Effective change is closer than you think

As the year wraps up, we may once again be considering new year's resolutions for change. For some, the thought of the well-intended resolutions that we let fall by the way side this year can have a perturbing effect on the process since we hated that feeling of failure.  Nonetheless, we all know deep in our heart that we are called to more and have to change in order to achieve.

When considering personal change,  we can tend to focus our change efforts on some under-achieving area of our life, instead of pouring our limited change energy into strengthening the areas which are peforming. It's a natual tendancy since we tend to focus on our negative instead of expanding our positive. Scott Belsky of "Fast Company" challenges us to optimize instead of employing a drastic change. More often than not, our radical attempts to change fail since we attempted to over-correct much too drastically, leaving in its wake a chaotic mess of frustration and self-condemnation.  Additionally, Belsky suggests that our pursuit of greatness has more to do with optimizing our strengths instead of just trying to rid ourselves of the unattributable qualities that suffer from comparison. In other words, take what energy you do have and apply it to the areas that are producing in hope of optimizing yourself.  So the next time you are considering change, consider optimizing. When applied, the concept will give you the small Penny principle victories that add up over time to make up a windfall of greatness. Below is a short video piece on the concept of optimization.

Win Today!

Victor

Sitting in the airport waiting for a connection flight can give you the time to people watch and to contemplate. The people watching is what I enjoy most about the waiting, but through the time to contemplate I can't help but recognize an energy of purpose in the air among all of the travelers moving through their journey.  As I see it, purpose has a way of making our lives much more focused as it summons our innate desire to be relevant.  What's more, when purpose arrives, an efficiency of sorts tends to infect our entire process so that our decisions become prioritized.

A success story that all began with a little ambition

I just finished reading the success story of Trisha Waldon, a retired millionaire who started her own business when she was 28.  The kicker is that Trisha was a single mother of two, barely surviving on food stamps in the Black Hills of South Dakota (not exactly the opportunity capital of the world).  Her full story can be found here. Trisha claims that her ah ha moment came when she over-heard a teacher at her daughter's school say "You can create your own life." She goes on to say, “I knew I had to take responsibility for my own life. I had been running it according to others and things hadn’t worked out very well.” 


The value of a moment couldn't be more poignantly captured than by this story.  Her reality was dim at best, yet she found that spark of ambition in herself to believe that she was worth not giving up on. The story is inspirational and practical, since the magic fairy godmother didn't wave a wand over her life to put her where she is today.  Trisha achieved through trial and error, but never retreated to her previous place in life. She grew with each moment and over-time began to learn how to properly harness the power of an ambitious spark.  In Trisha's own words she reminds us that it is a day by day process of hard work, but the ambition kept her in a growth mindset, “Getting there was incredibly challenging, I learned by trial and error, I cried a lot..." I am reminded that we all need to believe a little more that we actually can achieve what we know we are worth. It just won't be easy that's all. And that's the starting point of every great success story. 

Win Today!

Victor

A little ambition can grow a giant dream

A baby pygmy hippo who will eventually grow to weigh 400-500 lbs

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambition. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
- Mark Twain

Ambition is a word that can often be misunderstood by those who quote it, and or, by those that hear it being quoted. It's often an attribute assigned to the captivated person who is single minded in a pursuit. Moreover, it can also be a shield of excuse for those that do not know how to wield it correctly, thus mistakenly claiming ambition as the cover for ill-spirited actions. The world is littered by the collateral damage of ambition gone astray. Yet in it it all, ambition is the fuel for realizing an upstream located vision, despite the current down stream reality.  The question is how well do we understand the fundamentals of this powerful tool?