Progress Archives - Page 49 of 49

New Beginnings

Posted on January 31, 2020

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.

Action Progress

Do Your Own Pushups

Posted on January 30, 2020

The optimal way to change something in your life, is to make the effort yourself.

Sure, you can watch Tiger Woods play golf everyday and that might help your golf game a little. But to make, lasting and significant progress, you need to go do it yourself.

Whether this means getting up early to travel through rain or snow to get to the gym and do a challenging workout, put in the work to build your business or put the gruelling extra effort in to progress your career, only you can do it. If your personal trainer, competitor or work colleague put in the hard yards and focus on the results, they will get the benefit, not you.

It’s nice to have supporters and people cheering you on and hoping you get the work in and the results out, but only you can make it happen. No well intentioned effort from your Mom, Dad, spouse, friend, neighbour, etc will make your body, business or career better. You have to grind it out and win those results for you. And you will feel amazing for it!

Go! Do your pushups.

Action Progress Reframe your thoughts

The Thrill of Being Early

Posted on January 22, 2020

Can you remember the last time you arrived somewhere early? Relaxed, composed, delighted. Maybe even just a little bit pleased with having pulled it off.

Maybe you were 15 minutes early, ahead of everyone else, and were able to greet everybody as they arrived. Perhaps you enjoyed your new status as the early bird and you even thought this might make a good habit to adopt.

Even if you were bang on time, it’s still such a thrill to arrive by the time you were expected. I know I love that feeling. It feels so very good. So what do you need to do to consistently get that early bird calm and confidence?

There are three critical success factors in arriving early. Do these with every meeting, appointment or event and you’ll get to experience that thrill of already winning, if only because of the time that you arrived.

First, you must realistically work backwards from the 15 minute early mark. So if your appointment is at 10:00, aim to be exactly in the spot you need to, but by 09:45. In doing so, you must recall your average times required to prepare yourself and journey to the destination. This preparation includes what you need to wear or bring, and assessing transport, weather, parking, security on arrival, possibility of meeting people on the way, etc.

Second, you must add in some contingency time on top of the first step. It depends on the distance travelled, but as an example, if it is within an hour, add 15 minutes (for traffic, bad weather or meeting someone you know en route). If your destination is overseas, add one to two days, depending on the importance of the event.

Third, you must know when to stop doing things beforehand and transition into get ready mode. You must not do, “Just one more thing”. Set a timer on your phone if you must to alert you to the transition moment. But, when it is time to transition into get ready and go mode, you must focus on that and not become distracted or engaged in anything else. You have no “spare” time. You have already calculated the time required to be there early and that extra contingency time was for unexpected things, not to borrow from.

If you do these three things, you will be early 95% of the time and get to feel the thrill of being early as your reward. There are so many other benefits from being early though too, such as a calmer mind on the journey, appreciation from others involved in the event and a sense of personal control and mental power.

At one event, to which I had arrived early, the benefit was that I was able to speak to the CEO of one of the world’s largest telecoms companies, for almost 15 minutes, before he had to prepare to address the arriving audience. Definitely worthwhile.

Develop the three-step habit above and you will get the thrill of arriving early, more and more, as your big new habit of arriving early is developed and reinforced, until it is firmly in your programming.

You may find the benefits to be priceless.

Goals, Results & New Thinking Reframe your thoughts

RESULTS!

Posted on January 21, 2020

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!

Action Progress

Uncomfortable to Unstoppable

Posted on January 20, 2020

Frequently people stop because something is uncomfortable. People will often shy away from a challenge because it is socially uncomfortable (what people might think or say if you tried), physically uncomfortable (a challenging skill or strenuous) or mentally uncomfortable (trying to solve a difficult problem).

If only people remembered that you always have to get through that uncomfortable stage before you can get to the unstoppable stage.

If you can remember, you were usually uncomfortable when you started doing anything for the first time. It could have been putting your hand up in class, or speaking in a meeting (social), learning a new sports skill (physical) or learning your times tables (mental).

The trick to remember is that it always gets better and easier if you put in the effort and accept greater guidance from someone who knows how. Then if you keep trying, practicing and developing, you will start to be quite good at it (witness anyone progressing through times tables or solving a Rubik’s Cube).

Then if you practice even more, you can become unstoppable. What a great feeling that is. To know you are one of the best in a certain endeavour.

That period of being uncomfortable is the way the Universe checks to see who really is interested in progressing further.

To progress from Uncomfortable to Unstoppable, you need Action Not Words.

Go do it!

Goals, Results & New Thinking

Habit Forming

Posted on January 14, 2020

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.

Progress

A Life In Progress

Posted on January 12, 2020

There are only two situations were your life is not in progress: When you are regressing and when you are dead.

Dead seems to be forever. Try to make sure that if you ever regress, that it isn’t similarly long.

I love progress. People generally seem to love progress too. We love to see our family and friends doing well and improving. We love to see our favourite teams get better, win more and move up in the standings. We love to see our own lives getting better, whether it’s in our relationships, financially, health and fitness or work/career.

But sometimes we stagnant. Or worse. We regress. If you see that happening, in your life or others, focus on what you can do to make a positive change. This can be a little uncomfortable. But pain is temporary.

Take one thing in your life right now and make it better. And work on it every day. From making your bed when you get up, to eating better, to sending a letter to that client you’re after. And then follow up.

You’ll feel great.

Go do it now.

Goals, Results & New Thinking

10 Jan 2021 – That Went Fast!!

Posted on January 10, 2020

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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