Thu 6 May 2010
THE POWER OF A DAY
Posted by Jim under Uncategorized , Adventure and Alchemy , Leadership , Health and Vitality , InnovationComments Off
THE POWER OF A DAY
How can you create a world-class career or a great life? The answer’s a strikingly simple one: Live Great Days.
Your days are your life in miniature. Just focus on making the day ahead of you your best yet. Then get up and do the same thing tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. These days will quickly become weeks. And the weeks will slip into months. Soon, you’ll have just polished off your best year yet.
The question then becomes how do we install the habit of living great days - days where we work at congruence with our values and days where we are positive/excellent and passionate?
Let’s look at a a concept called “30 Day Challenges”. Say you want to grow the habits of 1 - daily exercise and 2 - high performance visualisation in your life? Start by committing to these 2 new habits for the next 30 days, as it will take about 4 weeks before a new ritual becomes your New Normal. Then, start recording the fact that you followed through on these 2 daily commitments in your journal before you go to bed. After a few days, you will not want to break your track record. And seeing the victories of the past days fuels forward momentum. Giving yourself 30 Day Challenges to install new behaviours is such a powerful tactic for leadership and personal success.
Please remember, mastery and greatness doesn’t come from one bold act that then defines your life. Instead, they come from those small, seemingly invisible daily wins that over time amount to a Best in World career and a World-Class Life. So start today.
Jim
Safety in decision-making is only an illusion. The safety that most organisations seek in rules can be accomplished more simply by accountability, accepting the organisation’s role in creating its problems, and practising prudence and good judgement achieved by organisational learning.
There are other companies that take the opposite point of view on the public. Some offer an unconditional guarantee to its customers - having the belief that this is a great opportunity to capture customers for life….. i.e. when they need a refund. They take the item back with no hassle, no questions, no guff about “where’s the receipt?” - the cost of that refund is peanuts compared with what you gain in customer loyalty.
I seen an article about Jimmy Smith, a full-contact fighter. He speaks of his philosophy. “Defeat doesn’t need any help,” he says. In other words focusing on defeat just adds to the problem. Think the other way.
