The Myth of Why

If we know how to live, we don’t need a why. We don’t need to know why we are unhappy, but how to be cheerful. A. B. Curtiss

“Why” is not the answer to “how.” I'm a believer there aren't many answers in "why," and we shouldn't spend much time discovering and digging up reasons. “Why” tells us about our past or what we are doing wrong, but provides little guidance to reshaping our future.

Our unending quest for “why” is to discover the source(s) keeping us from accomplishing what we want. We’ve been lead to believe that once we know the source of the problem, we can fix it and all will be well.

“Why” may be valuable in learning golden nuggets of relief, peace, and understanding about the challenge. Nevertheless, you won’t often find the road map to what you desire in discovering “why.”

Let’s take an example of self-improvement. I’ve struggled with negative thinking most of my life. Years of searching highlighted many valid explanations for my past negativity. I learned the details, reasons, and causes that fostered complete understanding of my negative influences. The “why” part.

Yet knowing “why” didn’t bare much fruit. It didn’t help me move forward at all. I still needed to learn the skills for “how” to be authentically positive and upbeat. I made giant leaps forward when I stopped searching for “why” and attempting to fix it the problem.

Spending my time studying and modeling the right and healthy way to think, the “how to move forward” part, was the answer. Use your greatest resource, time, and stop searching for “why” and start searching for “how.”

The Courage to Be You

What is your "way of being" in a group setting? Do you feel inferior, intimidated, shy or even empty? Are you constantly comparing and rating yourself on whatever scale applies at the time; success, wealth, looks, intelligence, skills, ethics, dedication and personality?

What if you could give all that up and have freedom to be relaxed and comfortable? You can!

It takes courage, though. It's about being comfortable with ourselves no matter what. In spite of ourselves. Did you know one of our greatest fears, especially for men, is someone will discover who we really are? Yikes!


They'll find out we aren't the person we portray oureselves to be. Funny thing, neither are they. We seldom know we are pretending to be someone else, because it has just been part of how making it in the world is done.

I spent years being afraid to have the biggies in town over to my house for fear of not appearing as successful as I thought I should be. Did I realize I thought this way? Not really. Probably wouldn't have admitted it to myself even if I did.

How do you bridge the gap from trying to be what we think and have been taught we should be... to being authentic and exceptional?

Acceptance! Accept who you are right now. Oh yes, all of your faults and shortcomings with every single weakness thrown it as well. You can do it. Your reward is freedom from false beliefs, fears, timidity, low self-esteem and yourself.

You are all you need to be right now at this very moment. You have what it takes to do whatever is next on your journey. I'm not saying you have what's needed for next month or year, but that will come taking one step at a time.

The very next step is all that matters. You have enough and are enough already to do just that.

We are the ones that hold ourselves back the most, not our faults and shortcomings. Everybody has those and in abundance. You just don't think they do. Isn't it a pure joy to be around someone who is completely comfortable with themselves and humbly so?

Think what just their presence portrays and the positive energy they send off. Society tells us to be impressed with stature, ego, titles, responsibility, and wealth. You know deep inside, now really think about it, those things hold no true substance, joy, or happiness.

Aren't joy and happiness what we all work so hard for? You find it on the inside especially when you decide to be really courageous and uncover more of the authentic you.



Be less of who you think you should be and move towards the naked truth of the authentic you. Decide on the courage to by you.

Why It's Important to Know What You Want

Do you clearly know what you want in all parts of your life? Or is your focus on what you don't want. I don't want to be fat or I don't want to be poor or I don't want to lose clients. Have you ever thought about it?

We are trained and programmed (see this post) to think mostly about what we don't want. When we do, we are attempting to "move away from" that which is undesirable. Wrong method. Thinking about not being fat is still thinking about fat, which is negative and disempowering. Also, your mind will naturally look for more reasons why you are fat.

But if you know what you clearly want and focus towards that desire you will move in that direction. Great Olympians don't think about how they might fail. They power focus and visualize themselves succeeding and winning. "Moving towards something" is always smarter, more successful and powerful than moving away from what you don't want.

Works with managing as well. Help your associates understand what you want from them, rather than criticizing for doing what you don't want. Move them towards what you desire and your results will be remarkable.

Knowing what you want and getting it requires the mind set of thinking that same direction. It's about changing a habit, so it will be difficult like anything else with a significant reward.

Do You Lead or Follow Your Thoughts?

Who's in charge? You or your mind? You'd be surprised how much your mind goes on and on without your commands. In order to have a mindset that serves us, we must do better at leading our thinking.

What do I mean? I'm sure many of you have never given it a thought (pun intended.) When you're driving in an open space, does your mind wonder all over the place? Thought so. That's following your mind or thinking and it happens often. Think how many times you engage in brief "mindless" hellos or chit chat where you really aren't thinking at all about the conversation.

Do you think about things you don't want to? You're allowing your mind to be in charge.

Are you longing for a better life (good -you're normal)? Do you wish to accomplish more in less time? Then be more conscious of your thinking. Lead your thinking to where you wish it to go. Don't let your mind wonder so much on its own.

Awareness! That's the key. We must first be aware our thoughts are wondering and then and only then are we able to replace those rambles with our directed thinking. Leading our thoughts where we want them to go, so we'll be empowered forward and served by them.

Shorten your route to success and joy by taming and training your mind to be your servant. It's the ticket to overcoming your daily grind, problems and challenges.

E-mail Overload? Declare- Enough!

Has e-mail become your foe? Are you chained to your computer sorting through endless messages and trying to decide on the ones in which to reply? Do you save them just in case?

E-mail was supposed to be our friend and time saver. The great communication tool. Now it wastes hours a week if we let it. This demanding economy requires the utmost performance from everyone, and it’s time e-mail is part of the cutbacks.

Great decisions empower. Take back your life and decide to set new boundaries on e-mail. It’s your life and changing the way you think about e-mail is a choice. Here are a few decisions that will start you in the right direction.

• Decide first what you really, really want; more time, greater productivity, more leisure, tighter focus, or more e-mail. Remember this every time you open your in-box.
• Let everyone know not to send anything other than very important mail.
• If you are self-employed, set rules for mail; only Cc. those absolutely necessary, executive summaries only on lengthy mail, no one should answer unnecessary mail, ask for other input and ideas.
• Open your mail only once or twice per day.
• Ask, “What would be the worst case if you didn’t open this message.”
  
  Take a stance. Start a trend. Declare – enough! Make your job more efficient and effective immediately. Be tough on e-mail and set yourself free.

Read This Book

Are you an entrepreneur, sales person, pastor, leader or professional with a passion for being the best you can be? Then read, What Got You Here Won't Get You There; How Successful People Become Even More Successful, by Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall is widely known as one of the best executive coaches in the world.

Isn't that a fabulous title? Doesn't it really tell you why most of us get stuck in our pursuit of excellence?

Coaching is about self-discovery and self-knowledge. Once you master the fundamentals of your job, most often it is "who you are," or self, that holds you back. The more you learn about your self, which is driven by your mindset, the faster you can grow towards your personal and professional goals.

Read this review, "The Word" According to Marshall, (10/13/08) by "Excellence" expert, best selling author, consultant and leadership phenomenon Tom Peters on Tom Peters' blog. He gives you the scoop straight out and praises Goldsmith as "peerless" meaning without peers.

Your customers and mine aren't interested in "very good." They want exceptional.

Being Positive in a Very Negative World

Are you overwhelmed, even distraught, with all the negativity bombarding you? These are extremely difficult times. Most of us have never experienced such turmoil, and it's an extraordinary challenge to stay positive.

It is critical for you to do everything you know in directing your thinking towards solutions and positive possibilities. Move towards what you want not away from what you don't want. Focus and what you need to do to get through your challenges.

Live in the solution and not in the problem.

What most of us do is focus on our problems, think about what we don't have and fret about how life should be different. It's the wrong strategy. Don't spend your time figuring out how to move away from what is wrong.

This only causes us to spend our precious time focusing on what is wrong. Even worse, our mind will expand whatever our focus. That means our problems become even bigger the more time we spend with them.

I am not saying ignore your problems by any means. Accept them as they fully exist and don't hide from the truth at all, or you will be building a foundation for disaster. Acknowledge what's wrong but focus on solutions.

You can only spend your thinking and energy in one direction at a time. Doesn't it make sense then to find solutions, as small as they may be, and propel yourself forward in any way possible?

Do you want to be exceptional in the face of severe negativity, enormous personal challenges, and severe economic conditions? Even when facing personal hardships as never before, you can empower yourself, your family and your team with your positive solution focused mindset. Result? It may not be all you wish, but you will create the best situation possible.

Money Mindset in Tough Times

Your beliefs, feelings, and thoughts about money are never more critical than right now. My 30 years of experience as an investment advisor taught me that how we think about our money is THE most important aspect of creating wealth.

Your money mindset is more important than investment information, experience, and your advisor. Unless you've deprogrammed yourself, the way you were taught to think about money growing up will be your base motivation in most of your decisions. Most all of us have at least one underlying motive we don't recognize.

Are you afraid when it comes to money, or does money, its status, and recognition drive you?
Are you a success because of money?
Maybe money means security, which really means we are insecure, or maybe it leaves a bad taste all together.
Are you afraid to take a loss because of pride or always wanting more?

Don't be ashamed to look deeply at this. I had several of these mindset obstacles to overcome. Discovering your money mindset will only help you to move towards being exceptional with finances. And if you are unwilling to do so, that may be a "red flag" to your financial challenges.

The list goes on, but the point is to try and recognize these foundational beliefs and do it now.

In extremely uncertain times like these with all of the drama and news headlines wherever we turn, our tendency is to be more controlled by our emotions than anything else. These emotions will to some extent be driven by your childhood programming.

Do everything you can to keep your emotions out of the money decisions - especially now. It doesn't matter if you have a loss or that the financial sector is a mess. How you feel has nothing to do with good investment decisions. You won't know until after whether you are right or not.

Make the decision to stay put, buy or sell based on sound reasoning alone. Get your ego out of the way. It's usually a very profitable strategy.

Keep your mind set on being smart not being right. You'll never be financially successful if you need to be right. Your money mindset matters most.

Why is Your Mindset So Critical?

We all see the world through filters that have been programmed into our mindset through our upbringing, our experiences, our values and everything that has molded and shaped our lives.

So our filtered perspectives become they way our mind-is-set over the years and from which all of our decisions, opinions, and assumptions are derived. Our thinking habits are developed and our world is as we see it; just as we are.

But that is not the world, only our view of it. Our box. We all see the same world differently. We must get out of our box to grow and move forward in ways we don't know.

If you want different results in your business, profession, and life, you must do things differently. Since what you do is derived from your mindset, doesn’t it make sense to transform your mindset before you do anything else?

It is absolutely critical. It’s also invigorating, inspiring, fun and very powerful.

But nowhere are we taught how our mindset influences everything in our lives, and that we can learn to make choices about what we believe, how we think, to respond rather than react, and to manage our feelings and emotions.

How powerful is that? And Brad Denham Life Coaching is where you begin.

Our mindset drives everything in our lives; what we do, how we act and respond, our attitudes and outlooks, our feelings, assumptions, rules and the list goes on. There may be nothing you can do that is more life-changing than improving your mindset.

The Destination Myth

I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Peyton Manning, quarterback of the Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts, talk about enjoying the journey each day. He told us he was able to take in Super Bowl week without getting caught up in the hype. He enjoyed the bus ride to the stadium, and lived the excitement of being in the pre-game stadium tunnel. He convinced us how important it had become for him to live life each day rather than focusing on some destination.

 

We've all heard it before, focus on the journey not the destination. But are you really doing it? Peyton talked about the destination myth – reaching the destination appears to hold some reward or magic change for our lives. Believing that is precisely how we lose a significant amount of our joy and happiness in life. Real joy is only created daily in the journey itself.

 

Pastor Gary Lewis calls destination seekers the "when and then people;" whenI arrive at my destination then life will be different, better, glorious, etc. Or when I'm finally successful, then I will enjoy life and work more or everything will be significantly better. What a hoax. Manning framed it in football context; no matter what game you finally win, there's always another one to prepare for and more learning and growing to do. You're never ever done. So why not just enjoy the heck out of the daily journey.

 

A driving force behind destination focus is our desire to attach ourselves to the success upon arriving. We want to live in that success and enjoy the glory of that victory. In doing so, the victory starts to define us, and we lose our sense of authentic identity. We also tend to stop growing at this point, because we think we have already arrived. We are finally “a somebody.”

 

A real revelation to me was Manning’s discussion of the stop, learn, and let go of your failures as well as your victories. Letting go of failure is something most of us have heard before. Failure is only failure if we give up, rather than learn from it and move on. Don't let failure to define you. Don't become your failure by taking it personally and all that great wisdom.

 

But Manning says the same thing about success; don't become your success either. Don't define yourself by your arrival at the destination. Stop, learn, and let go of success just like failure. Only then can you maintain your authentic identity and grow to be the best you can be rather than basking in your success.

 

Peyton said moment the Indianapolis Colts officially start next season, the Super Bowl and everything about it is behind them. They aren’t attached to it or still living in the glory of the huge victory. The success and achievement of this lifetime goal for becomes just another step on the ladder to the next destination. Peyton will be enjoying each day along the way and living life in its fullness.

 

We all need destinations, goals, and something to move toward to focus our direction, but not our attention. We must stop being "when and then" people by identifying ourselves with our destinations. Reaching a destination does not provide lasting fulfillment. So be like a Super Bowl quarterback and live for today and enjoy the journey.

 

Oh by the way, Go Colts!