Results. Making an I.M.P.A.C.T - a series of things I do...out-in-front

Results, targets, goals, intentions....what is it I want to get done in the future.....this morning, today, next month, the rest of the year?

The most important thing I know I can do is the "Think into those results, with I.M.P.A.C.T" -

What IDEAS do I have about getting those results?

I MEDITATE (pray) on my ideas and the results I want.

I PROPOSE QUESTIONS to myself about the choices, behaviors, actions, causes and circumstances that could bring about those results.

I ANALYZE & ACT - how it’s work for me in the past. What did I do right? Wrong? What needs to change? I do something even if it’s wrong (anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until I can learn to do it right!).

Continuously Create the Right Environment / CONQUER the gremlins! We all have them. My environment includes everything around me at all times. It can't always be right, but I can control the majority through what I read, listen to, watch and the people I hang-out with. I pour positive self-talk into my head (to drown out the gremlins). I try to be conscious of what I'm saying when I talk to myself and what I'm saying to others. And what I'm hearing others say. Fight the demons..!

TRANSCRIBE (journal) my thoughts…my ideas…the results I want. I'm not sure the rest of this makes any difference without a discipline of writing down what's in your head.

13 Choices to Achieve Sustainable Results

 If you limit your choices to only what seems possible 

and reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you

 truly want , and all that is left is compromise - Robert Fritz

1.     I’ve got to choose to have the right mindset

2.     I’ve got to choose to have the right support and higher expertise

3.     I’ve got to choose to have a robust evaluation and correction system

7 Reasons to Stop Being a Perfectionist

Krista Jezek shared this with me a few years. She got it off a discussion on LinkedIn and I've Googled looking for the original source but it seems the list has been around for some time and lot's of credits.

Here's the list (and please let me know if you know who originally came up with it)..

1. Perfectionism causes procrastination
2. You get caught up in the details
3. Perfectionism doesn't allow you to be yourself
4. Perfectionism set you up to need others' approval
5. Perfectionism causes you to be in a constant state of stress, because you’re always trying to meet your perfect standards
6. Perfectionism stops you from taking a risk
7. Perfectionism stops you from picking up the phone
   
   To that end..........#BuildItOutInFront

Failure Has Benefits....

One of the best books I've even "not" read is Maxwell's Failing Forward. 

I haven't read it, know I should, but have it and I have reviewed it. I've also read numerous quotes John's made about it. (I'm pulling it out to put in my 'need to read soon' stack)

My friend John Griffin told me our mutual mentor Paul Martinelli hit him with the Success Cycle recently: Test, Fail, Learn, Improve, Re-Enter. (I have that written on a post-it note inside my daily planner and look at it numerous times a day)

Personally, I think action around "anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you can learn to do it well" will propel one towards an incredible amount of getting things done. Add the Success Cycle and the possibilities are endless. 

Ha! Failure! It's an event, not a person. Most of us just don't get that. We don't know how to make failure work for us.

Friend and colleague Hurdie Burk were talking about his Business Warrior initiative and I was drilling him on his intentions for the group and whether I was willing to invest the time and money. Hurdie knows success isn't just about moving forward, it's about picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and trying it again.

Needless to say, he nailed it because I can't wait for his new group to start.

And to add value, he then sent me the Google post...The Surprising Benefits of Failure. 

To that end.............#BuildItOutInFront

The Flea Trainer, by Zig Ziglar

DLS note. Zig continues to so greatly influenced my life, long after his death. One of my favorite of his many stories is this one.....

"Your experience influences how high you think you can go. If you have been told (or told yourself) that you can only expect so much out of life, you may have conditioned yourself to mediocrity.

One of my favorite stories is about flea training. It is the perfect illustration of how your experience can limit what you are able to accomplish. If you put a bunch of fleas in a jar and put a lid on the jar, the fleas will jump up and collide with the jar lid. They quickly adjust how high they jump so they won't hit the lid. After they adjust their jumping power to avoid the lid, you can take the lid off of the jar and the fleas will not jump out! They will have trained themselves to jump so high and no higher. The fleas actually become slaves to their experience and imprison themselves inside the jar—even though they could jump out at any time after the lid is removed.

People do the same thing to themselves. Somewhere in most people's experience, they develop the idea that they can (or should) do only so much and no more. They adjust their expectations of themselves accordingly, and they get what they expect: less than what they are capable of!

I believe you have the potential to do and accomplish far more than you believe you are capable of doing and accomplishing! I believe that because history is filled with stories of men and women who have done just that. If you study the lives of great people, you usually discover they came from average families, living average lives, doing very average things. Then, these people have some kind of experience or encounter a turning point that puts them in position to do more than they could even conceive. Or possibly they became sick and tired of living the way they were living and finally said, "Enough is enough!" In every instance they responded to the experience or opportunity and accepted the challenge to grow.

Former United States President Dwight Eisenhower was not a high-ranking officer in the years prior to World War II, but he was passionate about wanting to get out from behind a desk and fight "his war." He was a staff officer to General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines prior to the war and probably thought continuing in that role would be the best thing he could do. Circumstances of the war and his excellent organizational skills eventually resulted in him becoming the Supreme Commander of all the Allied Armies in Europe, and after the war he was elected president of the United States. Eisenhower is actually quoted as saying, "I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the presidency."

The amazing and even startling point of this story is that there was never one big thing Eisenhower did that changed the course of his life. Every small step, every small promotion, every new direction his military life took led to a culmination of events that resulted in his huge lifetime of success. His willingness to accept every new position, regardless of how mundane or challenging it might be, moved Dwight Eisenhower toward his destiny.

What about you? What do you expect of yourself? What is your turning point? You can do more than you think you can do. But you'll never know if you don't try. Go out there and see all the good things life has to offer a flea trainer."

Bless you Zig and I do look forward to seeing you at the Top. 

Danny

 

Changing Values to Win

"Values influence every aspect of our lives: our moral judgments, our responses to others, our commitments to personal and organizational goals." - Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner write in The Leadership Challenge

The essence of how we live are in our values. We do what we value. 

Ex. I might say I value my health but succumb to my desire to eat heavy carbs, thus living out my value of that emotional pleasure. 

Ex. Getting up early to workout with a group of Camp Gladiators is part of the plan to loose weight / improve strength. That plan is part of of the fulfillment my value of being healthy. 

Values are the intangible aspects of life that make you feel in alignment, complete, on track, and functioning at a high level.

At our core, values change over time and a life that recognizes and aligns with one's core values will feel more satisfying. 

We must first recognize 1. the values will living out versus 2. the values we want to live out. 

Then we can start making adjustments to our activities to align with our goals and desires. 

Some examples of values include adventure, fun, service, creativity, connection, etc. When we consciously design our life to align with our values, life gets immeasurably richer — and easier! 

Process. It's a process to gain clarity of your values and and as you do you'll start designing your life 

To discover your values, ponder these questions:

• What is important to me?
• What is important to me about that?
• How does that make me feel?

Then break it down:

• What did I do today that I liked? What value was that connected to?
• What did I do today that I didn't like? What value was that connected to?

The change questions are "what values are winning?" :"What values do I want to win?"

Danny L. Smith, CMPS

512-773-6528

LinkedIn.com/in/DLSmith

Handling a Promotion: Promotions bring privileges...

- the wise leader will use them without abusing them.

- the wise leader will refuse to exploit the privileges entrusted.

"Nehemiah never started Nehemiah Enterprises, Inc."

from "Hand Me Another Brick" by Charles Swindol

Don't Confuse Trust with Hope

We can't confuse Trust with Hope. And I'm not talking about the hope for salvation Christians have in their faith (as I do). What I am talking about is how we trust each other and how "hope (in this context) is not a strategy." Trusting well is a strategy. When we trust well, we can verify that trust, we can hold the other accountable to that trust. When we trust well, we get down to business faster. When we trust well, we have the same motives, the same agendas, and behave well according to that trust we have with each other.

When we don't trust well, we check things out, we display passive-agressive attitudes, we ignore, we just wait for others to "get over it." When we don't trust well, we encumber each other. We slow down the process.

And it cost money, time, and respect.

We have to earn trust. Hoping someone does something doesn't have to be earned, it just kind of happens. Now, remember, I'm not referring to a Christian's hope for salvation, that's a different totally different meaning - though the same root word, different context all together.

Here's an example of what I'm referring to about Trust vs Hope; when you are driving you don't trust that someone will not run a red light because you can't hold them accountable. Oh sure, they can get a ticket, or even pay for your car and hospital bills, but you might be dead!!

Now, what you do do is hope other drivers drive safely, don't run red lights, or cross the line on curves at 70 miles an hour.

Th cyclers on the roads here in Austin are HOPING they don't get run over. It's not trust, but hope.

Same thing happens in business; we can hope for some things and trust in others. Those we Trust Well in, we can verify - we hold someone accountable. Otherwise it's Blind Trust and we are hoping someone doesn't have a seperate agenda.

The more we trust, the more profitable we are, and the more we make a good difference.

Play on words? I don't believe so. Maybe a bit simplistic. Test it yourself and see how it works out.

To that end....

Danny

Goal setting and achieving happen at a different level of consciousness

 It's the sign of an educated mind that can

entertain another's ideas without having to own them.

- Goal setting happens in the conscious mind.

- Goal achieving happens in the subconscious mind.

- The subconscious mind is responsible for maintaining our reality. 

- Our reality is made up of beliefs and habits that leads to activities that lead to the results we obtain.

- Results are a direct reflection of beliefs and actions.


Thus, in order to ACHIEVE goals, we perform sustainable actions by changing our beliefs by changing our reality. Our reality is only changing through repetitive thoughts driven by a desire, a purpose, a why.

We can set goals all day long, but they stay in our consciousness, rejected by our unconsciousness, until we change our thinking as it pertains the achievement of those goals.

Goal achieving happens in the subconscious mind and the subconscious is trying to reject any changes. Right now, if this is new to you, it's rejecting it...afraid a change might be coming.

To that end, don't let your subconscious reject something before understanding it.

#ToThatEnd

Thoughts on "Why Change Your Thinking"

I've studied successful people for over forty years and

I've found they are all alike in one way: the way they think.

- John C. Maxwell

That quote is from his book How Successful People Think and right out of the gate, in the introduction, John addresses WHY CHANGE YOUR THINKING?

No doubt John at least pondered the unsuccessful and knew he needed to address this issue quickly;  why one would want to change their thinking?

It's simple, really - if you don't like something in your life, anything; work, home, family, play. If you don't like it, if you want to improve, you must change your thinking. Your thinking controls your actions and 90% of your thoughts are repetitive. Literally. 90% of what you think about today is the same as yesterday and if you want to change, you have to break deep into that 90%. Or else. Or else those habitual thoughts will drive you to........well, they'll drive you to not change.

It's hard to overcome a problem, overcome a situation, overcome where you are right now. You are where you are, I am where I am, WE are were we are because of the journey we've been on, the paths we've taken, the decisions we've made, the happenings that have happened. We could not be where we are without ALL OF THAT.

And when we start applying action to the changed thinking, things start happening to keep us in the old reality. So we have to stay in the change, we have to keep thinking and acting into the changed thinking.

We can't get to a new place with the same thinking that got us HERE.

Back to John's quote, he said "the WAY we think." The WAY we think, and the Way we change our thinking is also the same.

#OnwardAndUpward

Today. Just Today.

Today. A day in 2016.

2016.

Really.? Years fly by. Concerns for years past, I have to search to remember.

Today.

Yesterday? Forget it, drive on. FIDO.

Today. Lord, my daily bread.

Don't think about tomorrow.

Today has enough challenges of its own. Don't make today worse by thinking too much about tomorrow.

Today. It's all about today. Making today the best day.

Today. Putting one foot in front on the other, making every step count.

Scripture tells me to be diligent about every action and God will establish my plans.

Today, I know what to do next, do that. And only then will I know what needs to be done then.

Today.

It's up to me to make it a great day.

Conversations

Masterminding is, in part, not letting predetermined assumptions rule the conversation. If I only agree or disagree with you, I'll never grow, I'll never change, I'll never improve, I'll never get any results different than I'm already getting.

Just because I don't argue with you doesn't mean I agree, nor do I necessarily like what you have to say when I don't disagree.

Considering another's point of view without agreeing or disagreeing is (maybe a bit of conceit here?)....is a sign of an educated mind. At least I'm more educated than I was before and that's my goal. (This is just about me) It's also an exercise that keeps me from judging others' and their words and intentions.

Many times, I'll hear something I totally disagree with and ask myself 'what if I did?'

Or really like something and ask 'what if I didn't?'

And it does make for an interesting discussion between Danny and Smitty.

Points to Ponder - "It's not about the Coffee"

Points I'm pondering this week....It's Not About the Coffee

Book: The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization

Whether you are the head of an entire organization or a department manager, reading and following the simple principles found in this book can help get your thoughts headed in the right direction for 2011.


Book: The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask About Your Organization By Peter Drucker, with Jim Collins, Philip Kotler, James Kouzes, Judith Rodi, V. Kasturi Rangan, and Frances Hesselbein

Any group, team, company or organization should always be aware of what you are doing, why you are doing it, and what you must do to improve the organizations performance;


Drucker tells us to ask -


1. What is your mission?

2. Who is your customer?

3. What does your customer value?

4. What results are you looking to achieve?

5. What is your plan?



He encourages the reader to further explore, analyze, assess, determine and develop in and around those five questions:


Explore….the five simple, yet essential questions


Analyze….your organization’s mission, which should be a short, sharply focused statement that tells
everyone why you do what you do, not how you do it.


Assess….who your target customers are, who and what influences them, what they value, how you can create satisfying experiences for them, and which customers you should stop serving.


Determine….what specific results your organization should be striving to achieve, and where you should focus for future success.


Develop….your organization’s plan, which must define the particular place you want to be as well as the budget and action steps that will enable you to get there.


These notes are from my previous review of this book posted at In-the-Box: Reading Well.


To that end...



Book: "When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan" by Peggy Noonan

What a great book!! I try and read a book about Reagan every two or three years and this has to be the best yet with God and Ronald Reagan in a close second.....ok, almost as good.


This isn't just a good read, but a pleasant read. If the author's intent in writing this book was to show how much she, Ms. Noonan, really cared about Mr. Reagan, she gets an A+.

Obviously, it helped that Ms. Noonan knew the Reagans and those close to them for years, but even so, few people can make words seem so real. This is the first of Ms. Noonan's books I've read and it will be interesting to see if she can accomplish such a feat again.

Read more at In-the-Box: Read Well blog

Teachability

‘When I watch one of my pictures, I pay attention to what the audience doesn’t laugh at. If several audiences don’t laugh at a stunt, I tear it apart and try to discover what’s wrong. On the other hand, if I hear laughter I hadn’t expected, I ask myself why that particular thing rang the bell with the audience.’  - Charlie Chaplin.

Born into poverty, he signed the first million dollar contract as an entertainer. Charlie Chaplin fully believed he was successful because he was teachable. Not because he had an extraordinary gift or talent. Many just as gifted and talented go to their grave never having used their talents nor their gifts.

Chaplin perfected his gift. It was at the height of his career that he was known best for replacing complacency and arrogance with teachability.

If you want God to use you, stay teachable, search out more of the kingdom within.

Maybe the best book, or 2nd best, on the Theology of Work yet

This might be the best book on the Theology of Work I've read yet...here's an insert from the What's Best Next blog -
If You Only take 5 Productivity Practices Away from This Book

Learning and especially implementing productivity practices can be hard. It is easy to forget what we learned or forget how to apply it. One remedy is to keep coming back to this book (of course!). But to make this as simple as possible, if you can only take away 5 things from this book, they should be these: 
 
Foundation: Look to God, in Jesus Christ, for your purpose, security, and guidance in all of life.

Purpose: Give your whole self to God (Romans 12:1-2), and then live for the good of others to his glory to show that he is great in the world.
I've read the book twice and will continue to gain nuggets for a long time to come.

Guiding Principle: Love your neighbor as yourself. Treat others the way you want them to treat you. Be proactive in this and even make plans to do good.

Core Strategy: Know what’s most important and put it first.

Core Tactic: Plan your week, every week! Then, as things come up throughout the day, ask “is this what’s best next?” Then, either do that right away or, if you can’t, slot it in to your calendar or action list that you are confident you will refer back to at the right time.


To that end......

Still staying connected to my frustration

Stay connected to your confusion and discover your why.

Most people let confusion lead to frustration and then they

quit. Move from confusion to discovery and curiosity.

Explore. - Paul Martinelli

Hearing Paul say this three years ago, I asked WHAT? And he said.........

Stay connected to your confusion

and discover your why. Get creative.

Don't let confusion turn to frustration.

If you do, you'll quit.

 

Stay connected to your confusion,

move to discovery and curiosity.

Get creative. Explore. Discover your why.

Still, 3 years later after first learning this lesson from Paul, it's still.......Profound.



To that end........Bless you Paul.

Marketing. What's Love got to do with it?

What is love in business? Love is a matter of sharing
your knowledge, network of relationships, and your
compassion - or any combination of the three

- Tim Sanders, Author

People-Centric Expert!

Scott Reese and I were talking recently and the conversation came around to how to work with difficult people. Here's how the conversation went from there...

Patrick Lencioni - THE FIVE DYSFUNCTIONS OF A TEAM

Read a bit from the book..click here

A wasted conversation with Lauren

Phone rings

Me - It's a great day, Danny Smith.

Caller - Danny, my name is Lauren. I'm a financial planner and Chris suggested I give you a call and set an appointment to come by and see you.

Me - Lauren, I'm backed up on some things for the next two weeks. Can you call me then and we'll set a time.

Lauren - thanks Danny, I'll do that.

Two weeks to the day later 

Phone rings

Me - It's a great day, Danny Smith

Caller - Hi Danny, this is Lauren. I called two weeks ago to get an appointment and you suggested I call back today.

Me - Hi Lauren. I remember, when's a good time for you.

This is a normal routine I use. I am usually backed up a bit, but normally, the caller doesn't call back.

Lauren and I set an appointment, we met at my office, she was extremely personable, professional and knowledgeable. I told her I didn't have a need for her services at-that-time but we had a great conversation and I mentioned I might have a couple of people I'd introduce her to at a later date.

She thanked me for my time left me, gave me a few of her business cards and parted.....



Normally, I'd send an email 2 or 3 days later thanking her for coming by, but I didn't in this case.

Now, weeks later........nothing.

Nor did she reach out to me between calls mentioned about. Nor did she make a point of letting me see she looked at my profiles anywhere online.

Lauren wasted our time. She wasted the handshake.

Surely the calls, the effort.........I guess she was only interested in making a sale......right then.

Obviously a very short-term thinker and doer. Commission Breath at its worst!

22 Roadblocks/Blind-Spots to Successful Sales and Marketing

Not in any particular order......

1. Thinking "I don't have any Roadblocks or Blind-Spots" (or...not knowing what they are!)
2. Lack of understanding of the differences between marketing and sales
3. Trying to sell to everyone
4. Failure to have a proper sales conversation that extends past the "what do you do" and lasts for weeks, months and years until the lead either needs your product/service or knows someone that does - difficulty staying engage
5. Commission Breath

"Culture eats vision for lunch"

From "The Heart of John Maxwell" series.....

Culture eats vision for lunch. It's more important than mission, vision or strategy. When people ask me if there is a secret to developing a really good company, my answer is always the same: "Yes, develop a good culture." How the people in your organization behave is your culture, and it reflects the company's values. If you have created an environment conductive to personal growth, wherein people understand how they connect, how each person makes a different in the life of another, well then, you are accomplishing more than a mission, vision or strategy every could" - John C. Maxwell

Who are your Roys?

I love hearing from old friends and one showed up in my inbox a few months ago. Roy Whitlock replied to my blog post about roadblocks and blindspots where I wrote about  “Perfectionism / Getting ready-to-get-ready and anything worth doing was worth doing poorly until you learned to do it right."

Now, to begin with, I can see Roy walking into my office and asking what he wrote in his email -  “I understand getting past roadblocks - but how does one find one's own blind spots? For example, your point #10 - how do you determine the point where "Getting Ready" becomes "Getting Ready to Get Ready"? And if something is worth doing, isn't it worth doing well? Won't doing it poorly start to reflect on your service delivery?” And on he went.....

Roy and I used to have some really good conversations. LOL……As to his plethora of questions (he rarely had just one)….here’s my response  -

Getting ready should be short and sweet. "When opportunities come up, it's too late to prepare."

Interview on "A New Way to Think"

Alert and oriented times........?

I wrote recently about “failing faster” and mentioned a John Eldridge quote. Here’s the whole thing about

“Most people go through life alert and oriented times 2 or 3.”

When a Coast Guard jumper goes into the water he (or she) is miked-up and upon securing the person being rescued, will radio back up to the crew the condition of the person being rescued.

He'll say “Alert and Oriented times 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5.” 

If someone is not alive, literally dead, the message will be “alert and oriented times ONE, I repeat, alert and oriented times ONE.”

Times TWO is – alive but unconscious.

Times THREE is – conscious but no awareness.

Times FOUR is – conscious, in and out of awareness.

Times FIVE is – FULLY AWARE, ALIVE AND FULLY AWARE.

John Eldridge in his fabulous read “Waking the Dead” claims most people go through life…

……Alert and Oriented times TWO or THREE.

To that end ….

be alert and oriented today TIMES FIVE. Be ALIVE.

Be FULLY AWARE.

Failing Faster

" I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."
Thomas A. Edison
(thanks to Mark Petticord for reminder
about this quote)

Have you ever really considered how much failing helps? 

Used with permission - www.blairballphotography.com

Not that anyone likes failing, BUT, we’re all going to fail. Right? If we aren’t failing we aren’t trying. Right?

I gave a talk on Monday that started with a quote from John Eldridge –  

“Most people go through life alert and oriented times 2 or 3.”   

That’s on a scale of 1-5; 2 is alive-unconscious, 3 is conscious-unaware...5 is FULLY ALIVE

My talk ended with “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you can do it well." That’s mine, or at least I claim it......I have no doubt I heard someone say it or I distorted something someone said to make it fit my philosophy!

Either way, I really want to live life alert and oriented times FIVE (fully aware) when I’m being creative, thinking about better ways to do things, following someone who has succeeded before me…trying to figure our HOW to do what they’re doing….

Jim Collins, in Good-to-Great, likened this to THE HEDGEHOG CONCEPT. Maybe I should say, this practice is my interpretation of the hedgehog concept.

Back to failing….there's a big difference between failing and being a failure.

It’s through failing, we grow, we become more. We can have more. Everything you've ever accomplished in your life, from what you're barely competent at to what you've mastered, it's all been accomplished by the process of failing.

As a baby, you learned to walk because you were persistent in failing at it. You learned to ride a bicycle because, because, you were persistent in failing at it.

I bet you’ve never accomplished anything of value without failing at it first. No one in history has…..no inventor, no discoveries, no medical cures,
NOTHING.

But you were NEVER a failure because of it. On the contrary, by being persistent in your failing at those activities…

…you became a master of them.

 What is it you want to do or do better?

Mastery comes to those who are willing to persistently fail. And yet the willingness to fail is one of the most difficult things for people to do.

To that end….be sure you do something today you don’t know how to do and fail at it.

And then fail it again, only faster. And again, faster and faster and faster.