Discover five simple steps to create your own luck!
Have you ever wondered why some people seem to be luckier than others? Maybe you feel lucky. Congratulations! Or, on the other hand, perhaps you feel that lady luck never comes knocking on your door.
I have often wondered what luck is and if there is a way to change my luck. I have spent a lot of time and energy pursuing answers to that question.
I grew up in a good, hard-working family that never seemed to have much luck. Life was challenging and a constant battle for survival. Money was hard to come by, and outside forces were constantly wreaking havoc on our dairy farm, animals, and finances. There were diseases, bugs, floods, and droughts, and it felt like a never-ending onslaught of bad luck. No wonder people connected to the land can develop a sense of superstition that some outside force is against us. All external forces have an observable effect on our quality of life.
Leadership choices are made every day and yet very little thought is really put into considering the worthiness of the leader.
Too often a leader is chosen by default because no one else wants the responsibility.
The most suitable leader should have the right combination of a desire to make a difference, experience, skill, attitude and ability.
If someone is motivated by power, status, control or greed their decisions, actions and thought processes will be based on their own ego and what’s in it for them – and not necessarily what is right for their stakeholders.
Who wants to follow a leader who is motivated primarily by self-interest? Unless of course your interest is aligned with theirs. We call that mutual self-interest.
The best leaders know when to lead and when to follow. If a leader is motivated by not wanting to follow, then they will insist on leading – even when they are clearly not the best suited for the role. The end result is suboptimal compared to the right person leading.
Next time you are choosing a leader, consider these eight motivations and don’t listen to what they say. Consider their past actions and results as good indicators of future results.
A lot of well-meaning people end up frustrated when attempting to give people feedback… that is because they don’t have the person’s agreement or attention.
Most people view feedback as negative, so don’t do it!
Perhaps you have been on the receiving end of feedback that is thinly masked criticism intended to minimize and dominate. This is more common than we would like to believe.
As a CEO, coach and seminar leader I have had lots of practice delivering messages to fragile egos. In fact, there seems to be a correlation between the size of the ego and its fragility. Anything that challenges the ego’s view of the world is resisted, often vehemently.
It takes humility to be open to input from the outside, so anytime you run into a large ego – you can expect resistance.
Working with fragile egos is like walking through a minefield… you never know when you will step on a mine -ka-boom!
Regardless of the situation within which you are offering suggestions for improvement, it always goes down better when you warm the recipient up by getting their permission first, then starting with the positive. We call this approach LOVEBACK and have found it to be dramatically more effective than traditional feedback.
These 5 Keys to Loveback are like a magic elixir that when consumed allow you to say almost anything to anyone…
One of the most uncomfortable aspects of life is that it involves constant and never ending change. And the pace of change isn’t slowing down anytime soon, in fact we live in an era of accelerating acceleration.
How you respond to change determines your level of stress, happiness and success.
if you are like most people change brings fear and uncertainty. We like things to stay the same. Often it feels like we are just getting used to and comfortable with things as they are… and bam… something or someone pulls the rug out from under us.
It takes a lot of self confidence to know that no matter what happens, no matter what changes – everything will be alright.
Our research has shown that people respond to change in one of 7 different ways. The least effective strategies are to deny, resist and accept change slowly. Higher up (meaning more effective) is to embrace change aggressively. Even more effective is to be enthusiastic and ultimately proactive which is where you preempt what is soon to happen by understanding and foreseeing the future.
By far the best is to adopt an attitude of “knowing” that change is constant and to respond to it in advance without even thinking about it. To live day by day with a balance of mind and heart. Secure in the knowledge that all change serves a higher purpose, we just have to trust and figure out what it is.
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There are seven different levels of leadership. Level 7: Visionary Leadership is the most effective. Level 4: Command and control is how most people lead. Consider two things, one is what level of leadership you use when you are feeling confident and sure of yourself and the other is what level of leadership you default to when you are under pressure?
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To chase means to pursue in order to catch or catch up with. Unfortunately, many people chase their tail, looking busy and yet going nowhere.
Where does the idea of chasing what you want come from? What if there is a faster and more effective approach that is counter-intuitive?
Here’s the thing, whatever you chase says a lot about you. It speaks louder than what your words say. It communicates your true intentions, your lack, and limitations. Typically we don’t chase what we have in abundance. We chase what we don’t have and by doing so, we telegraph to everyone that we are lacking in the thing that we are chasing. This creates a feeling of neediness, which is repulsive!
So if chasing isn’t the way to do it, then what is?
The key is to align your actions, beliefs and feelings from the end result of the vision as if it were here now. This point of view collapses time and draws the future into the present. Then from this perspective, there is no chasing. Your vision is drawn to you.
Does that mean you don’t have to do anything? Of course, you have to do something! The difference is that the actions you take will be from a position of confidence, certainty and clarity and your results will go up exponentially!
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Set in the year 2048, after a war, the community elders thought it was a good idea to remove all race, emotions and as many differences as possible.
Hmmmm… sounds like removing many of the very qualities that make us human!
Before watching this movie I had never heard of the book that it is based on… I was looking for a movie to watch one evening and stumbled on it in iTunes.
Filled with A-List actors this movie delivers. I totally loved it! My most profound takeaway is that no matter how well-intentioned people are, in their “infinite wisdom” by removing what makes us human in order to make us “safer” they create a new set of horrors. This manifests as good people engaging in unspeakable acts without even realizing it.
This has me thinking about certain people and cultures that find emotions so difficult to handle that they suppress, cover up and deny them… in the end lacking feelings, perhaps most importantly lacking empathy for the suffering of others…
It is the full range of emotions from the depths of sadness to the highs of joy and ecstasy that has us being fully alive…
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I was inspired to put together this diagram to highlight the competing forces of risk and return (also known as reward). As I sat on the couch one evening a thought came to me about what separates successful leaders from everyone else.
Successful leaders aren’t smarter. They certainly aren’t more conservative. They do seem to take a lot of risks and for the most part emerge unscathed. Once in a while you will see a leader crash and burn only to rise from the ashes. Unless it is incapacitating or life threatening… most disasters won’t keep a true leader down.
Lots of people have visions of a future they would like to create or see others create, however most of these visionaries never manifest their vision into reality. You could say its easy to dream and quite another thing to take it all the way to realizing it.
The best leaders not only inspire others to follow but also acquire missing knowledge and apply it through successful execution on the route to mastery. This takes balancing risk and return.
The same is true of investing and entrepreneurship. Ask any successful investor or entrepreneur and they will tell you that maximizing returns comes with high risk and that minimizing risk also limits potential returns. The Sweet Spot (The Zone) is found by seeking a balance between these two competing forces. In order to stay in the Sweet Spot takes constant learning, execution and application of the knowledge gained.
When you stop learning, stop applying and stop executing you drop out of The Zone and become either over conservative or take unwise risks that are akin to gambling.
Most people fixate on one end of the spectrum or the other and often wildly swing between the two.
Consider for a moment, what would happen to your FLOW if you followed this simple 4 step strategy:
Locate the Sweet Spot by asking “what does OPTIMUM look like?”
Move into the Sweet Spot
Make ongoing adjustments to stay in the Sweet Spot
Assess the downside risks and develop a strategy to mitigate them
Inventory the potential upside and implement a strategy to capitalize on it
The key is to not fight competing forces… work with them!
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