Tag Archives: YB12

Time’s STILL passing.

08 Friday Nov 2019

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A blog from 2015……………………

“You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again.” Benjamin Franklin

I chose this quote from the ‘father’ of time management to reflect how much I recognise that procrastination can be an obstacle to my success, although I don’t do it as much as I think I do. I put procrastination off whenever I can.

I was recently at an event run by John Grant, the founder of the YB12 – Your Best Year Ever brand, the brand of which I am proud to be a part (see HERE) and as he was speaking I made the following note on my course workbook:

“I don’t have time to wait to be the best I can possibly be.”

I am 53, with a birthday next month. Optimistically, that’s only 4 years older than Stephen Covey was when he published The Seven Habits. Realistically, I am 35 years older than Jenson Button was when he entered F1, so that’s a dream that isn’t going to happen.

Back to my point. We all have futures, most of us plan for them. Some have detailed plans, others have an ‘idea’ of where they want to go and will get there. Some have no idea. (Some of those wear sports clothes but never break into a sweat unless running from the Law.)

For so many, me included, the recognition that we have a future, and accidents and illness aside a fairly lengthy one, means that we also subconsciously perceive that we can put things off ‘just a bit’, as if we’ll still have the same amount of time left to complete that action as we had when we put it off! A day here and there doesn’t matter, after all. Or does it?

In our culture, a day frequently becomes a week – something we put off on Monday was “better done on a Monday so I’ll do it next Monday.” A diet starts on the first day of the month, so that’ll be next month.” Or a birthday. Or “It’s November the 1st today. Year’s almost over, and Christmas is around the corner, lots of planning to be done, etc. etc. so I’ll set some New Year’s Resolutions and start on Jan 1st.” Except we also know that Jan 1st means coping with the feelings, chocolates and booze left over from the night before and the 1st becomes the 2nd, and in no time at all – “Where has the year GONE?”

The likes of Bill Gates†, Steve Jobs, Gandhi, Franklin, Lincoln, Churchill and so on (pick your own) didn’t procrastinate. They took action. They took action and achieved more than most of us ever will, in some cases with no computers, no Internet, and no electric light . They maximised their use of time through planning and by NOT putting things off.

We all have a future. For some it will be longer than for others, so there’s no equality there.

But we all have NOW.

Use it better. ‘Cos it just passed you by at infinity times the speed of light. Another one went while you read that. And that. Ad infinitum.

 

† I like it when personal development writers use Gates and Jobs as examples of people who succeeded without a degree. Pause. They were at Ivy League colleges. Clue: not cheap places, having money and connections helps, and they had to have passed seriously hard exams and processes to get in. The degree was a given, if they’d stayed.

Who are you? Really?

29 Sunday May 2016

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“An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which a person faces and uses his experience.” James Baldwin

There is an exemplar phrase in NLP which goes, “I can’t do that, here.” The sentence illustrates several ‘excuses’ why people don’t do things.

“I can’t do that here” – Emphasis on the beliefs and values level: What keeps me away from doing the task? Who told me that I am not made for to do that?

“I can’t do that here” – Emphasis on the capability level: Do I need additional skills, techniques or methods to proceed?

“I can’t do that here” – Emphasis on the behavior level: What kind of actions can I do? Does the task have a positive intention? Is it in accordance with my personal development?

“I can’t do that here” – Emphasis on the environment level: Where, when, with whom could I take action? What is my ideal working environment? What time of the day will be best?

(Copied from Ansus Consulting Blog.)

The astute will notice that I haven’t opened with the ‘I’ part, which goes to the crux of this article. What is it about ‘I’ that can either stop us doing something – or actually enable us?

Our identity is more than our name. As Baldwin suggests, it is an encyclopaedia containing every experience, lesson and unifying principle to which we have been exposed. Some have been imposed, some have been chosen – hopefully by the time you’ve read some of my blogs you’d certainly have chosen the latter.

But Identity is not something set, once baked. (Or half-baked.) Identity is something fluid, which changes as experience changes, as lessons and understanding change, and as we choose to change. That last one – choice – is something we must do for ourselves. Better still, it is something we can do for ourselves. If we want to, that is.

Ever heard someone say ‘that’s just not me?’ If you have, and if you were unenlightened at that time, you probably scoffed, but the truth is that when someone uses that expression – it is the truth.

But what is also true is that the individual can choose to make ‘that’ part of them; they can choose to learn the new skill, to accept the new value, and to change their way of thinking. They can do it in the moment, or over time.

At YB12 Best Year Ever© one of the first exercises that we encourage our clients to undergo is for them to conduct an exercise in Self-Analysis, to discover what’s important to them, what’s stopping them, and to decide whether they want to do something about it. The objective is not necessarily change, but a ‘subjectively objective’ process to explore, and then decide whether they are content with who they are. The rationale is as much to derive contentment in who they are as much as discontent. So many people ‘strive’ for something they think they want, only to find that it wasn’t them who wanted it – it was their family, their friends or their society. The gap between ‘who they are’ and ‘what they’re encouraged to want’ is identified, and the choice then made in terms of which to pursue.

All of those choices are what makes a HUGE part of who we are – our Identity.

And once we know, explore or even change who we are – we can decide what we CAN do, and where we can do it. Properly.

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“It’s all too much!” Often, only if you LET that happen.

24 Sunday Jan 2016

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Everything develops – even stress.

I have undergone input on overcoming stress from the best, but all too often the writers and trainers focus on stress being caused by AN event – a family argument, potential redundancy at work, a split with a spouse, and so on. But I have always been aware of the ‘true’ story, which is that stress is rarely the consequence of any singular event.

It is all too frequently the result of a whole series of events, occasionally but not always contemporaneous (at once), the combined effect of which is the sudden or even gently insidious onset of some kind of breakdown. And the worst part of this is that the lack of a significant event, or the inability to recognise the drip-drip-drip build-up of smaller stresses, had two effects.

First, the sufferer cannot deal effectively with the stress because s/he cannot clearly see the cause. As we are ‘stimulus-response’ creatures we expect to look at our symptoms and see a clear cause for our emotions, and when it isn’t clear we get all confused, and arguably even more stressed. Unlike a pain we can localise and treat, built-up stress has no scar, wound or ache we can point at and go ‘Aha!’ with.

The second effect is that those around us are also unable to see the ‘significant effect’ and therefore question why it is we are demonstrating the symptoms of stress-related physical or mental distress. I remember a colleague ‘going sick’ with ‘stress’ and those around me could not understand why he was so stressed as (in their eyes) he didn’t do any work and had nothing to be stressed about. I politely pointed out that just because someone is on sick leave from work it doesn’t necessarily follow that work was the cause. In the case in point it was probably more related to domestic issues related to civil legal challenges he was encountering with a questionably motivated local authority.

What is the cure to such stress? I am no psychologist or psychiatrist but one thing leaps out at me from cases like these, based wholly on my own experience of ‘built-up’ stress.

Take control. Recognise what you can do about your circumstances, and take charge of starting the things that need to be started, and stopping those that should be stopped. Let go of the things about which you can do nothing – accept them and move forward. Part of doing this is to identify what the problem is, but not necessarily the cause. Sometimes knowing what the problem is, is enough – the cause gets taken care of ‘by default’ when the problem is addressed. Not always, but more often than you realise.

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The YB12 – Best Year Ever Program includes input on overcoming stress. Go to the Have Your Best Year Ever page for more information, or go to www.yb12coach.com

What do you believe in?

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Purpose and Service

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And what exactly are you doing about it?

The Third Resolution states, “To overcome the Restraining Forces of Aspiration and Ambition, I resolve to dedicate my talents and resources to noble purpose and to provide service to others.” This is achievable at many possible levels, but in the final analysis it is NOT done – and here I am being a tad accusatory – by signing a petition on Facebook, or ‘sharing’ a post which, if you are objective and sit back for a moment, you cannot be certain is real.

(I’ve lost count of pictures of someone/something where the post is circulated to capture someone for something evil they have done. When we have no knowledge if the post is actually true, or us in fact an attempt to destroy someone else’s reputation, or to find someone for evil purposes.)

Service requires something more than just agreeing with someone else’s opinion, more than putting a £1 in a charity tin. It requires positive, meaningful ACTION.

To illustrate, let me show off. I believe in The Seven Habits and associated philosophies. I believe in the professionalism of the investigation industry. So to positively act in respect of the former I funded and provided delivery of 7 Habits for Teens training at a local school and I have recently joined a group of people doing something similar on a national basis. In respect of the investigators I have, with others, produced a training course and oversee its delivery to students interested in becoming investigators.

In respect of both I was a volunteer, but the service provided and the associated experience has led to both now being real and potential sources of income. (Don’t anticipate being a millionaire but every little helps.)

And there is nothing wrong with being paid a reasonable, appropriate return for the provision of noble service to others. It’s how the world works. If you couldn’t earn money serving you’d starve. (David Middleton’s reported £250k pa from a charity seems a bit steep.)

But providing service based on what you believe in is a lot better than just trudging through life counting widgets when widget counting does not float your boat. If your work can’t reflect your beliefs, then volunteer in a way that does. You may find that being in the ‘service’ pond enables you to swim with the bigger fish that’ll take you better places. (Plaices? Sorry.)

And when push comes to shove, if you value only your family, then make sure that the service you provide is the one they want. Take them on holiday where THEY want to go. Buy the things they NEED, not just WANT.

And be there, be present. You don’t serve the family you say you value, by spending all your time earning money to buy the things that take up their attention so they don’t notice your absence.

For more on the Third Resolution, consider purchasing the book HERE.

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Life’s too short to wait to ….. (enter here what you’re not doing)

01 Sunday Nov 2015

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“You may delay, but time will not, and lost time is never found again.” Benjamin Franklin

I chose this quote from the ‘father’ of time management to reflect how much I recognise that procrastination can be an obstacle to my success, although I don’t do it as much as I think I do. I put procrastination off whenever I can.

I was recently at an event run by John Grant, the founder of the YB12 – Your Best Year Ever brand, the brand of which I am proud to be a part (see HERE) and as he was speaking I made the following note on my course workbook:

“I don’t have time to wait to be the best I can possibly be.”

I am 53, with a birthday next month. Optimistically, that’s only 4 years older than Stephen Covey was when he published The Seven Habits. Realistically, I am 35 years older than Jenson Button was when he entered F1, so that’s a dream that isn’t going to happen.

Back to my point. We all have futures, most of us plan for them. Some have detailed plans, others have an ‘idea’ of where they want to go and will get there. Some have no idea. (Some of those wear sports clothes but never break into a sweat unless running from the Law.)

For so many, me included, the recognition that we have a future, and accidents and illness aside a fairly lengthy one, means that we also subconsciously perceive that we can put things off ‘just a bit’, as if we’ll still have the same amount of time left to complete that action as we had when we put it off! A day here and there doesn’t matter, after all. Or does it?

In our culture, a day frequently becomes a week – something we put off on Monday was “better done on a Monday so I’ll do it next Monday.” A diet starts on the first day of the month, so that’ll be next month.” Or a birthday. Or “It’s November the 1st today. Year’s almost over, and Christmas is around the corner, lots of planning to be done, etc. etc. so I’ll set some New Year’s Resolutions and start on Jan 1st.” Except we also know that Jan 1st means coping with the feelings, chocolates and booze left over from the night before and the 1st becomes the 2nd, and in no time at all – “Where has the year GONE?”

The likes of Bill Gates†, Steve Jobs, Ghandi, Franklin, Lincoln, Churchill and so on (pick your own) didn’t procrastinate. They took action. They took action and achieved more than most of us ever will, in some cases with no computers, no Internet, and no electric light . They maximised their use of time through planning and by NOT putting things off.

We all have a future. For some it will be longer than for others, so there’s no equality there.

But we all have NOW.

Use it better. ‘Cos it just passed you by at infinity times the speed of light. Another one went while you read that. And that. Ad infinitum.

† I like it when personal development writers use Gates and Jobs as examples of people who succeeded without a degree. Pause. They were at Ivy League colleges. Clue: not cheap places, having money and connections helps, and they had to have passed seriously hard exams and processes to get in. The degree was a given, if they’d stayed.

*If you want to stop procrastinating, and live reasonably close to South Wales, consider this as a valuable opportunity to learn how to stop procrastinating and get what you want in 2016.

https://threeresolutionsguy.com/total-focus-workshop-january-2016-south-wales-uk/

You can be as GRRRREEEEATT! as Frosties.

11 Sunday Oct 2015

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“When we exercise the courage to set AND ACT on goals that are connected to principles and conscience we tend to achieve positive results.” Covey/Merrill, ‘First Things First’

And this was brought home to me this week, in two ways.

First of all, I have been establishing a training and coaching business (see this page ) and the business model involves making calls to business to seek their help in my provision of a keynote talk on overcoming procrastination, a talk after which I invite the attendees to come to a formal programme. I may have mentioned before that I hate making telephone calls at the best of times, so making unsolicited calls at the end of which I may be rejected was, shall I say, challenging?

But I set the goals (probably months ago, to be frank!) to make said calls this week and, ennobled by a colleague’s own success in making an approach to estate agencies, I did the same. I made a list of local agents and worked through them.

I was not called names. I did not die a horrible death. I overcame my dread (okay, it’s not facing a horde of Zulus but I have been spared that horror because some braver men did it for me in 1879) and established a positive experience that will serve me in the future. I also salved the conscience that’s been shouting at me to act. Lesson taught, and learning accepted.

But there was an added lesson. As I was making these calls my son walked in on me. He is involved in a college course, part of which requires him to do 300 hours relevant work experience. He is a shy lad, but owing to the desire to get the work (farming) and the failure of the college to provide any meaningful assistance, he has had to overcome that reluctance to deal with people and he has spent the week touring farms, talking to strangers and asking them for help. He appears to have met with some success.

And the bombshell – having nagged him to get out and put himself about because that’s what we coaches do, he looked me right in the eye as I put the phone down on a call and said, “Now you know how I feel.”

Boom! Right in the conscience, son! Twist that verbal knife! (And impress me with your wisdom.)

And was he right? Damn right he was right!

When we overcome our fears, however small and illogical, we make ourselves something better than we were before. It might only be a little bit ‘better’ but as Emerson said, “Little by little we build our power.” I remember my first public speaking effort. I was asked just to introduce myself. I got up and burbled for two minutes, then sat down – desperately wanting another go! That ‘little’ built so much power in two minutes.

Every time we leave our comfort zone, regardless of the results, we grow. So does the zone, so we have to stretch further the next time we want to leave it. Occasionally we don’t only enter the ‘stretch zone’ that sits immediately outside the comfort zone. Occasionally we are shoved mercilessly into the Panic Zone. And when we emerge from there, battered and bloodied (or even unscathed) we are all the greater for having been there.

Seek your greatness. Stretch yourself. Listen to your conscience and your Unifying Principles and, when the opportunity arises or life asks you to comply with them – do so.

It’s fantastic.