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I recently saw a wonderful piece about “If I Had My Life to Live Over.” I thought it was worth sharing with you. It’s from the late Nadine Stair of Louisville, Kentucky, who wrote it when she was 85 years old:
If I had my life to live over again,
I’d dare to make more mistakes next time.
I’d relax.
I’d limber up. Read the rest of this entry »
In San Diego we’re in the middle of a six-month “Season of Service” movement with businesses, civic agencies, and churches all pitching in with community volunteers to serve others. For years I’ve been dreaming about how we can make San Diego a servant leadership town – how in the near future people will come here and say, “What an amazing place to live—just look at the way government and business and education and neighborhoods interact – everyone seems to be out to serve each other and solve problems, not to be self serving.”
My larger dream is that leadership throughout the world will be composed of people who lead at a higher level and, in the process, serve first and lead second. That’s a really tall order, and I might sound like a dreamer. But read this wonderful quote from Harriet Tubman:
“Every great dream begins with a dreamer.
Always remember, you have within you
the strength, the patience, and the passion
to reach for the stars to change the world.”
Why not? What do you want to do to change the world? Remember, you can do it by the moment-to-moment interactions with your family, your friends, your colleagues, and everyone you meet. What’s your dream for changing the world? Go ahead, be a dreamer!
Not too long ago I was an emcee at a conference in Florida and it was great. There were three interesting speakers—Craig Groeschel, who founded Lifechurch.tv, Andy Stanley, pastor of North Point Community Church near Atlanta, and then we had the famous author Patrick Lencioni.
I learned a lot from these guys. It was so interesting – all three of them talked about ego issues.
* Craig talked about how a lot of people have fear and let that fear stop them. He said you need to push through the pain and do what’s right.
* Patrick Lencioni has a new book called “Getting Naked,” which is all about being vulnerable. He thinks people in business shouldn’t try to act as if they’re perfect – people will really admire that. Colleen Barrett from Southwest Airlines has also said that people admire your strengths, but they love your vulnerability.
* And then Andy Stanley talked about how if you do less and delegate more, you are going to get a lot more accomplished. A lot of times people try to achieve things beyond their abilities because they are afraid to delegate to other people. That’s when you end up trying to do everything—and of course you’re going to fall short. Then you’re in trouble.
That sounds like the fear of false pride – where you think more of yourself than you should, and you don’t want to appear vulnerable. The other fear is where you have self doubt – and think less of yourself than you should. This really reinforces the importance of our whole self leadership program—really effective leadership starts from the inside. It starts with you, whether you’re trying to influence kids at home, or coworkers, or as a manager with your people, or what have you. It’s so important that you know who you are, and that you realize that you are NOT your performance or the opinion of others. You can do what’s right. You can also share and be vulnerable. When you make a mistake, you can push through fear.
I just love learning. Make sure this week to learn a lot. Maybe there’s still time today to learn something!
I recently heard a wonderful speaker named David Cook, who is one of the great sports mental coaches in the country. He had a really interesting theory about goal setting that I thought was worth sharing with you. He said when you go to set up a goal, whatever it is, you should try to see that goal in your own mind being accomplished. You need to see the outcome. Then you need to feel what it will be like once you’ve accomplished that particular goal, and get that feeling in mind. And then you need to trust that you’re going to be able to get there. He said the power is in the seeing it and the feeling it, and then just trusting the thing. So if you have a goal, whether it’s a business or personal goal, try to actually see yourself accomplishing it and feel like you’re going to feel once you’ve accomplished it—the smile on your face, the applause from other people, whatever—and then just trust it and set your sights on that goal. I think that is really interesting. In golf, he has a whole bunch of people who have “SFT” on their ball, so when they’re playing golf, they try to see every shot—what kind of shot are they going to hit, where is it going to go, how high and all—then get up and feel it, and then just trust the process. He said it really is amazing how it works on all kinds of goals. I was thinking about the great athletes competing in the Olympics—the ones who win have seen themselves crossing the finish line and accomplishing their goal ahead of time. Then they make their actions consistent with what they are seeing and feeling. I think it’s a really fascinating process: See it – Feel it – Trust it. Isn’t that interesting? Try it on one of your goals today.
Last week and this week we are having a “Blanchard March Madness” tournament here at the corporate office. Last week we had some individual competitions including HORSE and a Sharpshooter tournament, and this week we are having 3-on-3 games. Well, on Thursday we had the finals of the individual competitions, and do you know who won the sharpshooting contest? Yours truly! Ha! I made 16 out of 20 shots from the foul line. What a great time we had, and I couldn’t believe I beat all the youngsters here at the office!
It was interesting. I’m proofreading the second edition of The Mulligan that I wrote with Wally Armstrong, about golf and faith. There’s a lot of mental stuff in there too. Tony Robbins said that if you want to perform well, there are three aspects. One is focus—you have to see yourself doing well. And you know, I used to be a great foul shooter when I was younger, so I just saw myself pouring the shots in. Then Tony said you have to have the physiology—you have to walk like you know what you’re talking about. So when it was my turn, I just walked there like I knew what I was doing. And then Tony said you have to have a routine. So I bounced the ball and tossed it around the same way every time before I went for the shot. So I made 16 out of 20 at the line, which even surprised me.
I also read in there what we wrote about playing NATO golf—Not Attached To Outcome. So you’re not worried about your outcome, you’re just going with the flow. Last week we were at a program called Inspire San Diego. The guy who put it on was Greg Reid, who cowrote a book called Three Feet from Gold, which really built on the ideas from Think and Grow Rich, the classic book by Napoleon Hill. Just listen to this line from Napoleon Hill: “There are many things you cannot control, but you can control the only thing that really matters—your mind and your attitude. External forces have very little to do with success. Those who program themselves for success find a way to succeed even in the most difficult of circumstances. Solutions to most problems come from one source, and one source alone: yourself. You can do it if you believe you can. You control your destiny. Decide to live life to the fullest. You may be three feet from gold.”
That was fun. Life is a very special occasion, don’t miss it!
Occasionally Margie and I lead a couples’ workshop that lasts a day and a half. It’s really interesting—you might say, “What does leadership training have to do with couples in a marriage relationship?” It is such a powerful thing, we found out, because as a lot of you know, we define leadership as an influence process. Anytime you’re trying to influence the thinking, beliefs, or development of another person, you are engaging in leadership. When you ask people about the most influential people in their lives, they don’t normally mention bosses at work. They talk about their mother, father, grandfather, uncle, or a coach or teacher. There is a lot of life role leadership that goes on, informally, in families and in friendships and all. Leadership in the home is life role leadership. It’s probably the most important leadership role you could ever have.
In our work, you know we say that leadership is a transformational journey starting with self leadership, then moving to one-on-one leadership, then to team leadership, and then to organizational leadership. And as we look at families, it becomes really clear that self leadership really starts with just finding out who you are and whose you are, and getting perspective on your life. Then you move to a marriage relationship, and that’s when you’re trying to influence each other, one on one. Then when kids come along—now we’re talking about team leadership. How do you build a community? How do you get people to recognize that none of us is as smart as all of us, and really create that team environment? And then the organizational leadership of a family would be the extended family. What do you do with your in-laws and outlaws and cousins and that whole thing? That’s something most people don’t think about as a leadership position, and yet in a family, it’s a whole different element. So it’s kind of fascinating. Through our training we realize that these concepts apply at home as much as they do in business. So learning how to be a good leader is good for everyone.
I was recently reviewing an old concept that I learned years ago called “The ABCs of Personal Power:”
- A stands for Activating Event. It’s anything that can happen to you. It can be good, it can be bad, or whatever. Things will happen. You get praise, you get a reprimand, you get promoted, you lose a job, your house burns down – you know, whatever. It’s something that happens to you in life.
- B stands for your Belief system. That’s where you store your beliefs about yourself, about other people, and about life.
- C is Consequence. What do you do about what happens to you?
We can never control the activating events. Good and bad will happen to you in life. Things show up. The only thing you can control is your belief system—what do you do with what happens? I remember one time when I was a kid, walking with a friend in the woods when a snake came crawling across the path. I’m not a big fan of snakes, so I was about ready to turn around and run. And my friend said, “Don’t run! Snakes are beautiful—look at this thing!” And he bent down and picked up the snake. It was the same activating event from a different belief system. That’s the way it is in life. The same event happening to two different people gets programmed a different way. What do you do when something happens to you? Remember—it’s your belief system that will drive your life. You can’t control what happens to you but you have complete control over what you do about it.
You know, I think sometimes you really can make your dreams come true. Margie has often said, “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” As you think of your New Year’s resolutions, go ahead and dream about the person you want to be or the thing you want to do. When you start to send energy out to dream, people just may show up in your life to help you accomplish it. That’s what happened when Spencer Johnson and I wrote The One Minute Manager. In May 1982, the book was coming out and in September, Spencer Johnson and I met at the La Jolla Cove. We had The New York Times book review section and a bottle of champagne, and we set our goals and our dreams for this book. We dreamed that we would be able to sell 500,000 copies—no business book had ever sold that many—and we dreamed that it would be on The New York Times bestseller list for six months. We celebrated, we clicked the glasses as we were sitting there with the bestseller list, and it was just really a fun time. This was on a Sunday. On Monday I was getting on a plane in San Diego going to Chicago, and I introduced myself to the guy sitting next to me in First Class. I said, “What do you do?” and he said, “I’m a regional sales manager for B. Dalton.” I said, “You sell books?” and he said, “Sure, we have 750 stores.” And I started talking to this guy and I designed a whole strategy to get to the business and economic buyers of B. Dalton and Waldenbooks and all the bookstores. And I said to this guy, “You weren’t supposed to be sitting here, were you?” and he said, “How did you know that? They goofed up my ticket and at the last minute I was upgraded to First Class.” I said, “You had no choice. I sucked you into this seat with the energy from my dream and our vision about this book.” So dream big in 2010! And let other people know what your dream is so that maybe they can help it come true. Have a wonderful dreaming year and let’s see what kind of things you can accomplish at work and at home and in the community. Be the best you can be in 2010.
I used to work with a fellow named Rick Tate, who talked about studying people who trained seeing-eye dogs. What they found was that they kick two kinds of dogs out of the program: The first kind were the ones who were completely obedient, who would do anything that the master said. That was really kind of surprising because you would have thought that the only ones they would kick out would be the ones who wouldn’t do anything that the master said. But they kicked out both kinds. The only dogs they kept in the program were the dogs who would do what the master said unless it didn’t make sense. They kept the dogs that could think for themselves. I think that’s what we as leaders should always try to do—get everybody to think for themselves. Sure, we have some guidelines, here’s what our policy is and all, but use your brains. You can imagine a seeing-eye dog with his master at the street corner, and the master says, “Forward,” and the dog looks up and there’s a car coming at sixty miles an hour. And the dog thinks, “This is gonna be a real bummer,” as he leads his master out into the middle of the street. So we want to empower people to use their brains – train them to do what the boss wants, or what the policies are, unless it doesn’t make sense. That’s really allowing people to bring their brains to work. So don’t get hit by a car! Use your brain today.
