Development Geek

Win Wednesday Motivational December 11th, 2019

Our lives are the result of choices. Too often we forget that everything is choices. Even not making a choice is a choice.

These choices form our character. How we respond to the world and circumstances outside our control. And for everything outside of our control, we still have complete and utter responsibility for the lives we lead.

It is not our choices that limit our opportunities. It is our desire to hold on to the choices we have made. To hold onto our past, and to protect what we have.

The first decision is make a choice. Decide.

Think about it this way. -If you have done all your home work, and there is no more facts to pull into your thinking, then which path to choose matters less than making the choice. Both paths are going to get you somewhere, and that somewhere is better than standing at the fork in the road.

Make a choice
Decide to act
Maintain tenacity
Love the process
Experience the journey

Then you must decide to act – Keep it simple.

Put your feet on the path. Do not go back to step one, you’ve made the decision. Do not go back to mulling over something you have decided. Action. Action. Action. Don’t go big your first day. The step is going big. It’s about consistent daily effort.

Maintain tenacity

Keep up your resolve by maintaining your tenacity. This is persistence through force of will, hard work, maintaining momentum with work. This is another area where your character will shine through. Grit, tenacity, perseverance, determination, resolve, doggedness – dig deep and keep going.

Love the process

To stay focused and not lose your self in doubt, you must love the process. Love what you are doing. What ever it is, the process matters, if you want to succeed it’s important to enjoy the how of what you are doing. Work out those habits, adjust where necessary, and enjoy.

Experience the journey

It’s one thing to love the process, and another to enjoy the overall journey. The journey is the experience. It is the cradle of our lives. And this is where we learn and grow, through experience. When you focus on the end result, the results are tainted and much of the time this is where we give up. Learn from this experience and build upon the success of learning.

Twice as Motivational Tuesday December 10th, 2019

Leadership is an action, not a position.
-Donald McGannon

The illusionary leader –

Leadership is not a crown you wear. It is not something you can be given as a position. It is not about what you say. Or the vision you have, or the strategies you employ.

It is about how your actions serve others. Your influence. Your choices. Your character. To stand for what is right, especially when it will harm you.

It is not in how you show up when all is easy, but your character in the darkest of moments. It’s about how you nurture those around you. How you take blame, responsibility for all that is wrong, and none of the credit when they do well.

The best leaders don’t take curtain calls, don’t win awards, aren’t given recognition —because their people are the ones that did it all.

When you make others the heroes and motivate them to find their own power, then you will have made it as a leader.

When they in turn do the same for others, and create new leaders. Then you have reason to smile as a leader.

Everything else is ego. It taints the work.

Leadership is hard. It is a journey and not a destination. A calling, a belief, a way of life…It is not for the faint of heart, but it is something that we can all strive for.

Leadership for everyone.

More Than Motivational Monday December 9th, 2019

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.
-Albert Schweitzer

Leadership means that you are being watched all the time. Yet, we spend more of our time on words and not actions.

Most of the leaders we see in our businesses use a lot of words. Words are the pseudo leader’s stock in trade.

Those who speak like the leaders above them get recognized. Use the right jargon, the newest corporate speak, spout out the latest leadership books and motivational You Tube videos, and everyone assumes they are a good leader. It is what they have learned from those around them. And as we look around there are many that have gotten ahead working within this model.

Illusionary leadership. That is all this is. We don the cloak of looking like a leader, talking like a leader, and we fit into the leader club. Soon enough we are treated like a leader. It is rampant, and so pervasive that we actually have begun to believe this is leadership.

That disconnect is why we need a million different leadership books on how to look and talk like a leader, and most miss the point.

Our actions will be judged intuitively by those around us, far more than what we say.

Leadership is influence. It isn’t a title. It isn’t a position.

The key to influence is to live your mission.

Be an example to others, always, even when you think no one is looking. Being an example is a function of character. And character is lacking in much of our modern conversation about leadership.

It is one of the main reasons many of the leaders I talk to are frustrated because they feel like they are doing all the “right” things and still not getting the results they want “from” their people.

I’ve been guilty of this myself. I had to take a good step back and look at each of the things I was doing. Not what I was saying. My intentions didn’t matter. What mattered was how my actions were influencing the people around me.

When there was a slight misalignment it showed up, in the actions I was taking. And those around me just weren’t as bought in to what we were trying to accomplish.

We all want to believe we have good character. That we are leaders and not managers. That we have principles. And while for a lot of people this may be true, from their own vantage point, they have not looked at their actions, their example, their character closely enough to realize that what they are doing is tainted.

Dig in deep to your mission. Take a good deep look at your actions and ensure they are aligned with your mission. If not, whoa, you’ve got some work to do.

Mission is more important than ego.

Saturday Motivation 12/7/19

It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.
– Adlai Stevenson

Being self conscious of how we look gets in the way of our mission.

Worrying about how we look is a recipe for failure. We will forever have our eyes on the wrong thing.

Our minds create a spotlight on our perceptions magnifying everything. We think we look stupid, we are embarrassed, and we distort everything around us.

And all of this is emotionally draining and we are putting our energy into something that isn’t helping our goals. Whether they be speaking up in a meeting, having fun at a party, or helping our favorite charity. We are letting our minds get the best of us because we fear being who we are.

Let others spend their time judging. Your job is to get on that horse and ride. There is a lot of work to be done, and not much time to do it.

Remember, everyone thinks they have a spotlight on them. Most will be blinded by their own spotlight. They will barely see what you see and they will barely remember what ever it is that is consuming you.

Quit being blinded by your personal spotlight and get the work done.

Friday Five -Words to Anchor the Day

Provoke – Deliberate – Stimulate- Intentionally – Consciously

Words have meaning. They are the form of our thoughts. And the best words, bring us from thought to action. My Friday Five, all center around the type of action I take. To consciously and intentionally, with deliberate purpose, provoke action that stimulates good in the world.

Today these were top of mind.

In each coaching session I did, with the fellow entrepreneurs that I messaged, the content I created and the posts that I continue to grow online. I came back to these words and asked, do each of these things create action? And specifically the kind of action that motivates and inspires more positive action.

What did you do today? How did you anchor yourself to your mission? Or do you hope that what you are doing fits into what you believe?

It is common for most of us to let our days over take us. To float through them, based on our calendar and the constant pull from others on our time. I overcome this natural tendency by anchoring my day with intentionality. Will there be some drift and float as I meet unexpected challenges and interruptions to my time. Absolutely. At the end of the day, having these anchors spelled out at the beginning of the day, helps me bring it back to center.

Ultimately, this helps not only for prioritization and keeping my theme of the day, but allows me to feel more fulfilled at the end of each day.

What are your five words for the day?

Monday Motivational December 2, 2019

We need new experiences to grow. To face challenges and the unknown – these are at the heart of experiences.

Day in and day out, the comfort of sameness does not lead us on a journey of exploration. There is no new experiences, no new learning, no growth. With comfort, we are alive without living.

Embrace the discomfort.

Our minds will play all sorts of tricks on us to keep us safe. It will talk you out of every good idea you’ve had within seconds.

Doubt will creep in, logic or emotion will overtake, and you won’t take the first step. This is why waiting for motivation to do things causes a lot of wasted time.

It takes a sheer force of will, and amazing amount of motivation to overcome the daily habit response that overtakes you.

Eeach time you don’t speak up in a meeting, when you had something to say, and don’t because you are afraid – you are given more evidence on why it would be a bad idea to speak up. And the cycle continues. You are proven correct that you need to stay in the safe zone.

And nestled in the zone of safety, carbon copy days go by, then months and years, and you don’t grow. The world keeps moving forward. But you are safe.

We are not meant to be safe. We are not meant to sit on the sidelines of our own life.

Take charge. Get in the discomfort zone. Make it your own. On the other side is know how, is experience, and you can then begin to teach others.

Monday Motivation November 25, 2019

You can never really know anything. You certainly can’t know everything.

–And even if you could, it would be boring as all get out.

The act of knowing is the end of seeking, of finding, of questioning. It is the end of knowledge. The death of experience.

And still, being unsure doesn’t feel good. The firm ground of confidence feels much better than the uncertainty of the unknown.

There is a difference between confidence and certainty. And this is where, we must learn to live in discomfort. To have confidence in our ability to figure it out and to learn.

This is free will. Having the unknown, and not really ever knowing the “right ” path. Otherwise, everything would be written in stone, and we would not have adventure that comes with truly being free.

Embrace the suck.

Friday Motivation November 22, 2019

Safety is an illusion. Security a prison. We are chained to our fear and desire for comfort.

To soar you need freedom, but you’ll be very far from the safety of the ground.

I’ve thrown all caution to the wind, and have embarked on a journey to freedom. Throwing off the shackles of other peoples expectations, of my own desire to fit in and be liked. I have unchained myself.

It is exhilarating. It is terrifying.

These are the things I’m doing. May these words help you in your own personal uprising.

Conquer those fears.

Make them work for you. Turn those fears around, so that you feed off of the fear, and make that energy work for you.

You cannot be free and safe. So embrace it, and you never know what you’ll be capable of accomplishing – until you do.

Thursday Motivation November 21, 2019

Things aren’t upsetting. Circumstances just are what they are.

It is our feelings that we attach to these things. Our judgments of good and bad regarding those things, that is what upset us. Remove the judgement, the expectations, the feelings about things that happen in your life. This is what causes stress, gives fuel to anger, and gets in the way of making good decisions in life.

While there is no objective truth. We can practice some objectivity in our daily lives. Objectivity takes changing our perspective. Viewing what is going on without the emotional quality that comes by allowing words to trigger us, whether those words are spoken by someone around us or in our own minds. Our words and emotions provide the color that makes us feel that something is bad. We first have to Stop.

Stop our thinking in its tracks. Pause and relax. Don’t think. Let your emotions begin to recenter. Get out of your head. Think about the here and now.

Not what might happen, could happen, your afraid will happen. Not how you feel about what happened. Try stating what happened as a fact. Practice this, and you’ll see how much of what you state as a fact is actually feeling, judgement, added color.

Begin to get good at this, and it won’t purge all emotion and you won’t become a robot. You will start to take back some control of how you respond and your perspective will change.

If you knew you were going to die today, would an email from your boss sharing their concern that the client could decide to pull out of a deal, be something you would choose to get triggered about. No, your perspective would be different.

Treat each day, like today could be the last, and you’ll start to wonder does all this silliness really need to cloud my day.

Practice this and your day will be considerably more enjoyable.

Wednesday Motivation November 20, 2019

Life kicks everyone’s ass at one point or another.

Don’t let it get you down, or turn you into someone you are not. Taking it out on others doesn’t do any good. And it isn’t nice.

Take the ass kicking.

Learn from it.

Allow yourself to grow.

It is a rite of passage and no one ever became anything worth a damn by having it easy. When you pass through to the other side, you will have learned a lot and you will be less likely to have the same thing cause you the same level of problems because you’ll be more prepared.

When we let ourselves, we are very good at overcoming obstacles.

If we wallow, become ungrateful for what we have, spiteful to the universe, and upset with those around us for not being in the same place we are right now, that is a function of our true character.

Only you are responsible for your life and how you respond to it.

We each have an amazing capacity for growth, compassion, and the ability to overcome obstacles.

Be the best you.