The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. That’s why banks rely heavily on a credit scores.  Its also why obtaining those often elusive goals is so dang hard.  So how can you create change? Here’s the 3 Critical Elements To Accomplish Anything!

A Written Goal

I mean a compelling and specific written goal with a due date.  By compelling I mean something you want to achieve and you know why you want to achieve it.  To simply say you want to “read the bible through” or “lose 10 pounds” doesn’t carry enough weight (pun intended) to get you to actually change your behavior.  You have to have a compelling “Why” or reason for moving in the direction of your goal.  Keep it positive.  Focus on what you want to gain and not what you want to lose.

A Solid Strategy

My good friend Mark Cole defined strategy this way.  “If your goal was to occupy Normandy your strategy might be to use the air force the navy and the marines for a Continue Reading…

Recently I was on a flight where the flight attendant delivered his safety instructions over the PA and finished with this statement, “Please be careful when you open the overhead bins because, in flight, shift happens”.  Clever, huh?  I don’t care if you’re a pre-school teacher or the Pope, in this life, things don’t always go as planned.

Here are 7 ways to leverage disruption and thrive when shift happens to you.

1. Don’t make things worse:  You won’t make your best decisions when things are on fire… so just don’t!  The easiest way to worsen any complicated situation is to make major life decisions before the shock of the situation has worn off.  If you just had a bomb dropped on you, give yourself some time to let the concussion wear off before you dive into a solution.  Making promises, good or bad,  or offering forgiveness too early may come back to bite you.  Promises made during disruption are almost always formed out of anger.  Premature forgiveness can lead to bitterness on your part or on the part of the person who thought they were forgiven.

2.  Decide ahead of time how you’ll leverage disruption: You must decide ahead of time how you’ll be affected and perfected through disruption.  Disruption that is certainly coming.  Yes I know that’s hard to do when you’ve lost your job or your marriage.  This isn’t an easy step.  Most of the time the lesson is only obvious in the rear view mirror, but still you have to be committed to the lesson.

3. Take as much responsibility as you can:  My pastor, Andy Stanley, claims that counseling has never been his strong suit but that he knows one thing with absolute certainty.  If he couldn’t get people to focus on THEIR CONTRIBUTION to the problem at hand, they weren’t making progress.  Continue Reading…

For the past few weeks one of the audio books I’ve been listening to is the Four Hour Body by Tim Ferris. (Caution there is some adult language and a couple of very adult topics included)

Overall the book has been pretty good but there has been one phrase that really grabbed me. Tim does a lot of strategic testing of supplements and exercise strategies using himself as the test subject. In one experiment he tried a certain dosage of a natural supplement and reported:

No Observable Effect Level Continue Reading…