Tag Archives: discipline

4 Strategies That Will Help You End The Decade Strong And Build Momentum To Keep Going

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I’ve been having some conversations with someone about some potential business opportunities that we could have together. As we’ve gone back and forth, there have been some things come up that I could get real excited about. There is great potential for us to work together and have it turn out very well for both of our companies. 

Yesterday I asked to set up a time we could get together to work out some of the details and get going. I was surprised by his response, but as I thought about it, I started to wonder how many other businesses do the same thing he’s doing.

When I asked for the meeting he informed me that he’s swamped right now with things he needs to wrap up before the end of the year. This, I can understand. But it was the next part of the conversation that has been on my mind since we talked. He told me that he’d rather wait until January to meet because their company basically looks at December as a write-off month. He said they all start to get in holiday mode and don’t do much before Christmas, and then as it gets closer to the 25th most of them start booking time off until the end of the year. For those that don’t take the time off, for the amount of work they do they may as well have taken the time off.

Is this how you approach December? I hope not! 

Why not use the next 27 days to finish this decade off strong and set up 2020 to be great? What you do this month can really determine how your next year goes. Now is the time to get focused and get a jump start on your competition to start the new year.

If you give the following four areas your best effort, you can end 2019 strong and get a great start on 2020

Focus

This is a habit you need to work on daily throughout the year. But as we get closer to the holiday season and the distractions around you increase, you’ll need to be even more disciplined to keep focused

How much time do you actually spend being focused and working? With so many distractions so close to you I can be difficult. Taking a quick look at your inbox can turn into an hour of reading and replying to emails. Looking at one of your social media accounts can turn into mindless scrolling. Phone calls, employees, texts… The list of distractions can go on and on. 

Identify the things that distract you and determine how you can prevent it from happening while you put all of your focus into your work for a specific amount of time. Turn off the phone. Close everything on your computer. Lock your door. Do whatever it is that you need to do so that you can completely focus for whatever amount of time you’ve scheduled.

You can start this today by determining your top three priorities for tomorrow. When you start your day tomorrow, your number one task is to complete the things you have identified as your top three priorities. Don’t look at your emails, texts, social media or anything else that will distract you until you accomplish your top three priorities.

Schedule

Fill up your January calendar now. With so many people wanting to put things off until January, they’re going to be swamped when it rolls around. People are more likely to set January appointments in December than they are in January when things get crazy.

Too many people are just on a day-by-day schedule. They put more time and effort into figuring out their vacation schedule than they do with their daily schedule. Don’t come into Monday and wonder, “what am I going to do this week?” Don’t come into any day without it already being set up and planned.

Someone should be able to take a look at your calendar, and what you are trying to achieve this year is obvious. You have the meetings, events, presentations, follow-up and prep-time scheduled to make you succeed. It’s not about scheduling every second of every day, but it is about moving forward with intent.

What are you doing next Tuesday that is building your business?

Build and Strengthen Relationships

This is a great time of year to make the emotional deposits into your most important personal and professional relationships

Simply taking the time to call someone or take them to lunch can mean a lot to your relationship. Do you or your company give gifts at Christmas? Send cards? 

Take some action today. What can you do today to strengthen a specific relationship?

Personal Growth and Development

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey identified Habit 7 as Sharpen the Saw. He said to “seek continuous improvement and renewal professionally and personally.”

As we approach the end of the year, now is a great time to give this some extra attention to help you to be ready for 2020! 

How you start 2020 will determine how you finish it. 

Schedule some time for reading, attending courses, working with a coach, or anything that is going to help you improve your personal growth and skill development.

Take a look at our Guided Tour and learn how our online coaching system can help you grow and succeed both personally and professionally as you transform your business.

In 27 days we begin a new year. Those 27 days are going to come and go regardless of what you do. Don’t waste them. Do the things that will amplify your business and your life and allow you to finish 2019 strong and to build the momentum you need to begin 2020 and make it great!

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Do You Have To Do Everything Your Coach Asks?

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Early in my career when I was a bank manager there were many things about my position that I enjoyed. I loved working with customers, analyzing their businesses to find the best solutions for them, and I loved coaching and mentoring my staff. Before I was in this position at the bank I had a manager who was a great coach to me. He mentored me well and taught me a lot about being a manager and a coach. 

Throughout my career, coaching is one thing that I’ve continued to enjoy and today I love working with clients to help them work on their businesses, leadership and their personal lives. But whether I’m working with one of my clients, my own team or even the basketball team that I coach, there is one thing that drives me crazy. 

What is it that drives me crazy?

It’s when something doesn’t work out because they didn’t do the things that I knew would work. It’s when my client, team or players don’t listen to me. 

That is the reason that I’m writing this right now. Lets flip the situation around and put me in the client’s seat. Even though I’ve always loved coaching and leadership I’ve never done much in the way of writing or publishing. My coach has recently been talking to me about “finding my voice.” He wants me to start publishing on a regular basis, even if it’s only for my own benefit. He told me to write articles, blog, use Facebook Live, podcast, it didn’t matter. Just start doing something and share it somewhere.

Later when I was alone I sat down to my computer and thought about it. I understood what he was wanting and why it would benefit me. But my thought was that maybe journaling would be good enough. I would do all the writing, I just wouldn’t publish it anywhere. But then I put my coaching hat back on and thought about it some more. From a coaching perspective, I know why he wants me to do it. I also know as a coach how I would feel if I asked one of my clients to do this but they didn’t. 

As a client, team member or player, if you want to grow and benefit from what your coach can do for you, you need to be all in. You need to do the things you are asked to do, even if it’s hard. Sometimes the task isn’t what you learn the most from. It’s the discipline of going through with the task that is the real teacher. 

Alarm Clock Discipline

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Everyone wants to know:
“How can I be successful?”
“What do I need to do to be the best at what I do?”
“How do I get an edge to beat our my competition?”
What’s the answer? Well, there’s an entire industry built on telling you the answer. There are so many resources available to answer your questions.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Think and Grow Rich

How Successful People Think: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Life

The list is endless. There are many more I’ve included in my Reading List, check them out HERE. Or check out the 2,275 books that come up in Amazon when you search “How to be successful” HERE.
But it doesn’t matter how much you know or how much you’ve read if you don’t act.  There are many things that you need to do and things that need to come together for you to be successful, but I know that one thing you need to be successful is discipline. Today I have been thinking about something I call Alarm Clock Discipline.
The more I read, the more I see thoughts and ideas overlapping with different authors. Recently I’ve had three different resources that have made me think about this topic.
In October I wrote a post about The Slight Edge. In that post I wrote:
Out of all the great things that I have learned from this book, there is one concept that stands out more than the others. “The simple things that lead to success are all easy to do. But they are also just as easy not to do.” This concept is hit on throughout the book. It’s the simple, little habits that you do every day that lead to success. The simple, little habits that are easy to do, but just as easy not to do. This phrase runs through my head every single morning now if I want it to or not. I set my alarm for 5am. When it goes off I have two choices. I can slide out of bed, put on my running shoes and go for my morning run. Or I can hit the snooze button, curl up in bed and fall back asleep. I’ve really done both quite a few times in my life. I’m pretty disciplined so getting up early to run or workout usually isn’t a big deal. But I’m not as disciplined in going to bed at a good hour. So some mornings when the alarm goes off at 5am and I’ve only been in bed for a few hours it’s pretty easy to justify skipping the workout that morning and usually hitting the snooze two or three more times after that. But now each morning when my alarm goes off, before I have the opportunity to realize how tired I am, the words, “Easy to do. Easy not to do.” are running through my head. That’s motivation enough to get me going.
Jeff talks about the “little things” a lot. If I hit the snooze and skip my run it likely isn’t going to kill me or have a drastic impact on my health. But the compound effect is always working. It’s either working for us or against us. So as I get out of bed for my workout those actions are compounding with all the other times I take those positive actions. That one workout might not have much of an impact on my health, but compounding them all together will. Just like when I hit the snooze, that action compounds with all the other times I take those actions and works against me.
Basketball is a big part of life in our family and Alarm Clock Discipline is a big deal when we are getting teenagers up at 5:00am for a workout. As would be expected with kids, some days are easier than others, but over the past five years I’m proud to say that Tia and Daxon have put hundreds of hours into working on their game before most kids their age would even consider being out of bed.
I recently sent them the following video to watch from PGS Basketball: 5 Ways to Build Mental Toughness.
Number one on the list: Wake Up Early & Get Out of Bed
I love in this video when he says that by “hitting snooze you are giving into your feelings. When you give into your feelings you will never be special at anything.”
I don’t care if you do or don’t like the sport of basketball. Take five minutes to watch this video, it’s worth your time.
The most recent resource that got me thinking about this topic again was a book that I just finished by Jacko Willing and Leif Babin. The book is Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALS Lead and Win
In the book they say that discipline starts every day when the alarm clock goes off in the morning. The moment the alarm clock goes off is the first test and it sets the tone for the rest of the day. The test is simple. When the alarm clock goes off do you get up out of bed or do you lie there in comfort and fall back asleep.
They go on the explain that if you have the discipline to get out of bed, you win, you pass the test. If you are mentally weak at that moment and you let that weakness keep you in bed, you fail. Though it seems small, whichever decision you make will translate into more significant and substantial elements of your life.
My favorite quote in this book is, “Discipline is the difference between being good and being exceptional.”
How do you become successful? There are many answers to that question. But having Alarm Clock Discipline is a good place to start.

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Daily Success Habits

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Road to Success Highway Sign

When Jeff Olson talks about success habits in The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness he often says, “they are easy to do, but they are easy not to do as well.”

I recently read Think and Grow Rich again and decided to take on Napoleon Hills challenge of writing down my goals and reading them twice per day, once first thing in the morning and once just before going to sleep. Really, it’s a pretty simple way to get your mind continually focused on your goals, it’s easy to do.

Over the past week I’ve had some late nights and early mornings. That’s no excuse and I still have all my good intentions, but as I look back there are times that I have simply forgot to do this. Easy to do… Easy not to do.

As I hurried to get the kids off to school this morning and realized I had forgot about reading my goals over this morning I started to reflect on it. How important are these goals to me? How bad do I want to achieve them? If I can’t take the simple step of reading over my goals twice per day am I really going to do the other things that are going to help me achieve those goals?
To be successful we need to create our success habits which we do day in and day out regardless of what they are. As Darren Hardy teaches in The Compound Effect, it’s the small, daily habits that create big results. Figure out today what those small daily habits need to be and don’t cheat yourself, make sure you are doing them every single day. They will help you find success.


 

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