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Is Your Life Ready For Groundhog Day?
In the hit comedic movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray's character, Phil Conners, is caught up in a time warp, doomed to live the same day over and over until he gets it right. Hilarious as the ensuing mayhem may be on the big screen, it is a poignant and not too thinly veiled metaphor for how most of us live our own lives - mindlessly occupied with our own issues and concerns, stumbling through life (often over the toes of others) with little if any conscious direction or critical thought. In the end, we keep on running into the same scenarios and problems over and over - not because we're caught in a time loop, but because we're caught in a life-loop. We haven't made the grade, so we can't graduate beyond our current situation. One of the solutions to this is to create what I call a "Groundhog Day" Proof Life. Think about it for a second. What if today (or any day lately) was the only day you got to live. Would that be okay with you, or would it be a wailing tragedy? There are 5 steps to creating a GD Proof Life, and I've outlined them below. 1. Quit playing "Someday My Prince Will Come" on your internal radio station. Whether it's the perfect mate, the perfect job or the perfect life, too many of us spend so much time in the imaginary future that we let our present fall to pieces around our feet. Why bother cleaning, when you don't really belong where you currently live? How can you possibly have a great night out when your ideal date hasn't shown up at the door? Who cares if you blow off your job - it's not like you care, or anything. Stop it! As John Lennon sang, life is what happens when your making other plans. Don't waste the life you have fantasizing about a life that doesn't exist. 2. Get your house in order. Now that you are back in the present, get your act together and make what you do have work as well as it can for you. Design environments that support and uplift you by ditching anything that doesn't and only replacing it when you've found something you love. 3. Pursue your dreams, not your "purpose." Yes, we all have a purpose in life (more than one, probably). But part of the game is that we don't get to know what that purpose is, and spending all our time trying to find it often ends up taking the place of actually living our lives in a way that would allow us to serve this purpose if we did. We all know people who went off to "find themselves" and never came back - don't be one of them. The best way to find yourself, and your purpose, is to live a life of passion and authenticity and let them find you. 4. Quality, not quantity. Why live life at half-mast? You don't get bonus points for choosing lots of cheap, nasty fast food instead of a moderate amount of gourmet cuisine, and neither does it gain you anything to fill your closet to overflowing with ill-fitting and poorly matched clothes instead of holding out for a modest assortment of exquisite ensembles. Greed and envy are not what I'm advocating, but life's to short to sit on lumpy furniture and eat bad food. 5. Make it matter - all day, every day. Live life as if you might actually have to account for it someday. Is it really so important to get that promotion that you are willing to hurt a friend, bend the rules (even though it makes problems for everyone else down the line), or claim credit for stuff you did not do? Would it really take that long to bring a hot meal to a shut-in down the road - even if you do have to miss the opening sequence of your favorite television show? Do you really need one more piece of jewelry that you'll never wear, when the money could go so much farther at the community center downtown that provides valuable resources to those in need? As they say, what goes around comes around. What do you have coming? Imagine today happening over and over and over again for the rest of your life (or at least until you got it right). What would you need to clear out, clean up and bring into your life to make that an intriguing prospect, rather than a chilling thought? Don't wait for tomorrow to get started. In real life, we only get one chance to get it right. (c) Soni Pitts ABOUT THE AUTHOR Soni Pitts is the Chief Visionary Butt-Kicker of SoniPitts.Com. She specializes in helping others reclaim "soul proprietorship" in their lives and to begin living the life their Creator always intended for them. She is the author of the free e-book "50 Ways To Reach Your Goals" and over 100 self-help and inspirational articles, as well as other products and resources designed to facilitate this process of personal growth and spiritual development.
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Coaching Trust - The Most Vital Component in Leadership "Trust is the emotional glue that binds followers and leaders together." Two Leadership Traps: How To Avoid Them and How To Get Out Of Them (Part 2) Here's how to get out of, or avoid, the "I need ... " trap. It simply involves changing what you think and what you say in very simple ways. Dont Be a Complainer Complaining. There's room for legitimate complaining, but if you let this deadly disease of attitude - complaining loose, it will conquer you. Complaining can take over your life. Destroy you and leave you without anything. In Leadership, The Eight Ways Of Right Action (Part 2) In Part 1, I said that leaders who can't have people take right action are ineffective, and I listed four of the eight ways of right action. In Part 2, I'll describe the remaining four ways. Partnership: Choose It or Lose It Charlotte decides to do good. Charlotte is a highly motivated worker. Something has been bothering her lately, something about the structure of the work flow that's causing redundancy, misallocation of resources, costly errors, and diminished productivity. On her own she does a careful study of the situation and convinced that she is on to something, she spends her evenings writing a detailed report that includes her observations, the apparent costs to the system, evidence of mismanagement (she is a bit caustic here), her vision of how the work flow should be structured, along with the steps she feels would turn things around and assure success. In the end, this is a detailed report, meticulously done, twenty-five single-spaced pages, with charts and graphs. Charlotte is proud of her work, the fact that she did this at her own initiative and on her own time, and she is truly excited about making a positive contribution to the organization. Charlotte finishes her report and sends it to the company president. And then she waits. And she waits. Certainly there will be a phone call, a meeting, some acknowledgment of her contribution, a bonus maybe, even a promotion wouldn't be out of the question. Something. But nothing comes. A week goes by. Two weeks. Still nothing. Hope wanes, and a bitterness begins to settle in. Those executives, she thinks, they go off to these programs on partnership or leadership or empowerment; they learn all the right words, but in the end it doesn't mean anything. It's more of the same old arrogance of top management. They really don't care. And this marks the end of Charlotte as a highly motivated worker. She is angry; she has her evaluations (all negative) of the president; she is feeling very righteous -- I did the right thing and what did it get me? -- and she has lost interest in pursuing her productivity project. What's the point? she asks. That's the last time I'll go out of my way for this company, Building Self Confidence As a hypnotherapist I specialise in helping people to develop confidence and self esteem. Leading In The Face Of Disaster The date was Saturday, April 11, 1970, the time 13:13 CST. The event to take place was to be one of NASA's finest hours; the launch of Apollo 13. Apollo 13 was supposed to land in the Fra Mauro area. However, an explosion on board forced the crew to circle the moon without landing. Effective Leaders are (#2) Technical SET CLEAR AND REASONABLE OBJECTIVES FOR THEMSELVES AND OTHERS: Plan? Plan? Plan? Managers need to do their homework. Effective managers know that setting objectives, outlining the steps required to achieve them, and delegating tasks appropriately to each staff person are all necessary components of bringing a project to fruition. The development of a system that maintains these objectives (like a wall calendar) is a good sign of an effective leader and time manager. Any major projects should be time-lined backwards from completion date to incipience to verify how long they will take, and to create intermediate goals to keep the staff and management motivated. Are You a Good Manager or a Great Leader? Your word is your truth - Know that when you speak, you will fulfill your promise to others and others will know they can depend on you. Think before you speak. Under promise and over deliver. Always keep your promise. The Personality of Leadership Have you ever wondered what type of person or personality makes the best leader? Most would consider the answer to that question to be the person that has the greatest success, the largest organization, or the best staff. Conversely, have you ever wondered how it is that a person with little drive or entrepreneurial skills ends up in a leadership position? You know the type person I am writing about, a person that could not lead a dog on a walk, but has been given the responsibility of leading a large and well-established organization. Ask Yourself Whats In It For WE? "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success." - Henry Ford Make The Elephant Jump -- Leading With A Kind Heart Leadership is not about getting people to do what they want. If they did what they want, you wouldn't be needed as a leader. Instead, leadership is about getting people to do what they don't want to do (or don't think they can do) and be ardently committed to doing it. Managing Monsters in Meetings - Part 6, Deadlocked Discussions Although a meeting is a vehicle for resolving differences, it can break down when the participants become mired in a disagreement. Common Mistakes Extraordinary Leaders Dont Make When people make a decision (either consciously or unconsciously) to follow your leadership, they do it primarily because of one of two things: Your Character or your Skills. They want to know if you are the kind of person they want to follow and if you have the skills to take them further. Yes, there are other variables but these are the bulk of the matter. This week we focus on the kind of skills that cause people to follow your leadership, specifically things that an Extraordinary Leader doesn't do! Heres The REAL Reason Bush Won: The Dark Night Of The Leadership Soul George Bush won the election because he was finally able to break out of the presidential bubble and give "leadership talks" on a consistent basis. Birth Order - Understand How It Affects Your Personality "Know thyself" is a powerful principle that leaders, managers and effective people intuitively know. Be the Samurai Sword Relationships are constantly facing crisis. Everywhere we look people are in dispute with one another. Companies are in dispute with one another. Countries are even in dispute with one another. Leadership For Deep Results: Without Them Are You Wasting Your Leadership And Your Life? (Part One) I've challenged all leaders I have worked with during the past two decades to achieve "more results faster continually." Precious Moments There is too much learning out there that we earn drop by drop as we go through experiences in life. There is one of the experiences that I earned from a workshop on Leadership Skills and Management. What Makes A Good Leader? Ask Uncle Sam What do the major generals who are leading the war efforts in Iraq have in common with executives and entrepreneurs who are conducting business back home? When it comes to leadership, the answer is probably a lot more than you think.
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