The Power of Words
Starting Each Day With A Little Thinking...Confusion
Sometimes it seems as if there are just too many decisions to make. All of the moving pieces, conflicting priorities, and potential alternatives leave us in a state of confusion. What are you to do when the confusion seems too much?
One thing you should do — in my opinion — is ask for help. However, prior to asking for help, its wise to take a few steps to sort out the confusion. I find the following four step process to be particularly valuable:
- Start by identifying your end state / where you want to go. As the old expression goes, if you don’t know where you are going an y road will get you there. Once you anchor on an endpoint, you can move on to the next step….
- Identify what you MUST do to get to that end state. Breaking down the elephant in to a number of digestible pieces turns an overwhelming situation in to a number of attainable actions.
- Lay out a timeline for the actions. It doesn’t need to be perfect — in fact it shouldn’t! The actual course of actions will change, but you need the basic plan to…
- JUST DO IT! There’s no magic to getting things done. Just a lot of discipline and hard work. If you identified where you want to go, broke the path in to a number of intermediate steps, and sequenced the steps, the only thing left to do is start taking the steps. Too often folks fall in to the “paralysis by analysis” trap and postpone embracing Nike’s incredibly powerful motto.
I’m not suggesting for a moment that escaping one’s state of confusion is easy. What I am suggesting is that continuing to boo-hoo and belly ache about your situation will get you no where. Making and executing a plan, is going to get you a different place — maybe better, maybe worse. In either case, you’ll have learned, grown, and lived a bit more.
With that in mind.
Isn’t it time you took a step forward to avoid the confusion you’re facing?
As always, thanks for the time.
Transition
Baby, child, pre-teen, teen, young adult, adult, parent, retiree, old guy. Interested, beginner, novice, proficient, expert, professional, world class. Spring, summer, winter, fall. While we would all like things to stay the same, that’s just not reality. Life involves a series of transitions. Some people thrive on these transitions. Others struggle. Why is that?
In my mind opinion it’s all about attitude. If you’re continually looking backwards and “living in the past” the transitions in front of you are going to look pretty unattractive. Now I’m not suggesting that you forget about the past. To the contrary, you need to remember it and hold it in a special place in your heart. Your experiences are what define you. And you need to embrace and understand those experiences. But the past is the past. It can’t be relived. It can’t be changed. Folks that thrive are always looking forward. They see the forthcoming transition as the next big opportunity. They draw on their experiences and embrace the transition. While it doesn’t always go smoothly, their positive, forward looking outlook normally pays dividends. They recognize that transitions are simply part of life and have come to terms with the fact that you are better off embracing them than avoiding them.
If you have any doubts that you are going to face transitions in the future, I’d encourage you to picture how you’ll celebrate your 120th birthday. Hopefully that one got you off the “I don’t have to deal with transitions” cart.
So the next time you see a big challenge or change in front of you, the next time you are facing a transition, realize that life isn’t treating you badly. Rather, life’s simply being life and it’s up to you to define the terms on which you face it.
With that in mind:
What’s your next transition?
As always, thanks for the time.
Help
We all like to think of ourselves as independent souls who have found our own way. It’s a great mental image; and, it’s important to recognize the control you have over your actions, and in turn your life. However, there are NOT a lot of folks around who get by solely on their own. Most folks can do much better by asking for the help of others.
Unfortunately, society’s done a bit of conditioning with us that suggests that “asking for help” isn’t exactly a good thing. Often times when we tell some one we are “asking for help” there’s an immediate connotation that flashes in the other person’s eyes: the one asking for help must be weak, incapable or flawed and that’s BAD!
Because we’ve been conditioned to tie the “that’s BAD” with asking for help, folks are often hesitant to reach out. Newsflash – we ARE all weak, we ARE all incapable, and we ARE all flawed. HOWEVER, that’s NOT a problem. That’s reality. There’s only been one perfect person to ever walk this earth; and, no disrespect intended, you ain’t him! The shortcomings we possess offer us the opportunity to reach out to others and allow them to share their gifts with us. By asking for help we’re actually OFFERING a huge gift to another.
Think about it for a minute. When you help someone that needs it, when you provide your skills and/or abilities, when that person smiles and shows a sense of relief, how do you feel? That feeling exists because they asked for help and you provided it. Sure, they weren’t able to do it on their own. Who cares. It got done AND in the process you gave them the gift of help. But it likely wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t reach out and ask for help.
So the next time someone asks for help, you might want think about the gift they just extended to you in lieu of forming any judgements.
With that in mind:
Why are you afraid to ask for help?
As always, thanks for the time.
Handcuffs
It’s fascinating to me the way that the brain works. It’s both incredibly simple and amazingly complex. We can focus on the “can” and it will guide us to incredible heights. We can focus on the “cannot” and it will carry us to the depths of despair. And that makes me wonder why so many of us decide to shackle the brain voluntarily with mental handcuffs.
Let’s start today with a little bit of perspective. If you’re reading this you’ve likely got a computer, iPad, or smartphone. You’ve either got a high speed internet connection or a 4G network connection. You probably live in a home that 99% of the world’s population would love to inhabit. You don’t have to worry about being hungry. You spend way too much money on material things that you discard within a year or two. And, at the risk of potentially offending any of my international readers, you live in a country where — in spite of all of the political stupidity — we’ve got a pretty good deal going. And many of us, in spite of all of our blessings, feel “handcuffed”.
Handcuffed to the mortgage, handcuffed to our job, handcuffed to our obligations. And we LOVE those handcuffs!!! Seriously, we can claim that there’s SO many things that keep us handcuffed to our current situation. We’re a prisoner of our situation. Woe is me. Come on, seriously do you really want to play that card? The reality is there’s not a whole lot keeping us in the situation we face. Most of those handcuffs are mental and not physical. They’re constructed from fear, doubt, and unwillingness to endure near term discomfort for long term gain.
So the next time you start to boo-hoo and bellyache about all those things that keep you handcuffed, you might want to think a little bit about where you stand compared to the rest of the world. You might want to consider how much risk a change would really entail. You might want to consider your “needs” versus your “wants”. And you might want to consider whether the handcuffs keeping you in place are real or a figment of your imagination.
With that in mind:
Isn’t it time you take off the handcuffs?
As always, thanks for the time
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