Quote of the Day

 “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.” -Dalai Lama

Taking the Leap

Is it time for your big, bold venture?

John C. Maxwell

As the 20th century poet E.E. Cummings once reflected, “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
If only courage were all it took to launch a new venture and become the achiever you’re destined to be. Bravery may be the big red button you have to push to get started, but it alone won’t sustain you.
What separates the gutsy from the gutsy-and-successful is a set of traits that allows them to imagine a new pursuit, put it in orbit, and then force it to climb to new heights.
Do you have courage? Good. That’s a start. Now, do you have the traits to see your dreams to fruition? Ask yourself the following questions to find out:

1. Are you passionate?

You have to love what you do. You’ve got to lie in bed dreaming about it and wake up ready to throw yourself into it.
Passion pairs well with courage. You need both at the starting point of your journey—passion to find the idea, courage to hit “Start.” But passion also gives you staying power, and that’s critical because sustaining is usually more difficult than starting.
Passion also helps you to become an effective promoter of your business. It makes your voice gush with excitement, eyes blaze with enthusiasm, and hands gesture with emphasis. As a leader, you must believe in your business so much that you feel compelled to talk about it. That passion will spill into your words and convince listeners to become clients.

2. Can you handle stress?

It’s inevitable, even in a job you love. You must face the stress of taking risks. You must handle the stress that arises when you struggle to meet the demands placed on you. You must withstand the pressure of financial challenges, staff challenges, limited resources, time constraints and problem-solving. And, of course, you must be able to weather criticism.
In my early years of leadership, I didn’t handle the pain of criticism very well. I sometimes cared more about it than I did about making the right leadership decisions. I had to grow through that. These days I find affirmation in the words of Albert Einstein: “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
Criticism is inevitable. In fact, there’s a tenet you ought to know, The Rule of 5 Percent, which says that, no matter what you do, 5 percent of people will not like it. Save yourself some anxiety now and know you’ll never satisfy everyone.
Another thing about stress: To handle it well, you need to be healthy. I learned this the hard way in my early 50s when I had a heart attack. Now I exercise daily and try to eat better. I came to understand that the healthier you are, the better situated you are to handle whatever your bold venture throws at you.

3. Do you have good people skills?

Let’s face it, if you don’t, you’re at a distinct disadvantage. People go along with people they get along with.
“Between 70 percent and 90 percent of decisions not to repeat a purchase of anything are not about product or price. They are about some dimension of service,” author and former Burger King CEO Barry J. Gibbons once noted. Yikes! If that doesn’t force you to put a smile on your face and some warmth in your handshake, I don’t know what will.
To make a new venture successful, you must analyze your interpersonal skills and determine how to best use them.
Your understanding of people will help you build your business. Your treatment of people will help you build your business. If you can build relationships, your reputation will help you build your business.

4. How do you solve problems?

The best problem-solvers, I think, possess two attributes: creativity and decisiveness. It takes a lot of creativity to deal with reality and the knockdown punches it fires at us. Then once we hit on a solution, we need to act decisively.
Biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi said, “Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” OK, well, once you see a solution, you also need to take action.
One of my favorite stories about decision-making, told by some of my fellow preachers, involves a young Ronald Reagan. When his aunt offered to have a pair of shoes custom-made for the boy, the shoemaker asked whether he wanted them with round or square toes. The boy hemmed and hawed, so the shoemaker asked him to return in a day or two to give him an answer.
A few days later the shoemaker saw The Not-Quite-Yet Great Communicator on the street and asked what he had decided about the shoes.
“I haven’t made up my mind yet,” the boy answered.
“Very well,” said the shoemaker. “Your shoes will be ready tomorrow.”
When Reagan picked up the shoes, one had a round toe and the other a square toe. That taught the future president that if you don’t make your own decisions, somebody else will make them for you. Now, I don’t know how much of that tale is myth and how much is fact, but it does illustrate the importance of firm decision-making.

5. Are you optimistic?

Optimism + Entrepreneurship = Success. Now that’s a little math to chew on. When you believe in yourself and are optimistic about your business, others are more likely to be optimistic about it, too. Think about that the next time you face your investors, clients or employees. Nowhere is optimism more important than in the face of failure. Did you know that, on average, an entrepreneur fails at more than three ventures before finally finding success? If you remain optimistic, you’ll keep trying. If you keep trying, you’ll reach that upper echelon of achievers—the ones who have plucked success out of their fiascos.

Quote of the Day

"Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others." -Coach K

How to fail successfully...

I Failed

By Leo Babauta

It’s a feeling deep within your heart, one you try to ignore, of heaviness. Of dread and discouragement. Of sadness and guilt and collapse.
I feel this heaviness in my chest when I fail.
It can make me feel like crying. I feel lonely and I want to give up. I want to fall on a bed and shut out the world. But that doesn’t work, because the feeling follows me into bed, and actually intensifies until finally I have to get out of bed to try to escape it.
Failure can hurt.
People get this idea about me, that I am successful and disciplined and gurulike. I’m successful at life, but not in the way people imagine. I’m not disciplined. I’m certainly no guru. I fail, all the time, and the heaviness can come in small doses or big waves, unpredictably.
What do I fail at? Let me count the ways:

• My diet — I eat healthy most of the time, but I overeat when there’s an abundance of yummy food in front of me. I mostly remove that food from my life, but I can’t avoid social situations where the food is right there. When I overeat, I feel fat and bloated and bad about myself.
• Procrastination — I’m actually much better at beating procrastination than I used to be, but sometimes I put off things I don’t feel like doing, for days. I’ve figured out this is because the task has a lot of barriers to actually starting, like needing certain conditions or information that I don’t immediately have.
• Mindful parenting — I’ve made a lot of progress in being a more patient, compassionate father, but there are times when I snap and lose my temper. It’s not horrible, just not great. I always feel bad when I get mad at the kids.
• Expectations — while I’m much better at holding loosely to my expectations, I still have them, and still feel frustrated/disappointed when people or situations don’t meet them.
• Simplicity — I’m not as minimalist as I once was. I still have far, far less than most people, but I allow myself to buy things more than before. Also, I now have an iPhone — it was a Father’s Day gift from Eva. I resisted getting one for 6 years, and now am one of the masses.
• Internet — I use the Internet for work, play, reading, learning, etc. I’m on it more than I should be, and sit too much (though I’m pretty active compared to the average person).
• Learning — I dropped learning languages and programming and other things like this, mostly because I’ve found I just don’t have enough time to seriously learn stuff and still do the other things that are important to me.
• Yoga — I really need some flexibility, and love yoga because it’s meditation and flexibility and a workout all rolled into one. I have not consistently done yoga despite being challenged by my friend Jesse.

I failed at all these things and more.

What Can Be Done

What can you do when you have the heavy feeling of failure in your heart? It’s not always so easy.
The answer, of course, is action. That’s not always easy because when you have the heavy feeling, you don’t feel like taking action.
You take the action anyway. You take it because you know if you don’t, you feel worse, and eventually your life degrades to the point where you don’t respect yourself anymore. You take the action anyway.
Here’s what I do:

• I take a breath. It’s not the end of the world to fail. I just need some space, some distance. I need to see the problem in perspective. When I do, I realize that the failure is pretty minor in the grand scheme of my life, in the grand scheme of the world of lives around me.
• I reframe the failure. Someone once said there isn’t failure, only feedback. That means the failure is just a point of information, a part of the learning process. I like to say, it’s not a failure of me as a person, just a failure of my method. Which means I need to change my method.
• I change the method. If the way I was doing it didn’t work, I need to find a new way. What can I do differently? In some of the cases above, I added some accountability, asked people for help, or looked for inspiration. In some of the other cases, I haven’t changed the method yet, to be honest.
• I take the first step. The problem can be overwhelming, because quite frankly we can’t solve any of this stuff overnight, or even in a few days. We can, however, take one step, right now. One tiny step. And that’s all that matters.

Take one step. Any step.
It lightens the heart. It shows you that things aren’t insurmountable or impossible. It starts to dissolve the discouragement and sadness and pain.
The single step you take today is the antidote to the soul-tearing effects of failure. It helps me, every day.

Five Qualities of + and - Sports Parents

FIVE SIGNS OF A NIGHTMARE SPORTS PARENT Nearly 75 percent of kids who play organized sports quit by age 13. Some find that their skill level hits a plateau and the game is no longer fun. Others simply discover other interests. But too many promising young athletes turn away from sports because their parents become insufferable.

Even professional athletes can behave inappropriately when it comes to their children. David Beckham was recently ejected from a youth soccer field for questioning an official. New Orleans radio host Bobby Hebert, a former NFL quarterback, publicly dressed down LSU football coach Les Miles after Alabama defeated LSU in the BCS title game last month. Hebert was hardly unbiased: His son had recently lost his starting position at LSU.
Mom or dad, so loving and rational at home, can transform into an ogre at a game. A lot of kids internally reach the conclusion that if they quit the sport, maybe they'll get their dad or mom back.
As a sports parent, this is what you don't want to become. This is what you want to avoid:

• Overemphasizing sports at the expense of sportsmanship: The best athletes keep their emotions in check and perform at an even keel, win or lose. Parents demonstrative in showing displeasure during a contest are sending the wrong message. Encouragement is crucial -- especially when things aren’t going well on the field.

• Having different goals than your child: Brown and Miller suggest jotting down a list of what you want for your child during their sport season. Your son or daughter can do the same. Vastly different lists are a red flag. Kids generally want to have fun, enjoy time with their friends, improve their skills and win. Parents who write down “getting a scholarship” or “making the All-Star team” probably need to adjust their goals. “Athletes say their parents believe their role on the team is larger than what the athlete knows it to be,” Miller says.

• Treating your child differently after a loss than a win: Almost all parents love their children the same regardless of the outcome of a game. Yet often their behavior conveys something else. "Many young athletes indicate that conversations with their parents after a game somehow make them feel as if their value as a person was tied to playing time or winning,” Brown says.

• Undermining the coach: Young athletes need a single instructional voice during games. That voice has to be the coach. Kids who listen to their parents yelling instruction from the stands or even glancing at their parents for approval from the field are distracted and can't perform at a peak level. Second-guessing the coach on the ride home is just as insidious.

• Living your own athletic dream through your child: A sure sign is the parent taking credit when the child has done well. “We worked on that shot for weeks in the driveway,” or “You did it just like I showed you” Another symptom is when the outcome of a game means more to a parent than to the child. If you as a parent are still depressed by a loss when the child is already off playing with friends, remind yourself that it’s not your career and you have zero control over the outcome.

FIVE SIGNS OF AN IDEAL SPORTS PARENT
Let’s hear it for the parents who do it right. In many respects, Brown and Miller say, it’s easier to be an ideal sports parent than a nightmare. “It takes less effort,” Miller says. “Sit back and enjoy.” Here’s what to do:

• Cheer everybody on the team, not just your child: Parents should attend as many games as possible and be supportive, yet allow young athletes to find their own solutions. Don’t feel the need to come to their rescue at every crisis. Continue to make positive comments even when the team is struggling.

• Model appropriate behavior: Contrary to the old saying, children do as you do, not as you say. When a parent projects poise, control and confidence, the young athlete is likely to do the same. And when a parent doesn’t dwell on a tough loss, the young athlete will be enormously appreciative.

• Know what is suitable to discuss with the coach: The mental and physical treatment of your child is absolutely appropriate. So is seeking advice on ways to help your child improve. And if you are concerned about your child’s behavior in the team setting, bring that up with the coach. Taboo topics: Playing time, team strategy, and discussing team members other than your child.

• Know your role: Everyone at a game is either a player, a coach, an official or a spectator. “It’s wise to choose only one of those roles at a time,” Brown says. “Some adults have the false impression that by being in a crowd, they become anonymous. People behaving poorly cannot hide.” Here’s a clue: If your child seems embarrassed by you, clean up your act.

• Be a good listener and a great encourager: When your child is ready to talk about a game or has a question about the sport, be all ears. Then provide answers while being mindful of avoiding becoming a nightmare sports parent. Above all, be positive. Be your child's biggest fan. "Good athletes learn better when they seek their own answers," Brown says.

And, of course, don’t be sparing with those magic words: "I love watching you play."

Click here to contact Bruce E. Brown and Rob Miller.

Six Words You Should Say Today

"I love watching you play" and here's why:

 http://www.handsfreemama.com/2012/04/16/six-words-you-should-say-today/

The next time you feel the need to guide, instruct, or criticize after a ball game, performance, or extracurricular activity, instead consider six simple words: “I love to watch you play.” 

Furthermore, if you become emotional simply by watching someone you love in action, consider these six words, “I love to watch you _______.“

In some cases, less is more. 

Less can be exactly what they need to hear. No pressure … just love, pure and simple.

Quote of the Day

"If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door."

—Milton Berle