Tag Archives: self-esteem

Four Words That Make A Big Difference.

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Jerzy Gregorek is a Polish weightlifter who has won four World Weightlifting Championships and achieved a world record. Since retiring from competitive posing (sic) he has established a brand called ‘The Happy Body’ (https://thehappybody.com) serving his clientele in terms of the provision of nutritional and exercise advice.

But he is mentioned here because of a now famous quote attributed to him, which parallels the First Resolution, and which is the subject of today’s blog. The quote read:

“Hard Choices, Easy Life: Easy choices, Hard Life.” Four words, used twice, and an enormously powerful and profound truth that most of us try to avoid.

We know that eating nutritious food in sufficient quantities is good for us, but the easy choice leads us to the tasty stuff.

We know that exercise is good for us, but we park as close to the office entrance as we possibly can rather than use those dangly things hanging from our hips.

We know that doing an excellent job is the right thing to do, but if we can get away with it, we’ll do a ‘good’ job. But as Stephen Covey espoused and Jerzy agrees, the Good is the Enemy of the Best.

Hard Choices require a disciplined mental approach. They require that we look at our situation, the challenges presented, and consciously us the Gap between that stimulus and our yet-to-be-decided response and decide – what is the best thing to do, now?

Various alternatives will present themselves, and in that moment, the success or failure or ‘just get by’ is decided. To get the success – or at least the longer-term, substantial and irrevocable success – you have to make the Hard Choice.

That may only mean getting out of bed when you really want another five minutes, but that initial personal victory can have surprisingly powerful effect. It may not seem so in the gloom as you stumble for your slippers, but doing it once makes it easier to do again, and suddenly your time is being utilised better, your self-esteem expands, your results improve.

Which leads to the second truism. The Hard Choice rarely has an immediate payoff, whereas (psychologically) the easy choice provides exactly that, an outcome that doesn’t serve us at all. And you know that. You just needed reminding, like me.

What Hard Choices do you need to make, today? You’re already up so that’s one you can’t make again. But how about lunch – jacket potato, salad and beans, or a huge coronation chicken baguette? How about that difficult conversation? How about parking at the far end of the car park (unless it’s raining. I understand the practicalities of wet clothes in an office).

What can you start doing that’s better in the longer term? What can you stop doing that’s convenient but less conscientious? What are you doing that is already good, perhaps so good that you could do more of it?

Make the Hard Choice. It’s a heavy lift, but in the end you know it is the way to success in any area of life. Ask Jerzy.

For more on the subject, buy The Three Resolutions, available HERE at Amazon in paperback or Kindle format.

Or listen to this podcast

Are you just a By-Line?

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Is your LinkedIn ‘blurb’ the whole extent of your existence? Is your quirky, deeply-considered and often trademarked tagline the result of deep introspection, or just a marketing tool for making you special? I’ll be blunt – I suspect for many it is the latter. It has a genuine purpose, and you’ve put a lot of thought into it. But the motivation may not be ‘right’.

We are not a job title, quirky or otherwise. We are far more than any professional trademark can ever describe with any accuracy. What is more, what we are we are all The time, whereas the registered trademark (is it really, or have you just popped an ® by it?) is, at best, nothing more than who we are at work.

We are whole human beings, and our senses of being, purpose and relating should be reflected in a set of self-defined guidelines that, if we are to be seen as having true integrity, must be executed with consistency.

That is why I wrote The Way – Integrity on Purpose. It is a deep-diving guide to identifying, defining, designing and executing on a personal credo that is about as comprehensive as I could make it. It is a book that provides counsel on self-analysis to the point at which you – yes YOU, not me or anyone else – decides what your are for in your personal, interpersonal and professional lives to the point at which you are congruent in the way you ‘are’ at all times, instead of different people in different situations.

It is also the route I took to deciding to write and (try to) live by the contents of my magnum opus The Three Resolutions. It is also the foundation to my ability to roll with the several punches I have suffered over the years in terms of cancer, professional challenges and occasional failures.

To be frank, and some psychologists would agree, material and counsel of this type is what can turn someone from feeling ‘meaningless’ to ‘purposeful’ – and we know the devastation that can occur when that gap isn’t addressed, don’t we.

If you have any sense of self-doubt – any at all – then reading this book will, I firmly believe, at least point you towards a bespoke solution for rediscovering a sense of purpose and inner peace.

It’s not about having a registered trademark to hide behind. It’s about having a set of standards to which you hold yourself, all the time and everywhere.

Go and explore the index. See if there’s something there for you – or for someone you care about.

Don’t just be a By-Line. Seek a “Be Line.”

Incongruence cost me – don’t let it cost you.

09 Thursday Apr 2020

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Ever done something you wish you hadn’t? Ever spoken down to someone when you didn’t mean to? Ever knowingly broken a rule, then regretted it? Ever judged a situation at a time of emotional disquiet, acted accordingly and then realised you had it wrong and always did – but let your emotion rule your thinking?

I’ve done most, if not all of those. And in each case, the fault lay within my acquiescing to the deed because I wasn’t wholly acting congruently – that is, either with my own values or (and this is important) the stated values of the organisation for which I was working. I may not have agreed wholeheartedly with those values but I should have accepted and complied with them. Silly me.

In lesser circumstances, the lack of integrity had short term results – poorer relationships that meant reluctance to engage with someone when I really needed to do so. Phone calls being put off, visits being postponed, and so on.

In the worst case, I felt I had to leave my job. Not entirely because of the offending act but because of the untenable situation it left me in. Nevertheless, the time management/productivity consequence of my failure to act with congruence was no job to manage or to be congruent about.

In TimePower, Charles R. Hobbs discussed how a lack of personal integrity – which I never thought was different to professional integrity but my job loss suggests otherwise! – causes problems not just in the productivity sense but also in terms of our own sense of self-esteem.

(I’ve known people use the term ‘personal self-esteem‘. What other kind of self-esteem could there be?)

When we fail to meet our own standards we tend to dwell on that failure. I’m not talking about failure in the sporting sense. If we didn’t fail to win at sports, no-one else would, either. To paraphrase Ziglar, if someone didn’t come second the winner wouldn’t have been first, they’d have been ‘only’. I’m talking about the kind of failure that our conscience tells us is our own damn fault.

In other words, failing to act with integrity – congruence with our personal beliefs or those we have adopted – wastes time in self-examination, further self-doubt, lack of self-confidence and, potentially, a whole host of other things that stop us doing, effectively, what we are supposed to be doing.

Now ‘retired’, I find that my biggest regret isn’t the lost money I would have earned, but the inability to do the work I had the opportunity to do. And the realisation that even when I wasn’t happy at work, I could have been. Which is an odd thing to write about stressful work but it’s true. I now have less to manage my time about, and less of a need to have high professional standards.

Which isn’t to say I won’t have high amateur standards!

Of course, some lucky people have no personal or professional values, so their integrity can float around complying with anything it likes, so they never fracture their self-esteem.

And do you realise just how much you can’t trust those people?

In conclusion, therefore, I encourage you to spend time identifying your values fully, then decide whether you’ve complied with them so far and then how you’re going to be congruent with them from now on. That’s NOW ON, not ‘in the future’, which is a bit nebulous. If you need help in doing that, it is available HERE. At no cost.

It IS worth the effort, and NOW is the time.