Learning to be a Champion Blog

Forethought as ACTION is a strategy, not just a tactic.  Yes, you need to make forethought as ACTION a part of your tactical efforts to maximize the value of your actions each day.  However, forethought as ACTION is a strategy for maximizing what’s currently available to you in a dynamically changing world while also influencing your access to new assets that come your way.  If you are regularly creating value, you will gain access to new assets in your ever evolving world.

At the strategic level, the entrepreneurial contingency plan is about working multiple active plans for thriving success versus the more traditional approach to contingency planning as a fall back scenario.  In other words, you actively work plans A1 and A2 (and maybe A3) versus actively working plan A while passively constructing plan B to fall back on when plan A hits the wall.

“It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.”
– Chinese Proverb

It is much better to take simultaneous small strategic steps with multiple plans that take you in the right general direction than to just take sequential tactical steps along one path.  With multiple plans, you will likely always be moving forward.  With one plan, you will run into road blocks and constraints that will stop your forward momentum.  All plans run into road blocks, there is no perfect plan.  Thus, multiple primary plans allow you to keep momentum moving forward and working in your favor.

However, too many simultaneous plans won’t establish enough momentum in the right direction to create real results.  If you have too many plans, you are not going to spend the appropriate time checking status on your plans and making the appropriate real-time adjustments.  Attention, resources, and time will be spread too thin and too many obstacles will surface in too many areas to get the proverbial flywheel spinning in the right direction.  People will quickly become overwhelmed and frustrated.  As Jim Collins found and shared in his book How the Mighty Fall - the mighty proceed down the path of destruction when they engage in the undisciplined pursuit of more!

“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.”
– Peter Drucker

Display discipline in your pursuit of thriving success and commit to the right two or three primary plans to maximize their likelihood.  Don’t go with just one plan, you will have too many momentum stopping setbacks to be in the right place at the right time.  On the other hand, don’t have too many plans as you will either not get enough momentum established or you will waste your precious resources by spreading them too thin.

The pursuit of selective greatness makes all the difference.  It helps you see more opportunities and possibilities on the journey and it gives you the determination and strength to push through the inevitable dips along the way.  Thus, we recommend you have a few critical plans that allow you shoot for greatness, anticipate challenges, and persevere on your journey!

“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning”
– Winston Churchill

© Copyright 2010 Jon L. Iveson, Ph.D. and Sandy Seago

The topic of confidence has come up a great deal these days as I interact with clients, colleagues, friends and family.  The prolonged recession has just whittled away at the confidence of our organizations and individuals.  It seems as though most people are living with tremendous fear and anxiety while most of the rest are just trying to fake their way through this challenging period. 

There is a small portion of people really living with confidence during these uncertain, challenging, and tough times.  These people have transformed or will transform their situation for the better during these uncertain, challenging, and tough times.  Here is the 6 step process they are using to live with confidence each day as they transform their lives and organizations:

1. Decide to Thrive and Overcome the Challenges.  Confidence comes when you draw a line in the sand and set your sights on worthy goals.  Decide to improve in some way.  Also, decide to pursue some worthy but improbable breakthrough.  Both will stretch you but each type of goal stretches you in different ways for the better.
2. Take important and significant chunks of action toward your goals.  It is far too easy to get spread thinly and attempt to multitask your way through your challenges.  Multitasking is something we all must do at certain times of the day, yet it should not be our modus operandi if we are to thrive during these uncertain times.  We need to FOCUS to really make progress.  Learn to carve out as many 45 to 90 minute blocks of focused and concentrated effort on the most important and significant actions tied to your goals.  Verne Harnish often tells his workshop participants that research has shown it takes 21 minutes to get back up to full speed after an interruption or shift in focus.  It is hard to make real progress if we can’t ever get up to full speed!
3. Create some small but significant Personal Victories each day.  Take 10 minutes to read something positive that can influence your attitude during the day – VICTORY!  Get some exercise – VICTORY!  Learn more about your unique strengths, ways to use them, and take the smallest action to implement what you’ve learned – VICTORY!  Spend 15 minutes giving your full attention to something your child wants to do, discuss, or experience – VICTORY!   There are many ways to create small but significant Personal Victories each day.  They don’t take a great deal of time but provide a HUGE amount of reward and help build confidence in your life!  Commit to 3 Personal Victories each day and be prepared to feel the difference.
4. Regularly challenge yourself, in whatever way you can - big or small.  Push through some discomfort every day.  Mix it up.  Challenge yourself through exercise one day, in learning another day, and in action (vocation or avocation) on yet another day.  Get outside your comfort zone and stay the course for a few minutes to an hour each day.  Don’t overdue it and build in recovery time.  But, most importantly, challenge yourself in some small way!  The world will provide many challenges during your life journey and you need to be practiced at meeting challenges.
5. Activate humility in some way (i.e. gratitude, grace, and/or charity).  The four previous steps build confidence.  This step counterbalances confidence with humility.  Otherwise, you will move from confidence to arrogance.  Jim Collins found that arrogance is what starts the five stage process of “How the Mighty Fall” in his book by that name.  There is no reason to start down that path!
6. Learn and grow from the above five steps.  Take a few minutes each night (or early the next morning) to review and reflect on the day.  Accept that small failures are a part of the game and focus on learning and growing from them.  Get emotionally excited about the small successes of your day and use them to catapult your confidence building process for the day ahead.

These simple but important steps are of great importance in living with confidence during both good and bad times.  However, these steps are the difference makers when things are uncertain, challenging, and tough.  Commit to these 6 steps and you will be confidently live in the present and confidently build a thriving future!

© Copyright 2010 Jon L. Iveson, Ph.D.

Once you find your true passions and build your burning desire to take regular action on those passions, it is time to create your vision for the future.  Passion gets you excited, burning desire pushes you forward, and vision acts as your magnetic pull!

In its simplest form, the vision is an idea of or for something better than is experienced in the moment or has been experienced in the past.  Without this idea, or “end in mind” as Stephen Covey called it in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, our lives are too easily filled with the mundane and busy activities of the day.  There is always plenty of activity going on around us to crowd our lives and take us down a bad or wrong path.  Our vision gives power to our daily decisions.

The whole idea of a vision is to give you a sense of direction – a sense of purpose.  It provides a filter through which to see the vast activity and information in front of you each day.  It gives you real power to make small decisions each day to influence the future.  Instead of just reacting to the activities and information of the day, you become the captain and commander of your life.

The best place to start building your vision is at the end of your journey.  Contemplate your family, friends, competitors, etc. gathering around at your funeral and imagine what they might be saying based on your life up to this point.  What might you want them to say?  If you can put this into words (generous, smart, funny, did the right thing, cool, etc.,…), then you are getting at the essence of your personal vision.  The next step is to define what these words mean to you and what you can do to live them out.  These words then act as a guiding light for your life!

It is important to get clear on your vision but not attached to 100% of the specifics of that vision.  You see, no matter how much time and effort you put into this visioning process, you will NOT be 100% accurate with your vision.  Many things will change around you as you pursue your vision.  You will have had no way of predicting these changes. 

The last year in NBC late night programming changes could NOT have been predicted by the players with 100% accuracy.  A personal vision tied a 100% accurate prediction of how things panned out would most likely have failed miserably.  Yet, even in the fallout of the most recent late night programming changes, one of its key players teaches us how to experience the benefits from the right perspective of our personal vision. 

Conan O’Brien, the most recent host of NBC’s Tonight Show, was removed from the spot after 7 short months at the post.  However, in saying goodbye to his viewers, he captures the contradictory forces we must embrace in setting and pursuing our personal vision…

“I hate cynicism ¬— for the record it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. … As proof, let’s make an amazing thing happen right now.”

Much of your vision and its components can be fully realized if you start with the end in mind.

From Personal to Broadly Compelling

A vision for a thriving high potential growth business starts with one personal vision but grows and succeeds with the blending of many personal visions.  It is with this connection, expansion, and blending that an enterprise develops a compelling vision which drives forceful and urgent action towards its end.

The compelling vision engages people, partners, investors, employees, customers, etc… to give discretionary energy to make it real.  It is also one of the last truly sustainable competitive advantages when you develop a unique culture around this compelling vision and a set of distinct values. 

Its like Terry R. Bacon, Ph.D. and David G. Pugh describe in their book, Winning Behavior, “Behavioral differentiation is difficult to copy because it requires more skill and will than many companies possess - even when they know what you are doing,” especially when behavioral differentiation is aligned with a compelling vision and distinct value set.

The Gallup Organization has shown through it’s data that the engagement scores on the statement “ the mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important” significantly impacts the success of an organization.  By developing a broadly compelling vision for your organization, you are more easily able to attract, involve, and engage the best people at all levels in your organization.  In their 10 million sets of data, Gallup has clearly found that higher engagement levels readily translate into higher levels and probabilities of success, productivity, and profitability.

Alan Mulally, Ford Motor Co. president and chief executive, talked about overcoming the challenges of the great 2009 recession when speaking at the 2010 North American International Auto Show.  He said…

“I just can’t share clearly enough how important it is … to have a compelling vision,” he added. “If you don’t have a plan to deal with current reality and long-term growth, it is absolutely terrifying and you come close to losing your company.”

A personal vision will help you and a compelling vision will help your company, in good times and bad times, to focus on important things that can influence your future success.  Time spent in the visioning process on the front end of your life and business journey will be richly rewarded during your often hectic journey in life!

© Copyright 2010 Jon L. Iveson, Ph.D. and Rich Langdale

Today’s article is in honor of the great Presidents in U.S. history as we get ready to celebrate President’s Day on Monday.  THEY DARED TO THRIVE - WILL YOU?

It is not what happens “out there” that will determine your level of success in this world.  Instead, it is your attitude, mental approach, and physical actions that will allow you to achieve your fullest potential success.  So, always be working on improving and energizing your attitude, mental approach, and physical actions to “Thrive at All Times.”

Most people will only achieve their fullest potential of success when the times are booming.  They only know how to use the expanding energy of their environment (micro or macro) to create greater success.  They have learned only how to spot the appreciating assets in their expanding environment and jump on board that proverbial “train” to experience their success of that moving train.

However, when the times turn tough and the recovery is rough, there are NOT many trains on the right tracks and there are dramatically fewer seats available for jumping on board.  Thus, you must learn to lay your own tracks and move your own train to experience expanding success in a shrinking or stagnant economy.

If you use your time to cultivate a thriving attitude, thriving mental approach, and thriving actions, you will have the keys to “thriving at all times.”  So, how do you DARE to Thrive at All Times (no matter what the economy is doing)?

Decide on Your Dreams.  Always be dreaming.  Find your passions and make sure you engage those passions each and every day.  Others are drawn to passionate people and passionate purposes.  Put your passions out there and build complementary teams of passionate people pursuing passionate purposes.  The energy from this effort will feed itself and take grand dreams from possibility, to probability, and on to perpetuity.

Act with Courage to take Risks.  With risk, comes reward.  No grand dream can or will be achieved without some risk along the way.  We can not achieve our fullest potential if we don’t leave our present comfort zone.  Act with courage every day.  Step out on limb and risk something small each and every day.  Continue to add passionate and courageous people around you and you will gain more confidence to face uncertainty.  When the times are tough and the recovery is rough, you actually are risking more by NOT making decisions to take small risks than you are by making decisions to take small risks.  In other words, inaction and indecision is more risky than new action and new decisions in tough and rough times!

Rely on Faith.  Have faith in something greater than yourself and activate your faith each and every day.  Challenges, doubts, and obstacles will most certainly rear their ugly heads on your path to your dreams.  You must have faith in your dreams, in your team, and in a higher power to achieve your true potential.  Explore and cultivate faith in all its forms.  It will be one of your most powerful and reliable assets!

Engage Willpower to Succeed.  Never quit before the miracle happens.  Know that you will fail in some small way many times in achieving your dreams.  View these small failures as opportunities to learn.  With each lesson, reinforce your strong will to achieve your dreams.  Be committed to your dreams but detached from means of achieving those dreams.  Adapt, adjust, and retreat as necessary, but refuse to quit before the miracle happens!

When you DARE to Thrive at All Times, you can create magic.  Be a student of the environment, challenges, and opportunities around you but don’t let them determine your level of success.  Instead, DARE to cultivate a thriving attitude, thriving mental approach, and new thriving actions that will serve in you, in any and all times!

© Copyright 2009 Jon L. Iveson, Ph.D. and Sandy Seago

The day that will change your life forever and take you from occasionally thriving to thriving at all time is the turning point.  The turning point occurs when you fundamentally embrace a new approach to all your challenges and opportunities.  2010 provides the perfect circumstances for people to arrive at this day and make the fundamental shift that will change their life for good.  Unfortunately, the vast majority of people will reach this crossroads in 2010 and head down the wrong path.

So, what happens at the turning point?  You embrace the fundamental tension between patience AND decisiveness in living your dreams.  Most people are too patient with the wrong things and way too indecisive on the most critical keys to their success at any given time.  When you achieve the right balance, you arrive at the turning point – you now have the wisdom to thrive at all times!

• You need to be patient as your dreams or vision unfold AND you need to be decisive in taking action to move it forward.
• You need to be patient when making major changes to succeed in a sluggish economy AND you need to be decisive in creating real progress.
• You need to be patient when working on your weaknesses AND you need to be decisive in taking new action to make them irrelevant.
• You need to be patient with the healing process AND you need to be decisive in taking action to accelerate and support it where you can.
• You need to be very patient when waiting for a major recession to end AND you need to be decisive in re-inventing your situation to thrive no matter what the economy is doing.

There is only one way to thrive at all times – develop the right balance between patience and decisiveness and always feel good about how that balance helps you move forward!

© Copyright 2010 Jon L. Iveson, Ph.D.

If you are NOT living a thriving life right now, you are probably wasting precious energy fretting about the challenges and obstacles presented by your current situation and circumstances.  Acknowledging the frustration or negative emotions tied to your current situation and circumstances is the starting point for designing and living your unique thriving success story.  However, dwelling on those challenges and obstacles is a huge waste of energy and potential!

You have to start where you are.  We can’t just magically wave a wand and remove the challenges and obstacles associated with our current situation.  However, as Stephen Covey pointed out in the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” we do have the ability to choose our response to our conditions, situation, and circumstances.  When we proactively choose better responses, we start the process of changing our conditions, situation, and circumstances.

This most recent recession has knocked most organizations and people on their heels.  As I work with organizations and people to design and experience their unique thriving success stories, I see tons of frustration and anxiety about how this recession has significantly decreased their quality of life at work and at home.  Much of what people loved about their work and their lives has changed since the beginning of this recession.

So, what’s an organization or individual to do?  Well, you need to start where you are and focus on where you want to go (thriving at all times).  So, if you aren’t doing the thing you love, you need to find something to love in what you are doing, and expand on it!

In the Gallup Organization’s 25 plus years and 10 million sets of data on employee engagement, they have found that there are three types of people in organizations.  I believe the majority of people fit into the first two categories.  People in the third category are harder to find but these are the people that thrive at all times!

1. The least engaged group sees their work simply as a job.  It is a necessary inconvenience (that has been made more inconvenient during these tough times) and way to make money (harder during these tough times) so that they can accomplish personal goals and enjoy themselves outside of work (also much more difficult these days).

2. The second group sees their work as a career.  They enjoy the increased pay, prestige, and status (not nearly as rewarding during these tough times) that comes with success at work.

3. The third group considers its work to be filled with purpose.  The work is an end in itself and this group believes that this work contributes to the greater good and makes the world a better place (filling a significant need during tough times.)

The engagement data clearly shows that we need to find more meaning for ourselves and the people in our organizations to be successful.  Yet, most organizations and individuals have gotten more focused on the mechanics, not meaning, during these tough times.

So, the question for you is…can you find something you love in what you are doing and expand on it?  This is the path to thriving at all times!

© Copyright 2010 Jon L. Iveson, Ph.D.

This recession has been tough and the recovery is progressing very slowly.  This turbulence that we have experienced over the last 18 months has led to many struggles and challenges in all sectors of the economy.  These struggles and challenges have come in waves.  Your sector and position in that sector determined which wave felt the strongest to you.  These waves will continue during the recovery and you need to better position yourself to experience them as small waves, and not tsunamis.

It is a great time to build or re-build a thriving high potential growth business.  The path for success with the high potential growth business starts with passion and desire.  You might have succeeded at some level, prior to this past recession, without strong passion and desire for your career or particular business.  However, the odds of real success now without them are drastically reduced.

In our interactions with individuals and organizations, we see two approaches to dealing with the turbulence and uncertainty.  The first and more common approach by BOTH individuals and organizations is the fear-based approach.  Individuals and organizations fear losing their current status or situation and thus reluctantly make any changes and/or decisions to build a better path forward.  The second and less common approach is to accept that turbulence and uncertainty are a greater part of our current reality.  Those individuals and organization that have this acceptance then see the opportunity – they can align their life, their work, and their organization more closely with their passions and burning desires.

Life should be fun.  It can be fun no matter the general circumstances.  That does not mean that life will be easy.  The seeming ease of success is experienced on the backside, not the front-side, of the mountain you climb!  The climb on the front-side of your mountain can be short, fun, and rewarding or it can be a long death march.  The absence or presence of passion will determine how you perceive that climb.

“You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what it is you are doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.“
– George Lucas, Film Director and Producer

If you don’t pursue an opportunity that is in line with your personal passions, odds are you will have a tough time during your tough times.  The fact is, there is almost always someone, who is smarter, wealthier, better connected…and the only differentiator you may have is your willingness to work hard.  If you are working hard at something you are passionate about - it won’t feel like work, it won’t feel as difficult, and it will be much more fun!

When you have this perspective to start, you can translate your passion into a burning desire.  There is a subtle but important difference between passion and burning desire.  Passion is a powerful emotion that can be generated through one’s own initiative and efforts in something or it can be generated through other people’s initiative and efforts.  Just take a look at all the passion generated on a football Saturday at the Alabama, Texas, Florida, Boise State, Ohio State, etc… football stadiums during football season.  Burning desire must come from within and it can’t help but activate the initiative and efforts from those within which it resides.

“Back of all this demand for new and better things, there is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it…Remember that all who succeed in life get off to a bad start, and pass through many heartbreaking struggles before they ‘arrive.’  The turning point in the lives of those who succeed usually comes at the moment of some crisis, and through which they are introduced to their ‘other selves.’”
– Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

There is no better time to align or re-align your life with your passions and burning desires.  Take this opportunity and experience the benefits the rest of your life!

© Copyright 2010 Jon L. Iveson, Ph.D. and Rich Langdale

We just launched a new decade so it provides everyone a great opportunity to view their challenges from a different perspective.  In 2009, Suzy Welch published a highly praised book, 10-10-10, that discusses the idea of living with the decade in mind when making all our important decisions.  She also points out that we should consider the consequences in the next 10 minutes and the next 10 months. 

With this in mind, here are several ideas that will help you design a Thriving Decade and a Thriving Year while also providing you the opportunity to begin living your personal Thriving Success Story:

Make the decision to Thrive this year and this decade.  Get use to making decisions in all that you do.  Too many people are hesitant to decide after experiencing the challenges of 2009.  Don’t just participate or go through the motions.  Make decisions (big and small) to take action in the right direction.  Pursue selective greatness.  Choose to do nothing instead of doing the mediocre.  Don’t settle.  Make decisions as soon as you have a reasonable amount of data to support a decision.  Make deciding, not waiting (for more information, a better time, etc…), your habit.  Reach for new heights.

Study something new in great depth.  Find a thought leader or topic that truly intrigues you and spend the next 90 days digging a little deeper to increase the value you can contribute to the world.  Make a radical shift or change in your mindset for the better.  We all know things that are holding us back.  Keep the 90% of yourself that you like and serves you well.  Find comfort in that stability and consistency while re-inventing 10% for the better.  Be curious. 

Don’t look for a reason to say “no” where you spend your time and energy.  Instead, look for opportunities to say “yes.”  Amplify the positive AND find a way to plus it (add one small but significant thing to it) in all that you do.  Choose to take small risks to fail your way forward.  Choose to fit in with dream makers, have more conversations about visions and dreams and find a way to stand out from the crowd by expressing your unique contributions to the world.  Maximize opportunities when things are going well AND when they aren’t.

Be a Master Craftsman.  Choose something valuable to master.  Tools alone will not create impact – the craftsman that applies the right tools creates the impact.  Learn to implement better with every application of your talents, skills, and strengths.  Don’t be a commodity, be a premium brand in work and in life. 

Find a quest to drive you forward.  Seth Godin put it best in his 2009 blog post.  “Having a community-based quest means that there’s less room for whining, for infighting and for dissolution.”  The right quest creates motion in a positive direction, takes you on a ride worth taking, brings out more of your best, and makes you a better person than you were before the quest. 

Take 10 minutes to re-read this article.  Based on this article, make a decision and take action right now generate positive consequences in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years.  Do it with “Thriving Success” in mind.  Do it every day, every hour, and eventually, with every decision.  You will soon be living your own personal “Thriving Success Story!”

© Copyright 2010 Jon L. Iveson, Ph.D.

The Alabama Crimson Tide won the BCS National Championship by beating the Texas Longhorns 37 to 21 at the Rose Bowl.  I was a few minutes from turning the game off and heading to bed when the Texas Longhorns began to rally in the second half of the ballgame.  Although the final score was decisive, the Texas Longhorns overcame some significant challenges to make the outcome of this game very uncertain with just 6 minutes to play.  Alabama scored two touchdowns in the last two minutes to create the final margin of victory.

The game provided a few important lessons for everyone as we continue to deal with the turbulence and uncertainty of a slow economic recovery:

Lead with your strengths.  Know what has worked and is working for you and expand on it.  Don’t get creative for creativity’s sack.  Both Alabama and Texas ran plays in their first possessions that were not part of their proven strengths that got them to the game.  It cost them both.  Alabama threw an interception on a fake punt on their end of the field.  It gave Texas great field position and they converted it into points on the board.  Texas ran an option play that got their quarterback, Colt McCoy, knocked out of the game.  The Texas offense’s strength was not the option, it was the forward pass.  In both cases, the teams got creative but did not lead with their strengths in getting creative.  Don’t put yourself in the same vulnerable position.  Get creative only with your strengths in mind!

Adapt, Adjust, and Never Give up.  When your start quarterback goes down to injury early in the game, you have no choice but to adapt and adjust.  The Texas Longhorns were forced to adapt and adjust.  It initially was painful for the team.  They were not able to make plays and they did not seem to have a handle on what to even try.  They even sufferable a major blow just before halftime when one of their play calls and the execution of that play went very wrong.  They second half of the game did not start out much better.  But, they continued to adapt and adjust.  Finally, some things started to click and they were able to build on some new found momentum.  From 6 minutes and 15 seconds left in the game to about 2 minutes left in the game, Texas was within one score of a tie or the lead.  Their inexperience at quarterback ultimately caught up to them.  But, what an effort and commitment to never give up and never give in!

Measure your success based on how far you have come, not by a standard of perfection or some other overly audacious short-term goal.  You should have high standards and pursue audacious long-term goals but you will not achieve and sustain true success and happiness if you always grade yourself solely on the gap between your actual performance and those lofty standards.  It is much more rewarding and enjoyable to acknowledge how far you have come!  The Texas Longhorns did not anticipate losing their star quarterback in the first few minutes of the game.  However, they ended up adapting to the challenge and making a real run at winning the game in the closing minutes.  It looked as though the coaches and players had great perspective after the game.  They appreciated how far they’d come in overcoming the challenges and did not dwell on how close they came to perfection and a national championship.  They will learn from the experience and will be better in many ways for their next opportunity!

If you take these three lessons to heart during this uncertain economic recovery, you will most certainly find a way to have a prosperous, successful, and happy year!

© Copyright 2010 Jon L. Iveson, Ph.D.

As we prepare to head into the two biggest annual holiday celebration weeks in the U.S. each year, many people are beginning to think about their New Year’s resolutions.  Unfortunately, many people will not come at their resolutions with the proper perspective.  Thus, their resolutions will become one of their first failures of the year.

The statistics I found on New Year’s resolutions two years ago are: 

• As low as 45% and as high as 88% of people set resolutions or goals each year in a handful of surveys done the last five years.
• After 2 weeks, just 70% of these people will continue their efforts to achieve their resolutions or goals
• After 6 months, just 40% to 50% of these people will continue to pursue or have achieved their resolutions or goals
• Only 8% to 12% of these people achieve their resolutions or goals

Before you set your resolutions this year and set yourself up to be part of the 90% that fail to achieve their resolutions, consider these thoughts.

1. Drive to Thrive (in some way, shape, or form)!  Connect to something you are truly passionate about and/or have a strong drive to achieve it from the very moment you start to think about it.  Pursue selective greatness by deploying your strengths and talents.  Build momentum in this area and give yourself the opportunity to focus on what’s working.  You can expand this success into other areas as your momentum grows.
2. Re-invent 10% of your disciplines.  Jim Rohn often told his students that “We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.”  Choose to suffer the smaller pain of re-inventing one attitudinal discipline, one thought discipline, and one disciplined action.  These can be the smallest of disciplines but they will quickly lead you down a path of success when they are practiced each day.
3. Only participate in the right meetings.  Instead of complaining about being in too many meetings, change how you contribute to your meetings and run your meetings for greater success.  Eliminate some meetings and re-structure others.  Schedule the meetings to occur as frequently as necessary (and no more frequently) to achieve the four kinds of objectives (synchronization, constraint removal, priority advancement, and strategic maneuvering) necessary to achieve long-term, sustainable success.  Finally, bring data (not opinions) and facilitate dialogue and debate during the meeting so that you can make the discoveries that support the advancement of your goals.
4. Make better Decisions.  Vow to create a better ecosystem around you.  One that is supportive of making better and better decisions.  Engage in your meetings and relationships in a way that enhances your ability to make daily decisions.  Draw out solutions from those around you and debate different views to find better solutions, not to win the debates.
5. Be determined to make your decisions right.  Once you have made decisions, be determined to make progress based on those decisions.  Far too often, people don’t invest in the process of making the best decision possible.  Instead, they hesitantly make decisions and then immediately start looking for excuses or reasons why those decisions will not work.  Do the opposite, invest in the decision making process and then be 100% committed to making your decisions right.  Know that there will be obstacles and challenges in implementing your decisions.  Be determined to find ways around those obstacles and challenges.
6. Continually monitor the data around your resolutions and use it as feedback.  Adjust your course, as necessary, to achieve your resolutions.

Acknowledge that resistance is just a natural consequence of having goals and resolutions.  Focus on what you want, not the resistance.  What you think about and focus on expands. You just need to connect to what you want in the right way to overcome the resistance.  Know that you can and you will find the answers as to how you will achieve your goals and resolutions.

I wish you Happy Holidays and a Thriving New Year!

© Copyright 2009 Jon L. Iveson, Ph.D.