Focus Confidence Momentum

If you want to understand what’s going on in Europe think safety nets.

My feeling is that when people have easy access to too many safety nets they tend to lose their self-reliance. There is a wide spectrum to this. A few people have too much pride and accept little help from others. The majority I think go with the flow, swallow their pride and will accept help to various degrees, when there is a safety net available. At the extreme are people who rely on safety nets to exist. Many are doing the best they can because of illness or bad luck. But many others have used safety net options for so long that that they lose their ability to struggle towards self-reliance, even to the point of looking for a job. Sadly, some people never had a chance to learn self-reliance.

It’s the same in Europe but on a national scale. Countries, like Greece, on a national level swallow their pride and continuously use the safety nets offered by the more productive countries, like Germany. They seem to have lost their self-reliance and their problem just keeps getting worse. But now the safety net is about to rip because Germany et. al. are running out of money and there will be no one to pay for Greece’s safety net. Oooops

That’s what’s happening.

Confidence is a consequence of doing the right things right or, at least, in an improving fashion. I usually tell my coaching clients that the coaching doesn’t start until we decide what actions they will be taking to achieve their goals. My coaching job is to help them do more of the right actions well and less of the wrong. Helping them decide on their goals is more of a consulting assignment – we arrive at those collaboratively.

For example Tiger Woods’ putting coach helps him to go thru his pre-putt routine the same way each time. It’s designed to assess all the right things and gives him confidence that he hasn’t missed anything before he putts. His coach helps to provide the diligence necessary to do all the small actions that are part of the routine.

Lombardi told his players during their exhausting practices; “If you quit now during these workouts you’ll quit in the middle of the season, during a game. Once you learn to quit it becomes a habit. We don’t want anyone here who’ll quit.‎” And he focused and succeeded famously on ‘blocking and tackling’ i.e. nothing very fancy.

Coaching people to not quit is important. In business development coaching persistance is a paramount strategy. Cultivating the right people continually with email is effective. The cost is minimal. Persistance is easy. Except for one thing.

I have often found clients want to quit because they fear too many solicitations will make them look like a pest. I usually can turn around their reluctance by asking if they’d send that next email if I gave them $10,000, or whatever the value of a sale might be. They get the point and they persist.

Thank you Coach Lombardi.

I came across an interesting thought from Vince Lombardi today. He used the phrase “quiet explanation” to describe one aspect of coaching. I facilitated a workshop on mentoring the other day with a variety of ideas for giving feedback, igniting motivation and dealing with poor performance. I would have added ‘quiet explanation’ to my list of good ideas if I had seen it earlier. It just sounds so nice to me.

Here are some synonyms for explain: describe, put in plain words, clarify.

When something happens, we make up theories – stories, really – about what happened and why. Then we go looking for evidence to support our theories. Often, we have to skew the facts a bit (or read only those journalists we agree with) in order to keep our theories intact.

You’ve probably heard the quote “The greatest tragedy in all history is the murder of a beautiful theory by a brutal gang of facts.” This week, I challenge you to aid and abet that murderer. Look for the facts. Don’t be sucked in, or suckered by, your own story. Dig out that magnifying glass and look for the truth.

Lynn

© 2011 Lynn Cutts, Manage Your Muse, and Weekly Challengers. All rights reserved. Muse@ManageYourMuse.com www.WeeklyChallengers.com

I found this recently in Forbes. It’s a question asked of Stephen Covey and it’s good.

If you had to write The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People over again, would you change anything? Explain.

I would not. The sequence of the habits is the important thing. To win a public victory, you first need to win a deep private victory, taking responsibility and initiative—Habit 1, Begin with the End in Mind—Habit 2, and Put First Things First—Habit 3. Then the public victory follows — Habit 4, Think Win/Win, Habit 5, Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood, and Habit 7, Synergize, which means that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Habit 7 is Sharpen the Saw, so that the four parts of your nature are deeply developed and nurtured—your body, mind, heart and spirit.

I’m working on a speech where I have to talk about a friend. When I summarized the events of our friendship the title of this post came to mind. My friend is someone who has a terrific prosperity mentality. It’s easy for them to spend time and money to follow their dreams, or desires, at least. They don’t worry about running out of either.

Do you work with a properity mentality or a poverty mentality. Does some fear of running out of money or time get in your way of doing things you want to do.

Can you re-evaluate? Can you make a list of things you’re not doing for time or money reasons? Are those things you really want to do – really in your ‘bucket list’? Well if there are a few positive answers to those questions it’s time to take a new look and your time and bank book. Remember ‘you’re going to be dead a long time – it’s time to live now’.

This applies professionally as well as personally. At one end of the scale are business investment decisions. At the other end are those items on your personal ‘bucket list’.