When it comes to success, there are two types of people in the world: those who take ownership and those who don’t. The people who don’t take ownership become victims to their current realities. They struggle to see beyond the here and now. You might say those folks lack imagination. However, those who take ownership see their current realities as a temporary pitstops on the way to a better life. They have a vision for the life they aim to live, and they work towards that vision daily.

What Do You See?

I’m guilty of watching a few home makeover shows on HGTV. Typically the host of the show will walk into a fixer upper with the buyer or client. Each time, the host paints a beautiful picture, seeing the potential in the space and what it could become. If we take out this wall and reface the fireplace, you’ll have a spacious feel as the kitchen flows into the living space.

Inevitably, the clients are hesitant. All they see are the cracked laminate floorings, brass fixtures, and overwhelming disrepair surrounding them.

The current reality of the home interferes with their ability to imagine and create their future.

The same thing can happen as you pursue excellence in your life. You can’t envision that 4 week trip to New Zealand, changing careers, or owning your own business. Those things just don’t seem to fit within life as you know it today.

This is a dangerous place to be.

Pursue a Life of Possibilities

You may not be aware that you allow your current reality to determine your future.

Or, like Rapunzel looking out on the world from her tower prison, you may have a dream for your life. However, you are trapped by reality, and you don’t see a way to get there.

To live a life of possibility we must look beyond what’s true today. We must change our mindset.
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Rather than focusing on limitations, seek a future built on possibilities. Let’s look at 3 limiting realities and how to discover their inherent possibilities.

1. Time

A friend of mine is a single dad who works long hours. He wants to spend more time with his kids, but he also wants to provide more for them. He wants to better himself and be more involved in his community. However, he finds it hard to see beyond his relentless schedule.

Today you may not feel like you have time to pursue your dreams, start a new hobby, or take your kids to the park. However, if you wait until you feel like you have the time, it may be too late.

Have you assessed how you’re spending the 168 hours of your week? Does keeping up on all your favorite shows need to be a high priority? Or would taking an online class move you closer to the life you want?

It is difficult to do the hard things now that will pay off later. However, when you say no to good things, you can say yes to better things. If you said no to watching the Seahawks game on Monday night, what possibilities would that open in your schedule?

2. Money

Maybe you want a newer car, an advanced degree, or to take your family on a cruise. But you just don’t have the money right now.

I wanted to replace my wife’s car with a nicer, more reliable SUV. But we didn’t have the money. After some number crunching and discussion, we are saving money each month that will allow us to pay for that SUV in cash (we aren’t car payment people).

What about you? How are you letting money limit your dreams, successes, and life?

Maybe you need a budget. Maybe you need to stick to the budget you have. Maybe you need to deliver some pizzas or start a side-hustle doing marketing for a mom-and-pop hardware store to bring in a little extra income for the next 10 months. It may not happen overnight, but with some diligence and sacrifice, I imagine you can find a way.

3. Circumstances

Let’s say you want to get that advanced degree or take that extended vacation. But you have a 9 to 5 job that somehow consumes 60 hours per week (like 25% of salaried workers in the U.S.). Yet without going back to school, you have no room for advancement. Outside of work, you shuttle kids to soccer practice, youth group, and piano lessons. Most nights your family has dinner together in the minivan between stops.

There just isn’t room for anything else. At least, that’s what your current reality is telling you.

Take a deep breath. Could you get that degree in three years instead of two? Could you start your own business that would allow you time for that vacation? It might not be viable right now. That’s okay. What would have to happen for you to start that business or apply for a job with more flexible hours? Is there something you can do to get yourself started down that road?

Possibilities Not Limitations

Instead of focusing on the realities of life as it is, allow yourself to envision life’s possibilities. It’s okay to dream big so long as you’re willing to think outside the box or beyond the status quo to get there. Ask yourself the “how” questions. How could I make this happen? How could we restructure our spending? How could I spend my time more wisely?

We have one life to live. Will you look back one day and wish you’d chosen differently? Or will you seize this life and embrace the dream inside of you? Think of the possibilities.

Question: What possibility or dream are you going to embrace? Leave yours in comments section below this post. I look forward to hearing from you.

The post How to Develop a Possibility Mindset, Not a Limited One first appeared on The Excelling Edge.

We all make mistakes. When we do, it is easy for those mistakes to steal attention and focus. We become fixated on them. We get stuck. We want to evaluate, analyze, and fix our mistakes right away. However, I argue that it is best to save analysis until later. 

In Sport As In Life

Recently, while I was out of town, I was fortunate enough to have a front row seat to a highly competitive golf tournament.

In golf, as in life, people make mistakes. Time and again, I saw golfers hit shots that were worse than expected. Some of them dropped their heads while others raised their hands in disbelief and frustration. Still other golfers would swing the club again, trying to correct the misguided swing that led to an errant shot.

Is this the time to correct mistakes?

Why Not Fix It Now?

When we pause to make corrections, our attention shifts from the current moment to the moment that just passed. We are no longer in the present.

For the golfers, this means that they could not devote their full attention to the next shot – the one that mattered in the now.

When you try to do your best with less than your full attention, what do you think will happen? If you guessed, “more mistakes,” you are absolutely right.

On numerous occasions and in a variety of contexts, I’ve seen one mistake lead to another that led to another. I’m sure you have too.

In this golf tournament, I watched one player hit at least 3 balls in a row into the water – one right after the other. He was distracted, frustrated, and getting down on himself. His confidence took a major hit as each splash echoed in his ears. It was tough to watch.

Eventually, he got back on track, but with the right strategy, he could have recovered much faster.

How to Quickly Recover from a Mistake

Rather than getting caught up in “fix-it mode,” you can recover from mistakes faster by practicing A.T.E. with these 3 basic steps.

You can recover from mistakes faster by implementing a simple A.T.E. strategy.
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1. Acknowledge the Mistake.

Call it what it is. If you said the wrong thing, made a poor decision, missed a call, or hit the ball into the water, simply acknowledge it.

No denial. But, no self-berating either. Keep things matter-of-fact. Something like, “That wasn’t what I meant to say.”

2. Tag the Mistake.

Either mentally or physically, make a note of the mistake for later review. Think of this like a figurative sticky note, or jot it on a literal sticky note. Again, just the facts.

Taking this step will allow your brain to move on, knowing that the mistake will not go unchecked or unevaluated.

Now you can bring your full attention to the next task – whether that’s the next shot, meeting, or conversation – whatever performance moment is next for you.

3. Evaluate the Mistake Later.

Once the dust has settled and the performance has come to a close, it is time to evaluate and analyze what went wrong.

Use your expertise, experience, or even a colleague to figure out where you went wrong.

Once you’ve identified the error, select a strategy you can control to make improvements for next time.

His Airness

Michael Jordan is well known for taking this sort of approach. He was often seen in the locker room after games with a towel over his head. This signaled to his teammates that he was in analysis mode – like a do not disturb sign.

Michael Jordan kept his head in the game by waiting until post-game to evaluate his mistakes.
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He would review the game in his mind (using mental imagery), and identify mistakes he’d made. He identified how he could make adjustments to avoid or improve upon those mistakes in practice or in the next game.

Once he had a plan, he took the towel off his head and let the mistakes go. He didn’t carry them around with him; he didn’t dwell on them or beat himself up. Jordan had a plan on which to act and that’s all that mattered.

A.T.E.

No one is perfect. When you make mistakes, remember to save the analysis for later using A.T.E. Doing so will help you keep your head in the game and your confidence high. From the court to the board room, we need our full attention to be at our best.

Question: When have you seen someone get stuck analyzing a mistake when they should have been focused on the task-at-hand? Share your example in the comments below!

Links:

• Post: Mental Rehearsal: From Saving Lives to Winning at Work

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When emotions take over, it gets ugly. Golfers throw clubs. Football players back their teams up 15 yards. Basketball players swing elbows. If only everyone could keep cool.

Don’t Be a Head Case

I’m all too familiar with this. As a tennis player, I used to be a “head case.” That’s a label often given to athletes with a short fuse.

Early in my college career, I fumed when I missed easy shots. When I lost a set, my opponent didn’t have to guess what I was thinking. My body language shouted, “I’m frustrated, pissed off and a ticking time bomb.” The worst was when I’d lose to “less talented” players because I imploded like a 1920s apartment building marked for demolition.

The more I was expected to win (by myself or others), the worse it seemed to get.

Fortunately, I’ve since learned to keep my emotions in check and so can you or your players.

Create an Emotion Control Plan

Athletes can maintain composure using a 3 step game plan – what I call an emotion control plan.

Players should identify the situations when their self-talk, emotions or physiology become counterproductive. This is key because they need awareness of what gets their blood boiling in order to intervene beforehand.

Start by helping players identify the last situations in which they lost control. Coaches or parents may need to remind them.

Then specify the actions and/or consequences in each situation. What happened? Did the player lose focus, tighten up, foul out of the game, etc.?

To prepare for step 2, turn isolated incidents into general situations. For example, “an opponent calls me a cheater,” or “the referee blows a big call.”

Now that each athlete is clear on which situations tend to set them off, they can paint a new reality. How would the player rather respond? What would be most productive?

When I played tennis, I didn’t want to explode; it just happened. This was in part because I hadn’t thought through how else to respond.

Have players script what they’d rather be thinking in each situation. This is especially important because it’s our thoughts, in large part, that dictate our emotions.

Take for example, the player typically thinks, “That ref must be completely blind.” An expected emotion from that thought would be frustration or anger which often leads to acting out. Instead, the player could think, “No game is won or lost on a single call.” This thought helps the athlete keep his or her cool by keeping one bad call in perspective.

Players also need to script their reactive behavior, making it purposeful. Will they immediately hustle back to the line of scrimmage? Will they tense their fists and slowly release the tension? Some athletes find it helpful to focus their eyes on a single spot on a uniform or equipment as way to stay in control.

Regardless of the details, the point is to have an effective planned response for thinking and behavior.

Thoughts direct emotions and actions. Therefore, players can trigger a more productive response to situations that set them off by creating a mental cue.

This is a word or phrase that is specifically designed to elicit the more productive response.

For example, when I lost serve in a tennis match, I began using the phrase, “Stay calm and play smart,” as a mental cue. It was instructive and helped me coach myself away from the frustration and anger I to which I was prone. This mental cue also helped me to stay in the present moment rather than focusing on the consequences of losing a game in the set.

Some athletes use cues like, “Keep cool,” “I’m poised,” or “Be calm,” to help them keep their emotions in check when things don’t go their way. Notice that each cue highlights the desired response (i.e., poised).

Athletes are more likely to keep their cool when they have preplanned responses to adverse events.
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Let the Emotion Control Plan Work for You

When players start applying their emotion control plans, players will:

• show more composure
• be less susceptible to pressure
• make better decisions
• avoid repeated mistakes
• perform better

If this “head case” can learn to control his emotions, I’m confident you or your players can too. It won’t happen overnight and it will take practice – just like sport specific skills. Players who control their emotions perform better regardless of the situation. Having an emotion control plan puts them back in the driver’s seat.

Click the Button to Download the FREE Worksheet:

Use this post to guide athletes through the worksheet and help them better managing emotions.

Question: What’s your most memorable “hot head” moment in sports? Leave yours in the comments below.

Link:

• Post: How to Help Your Team Keep Their Heads in the Game https://theexcellingedge.com/?p=493

The post How to Help Athletes Keep Cool When Emotions Run High first appeared on The Excelling Edge.

“I’ll just do it myself.” Have you let that sentence pass your lips before? I know I have. Delegation can be a serious challenge for leaders. Often those in a leadership role got there by doing all things themselves and doing them with excellence. It can be hard to ease off the reins. However, for teams and businesses to grow, leaders must overcome their internal barriers and delegate.

The Struggle to Delegate

While conversing with a friend of mine who holds a prominent leadership position, I heard those familiar words, “I’ll just do it myself.” He explained that he has high standards. The people around him weren’t capable of managing this task with the level of detail he believed was necessary. In his frustration, he was willing to toss another ball into his juggling act.

You see, he’s a perfectionist. That’s part of what makes him great at his job. Sadly, he has probably been told, “If you want something done right, do it yourself,” a few too many times throughout his career.

I urged him to try to step back from the emotion of the moment. He shot out several excuses as to why he couldn’t delegate this task. I aimed to alter his perspective and help him see a bigger picture. As leaders, we need to do just that.

When it comes to delegation, leaders must reframe 3 prominent, yet limiting beliefs that are inhibiting the growth of themselves and their teams.

1.  Short-Sighted Belief: “This will get done faster if I just to do it myself.”

The temptation of this belief is that it is true. It is true in the moment. However, in the long-run, you’re only hurting yourself and your team. It is worth it to make time to properly delegate any tasks that don’t require your specific input. Once trained, your team members can continue to handle these tasks. This frees you up, as a leader, to have more time for casting vision, developing strategy, mentoring, innovating, etc.

By doing things yourself, you are also stunting the growth, initiative and independence of your team.

Reframe Short-Sightedness with: “While this may save me time now, properly delegating this task will buy me more time in the future.”

2. Perfection Belief: “If I want something done right, I have to do it myself.”

Many leaders trust themselves more than their teams. When you deem something important, you have a harder time letting it go. Your team doesn’t think like you think. They don’t make decisions like you do. They don’t have your instincts. If this is your fear, then I challenge you to consider that this fear is your fault. As a leader, developing your team is your responsibility.

If you coach someone through the process, he can learn to think more like you. As you explain why you would make certain decisions, you teach him to process information the way you do. Over time, you cultivate skills in your team that you can trust.

Author John Maxwell wrote, “If someone can do a task at least 80% as well as I can, I give it to them.”

Reframe Perfection with: “The time it takes to train someone to do this right is an investment. They may not do it the way I would, but an 80% solution done by someone else is better than a 100% solution I had to do myself.”

If you can’t trust your team with big things and delegate, it’s your fault as a #leader.
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3. Fear Belief: “This is important, so I have to do it myself.”

At times, leaders assume there is an expectation that if a task or project is deemed important, they must do it themselves. This belief stunts the growth of a team or organization. If you are the only one that can do “important” things, then you significantly limit how many important things your organization can handle at once.

Can your team not handle important tasks? I’d imagine the they can. Indeed they may be more capable than you realize. By allowing team members to do more, you expand the growth of your business rather than stifle it.

Reframe Fear with: “By trusting my team with important tasks, I’m expanding the capabilities of our organization.”

Honestly, these 3 limiting beliefs are the ones I battle most when it comes to delegation. Just like many of you, I get caught up in getting things done. At times, I need to remind myself to rely on the team around me. I need to make the long-term investments that will pay long-term dividends.

Take the First Step

Delegation can be a hard skill for leaders to learn. In order to learn to delegate, we must first overcome the limiting beliefs that hold us back from cultivating excellence in ourselves and our teams. Avoid a quick fix mentality. Practice the art of leadership. Reframe for long-term solutions. Reframe for 80% solutions. Reframe for expanding capabilities.

Question: What is your greatest hurdle when it comes to delegation? Share your comment below this post. 

The post How To Shed Light On The Lies That Inhibit Delegation first appeared on The Excelling Edge.

“When achievers fail, they see it as a momentary event, not a lifelong epidemic,” stated John Maxwell in his book, Failing Forward. This is a mindset we desperately need in our culture today, whereas we see failure as akin to some kind of plague. Parents go to great lengths to protect their children from failure. Our education system forces teachers to do everything except lie to protect students from failing a class.

We easily forget the failures of many famous names: Abraham Lincoln, Michael Jordan, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs. These achievers didn’t let their failures define them and went on to great success. Are we dealing with failure all wrong? How can we capitalize on our failures to spur future success?

Once, I competed in the open flight of a tennis tournament in Orlando, FL. There are a couple things you should know before I go on. First, open flights of tournaments are meant for really good players, like high-level collegiate contenders and tennis instructors. Second, I was an awkward 13 year-old tennis convert eager to finally play some real matches. Are you seeing the recipe for disaster?

What I didn’t know didn’t hurt me until I met my first opponent, a nationally ranked, Division I beast of a player. Allow me to let you in on a little secret: I didn’t win a single point in the match. That’s what some call an epic fail.

To be honest, I’m not new to failure. I’ve failed in multiple areas during my life. Those failures weren’t easy to swallow when they happened. However, what matters aren’t the failures, but what they’ve made possible. The reality is that how you interpret a mistake, failure or setback sets your trajectory. Either you quit, keep failing or grow. The choice is yours.

We can all learn from failure and cultivate future success by applying these 3 truths.

Failure Isn’t Final
“Success isn’t permanent, and failure isn’t fatal,” according to a quote most commonly attributed to Winston Churchill. We all make mistakes, mess up, and blow it. Keeping a thick skin isn’t easy, but it is necessary. When we let our failures define us, we blow them out of proportion and begin to think counterproductive thoughts like, “Wow, maybe people were right, I am a failure.”

The truth is, failure isn’t final. Don’t allow it to rob you of confidence, enthusiasm and motivation. Instead, see it as a single event, this thing that happened once that you don’t intend to repeat. Failure is the beginning of a new chapter, not the end of the story. That gruesome massacre that occurred on a tennis court in Orlando wasn’t the final page in my racquet swinging saga. It was just a bump on the road to success.

Failure Is Controllable
It is important to take responsibility for our failures. If we don’t, we give away all control. Referees, understaffed, weather, baby kept me up all night… If you think these sound like excuses, you’re right. Admittedly, other factors do work against us sometimes, but it does us no good to give them our attention. (See link to a previous post below.)

In order to learn and grow from failures we have to be willing to take a hard look in the mirror. Maybe we weren’t prepared enough, focused enough, didn’t communicate effectively or just choked the under pressure. The reality is, these are all things that we have control over.

Failure Holds The Juice Of Success
Visualize a large, juicy Florida orange. If you were to cut it in half and squeeze the fresh, tart juice into a glass, what’s left in your hand? Garbage. Technically, the peel and flesh of the orange are left, but I’m no chef, so zesting isn’t really my thing. You don’t want to stand there holding that sticky mess for very long do you? No, of course not. Throw it away or compost it. Now, you’re left with a tangy glass of juice.

Translation: squeeze your failures and get all the useful, actionable, controllable goodness out of them. What can you learn from the failure? Once you’ve analyzed it and gathered the lessons learned (aka the juice in the glass), throw away the peel and quit ruminating on the failure.

Holding onto the sticky mess causes us to lose sleep at night and creates unnecessary stress and raised blood pressure. Keep the good stuff, the lessons learned and chuck the rest, it’s only weighing you down. Why walk around with an orange peel in your pocket?

I have blown presentations, messed up relationships, let people down, quit playing guitar and failed in numerous other ways. But none of them were final; the story continues. All of them are controllable. It is up to me to squeeze out the juice and toss the rest. The more readily I do that, the faster I move on to future successes.

And so it is for you. Fail. Juice it. Then, move on to the success that lies ahead.

Question: How have you used your failures to create future success? I’d love to hear from your experiences in the comments below. 

The post Juice It and Toss It: How To Redefine And Grow From Failure first appeared on The Excelling Edge.

Frankl relays to us that we have the ability to choose our thoughts, our emotions and our actions. Did you catch that? A man, imprisoned in a concentration camp was able to find an element of control. We can all learn something from this principle.

Allow me to tell you something shocking; as an adolescent, I had an attitude. Unbelievable, I know. I would get all up in arms over referees, decisions made by a teacher, unfavorable rules by parents and all sorts of things that were outside of my influence.

Perhaps you’ve experienced this before. Just the other day, I caught myself expressing frustration and irritation over something I have no control or influence over, whatsoever. The weather seems to be one such example.

One secret I have learned to deal with this frustration is to focus my time, energy and efforts (some of my most precious resources) toward the things that I can control. One of the best ways to understand this is through what author Stephen R. Covey calls “Circle of Influence.”

The idea is to shrink the circle of concern. Those are the things that are stressful, frustrating and worrisome. Simultaneously, expand the circle of influence. These are the things on which I can have a direct impact or control.

How It Works

To put it simply, moving things from your circle of concern into your circle of influence is about choice. We choose to identify what we can control or influence in a given situation. Then, we act on those things and accept or cope with what’s leftover.

For example, my wife and I have a friend who recently found out she has cancer. We can’t control the disease or the outcome. However, we can control offering support, going to visit and helping in any way we can. Or another example: an unidentified large expense shows up on your financial statement. It’s obviously a concern, so you take steps of action to contact your bank and gain clarity as to what happened. That’s moving the concern into influence.

For me and many people I’ve worked with, this is a game-changer. And it can be for you too.

I’ve found that when you focus your energy on the things you can control, there are 3 main benefits that you stand to gain:

Renewed Energy
When you’re focused on the things you can’t control, it’s like a drag race driver pulling the emergency brake just before the light turns green. We end up spinning our wheels and blowing smoke. Doing so is a complete waste of energy.

In contrast, devoting your attention and efforts towards the things in your life that you can have an impact on really increases your return on investment (ROI). I see this as getting really good fuel efficiency; the gas you’re using goes much further when applied to the things you can influence. As I shift the ratio of items in my circle of control, I get more ROI.

Searching for the slightest control, even in the darkest circumstances, gives us a sense of autonomy, hope and a direction in which to take purposeful action. When I start to take purposeful action toward the things I can control, even if it is just my emotions, that act alone puts me in the driver’s seat. When I’m in the driver’s seat, I don’t feel helpless anymore. Instead, I’m doing what I can and focusing on expanding my circle of control.

Rocket-Propelled Productivity
If you’ve made it this far, it is likely no surprise to you that when energy is up and stress is down, productivity sky rockets. Magically, when I’m not wasting my mental and physical resources on my circle of concern, I can ramp up production.

Regardless of your set of tasks, you’ll accomplish more during your workday if you are maximizing your ROI and have more fuel in the tank for facing the unexpected challenges and embracing the opportunities that will undoubtedly come your way.

Whether you’re a front office executive, construction worker, homemaker, student or elite athlete, this strategy can change your life. As a teenager, I began to realize that I was spinning my wheels and the only impact I was making was on myself. I was stressing myself out with frustration and worry but having no effect on the situation.

I continue to build awareness of my two circles, concern and influence. There is much to gain by being deliberate about how we use our precious resources of time, energy and effort. Spend them wisely.

Question: What keeps you from focusing on the things you can control and influence? I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below. 

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