Ask yourself this question: What action could you take today to demonstrate excellence or real value? It’s a question worth thinking about every day.
I know many people set intentions of how they’re going to go about doing things.
Continue Reading »Years ago, I read a story about a woman anthropologist who would jump out of bed every morning and intentionally have both feet land at the same time. She would land them hard and yell out: “I wonder what really amazing thing is going to happen to me today!”
By setting the tone of looking for something amazing to happen, she felt she created far more amazing experiences.
Continue Reading »Carl Jung taught us that what we love about other people we love about ourselves. What we dislike about others, speaks highly of the work we need to do on ourselves. Okay, I know you didn’t want to hear that. And yeah, I know you don’t believe it. And yet, psychologist after psychologist has proven that we project our disowned parts of ourselves onto others.
Look around and decide what you don’t like in other people that you work with.
If you had a problem getting along with your boss, it might not have anything to do with your boss, and you might not have had a good relationship with your previous boss and perhaps the boss before that.
If that’s the case, I’ll bet they all look the same. Why? Because these kinds of things are archetypal. In other words, we repeat the same patterns we had before; patterns so foundational to ourselves that we keep seeing them. So, as you listen to people complain about others in your workplace, notice that oftentimes, what people are really complaining about is their disowned parts of themselves.
So instead, ask people for what you want directly. Own the parts of you that are the ugly little part of you; that evil twin that comes along to work every day.
As you own that and look at that, it gives you the ability to say, Hmm, okay, I could be doing some work on myself. I’m going to stop making it about others and instead, step into it and realize that it’s my job to decide to love everybody with whom I work.
We still have our lines in the sand asking for what we need, but we can do it with kindness and gentleness, and just create a better awareness as opposed to being upset by it, and then we can stop projecting our disowned parts of ourselves onto others.
I bet we’ll be a whole lot happier being ourselves and being with the people that we’re around.
Do you make good choices? Really? If so, how often?
Making good choices will define the results you create in your life.
But most people don’t have a really good idea how to go about making good choices. You see, when we’re looking at a choice, we have to ask these questions and give honest answers:
| “What are the things that can go right here? Best possible outcomes…” | “What is most likely to happen?” | “What are the things that can go wrong? The worst possible outcomes…” |
And as we look at each of those three columns, we have to ask ourselves, “what’s the likelihood that you’re going to get the best possible outcome?” “Can I live with the worst possible outcome?” And “Is it worth it to do what’s most likely?”
By actually writing those three things out in three different columns (example above), It’ll be very clear, what is the right decision to move ahead with.
Let’s say you’re thinking about getting a new job, because a lot of people are thinking about and doing that right now.
So, what is one of the best things that could happen? You could get a raise! That would be fantastic. There could also be more ease in your job. Obviously, those would be some of the best things that could happen.
What’s the worst thing that could happen? Well, you could get that new job and later decide you hate it or hate the people you’re working with every day. You could also get that new job and find out exactly why the person left that you’re replacing.
Now, if you leave right away, you’ve got this hole in your resume, and that’s going to look really, really bad, because you’ve job-hopped a couple of different times.
Other worst things? The economy could turn such that they start laying people off, and since you’re the new person, you’re the first one to be laid off and your family no longer has that income to rely on; that stability.
What’s the likely scenario? Likely you might get a little bit of a raise, and likely, you’re probably going to have more work to and it’s going to be harder to do the work because you’re new to the job and getting used to a new boss, etc.
So it’s likely, it’ll be more stressful than the situation that you have now. And likely, you’re not going to have the same depth of relationships as what you are enjoying now, so you’ll lose a lot of that feeling of connection. So, your decision grid might look something like this:
| “What are the things that can go right here? Best possible outcomes…” | “What is most likely to happen?” | “What are the things that can go wrong? The worst possible outcomes…” |
| Get a raise Less work Better people Better boss | Little raise Little more work to do More stress at first Less connection with people at first | More work Might hate it Worse co-workers Job/conditions are worse Hole in resume if… 1st out if layoffs happen |
Now you can go forward with a decision using the follow-up questions above.
You see, most people when they’re looking for a new job, for example, and they’re making a decision, look only at the one column and their decision grid looks more like this:
| “What are the things that can go right here? Best possible outcomes…” | “What is most likely to happen?” | “What are the things that can go wrong? The worst possible outcomes…” |
| Get a RAISE!!! |
They’re going to pay me more. Yep, there’s always another side to that story.
Now ask yourself this:
“How can you instead stay in this job and find a way to be worth more and create a career for yourself?”
It’s fascinating how the people who seem to do best in life tend to hang on to those jobs and find ways to continue to be advanced within their organization.
So, for career decisions and any decisions you make, ask yourself these questions:
Whether it’s conscious or subconscious, many people play games in the workplace. When I say “play games,” that isn’t exactly a compliment. I’m not referring to workplaces that have bean bags and foosball tables.
For instance, if your supervisor asks you to get something done, and you pretend later not to know about the assignment, and at the time that it’s due, you start to ask questions? That’s not going to go so well.
When bank employees play games in the workplace, it isn’t a good thing because what they’re doing is basically pretending not to know. It’s also called passive-aggressive behavior. Pretending not to know you are engaging in passive-aggressive conversation and behavior is not attractive in adults.
Instead, whenever you are unclear about something, get your conditions of satisfaction that we discussed before. And if it looks like you might be missing a deadline, negotiate well in advance and let your boss know well in advance that…
Ask if that is acceptable, because sometimes just because you’ve negotiated for it doesn’t mean that it’s automatically going to be a “Yes” answer from your boss. Maybe you have to reprioritize something else to get it done.
That cleanliness in how you have that conversation makes a big difference in the relationship and the outcomes of your job. Be very thoughtful about keeping your conversations clean, make direct requests of people, fulfill on those, and if you blow it for whatever reason, just say these beautiful words, “I blew it.” It’s that simple.
Everybody knows that everybody makes mistakes. That part’s okay. Granted, that obviously can’t happen every day, all day long. But when you make a mistake, how you handle that mistake defines who you are to everyone around you. It is a sign of your character. So, next time you blow it simply say these 3 words, “I blew it.”
Number one, make sure it never happens again.
And number two, make sure this gets corrected and caught up.