If you have but one resolution this year, better yet commitment, be an active participant in your life. No more spectating from the sidelines – get in the game! Try new things. Do it afraid. Challenge yourself.
Good coaches help us uncover our potential, encourage practice to hone skills, prompt behavior change and motivate us to improve performance. Be your own coach by flipping old assumptions, asking good questions and using active listening techniques to hear the answers. We unfold, improve and make progress through daily rigor of practice and effort.
'“If all difficulties were known at the outset of a long journey, most of us would never start out at all.”
- Dan Rather
Get Your Grit On, Keep Going
Mental toughness, resilience and grit are required to navigate the winding roads of life and enjoy the journey along the way. Keeping momentum with forward motion, getting up again and again and embracing a growth mindset are the fuel to finish strong.
In Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance, Angela Duckworth summarizes “grit” as passion and perseverance for very long-term goals, having stamina, sticking with your future, day in, day out, for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint. You can grow your grit by cultivating your interests, committing to the daily habit of practice, connecting with a purpose beyond yourself and embracing hope to provide the inspiration to keep going.
“Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.”
- Dr. Seuss
Play Time - Bring It On!
“Now this relaxation of the mind from work consists on playful words or deeds. Therefore it becomes a wise and virtuous man to have recourse to such things at times.” – Thomas Aquinas
Where we focus our finite time, attention and capacity defines the quality and depth of our days. The actions of experimenting and exploring help us discover what is most important to us. Our core values should drive how and what we spend our time on to make our days meaningful and fulfilling.
“Doing more with less” is empty mantra that corporate America has been serving up for decades, which accounts for the 34% employee engagement rate as measured by Gallup. While the numbers have improved, 53% are in the “not engaged” category. The sheer volume of what’s expected will not be solved with more technology or multi-tasking schemes. How about “doing less with more” and creating lasting value?
Engagement in an activity, whether it be work, a side gig or a hobby that requires passion and commitment which compels us to put effort into the activity.
One important way to re-engage and rediscover your passion is play. In “Adults need recess too. Here’s why you need time to play”, Tolu Ajiboye describes how playing games, exercising, hobbies and laughter facilitate creativity and problem-solving skills as well improve our cognitive health and happiness.
“Clinical psychologist and chief of the Division of Psychology at Ellis Hospital, Dr. Rudy Nydegger, says there are two basic tenets of play. ‘First, it is something that we do for recreation that is purely for enjoyment and/or entertainment — it is something we do just for fun," he says. "Second, it is something that is intrinsically motivating. In other words it is something that we want to do and is not something we need to be coerced or 'bribed' into doing. It is voluntary; we do it just because we want to.’”
Integrating play into our days not only makes life more fun and each us more fun to be around, it can improve the outcomes of our efforts and relationships. Don’t wait for vacation to get more play time in. Commit to it every day.
Do less and play more. Recess has begun, let the games begin.
“Dream and give yourself permission
to envision a You that you can
choose to be.”
- Joy Page
Creativity Permission Slip
How many times have you said, “I’m not creative”? Too many, I’m sure. It’s time to stop, paint a new picture and change your mindset.
“A study by George Land reveals that we are naturally creative and as we grow up we learn to be uncreative. Creativity is a skill that can be developed and a process that can be managed. Creativity begins with a foundation of knowledge, learning a discipline, and mastering a way of thinking. You can learn to be creative by experimenting, exploring, questioning assumptions, using imagination and synthesing information. Learning to be creative is akin to learning a sport. It requires practice to develop the right muscles and a supportive environment in which to flourish,” according to Creativity at Work.
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3 Reasons We Don’t Start and How to Overcome Them
We have a lot of ideas and good intentions, but often fall short of acting on them. Starting and finishing fuels more starting. Here are three common reasons that we don’t start:
Busy
Change
Fear
Let’s break each down and get more starting in our day.
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"What is to give light must
endure burning."
- Viktor Frankl
Black Holes
This week, NASA announced that their planet-hunting Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) captured a black hole tear apart a star in a cataclysmic phenomenon called a tidal disruption event.
As I watched in awe, I thought about all of the “black holes” in our lives that we allow to snuff out and consume our light. Black holes like regrets, grudges, “rules”, old stories that we still believe, lack of confidence, fear, clinging to the past, assumptions and judgments about ourselves and others.
It we don’t let these things go, they don’t let us go and grow. We remain comfortably captive to them. While we may be justified in our feelings, we can choose to rise above them and live fully, letting our bright light shine.
Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl’s quote sums it up the best, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.” If anyone had the absolute right to be angry, bitter and broken, it certainly was Dr. Frankl. Our daily burdens pale in comparison.
New research was just released this week on the health benefits of optimism. “Thought patterns and mindsets are the most intimate parts of our experience,” said Dr. Alan Rozanski, lead author of a meta-analysis on optimism that was published Friday in the journal JAMA Network Open. "We have known for a few decades now that there's a relationship between psychological factors and heart disease.”
Optimism not only changes your perspective, it also helps your heart, literally. Think about all of those “black holes” and dare to consume them with your light.
6 Ways to Train Your Brain to Be More Optimistic
1. Try on a positive lens – the glass is not only half full, it’s overflowing!;
2. Be aware of who you surround yourself with – it’s easy to fall into the “misery loves company” trap;
3. Turn off the news – especially pertinent now with the political season in full swing (although it’s always in full swing);
4. Write in a journal a few minutes a day – gratitude can do wonders for your perspective. I just downloaded an awesome new app – 5 Minute Journal which is a simple and “doable” way to put your intentions into daily action;
5. Acknowledge what you can and can’t control – the Serenity Prayer sums that one up the best;
6. Acknowledge the negative – there are difficulties in life to be sure and shouldn’t be denied, but we can choose how we respond;
7. BONUS – lighten up and laugh more.
You have a choice to not allow the “black holes” that surround you to consume you. Choose carefully for it determines the quality of your life. Now go consume some black holes with your light.
“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone's task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.” – Viktor E. Frankl
“Perseverance and perspective until victory.”
- Lincoln Diaz-Balart
Eagle and Mouse Eyes
There’s an ancient Native American concept of eagle eyes and mouse eyes - the broad view and close up view. Both perspectives serve their purpose and work in tandem to gain insight, create meaning and give us a 360 degree view. Using mouse eyes when we need to focus and execute and then shifting to our peripheral vision of an eagle to get an expanded view to be inspired to keep moving to the finish lines in all aspects of our life.
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no more snooze alarm
Wake Up
I’ve just started David Brook’s new book The Second Mountain – The Quest for a Moral Life. I’m not very far in, but I can tell that I’m going to savor this book like I did with Cal Newton’s Deep Work. Both speak to a need to go deeper, stay longer and do the work. More to come on deep work strategies another time.
In the Second Mountain, one term that captured my attention immediately was “acedia.” A centuries old concept, Brook’s summarizes acedia as the quieting of passion, a lack of care, sluggishness of the soul, an oven set on warm. I see this all around and within and I don’t like it nor am I willing to accept it as just being the way it is. We need to turn up the heat and focus on the right things.
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Moving through the middle
The Middle
We get excited by big ideas. We imagine the finish line which can motivate us to start. Then the middle happens - the work. The fog rolls in, the path is unclear, the work is hard and the finish line fades into the distance.
Most of life happens in the middle. This is the place where diligence, rigor and discipline are required so we don’t give up. Moving through and carrying on are required to get to the finish line and prepare us for our next start line. And the middle is the heart of the journey that really matters.
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Create order
Spark Joy!
Creating Order
Over time, we accumulate piles in our houses, offices and minds. And the clutter we create brings chaos, preventing us from starting and doing the work to finish what’s most important to us. We need space to breath, think, plan and take action. A great place to start starting is to clear the clutter and create some order. And then committing to keeping order after it’s created so we don’t return to old habits and new clutter.
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