couple of weeks. Then just start putting on your exercise gear and go for a five minute walk. Taking these baby steps will set you up for your jogging routine. Then after a few weeks just go for it. Now that you have your emotions geared toward jogging it should spur you into action.
By allowing the emotional momentum to build, you can create motivation that will help you accomplish things that make you happier.
I have never been big on New Year’s Resolutions. As Renee mentioned in her recent post, resolutions are monthly, weekly, or even daily occurrences – I make them when I feel that I need to.
For the last five years, I have been a student, so twice a year I would find myself making a truckload of resolutions: January and September. My first year of university was a shock for me. I was still applying the work ethic I had in high school – that is, pretty much no work ethic at all – and when grades from my first semester rolled in, they were not up to my standards. I quickly set resolutions for the following semester. I would go to every 8AM class! I would do all of my readings before discussion! I would meet with my professors in office hours! Similar to many New Years Resolutions, my behaviour changed for a week before I went back to my old habits. Another set of grades came in April, and again I was unhappy.
I repeated this pattern for two years before deciding to take a year off to figure some things out. Looking back on it, it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made for myself. I knew something wasn’t working, I knew I was unhappy, but still I found myself unable to make the necessary changes to fix it. I took my time off to ask myself a lot of questions. Was university the right choice for me?
Three months into my gap year, I had the answer: yes, it was, and I had been taking it for granted for two years. I found myself missing school constantly. I missed learning. I missed surrounding myself with smart people who disagreed with me. And instead of setting relatively superficial goals about my behaviour, I tried to get to the root of my problem and change my perspective. Why was I in school? What did I want to get from the experience?
When I went back to school after my year off, I began to approach my classes from a truly groundbreaking perspective: I was in school to learn! For two years, I had perceived school as the means to an end: a degree. Suddenly, school became the end in itself. I started seeing my readings as learning opportunities, instead of words to study and memorize. As soon as I started caring about the material, I started actually learning the material. I thought about it outside of class, I talked about it with my friends, I started connecting it with all of my other subjects. I didn’t need to set an arbitrary goal of speaking to my professors during office hours; I was so engaged with the material that it became a natural thing to do.
This ties in with the Triad of Change: that to fix a problem in your life, you need to make a change to your behavior, your perspective, or your structure. In changing one, the others should more easily follow. Semester after semester, I found myself unable to change my behavior. When I reflected on this, I realized this applied to almost every area of my life: my health, my relationships, my education. The only thing that has worked for me is to change my perspective on each of these areas, and my behavior and life structure followed quickly. I have friends who can snap their fingers and change their behavior: for them, it may be better for them to start by setting behavioral goals, such as creating a study schedule or meeting regularly with professors. Structural changes may include changing your school schedule entirely: taking fewer classes, or starting class later in the day. A lot of change comes from trial and error: but goals are meaningless if you abandon them, so start by making the changes you know are within your capacity.
You’ve probably heard before that one of the keys to being successful (in anything) is setting realistic, achievable goals. Personally, I’ve always struggled with this. It might be ironic, but I’ve even had to make “making achievable goals” one of my personal goals. I’m very pleased to say, however, that after working on this skill for the past few months, it’s already starting to pay off for me, and I though I might impart some of the things I’ve learned here.
Back in July I made a commitment to myself to be healthier. While well intentioned, goals don’t really get more vague than that. For one solid week I awoke every day and made a fresh, nutritious breakfast. I got more exercise. I also went to bed at a reasonable hour, knowing full well the effect that a proper night’s sleep would have on my personal wellbeing. All of these things are undoubtedly healthy. The problem was that I didn’t continue those habits. After that week I woke up and thought, “I’ve been so healthy this week, I can let myself slide a little. Just for today.” So I had a bowl of sugary cereal and didn’t exercise. The next day I felt equally unmotivated to going back to being healthy and ended up going out with my friends and having a few drinks, meandering home somewhere in the vicinity of 2 A.M. Now neither of these things are terrible, but I’m sure it’s not hard to see the pattern that’s forming. My original goal of being healthy fell by the wayside, and I had no discernable plan to get back to it. This, I came to learn, is where I failed.
Making goals—even well intentioned ones—too broad destines them for failure. Without clear steps on how to get there it’s doubtful that you’ll be able to stay on the right track. The key that I missed in this instance was to make smaller, more attainable and measurable goals that will build up to a larger objective.
Fresh Inspiration
Since the summer I’ve come to learn quite a bit about setting goals, and perhaps more importantly, how to put in place steps to achieve them. It started when I was catching up on some podcasts while doing some household chores. I listened to an episode of This American Life about Superheroes (which you can find here), and a particular story about a lady named Zora jumped out at me. Zora is a real life Wonder Woman. She trained herself to be a superhero ever since she was a girl, learning to fly helicopters, master martial arts, and defuse bombs. She managed all of this by keeping a list (which she referred to as “The List”) that she would constantly update and revise with all of the skills she wanted to learn if she were to become a real superhero. Amazingly, it worked. Zora didn’t become a superhero overnight, but with time and a hefty amount of diligence she’s been able to accomplish some incredible things.
The methodology behind achieving incredible things by setting smaller, achievable goals is well documented. One of my favorite reads on the subject is here at How Stuff Works. It’s great food for thought, and it can be applied to your career, your health, your personal life, or whatever else you choose.
As corny as it sounds, I took this lesson to heart. I made a list, and I didn’t just fill it with goals like “be healthy,” either. Now I wake up every morning and take my dog for a 30-minute walk, come home and make a nutritious breakfast that I’ve laid out in a meal plan the week before. Three times a week I exercise using a set schedule and workout plan. I haven’t started regulating my sleep yet, but that might come in a later iteration of my list. So far, my goal is to keep those habits and eventually bring myself down to a manageable 15% body fat. When I can put a check beside that goal I can readdress my list and work out a new plan for my health and my future. I might even start doing my own 30 day challenges like our own Renee Masur here at Sokanu. The lesson here is that making attainable goals can make all the difference between failure and success.
