You’ve lost your edge. You’ve been feeling flat lately; worn down. Work’s been rough. You can’t seem to make it more than a couple of days without fighting with your wife. Your confidence is shot. You’ve slipped into a habit of escaping; into drinking, or sports, or games, or porn. (more…)
Who holds you accountable? If you’re like most people, the answer is nobody. Correct that, most people hold themselves accountable, which is just another way of saying nobody.
After seven years of leadership coaching, and 41 years of living, I’ve learned that human beings are very bad at holding themselves accountable to accomplishing long-term goals.
Here’s why: (more…)
Every December, millions of well intended people set New Year’s resolutions and then, every January, they promptly give up. According to Forbes only 8% of people actually accomplish one of their New Year’s resolutions. By the time this article was published, in the second week of January, over half of people have already quit. (more…)
I used to be really bad at remembering names. Now I’m not.
I used to hate being in cold water and being cold in general. Now I don’t.
I used to be physically inflexible, I couldn’t even sit cross-legged. Now I can.
I used to be unable to have faith in a God I couldn’t see. Now I do.
If you had asked me about any of these problems back then, I would have told you “that’s just the way I am” or “that’s just how I am wired.” I thought these things were out of my control; that there was nothing I could do to change them. Then, a few years ago, I learned that I was wrong. (more…)
Failure comes in all shapes and sizes.
There are small failures, like the time in college when I had my new girlfriend over for dinner and served her a homemade strawberry milkshake that included chopped up bits of wooden spoon that I accidently blended in. I told her those bits were just strawberry seeds.
And there are big failures, like when I was the President of a mortgage company and lead it into bankruptcy, letting a lot of people down along the way.
But no matter the specifics or scope, all failures are the result of three root causes: lack of strategy, lack of effort, and lack of courage.