Business Advice: Be an agent of change

A man walks into a psychiatrist’s office.  “Doc, every time I see nickels, dimes, and quarters, I have a panic attack!  What can the problem be?

“Oh that’s easy” the doctor answers. “You’re just afraid of change”.

How many of us go through life virtually paralyzed because we are afraid of change, to try something new or different.

This fear keeps us from expanding our growth, knowledge, and success and limits our lot in life.

To break out of this cycle of fear we need to understand what fear really is.

Here’s two explanations of what fear really stands for;

False

Expectations

Appearing

Real

So how do we change or how can we be a change agent for others?

If someone is satisfied with their lives, will they change?  No, because they are satisfied.

If someone is unfit, overweight, or unhealthy, but they are satisfied with that, they are still unlikely to change.

Many of us have the ability to change the instant we become unhappy with our lives.

Others of us have to wait for a stroke or another disaster before we realize the need to change.

We see that there are two ends of the scale.  Some wait until the end and some change right at the beginning and some change just for the sake of change. Somewhere in there, there is a happy medium for you.

There is a simple formula that will allow us to understand the process of change and what we can do to affect positive changes in ourselves and in others.

(D x V) +FS > R

The “R” stands for resistance.  To overcome the resistance to change, what needs to be greater?  What can tip the scale to overcome our fear of change?  Let’s take a closer look.

The “D” in the formula stands for Dissatisfaction. Before you can change you have to have a level of dissatisfaction…

What builds dissatisfaction more than anything else?  “V” for Vision.

Let’s say that you are a kid living in an impoverished neighborhood. You don’t know any better life than that.  Are you dissatisfied with your life?  Not necessarily, you may be satisfied because you don’t know any better.

Why is it that when you are in business you need to consistently improve your business education?

Why do people hire a business coach or have a mentor, to help push them thru their comfort zone and to help them grow their vision.  They need help to look at what their next level is supposed to be.

Dissatisfaction takes a belief that there is something else out there.

One of the things I do as a business coach is to help my clients feel a level of dissatisfaction or discomfort, if they don’t do the work required to change.  Without a coach or a mentor you stay in your comfort zone because people don’t like feeling dissatisfied.  Dissatisfaction comes first but then we have to have vision and a belief that the vision is possible.

Those kids living in the impoverished neighborhoods can watch television and they can see other places in the world, but most have no belief that a different life is possible for them.  However, some do get a belief that it is possible.  Some of you reading this article are where you are today, because of the vision and the belief you had of a better life.  You believed it was possible.  That is why you have worked to make a better life for yourself.

My question is, how do we raise the dissatisfaction level for where you are now and how do we raise the vision of where you want to go?  Most of us are not experiencing change.

One of the fastest ways that I have found to raise people’s dissatisfaction is by having them write a check into their own investment accounts at the first of the month.  This check is from your business into your own investment or profit account.  An investment or profit account is an account that you can’t get direct access to.  If you take out $10,000, $5,000, $1,000 or even $100 a month, you then have little or no money left to pay the bills.

Is there going to be a level of dissatisfaction going on?  Absolutely!  How much harder are you going to work to pay off your creditor that calls you every day?  You have to create a vacuum that needs to be filled.  You have to start stretching yourself and expanding out of your comfort zones.

The next step of the equation is “FS” which stands for First Steps.

We have dissatisfaction, we’ve created a vision of what we want, but we don’t know how to start.

This is where a mentor or a coach can help.

Don’t look at eating the whole elephant all at once, just take it on one bite at a time.  Lee Iaacoca, states that the discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.  Take the time to write out your plan and break it into bite size chunks and get into Action.

By doing so, you will begin to break through the barriers in your life and stretch your comfort zone to reach a level of success you’ve only dreamed of.  Use this formula not only to help facilitate change in your life but to be an agent of change in the life of others.  Help them to understand and qualify their dissatisfaction, help them to build their vision what they want to achieve, and finally give them the first steps to move toward that goal.

By following this simple formula you can truly become an agent of change in your life as well as the life of others.

In business, it is always the little things that get the big results. Our Business Health Check will give you invaluable insights into the many areas of your business. By completing our Business Health Check, you will receive a Free Report based on your answers, prepared by our team of highly skilled Business Coaches.

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5 Tips to Turn Overwhelmed into Productivity

I was once talking to a business owner who had lost his focus in his business.  He would come to work day in and day out, doing the same thing day in and day out and not really get anywhere.  He confided in me that he always has this overwhelmed feeling and he felt that his business was lost in the fog and he did not where he was at and he actually forgot where he was going.

The feeling of being overwhelmed gave his life a sense of not being balance.

Does this sound like you and your business?  Don’t panic, you are not alone.   Here are a few ideas to get you back on track.

First.... Realize that it's almost impossible to achieve a work-life balance.  Your focus is always going to pull you more in one direction than the other.  You can't achieve balance but you can achieve  harmony between your work life and personal life.   Remember, you can't physically and mentally be in two places at the same time.  If you are at home don't mentally be at work and visa-versa. 

Second... Realize what is going on.  You can't fix a problem until you admit you have one.  Stop pretending that you have everything together because eventually something is going to pop.  Once you start getting that feeling of being overwhelmed try to identify the triggers.  Then you can begin to work on being in charge of your attitude instead of letting something or someone trigger that negative feeling.

Third...  Identify your overwhelming triggers.  When we get the overwhelmed feeling, it's like our mind and body's circuitry goes into overload.  If we think about it and look back we'll be able to identify specific things or events that trigger that feeling.  Once we identify what these stressors are we can begin to take control back.

Fourth...Call time out.  The overwhelmed feeling hits us when we lose our focus.  Take 15 minutes and step back, maybe listen to your favorite music, go for a walk, or close your eyes and take a power nap.  You need to take some time to quickly recharge your batteries. 

 

Fifth... Find meaning in what you do. Write a list of what's most important to you both professionally and personally.  Now determine how doing what you need to do now will help the people that are most important to you.  We find meaning in our work when we can figure out how what we do helps others.  It's easy to let down ourselves but it's a lot more difficult to know that you are letting down people that are important to you.

Stress is NOT always positive but if managed correctly, stress can be enhancing to both our performance and overall well being.   

7 Keys to Quality of Life

As a business coach I always try to stress that your business should not be your end all.  It should be the vehicle to help you get what you really want out of life.  Your life shouldn’t be your business.  Your business should get you more out of life.

Here are what I believe to be are the 7 keys to improving ourselves and achieving the quality life we want and deserve.

1. Quality of Results – To increase our quality of life, we need to get better results.  That’s easier said than done.  How do we increase the quality of our results?
2. Quality of Actions – By increasing the quality of our actions, we will improve the quality of results.  So how do I do that, you might ask?
3. Quality of Decisions – To increase the quality of our actions, we need to make better decisions.  The next key will help us to increase the quality of our decisions.
4. Quality of Questions – The better the questions, the better the decisions you will make.  One of the key ways that I help my clients as a business coach is by asking the difficult questions and coaching my clients to start asking themselves those difficult questions.
5. Quality of Beliefs & Dreams – You can’t ask better questions if you don’t know what it is you don’t know.  When you have strong beliefs and big dreams, you begin to ask better questions because you need to know why.  You’ll start asking yourself what is keeping me from achieving that success.  But how can someone build better and bigger dreams and a stronger belief system?
6. Quality of Education – By increasing our quality of education and always trying to learn more, our beliefs will get stronger and our dreams will get bigger.
7. Quality of Mentor/Teacher – We have to first admit that we don’t know everything.  Today we have the ability to access many mentors and teachers, not necessarily personally, but through their workshops, books, CD’s, DVD’s, etc.

One person I consider to be my mentor, but have never actually met is Jim Rohn.  Though he has passed away and he is missed by many, he said two things that have always stuck with me.  “You have to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.” AND “Don’t wish that your life was easier, wish that you were better.”

If we strive to have a mentor who can teach us and mentor us to look at the world and ourselves in a new light, THEN....

• We will increase the quality of our education 
• Leading to higher quality beliefs and dreams
• Allowing us to ask better questions to make better decisions
• Allowing us to take better actions
• Leading to achieving better results 
• Resulting in an increase in our quality of life

Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below...