A Question of Balance...or Something Else?

Q: I struggle to find a healthy balance between work and family time. What can I do?

Questions about balance come from the very core of how and why coaching can be a powerful force in a person's life, work and business. The "balance" question is quite common, yet seldom do I agree with the common answers, so I have written on the subject often - here, here, here, here, here and here. And, since I was asked the question above on this very day, I'll revisit the subject once again here.

Balance between our work life and personal life, balance among our various roles - no wonder they seem so elusive, because:

You can do anything you want, but you can’t do everything!

Sounds silly, but this is a great place to begin. You cannot do everything you want or must do all the time. Likewise, you might not want to sacrifice everything for the sake of one thing. Too often I find the concept of “balance” leads to guilty feelings about everything all the time…and that’s not healthy, especially if Health is something you are trying to balance!

If you often find yourself thinking, “I would rather be…”, then balance won’t help and it may even hurt. What would you rather be doing? Why aren’t you doing those things? The things you are doing may be “should do” instead of “must do” activities. What must you do with intention and priority today? How would you rather be feeling? Where would you rather be going? What would you rather have? With whom would you rather be investing your time? How would you rather be? Why would you rather...? What are some other questions you might ask? What is it you really want? What is it you must really do?

Consider this example: If you’re at work and you would rather be at home, isn’t your quality of life at home the reason why you work? If you are with family and think you should be working, isn’t family well-being the reason you work? If you want to achieve something you love, are you willing to endure some things you may hate (within reason) to succeed?

Tournament of Dreams
Here’s a start for living an On Purpose life rather than a guilty one dragging along in “balance”:

1. What do you want? Make a long, exhaustive list;
   
2. Match your "wants" in pairs to compete with one another
3. Ask, “Which one is most important to me now?” until you have a winner. Do this for each area of your life, i.e. family, career, financial, health, spiritual/ethical, social, mental development, etc.
   
4. Plan your days around the winners.

What do you want most?

Why do you want it?

What are all the things that might keep you from achieving it?

Can you be innovative enough to conceive solutions for all these barriers to success? (This is where coaching can be most powerful.)

When will you take the specific steps to implement these solutions?
Then, what does your time-line look like for these steps to achieving your goal?

If you won’t change your goal, which is admirable, you can always change the time-line. But what happens to most people is this: they don’t write down their goal and make it an ongoing priority; they lose focus; they fail to identify and address the obstacles and their solutions up front, so the time-line keeps changing, and they eventually forget or give up on the goal.

So write down the “winners” from your Tournament of Dreams in the form of goals. Conceive all possible obstacles and potential solutions for them up front. Then take the necessary steps whether they take you a year to complete or 20 years.

Breathe. Love. Have fun along the way.
Every Life Has a Reason

NOTE: Make sure you also check out my post as guest blogger today at the World Prayer blog. Here is the link http://ow.ly/133Pg .

The Definition of Success

Almost everyone I know, or can think of, wants the same thing: Success. How about you? Could anyone not want to be successful? Well, there's been a lot written on the subject over the years, including some useful quotes:

• Woody Allen opinioned that "Eighty percent of success is showing up."
• The oft-quoted William Feather said that "Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go."
• Someone else once said "The road to success is always under construction."
• And Vince Lombardi, the immortal coach of the Green Bay Packers, noted that "The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will."

Everyone has his or her own ideas about what success looks like. Success is individual and unique to everyone, so can there be a single definition of success? Success is something that we all strive and work hard for, so wouldn't it be great if we could have a single definition of success that works for each of us?

I'd like to offer up a “Definition of Success” that works for me that I use with my clients, and that I think can work for each of you as well. (This definition, and for that matter my entire blog today, is the product of the folks at Resource Associates Corporation, the human development research organization behind my company with which I have been delightfully affiliated for more than 7 years.)

The continual achievement of your own predetermined goals, stabilized by balance, and purified by belief.

Let's examine the elements of this definition more closely:

• Continual – Ongoing, steady, constant, uninterrupted. You can't take a break from life or your pursuit of success, no matter your situation or circumstances.
• Achievement – Fulfillment, accomplishment, attainment, feat. You must take action. Ben Franklin said that "Well done is better than well said." Progress must be made; otherwise you’re just treading water, if not losing ground.
• Your own – It must be unique to you. Other people may have opinions about what success should mean for you, but only you can determine what is truly right for you.
• Predetermined – To define and decide or determine in advance, to have forethought. Plan to be successful; it’s not going to happen on a whim.
• Goals – Destinations, ambition, aims, objectives, targets. Goals provide focus; otherwise, there is no direction. And make certain that you have SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistically high, and Time-based).
• Balance – Address all aspects of your life (social, career / financial, family, mental, ethics and beliefs, and physical) in a comprehensive manner.
• Belief – Self-confidence, commitment, faith, trust, certainty, conviction. Ezra Pound said that “What matters is not the idea a man holds, but the depth at which he holds it.” You have to believe in yourself … if you don’t, who will?

Does this “Definition of Success” work for you? Try it on for size and see if it can help you (personally and professionally) achieve more of what you want and become more of who you want to be!

"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get."
- Dale Carnegie

2010 Reaffirmation: My Grand Aim & Manifesto

Following is a re-post of my blog from November 2009, which is an appropriate reminder to start to this new year and decade of life:

"The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. But it may be that the way of life that he has chosen for himself and the peculiar strength and sweetness of his character may have an ever-growing influence over his fellow men so that, long after his death perhaps, it may be realized that there lived in this age a very remarkable creature."

- W. Somerset Maugham, introduction to The Razor's Edge (1944)

The Razor's Edge is a 1944 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. Its epigraph reads, "The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over; thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard. —Katha-Upanishad"

Perhaps you are more familiar with the movie, The Razor’s Edge, than the book. The Razor's Edge tells the story of an American, Larry Darrell, who returns to Chicago after his experience in World War I disinclined to assume a conventional role in American society. He then travels the world from Tibet to Paris in an attempt to find some meaning in his life. In the 1984 movie version starring Bill Murray as Larry Darrell, the book's epigraph is dramatized, in much more practical English, as advice given to Darrell by a Tibetan monk:

"The path to salvation is narrow and is difficult to walk as a razor's edge."

I am that man. My primary aim is not for fame but to be very remarkable, measured by the value of my influence in the lives of others. I borrow my Grand Affirmation (you might call it my Vision for Being, an existential aspiration or even a potential epitaph as well as primary aim), from the author Maugham because he has written what I would aspire to say about my life, about my living. Meditate upon and understand Maugham’s quote and you will understand me and, I pray, you will understand more of yourself, too.

My primary aim is not for fame but to be very remarkable, measured by the value of my influence in the lives of others.

The trace of my sojourn need not be fame or really even fortune, in common terms. I seek to be a remarkable creature whose “strength and sweetness” of character might have a valuable influence in the lives of others. I do so, not by telling people how to live, but by living and asking others how to live, how they want to live and, most importantly, what they want to live and why.

I believe there is a minute demarcation between significance and insignificance – narrow as a razor’s edge. I have chosen to walk on the edge. I seek daily salvation in authentic self-expression that adds value through relationships, which somehow glorifies God and edifies my fellow men and women. It provides the foundation for my Purpose:

to ask questions that open up new possibilities and new ways of being in a manner that develops people who will improve the quality of life for the world around them.

What if I put my Purpose into numbers? What if I had Purpose-full and profound relationships with 100 people this year, and each of those people had a direct effect on the quality of life for at least 10 people around them? I would have a positive influence over the lives of at least 1,000 people. What if I had that direct effect on 150 people…? 250…? More…?

What if I sent invitations to my Manifest Birthday Party? This would be a celebration indeed, not so much for another year in my life but for the Birth Date of what is to come, the influence that is yet to be. What if 100 people, carefully chosen, joined me to celebrate my re-birth and pledged to hold me accountable and join in my sojourn, to see that I walked this razor’s edge? They would accept my invitation because they support the way of life I have chosen and want to assure I have the strength and sweetness of character to have an every-growing influence over the people I meet on my sojourn. They would choose to attend or correspond because they want me to be a very remarkable creature. They want to hold me accountable to my Grand Affirmation. They want to join me on the razor’s edge.

The Razor's Edge - The Intersection of Purpose and Now. You are welcome here. Would you join me?

Developing the Motivation & Initiative to Achieve Anything You Want

I recently responded to a question on LinkedIn from another executive coach seeking assistance in "facilitating and coaching a group of directors about how to improve and develop self motivation and initiative attitude".

This week marks the beginning of 2010, a new year and a new decade. Since self-motivation and initiative are on the minds of most people who seek to make this year (and decade) their best ever, I chose to share my answer to this question with my readers at The Intersection of Purpose and Now:

The core of my business practice is helping individuals and groups develop focus, self-motivation and initiative to achieve what is most important to them. I can't say there are any one or two exercises I use to accomplish this; however, I would like to help you. I'll attempt by explaining some of the basic elements of motivation and initiative that I have found to be fundamental in planning any facilitation or coaching practice.

At the core of motivation and initiative is "knowing what one wants" - personal desire. In this sense some of the same exercises you might use in strategic thinking or in coaching should be helpful. Individuals, teams and organizations drift and lack motivation because they lack clarity of focus on what is Most Important to them. Knowing what one wants, and committing that into a specific, measurable goal or action item is the first step.

Next, why do I want it? A goal doesn't really become a call to action unless it is truly something one wants at a personal level (the famous emotional WIIFM). What are the rewards if I/we achieve or attain this goal? What are the consequences if I/we don't? These questions get at the heart of motivation. If goals seem to be clear, yet people still aren't taking action, this is the place to look. Often, we assume that because a goal is established it is automatically "my goal" that I will want to achieve. On the surface, we may even convince ourselves we want the goal initially. Drilling down (i.e. using the "5 why" technique) one's answers to the basic questions of "What are the rewards for success?" and "What are the consequences of failure?" reveal the most personal and idiosyncratic motivations for one who is pursuing any goal.

Third, what are the obstacles that MIGHT keep me/us from achieving what we want to happen? This is a critical thinking activity and one most often ignored, slighted or taken out of sequence. Identifying obstacles leads toward focused initiative. The one obstacle we take for granted or fail to identify early on, typically becomes the one that throws us off course or is the "shadow cause" of what otherwise seems like a lack of initiative. I have found there are at least 7 obstacles to any goal; time, money and fear (in some form) are the most common obstacles. When addressed in sequence, most obstacles can be overcome or avoided altogether if addressed with predetermined solutions, which is the next step.

Acknowledging obstacles up front and identifying possible solutions and action steps to overcome or avoid each one is the key to creating new possibilities that before seemed impossible. Once you have helped your client identify all conceivable obstacles, help them identify possible solutions to each obstacle, one at a time. Choose the best solution(s) for each one, then map out the action items (individual tasks) that must be taken to implement the solutions. This, of course, is the common practice of goal or project planning, but it becomes more powerful and effective when the "Why" and "Obstacle" questions are addressed first. (By the way, if there is an obstacle for which there appears to be no conceivable solution, then your client should rethink the goal.)

Now your client has a well-conceived plan to achieve what they want. Now if they still find themselves lacking motivation or not taking planned actions they know where to look for root cause: review "Why is this my goal?" and the two guiding questions. Chances are, lack of action is because the rewards for success and/or the consequences for failure aren't compelling (motivating) enough. In other words, this really isn't MY goal; it isn't what I REALLY want.

There are many activities and techniques I use in helping clients identify and develop self-motivation and initiative, but the sequential elements I have described above are the foundation of a process that works every time.