What are you willing to do to get what you really want? What are you are willing to do to be the best version of yourself?
Those are two pivotal questions I asked my last November. I’m glad I chose to take a leap of faith and just jump in.
How? I gave myself 15 minutes to come up with a personal goal. I chose to qualify for the Boston Marathon by July 1, 2019. Whether or not that happens is actually immaterial.
Why? Because it’s always more about the journey than the end point/goal. The journey of making process brings you the most joy, excitement and passion. 99.9% of the work is the journey. The icing on the cake is the end.
So whether I make it to Boston by July 1 or the following year doesn’t matter to me. Because I will. That’s a certainty.
Sometimes timing matters, but sometimes you make the time matter.
Now the Drum roll…I’m super duper excited to be running the New York CityMarathon in November. It’s a bucket list item for me.
I ran a virtual marathon in November to do it because I didn’t want to wait around and hope I would get in via lottery. It makes it even more memorable to do it this way. 17 week training plan starts in July, but I’ve got two marathons before it (Phoenix/Tunnel) so I’ll hit the ground running (literally) at full speed.
A year ago I was just starting my running journey and finished the Dallas 2017 half marathon (my first race). I hit a “wall” at mile 11 and felt like I was “dying.” But I didn’t stop once, and powered through to finish in 1:53 with less than four weeks of running.
Time passes quickly!
Running has taught me many lessons.
One is the difference between feeling like doing something and actually doing it. Today, I didn’t feel like waking up to run 10 miles at 4am or run another 6pm tonight. I’m just doing it. I’m in charge not my thoughts or feelings.
Two, the thing standing between you and what you want, is you. You will move mountains through grit, determination, passion and just doing the best you can do that day. It’s about taking imperfect action versus none at all. I never thought I could run a marathon, let alone two. I never thought I could run it in 3:37, six weeks after my first one. I never thought I could run almost 1900 miles my first year running.
Most running days weren’t great. But the great days are built upon a foundation of shitty days I didn’t want to run or I just didn’t have that much to give.
Moral of the story is find “your thing” and make it happen. YOU are the only one that can do it. YOU are a superstar. YOU CAN do it. The ONLY question is will you do it or look back and wish you would have tried. The choice is always yours and every day you can make a new one!
What are you willing to do to get what you really want?
You won’t figure it out it thinking about it. Take imperfect action today.
Your level of “self-awareness” is ceiling on your career/business success, management, leadership and relationship abilities and overall happiness.
Let me explain why.
Oprah talked about this last year in an interview (about her business journey).
“If you’re not talking about the trauma (and unconscious patterns sabotaging your success), you’re talking about the wrong thing. It’s not about “what’s wrong with that person?” but rather “What happened to that person?””
Every person eventually hits their ceiling where their skills/abilities tap out, which leads to much lower performance and negative outcomes.
The only way to break through is to understand the root problems of why you are stuck (which includes pattern analysis to understand how you got there either through learned behaviors and/or trauma (which can be anything that caused you pain)).
The CEO who is a poor listener and doesn’t take feedback may lack information on how to do it. They may also have grown up in a household of six children where they had to shout over people to get heard. So they learned listening wasn’t useful.
If you just gave the CEO feedback, they’d often reject it because our mind is wired for survival (ie don’t tell me I’m broken). If you point out a pattern, you don’t engage your fight/flight part of your brain and they won’t often reject it.
You then can create very subtle/simple solutions to remove this barrier. Things such as talking last in meetings, asking more why questions in conversations, practicing empathy, etc.
You’ll instantly be back on track major significant progress.
But if you don’t, you’ll this ceiling will crater your life as it leads to bringing to rock bottom.
100% of people will go through this. The difference is who takes action and who doesn’t.
If you had to invest in a person/people for 10 years would you invest in the people you surrounding yourself with?
Ask the same of yourself.
If not you need to make a change now.
First step: Focus on your own self-awareness (and understanding your blind spots and patterns sabotaging success) including seeking feedback from others.
Your “accountability mirror” holds the answers. You’ve to be willing to look in it, be vulnerable and do the work!
According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), about 33 percent of all businesses will fail during their first two years. This is why it’s important that business owners are guided by principles to reach company goals every day. We asked the experts to share the business philosophy they live by that helps them stay focused as decision makers.
Only 10 percent to 15 percent of leaders are self-aware, but 95 percent believe that they are. If you don’t understand your blind spots, patterns, emotions and how those affect others, you’ll make many mistakes, lose clients and have poor employee retention. Self-aware leaders deal with conflict much better and enter into difficult conversations on a regular basis. They let their ego cloud their decisions much less often. They seek to understand first by listening vs. trying to tell others why they are right. Self-aware leaders are vulnerable, and they share with others, which builds deep relationships much quicker.
Here is one I really liked:
3. ‘The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it took place.’ — George Bernard Shaw
Every month, Dr. JP Pawliw-Fry surveys more than 30,000 people in the workplace through the Kellogg School of Management’s Executive Education program to narrow in on the traits and qualities that differentiate the top from the poor performers. He found the best leaders never avoid the hard part of a conversation. Most of us will omit the last 8 percent of a difficult discussion, assuming the other person understood what was implied. This creates tension and frustration when nothing changes since the two didn’t fully understand each other. For everyone to work at maximum efficiency, it’s crucial to finish up that last 8 percent of the tough conversations.
We live in a culture that doesn’t want to deal with pain (hurt, failure, short comings, etc.) so it matastisides into blame and hate. It’s so much easier to cause pain than deal with pain.
It takes real courage and accountability to deal with your own pain.
