push your limits

“A true master will not deceive an able disciple. You are hampered by the limits you set and no limit can be set on skill.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

 

What are your limits?   Review these ten ideas and rate them from 1 to 10 in how you use them in your life.   How close are you to living at your limits?

1. Hunger and Drive.   Do you have some strong compelling desire or hunger to accomplish or do something?

2. Vision.   What is  your vision for the future?   Does your family have a vision?  A vision is a statement that you create that helps you define a direction for your life.  What is yours?

3. Certainty.  What is the level of stability in your life?   What are you certain of?

4. Passion and feeling alive.   Are you passionate about something?   Is there an issue or topic that concerns you and drives you to do something?

5. Care and connection.   Do you have someone you care about?   Are you connected to others?

6. Unreasonable expectations.  Do you have goals that stretch what you’ve done before.

7. Courage.  Are you willing to take a risk and act on what you believe.

8. Faith.  Acting in the direction of what is possible.

9. Flexibility.  The ability to adapt to changing conditions.

10. Authenticity.   Are you really being who you are?

Rate yourself on a scale of 1-10.  (1, Not even close to fully realizing my potential. 10, Fully realizing my potential)

What areas do you want to improve in?  What steps will you take to improve in those areas?   What would the benefits be to  you for make that improvement?

what successful people do

“It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
― Leonardo da Vinci

 

 

Which one are you?

Leadership and authority

“The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.”
― Stanley Milgram

How does leadership and obedience to authority merge together?   Does a leader invoke thoughts of authority and subordination or does leadership provide an equal platform void of authority?

One model of leadership, servant leadership for example flips the pyramid upside down.  In servant leadership the leader serves those who are associated with the leader.  The model would suggest that there isn’t a command and control aspect to leadership and yet in many instances there still exists this idea of hierarchy and control in leadership.

Are you able to challenge the leader?   Are you able to have a voice that opposes the leader?

If you are a leader do others that follow you have the ability to oppose your authority?   As a leader are you in a position of authority?

What characteristic or set of attributes do you have that allows you to lead without creating this sense of obedience to your position?   Are people engaged by your vision?  Are people attracted to your style of openness and inclusion?  Are people desiring to be around someone who is vulnerable and authentic?

Better leaders give up authority to create opportunities for others to contribute more meaningfully.   In some place in  your life you are leading.   What are you doing to advance your leadership?   Are you empowering others or are you using authority to lead?

How would you answer the questions?

creating a more positive image

“It’s not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life,it’s what you whisper to yourself that has the most power!”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki

What do you believe about yourself?   Do you believe that you are the total sum of what others have said about you?   Did you believe the teachers, parents, relatives, friends or others that said, “You are ___________”?

Most people believe what others say about them and then build their internal story to match what the outside world has told them they should be or what they shouldn’t be.  Teachers may have told you that “you’ll never amount to __________” and left an indelible mark on your story.   You may have believed that “I won’t be able to live my dreams.”   That story became your life.  Others may have influenced you as well and killed your biggest dream.   Think about it for a few minutes.  What did others say you were going to be or do in life?   What story do you still carry around with you?

The story becomes a belief, the mask hides the true self from the authentic self and life becomes less than what it could really be.    There are three key beliefs that impact your personal image.

1. Personal.  The belief that what you hear is true and that is the truth about who you are.   With enough repetition there is a shift in some people to a mode of helplessness.

2. Pervasive.    The idea that all external messages are pointed to you and are negative.   That all negative things are in a sense apply to all things, as in “everything is bad.”

3. Permanent.  It’s not that things are bad, things are going to get worse.   The tide of woe is only going to grow and there is no hope at all.

One way to improve your self-image is to look at the things you do control and the things you don’t control.   Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the center.  On the left write “control” and the right write “don’t control”.   Write down all the things you do control and then write down all the things you don’t control.   You can manage what you do control.   Leave what you can’t control behind.

Listen to Professor Seligman describe the state of psychology here:

start with one

“Everyone is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive on different days. Everyone knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call forth, but which he might display if these were greater. Most of us feel as if we lived habitually with a sort of cloud weighing on us, below our highest notch of clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning, or firmness in deciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.”   William James

If you read the quote above you probably have had days where the energy to live fully just wasn’t there.   It was a day that you felt you needed to take off and just find a place to do nothing.   Where does your energy come from?   What makes you excited to participate in a new day?

What do you think is the biggest thief of energy?
1. To many things to do and no clear priorities
2. Nothing very interesting to do, not challenging or valuable
3. No external motivation, others encouraging you forward
4. Physical ailments or negative thinking

What would it take to activate you so that your day was filled with energy and positive outcomes?     You do realize that your energy doesn’t come from somewhere else, it comes from within you.   It comes from lifting your energy level up when it is down.  It comes from thinking about one thing that will produce a desired result.

Clarity and focus.   That is one way to get energy flowing.   Be clear on achieving one goal and focusing on achieving that goal.   Stay clear of distractions, email, conversation, or other activities that pull you away from that “one” thing.

secrets of super-performers …

“Temperamentally anxious people can have a hard time staying motivated, period, because their intense focus on their worries distracts them from their goals.”
― Winifred Gallagher

Are you a super-performer?   Do you want to be one of those who is able to do more, live more and experience more than others?

So what do these super-performers do that makes such a difference?   One thing they do is capture an idea and with intense focus that they that idea and do something with it.   Most people have an idea and think it is great and then do nothing with the idea, other than say, “I had a great idea …”.   The high performers do something with ideas.  They take a risk.  They focus and they execute.

What else does a super-performer do?   They enable their genius.   Everyone has the ability to be a genius and yet only a few enable that genius in them.   Instead of expecting instant results genius thinking involves time and focus.   Putting both time and energy into one idea equals genius.   This isn’t about having a high-IQ, it is about doing something with what you have.   Think of those who have had startling breakthroughs in their lives, what really was different.   They maniacally pushed through those that said, “you can’t do that.”, and did it.   They took their dream and pursued it.    They didn’t give up.

You knew that didn’t you.   Did you know that super-achievers spent time with the thought leaders they wanted to emulate?   Top performers spent time with those they wanted to be like.     They raised the bar of their own thinking by learning how those who have achieved great things thought.    In a sense our beliefs and actions are limited by those we associate with.  As we raise the bar, we raise the bar for those who surround us.    That isn’t as easy to do as the others, and that is one of the key differences between average performance and super performance.

Here’s a story of a peak performance.    What did you notice about the story?