It’s the simplest tool and techniques that I know for positivity – be in the now. Learn how and why from this, the third part in our 10 part series about creating positivity in your life. As always if it works for you it will work for somebody else please share – have a great day! Brendan.
The American motivational speaker Tony Robbins talks about WAGs and BAGs in terms of goals setting, namely being Wildly Audacious Goals or Big Audacious Goals. In my experience people have no problem in setting WAGs or BAGs rather most people struggle on how to chunk, phase or break down their goal into a path that can lead to the BAG or WAG being successfully achieved.
Recently I coached a well-known TV celebrity that on the surface looked very successful and certainly had no shortage of work. He was happy, good at what he does but for all that he was not earning or bringing home enough to stop himself regularly ending up in his over-draft and yet was not a big spender.
My client is a great goal setter, in fact he is too good as he has too many goals and therefore is distracted from the most important goals! The first challenge for him is to priortise his goals. I use a simple 3 step formula to do this;
1. Do I/will I enjoy reaching this goal?
2. Do I/will I get a reward (money, love, health…) from this goal?
3. What cost if any will pursuing this goals have on my life?
The next challenge for him is that he does not chunk his goals into manageable pieces. To use the well worn cliche “how do you eat an elephant?”, “with a spoon”! Which is a nice way of saying you have to start by turning your goal into small pieces. I like to ‘chunk’ goals by what I can achieve in 1 day and then make a list of these chunks. In this manner it becomes easy as your daily goal becomes very achievable and effortlessly moves you closer and closer to your BAG or WAG.
So ask yourself today;
1. What would I like to achieve?
2. Ask the enjoy, reward, cost question of it?
3. Then break it out into daily chunks
Have a great day. PLEASE share this because every time you share one of these stories YOU could be helping someone to create “meaningful’ success in their life! So please FaceBook share and Twitter.
Thanks Brendan.
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You might remember Jan Carlzon that I wrote about in the Bombay Smile – moment of truth article, the ex CEO of Scandinavian Airlines SAS and the man who coined the term “moments of truth” to describe how people interact with you and your brand. I experienced a great moment of truth with two brands recently that not only spoke of how good businesses are managed but also how attitude is so important to success.
The first store I visited was an art gallery. I was buying two prints by the same artist and as is my nature I asked “would there be a small discount on buying two prints?”. The gallery owner laughed sarcastically and said “maybe if you buy 12!”. I retorted “surely I could get these online with some discount but I would like to give my support to local businesses…” and the reply came “what ever would make you think that – they are the same price online and that is that”. I should probably have left the shop at that stage but I wanted the prints and went ahead with the purchase. While paying I asked “how is business?” the gallery owner replied “up and down” I added “but sure you’re doing something you love…”. She looked at me and said “I am too old to do anything else” in a dejected manner. This was my moment of truth. This lady even though she owned a successful gallery and was surrounded by beautiful art and was regularly meeting artists and art appreciators was not creating meaningful success. This was the root cause of her terrible customer manner and left me feeling flat after my purchase rather than lifted. Next time I’ll buy from someone who loves what they do. But reflect for a moment, do you sometimes act like the gallery owner? and if so are you doing what you love?
The second experience was in a very large supermarket. Feeling a bit flat after the gallery interaction I went to buy nappies for my newborn. The isles had been rearranged and I could not find the nappies I needed. A store shelf packer was busy talking on a 2 way radio and was laying out stock on the shelves. I approached him and asked where the nappies were. He was obviously very busy but stopped what he was doing and led me to the product I needed. I took the nappies and walked to the checkout. As I approached the checkout I heard someone calling out behind me. It was the man again with another packet of nappies, the same as the ones I had in my hand, but these were half price from another part of the store. He passed them to me and said “these will save you a bit”. I was amazed. This guy did not own the store but he was behaving as if he did. I was delighted with my second moment of truth and left the store lifted and delighted! While this man may not have loved his job you could see he loved helping people and therefore was creating meaningful success in his life and mine. I will be back to that store.
So again ask yourself what ‘moments of truth’ do people experience with you? The other interesting strand that weaves through this story is that while I did not get a discount on the pictures I did on the nappies so in that way what I set out to achieve happened!!!
Have a great day and please share on FB or tweet or email – Have a great day Brendan!
If love be the sustenance of the heart, creativity the sustenance of the mind and food the sustenance of the body then meditation is the sustenance of the spirit. – Brendan Foley
When conducting a coaching session I often ask people to score their lives on 4 scales. A quick ready reckoner if you like to assess where an individual is creating meaningful success. I ask people to score from 0-10 how good they feel about; their mind (education, stimulation, creativity), their emotions (relationships, communication, friendships), their body (health, sleep, diet) and their spirit (essence, higher-self, connection). Most answer the first 3 categories; mind, body and emotion easily enough and almost all people stumble when asked to evaluate their spiritual health.
This failure to be able to assess or dialogue with their spirit is quite disconcerting for the individual involved. We all struggle a little to put words on what we mean by our spirit. Many of us confuse spirit with religion (another days post!) when actually pretty much everyone can tell you a balanced and happy person has success in mind body and spirit. Yet why is it so difficult to be articulate about our own spirit?
I believe that most of us have never been thought how to have that conversation with ourselves and fewer of us still make the time to have the silence to allow this real inner dialogue to happen. The good news is that this dialogue is easy and in my view meditation is one of the best ways to facilitate this conversation with the self. You do not need to know what your spirit is to start the conversation, but start it you do need to do. When you start this communication your true wisdom flows and happiness becomes easily accessible! Being in a state of Spirit is one of the 5 States of meaningful success.
Why not check out the meditation in the RESOURCES section. I would also highly recommend the free 21 day mediation programme from the Chopra centre which can be accessed online at http://www.chopracentermeditation.com/
Please share FB and retweet and together we can make today a great day!
The title of this post taken from the famous Gil Scott-Heron song of the same name, nicely captures the essence of a really fascinating conversation I had recently with a group of like minded coaches and business people. We were all reflecting on how a large number of people that we interact with were feeling very negative due to the state of the economy. It quickly transpired that most of these people were basing their emotional state on factors outside of themselves. This is perhaps the most risky and reckless strategy you can employ if you want happiness and meaningful success in your life.
Happiness is not created by external forces; be that money, sex, food, perceived success, share prices and so on. Real happiness comes from inside and is a CHOICE. When someone chooses to be truly happy they let go of their attachment to outside forces and embrace change and flux. That is to say that chaos becomes seen as synchronicity and rather than fighting the tide you learn to swim with it to get where you want to go. I know plenty of businesses and people who are embracing this fact and thriving in the so called recession.
Interestingly this same concept or approach to life creates a silent revolution. If I choose not to react to the negativity around me and concentrate on feeling happy and positive then I affect others in a very positive way. I am conscious that as I write this Ireland has broken all records to date with the size of the national debt. Criticising the banks, the Government or others won’t change a thing and all I will do is feel negative. This will affect my ability to do good business today and to be positive company for my family and others. If we all got on with our real job; being happy, then the mess will sort itself out. So start the revolution today CHOOSE happiness and fly in the face of those who will try to drag you down. Inspire them. Lift them and in doing so we will start a revolution that will not be televised but will lead us all to meaningful success.
Please retweet, Facebook or email link to others and help start the revolution! Thanks and have a brilliant day, Brendan.
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