Living LARGE

I find it spectacular to live outside of my old self. I don't worry as much or complain as often, and I'm much better at positive thinking, an empowering attitude, emotional management, thought leadership, and reflecting insults. I have less stress, doubt, anxiety and I understand that my feelings aren't true.

It's living LARGE compared to where I've been, but there is so much more to do. That's exciting as well, because the benefits will be enormous. I will be living even LARGER. I dream of the day when I'm joyful every day in spite of my circumstances. I can't wait to get out of my own way and really live LARGE.

What about you? Are you doing anything to advance your skills and be the best version of yourself? I am so surprised, disgusted actually, how many people are content being mediocre at best. Why don't they want to be more and do more than today?

Here is my short formula for living very LARGE:

1. Grow bigger than your problems.


2. Be stronger than your feelings and emotions.


3. Learn to be the leader of your thoughts.

Coaching can accelerate that journey. That is how I've progressed so quickly. Give back to your own life. Invest in yourself. Spend the time to earn the life you want. It is difficult to live LARGE but not as difficult as mediocrity.

Absent Without Leave

I left without an explanation and I apologize. I had a twice weekly writing assignment for a company I was coaching lasting 2 months. I only have so much in me to write, and I had nothing left for my blog.

After a short break, I'm thrilled to be back.

Brad

Own Your Stress

If you really want less stress in your life, consider this; take ownership of your stress. This may be almost offensive to you to, but hang tight. Taking ownership of your stress means to be responsible for how you react and respond to what stresses you.

Note, I’m not saying that you take ownership of what is stressing you, just your reaction to that stressor. You can’t beat stress if you believe you are powerless against it is being dumped on you. You will believe you have no control over the dumping and feel helpless.

If your co-worker stresses you, most likely you haven’t be able change him. I know you want him to change and think he should changed, but until he does you must deal with his stress in your strength. The only way to do that is to have some control or advantage over his stress dumping.

How is that possible? Accept ownership of your stress reaction to your co-worker’s problem. Take the control away from him! When he acts and you stress, he’s essentially controlling you. You can’t do anything about it if he’s in control. Take back control of your life! Nobody likes or wants being controlled.

If you accept ownership of your stress, then you have a choice about how you respond to stress. You will gain the power to respond differently to his stress spewing, because you are in charge. Make a decision that you will no longer allow his stress to ruin your day. You can finally find a way to manage stress because you are the owner of your response.

Worrying about Money? 3 Ways to Cope

There could be an entire nation created just from people worrying about money. Money worries are ripping apart families, stifling corporate growth, paralyzing professional development, and creating stress and tension in gigantic proportions.

Worrying is not the answer. Many of us worry because of our misguided beliefs that it demonstrates we are concerned and focused on the problem. That may be true, but the wrong strategy. Focusing on the problem is exactly what we do not want to do.

Worrying points us in the wrong direction. We focus on what’s missing, what is gone, and the reasons we can’t do what needs to be done. It zaps our energy and causes stress leading to other problems that compound our worries.

Fight the urge to worry. Worrying becomes a habit that must be broken over time. Worrying will not add 1 ounce of solution to your money problems. Use these three steps to reduce worry:

1. Concentrate specifically on positive actions. Put all of your effort into moving forward doing anything possible to advance. Otherwise, you will waste valuable time, miss opportunities, and fight negativity.
2. Focus on today. Today is all that counts. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow will have worries of its own. Doing what you can today is all that matters. Stop futurizing as if you know what the future will bring.
3. Change your relationship with your money. Money is NOT security. True security is having an accurate self-worth. No amount of money will provide security, therefore, lack of money does not equal insecurity. Uncertainty maybe, but not insecurity.
   

Do not let money worries destroy your health. Change your money mindset to work for you and face the truth for empowering freedom.

Busyness = Importance

By today’s standards, if you are very, very busy then you are also important. Many people brag about how busy they are and how much of a load they carry. Most today are proud to say, “I’m off the chart busy,” as they beam in the glory of importance.

I’m not putting these people down. Heck, almost everybody is included and I can be one as well. What is busy, anyway? What if we had a busyness scale on which to compare ourselves with other extreme busyheads. Let’s see, there could be Obama busy on right and retired busy on the left. Where would you fit in this scale?

If you were around people that were high on the Obama end of the scale, would you dare brag, or complain, about being so busy? What would they say to you? Or maybe how long would they laugh or put up with you? It’s a fair question, because I think it shows that “busy management” is a skill set rather than something out of our control.

Aren’t the figureheads with worldly responsibility better busy managers than you and I? Isn’t our ability to grow and manage our busy lives what determines if busyness stops us or propels us forward? So is busyness your enemy or your friend?

Controlling our demanding schedules includes skills and mindset. Manage your busyness with joy and a positive outlook. If you learn to deal with this load, there is a bigger load of busyness just waiting for those able to carry the responsibility.

Busyness = Importance? Not really. But managing busyness = greater responsibility and that will land you in very important positions

Difficult vs. Hard

Seth Godin writes one way to set yourself apart is to do the difficult work. Hard work can be done by many ambitious soles. Hard work is doing reports, paper work, your daily professional duties, cleaning the house, running kids, and battling laundry.

Difficult work, however, is what we tend to procrastinate; writing, creating, having tough conversations, self-transformation, saving money, and learning new software. T. Harv Eker says that wealthy people do the difficult work that makes life easy. They do what is next in spite of how they feel, whether they want to, or if it's convenient.

My question is why do we avoid the difficult work? Here are at least a few of the reasons:

• We're out of our comfort zone with difficult work.
• We don't believe we have what it takes for completion.
• We believe our resources are inadequate.
• We get distracted. Difficult work may require deep concentration.
• Simply, it's just plain difficult and who wants to do difficult? It's just too hard.

Difficult work stops my clients' progress more than anything else. Mine as well. What about you? What additional roadblocks are stopping you from achieving an outstanding life? Or is achieving the most solid blockage of all? We keep thinking our best life will eventually "happen" to us, when in fact, we must earn it out right with the difficult work.

The solution lies in our perception of difficult work. We must change the way we think about difficult, which in turn, will drive a new way of processing these major challenges.

A Positive Life and a Negative Mind?

I don’t think so. We become what we think, or … we are now what we thought yesteryear. Your thoughts and beliefs drive what you do and what you say. You can’t override, for very long, what is deep inside with anything other than the truth.

We have all been actors in the play of life. We “pretend” we are someone other than who we really are. Most of the time, we don’t have a clue about our pretending, other than the stress the acting creates.

But, eventually we are found out, or hopefully we find the acting first, and then the truth is revealed. We are seeing a lot of this revealing in the financial world today aren’t we? We can “pretend” to ourselves and others that we are positive people with open minds and sincerely believe we are.

Time will show that deep inside, the beliefs and thinking that drive our lives are indeed negative in many ways. We may focus on what is wrong, complain, criticize, or infect others with any number of other negative outputs.

I was in a brainstorming session with leaders that claimed to be positive without question. It was amazing the numbers of “you can’t do that” and “that will never work” “we’ve tried that before” statements. I’m sure I was part of it myself without ever realizing. Hmmm?? We do see others as we are and not as they are. This is getting painful.

My purpose is not to point fingers but to bring awareness to our words and self-talk. Our conversations with others and ourselves are where the truth will lie. Concentrated listening to these conversations is one way we can determine if we are fooling ourselves about being positive. Asking a close friend or spouse is bound to uncover the painful truth.