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That New Year’s Resolution

Gil Pizano — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 03:27:37 +0000

A new year has begun and a countless list of New Year’s resolutions have been made by many. A large number of those resolutions won’t last the month! OK, I admit I tend to be optimistic about people (because many will tell me that most New Year’s resolutions don’t last the first week). Resolutions are great decisions that people usually commit to in order to change their life or the life of someone else for the better. So why do so many “forget” or “lose track of” whatever it is they said they were going to do? I’m sure you’ve never been one of those people. Admit it. We’re all guilty of not committing to the resolutions we’ve supposedly committed to. But why is that? It’s simple…a sincere passion for it is missing. It’s so much easier to commit to a change that can help you follow your passion…whatever that passion may be.

Principle: Follow Your Heart

I’m sure this is not the first time you’re seeing the above phrase. If it is, then I’m glad it’s being introduced to you here. If you have seen it before, I hope you understand what it means. Early in my career, I thought I understood what it meant, but I discovered that I didn’t really. At first I always focused my education on helping me get the job that would make me the most money. When I started along that track, I discovered that even though I was beginning to make some serious bucks, I wasn’t feeling fulfilled. If I kept on that track, I knew I would end up in a place I didn’t want to be at in the future. So, I decided to go into another type of field where I felt I made more of a difference. That helped me to feel better about what I was doing. That feeling that one gets when they are following their heart is a personal feeling that only you can know how it feels when you’re on the right path for yourself

How do you know you’ve found your passion? Find something you love to do so much, you can’t wait for the sun to rise to do it all over again. Connecting your New Year’s resolution to something you’re passionate about will help in achieving your goal.

Principle: Do Not Fool Yourself!

By fooling yourself, I’m talking about making yourself believe something in order to avoid something you know you need to do. This principle for helping to stick to the commitments you made to yourself is a short and simple, yet powerful one. It’s a principle that all of us at one point or another have used to rationalize ourselves out of doing something we needed to do (e.g. I can have one more ice cream ‘cause I’ve had a very stressful week).

If you want to succeed in what you’ve committed yourself to do, be honest with yourself. Don’t fool yourself into not following your passion. Earlier in this post I briefly described how I was not on a path in my career where I would be personally fulfilled. I was originally fooling myself into allowing money be the focus of my occupation. Had I not realized that I was fooling myself, I would still be doing something that I didn’t want to do and thus, would still feel as though I was missing something in my life.

Principle: Baby Steps

Ah! Here is the old adage about taking baby steps. If one of your goals is to read more books rather than watching TV or surfing the internet, why not start by reading no more than 15 minutes in the morning or at night before going to bed? There was a time not so long ago when reading for fifteen minutes felt to me like three days…in fifteen minutes. Oh it was brutal for me! I was reading so slow it would take me 15 minutes to read one or two pages of a paperback. No fooling…I was bad! I did manage to overcome this by taking baby steps. First I made it a point to read one page and then stop for a minute and then read the next page. I’d read the second page and then stop for a minute before I continued. This allowed me to not get as bored with reading as I would’ve had I read straight thru at first. Over the next few weeks I began to notice that I was reading faster and not getting as bored reading as I was when I first started. In time I was reading two, then three and four pages a minute. Today, I find reading fun and cannot imagine myself finishing the day without reading.

Do You Know Someone…?

Do you know of anyone who has a passion for something? If you believe you do know someone like that, observe them. Do they appear to have more enthusiasm, energy, and excitement than others? Do you find that they often appear to be creative in what they are passionate about? They appear to come up with really unique and yet simple ideas?

Do you know someone who succeeded at losing the weight they wanted to lose? Ask them how they did it? Did they quit eating everything that was bad for them and going to the gym six to seven days a week or did they take baby steps to reduce or change the types of foods they were eating?

Do you know of someone who succeeded in whatever they chose to commit to last year? Look back on how they did it? Did they use some of the above aspects to succeed at what they chose to commit to?

What are some ways that you believe will help you succeed at achieving your goals for the new year?

Giving Thanks…Always

Gil Pizano — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 21:07:56 +0000

Today is Thanksgiving and many people around the world celebrate it. I originally thought it was only an American holiday being that my recollection recalls learning about how the pilgrims in New England, USA, celebrated the first one in order to give thanks for the bountiful harvest they had that year. It eventually became a holiday tradition that started to include not only the bountiful harvest but all areas that a person or community could be thankful for. Family, friends, health, a home, you name it. Having something in one’s life where not having it would make life less enjoyable is always something to be thankful for.

My own life has had many ups and down in the past few months. Many ups and downs have occurred in my personal life as well as some in my professional and social lives. This has caused me to have some personal soul searching in order to “come to grips” as they say with the things going on in one’s life. It’s good to do soul searching every now and again because it helps a person to have a clear perspective with the world, their role in it and their life. My humble opinion tells me that soul searching is an exercise that everyone needs to do at least once in their life if not more. Some of the most successful people (is society, academia, in business or religion, etc.) I know have admitted to having personally soul searched at least once in their lifetime. Many of those same people have actually said that they do it regularly because without it they have often fallen prey to their own self-deception.

Now, how many times a person does soul searching is completely up to them. I really do enjoy the quote by that famous author known only as ‘Anonymous’ that says, “The greatest evil in the world is self-deception, because self-deception preys on the troubled soul.” One of the simplest and easiest first steps to doing a personal soul search is to take a look at the good things one has in one’s life and thankful for them. Today being Thanksgiving is a good day to do just that. Why? Because, in addition to the saying “there’s no time like the present to begin something”, there are many other people today also giving thanks for what they have in their lives.

One of my aunt’s recently sent me the below prayer of Thanksgiving. After having read it, I thought what a great item to share with others. Whether a person is religious or not, we can always be grateful for the things we have. Whether the glass is half-full or half-empty, that perspective is always up to you.

Thank you Lord
Because everything goes well ,
For a clear and receptive mind
For the light that illuminates me,
For the life that heals my body,
For the abundance of all good things,
For the people who come into my life,
For those I love but have to let go,
For my home,
For my work,
For my study,
For my abundant remuneration
For my constant protection
For the safety of everyone who walks on the street,
For peace in my heart,
In my home,
In my work,
In my country,
In my city,
In my continent,
On my planet …
Thank God for this world in order.

Lord, always remind me that nothing is going to happen that you and I cannot resolve.

Amen!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

A Friend’s Diagnosis (0)

52 Powerful Quotes on Leadership, Action and Motivation

Gil Pizano — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 00:46:24 +0000

Why do we like quotes so much? A good reason for many of us is that you don’t have to read a book to get to the point. Quotes can be very short, straight to the point and thought provoking. Sometimes, there’s just so much wisdom and life experiences in one short sentence that you can almost sense and understand what the author has gone through to reach the point they are attempting to make! Here are some quotes that have thought provoking to me in my own leadership journey. Do you recognize any of these?

“I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep.” —Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord
“A leader has to be able to change an organization that is dreamless, soulless and visionless … someone’s got to make a wakeup call.” —Warren Bennis
“Although some people think that life is a battle, it is actually a game of giving and receiving.” —Florence Scovel Shinn
“A boss creates fear, a leader, confidence. A boss fixes blame, a leader corrects mistakes. A boss knows all, a leader asks questions. A boss makes work drudgery, a leader makes it interesting.” —Russell H. Ewing, Author
“A frightened captain makes a frightened crew.” —Lister Sinclair, Playwright/Broadcaster
“As you enter positions of trust and power, dream a little before you think.” —Toni Morrison, Author
“Becoming a leader is synonymous with becoming yourself. It is precisely that simple, and it is also that difficult.” —Warren Bennis
“A life of reaction is a life of slavery, intellectually, and spiritually. One must fight for a life of action, not reaction.” —Rita Mae Brown, Mystery Author
“A teacher affects eternity. He can never tell where his influence stops.” —Henry B. Adams, American Historian
“If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.” —John Quincy Adams
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear” —Ambrose Redmoon, American Philosopher
“Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage.” —William Ellery Channing, Psychologist
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” —Peter Drucker
“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments.” —Jim Rohn, Author/Motivator
“Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Everyone lives by selling something.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
“I have more fun, and enjoy more financial success, when I stop trying to get what I want and start helping other people get what they want.” —Spencer Johnson, Business Author
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.” —George Bernard Shaw
“I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?” —Benjamin Disraeli
“If the rate of change on the outside exceeds the rate of change on the inside, the end is near” —Jack Welch
“If you don’t think about the future, you won’t have one.” —Henry Ford
“Most people succeed because they are determined to. People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don’t know when to quit.” —George Allen, Football Coach
“It takes a tremendous act of courage to admit to yourself that you are not defective in any way whatsoever.” —Cheri Huber, Author/Zen Philosopher
“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” —William James
“It’s so hard when contemplated in advance and so easy when you do it.” —Robert Pirsig, Philosopher/Author
“Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.” —Tom Peters
“Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.” —Bernard Baruch
“Ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses.” —George Washington Carver
“No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.” —Helen Keller
“Nothing great was ever created without enthusiasm.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you.” —Dennis A. Peer, Management Consultant
“Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.” —John Quincy Adams
“Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.” —Thomas J. Watson, Former CEO, IBM
“People can be divided into two classes: those who go ahead and do something, and those people who sit still and inquire, why wasn’t it done the other way?” —Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Question: How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Answer: Four; calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” —Abraham Lincoln
“Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things and I’ll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things.” —Lawrence D. Bell, Founder, Bell Aircraft
“Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” —St. Francis
“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.” —Theodore Roosevelt
“The best way out is always through.” —Robert Frost
“The first law of success is concentration, to bend all the energies to one point, and to go directly to that point, looking neither to the right, nor to the left.” —William Matthews, Journalist
“The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” —Max DePree, Business Consultant/Author
“The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone. Then you develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it.” —Elaine Agather, CEO, JPMorgan Bank
“The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.” —Dwight D. Eisenhower
“The reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first.” —Robert J. McKain, Management Consultant
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” —Peter Drucker
“The first duty of a leader is optimism. How does your subordinate feel after meeting with you? Does he feel uplifted? If not, you are not a leader.” —Field Marshal Montgomery
“Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.” —Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death.” —James F. Bymes, Secretary of State
“What would be the use of immortality to a person who cannot use well a half an hour?” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“When I’m getting ready to persuade a person, I spend one-third of the time thinking about myself, what I’m going to say, and two-thirds of the time thinking about him and what he is going to say.” —Abraham Lincoln
”Always think of what you have to do as easy and it will be.” —Emile Coue, Psychologist
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing — that’s why we recommend it daily.” –Zig Ziglar

Hope you enjoyed reading some of these quotes! If so, and you’d like to comment, please do so. If not, then let us know and why!

What are some of your favorite leadership, action and motivation quotes?

Is Someone Shooting Down Your Ideas?

Gil Pizano — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 01:26:33 +0000

Beware of the four gallingly common strategies that people use to shoot down a person’s ideas. These tactics are all the more common against a person who’s been identified as a leader within their organization…but why? In the world we’re in, there are many people who unfortunately don’t like to think about how to solve a particular issue. They’d rather do what is probably the simplest thing a person can do. Point out what may be wrong with an idea without giving an alternate solution for the problem the idea is attempting to address. I’m sure you’ve probably never witnessed such a scenario.

I always think back to the first time I read about an interview with the great statesman Dr. Albert Schweitzer where he was asked the question of what’s wrong with men today. His answer, “Men simply don’t think.” (Note: My last two sentences where not meant to give a feminist any extra fodder against men out there, the answer was given by a famous person who happened to be a man as well.8-) )

The four strategies that I’ve seen people often use to shoot down a person’s ideas are:

(1) Death by delay

(2) Confusion

(3) Fear Mongering

(4) Ridicule

These four types of “attacks” on a person’s ideas are often done through a couple of dozen questions, comments, and/or arguments. Any one of these questions can cause an unsuspecting person to cave in and give up on their idea.

We tried that before and it didn’t work (<– this one is one of my personal favorites).
No one else does this, why should we try it really.
You can’t have it both ways.
Ah! What about THIS? [“this” being a worrisome thing that the proposers know nothing about and the attackers keep secret until just the right moment].
Good idea, but the timing is all wrong.
It’s too much work to do this.
It won’t work here. We have a unique situation.
It puts us on a slippery slope.
We simply can’t afford this. / It’s just too expensive.
You’ll never convince enough people.
You’re abandoning our core values.
It’s too simplistic to work. / It sounds too simple.
Sounds like [something horrible] to me!
People have too many concerns to do that.
It’s too difficult to understand.
You have a chicken and egg problem here.
Your proposal doesn’t go far enough/your proposal goes too far.
We’re simply not equipped to do this.
Money [or some other problem a proposal does not address] is the real issue here.
You’re exaggerating the problem.
You imply that we’ve been failing!
What’s the hidden agenda here?
What about this, and that, and this, and that…?
We’ve been so successful. Why should we change? (if it’s not broken, why fix it?)

What’s Your Response?

One of the more common responses people often do to is often the first thing they should not it they want to succeed with their idea. All too often people push out the ‘troublemakers’. Why do that? Here is a golden opportunity. Why not just let them in and treat them with respect. Allow them to always be part of the solution. Listen to their concerns and criticism. The opposite of respect in that situation is shooting back. If you start shooting back at a person who is criticizing you, others will see that you are shooting at them and may become sympathetic to the other person even if his attack wasn’t fair!

Another type of response that often backfires is drowning a person in a half-hour’s worth of evidence. Drilling them basically into the ground with information as to why your idea is a good one that will definitely work. It’s better to communicate in ways that are simple, clear, short and to the point. Research by authors John P. Kotter and Lorne A. Whitehead had shown that the most effective people, instead of just spraying verbal bullets, respond in a way that is simple, clear and filled with common sense.

Never let it get personal, no matter how much you want to lash out. Just understand that the person is really attacking the idea, not you. Keep an eye on the entire audience and not just the one critic. It’s very easy to get hung up on the guy who’s attacking your idea.

Last Words…

The saying that states, “He who laughs last, laughs best!” is not one that I agree with. The phrase that often is more accurate to me is, “He who laughs last, doesn’t really need to laugh at all!” He lets his idea prove him right.

When one has an idea, it’s never simply the idea that makes it to be a working idea. One thing is to be able to generate an idea by digging up data, analyzing it, and putting it together in some form of logical way. But it’s another thing all together to gain the support one needs in order to get the idea off the ground and working!

Cheers!

Gil

A New Perception Can Alter Your Reality

Gil Pizano — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 11:40:46 +0000

What are you doing right now? What are you thinking about at this moment? How do you perceive the challenges you’re facing today? If you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that you could change something for the better, would you go ahead and do it? The outcome of something is greatly influenced by the perception a person has towards it. Even though I may be beginning to sound like a Pollyanna at this moment, there is definitely some truth in the foolishness that some people take to be part of being a severe optimist. Perception is controllable and alterable.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word “perception” comes from the Latin words perceptio, percipio, and means “receiving, collecting, action of taking possession, apprehension with the mind or senses.”

In philosophy, and psychology, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. Perception is perhaps one of the oldest fields in psychology. The oldest quantitative law in psychology is the Weber-Fechner law, which quantifies the relationship between the intensity of physical stimuli and their perceptual effects. The study of perception gave rise to the Gestalt school of psychology, with its emphasis on holistic approach.

What one perceives is a result of a person’s interactions between past experiences, including one’s culture, and the interpretation of the perceived.

I’ve seen a large number of people miss out on some amazing (and I truly mean AMAZING) opportunities because of their perception toward something or someone. I see this all the time at social events. Whenever a person doesn’t want to approach someone else, or return a hello towards another person when that person says hello to them, they are inadvertently losing out on an opportunity. The opportunity to know the other person better, the opportunity to learn that the other person is related to someone who happens to be very close friends with a person they’ve been attempting to connect with for the past two or three years it turns out. The opportunity to find out that the person is an executive or a person of influence in an industry you’re attempting to make your name known. The opportunity to make a good impression with someone who can positively (or negatively) effect your reputation due to the way a person interacts or does not interact with them. An opportunity missed due to a person’s perception. This may not always be the case, but it happens much more often than you might think.

Another destiny altering perception that is all too common is to think of a challenging situation one may be dealing with as a completely negative thing all the time. Sometimes a challenge one faces is really an opportunity to shine, or to move on away from somewhere one doesn’t want to be, or to grow as a person. There are many possibilities that can exist within challenging scenarios, but I’m not going to go into all of those hereJ.

Have You Ever Been Guilty of…

Not giving a task the attention it deserved because you thought it was more important to get it done rather than doing it right?

Not keeping an appointment with a person because, even though you said you “may” or “may not” be able to keep it (and you really could’ve made the appointment), you decided that making the appointment was not as important as watching your favorite sports team on TV take on their arch-rival?

Not treating someone at an event as important as someone else you were in conversation with because you didn’t believe that person was worth your time?

Basically throwing your hands up in the air and accepting a bad situation, even though you suspect you may be able to do something about it so that the outcome may not be as bad?

I’ve been guilty of all of the above scenarios in the past more often than I care to admit.

The Past Cannot Be Changed

One person I use to mentor a long time ago always dwelled for long periods of time on negative events that have past. He dwelled so much in fact that he was hampering his ability to move up in his career and build on some important relationships. When an opportunity to lead a new venture or project came along, he would keep “bringing up” the failures of the past that he was involved with. He didn’t know it or understand that he was making himself appear like a “dweller” instead of a pro-active “doer”. His perception was that he needed to remember the past and learn from it. But at the same time, his perception of how much he should focus on the past, in comparison to how much focus he should have on the present and the future, was affecting his success. A success that, according to him, was out of his reach most of the time. This was his perception of what was and needed to be.

Another person I mentored was much happier in her career (she told me) because she learned early on that you can’t change the past and so why dwell on something you can’t change. She chose to focus on what she could change. Remembering the past but not dwelling on it. Because of this, she didn’t waste personal energy on the past and was able to put more thought into making things she had control over work. Her perception was a proactive and resilient one. Resilient because even when she is surprised by something that is, how shall we say, less than what she was expected or wanted, she quickly moves forward in attempting to remedy the situation. Or at the very least, move onto the next initiative. This was her perception of what was and needed to be.

The Ability to Alter the Future is Within Your Power

A negative perception is often based upon a problem or a set of circumstances in one’s life in which a person feels stuck, without options and paralyzed. Unless one is a psychological masochist, this is an awful feeling that a person would rather not feel. Creating, and maintaining a positive perception begins with the personal choice to have one.

We can’t always choose what happens to us in life, but we can definitely choose how we react to what happens.

What are your thoughts?

Here are some good articles on the above:

4 Self-Perceptions Can Improve Your Career! by Deb Wheatman

Are You Guilty of Judging Others?

Does Your Perceptions Meet Your Expectations?

How to Crack the Self-Awareness Paradigm by John Baldoni

Lower Your Workplace Stress by Changing Your Perceptions by Harriet Meyerson

The Role of Perception and Attitude in Stress Management by John Townsend

Your Perception IS Your Reality by Tony D. Clark

Zig Ziglar — Attitude Makes All The Difference (video)