Overcoming Your Fear of Failure
If you follow us on Instagram, you probably saw my recent post about making mistakes. I confessed that even though I have worked on my mindset a lot in this area, I still have a little fear about making mistakes. People fear making mistakes for several reasons. They might think, “If I’ve failed once then I’ll probably fail again.” They could fear the repercussions and risks. They don’t want to disappoint others or are afraid of rejection. They’ve defined their self-worth by their success. Maybe avoiding failure has become a learned response—they expect someone to come to the rescue because someone always has and therefore have never learned how to…
Creating Story
Have you seen the movie with Ben Stiller called “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”? Ben’s character, Walter, daydreams of a life full of action and romance where he is the hero. Eventually he decides that he can’t live life in a make believe world, so he takes action in the real world. He creates a story. I’ve read a lot of books (good and bad), and my favorites are those where the character struggles to overcome obstacles to get what he wants–Jean Val Jean in “Les Miserables” overcoming his past; Jonas in “The Giver” overcoming the expectations of the dystopian society; Daniel overcoming his hatred in “The Bronze Bow”.…
The Daily Dozen (minus 2)
One of my favorite personal development speakers, Chris Brady, likes to ask, “20 years from now, what will you wish you had done today?” He talks a lot about how consistently productive daily habits, compounded over time, create success. He says that successful people aren’t lucky or blessed to be in their current situations, they just did the right things, consistently. Chris recently gave a talk called The Daily Dozen in which he listed 12 habits that he thinks are important. This is post is modeled after that talk, but with fewer and different habits that I think are important. ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————– Habit #1 Read from your core book every day. Your core…
Cultivating and Attitude of Gratitude
I love that we get to experience things in patterns! Often I learn a new principle or I am reminded of something I knew previously, and suddenly I have several experiences, conversations, or other exposures to that exact principle within the next days to weeks. This just happened this week. Just a couple of days ago, I posted my weekly video which was about Reframing. That same day I decided to finally get around to reading the book: FLIP the Gratitude Switch by Kevin Clayson. (I don’t remember the exact manner in which this happened, but Kevin sent me a copy of his book with a personalized note in it.) FLIP the Gratitude…
Launching a Leadership Revolution
Leadership is the influence of others in a productive, vision-driven direction and is done through the example, conviction, and character of the leader. (pg 7 Launching a Leadership Revolution) I just finished rereading Launching a Leadership Revolution by Chris Brady and Orrin Woodward. This is an amazing book written by two gentlemen who definitely have fruit on the tree in the Leadership Development arena. INC Magazine does a survey in which they determine the top 50 leadership and management experts in the world. (This includes leadership giants who have passed away) Orrin was ranked #20, and Chris was #39. I believe this is one of the most comprehensive manuals on leadership and personal development. After reading it, I…
Catalyst for Change
I just finished reading “The Freedom Writers Diary” aloud to my kids. I’m not recommending it–there were a lot of graphic scenes and foul language, but the message was good–tolerance. It was a very eye opening book for us. We had no idea that people lived like the kids in the book; that people judge and hurt others all because of the color of their skin. It was shocking and heartbreaking. A few things we learned from the book: 1. Good teachers know how to inspire. 2. There are a lot of hurting people in the world. 3. There is power in reading a good book and asking how it…
