CategoriesActionGoals, Results & New ThinkingProgressReframe your thoughts

You Can Turn This Around

It’s not hopeless. It doesn’t need to be forever. There are always options. Good ones even. You can re-build or re-start from scratch. There’s a lot of awesome out there!

First you need to want something different. Ideally you can picture it in your mind, feel it in your bones and then describe it on paper. If you can’t find the time, or make the effort, to write it down, in a few bullet points, consider re-assessing if it is simply a wish rather than a goal.

If you’ve done the writing and are ready to go, then make a short little plan including the very next three simple steps you think you need to take to inch yourself closer to that goal. Call someone. Find an answer. Buy or borrow a book about it. It will then seem a little easier and you’ll feel like you’re on your way. Because technically, you are! (Cue the Quote: A journey of 1,000 miles begins with the first step…)

Do these three steps as quick as you can. Do one now. Then the other two. You will feel good for starting.

You don’t have to do these steps and you don’t have to change anything. But if you want to change something, you really should get on with it: the clock’s ticking. If you don’t have anything in your life you would like to change or improve, you may now return to your regularly scheduled programming…

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CategoriesActionGoals, Results & New Thinking

Take Control

There is a mess in your life somewhere. You need to own it. You need to take control of it. Look it straight in the eye and say, “I am sorting you out today!”. Then go ahead and do it.

There is huge power and energy in deciding you will take control and make something happen. You start getting clarity. You Even want to move forward more quickly.

Find something today that you have been avoiding, putting off, procrastinating with, and then take control of it. Sort it out. Wrestle with it. Stick with it. Put a quick plan together to tackle it. Then execute on that plan. Get started.

Allow yourself that feeling of being in control. In command. Directing the outcome. Pushing things forward. You will stop making reasons and start making results. You will feel exhilarated. Confident. Ready.

You will make it happen. Take Control.

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CategoriesActionGoals, Results & New ThinkingObserveProgressThink About It

Use The Feedback

Great, positive feedback is what the majority of people would like to get. It feels good and it’s energising. One great piece of feedback, or good feedback from the right person, at the right time, can keep me motivated for days or weeks.

Improvement feedback can be harder to take. It doesn’t have to be harder to take, but in general, a lot of people will have some challenges with constructive feedback, never mind factual or negative feedback too.

Since starting this blog, I have had a good deal of feedback. Some really good and positive feedback, while others have given good insights into ways I could improve the site or content. I have found both to be very useful and I have been delighted each time that someone has taken the time out of their day to think about the item, write down that feedback and send it to me.

The real key to feedback is not how it makes you feel in the moment. Although that can be helpful, and is important, what you need to do is reflect on it and use the feedback. That is the real key.

Use the positive feedback to encourage you to keep going. Maybe even create a notebook, journal or notes page in your phone, to capture all the good feedback. Then it is there for you when you need a little motivation or want to get smiling again. I have some from many years ago. It really makes a great impact each time I see it.

With growth or improvement feedback, you should consider it, assess whether it has some element of truth (whether you want to face that truth or not), and if it does, look at how you can start using the feedback and incorporating into your life. People are trying to help you, for free, so that you can improve and do better socially, financially, health-wise or whatever the topic is. People’s intent is usually good. But even if it isn’t, you can still use their insight and comments to help you improve and grow.

I’ve been using the feedback I’ve been getting for this blog and hopefully people are seeing the result of that. And what can’t be seen yet, I’m at least working on behind the scenes.

Always thank the person giving the feedback, whether you like it, or not.

Today, try to give at least one person some useful and actionable feedback. Also, listen for, or ask for, feedback from others for you to use. Write it down. Thank them. Use it! You will grow much faster, improve yourself quicker and see the benefits of that growth realised much sooner (in health, wealth, relationships, career, etc.).

Use the feedback.

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CategoriesActionGoals, Results & New ThinkingProgress

Puzzled?

If I can’t figure something out, I might say I’m puzzled. This puzzled feeling has a tendency to occur more often when the outcome I want seems either, far away from my reach, quite difficult or very important to me.

The key to unlocking the puzzled feeling is to use the idea of a puzzle ?.

When you look at a puzzle, whether it is a small 10 piece puzzle or a larger 1,000 piece puzzle, how do you start?

Most people start by taking the first step. You wouldn’t think you could solve it in one step, but you could make progress. Take one step. Pick up a piece. Place it somewhere. Group items that seem similar. Turn a piece 90 degrees. Or more. Get it wrong. Get it right. Try other pieces. Put together separate sections as they become more obvious. Add the separate sections to the main puzzle.

It usually takes longer to place each piece at the beginning of the task, but you can often move a little faster as you gather some early wins and get some momentum as you see things starting to come together. Then we tend to reach a tipping point. You can go quicker and quicker because you’ll have seen each piece that remains more than once and also seen the places they could go more than once. Familiarity has a calming effect and helps make quicker decisions.

Then the magic happens as you race through the last pieces with excitement, anticipation and pride of achievement. Seeing it all coming together, you finish it.

Done ✅

This is how you achieve anything that you want to do in life. It’s all the same. Only the (project) names will change.

When puzzled, procrastinating or panicked, use the puzzle process.

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CategoriesGoals, Results & New ThinkingReframe your thoughtsTime

New Beginnings

Setting off in a new direction can be both exciting and intimidating. The future could bring untold opportunity or challenges.

Regardless of what is to come, or how the change has come about, or whether you wanted the change or not, the best thing you can do is to take a deep breath, stand tall, smile and go forward, with an open mind and the confidence that things tend to work out well for those looking for things to work out well.

We can focus on the past, the “what could have been’s“, the plans you had, etc., but that is over now and new paths are to be forged. Allow yourself 5 minutes to mourn your loss, and not more, because every minute of life is too precious to dwell on unavailable paths.

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CategoriesGoals, Results & New ThinkingReframe your thoughts

RESULTS!

We all want results. We want the outcome we envisage in our head.

We do not want reasons. We do not want excuses.

As Jim Rohn said, “Results are the name of the game!”

Reasons or results. You will always get one or the other.

One of my favourite quotes, which has been sitting on my desk for over a year now, is…..

“Results don’t lie.” – Unknown

Whether you are losing weight, training for an event, or trying to earn more money, you can always tell how you are doing by the actual results.

If you want to be brutally honest with yourself, check your results.

Good luck!

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CategoriesGoals, Results & New Thinking

Habit Forming

Constant repetition is required until you reprogram your mind and body with the desired habit (remember your times tables). There are no set number of days to create a habit. It can take some people 15 years to say goodby to cigarettes and only a few days to start going to a new place of work.

If you want to create a new habit, do the thing you should do, but maybe don’t want to do, everyday, until it’s a habit. You’ll know it’s a habit when you no longer think about doing it, it just happens.

Be focused, make it important enough (like a new place of work) and it will be a habit very quickly.

You’ll soon start doing the thought or activity out of habit and start to realise, and focus on, the benefits you are getting. That’s when you will want to really make this new habit stick and not fall back into that old habit.

Call it ‘crossing the threshold’. 

It gets easier from there to make this growing habit into a permanent one.

Go try it.

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CategoriesGoals, Results & New Thinking

10 Jan 2021 – That Went Fast!!

Did you get from the year what you wanted?

Did you achieve anything? Everything? Or something in between? Step into the future by 12 months and reflect back, as if 2020 had just finished.

Was 2020 as successful as you had planned? For some it will be, and for others it won’t. Most of that success, and those new results, will come down to new thinking and new doing.

So stick with me, come back daily, and together we can make 2020 the miracle year you’re so eagerly hoping it will be.

Scott’s thinking. Are you?

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