And, I have deep gratitude to each one of you who has joined my tribe and believe that, too.

The Courage to Step Up to the Starting Line

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

I’m an athlete.  I’ve competed in at least a hundred races in my life, and at the starting line of any given race my internal dialogue might sound something like this:

“I didn’t train enough.  I have to go to the bathroom.  Where’s the bathroom?  The line’s too long!!!  I can’t remember the course map—how long is the first hill?  My shoes are too tight.  I don’t have time to re-tie them… what if my foot goes numb?  My goggles might come off.  This field looks tough.  I don’t belong here!!  I got up early for this.  Other people are still in bed.  I could be in bed!”

Sound familiar?  Whether you’re stepping up to the starting line of a race or building the courage to take the next leap in your business, your internal dialog may sound like a fretting little gremlin, throwing doubts on your intentions.  That’s normal.  The difference between those who go home (or never got out of bed in the first place), and those who step across the starting line is the willingness to embrace the discomfort of The Stretch.

The Power of The Stretch

The inspiration to sign up for a race or to step up to a new business challenge is where the magic starts.  The inception of a goal is powerful because it is generative.  It challenges the limits you’re willing to place upon yourself, and in doing so, it not only sharpens your personal edge of growth, it beckons you to lean into discomfort … the place that’s one step past what you previously thought was possible.

And yet, the spark of inspiration and musing over the possibility isn’t good enough. Thinking about the opportunity before you – fretting if you prepared well enough, wondering how you stack up against everyone else, anxious to know if you’ll knock it out of the park or fall flat on your face – is not an act of internal power.  It fractures attention away from your goal and dissipates the energy you would otherwise channel towards achieving it.

The act of actually taking action is The Stretch—it is the fingers-letting-go-of-the-ledge-scary-as-heck place where your intention meets your action.  And you know what?  Even on a bad day it’s good, because you are ALIVE with that synergy.  In the words of Seth Godin, “… finally you begin to realize that the safest thing you can do feels risky, and the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe.”

The journey of a thousand miles does not begin by thinking of the first step.   It begins by taking the first step.

What Big Idea of yours is waiting to be claimed?

The race only begins when you step across the starting line.

Share your comments and ideas at Stepping Across the Starting Line…

Here’s a Riddle…

Everyone has experienced me, but few people know how to find me.  I cannot co-exist with anxiety, fear, anger… or multi-tasking.  I don’t cost a dime, but if I could be bought, people would pay small fortunes to create me.  I can show up any time, any place, and during any activity.  I am the difference between “good” and “great.”  What am I?

The Answer

I am ‘Flow.’  The state of peak performance.  First proposed by one of the world’s leading researchers in the field of positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, ‘flow’ is defined as:

The experience people have when they are completely immersed in an activity for its own sake, stretching body and mind to the limit, in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

It is the place where your attention, motivation, skill set, and the challenge before you collide.  The result is a joyous, productive harmony, where you are at your best – your most innovative, most productive, and most brilliant.  A ‘flow experience’ is often characterized by words like “rapture,” “timeless,” and “single-pointed-focus.”

Whoa.  Sound like a magic elixir?  Too good to be true?  It is not.  And it is a key differentiator between those who are “good” at what they do, and those who are recognized and celebrated as “great” at what they do.

Components of Flow

According to Csikszentmihalyi, there are three components that are necessary to generate a ‘flow state.’

1. One must be involved in an activity with a clear set of goals. This adds direction and structure to the task.
2. One must have a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and his or her own perceived skills. One must have confidence that he or she is capable of doing the task at hand.
3. The task at hand must have clear and immediate feedback. This helps the person negotiate any changing demands and allows him or her to adjust his or her performance to maintain the flow state.

As can be seen in this graphic, flow state occurs when you have the courage to embrace a higher than average challenge, while, at the same time, stretching your skills to meet that challenge.

High challenge, but it requires low skill?
Flow is blocked and the experience instead is one of anxiety or worry.

High skill, but not a challenge?
Flow is blocked and instead the experience is one of boredom.

The Four Elements to Creating Flow

While a flow state can never be forced (how about that for an oxymoron?), you can intentionally set yourself up to create a state of flow by incorporating four key elements:

1. Intrinsic Motivation. Take on a goal or challenge that you are intrinsically-motivated to achieve.  This is different than a goal that motivates you because of an external reward (like money) or recognition (like an award).
2. Uni-task. Choose to create a single-pointed focus during the times you are working on that goal or challenge (no email, no phone, no multi-tasking).
3. Stretch. Select a goal or challenge that makes you stretch.  You know what that is – it’s the thing that keeps knocking on the back of your mind and it has the power to both excite and scare you at the same time.
4. Build skills. Is there is a system you need to implement, a mind-set you need to adjust, or a skill you need to build?  Do it.  Then get to work.

Where are you experiencing flow in your life?  What’s keeping you from having more flow experiences?  Is it time to change something up?

Share your comments and ideas at Creating Flow

Well, of course what your clients expect from their advisors is important.   And, it’s a worthwhile exploration for any advisor worth his or her salt.  But, is it the most important?

Recently, I had a conversation with a favorite colleague and friend of mine, Justin Anderson (JSA Advising), that has continued to intrigue me.  The question of the conversation was, what do clients expect from their professional advisors?

A worthy question, no doubt.  Yet, I think that even more compelling (and courageous) is the question, what do clients value from their professional advisors?

What Your Clients Expect

When your clients hire you, they expect that they are hiring the best.  They expect that you are the most technically proficient, the smartest in your field, a respected advisor among your peers.

They expect that you’ll deliver on time.  They expect you’ll have the right tools and systems to do your job.  They expect that you’ll operate with integrity.

What they expect is what you’ve put on the table as your offer.  It’s the intellectual, left-brained reason behind why they hired you in the first place.  But the reason they retain you for years and years?  The reason they proudly refer you to their friends?

It’s because of what they come to value in you.

What Your Clients Value

What your clients value is what they didn’t expect when they first hired you.  It’s what delights them when they think about what’s happened in their lives as a result of their work with you.  It’s the differentiators they talk about when they proudly refer you to their friends.

What they value is someone who isn’t afraid to tell them the truth.  Someone who is courageous enough to take a stand.  Someone who has enough faith in the abundance of their own practice that they drive to the best solution for their client, even if it means the end of a project or engagement.

What they value is someone who is willing and able to be a role model.  To illustrate leadership from the front, from the middle, and from behind.  What they value is when you show up clear-headed, confident, and present – as if they are the only client you have (because, when you’re with them, they are).

They value someone who is innovative in their own practices and can expertly navigate the roadmap of innovation for their clients.  They value someone who is willing to be wrong in the short-term in order to find the right solution for their clients long-term.

When you deliver what your clients expect, you look the same as every other advisor.

When you delight them with what they value (and maybe didn’t even know it), you quickly shift from a “commodity” to “indispensable.”

Do you know what your clients value?

Share your comments and ideas at What Clients Expect from Advisors… Is it Important?

You might also be interested in:

• The Trusted Advisor Paradox
• The Great Lie of the Divide
• The Freedom To Be Foolish

For Love of Bike

I’ve been riding a mountain bike on some of the most amazing Colorado single track for the last seventeen years.  Last year, both my husband, Mike, and I bought brand new carbon-framed racing mountain bikes. <gulp>

Mine even has the word “expert” in the name of the bike.  <double gulp>

In order to feel like I belonged on such a fancy (with-”expert”-in-the-name) bike, I had to step up my game.  I threw down the gauntlet by signing up for several endurance mountain bike races and… lo and behold!….  I started riding with more power and skill than I knew I was capable of on a bike.

Photo Credit: Mountain bike and life
partner extraordinaire, Mike Keffeler.

Biking and Business

So, while it’s probably true that mountain biking alone has not been the cause of my business growth in the past year (if that were the case, I think I’d find a way to ride even more), it – like all sports – provides a brilliant microcosm in which I’ve gotten to experiment with:

• How we self-sabotage through distraction and inaction
• The self-limiting beliefs we tolerate that keep us small
• How setting “stretch goals” make us… umm… stretch

In the many, many hours a week I’ve been in the saddle this last year, I’ve had plenty of time to ponder all the ways mountain biking (and sport in general) have given me the skills to be a better – and more successful – business person.

Top Three Business Skills Learned on the Bike

1) Decide and Take Action. Hesitation and double-thinking will only result in you being a scraped and bruised on the side of the trail… or, hiking your bike while everyone passes you.

The only way to prove that your Big Idea doesn’t have the umph to go the distance is to remain undecided and inactive on it.  C’mon!  What’s stopping you from taking that first small step to bring your Big Idea to life?

2) Look Where You Want to Go. This past weekend Mike and I were riding a trail with a technical decent.  At the top of that section of trail Mike said to me, “For this whole section, just keep your eye on where you want to go – focus all of your attention on where you want to go – and you’ll be fine.”  Turns out I rode some stuff I had no idea I was capable of… just by holding a single-minded focus on where I wanted to go.

Sure it’s scary to take risks and try something new in your business, I get that.  But every ounce of energy you spend focusing on what’s not working or what could go wrong is diverting your momentum from where you want to go.

3) Momentum Makes It Easier. It never fails to surprise me what crazy set of obstacles my bike will roll over… if I have momentum.  Conversely, without momentum it doesn’t take much to knock you off course and feel like a five-year-old who just had her training wheels taken off (does anyone have a band-aid??)

You’ve been there… it feels different to have a prospective client tell you “no thanks” when you just had three tell you “YES, where do I sign up?”, then to have someone tell you “no” when you’ve heard a succession of “no’s”.  Take heart, momentum is built through the habitual practice of #1 and #2, pretty soon the natural blips and dips of business won’t even catch your attention.

I’ll be doing the Breck32 Cross-country mountain bike race in mid-July.  So, when you see me taking some risks and trying something new in August (keep your eyes open – you’re going to love what I’m rolling out), you’ll know that I’m putting into practice some of the skills I built while out racing on the dirt….

Where are you stretching this year?

Share your comments and ideas at Biking and Business… a Love Affair

Money.

To that I say… Hogwash.  Money itself is not the reason we don’t take inspired action (though it is one of the more socially-acceptable things to blame).  However, our relationship to money can stop us dead-in-our-tracks.

The fact is, we all have a relationship with money, we all have a dance that we do with it.  Whether we feel guilty because we have a lot of it, scared because we have very little of it, controlled because we don’t want it to go away, or needy because we just want more of it.

We all do a dance with money… and you have the choice whether yours is going to create the space (and the means) for innovative thinking and Big Ideas, or whether it’s going to keep you doing-what-you’ve-always-done-and-gettin’-what-you’ve-always-gotten.

3 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship to Money to Support Your Big Ideas

This exercise is compliments of one of my business mentors, Kendall Summerhawk:

Step 1: [Do this step first without looking at Step 2... don't cheat!]  Think of a positive, healthy relationship you have with somebody in your life. Write that person’s name down (be sure to pick someone who you’ve actually known, whether they are still alive or not). Now, answer the below questions as quickly as possible.  Write from your heart, not your head, without judging your answers:

• What are the qualities that describe your relationship?
• How do you feel about yourself when you think about this relationship?
• How do you feel about the other person?
• What do they give you?
• What do you receive?
• What do you do in this relationship?  In other words, what is your role?
• What do you ask for?
• What is it that you know about this other person?
• What is a metaphor that symbolizes this relationship?
• What can you count on?
• Who are you in this relationship?

Step 2: Go back through the exercise and fill in the word “money.”

Step 3: Read back through the questions — notice how this shifts your feelings toward money. What comes up for you that is noteworthy?

Notice how differently you feel and what feels possible when the money dance you’re doing is a positive one.  Now, what’s stopping you from taking the first small step to bring your Big Idea to life??

Share your comments and ideas at 3 Steps to Transforming Your Relationship to Money

You might also be interested in:

• 3 Steps to Increasing Your Health Capital

Happiness is for kids (and for those irresponsible adults who eternally act like kids).  Responsible business and thought-leaders are serious and focused.  While happiness is a great idea for your “spare time,” it has no place amidst your impressive business pursuits.  And, besides, who would take a joyful business leader seriously anyway?

It’s true–happiness has no place on your professional development plan. Despite the fact that happy people tend to¹:

• Earn more money
• Be more productive
• Yield stronger performance evaluations
• Have stronger social networks
• Live longer
• Get sick less often and suffer from fewer chronic diseases

Hmmmm…. Maybe some of those “irresponsible adults who eternally act like kids” might be on to something….

How Happy Are You?

Martin Seligman is considered one of the leaders of positive psychology—the realm of psychology that explores the crucial question, “what is going right for people?”   The following General Happiness Scale is from his book, Authentic Happiness.

For each of the statements identify the number on the point scale 1 – 7 (where 1 = “Not a very happy person” and 7 = “A very happy person”) you think is most appropriate in describing you:

1)      In general, I consider myself: 1 … 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7

2)      Compared to most of my peers, I consider myself: 1 … 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7

3)      Some people are generally very happy.  They enjoy life regardless of what is going on, getting the most out of everything.  To what extent does this characterization describe you? : 1 … 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7

4)      Some people are generally not very happy.  Although they are not depressed, they never seem as happy as they might be.  To what extent does this characterization describe you?: 1 … 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7

Total your score and divide by four.  The mean for adult Americans is 4.8.

How do you compare?  Is it time to add “Pursue Greater General Happiness” to your 2011 professional goals?

Cultivating Happiness

As every good business leader knows, if a goal is going to be achieved, it needs some specific objectives to support it.  Here are some ideas for increasing overall happiness:

• Nurture social relationships. Strong social networks are highly correlated to happiness.  If you do nothing else, do this one.
• Pursue well-being, not being well off. Money itself is only marginally associated with happiness.
• Keep a gratitude journal. This helps you focus on all that is going right.
• Get into the flow. Do things you are passionate about.  If you lose track of time when you’re doing it, that’s a good sign that you’re in the flow.
• Complete tasks. If something is important, get it done.  If it’s not, take it off the list.
• Volunteer. Give the gift of your time and skills to a cause that matters to you.
• Reclaim your spirituality. Connection to a higher power helps to support life purpose and give perspective on life circumstances.
• Savor simple pleasures. Love the smell of fresh ground coffee in the morning?  Savor it.
• Thank somebody. Has someone made a difference to you?  Pass on the love and let them know.
• Forgive. Anger and happiness can’t occupy the same space.  Let it go.

Is it possible that increasing your overall happiness might actually give you a competitive edge?  Now, that’s crazy talk.

Reference:

¹ “The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead to Success?” by S. Lyubomirsky, L. King, and E. Diener, 2005, Psychological Bulletin, 131, pp. 803-855.

Share your comments and ideas at Happiness – Your Competitive Advantage

Hmmmm… you know I’m not going to buy that one, right?   I proudly own the moniker ‘Big Idea Success Strategist’ — if I bought the “big thinking is for everyone else” excuse, I wouldn’t have much of a practice… or a Big Idea of my own.  The focus of my work with clients is in tapping hidden potential, transforming mindsets to inspire Big Thinking, and implementing the systems and structure to turn Big Thinking into successful action.  Fact is, I’m a sucker for a Big Idea, I can smell one from a mile away, and I know you have one… we all do.  You may just not have called it that yet.

What IS a Big Idea?

Big Ideas don’t always look like international phenomena.  They’re not always translated into billions of dollars, or impact millions of people.  And, in fact, sometimes Big Ideas aren’t even what you do, but how you do it.

Do these sound like Big Ideas to you?

• The choice to stop competing as if your services are a commodity (by the way, you do this by getting clear on what differentiates you in the market, and then you courageously integrate that differentiator into every aspect of how you serve clients… and the crazy thing is, when you do, you become more irresistible to those you most want to serve….).
• Refusing to live a divided life by inviting who you are into what you do.
• Heeding the ache to restructure your business to fit your evolving life (when you started your business did you have kids, were you juggling carpools, making lunches?  Is it time to change how you do what you do to fit who you are today, not who you were 10 years ago?).
• Launching a business grounded in purpose, passion, and profit.
• Your dream of collecting a lifetime of your intellectual capital into a book.

All Big Ideas.  All necessitate that you be authentic and courageous.  All invite you to be an innovator, a thought-leader, and a role-model.  All require that you care enough to take action.

Big Ideas don’t always start out looking big.  In fact, most of the time, they just start out looking like you doing what you do best and care about the most.  And they always start with small steps.

In the words of Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, when talking about Facebook:

“The craziest thing to me in all of this, is that I remember having these conversations with my friends when I was in college.  We would just sort of take it as an assumption that the world would get to the state where it is now.  But, we figured, we’re just college kids.  Why were we the people who were most qualified to do that?  I mean, that’s crazy…. I guess what it probably turns out is, other people didn’t care as much as we did.”

And we all know how that story turned out.  What’s the first small step to your Big Idea?

Share your comments and ideas at “Big Ideas Aren’t For Commoners…”

You might also be interested in:

• Move Your Ideas from Mediocre to Magnetic

Revolutions Start with One

Revolutions don’t start as revolutions, they start with one person deciding they want a change and having the courage to act on it.  The decision to take action becomes magnetic and the momentum of a revolution begins.

What would change in a year if you started a revolution in your life… 1% at a time?

What if you decided….

To be 1% more focused on high-impact actions each day (pssst… that’s only 4.8 minutes in each 8 hour day… it’ll take you longer to go buy a cup of coffee…).

• What’s a ‘High Impact’ action? Check out the Get ‘er Done method.

To be 1% more courageous each day?

• Would you directly ask a client for their business?
• Would you give voice to your ideas instead of waiting for others to be the thought-leaders?
• Would you start laying the groundwork to do something different than you’re doing today?

To tolerate 1% less each day?

• Would you de-obligate from boards, committees, and projects that take more inspiration from you than they give to you?
• Would you disengage from relationships that no longer serve you?
• Would you find the courage to have a difficult conversation that’s been siphoning your energy and ability to move powerfully forward?

To invest in yourself 1% more each day?

• Would you make more time to sleep (…1% of 24 hours is only 14.4 minutes).
• Be vigilant about blocking the time in your schedule to workout, meditate, or truly create?  (Want to be bold and take on more than just 1%?  Try my Vision, Innovation and Implementation Day Challenge)
• Hire a coach or seek out a mentor who will help you clarify — and then hold you accountable to create — the more vibrant version of your life?

To be 1% more compassionate with others (and with yourself)?

• Would you be more willing to hold others as powerful, even when they can’t do it themselves?
• Would you find more reasons to celebrate than complain?
• Would you be willing to try for a 1% improvement again tomorrow, even if you only were able to make a ½% improvement today?

Pretend it’s March 8, 2012.  What has become possible in your business and your life, because you decided to make a 1% change each day for the last 365 days?

Share your comments and ideas at The 1% Revolution

In late 2010, Seth Godin posted a blog (Measuring Busy-ness) which stimulated an idea for me that might well prove to be the single smartest thing I do for my business this year.

VIID – Vision, Innovation, and Implementation Day. One day per month where there is no email, no phone, no Facebook, no distractions.  Just me, my Big Ideas, and a whole day to unearth the heart of why my ideas matter, who they matter to, and how I’m going bring them to life and connect them with the people who are eagerly  waiting to hear about them (even if they don’t yet know it).

Multitasking Yourself to Mediocrity

It’s not news: the best and brightest among us are hemorrhaging focused attention and multitasking ourselves to mediocrity in the process.  In the words of B. Alan Wallace in his book, The Attention Revolution:

“Might ‘genius’ be a potential we all share – each of us with our own unique capacity for creativity, requiring only the power of sustained attention to unlock it?”

Genius… you?!?  YES!  …Me too!

But, first you have to ditch the excuses that you can’t create the time for focused attention, and then you have to create a system of support so you will create the time for focused attention… again, and again, and again.

Five Steps to Move Your Ideas from Mediocre to Magnetic

A mediocre idea is…

• One that everyone else in the industry is also doing, and think it looks different because they’ve slapped their own logo on it.
• One that has the potential for genius, but experiences lack-luster implementation and impact because it never benefited from the focused time to get it fully developed.
• One that highlights your products and not your unique intellectual capital, giving your clients and prospective clients one more reason to view your services as a commodity,  rather than seeing your support and advising are indispensable.

Enter: VIID.

Step 1: Pick a consistent day and block it on your calendar for the rest of the year. I picked the last Friday of every month and I’ve already blocked my entire 2011 with the sacred VIID.

Step 2: Write an auto responder for your email. You’ll eliminate one more excuse not to follow-through if you have this pre-written and use the same one every time.  To keep you accountable to yourself, and make it super easy, ask your support staff to set a recurring reminder for him/herself to post the auto-responder the day before your VIID, and to not take it down until at least the end of business on your blocked day.  Here’s mine (feel free to swipe it and use it for yours):

Step 3: Record an Out of Office greeting on your phone. Set a recurring reminder in your task list that pops up at the end of the day prior to your VIID.  Before you close down shop for the day, record your out of office greeting and don’t even look at your phone again until VIID is complete.

Bonus Idea:  Be Willing to Be a Courageous! You may be tempted to be less-than-transparent on your email and phone messages (you know, to say something like “I’ll be in meetings all day” or “I’ll be at an off-site training all day”)… challenge yourself to question whether that’s really necessary.  In some organizational cultures, it may feel like the safe thing to do… but you are an industry thought leader.  What would happen if you owned the innovative way you do business?  What if it was actually your brand and you were more magnetically attractive because of the authentic way in which you exhibit it?

Step 4:  Track your ideas throughout the month. We all get flashes of insight and glimpses of genius at the most random times.  When you have one, capture the idea and put it in an “idea file” or list to be explored with focused attention during your VIID.  I’ve created a VIID “idea folder” in Omnifocus (the uber-slick task manager made specifically for Mac) where I capture my ideas.  You can create similar system in Outlook or other task management software.

Step 5: Prepare yourself. The night before your VIID pick the one or two ideas from your VIID file/list on which you will dedicate your focused attention.  Determine what you want to accomplish with the idea(s) you’ve picked.  Are you:

• Conducting a competitive analysis?
• Creating a high-end offer for your best clients?
• Designing a launch plan for a new, innovative program to engage with clients?
• Conducting a feasibility study on an idea?

Be clear with yourself: what do you want to have tangibly accomplished and when are you going to “ship” your idea? Don’t give your gremlin mind any reason to heckle that your VIID was anything less than the greatest investment you’re making in your business this year.

I’m willing to be that it will be.



Share your comments and ideas at Move Your Ideas from Mediocre to Magnetic

You might also be interested in:

• How Magnetic are YOUR 2011 Business Development Ideas?
• Multitasking Yourself to Mediocrity?
• “Big Ideas Aren’t For Commoners…”

* (Fair enough… there are obviously other automatically-regulated functions of the body that sustain life and fall into the same category as breathing, but hang with me on the concept, not the technicality).

Several years ago, one of my favorite industry thought-leaders, Kinetic Enterprise Board of Advisor, and a former client, Tim Belber, planted this simple, yet significant, idea with me…. Every single action we take each day is a choice, and if we think it isn’t, than we are choosing to think smaller, act smaller, and be smaller than we actually are.

Whether we realize it or not, many of us resist the power of choice because, with choice comes owning the responsibility of consequences.  It’s a lot easier to throw up your hands and tell your spouse that you have to fly to New York tomorrow because a client demanded a meeting.  Or, to resentfully give up another one of your daily work-outs because you have to go to a networking event.

But, the truth is, you are choosing to fly to New York tomorrow because you prefer the consequences of short-notice travel to the consequences of possibly losing a client.  Or, you prefer to the potential benefits of attending the networking event to the potential benefits of honoring your boundary for self-care.

The Mindset of Choice

Choice is a mindset.  Just like “abundance,” “success,” and “possibility” are mindsets.  A mindset is a set of assumptions and beliefs through which we see the world. These assumptions create a filter for information that perpetuate the belief (for example, have a scarcity mindset?  You will see all of the instances where there is lack and overlook where there is abundance, thus validating your belief that there are not enough resources in the world). Mindsets can work for or against us.

The mindset of “choice” is a success-perpetuating mindset.  It allows us to see all the options present and make a decision based on the cost-benefit analysis of each option.  The decision we land upon is the decision we’ve consciously made based on weighing the consequences or opportunities in each scenario.

The Language of Choice

The magical thing about a mindset is, just because you may not have a specific success-perpetuating mindset, doesn’t mean you can’t build it.  One of the most effective ways to cultivate supportive mindsets is to change your language.  Try this on for size:

• No-Choice Mindset: “I have to cut this meeting short because I need to take this client call.”
• Choice Mindset: “I’m going to cut this meeting short because I have a client call that I want to take.”

• No-Choice Mindset: “I got roped into this Board of Directors meeting and have to go.”
• Choice Mindset: “I was invited to the Board of Directors meeting and am going to take the opportunity to share my opinion.”

• No-Choice Mindset: “I have to pay the mortgage.”
• Choice Mindset: “I’m choosing to pay the mortgage because I prefer that to the consequences of being delinquent on my loan.”

The Practice of Choice

It may seem subtle, but the practice of cultivating a mindset of choice puts you in the greatest position of power. Freedom, expansion, and possibility come from choice. Limits, constriction, and inertia come from lack of choice.

Happy Holidays!  It is with deep gratitude to each and every one of you in my community, that I make this final post for what has been an abundant, growth-filled, and joyous 2010.

(Photo compliments of Peggy Dyer – photographer and artist of greatness – and is part of her One Million Facesproject.  Talk about someone who is impacting her community by working from the sweet spot where her gifts and her business intersect….)

Share your comments and ideas at The Power of Choice