New Beginnings.
“Much as we may wish to make a new beginning, some part of us resists doing so as though we were making the first step toward disaster.” ~ William Bridges
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Last week we discussed the impact of a positive, optimistic and enthusiastic ATTITUDEon your success potential.
This week, we are going to tackle an area of performance equally important: Your ability to get and stay ORGANIZED.
But before we move on to this week’s lesson, permit me to digress a bit.
I want to cover one more point on POSITIVITY — to capstone our discussion last week.
Your Life Depends On Being Positive…
Why is a positive and proactive attitude so important? Because it actually changes our physiology… causing our bodies to heal themselves!
Proof?
Here is a snippet from a man I respect greatly, the son of the World’s Greatest Possibilitarian, Dr. Robert A. Schuller.
On Sunday he said, “I recently read an article entitled “Mind Over Matter.” It appeared in a publication called “Health Features.” It reads as follows:
“Positive thoughts can be as effective as drugs in beating diseases. Studies show preventive medicine may soon be more than just monitoring your vegetable intake and exercise levels, and include how many negative thoughts go through your head in a day.
There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that a patient’s beliefs and hopes affect their prognosis.
One of the major contributors to maintaining health and removing disease is the attitude of the patient, says Professor Oakley Ray, a psychologist from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.
He reviewed one hundred years of research on psychology and disease for a paper published in American Psychiatrist and concluded that WORDS can have the same effect as DRUGS; thinking optimistically can change your whole biology.
Ray quotes a wide range of evidence including various studies linking mind set to heart disease. One such study from the Harvard School of Public Health established that optimism lowers the risk of heart disease in older men while pessimism and hopelessness increase it. There is strong evidence that patients with heart disease who feel hopeless about their condition do worse.
Positive thoughts and words are the means in which God starts to have an impact in our lives in a positive way” concludes Reverend Schuller.
Personally, I have always believed that people with a positive attitude (and equally positive self-talk) were significantly more successful, well-balanced and effective than people who go through life with a negative, self-defeating attitude.
The bottom line is, while positive WORDS may not be a miracle drug… what if they are and you refuse to accept the miracle?!!!
If for no other reason, find a way to inject POSITIVE words into your life each day, and maybe MIRACLES will find there way into your life as well!
Now, onto this week’s lesson!
Stop Confusing Effort with Results…
As we say in The Power of TQ, It’s not how hard you work—it’s how much you get done—that determines your success.
Even though you may be busier than ever before, you may be simply doing things the hard way, or worse, just spinning your wheels—confusing EFFORT with RESULTS.
Simply doTQ Factor 8A more frequently:
“Create systems to help automate your most productive activities.”
Listen to the Organize Workshop audio track…
Stop and listen to the audio track for TQ Factor 8A.
Then play it again while you’re reading the rest of this page, and while you’re completing the exercises.
Engage your brain on as many levels as possible. You’ll learn faster, and remember what you’ve read longer.
Another Fact of Life…
Every activity contains a series of steps that must be completed correctly to be successful. Systemize your success.
Identify the critical steps required to complete your most productive and rewarding activities. Then, create a “well-oiled machine” to automatically crank out results for you.
Systemize those steps through technology, checklists, delegation or by enrolling additional team members — and you will achieve the results you expect — far more often.
Automate this Factor and you’ll double, triple or even quadruple your productivity, efficiency and effectiveness.
“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” ~ George S. Patton
Factor 8A’s CONTRIBUTION to your performance…
A high commitment to this Factor of your performance suggests your systems have made you a highly productive “results generator.”
You are more productive than most, simply because you have invested the time and resources necessary to build systems to optimize your high-payoff activities.
Your secret is to create systems that utilize the best tools and technology — systems that bring out the best in you — and everyone on your team.
Factor 8A’s COST to your success…
A lack of commitment to this area of your performance suggests you’ve never quite figured out how to systemize success and put it on autopilot.
If questioned, you could probably list the activities that produce your greatest rewards.
But lacking the systems to properly support you, you don’t get to do them as often — or as well — as you’d like.
Consequently, you work hard to overcome your inherent lack of “system smarts,” and erroneously confuse personal effort with optimum results.
Factor Benefit…
The BENEFIT of choosing to do Factor 8A a bit more frequently: You have morepower…
You hit more home runs, because you get to bat more often. You accumulate performance positives like “Systematic, Streamlined and Automated” — immediately moving you towardsthe results you expect.
What happens when you FAIL to consistently do Factor 8A? You have lesspower…
You hardly ever score, because you rarely get up to the plate. Negatives like “Chaotic, Struggling and Hindered” start to take their toll on your performance — quickly moving you awayfrom the success you want.
The Bottom Line…
If you have a great attitude, crystal-clear goals, rock-solid plans, and an army of peopleto help you… you are well on your way to the success you desire.
However, if you do not have the organizational systems necessary to support your efforts… they will torpedo your success. (Take this as gospel from a man who wasn’t born with the “organization gene” found in my beautiful wife!)
— E.R. Haas, CEO
Category: Color Commentaries, Personal Growth
