Investing 101: Where Do YOU Invest Your Personal Energy?

February 16, 2010

Through my years of medical training and practicing as a plastic surgeon surgeon, I've gained a great appreciation that one's health and well-being is the foundation of all wealth, material and otherwise.

Inclusive of our own health and well-being, the greatest asset we have is our personal energy. That energy is comprised of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy.

Every second of our lives, we get to choose where we invest our personal energy. Are you wasting it thoughts, feelings, and activities that aren't in alignment with your core values, your passion, and your true mission in life?

For a variety of reasons, such as fear of saying 'No,' concern about disappointing others, or fear of failure, many of us do...

If you're really honest with yourself about it, you'll probably find that you've committed to other people, events, and projects that are "energy leaks"; things that suck life out of you, rather than filling you with energy.

Now, that's a real waste of energetic resources!

So, get in the natural habit of asking yourself: "What is the highest and best investment of my energy?"

Start by asking this of yourself as you start your day. Then progress to asking it of yourself throughout the day.

The shift in your energy, enthusiasm, productivity, and life experiences may astound you!

And that's a real blow for freedom!

Focusing Through Distractions

January 13, 2010

The most important skill for consistent high-performance in your business

"If I were asked to choose one mental skill that distinguishes athletes and other performers who remain at the top of their game, I would name their ability to adapt and re-focus in the face of distractions."
– Terry Orlick, author of  In Pursuit of Excellence:  How to win in sport and life through mental training

The ability to remain focused, despite extreme pressure, failure, and even apparent impending doom, is what separates a good athlete from a top-performing one. Many parallels exist between peak performance in sports and that in business. So, ask yourself, when the heat is on, do you focus on distractions or do you focus through distractions?

The good news is that the ability to focus and, especially, to regain focus after a major distraction, is a learned, practiced skill. First of all, it takes awareness that you’ve lost focus to regain it. But that alone isn’t enough. Focus takes practice, persistence, effort, energy, and a high level of commitment.

Yannick Noah, a former world top 10 tennis player, was once asked if he could ever see himself being #1 in the world. He replied in the negative, explaining that he knew he didn’t have the discipline –  the wiring so to speak –  to focus at the sustained high level of mental and physical output necessary to be number one.

Try this exercise: In a darkened room, light a candle. Then, stare at the brightest part of the flame, while thinking of nothing other than the flame. How long could you stay focused before your mind started wandering?

See what I mean?

ACTION PLAN:
To strengthen your ability to stay focused through distractions (and thereby strengthen your shot at business success), try these tips:

1.Practice being aware of a)  when you lose focus and b)  when you’re able to remain focused on your top priority strategies and their corresponding actions.

2.Practice giving yourself permission (and the freedom), to lose focus. Humans aren’t built to be 100%. After all, even high-performance machines fail from time to time.

3.Look for the opportunities in every possible situation, no matter how apparently grim. Consider that it’s not about winning or losing; it’s about what you gain. No matter what, you’re going to gain something valuable: Memories you can look back on, the experience of “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat,” and learning that will aid you in the future.

4.Practice getting back on track quickly. This means, when you inevitably lose your focus or even lose your cool, make a game of seeing how quickly you can turn things around. When you’re in a bad mood, how quickly can you change to being in a good mood? How quickly can you shift from being angry with smoke coming out of your ears to being calm, cool, and collected? Is it hours and days? What would it take to get it down to seconds and minutes?

5.Practice the candle flame focusing exercise daily. With persistence, you’ll find that your ability to stay focused on the flame will increase and, remarkably, so will your ability to focus on the highest-impact priorities on your plate.

Do You Have the Freedom to Trust Your Inner Guidance System?

November 4, 2009

Or are you being an "intellectual bulldozer"?

A lot of us go through life thinking that if we’re smart enough and we think through it, we can bull our way through a brick wall, without getting bumps and bruises or cracking open our skulls!

We think that intellectually we should be able to solve this problem and that problem.

But what’s missing is that this ingrained habit totally negates and takes out your inner guidance system.

And your inner guidance system is far more powerful than what we have intellectually.

Dr. Albert Einstein acknowledged that. He said that "imagination is more powerful than knowledge, it’s more important than knowledge."

Where does imagination come from?
It comes from your inner guidance system.

What it comes down to is whether you have the ability to trust your inner guidance system.

A friend of mine, David Ranney, is the author of "Tennis: Play the Mental Game,"  calls it your 'other than conscious mind.'”

As a real-life example, when I work with my clients to guide them, I gather as much intellectual information as is practical, then I  allow my "other than conscious mind" to work on it and help me arrive at a practical approach.

Whether or not you make what you think is a mistake, train yourself to recognize that whatever is going on is supposed to happen. That's an important part of trusting your inner guidance system.

You cannot intellectually see clearly into the future, but your inner guidance system can. This doesn’t mean that you'll always be consciously awareness, but the awareness is there, if you learn to trust it, feel it, and listen to it. And, above, act on it.

If there’s one huge take-home pearl here, it's this:

Come to expect that things are going to work out in your favor, no matter how bleak the situation looks.

No doubt, it takes an input of energy, it takes conscious awareness to live this way. But you're going to put in the energy one way or another, so why not choose the path of greatest and highest good?

A New Model for Business Success in the New Economy

November 3, 2009

Here's the model:
Purpose, Passion, Productivity, and Power => People, Planet, Profit, Prosperity

As entrepreneurs, it's our responsibility to contribute to shaping the emerging new era of prosperity.

It's time for new ways of thinking, new business models, new ways of connecting and collaborating with our buyers, our colleagues, our competitors, and other countries.

Focusing one's:

• Purpose
• Passion
• Power
• Productivity

leads to...

• Helping people
• Healing the planet
• Sustainable profits
• Global prosperity

What might be possible if we shifted our thinking and actions along these lines?

We'll discuss this model more on our Conscious Leaderpreneurship Conversation on Thursday, November 12th, from 12-12:30 pm pacific.

If you're not already on the reminder list, register here at no charge: www.freedompreneur.com/consciousleaderpreneurship

In the meantime, on Thursday, November 5th, we'll be talking about "Healing the Planet: Bringing Yourself and Your Business to the Leading Edge". Read more about this here

Applying Conscious Living and Learning to Your Business Growth

September 24, 2009

When it comes to growing your business, there are only four main areas to focus on (albeit, these are broad categories):

1. Leadership, Management, and Team
2. Operations.
3. Marketing and Sales
4. Deliverables

Leadership, Management, and Team is all about clarity of your focus, direction, strategies, tactics, intentions, and where you place your attention. This category is also about addressing your limiting beliefs and allocating limited resources efficiently.

Operations, otherwise known as "Logistics and Administration" relates to the critical processes and procedures that make your business successful. For optimal efficiency in the longer-run, these processes and procedures should be documented and turned into turnkey systems.

Marketing and Sales should be more accurately described as Education  and Matching Value, respectively. You must first education a prospective buyer about how your offering solves their problem or need. Then, it's your job to help them recognize the value of your offering, in terms of specific results, improvements, outcomes, and experiences that they would get from working with you and match that up with what they recognize as their pressing needs, problems, and challenges.

Deliverables refers to the services, programs, and products that help your buyers get what they need and what.

For any business of any size to succeed, all four of the above areas need to be working harmoniously together.

Now, these are tidy little categories and descriptions and it all sounds great in theory, but...

...what about turning theory into real-life results and progress?

In my experience and observation, this is where a lot of us get stuck, or at least snagged temporarily: Turning intellectual theory into action, that then produces desirable results.

So what's the solution to getting unstuck or un-snagged? Here are some quick suggestions:

1. Clarify and simplify your next immediate action step. Whatever it is, break it down into manageable, actionable bite-size pieces.
2. Find ways to make even the most mundane of tasks fun. Make a game of it.
3. Think of creative ways to make these tasks easier to take on and complete.
4. Find ways to collaborate with others so you can tap into the collective wisdom and energy of working synergistically.

While this takes mindfulness and discipline to apply to one's everyday life, the return-on-investment of consciously applying your strengths and talents to the tasks at hand are exponential, enduring, and many times, beyond one's wildest dreams.

On today's Conscious Leaderpreneurship call, we discussed these concepts as they applied to the participants real-world situations. Listen to the 30-min replay here.

Pre-Flight Checklist for Virtual Events (Webinars & Teleseminars)

August 3, 2009

Using webinars and teleseminars to educate others and to promote your services and products is a powerful, cost-effective tool.

Most of you have probably participated in a number of these. And you're probably using them for your own business endeavors.

As the host or presenter, have you ever started a session, only to be horrifed that you forgot a critical step, like making sure that your recording system was operational? Or, that you forgot to turn off all the  ringers (yes, even on the fax machine!)?

Having overlooked many critical and not-so-critical elements in my illustrious career, I finally decided to create a checklist of items to verify BEFORE starting a webinar or teleseminar. It's a "pre-flight" checklist, just like a pilot runs through before take-off. And, just like a plastic surgeon (ahh, that would be me!) used before starting a major surgical procedure.

Here's an example:

Starting 15 minutes BEFORE the start of the event:

• Door closed
• Turn all phone ringers OFF:
  • Landline(s)
  • Cell phone(s)
  • Fax machine(s)
  • Pager

At least 5 minutes BEFORE the event start time:

• Disable call-waiting, then dial into conference call line.
• Check recording settings in webinar system (I use www.GoToWebinar)
• Check recording settings in screen capture softwared (I use Camtasia)
• Check recording settings in audio editing software (I use Sony Sound Forge)
• Turn on primary recording system(s)
• Turn on backup recording system (record without a backup system at your own peril!)

Almost without fail, every time I've gotten lazy and neglected to follow this checklist, which is printed and hangs near my phone in a plastic sheet protector, I've lived to regret it.

Well, at least no planes crashed and no patients died on the OR table!

Building a Successful Business by Practicing Habits of Success

April 22, 2009

Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines a habit as "a behavior pattern acquired by frequent repetition or physiologic exposure that shows itself in regularity or increased facility of performance."

Now nearly 100 years-old, my yoga master and WWII fighter pilot ace, Dr. Michael Gladych has frequently reminded me that "repetition is the key to mastery." At the age of 93, he underwent cardiac bypass surgery - without general anesthesia. Do you think he's mastered a thing or two in his lifetime?

In their course syllabus from The Principles of Financial Freedom: Duplicating the Nature of Spirit in Your Financial Affairs, Reverends Lloyd Strom and Marcie Sutton write that:

"The old adage that "practice makes perfect" contains great wisdom. Whenever we practice anything, our entire psycho-physical being reorganizes itself toward perfection of performance. Consequently, we will always become skillful in anything that we practice. This is because the divine intelligence within us responds to our willingness to change for the better, by changing us for the better. Our willingness for this change to occur is demonstrated by practicing. When we are unwilling to practice, we are unwilling to change, and the "status quo" will always prevail. Every great human achievement has come to those who have engaged in practicing the disciplines of their chosen endeavor."

It is commonly stated that "successful people have successful habits." Unfortunately, this statement is an oversimplification of an extraordinarily critical success factor.

Your habits are a product of your beliefs, thoughts, and feelings.

Successful people have developed habits that enable them to be successful, given their particular combination of beliefs, thinking power, emotional intelligence, and style of taking action.

Note the emphasis on "... given their particular combination of beliefs, thinking power, emotional intelligence, and style of taking action."

Each of us possesses a unique blend of beliefs, thinking power, emotional intelligence, and style of taking action. And this is why what works for one person, doesn't necessarily work for another.

Some of these beliefs, thoughts, and feelings work for us. Some of these beliefs, thoughts, and feelings work against us.

And so it follows that if we develop habits, based on those unproductive beliefs, thoughts, and feelings, these in turn, result in outcomes that are less than desirable at best, and catastrophic, at worst.

So what can you do about this?
Make a list of habits that work for you. And, make a list of habits that work against you. Some of the habits that work against you will be habits of "not doing something" that actually would benefit you.

Once you've created these lists, start with the list of habits that work against you. Then, identify the limiting beliefs, thoughts, and feelings behind these non-productive habits.

In addition, be sure to make the list of habits that work for you and identify the beliefs, thoughts, and feelings that work for you. This is an important counterbalancing exercise, so don't overlook its value.

This simple exercise of creating a list of desirable habits along with a list of undesirable habits holds great power - the power of acknowledging one's self for productive habits and the power of awareness of those beliefs, thoughts, and feelings that no longer serve you or honor who you really are at your core.

Five Simple Steps to Habits That Lead To Freedom

1. For those habits you desire to eliminate or change, becoming aware of them is the first step toward freedom.
2. Commit to altering or eliminating those habits that no longer serve you.
3. Commit to adopting productive habits to replace the old ones.
4. Address the beliefs, thoughts, and feelings that keep those non-productive habits in place.
5. Establish a structure of accountability to ensure that you are supported in following-through on practicing your new habits and getting support and encouragement when you get stuck.

This five-step approach to altering habits is simply said, though not as easily done. But if you are truly committed to adopting habits of success that jive with how you are uniquely 'wired,' repetition is truly your key to mastery. And, you'll reap the rewards for years to come.

What’s the best image size for PowerPoint and screen projection?

March 12, 2008

That's a question that I for which I was not able to find the answer on Google.

So much for being able to find everything and anything on the Internet.

For those of you who use stock photos or your own images in your line of work, I got the following information from tech support at www.istockphoto.com, which is a very low-cost source of stock images. (Yes, Getty Images, in general, is higher quality, but so is the price.)

For PowerPoint presentations being displayed on a computer screen:
Use 72 dpi images (istockphoto "small" image files)

For screen projection presentations:
Use 300 dpi "medium" files.

NOTE:
The "xsmall" files can be useful for:

• Web pages
• Selected PowerPoint presentations (if the image fills only a small part of the slide and/or you are using a low screen display resolution)