goals

How Much Longer?

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We can’t go on a road trip with kids without hearing the classic question, “how much longer?” If the trip is any where near an hour or more we will hear it and probably over and over.

We asked the question as kids too because all kids want to get to the destination faster. Waiting is hard. The interesting thing is we grow up, but we still have these same feelings and emotions of wanting to “arrive” sooner. We may not outload in our whiny voice ask the question like we did as kids, but it doesn’t mean we aren’t thinking it.

Only now it isn’t about asking how much longer until we get to the hotel. As adults the questions we ask are more like:

“How much longer until I lose this weight?”

“How much longer until I’m out of debt?”

“How much longer until I can get my new car?”

“How much longer until my business is profitable?”

We all ask these types of questions of ourselves. We can even start asking them in the annoying, whiny voice like when we were kids. That is not a good sign.

All worthwhile things take time. Patience is so important in life. It may be boring. It may not sound like the million dollar solution, but it just might be. Patience is a sign of maturity. Unfortunately, many of us never seem to grow up. We are stuck asking those whiny questions like a 5 year old. We may dress it up to sound more sophisticated but it is the same basic question.

Why does it matter? Because impatience ultimately leads us to make a stupid decision. It leads us to get the car payment we shouldn’t get. It leads us to make the investment gamble we should have never made. It leads us to try the craziest fad diet ultimately causing our weight to yo-yo even more.

The irony in it all is that our impatience ultimately adds times or sometimes keeps us from ever getting there!

With a little more patience, we tend to make wiser decisions that are better for us in the long run.

How patient are you?

Chip on the Shoulder

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I often contemplate what drives someone.  Where does motivation come from in certain people? Drive is important. We don’t act to change our circumstances or create positive change in the world around us without drive.

Where does it come from?  There is a lot to be said on the topic. Entire books have been written about it, but let’s look at one source of drive for so many.

I heard a CEO say that he likes the people who have a chip on their shoulder.  The people who have something to prove.  It was just one quality that he mentioned, but his point was that people who have a chip on their shoulder are often hungry to succeed to prove something.

It is true.  Imagine how much progress has been made in the world by people driven to achieve something because of the chip they were carrying on their shoulder.  It is a driving force for some of the most driven, successful people. To take something negative and use the energy to achieve something positive is a much better alternative than using it to do something destructive.

We all probably have some type of chip on our shoulder.  We can use it for drive and motivation, but here are my questions.

Should we still deal with the chip?

Will a certain amount of success get rid of the chip or will we still be carrying it around even after succeeding?

Even if the chip creates positive drive, does it have potential to harm other areas of our life?

If we lose the chip would we lose the drive to succeed or would we find a healthier alternative?

Is our drive simply a band-aid to an injury that needs much more to be healed?

Those are my questions.

What drives you?

What If Energy Was the Goal?

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It seems almost all health experts have different opinions. There are certainly a lot of common themes that all the experts agree on like eat more organic green vegetables. No one really denies that is a good idea.

Some will boast of the health benefits of being a vegan while others will sound just as convincing on why we should live on a high protein meat diet.

Many promote the health benefits of vitamins and nutrition while others say it is wasted money and does nothing for your overall health.

This can cause us to just think, “What is the point? I could die tomorrow.”  And therefore, we don’t worry about our health because we aren’t sure if it makes a difference anyway.

There really isn’t anything we can do to guarantee that we live longer. We can try, but we all know our time is limited and we don’t know how long we have.

So what if energy was our goal?

I don’t mean the fake and temporary energy that we get from a Starbucks or Monster energy drink. I mean real, consistent energy throughout the day. What if that was our goal?

Maybe we don’t know if the vitamin regime that we take will add any extra years to our life, but do we have better energy throughout the day when we take it?

Maybe exercising in the morning doesn’t extend my lifespan, but do I feel more alive the rest of the day if I do it?

What if we made energy the goal?  I think it helps us cut through the confusion on what we should do. At least it does for me.

What gives you more energy?

Why Do We Want Complicated?

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Why is it that we push back against the simple plans but gravitate towards the complicated?

If we have something we want to achieve we tend to push back against the simple strategy.  Surely, it needs to be more complex. We need to use a strategy that almost no one has ever thought of or maybe only the most successful have and that is their secret.

Could it be the most successful just execute? I was speaking to someone I really respect several years ago and I noticed he had lost a lot of weight and was looking really good. I asked him what he had been doing.  His response was so simple. “Yea, I’ve just been eating less.” I kept waiting for the complicated, long answer on why his plan was better than all the others. Turns out it was a pretty simple strategy. He didn’t even have to sign up for a course to do it.

Don’t most of know this? We can all get healthier if we just EAT LESS and MOVE MORE.

Deep down most of us know that works, but why do we insist on the complicated? Maybe it is because if we find a complicated plan and it doesn’t work, we can blame the plan? We can always say that we didn’t fully understand it or that it wasn’t the right plan for us.  So then we can turn our focus on finding the next plan.

The good news is capitalism is alive and well.  There are endless entrepreneurs out there to sell us a complicated strategy whether it is fitness, business or anything else.

Maybe we shouldn’t be so quick to ignore the simple strategies. The only challenge is then we may not have anything to blame but ourselves if we don’t do it.

How to Have More Will Power

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Will Power!  Have you ever felt like you needed more of it!  Is there something in your life that you know you “need” to be doing, but you aren’t doing it?

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President’s Club Trip to Barcelona, Spain

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I love incentive and rewards trips.  I have always enjoyed traveling and visiting new places around the world.  If you are in sales or in the insurance industry and you have rewards trips available to you, I encourage you to work hard to earn them.

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