The Rocking Chair Test

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In order to really succeed with your goals, you not only need to take action, but feel motivated to do so. Very often, even what initially sounded like a great goal can lose its edge. Here’s some ideas to get you reconnected with your goals, re-energised and raring to go on your actions!

 

 

Take 2 of your business goals and 1 personal goal. It doesn’t matter whether you’re highly motivated to achieve them or need to re-engage – just choose the ones you’d love to kickstart!

Write a paragraph about them, as if you were selling the outstanding benefits of achieving these to someone else, to inspire them. Why are they so amazing? What would you gain by having achieved them in your life? What will having them enable you to do? How will it make you feel/ make others around you feel? By doing this with even the most mundane of tasks or targets, you can start to change your perception of them. Which in turn starts to awaken your curiosity as you look to finding ways of achieving them!

Now write down the first action you will take to move towards each of them in the next 24 hours. The power, the absolute energy of making any goal work is to take action immediately on it. I have a saying – never leave a place of learning without taking action. So if you’ve learned something so far in this exercise, identify what you need to do to take action on that!

 Do 'the rocking chair' test. Close your eyes and imagine you're 95 years old, sitting in a rocking chair, looking back at what you achieved in your life and in particular, these goals. How would you feel had you not taken action, had not done what you said you were going to do?

Now, some of you may be thinking – I can honestly say I would not be thinking about these goals in my rocking chair! It was only about decorating the spare room! Or getting another 5 clients by the end of the month. Big deal! But think of it like a domino effect. If you hadn't pushed that first domino (or taken that first action step), you might not have met one of the best clients you ever had. Which may have led to you being recommended for promotion. Which may have led to you enjoying that so much, you looked for the next challenge. Which may have led to you moving to another company, or growing your business. Which may have led you to be able to take that trip of a lifetime/pay off your mortgage early/buy your dream home/travel more/anything that you'd only previously dreamed of.

Get the picture? Every action you take (or don't take) in your life has a direct consequence later on in your life! So go back to that rocking chair. Now imagine looking back at your life and viewing yourself as a person of purpose, of action, of always looking for those small steps to take to move forward. How far away from that image are you now? What steps do you need to take to move closer to that reality?

 

Identify the steps – commit to taking them – take action! 

Filed Under: The Improvement Zone Tagged With: , , , ,

5 Leadership Practices to Enhance your Life!

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I work a lot with Kouzes and Posner's 5 leadership practices, taken from their book and website, "The Leadership Challenge". The reasons I like them are:


a) they've been researched right across the world, so they apply to all cultures



b) they're simple to apply in both work AND life



c) I love the word "practices" – it means that we can all practice them and get better at them!



 

The 5 practices are:


Model the Way - being the best role model you can be. Being someone to look up to; to respect; to admire; clearly demonstrating your own personal values and principles



Inspiring a Shared Vision - having a future goal, idea or vision which you're moving towards and inspiring others to join in with you/support you on the journey



Challenge the Process - having a healthy dissatisfaction with what is. Taking a risk, experimenting with something new, learning new things, moving away from your comfort blanket



Enabling Others to Act - collaborating with others; sharing your expertise and learning from others; giving people what they need in order to thrive



Encourage the Heart - showing belief, faith, trust and support in others, especially when the going is tough. Being an awesome cheerleader. Showing people they can win



As you read through that list, I know that there will have been at least one of the practices which you know is your strength, and I also know that as you were reading, one of them sprang out for you as an area you're currently not so "hot" in.

 

Ideas for Action

  • Identify which of the 5 practices you believe you're strongest in. What are three things you could do this week to capitalize on this strength and make a real, positive difference to yourself, or someone/thing else?

 

  • Identify which of the 5 practices you believe you need to work on the most. What are three things you could do this week (including one thing TODAY) that would make a real, positive difference in this area – and enable you to feel really proud of yourself when you've achieved them?

 

  • In the words of Nike – Just Do It!

 

Filed Under: The Improvement Zone Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Choice and Circumstance

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Spring is the time for new life, for sowing seeds and for spring cleaning. Whereas we tend to turn our attention to things such as our homes, our files, our diaries, our gardens, it is just as important to sow fresh seeds in our life and minds. Get the dust out, the cobwebs, the negative self talk – a spring clean of our minds! In doing so, we approach this spring – and indeed the rest of the year – with a real sense of hope and a real sense of desire and a real sense of ‘this is going to be a positive, productive and fruitful time.’ I really hope that you’re up for that. I certainly am :)

What triggered this post was a quote I recently came across from George Bernard Shaw: "People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want and if they can’t find them, make them."

Wow. Now that could have been said by any motivational speaker/coach today, but this came from a book written by George Bernard Shaw in the nineteenth century. I love that the wisdom of it still rings true today. 

In order to get the best out of ourselves – and inspire others to do the same – we need to look at where we're at and how we're responding to where that is, irrespective of the circumstances around us. Are we applying ourselves in the best possible way? Or resigning ourselves to the "fact" we cannot change the circumstances we're in?  In order to maximise our potential in any situation, good or bad, we must look at how to apply ourselves in the best possible way so we became the success story in the situation.

Although we can all find ourselves in situations we wouldn't necessarily choose, the choice we do have is in how we respond to those situations.

How are you responding?

Filed Under: Personal Thoughts from Jenny Tagged With: , , , , , , ,