Giving Yourself Permission to be Imperfect

If you want to rapidly increase the pace at which you overcome personal obstacles and weaknesses, let me give you a simple perscription: Give yourself complete and total permission to be imperfect. Just decide you’re going to be okay with it. Stop sweating the fact that there are 57 different things you wish were different about your life and let it go.

Here’s why: If you don’t give yourself permission to be imperfect, you’re setting yourself up in a position of weakness. You’re starting out with the “I’m so screwed up” or “My situation is so bad” perspective, which doesn’t do anything to help you overcome things. In fact, it just keeps you there longer, because you get depressed about how many problems there are with you and your circumstances. Your ability to take action to change things dissolves.

The way to successfuly work on overcoming your “imperfectons” is to use a different strategy – the triple tactic of honesty, realism, and action. Read more

Never Tolerate Excuses

I’ve set my home page to show me a sign that has five words in tall bold black letters: NEVER TOLERATE EXCUSES FROM YOURSELF. I load it up and look at it several times a day (at least.) It’s an angry looking sign, and it should be – because once you allow yourself to get in the habit of tolerating excuses, it’s all over.

I’m not talking about the excuses other people give us. You can’t control their behavior, so don’t even worry about it. I’m talking about you and me, and the excuses we give ourselves for why we aren’t taking the actions we know we should be. We even have a special name for these excuses, so we’ll feel better about making them: we call them “reasons.”

Let me give you a few examples of common “reasons” we use when faced with challenging situations: Read more

How To Become a Stronger Person

I still remember how Mike lost his job. When I was a teenager, I rode the bus to school – you know, those big yellow ones that slow down traffic so much. If you’ve never had the opportunity to ride in one, you may not know that the engine is equipped with a little device called a governor. It’s purpose is to limit the top speed of the bus to 35 miles an hour for safety. (That made for a long ride to school.)

One day, my bus driver Mike (not his real name) decided that he was going to taste a little bit of freedom and figured out how to disable the governor on his bus. Being one of the kids in the back, I wasn’t in a position to see the spedometer, but I’m guessing he had that bus going about sixty miles an hour at the top of his game. Read more

Multiple Streams of Productivity

I briefly mentioned “multiple streams of productivity” in an earlier post, and I’ve received a few emails from people asking to know more about it, so that’s what today’s post is all about.

What is productivity anyway?
You can define productivity in a lot of ways, most of which boil down to “getting things done.” But the “things” you’re getting done could be anything – and activity is not the same thing as accomplishment.

For the purposes of simplicity in explaining Multiple Streams of Productivity, we’ll define productivity as “making rapid progress on your goals.” I say rapid because it’s just the basic mindset of productivity – you want to get to where you’re going in a relatively fast (if not the fastest) manner.

You can make rapid progress on your goals in four ways. Let’s take a look at each of them and some examples of each. Read more

How Big Is Your Question?

In life, it’s not about what you deserve, what you desire, or even what you hope for. When it comes to the results you generate, and the goals you accomplish, it’s all about what you expect.

Expectation is Everything
I’ve talked about the importance of expectation in a lot of posts so far, and it’s for a good reason – I want to drill it into you as much as possible, because it’s that important. Whatever your level of expectation is, that’s what will fuel your motivation, and in turn drive your action.

If you attack your goals with the expectation that you will eventually win out, you will. It’s that simple, because that level of expectation pushes you to keep working until you find the right combination to unlock your goal. Read more

Where Motivation Comes From

You can’t achieve the goals you set for yourself unless you consistently take action. And you can’t consistently take action unless you’re strongly motivated. And you can’t become strongly motivated until …

Until … until you expect to succeed in advance.

The common thread in motivated people
When you look at people who consistently achieve the goals they set for themselves – these are the people who take consistent action regardless of the odds or obstacles that stand in their way – you’ll see that they all have this in common. They’ve committed in their mind that they are going to succeed, even if it’s a longer road, or a tougher fight than they signed up for. When it comes to motivation, expectation is everything. Read more

How to Get Things Done Faster

In my earlier article, How to Get Exactly What You Want, I mentioned the importance of holding firm to the expectation that you can accelerate the process of getting to your objective. This is an important strategy for success, but oddly enough, it’s one that a lot of people overlook.

Why is it so important to have an “expectation” that you can accelerate your progress? The answer is that when you expect something, your brain works harder to see where it’s going to turn up. It tosses out the idea that you might find a solution and instead becomes determined that you will find it.

And this serves you very well in the realm of getting things done faster. With your expectation firmly set, you are bound to be surprised at all the answers that seem to magically appear. The key is to regularly ask yourself a few important questions in a very specific manner.

When I say “specific,” I’m talking about carefully phrasing your questions. I don’t want you to ask “How can I …” questions, because that leaves open the possibility that your answer will be “Um … I don’t know.” Instead, I strongly suggest you phrase your questions in a way that assumes the answer is there (and fairly easy to see) already, so that your focus will be tuned to picking the best answer rather than wondering if one exists at all.

The first question deals with looking at things from an outsider’s perspective, which I’ve always found helpful because it takes the personal baggage out of the equation.

Question One: If someone were to tell me how to change one thing about the way I’m currently tackling a project that would double my rate of progress, what would it be?

No matter what you’re working on, chances are there’s a bottleneck that you either haven’t consciously noticed or simply chosen not to work on because you’ve been too busy doing things. By asking the question this way, you’re focused on something big – doubling your progress – rather than just a little tweak.

Asking the question this way can also strengthen your resolve to take action. If you think “Gee, I should really do this,” you might feel a certain level of hesitation to take action. But if you’ve imagined someone else pointing out this area you need to change, you may feel a subtle but valuable pressure to take action, because you’ve imagined someone becoming aware of a problem area in your approach (and that’s never fun).

Perhaps the answer here revolves around cutting back on inefficiency or time wasting. Maybe it’s going to be around coming up with a better way of doing something. Whatever it is, though, assuming the answer exists and is in plain sight in the first place is a powerful strategy.

A second question deals with looking at things from a different angle:

Question Two: If someone were to tell me about an additional way to make faster progress on this goal, what would it be?

Again, we’re harnessing two pieces of leverage: First, we’re assuming the answer exists, which keeps our brain focused on the solution. Second, we’re imagining an outside perspective coming up with the answer, which makes it easier to step outside our personal perspective and to think “outside the box.”

This question is a really good way to create what I call “Multiple Streams of Productivity.” You’ve probably heard of the concept of “Multiple Streams of Income,” so you can bridge the two together here. Basically, you’re out to find ways you can make progress on your goal in parallel.

A prime example of this is delegation. Any time you have someone doing a part of a project for you, that frees you up to work on another chunk of that project. Often we don’t delegate enough. Take advantage of this form of leverage.

When you ask this question with expectation, you’ll begin to tap into new ways to make progress faster than you have in the past. Just be sure that when you ask it, you don’t give up without a good answer that will work for you.

Finally, there’s one additional question that can really make your rate of progress advance rapidly:

Question Three: If someone were to tell me a way to accomplish my goal with a whole lot less work, what would it be?

This is my favorite question, because it gets you to truly think outside of the box. Perhaps your current project isn’t the best way to get to your goal after all. There’s probably some “aha” idea you haven’t considered before that could vault you to your intended result much more rapidly.

Maybe your goal is to sell 100,000 copies of a book so you can make a tremendous amount of money. Perhaps your current strategy is to write a compelling book and find massively effective ways to publicize it. Maybe all the gears are spinning in your head about how you can grab media attention and ride the wave to bestseller status as you convince 100,000 people to buy your book.

But maybe that’s not the most effective route. I was on the phone with my brother a few weeks ago and he told me about a man he had interviewed recently for a magazine article. This guy had a different approach to selling 100,000 copies of his book. He simply found a very large company who was willing to buy 100,000 copies of his book to hand out to all its employees.

Maybe finding 1 perfect customer is a lot easier than finding 100,000 good ones. This is just an example, but you see where I’m going with this.

Start asking these questions now.
Working from a mindset of expectation is generally a big adjustment for most people, since we’re conditioned to hope for things to work out rather than to expect them. But if you put these three questions into practice, and you do it consistently, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results. I know I have been. So get to it now – you’ll thank yourself for it.

How to Get Passionate About Taking Action

It’s easy to get passionate about setting goals. We all get excited about the things we want. But when it comes to taking consistent action on them on a daily basis until they are done … well, that’s another story. If this rings true for you (even a little bit), read on, because you’re about to find out how to get a lot more motivated to follow through on the everyday tasks required to get you to your goals (I touched on this topic in an earlier article, How to Get Exactly What You Want).

Why aren’t you more motivated?
When you set a significant goal – whether it’s starting a business, or cleaning the house top to bottom – it’s easy to start out strong and see the spark fizzle rather quickly. The excitement you had at the beginning fades and you find it harder and harder to take action as the enormity of the goal sets in.

Part of the reason the “spark fades” is because you’ve lost the perspective on the goal you had at the beginning. You were excited by the end result of the goal – that’s why you took action on it in the first place – but along the way you started focusing on the effort of progress rather than the satisfaction of the reward. Now, instead of a motivating project, it’s turned into … well, work.

That feeling can take your ability to take action and bleed it dry. Life’s too short to let that happen, so if this describes how you’re feeling about one of the tasks at hand, here are three things that can help you get that “spark” back so you can return to taking powerful, committed action.

Spark #1 – Remind yourself that this task matters because it gets you one step closer to the goal.
It’s easy to feel like whatever we need to work on is boring, dull, unmotivating, or basically just a hassle we don’t want to deal with. The truth of life is that on your way to your goals you’re probably going to have to a lot of things that don’t generate a whole lot of excitement when you think about them. So instead of thinking about the task you have to do, think of the step of the process you’re on instead.

Think about this – whatever your end goal is, there is a specific number of steps you’re going to have to take to get there. The journey isn’t never-ending – there’s going to be a point where it gets accomplished. So even if your motivation is flagging because you realize that you have a hundred more steps to take, consider the fact that after you do this one task, you’ll only have ninety-nine left. And while ninety-nine isn’t the most motivating number either, it’s still less than it was before. And less is good.

When you’re feeling completely unmotivated to take an action you know you need to, just hold on to this fact. Eventually you’re going to get there. You’re not there yet, but you can at least get one step closer. You can at least get one more task behind you.

You may feel like this is a little easier said than done, and you’re right. It’s not that easy to do at first, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. Soon you make a powerful shift – you realize more and more that every action you take matters in the larger scale, even if seems like boring work in the present. And because of that, your motivation will increase. Completing a project becomes a numbers game, where you start out with a specific number of tasks to accomplish and see that number decrease day after day after day.

As I said, this is easier said than done – at first. To make this work, you have to commit to pushing yourself to put this mode of thinking into practice for a few weeks until it becomes established as a habit. And once you stop thinking of tasks as an enormous number of to-dos, and you start seeing them as a number that decreases (sometimes rapidly), work becomes more like play.

Spark #2 – Remind yourself that this task matters because it impacts other people.
We are often much more motivated to do something for someone else than we are for ourselves. So when you’re feeling stuck when it comes to motivation, it can really help to ask yourself how the task at hand (or the end result) matters to other people that you care about. How will they benefit from you following through? What ways are you improving their lives by doing this? Who will I inspire? Questions like these can infuse even the dullest of tasks with fresh, relevant meaning.

The flip side of this is to ask yourself more negative questions. What are the costs to other people if I don’t follow through? How will this negatively affect their lives? How will I damage the relationship I have with then if I don’t do this? Who will I disappoint? These questions can also give you that push to take action when you strongly associate negative emotions to the idea of failure.

Spark #3 – Remind yourself that this task matters because it strengthens you as a person.
No matter what the task at hand is, completing it has a compelling benefit – you become stronger for it. By completing a task, you reinforce the fact that you are strengthening you most important asset – your “follow through” muscle. Along the way, you may be strengthening other characteristics – you may be improving your courage, or your patience, or your optimism, or your technical skill … whatever it is, the task makes you stronger as a person.

If you don’t feel that way about a task, then you need to shift the way you’re looking at it. There are changes that will occur within you as a result of the process of following through. Don’t ignore any of them – instead, appreciate them. Look for as many as you can, and you’ll stack reason upon reason to follow through despite any obstacles.

The source of the spark
Ultimately, all three of these sparks come from one central concept – the idea that the task, no matter what it is, truly matters in the long run. If you lose the expectation that the task matters, then you lose the spark that fuels your motivation. So focus on these three sparks, and though it may be difficult at first, you’ll find your level of motivation steadily creeping up to a level you’ll call “unstoppable.” So focus on these three things now. You’ll thank yourself for it.