Happy With Your Career? Not For Long.

One of my favorite quotes from Bruce Lee: "If you alway put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else — it will spread into work and into your life. There are no limits — there are only plateaus and you must not stay there — you must go beyond them."

What is Bruce really saying when it comes to your career or business?

Everything in your life is a plateau on an endless mountain. You work hard — you move up — and make it to the next plateau. You get settled — you enjoy that plateau — and then you make plans to move from that plateau to the next plateau on the mountain.

And I promise you — if you stay at that plateau for a long time — one of three realities will occur:

1. You WILL get bored of that plateau and start self-sabotaging behaviors.

I see this happen all of the time. We get comfortable and we get to know our responsibilities, our deliverables, our customers. Unfortunately, a career without challenges tends to become predictable and boring. And when things in our life become predictable and boring — we tend to take them for granted.

We start to let some areas grow fallow — we start to procrastinate on delivering — just a bit at first, but then it becomes endemic. We might start coming in later to work or leave earlier. We might not get back to our best customer as quickly as we used to. We spend a little too much time surfing or sleeping on the job — and everyone begins to notice.

Solution: When you start to get bored — the very millisecond you get bored — start looking for the new plateau to move to and START CLIMBING.

2. Someone WILL kick you off that plateau.

In my Welcome Packet I send to new clients, I have a powerful quote on the front cover: "If you aren’t continually reinventing yourself, your company, or your brand, it’s only a matter of time before you become obsolete, irrelevant, and go out of business." And that's 100% true.

Someone or some company is going to come along and shake your apple tree. You might see the apples fly all over the place and say to yourself, "I have a strong stem — nothing will happen to me."

But you're wrong. Think of what's happening right now in the marketplace — what has happened to the publishing, newspaper, media, advertising, music, auto, banking industries (just to name a few)? If things aren't falling all around you — you might be falling off the number one spot to number two (or three). Or your vocation is changing and YOU need to chart out a new direction for your business to sail towards.

Solution: Keep your peripherals moving at all times — keep looking around and see if anyone (or any company/industry) is going to begin to take over your plateau. Don't get comfortable, get moving.

3. Your plateau WILL disappear and you will fall.

We frequently make the wrong assumption and think, "This is a great job/company, I am challenged every day, and nothing will really change (at least for the time being)."

You're WRONG. 40-50 years ago, you might be right — my father had his position at Electrolux until the day he retired. But stop kidding yourself — those jobs are GONE.

In fact, each year, the market is moving faster and faster. Industries that were booming just a decade ago are now gone.  I'm always in awe when I visit my local cable company (usually to trade in my broken DVR player) and see just 10-15 years ago all the awards on the walls, the photos of all the accomplishments, the parties, the fun that filled all the offices and people there.

Now there are two VERY bored people on the other side of the glass partition who collect cable payments and exchange DVR players. That's it. Everyone else is GONE.

Solution: Sometimes plateaus disappear instantly, but most of the time, it take awhile for them to totally evaporate. So you have time — not a lot of time — but just enough to find that next handhold and start climbing up.

So the only logical decision to be made is to start climbing up. Because you don't want to start climbing down.

There's no time like the present — START CLIMBING.

P.S. By the way, this also applies to your life too. Your marriage. Your friends. Keep it fresh! Keep it growing!

Social Media Is Ruining Your Life.

How many text messages do you send in a day? How many emails? Tweets? Foursquares? How many quotes/photos/links do you post on Facebook? Pinterest? How many sites do you surf to learn about the world around you?

All of this is GOOD. But it shouldn't be the end-all of what you do to communicate every day.

Do you interact with strangers anymore? Your neighbors? The shopkeeper down the street? The man at Starbucks who makes you that perfect coffee every day?

As we stretch out via the web, we are slowly and subtly closing out many people around us. Not our friends, but those people I call "Strangers". You know, the people you DON'T know and unfortunately, they don't know you either.

As we entwine our lives with more and more social media outlets, it allows us to forgo the opportunity to reach out to people we touch everyday — the waitress, the auto mechanic, the crossing-guard at the school — and have a meaningful conversation with them.

Honestly, we don't even have to talk to them anymore — they are not only strangers, they are 'non-people' in our lives.

You might say — so what? But you might be missing out on your new best friend, your new boss, or your new life partner.

A better title for this post should be "Start A Conversation".

In the next few days, start a conversation with 3-5 strangers whom you wouldn’t normally talk to:

Ask them a question, make them laugh, or give them a compliment (I really like how your arranging those oranges - how do you do that?). You also need to get a response back — and if the opportunity presents itself, have a conversation.

But this is my charge to you — you have to do it this week. Make it happen.

Your Communication Skills Stink – Part Two.

Last week, I covered why communication is so important to business. Speaking with your clients, team, peers and boss are all critical to your success and are usually the nexus of problems when things go awry. See Part One here. If you break down the structure of communication, it really is the transmission of information. You say something, I respond. I say something, you respond.

It's a 'Give & Take' relationship, but sometimes the signal lines can be bad. The wires are compromised. Emotions get in the way.

And this can happen in a millisecond. It's probably happened to you — you are speaking with someone and suddenly — they shut down, they get an angry look on their face, or they bite back with venom. It's all happened to all of us — we chose the wrong word, or focused on the wrong example — and BAM! We get hit right in the nose. And it hurts.

Especially when communicating information. When selling to a prospect, instructing a team member, or speaking with a superior, one needs to be SO careful — here is the architecture of the conversation.

On one end is IDU — I Don't Understand. On the other is YDU — You Don't Understand.

IDU is the state where the person begins to shut down because you are speaking about a subject they don't know or understand. You are talking OVER their head. When it happens, the person starts to feel inferior or incompetent and they shut down.

YDU is the state where the person begins to get angry because YOU don't know or understand their situation. You are talking PAST them. When it happens, the person starts to feel angry or contempt for you — they begin to interrupt or sit and stew with anger.

IDU is on one end of the spectrum and YDU is on the other end. Your job is to remain in the middle with your communication, giving them info while ensuring you don't venture in IDU or YDU territory.

And the way to ensure this doesn't happen is to:

1. Watch for physical signals. They might start looking away or looking angry or impatient. They might not respond immediately or come back with a response that sounds frustrated or angry. On the phone, listen for typing or clicking — they are not listening, they are multi-tasking.
2. Ask questions along the way. Like: "Are you with me so far?" or "Am I speaking too quickly?" or " Do you want me to review any aspect of what I just covered?" or "Do you know this already?" This gives the receiver a chance to better understand the information and will quickly take you out of the IDU/YDU area.
3. Paraphrase their response. When they do respond, paraphrase what you just heard. This will quickly take you out of the YDU end of the spectrum.

Communication is so critical for your success — make sure it is TWO-WAY!

The Number One Way People Get Derailed.

It happened to you again. It's happened to me. It's happened to all of us at one time or another. We blame other people, circumstances, luck, your parents, your family, and ultimately the finger always points back at YOU.

Only you can change your situation. But we sometimes are afraid of what might happen. We start making up elaborate stories about what 'will' happen. We get caught up with a lack of inspiration, confidence, focus, energy, and my favorite persistence. How don't you get derailed? 

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

I get a lot of business cues from watching Mad Men, a tv series based in an ad agency in the 1960's. During the last episode, the main character, Don Draper is frustrated at the firm's new win — Jaguar and Dunlop Tires. He states, " These are piddly-little companies — I want Chevy and Firestone. Forget Lucky Strike, I want Dow Chemical." His partner instantly retorts back, "This is the old Don Draper, I've missed him." And subsequently makes the Dow Chemical meeting happen.

What would you do if you weren't afraid?

Right now — what's the one thing you would do to make your career, your job, your business BETTER?

Who would you call? What would you do? What can you affect?

Here's the secret: Just Do It. Make It Happen.

Be Proud Of Yourself.

As a coach, one of my responsibilities is to help my clients acknowledge their accomplishments. Why? Because we don't. We get so caught up in the rat-race, getting things done, moving as fast as possible — and we don't take the time to stop and review where we are and where we've come from.

A big part of my job is acknowledgement — I help my clients fully appreciate where they are in life — all the hard work, all the sweat and tears, all the long nights and early mornings — everything.

Why? It gives us perspective. It allows us to understand what it takes for us to really succeed. It also allows us to understand how hard we are on ourselves and how we forget all the hard work.

So . . . I want you to take a few minutes this morning and fully acknowledge where you are in life today:

• Do you have a roof over your head? A lot of people don't.
• Do you have a full stomach? A lot of people are hungry in this world.
• Do you have a partner in life? Family? Good for you!
• Are you employed? Nice work!
• Do you have a car? Excellent!
• Do you have a savings account? Good planning!

If you say yes to most of these questions — congratulations! If you have most - great job.

Be proud of yourself — who you are, what you do, who you impact, and what you leave behind. If you put yourself in the position of acknowledging your current position and what you've done — you have only one way to go — UP.

HOW DO YOU ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS? HOW ARE YOU PROUD OF YOURSELF?

LET ME KNOW BELOW . . .

The Secret To Getting Things Done.

Candidly, it hard to get things done. Of course, some things are easy, but many of them are quite difficult. We are always looking for ways to do things better, faster, and with less worry and work. Years ago, I came upon one of the most simple and powerful quotes I've ever read. It's from Mohandas Gandhi, who in his 78 years of life, gave us so many great quotes (and his actions too!).

"Action Expresses Priorities."

That's it. That's MY secret to getting things done.

Think about it — All of your actions, all the things you do, all the things you deliver — set your priorities. Once you take action, you instantly decide what you want to do first. Why? People tend to act upon those things that have meaning to them.

But I think it's deeper than that. I think when you don't know what to do, you need to just take action anywhere and suddenly certain things will start to fall into place.

But that's the problem today — we don't take action. We're afraid to — we procrastinate, over-analyze, and postpone because we are sometimes afraid of action.

Because action will ensure we have to make a decision — we have to do something that is sometimes hard, or we will have to deal with the results of that action.

But what we don't realize is that action moves us forward. It propels us . . . it forces us to rocket faster and faster. And sometimes we are afraid of that.

So ask yourself:

• How can I take action today?
• What should I do first? Second? Third?
• What should I stop doing?

So the next time you are putting off something — a decision, a task, a phone-call — just think "Action Expresses Priorities".