Tag: Goals

Time to Get Up

Today’s an exciting day. The weather is cool, the sun is out, and for a new day in a new week, life is pretty good.

I am embarking on a new idea. One, I hope will help many people. The project is called Reveille. Reveille is the bugle call you hear early in the morning when it’s time to get up, get started, and go out to win a new day.

No one likes to sleep in more than I do. And yet, all those things that I want to do cannot be accomplished with the covers over my head. I need to get up, clean up, drink up the coffee, and get out there where I can accomplish those items I need to do.

With your permission, as this week unfolds I will tell you more about Reveille, and more about how will be structured to meet your needs. For now, thank you for joining me in this wonderful announcement, and please come back to this blog to learn more as Reveille unfolds.

I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow. If it’s is beautiful where you are, go out and seize the day!

 

New Way

We Have a Plan

Plans are important. If you think the plan will never change, you never faced a true enemy in combat. When you face-off in combat the first thing that changes are the plans. These days my plans normally revert to “yes dear” and “I’m sorry.”

As you craft your plans, the best idea to get everyone who is part of that plan involved. Not only do you get overall buy-in to the plan, but you also have the support of everyone, because they know and understand they are part of that plan.

I know this sounds strange that I’m telling you to plan and then tell you that your plans will change. To demonstrate this let me tell you about Boy Scout Troop which I helped run as a leader.

About four times a year the scouts would go out to a camporee, freezoree, or some other camping adventure with all of the troops in the Council. Imagine a vast field with between 75 and a hundred troops of boys in attendance and camping over the weekend. We used to hold an overnight camp-out a week or two before a camporee and train the scouts in our troop on all of the various skills which would be tested on in the games at the camporee.

Does this mean the kids had an automatic guarantee of winning the games? No. Like everything else in life, things do change. The boys were there to have fun and having a little knowledge about what they were doing made it more fun. The games were never exactly like what we taught them, yet having those skills helped to do well. They still had to do it, and adapt as things changed. But, at least they had a plan of how things work.

As you leave one comfort zone, even though you may not have been exactly comfortable with it at times, you need a plan. The plan alone does not guarantee an absolute victory. The plan and a little practice mean you have a good idea of what you’re trying to accomplish.

Will that plan change? Yes, dear, I’m sorry.

Protect What Is Valuable as We Move Forward

Sometimes when we live with jewels all of our life, we forget what is really precious. We sometimes take for granted the things that work so well. And, tend to ignore those people  that are always there.

When we make a change, the ripples of the change affect everything and everyone around us. The larger the change, the stronger the ripples around us are; and the more those who are near to us are affected. It is important that we are cognizant of, and pay attention, to those concerns.

Have you ever been in an earthquake? Having lived around the world, I have been in several earthquakes. Some that were over as soon as they started, and some that seemed to go on forever. The truth is, the time of earthquakes is usually shorter than you think. The reason it feels longer is that you don’t know when it’s going to stop. Just like the earthquake, ripples that are caused by the change of one person affect others more deeply when they do not know what is going on or where the changes are headed.

There is a really neat way to help dampen the ripples of change for both you and those around you. The nice thing is it doesn’t cost anything, it takes very little time, it provides everybody involved some great support. Just sit down with those concerned and talk to them about what is going on.

It’s amazing that when people know, they can work as a team and together they can do all sorts of wonderful things to meet challenges.  To grow, to move in  directions, and to set the basis to ultimately succeed, no matter what the odds are.  Whether you are moving to a new city, changing jobs, planning a retirement, or any number of other things, sit down with those around you and whatever you do you discuss it and do it together.

That is one mean old master sergeant’s thought for the day. Try talking to those around you, especially the ones you care about, and you’ll be surprised how much support and teamwork you actually will gain.

Talk to you again tomorrow, have a great one out there.

We change with the times

We have talked about the fact that nothing lasts forever. Even the glass bottle that we drink from and the glass vase that holds our flowers is actually in a liquid form very slowly, forever changing. And so we have a choice. As everything changes around us do we accept the fact and change with it? Or, do we put a stick in the sand and say, “Here I stand.”

We see this all the time. Because of this, some people are labeled as old fogies. Other people are just dismissed out of hand as not knowing because it was not of their generation. The truth is, it depends. It is actually up to you. Do you keep with the old times? Do you learn and grow and go with the new times? I vote for the latter. I am too young of the mind to start living in yesteryear and begin believing there are no worthwhile changes.

We see others, and sometimes ourselves, occasionally get stuck in the past. Does that mean we are forever doomed to live the life of what happened at the high school football game? Counting the rivets on a B-52 in North Dakota? The pain of a hangover a day after the frat party? The patrol that went sideways? Or whatever else is burdensome on our mind? I really don’t think we have to do that.

We have a choice. For me, I choose to remember the past, learn and live in the now, and celebrate the possibilities of the future.  We remember in order not fall into the same traps or repeat mistakes. Now is where I live. If I am not happy with now, I learned so that I can change it. I also learn to prepare my path into the future.

Right now I should not be living in the past nor in the future. Right now, I should live, except, and enjoy where and what I am now. I do this knowing that like glass, I am not a solid. Rather, I am something that is continually learning, growing, and reshaping my destiny.

Tomorrow Is a New Dawn

Tomorrow is a new dawn. The start of a new day and the possibilities that day brings for all the great things in life. Just imagine what tomorrow might bring.

We get so used to the idea of the new Dawn because during our lives we have seen it happen so often. We get accustomed to the fact that there will be a new day in the morning. The new chance for a beautiful sunrise, dew on the grass, and beauty all around us in the air and on the ground.

Sometimes we just cannot see the beauty and wonder of it all, because we get a little jaded by its regularity. Yet it’s the most wonderful thing you can think of. Whoever put this whole plan into motion took great care. The cycles work well sunrise and sunsets, seasons and years.

In our day to day hustle of work, kids to school, bills to pay, and important things to do, we sometimes forget to stop and look. If you have the sun rising and purple on the mountain and crops in the fields, forests before you and the beauty of the shoreline again with its ebb and flow of the tides with the crashing of the waves to the shore, it is something to behold.

In the neatest thing, we each see something a little bit different within the new morning. It is as though each morning was crafted especially for each and every one of us.

Interesting things are coming up in the next week, and I will be very excited to tell you about it on Monday. Please remember without change, better things never happen.

Hope to be in touch with you again Monday.

We are once again at the end of a week with no idea where the first days went.  This seems to be a ritual with me.  I am not sure why.  I live near the Air Force Academy, and I guess the cadets up there must be rubbing off on me.

At the Academy, the cadets look at a week as a day.  Monday is the new morning, Wednesday is lunchtime and Friday is the end of the day.  For young people who have a lot to do and little free time to waste, I guess this makes sense.

I may have to run my projects by the week and, like the Academy, cadets look at each week as a day.  It might make the week more interesting.  It would help to organize and expedite a project. And it would make each section of the week more memorable.

 

Just a thought.  Thanks for listening.

Inspire Someone

Thanks, we are glad to have you here with us again!

Have you been thinking about what we’ve been talking about this week? Have you been writing things down? This is your life. I think we each only get one, and it is important that you have the chance to live the life that does you honor.

I have been taking a course on various companies. Learning what motivated them. Learning about their passions. Learning what it took to become viable and sustainable. For the founders of these companies, it truly is work. It is the work of fulfilling their passion.

Two kids from the same high school, one in ends up flipping burgers and salting fries. The other is driving Mercedes and taking vacations to Hawaii. Why?

Think of life as trade offs. 

Even better, think of where your passions live.  What do you need to do to fulfill them?  And, how that helps others because if done right, you could inspire generations that come after you. Don’t believe me?  Three words: Disney, Ford, Edison.

Succeed or Settle

Welcome back!

I left yesterday with the cliffhanger. You can do anything that you want to; and, to do so you have to do whatever it takes to succeed.

Life is rarely handed to us on a silver platter. What makes our life so precious to us are the things we work and sacrifice for to make our lives better for our families and us. Anything just handed to us no matter how nice, unexpected, or needed, does not hold the same value to us as those things we scrimped, saved, or strived for.

So, the question becomes, who is the future you, and what are you willing to put into making it happen? If you haven’t done so yet, now, before others get up and speak for you, write down what you would want to say about yourself and the things you’ve done during your life and those things you want to do.

I know you feel you are doing a lot of writing this week. It is important. Think about a cartoon of a kid who shoots an arrow into the side of the building, and then runs out and draws the target around where the arrow had landed and thinks he has succeeded. Did he succeed? Or did he settle?

Do you want to succeed? Or do you want to settle? This is a decision you have to make, and I cannot tell you what is right or wrong for you.

 

 

Mountains and Molehills

Hi there!

Did you sit down and consider the questions from yesterday? Did you write something down?

I saw a saying that goes you can be anything you want to be. A Variation on the saying is that you can do anything you want to do. Another variation is you can go wherever you want to go in life.

For some people, those things appear to be just lip service. They point at obstacles, and hindrances, and the results of poor decisions because no one to give them a chance. At the same time, there are people whose mountain of concerns make other people’s look like molehills, and yet they succeed.

Many people look at those who succeed and say, “Sure, but there they are outliers.” My thought on that is, “Yeah, so?”

You can do whatever it is you set your mind to. And, the second part of that? You have to be willing to do what it takes to succeed.

We will talk about what that looks like tomorrow.

Hidden Factories???

Up until now, we’ve talked about systems and habits at home. Most workplaces also have systems in habits. Some of those systems and habits probably work well. Some could always work better with a little improvement.

There is always the formal workplace and the informal workplace. Both are important to the business. One is the direct channel that management uses to set up processes and requirements and to maintain the actions needed for the business to be sustained. The other is the method by which the workers take what management dictates and makes it happen.

As I said, one does not work well without the other. Smart management and smart workers know this. The really smart companies don’t set up new systems and requirements until the management and workers have sat down together and gone over them.

On the other hand, sometimes management sends down new processes that it expects to have implemented within two weeks. The workers who actually do the work day in and day out look at the new processes, find the places where it does not work well, and simply substitutes whatever they feel it takes to complete what they think should be accomplished. When this happens, no one is happy.

Changes always work best with good, logical explanations and positive agreement before implementation.  Without this step, your new systems have just turned into hidden factories.

What is a hidden factory?  Join us Monday for our next blog, and I will tell you all about it.