The Importance of Focus

The Importance of Focus

Every other Friday I post about what has been happening over the previous two weeks. It is part of my “Show Your Work” experiment I started in the fall. If you have been following along, you will note things have changed quite a bit.

But ultimately, that is a significant part of what this experiment is all about. So often when someone is successful and later tells their story of “how I did it — you can too,” there are missing elements that didn’t seem important at the time. Maybe I won’t be successful (I hope that is not the case), or more likely people won’t look to emulate me, but for the time being, it is a great way to document my progress, what I am learning, and hopefully share some insights along the way.

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What Do You Believe That Is Unique?

What Do You Believe That Is Unique?

This was one of several thought-provoking questions that was asked of me during my time in the hot seat with my mastermind group. What surprised me was that the question was exactly what I needed and I had an answer readily available.

This is not how my hot seat session started, but it was a critical turning point. I have been, for several years now, working on defining who I am (in terms of my career), what value I can offer to the world, and how this all ties into my greater purpose in the world. These are not generally questions you would expect to get answers to during a one-hour session within your mastermind session, but my group is awesome! (more…)

How Every Business Is the Same: A Peek Inside the Movies

How Every Business Is the Same: A Peek Inside the Movies

For the past two weeks my house has been an “on location” film set. Movie making seems so glamorous, but after a few small peeks behind the curtain, like most things, it is mostly a lot of work.

It is so easy to assume that any business in which you don’t have direct experience is more interesting, easier, more fun… (you can pick any descriptor you choose). But when you really get down to basics, most businesses have lots of the same characteristics, both good and bad. The trick is to figure out what will make YOU happy, what YOU find interesting, and what YOU will find easy because it is the right match for YOU!

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What a Broken Leg Taught Me About Confidence

What a Broken Leg Taught Me About Confidence

In case you don’t know, I have been a PSIA certified part-time ski instructor for the past 8 years. I also broke my leg skiing about 5 years ago. Luckily it was near the end of the season so I had plenty of time to physically recover. Mental recovery took longer.

The scenario was fairly simple: we were on a week long trip to Aspen with friends. The first day was a beautiful day for skiing and we had enjoyed the morning and were heading to the base of the hill to take a lunch break. I was making some wide, smooth, rather fast turns as we were headed toward the bottom. I noticed that the lead part of our group had stopped, so I started putting on the breaks and the next thing I knew, I was on the ground and my right foot/leg felt strange. I yelled for my husband to come up and help me and when he arrived he quickly ascertained that this was much more severe than I imagined: I had broken my leg.

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Rethinking Failure – It Is Not Black and White

Rethinking Failure – It Is Not Black and White

Failure is a harsh word. But it is often the word we associate with a scenario that doesn’t turn out in the successful, happy, satisfying way that we had originally planned. But I don’t think looking at something as a failure is really helpful.

If something isn’t a success, we often jump to the opposite and call it a failure. But rarely are projects and activities so clearly black and white. In reality, most things we engage in fall along a spectrum. To delineate anything that does not hit the ultimate success mark as a failure is just not fair.  Failure is all about negative connotations. Along with that comes lots of negative emotions – neither of which is usually helpful in the long run. How much better would it be to grade our goals and objectives on a scale, looking at each element and component individually instead of lumping the whole thing into a single pass/fail mark?

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Time to Get Ahead

Time to Get Ahead

The week between Christmas and New Year’s can be restful since lots of people take time off, but this year I used the time to get ahead.

Between now and the middle of the month I am booked almost solid with appointments, trips and meetings. But I have also set a goal to be more consistent in both my blog posting as well developing a new weekly newsletter, the Weekly Course of Action. So instead of just relaxing as I would normally have chosen to do, I got ahead of the curve.

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