Recharging the Battery

With the frantic pace that we get into, we often forget to find time to recharge our battery. Last week I attended the quarterly conference of one of the companies that I am affiliated with. Even though I facilitated two sessions of my peers, which is always energy draining, I came away with a renewed sense of purpose and drive for my business.

When I step back and examine why there is this positive energy, several thougths come to mind. The first is that I got to see and interact with colleagues that I had not seen in a while. It's great to be around bright people who provide encouragement and reinforcement to me. I have always found that positive energy creates more positive energy.

Secondly, having to prepare to present to and lead a group my peers always creates focus for me. The process of organizing my thoughts and ideas to share with others focred me to make that I was apllying those same principles to my business.

Finally, it was great to hear about and share the successes of others. With so much doom and gloom in the business news today, it's nice to know that people can be successful in these times. It was amzing to hear some colleagues say that this was their best year ever. While I am not a that point, this year hasn't been terrible but I realize that it's about me and not the economy. More than ever there is a need for what I do.

Golf Lesson

It is easy to get in a rut playing golf. We may play the same course with the same people time after time. Our pregame warmup on the practice tee may be the same for very round.

Now there is a lot to be said for consistent routines in becoming a better golfer. However, sometimes we need to mix it up to recharge our battery. I enjoy occasionally playing a different course instead of my home course.

Why Plan?

To borrow the title from one of sports psychologist Bob Rotella's book, "Like is not a game of perfect". Rarely do all of our plans work out exactly as we plan them. Just when we seem to have everything under control, something totally unexpected happens.

Some people use this as an excuse to do no planning at all. Their rationale is that it does no good to plan because stuff is always going to happen anyway to mess up their plans, particularly as it relates to their personal lives. They prefer to lead a life dictated by events that come along and just go with the flow. They let others and life's events determine what they accomplish.

The problem with this is that people with no plans develop what I call the "victim mindset". Because they have chosen not to make commitments to themselves through goal setting and planning, they can easily blame others for their lack of success and their misery. Everything that happens to them is someone else's fault.

High achievers do two things well. One is that they have established goals and developed plans to achieve those goals. The goals provide a sense of direction for their lives. The more specific the goal, the greater the sense of direction that they have.

The second thing that they do well is accept the fact that surprises will happen. We cannot control what happens to us, but we always control our response to the situation. High achievers understand that uncertainty is part of life. They learn to overcome uncertainty and stay focused on the goal.

GOLF LESSON

There is an interesting dynamic that I observe with golfers. The worse the golfer, the more that they let a bad shot bother them. Professional golfers understand that they are going to hit some bad shots. The great ones recover from the adversity.

A few years ago Tom Kite and Davis Love were tied for the lead going to the last hole at Bay Hill, Arnold Palmer's tournament in Orlando. After Davis flew his second shot over the green, it looked like all that Tom Kite needed to do was put the ball on the green to win or at worst be in a playoff. Instead, he hit the ball into the water next to the green.

Kite then hit his next approach shot close to the hole and made a bogey. He eventually won the tournament in a playoff. His ability to forget the bad shot was key to his win. While the the television announcers were critical of Kite's decision not to play it safe, he viewed it as one of his best wins.

Clarity and Focus

I believe that success in any endeavor comes down to two things - clarity and focus. Clarity means to have a clear sense of what you want to accomplish. It means creating a vision of the future. Every great accomplishment begins with vision.

Goal setting creates clarity. People with written personal and professional goals achieve much greater success than those who do not have them. While most people agree that goal setting is important, very few actually put it into practice.

The reason that most people don't have written personal goals comes down to one word - fear. Our inherent fear of failure prevents us from making a commitment to ourselves to achieve something worthwhile. If we don't make a commitment, then we can't fail.

The ability to focus comes from clarity. Focus is the ability to do the important things that lead to achievement of our goals, and not to be distracted by unimportant or trivial activities. When I work with clients on time management, they quickly realize that time management is really not the issue. It usually comes down to lack of clarity or lack of focus. We always have the time to do what we perceive as most important at the time.

For more on my Peaking For Success© model for creating clarity and focus, click on this link:
http://www.lead-strat-assoc.com/peaking_for_success.pdf

Golf Lesson

When it comes to clarity and focus in golf, two names come to mind - Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Both had a single minded vision of what they wanted to accomplish in competitive golf. It is to win major championships.

In some ways, Tiger has had it easier in creating clarity of his goals. Nicklaus was there as a target. Clearly his vision is to be the greatest golfer of all time, and his measuring stick is the accomplishments of Jack Nicklaus.

What I find interesting is that Tiger established this as a goal, and publicly said so, prior to winning his first major. Talk about setting yourself up for failure. I can't remember any other golfer before or after Tiger talking about becoming the greatest golfer ever. I'm sure other good players have goals, but none have set such a lofty one as Tiger. And maybe this is why he is dominating like no one else. He has greater clarity.

So how do we amateur golfers achieve clarity and focus. I'll suggest we take it down to the micro level meaning that we apply it to each shot. Clarity is visualizing the shot before you hit it. I fully realize that the reason that we are amateurs is because the ball rarely goes where we aim it. But, I believe you'll hit a higher percentage of good shots with better clarity.

Focus is blocking out everything else, the just focusing on hitting the shot as we visualize it. It means forgetting about the previous hole, or worrying about what score we are going to shoot. Over the past couple of months, I have been working on this and the results show. I've dropped my handicap by three strokes.

"Old Mo"

I often hear sports announcers refer to momentum as "old mo". They talk about changes in momentum in a game. One team seems to have all the momentum on their side, then suddenly something changes and "old mo" seems to change sides.

The scientific definition of momentum is that is the power residing in an object. The mathematical formula for momentum is mass times velocity.

We all experience times in our lives where we seem to have all the momentum. "Old mo" seems to be on our side. Things are a lot easier when we have momentum on our side. The problem are those times where we seem to lose momentum. Once lost, it seems hard to regain.

If we apply the scientific formula for momentum, then it might be easier to regain. We have two ways to get "old mo" back on our side:

1. Increase mass - to me this means increase activity level. Often we lose momentum because we stop doing those things that created the momentum in the first place.

2. Increase velocity - to me this means stop procrastinating and putting things off. A faster moving object creates more momentum than a slower moving object.

Golf Lesson

If you are a golfer, you can relate to the term "bogey train". A bogey train is a situation where "old mo" has left you and no matter what you do, you can't make better than bogey on each hole. You see this frequently in pro tournaments. A golfer gets on a streak and seems to make every putt. Or the opposite, they seem to miss every fairway or green, and are constantly missing greens or short putts.

Good golfers have found the best way to regain momentum is to do two things:

1. Have a routine and stick to it. It is very easy when things start going bad to abandon those things which have worked well in the past.

2. Play each shot rather than worry about the score. A golfer can't force results. All they can do is make the best decision possible, hit the ball as best they can, and then observe the results.

Personal Accountability

First, let me say that I executed my game plan to perfection last week. I got everything done that I needed to get done, had a wonderful meeting with a new client, picked up a new piece of business with a former client, and shot a 74 on the golf course. Can't get much better than that.

When I do profiles on prospective candidates for jobs at my clients, one factor that I always look at in the results is personal accountability. This seems to be common characteristic that superior performers possess in almost any type of job or situation. Personal accountability is the capacity to take responsibility for your own actions and not to blame others.

I once had the opportunity to work with a former prison psychologist ( not as an inmate ) and he said one of the things he figured out very quickly was that we needed to have twice as many prisons. The reason that he said this was that every prisoner he talked to blamed someone else for being incarcerated.

Sometimes it's easy to blame a loss of a deal on a prospect who just doesn't understand what it is that you can do for them, or the economy, or a unethical competitor or timing, or any one of a bunch of excuses. What I have to come to realize is that the only reason I don't close a deal is me.

Here are ways to develop personal accountability:

1. Set your own goals.
2. Work towards your goals every day.
3. Keep commitments. Don't make promises you can't keep.
4. Admit your mistakes - first to yourself, then others.
5. Don't blame others if something doesn't work out.

Golf Lesson

Individual sports are humbling. There is no better place to develop personal accountability than on the golf course. Yes, sometimes we hit a good shot and get a bad result. A bad bounce turns a good shot into a bad one. Or someone put a tree right where our ball landed. Or put a sand trap right in the path of our ball.

For several years, my club hosted a Nike Tour (later Buy.com, Nationwide) event. This tour is made up of a combination of young players trying to develop their game to make it on the PGA tour and former PGA tour players who had lost their playing privileges and were looking to regain the magic that they once had. I had the opportunity to work as a walking scorer during these events, and so was "inside the ropes". I got to see and hear the players first hand. Some of the younger players have gone on to star on the PGA tour.

While this may be an unfair generalization, I saw the younger players generally have a much better attitude than the older players. They seem to accept their position on the minor tour. They were thankful to be there. They didn't complain about the set up of the course or the conditions. they just went out and tried to play as best they could.

The former PGA tour players generally had a negative outlook. The traps weren't raked perfectly, the rough was too high, the greens too slow or too fast, and so on. Their poor performance was caused by factors outside their control according to their belief. In the years that the minor tour has been around, I can't remember one player who has successfully come back to the PGA tour.

If you are a golfer, try playing one round by taking responsibility for every shot you hit. It might make a difference in your outlook and game.

A Game Plan

I'm sitting at my desk the day before a holiday weekend contemplating everything that I need to do next week. I have a couple of client engagements, one of which is going to require a lot of preparation. I have to write an article for one of my newsletters. I need to complete an audio program that I committed to do. Plus, I set a goal to write one blog per week. On top of this is training for my first half marathon in December and at least two rounds of golf.

I need a game plan. What works best for me is to establish a completion date for each task and work back to when I need to start it. That is called necessity thinking. About 80 percent of the population are necessity thinkers. We are at our best when we have deadlines and pressure. The other end of the spectrum are possibility thinkers who begin tasks as soon as possible and do all they can to avoid the pressure of a deadline.

A problem that we necessity thinkers sometimes face is that we are overly optimistic regarding the amount of time to complete a task. If something unexpected comes up, we end up scrambling even more to get everything done. We are more prone to mistakes when we are in the scramble mode.

So, my game plan is to build in a little extra time for each task. If all goes perfectly, then I'll have a some extra time to work on something else, or maybe even get in another round of golf.

Golf Lesson

Professional golfers develop a game plan for tournament that they play.They will play practice rounds before a tournament to get a feel for the course and to develop a strategy for playing each hole. They do this so they have fewer strategic decisions to make during a tournament and can focus their attention on making good shots.

It is interesting that much of the planning is done backwards. They usually start with where they want to land the ball on the green. On a course like Augusta National, this is absolutely essential to shooting a good score. Once they know where they want to land the ball on the green, they determine the best place in the fairway to hit the ball from. They will try to position tee shots or lay up shots to be in the best position to approach the green.

Most amateur golfers could save several strokes per round having a game plan, particularly if if is a course you play all the time.

Slumps

I am a big baseball fan and the Atlanta Braves are my favorite team. As I write this, Chipper Jones is mired in terrible slump. It seems that the times he hits the ball well, it is right at someone, or when he gets a good pitch to hit he pops it up or hits a weak grounder.

We can get into slumps in our life. All the breaks seem to go against us. It seems that the harder we try, the worse the results. If you are in sales, it means rejection after rejection. The deal that seemed to be a sure thing, fell apart at the last minute. Or maybe you are working on a project, then everything that seemingly could go wrong has gone wrong. You are hopelessly behind schedule and over budget.

Our thoughts and behaviors can lead to slumps. We can lose focus. We can lose sight of our goals or fail to act in a way that is consistent with our goals. Sometimes it takes getting back to basics to get out of a slump. Maybe bad habits have crept into our routine that are causing inconsistency in our actions.

We can lose our ambition. The fire goes out. We lose the drive towards our goals. We become tentative and hesitant to take action.

We can lose our belief in ourselves. We let setbacks turn us into pessimists. Negative thoughts tend to create all the reasons why we can't do something.

Or we can let fears overcome us. The more that we are afraid of striking out, the more likely we are to strike out. Fear of failure is a strong enabler for slumps.

When you look at these sources of slumps, one powerful way to overcome these is through affirmations. Affirmations are positive thoughts that we put into our mind through repeating them regularly to ourselves. If you are in a slump, write down a few positive statements and read them out loud to your self several times a day.

Golf Lesson

Golfers have slumps. Most slumps are caused by the mental part of the game rather than the physical part. One of my favorite movies is Tin Cup. There is a scene in the movie where Roy McAvoy, the character played by Kevin Costner, is on the practice range and develops what every golfer dreads, a case of the shanks. For you non-golfers, a shank is about the worst mis-hit of a golf ball you can make. The ball doesn't hit on the club face, but rather hits on the hosel where the club face meets the shaft. The ball goes weakly to the right.

In the movie, Roy's caddie says he has a solution to the shanks. He then brings out this elaborate contraption that he tells Roy to wear. It looks absolutely ridiculous but it works. The reason it worked is that it took Roy's mind totally off the shanks because trying to hit a golf ball with this contraption on required his focus.

A few days ago I was playing and was one over par going the 8th hole. I hit a big drive and had a short wedge into the green. Then it happened, I shanked the wedge. Now I have a 5o yard shot over a sand trap, and guess what, I shanked that shot too. I ended up making a double bogey. On the next hole, I hit a fair drive, but had a long iron into the green. You guessed it - another shank and I ended up with a bogey.

Now I am facing the back nine with the shanks. A sure slump in the making. Then I got a good break. I hit a poor drive into some deep rough. To get the ball out of the rough, I had to really concentrate on just making contact with the ball and not worrying about where it went. Well, I hit the ball solid, it got on the green, and I made par. I went on to shoot even par of the back nine. Slump over. Sometimes taking your mind off the causes of the slump and focusing on something else overcomes the slump.

Unconscious Competence

In my work with leaders, our goal is always to develop unconscious competence in those key skills and behaviors that lead to both personal and organizational success. Unconscious competence simply means doing the things that make us most effective and productive in a natural, automatic, and subconscious manner.

Most of what we do each day is actually done subconsciously, out of habit and routine. Habits are they way that our body and mind conserves energy. Imagine a day where you had to think and make a conscious decision about everything that you did. You would be totally exhausted by the end of the day.

Each of us has habits that are probably negatively impacting the success we want to achieve. It takes introspection and a lot of self examination to identify these habits and eliminate them. There are also habits we need to have that are not natural right now. Habits are formed through repetition - doing the right thing in the right way over and over again until it becomes natural.

For example, a large percentage of the population does not have written personal goals. This first time that I take someone through a personal goal setting process, it is very awkward and uncomfortable. Only by doing it repeatedly over time, will it become natural and comfortable.

Take a look at yourself. What habits to yo have that are holding you back? What habits do you need to create to become more effective?

Golf Lesson

Excelling in golf is about repetition. Good golfers are simply more consistent than poor golfers. I am always amazed when I play with someone who says they only play a few times a year, then get upset at all of the bad shots they hit.

If you watch a professional golfer, they all have what is called a pre-shot routine. The purpose of this is to take as much of the conscious mind out of a golf shot as possible, and let the unconscious competence take over. They develop good swing habits by practicing the same thing over and over again.

Most amateur golfers make the mistake of thinking too much while on the course. The place to think and tinker with a swing is on the practice range. And even this should be kept to a minimum, Most teaching pros recommend spending about 10% practice time making conscious thoughts about your swing, the other 90% just hitting the ball.

Distractions Keep Us From Our Goals

Henry Ford said, "Obstacles are those things which we see when we take our eye off the goal". Our natural human tendency is to focus on the negative rather than the positive. For every good reason to do something, we can always come up with 100 reasons why we can't.

Even though the human brain it a complex organ, it can still only process one thought at a time. If our focus is on those things which stand in the way of our goals, then we cannot simultaneously see the goal. The more negative thoughts we have, the less time we have for positive thoughts.

Here is a simple way to keep your goals in the forefront of your mind. Simply write them down and look at them several times during the day. I have found that constantly reminding myself of what I want to accomplish keeps me going forward and overcoming obstacles.

Golf Lesson

The 17th hole at the TPC Sawgrass golf course in Ponte Vedra, Florida is one of the most famous golf holes in the world. It is more commonly known as "The Island Green". The hole is relatively short and most pros hit pitching wedges to the hole. A professional golfer will hit 99 out 100 shots with a pitching wedge within a 25 foot circle on the practice range. The island green measures 80 feet long by 45 feet wide, so if this same area were outlined on the practice range , you would expect pros to land inside the area almost every time.

The record for number of balls into the water for one round of the tournament is 50 in 2007. With 144 players in playing that day, that says one out of three went into the water. What makes this hole so difficult are the obstacles and distractions that confront the golfer. There is obviously water surrounding the hole. There is a bunker in front of the green. Wind can also be a factor.

Sports psychologists will argue that the reason so many balls go into the water, is that many players focus more on the water, than on the green. They subconsciously let all of the potential obstacles distract them. Instead of visualizing the ball landing safely on the green, they see the ball landing in the water.

So if you find yourself stuck and not achieving what you want to achieve, are you visualizing success or are you visualizing failure?

Look Forward, Not Backward

There are two ways to look at the end of each day. One is to worry about everything that you didn't get done that you wanted to. The other is to reflect on all the things you did get accomplished.

A great little book that I use for closing thoughts in my work with clients is called Don't Sweat The Small Stuff ... and it's all small stuff. The title of one vignette is "Remember That When You Die Your In Basket Will Still be Full." We all could improve our outlook on life if we keep this in mind. A busy and productive person will always have more to do, so fretting about that which is undone in counterproductive and potential harmful to your emotional and physical health.

To reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed, spend time at the end of each reflecting on what you achieved and then look forward to what you want to accomplish the next day. Force yourself not to a look back at what was undone. It doesn't accomplish anything because the time is past and you can't do anything about it. Living in the past is a sure way to neglect the future. Spend your time on those things which you can do something about.

Golf Lesson

Golf is one of my passions as you will notice in my blog writings. While difficult sometimes, this whole idea of looking forward, not backward is key in playing golf well. I know I have ruined many a good round by getting upset about a bad shot or bad break. I play my best golf when I focus on each shot as I am ready to hit it, not worrying about the poor shot I just hit, or thinking ahead to the great score I'll shoot if I keep playing like I am.

The same is true in the game of work. Concentrate on what you are doing right now and do it to the best of your ability. Don't worry about past mistakes, or get caught looking too far ahead. Stay in the present.