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]]>We’re continuing to talk about this thought that despite how much we romanticize the notion, none of us are really “self-made.” If we’ve made anything of our life, it’s largely due to the help we’ve received from others along the way. Last month, we talked about the benefits and outcomes of inviting experts and challengers into our lives. If you haven’t read that discussion, click here. Now this month we are shifting over to the benefits and outcomes of inviting Supporters and Resourcers into your life. Remember, Supporters are simply people who believe in you. They would encourage you and even pray for you if you just asked. Resourcers are those who may sponsor you into their networks and go so far as to share resources with you. You can read an overview of all 5 crucial relationships you will need to help move your dream forward here.
So, we’ve established that the “self-made” man (or woman) is a myth and you will need to invite certain people into your life if you want to see you dream become reality. But, what is the real benefit of inviting these Supporters and Resourcers into your life? What can you hope to see in your life as a result of having these intentional relationships?
3 Benefits and Outcomes of Inviting Supporter and Resourcers into Your Life:
One word of caution. Just because someone is a Supporter of yours does not necessarily mean they will be a Resourcer. Years ago, I was setting out to start a new endeavor that was quite risky. I was flooded with Supporters, even to the point that many confided that they wished they had my courage. Mistakenly, I assumed that many of my Supporters would easily translate to becoming Resourcers. But when it came time to build my network of investors, I went back to those who had been my biggest Supporters. I was surprised, and disappointed, to find out most of my Supporters had no intention of becoming a Resourcer, even the ones who wished they had my courage. It was a somewhat painful lesson I hope you can learn here without the personal pain.
So, what’s left for you to do? Make the ask. Make a list of those you believe would be Supporters and Resourcers of your dream and contact them soon to ask them to come on board with you. You won’t regret it. As always, we are here to help you discover your God-given dream and establish some of these crucial relationships in your life. Just click here to begin the journey.
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]]>The post Benefits of Challengers & Experts in Your Life appeared first on 320 Coach.
]]>Now that you know what Challengers and Experts are, what is the real importance of inviting these key relationships into your life? What can you really hope to see in your life as a result? Let’s begin to answer these questions now.
Sometimes we call these Experts and Challengers “helpers” because they really are. If you hate the sting of realizing your ideas, maybe even your dreams, may not be as excellent or well thought out as you had hoped, this doesn’t feel much like help to you. But it is truly helpful. If you can learn a new way of thinking, save valuable time, and skip mediocrity, you’ve been helped almost immeasurably. The only thing that’s keeping you from getting to a higher level is you’ve not yet made the ask. Make the ask! Don’t know where to start? We are here to help you discover and establish some of these crucial relationships in your life. Just click here to begin the journey.
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]]>The post Building a Growth Plan appeared first on 320 Coach.
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If you want to achieve something significant and see your dreams become a reality, a simple yet effective step is to write down and keep track of your growth plan. The importance of writing it down and keeping up with it cannot be overstated. Ideas in your head give you a general direction, but they will not get you to where you imagine you want to be. In fact, over time, being guided by an idea will create frustration and you will begin to despise the very idea that began as inspiring vision for your life. It’s not the idea’s fault. But, you’re the one who can fix the problem. You can start by answering these three questions.
Remember, the answers to all these questions need to be written down and you’ve got to keep up with it. Keep these answers close to you. See them often. Schedule times to assess your progress. If you have a good plan and you’re intentional about following that plan, you absolutely will see the growth you desire. If you want someone to come along side you and help you create and follow your plan, one of our coaches is ready to help. Just click here to get started on a growth journey that will take you places you’ve only yet dreamt of going.
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]]>If you’re going to get to the dream that’s currently living in your heart and mind, you’re going to have to do more than just imagine it. You’re going to have to ask people to help in order to live it out. This is where many of us get stuck. We believe it’s a good thing to be self-made and it causes us to retreat from the very people who could help us the most. This all boils down to humility and teachability. Simply put, humility is lowering your guard and inviting the opinions and expertise of others into your life. And teachability is being willing to re-learn the things you thought you already knew. There are several different types of people you will need in your life to see your dream become a reality. Today we’re talking about just two of them. Experts and Challengers.
Experts. These are people working and living out a dream similar to your dream. We all need models and mentors and you may need to do some research to find who some of these Experts are. Remember, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Most of us will need to see and even learn a model before we can adapt it. As you begin to research who some of these Experts are, reach out to them and see how you can learn from afar and even up close. You may be surprised at how accessible some people will be if you just ask. Look for Experts and then lean into the relationships with those you feel you click with best.
Challengers. These are the ones who typically tell it like it is. They are very direct and straight-forward. We all need these people who will challenge and push us to reach higher and get better. They will challenge you both by the example of their lives and by the words they speak. They may not know much about your dream, but they are for you and could play this role if asked. Be aware though, you may feel threatened by these people. You’ll need some thick skin to gain the valuable perspective a Challenger will bring to you.
Think about what could block these people from coming into your life? And remember, if you’re going to grow beyond your current limitations, you’re going to have to get vulnerable and invite these Experts and Challengers into your life. Don’t know where to start? We are here to help you discover and establish some of these crucial relationships in your life. Just click here to begin the journey. Let’s get started today!
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]]>The post New Goals Need a New Mindset appeared first on 320 Coach.
]]>In her book, “Mindset”, Carol Dweck writes brilliantly about what she calls the ‘fixed mindset’ versus the ‘growth mindset’. Understanding these mindsets and adjusting accordingly, may make all the difference in how effective and satisfied you are in 2018.
First, let’s look at the fixed mindset. This is a mindset that believes intelligence is static. People in this camp believe “they are the way they are”. They see no real hope for any significant development of who they are. Now, it’s important to say that believing this is believing a lie. But, simply saying this is a lie and don’t believe it is not sufficient. Let me explain why you must work to get out of and stay out of this fixed mindset.
Although people with a fixed mindset generally believe they are the way they are, this does not mean they have less of a desire for a positive self-image than anyone else. They still want to perform well and look smart. This desire, coupled with the fixed mindset, leads to some negative tendencies to be front and center. Just to name a few, people in this space tend to avoid challenges, give up easily when facing obstacles, see high effort as generally fruitless, ignore useful negative feedback, and feel threatened by the success of others. As a result of these patterns of behavior, they may plateau early in life and achieve less than their full potential. This, of course, ‘confirms’ their deterministic view of the world.
Now, let’s contrast this with the growth mindset. People who hold this mindset believe that intelligence can be developed, that the brain is like a muscle that can be trained. This leads to a desire to grow and improve. Unlike their fixed mindset counterparts, these people believe their self-image is not tied to success or how they look to others. For them, failure is not something to be avoided, but an opportunity to learn and grow. So whatever happens, they win. Generally, people in this mindset embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, see effort as a pathway to mastery, learn from criticism, and find lessons and inspiration in the success of others. All this gives them a greater and greater sense of free will.
So, it should be clear that the growth mindset is greater than the fixed mindset in every way. However, this is real life and we all know that almost no one will have a 100% fixed mindset or a 100% growth mindset. Most of us have some of both going on simultaneously. If you’re hoping to operate in a growth mindset that may sound like bad news, but remember, free will is a gift at your disposal. It is possible to develop a worldview that’s ever-evolving from more of a fixed mindset to more of a growth mindset. This is true even if you are on the older side of life and are “set in your ways”. Dweck’s research indicates that both children and adults of all ages can be taught to change their mindsets.
This is where a good coach can help you in 2018. When you’re ready to get started changing that old self-defeating mindset, a great step is to get engaged with a coach who will challenge your thinking, ask you the hard questions, and help you learn to think differently and imagine new possibilities. When you’re ready, we’re here to help. Just click here to get started. Here’s to a happy and growth-filled new year!
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]]>We’re entering the thick of the holiday season, just beyond Thanksgiving with Christmas just ahead. It’s an inherently busy phase of life. What if you pulled back this month and enjoyed the holidays and family and friends and didn’t try quite so hard to achieve? What if you look at December as a time to celebrate all you have accomplished this year, big or small? What if you slept in and rested more than usual? What if you were quiet and still more than usual? Does this sound like a waste of time? It’s not.
Consider this. Every move you make need not be to leverage some future move or goal. Yes, a period of rest now will likely yield increased energy and clarity in the next stage of life, but I want to ask you to forget about that for now. We achievers suffer from a sickness. We struggle with focusing on what’s next at the expense of what’s here now. Take a minute or two and think back over the past year. What have you accomplished this year that you should be grateful for? What should you celebrate? Who do you need to slow down with and just enjoy their company? Perhaps your family? Your friends? Your church?
Consider the cyclical nature of life and embrace a time of rest. Not for what it’s going to yield to you in the next phase, but so you can enjoy and reflect on this time, right now. You’re not a machine and your family and friends don’t need you to be one either. Just be present during this holiday season and enjoy the other people in your life.
Rest
Relax
Laugh
Sleep
Celebrate
The next stage of your life will be here soon enough. Not only will you be ready to maximize it, but if you slow down intentionally now, you just may learn to enjoy the fact that all the phases of life are to be enjoyed and celebrated.
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]]>The post Consistency in Reflection appeared first on 320 Coach.
]]>Truth #1: Consistent margin creates a continual source of energy in your life. You’ve been there. Hours turn to days. Days turn to weeks. Weeks turn to months. Months turn to years. All the things you thought you would get around to aren’t even close to completion. You feel like you’ve accomplished very little and you’re exhausted too. Why? Simple. No margin in your life. If you allow it, life will . . . well, it will suck the life out of you. The cure is margin. And margin is a whole lot more than a 2-week vacation once a year. You know that 2 weeks’ rest won’t fuel you for the whole next year. What will fuel you for the next year is consistent time to stop, reflect, and plan. Andy Stanly has famously coined the phrase, “Don’t just work in it, but also work on it.” He’s talking about an organizational principle that says leaders are wise to back up from the day-to-day grind, get some space and perspective, and work on the plan before the dive back into executing the plan. What if you did this in your personal life, especially as it pertains to living out your God-given dreams? What if you took a full day and got away – maybe even to a different space – and dreamed and planned for your future? What if that one day spawned regular, pre-scheduled times in your calendar where you got away to rest, think, and assess how you’re progressing toward those dreams? If you did this, you would be creating margin and that margin would begin feeding your soul. The time stepping back would create energy for you in two ways. One is that you simply have time to unplug your brain from the day-to-day grind. This creates a natural return of energy. Second, progress creates energy. If you can see yourself making progress toward your dreams the energy infusion will be tangible.
Truth #2: Consistent margin leads to exponential results for you. If you keep your head down grinding out the work, you may gain some ground, but will you know where you’re going? The “work on it, not just in it” theme applies here too. Hustle is a current buzzword in the business and leadership world, but if you have a dream you’re working to fulfill it won’t happen with just pure hustle. You must know where you’re going to achieve the results you desire. You’re the captain of your ship. Imagine how the ship would go off course if the captain was always below deck rowing. When you’re consistently living in the margins, as we talked about above, you have your eyes clearly and consistently on the goal. Work on it, not just in it.
One of the best ways to get yourself living with consistent margin in your life is to work with a skilled coach who can help you maximize your time and effort as you work to achieve your dream. When you’re ready, our coaches are here to help you live with margin and get on track with your God-given dreams. Just click here to get started.
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]]>The post The Power of the Pause appeared first on 320 Coach.
]]>However, let me ask you another set of questions. Which day of the week do you generally take off to rest? How often do you find quiet places to reflect? What do your personal retreats look like? How much do you value rest and reflection? If you’re staring blankly at your screen wondering why anyone would ask such silly questions, then let’s discuss the power of the pause.
But, what’s the purpose of the pause? Why would you need to stop, rest and reflect? You don’t get any work done that way. You’re either taking ground or losing ground, right? If you’re under the impression that you can just push, push, push, and continue to take ground, you’ve bought into a lie. Have you heard of the Law of Diminishing Returns? The Law of Diminishing Returns simply states that every individual will hit a point in time when productivity will drop off significantly and will not return. This means no matter how many hours you work or how hard you try to push through, you will feel as if you’ve hit the wall of productivity. Typically, you’ll hit this wall daily around the eight to ten hour point. On a weekly basis, after 5-6 days. Beyond that, you’ll need to experiment and figure you’re monthly and yearly rhythms. Think of your life like a road trip. Driving hard may get you to your destination, but every road-trip is filled with pauses to cool down and re-fuel.
If you’re a hard driver and have thought of rest and reflection as wasted time, let me share two truths that may help in learning to take and enjoy pauses.
Truth #1: Magic happens when you create space to dream and reflect.
A great mentor of mine told me years ago, “Life happens in the margins.” He was right. What are the margins? They are the buffer times in your schedule and your life. If you have every minute scheduled, all the time, you have no margin and that’s no kind of life. When you create these margins in your life, you’re creating space to dream and reflect. Imagine how much more you could accomplish if you had a regular flood of new and creative thoughts come to you. That’s the magic that happens when you create space to dream and reflect. Have you ever taken a walk down streets you normally drive? If you do, you’ll notice all kinds of things you’ve never seen before. That mom and pop business that doesn’t have a flashy sign. The beautiful fountain that’s slightly obscured by a strip mall. A single home in the middle of a retail district. You can gain a greater perspective when you slow down. You see things that were previously hidden from sight. Your best ideas will remain hidden from you if you continue to drive hard all the time.
Slow down.
Create space in your life to dream and reflect.
Truth #2. Energy naturally returns and increases through these times of rest and reflection.
Are you tired? When you don’t pause and rest, you are more tired. This puts you in the camp with so many others who desperately want more energy. However, a good-night’s sleep or a few hours unplugged from your work will give you 10x’s more energy than a four pack of your favorite energy drink. This is how God created you. You’re an amazingly complex machine, but you were born with the design that requires rest. Just like any other machine with a design, if you use it like it was intended to be used, it performs. If you use it in a way contrary to its design, it breaks down. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done nothing for nearly an entire day, feeling like I had no energy, only to magically feel my physical and mental energy hit 100% sometime in the late afternoon. The only thing I did to replenish that energy was nothing. You are made to rest.
It seems counter-intuitive, but if you want maximum energy and creativity, you must step back, rest, and reflect.
It’s the power of the pause.
It’s wise to not ignore it.
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]]>The post Daily Learning appeared first on 320 Coach.
]]>Today, we continue exploring how to manage your time. But now, we’re talking about what you do daily. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. There is no plateau. There is no holding pattern. Even if you believe you’re holding steady in a season of your life where you’re not growing, those closest to you will tell you that you’re regressing. If this is true – and it is – it poses the next question we’ll explore. How do you learn and grow daily?
Focus. This is the first step. The subjects you could learn about and the material available are virtually unlimited. There is more to be learned than any of us could even begin to digest in a lifetime. So, this requires some focus on your part. If you’re on the path to accomplishing a given dream, your daily learning must center around that dream. Say you want to change careers and you want to become a CPA. You can devour books on chemistry, learn a ton, and still be no closer to your CPA dream. When we’re talking about daily learning, focus matters. Unless your goal is to be a Jeopardy champion, general knowledge is of little use. So, what do you need to learn? At this point, it makes sense to put this down on paper (or your phone or computer or whatever floats your boat). The point is, you’ll learn what you decide to learn. So, take the time to make it clear. Let your goals and dreams guide you. Take a fresh look at your goals and write down what you need to learn to make those a reality.
Who. This is the next level question. Who do you need to learn from? This is a question of personality and media. You can learn from many different people via many different medias. The step that you may be tempted to skip is research, but please don’t skip this step. Spend some time researching the voices out there. You can find a multitude of voices on any subject wrapped up in many different types of learning. Do yourself a favor and do the research and figure out what voices you want to learn from and via what media. These are decisions that will be driven by your goals, your preference, and the cost. You can learn a lot from free podcasts and from a PHD program at a university. Neither is right or wrong, but they are different delivery methods and carry vastly different costs. Here are some types of learning you can explore:
So, the final question. How much time will this all take? I’ll answer your question with a couple of my own. How much do you want to learn? How quickly do you want to make your dream a reality? If your current learning plan is non-existent, then any time spent is an improvement. However, if you’re serious about becoming a student and eventually an expert in your chosen field, 60 minutes per day is a great place to begin. Imagine if you spent an average of one hour per day learning and growing in the specific areas you need to make your dream a reality? This time next year could look very different for you, indeed. We’re here for you. Just let us know how we can help.
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]]>He was asking me the right question. Eventually, that question and many others like it, got me to a place where Fridays were no longer mindless T.V. marathons, but rather calculated, well-planned days to develop my dream. I made my dream a 6th day project and so can you. Here’s the question to ask yourself today. How can I work on my dream on a weekly basis? The answer. Block your time and make your dream a regular “6th day” project”.
Let’s start with the philosophy. Tony Robbins has famously said, “We over-estimate what we can accomplish in a day and under-estimate what we can accomplish in a decade.” It’s true. You will never achieve your dream during a single day locked away in your office or even some secluded wooded cabin. On the flip side, neither will you achieve your dream by devoting some attention to it when you have some extra time. The recipe is simple. Planned and repeated work, over time, yields incredible results. Enter the 6th day project. The 6th day project simply says that you must block out time, on a weekly basis, to work on your dream. A year from now, you’ll either be light years closer to that dream or you’ll be in the exact same place you are now. The main difference will be if you decided to set aside the time and execute the plan within those specific times.
Next let’s deal with reality. Not everyone has the exact same schedule. Not everyone can block out Friday, or even Saturday for that matter. You have a demanding job. You have family commitments. You have friends and hobbies. I’m not saying any of these needs to go away. Balancing all the pieces in our life is a myth. Rather, the goal is to manage the tension between all the pieces in your life. I believe every person’s life has rhythms, and no matter what your life looks like, you can identify the rhythms in your life and find regular time to focus strictly on your dream. Like most, you probably waste way more time than you realize. I talked about this just last month, but you can read about managing your time here.
The 6th day does not have to be the true sixth day of the week. The concept is that you must find significant weekly time to block out to work on your dream? How much time? Well, how badly do you want to develop your dream? How many other responsibilities must you manage? These are the kinds of questions that lead you to answer how much time. With that said, however, the time you invest each week must be significant. Can you look at a normal week now and find the time? If you can, why not block that time and begin working on developing your dream methodically, week-by-week? If you can’t maybe you need to look at putting something else aside. All things are not equally important. Just like I had to come to grips with the reality that I was making a weekly television marathon more important that my dream, you may have a similar reality to face.
One warning to give. If you think you’ll get a return on skipping rest and replenishment time, think again. When you look at your weekly rhythm, do not give in to the temptation to cut needed rest time to work on your future dream. The biblical concept of Sabbath is something none of us can circumvent. Just like you need a weekly rhythm of blocked time to work on your dream, you need a weekly rhythm of rest and replenishment. Don’t trade in one for another. Look elsewhere for that 6th day project time.
Well, now it’s time for you to develop and execute your plan. You can start in six months. You can start next year. But why? Why would you sit for one more week and wish you were closer to your dream when you could use that week to get much closer to your dream? If you’re ready to get started now, one of our coaches could help you begin building your 6th day project plan. Just click here to get started. When you’re ready, we’ll be ready to help you get there.
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