Action Archives - Page 136 of 162

Clear The Debris

Posted on May 1, 2021

Papers pile up. Books and magazines go unread. Meetings become unnecessary. Occasionally we need to clear the debris in our lives.

Many things are started which never get finished. It’s good to remove it or get someone in to resolve it. If a cupboard door needs fixing, then fix it. Otherwise, get a friend, or a professional handy person, to come in and resolve it.

If dishes have piled up, get them sorted out. Newspapers and magazines used to find their way into piles in our house. Not anymore though.

I was the main debris-maker. I liked to sift through the readables and keep them around if I didn’t make it all the way through. In addition, I would keep some with dog eared corners to read later. Later rarely came so the piles got bigger.

I had to stop bringing things in the house. So I reduced the amount of ‘interesting articles’ I would read. I also began throwing out the paper in the recycling as I walked in the house. It couldn’t add to the piles if I didn’t bring it in the house.

Then I reduced the piles by reading or simply tossing the items into the recycling. It was therapeutic. Get rid of old clothes, half done projects, papers and piles and those ‘someday’ items. Focus down on just a few key things.

Clear the debris.

Action Observe Property Think About It

Finding Opportunities

Posted on April 30, 2021

How do you find things you want? What thought process do you go through? Finding opportunities is a process but you need to follow the steps.

A friend is finding property opportunities in the new build space. He’s found a property to tear down and replace with two. He has also found some land where he could build several properties. Meanwhile, someone asked him how he did that as there were no opportunities to be found. He had been told there were no more land parcels to build new homes.

So while one person is out looking for possibilities, the other has chosen to accept that there are none. In my experience, people looking for something are more likely to find it. Perhaps it won’t be found in the first place you look. This certainly can be the case when looking for car keys or glasses.

However, if you are certain you will find them, you keep looking. Though the sensible person will look in different places. However, a person may return to a location and look more carefully or make some enquiries. These tactics also make finding something more likely.

Of course you can wait until someone brings the great deal to you. But you could be waiting all your life. So get out there!

Finding opportunities is about being very clear on your desired target and then looking in areas it is most likely to be. Speaking to lots of people and asking the right questions is also a very useful skill. So is listening.

Action Observe Think About It

Your Favourite Brand

Posted on April 29, 2021

What brand makes you most happy with your life? What is it that makes you feel that way? Your favourite brand can tell you a lot about yourself.

What brand values are critical to your selection? Do you value fun and whimsical, strength and honesty or perhaps precision and consistency? Products and services that really make us feel great are very powerful.

People are emotional beings. We respond and react to things on an emotional level more strongly than anything else. If you have the right product for you, the feeling can be one of warmth and comfort. This feeling you get can be so good in trying to help you to relax, sleep, calm down or just chill out.

Write down a list of your feel great products. Not the, “ho hum, that’ll do” ones but the ones that really stir things up inside. Write the first one, three or seven that spring to mind. If you can still jot down more, you should do so. A bit like popcorn, keep going until the ideas are only coming at a rate of one every few seconds.

Then see what you can learn from these and what moves you.

Your favourite brand, and brands, can be illuminating!

Action Progress Reframe your thoughts

Performing At Your Best

Posted on April 27, 2021

Life is a competition between you today and you yesterday. Other people can inspire you to push harder. However, performing at your best is up to you.

Like many things in life, some people start ahead of you and others start behind you. Regardless of where you start in life, improving on your current position is mostly down to you.

If you were born with speedy legs, you will run faster than most, especially in your younger years. However, unless you train and develop your body and mindset, other people may overtake you in a race. You can be born with talent, but unless you build on that, people with greater desire will leave you for dust.

Of course the race is still just between you and yesterday’s you but it’s better for your mind if you improve. If you don’t put the effort in, you may regret it later. And often this involves some perceived sacrifices that need to be made.

This is true for all the areas of life. Whether it is money, scholastic achievements, sports or relationships, you should be mindful of what you are doing and how much effort you are putting in.

Performing at your best will pay off. Keep striving.

Action Progress Reframe your thoughts Time

Move Swiftly

Posted on April 26, 2021

A comfortable pace is exactly that – comfortable. Consider moving a little quicker. Become a little obsessive. Move swiftly like it’s the day before you are going on holiday for two weeks.

Add a little bit more pace to your step when you are walking. Speak a fraction of a speed more quickly. Come to the point of your comment a little quicker.

This means you might just get more done in your day. Or you might be on time for more events and appointments. It will also mean that you take up less time of others.

If you do not value your time, you are unlikely to value the time of others. Wasting your own time is one thing but wasting someone else’s time is not ideal.

I practice moving quicker by setting an alarm to ring when I should be done a piece of work. If I have some smaller admin items to complete, I set the timer and begin my ‘sprints’. I see if I can work quickly to get the item done in that time. Sometimes I can do it. Sometimes I can’t. But I keep trying and with that I build a habit of hustling through items.

Come on. Move swiftly.

Action Time

Allocating Time

Posted on April 25, 2021

Time is amazing and challenging. There are so many interesting things to do and yet not enough minutes to do them all. Allocating time is the ultimate challenge in life.

Reconsider how you parcel out your time. Is it hyper-methodical? Or is it free flowing? Perhaps you are generally somewhere in between but vacillate from one end of the continuum to the other.

There is an amount of time for work matters, family, play, friends, sleep, eating and relaxing. How much to apportion to each area on any given day is the challenge.

I try to get my work done while the kids are at school or out with friends. Sometimes you radically change the allocation by choice, such as for a holiday. At other times, the change may happen to you. This could be the case if you come down with an illness or if someone close to you is unwell.

The other challenge is that it is hard to tell ahead of time, which combination is the best one. Working 100 hours a week can take its toll on your health and relationships. Of course, even working 60 hours a week can have an adverse effect on many things.

So it may be quite helpful doing a monthly review of how you are allocating time.

Action Reframe your thoughts

Treat People Appropriately

Posted on April 24, 2021

Equality sounds good. However, does equality mean treat people the same? Possibly, but maybe not. Try to treat people appropriately rather than the same. And yes there is some nuance in there but if you thought about it, you already know what I mean.

I like the idea of appropriateness. It allows for some differences in situation. For example, I don’t treat my young children exactly the same as I do my wife. Conversation topics are a little different, expectations are a little different and the comfort around their independence is not identical.

Another thought is, if we treated everyone equally, or the same, in the toilet category, women would have urinals. Or switching it the other way, men’s rooms might have (unnecessary for them) sanitary items available. It seems more appropriate that these differences exist. Making them the same would be a stretch on resources, and they would very rarely get used.

One question I know you’re thinking about is, “who decides what appropriate means?” For what era are we defining it? And once defined for the current world, know that things will shift in a year or five too.

Perhaps we really already know what appropriate would look like. Or at least we would know our current best idea of appropriate. Many people would be happy with that and it might make them aware, or at least curious about, other best practices.

Treat people appropriately.

Action Observe Reframe your thoughts Think About It

Check Your Highest Thoughts

Posted on April 23, 2021

What filters do you use to see the world? Are you in favour of rose-tinted glasses? Or are you a hardened sceptic? Check your highest thoughts carefully as they are the ones you filter the world through. This in turn creates your reality.

Remember, it is not the reality. It is simply your interpretation of reality. If you think people are inherently good, you will see the positive in people’s actions. If you deem people to be evil, then that is how you will generally see people’s actions. And of course you can take sub-categories of people too.

For example, let’s say you think that wealthy people are evil, corrupt and morally bankrupt. Then, even when a multi-billionaire donates a billion dollars to a charity or hospital, you’ll find the negative. You might ask why they are so greedy and why didn’t they donate more? Or you could reference how they are just using it as a tax write-off and publicity stunt.

Your thoughts can betray you as you create stories in your head based on how you want to believe the world is. Though, often enough, the world is not as we create it in our heads with our preferred filter.

Check your highest thoughts. Enlightenment is closer than you think.

Action Observe Think About It

How Are Jobs Created?

Posted on April 21, 2021

You want a job. They help with your income, self-esteem and confidence. However, they can be elusive. How are jobs created? If we know how, why and where jobs are created, we can better position ourselves to be chosen for them.

Jobs tend to appear wherever someone needs a person to do some work. Sometimes a job is to fill an immediate vacancy because somebody died or suddenly left. Other times there is some lead time due to the circumstances of the current job holder. For example, they may have been promoted or fired or even given in their notice of resignation.

A job could also be created in a new company or a growing company looking to expand. Positions are also created during reorganisations due to a new strategy or new leaders looking at building in a different direction.

If you like to be involved in a turnaround situation, look to companies with a recent earnings slump or a new CEO. If you like good efficient cultures, join a firm that is in a growth mode in a growth industry. Joining Netflix in 2007 would have been better than joining Blockbuster. Netflix pivoted into streaming while Blockbuster kept closing stores.

How are jobs created? It is usually by someone assessing a need in a company or division. They believe they need, and can afford, more help.

Action Observe Reframe your thoughts Think About It Time

Creating Your Own Prison

Posted on April 19, 2021

Have you ever felt trapped? It could be because of your circumstances, your choices or your thoughts. Creating your own prison is not what most of us set out to do.

Yet, many of us do it at some point in our lives. We may get into a great relationship but then things turn and we feel trapped. We also dive into things like a job or our own business and then feel we can’t escape. Lastly, we develop a way of thinking, patterns, that are unhelpful. We set up a guard to keep us stuck where we are.

Become aware of such things before you set off down a certain path. Ask yourself what the end of this path might look like in several years. Sometimes we can see clues to our future. We need to consider these signs, clues and intuition moments.

If we don’t see these when we set off, keep an eye out for signposts and side roads. If we are paying attention, we can recognise patterns of behaviour before they negatively impact us. These can be our own or the actions of others.

If you feel trapped in a situation, consider what you are grateful for. Also, consider what the many options are that you have. Think of the easy ones and the hard ones. Don’t just swap a tough situation for another one.

Certainly don’t make creating your own prison a habit.