Act today and look toward tomorrow

Tolerance may be a good thing. Complacency may deter you from your goals.

Tolerating something – an aggressive coworker, a runny toilet or a squeaky wheel – continually drains your energy, like filing a cup upon which someone has made little holes.

Does continuous tolerance or complacency keep you from being yourself and evolving quickly as a human being?

How often do you distinguish between your activities that are incomplete, unresolved and require resolution or those that are unfinished, still needing work and require action?

In your life, how many things are unresolved or infinished?

Here are two simple exercises to help you break those negative reinforcing loops of tolerance and complacency.

List five unresolved issues or situations (large or small) that are draining your energy. Circle one that you can complete today.

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List five things (small or large) you’re putting up with or tolerating. Circle the one that you can eliminate TODAY.

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What’s the one big change that would make the most difference in your life?

What’s the first step you will take in the direction of that change?

When will you do this?

Planning, complacency and motivation

Earlier this week, a client reminded me of the importance and contradictions of planning and complacency.

Himself a brilliant story teller, he shared a story of two priests who took a vow to be itinerant monks for life. They promised to do good works and help the poor, disenfranchised and desolate wherever they went.

To avoid being bored or becoming complacent, the two monks would prepare ever year for a trip saying they would go at the end of the year.

Each year, when their detailed and minute planning was finished and the year came to an end, they would say to themselves that they would go next year and then spend all of that next year planning to go on a trip.

They repeated this process every year until they died, motivated yet neither resolved nor finished.

Is it time to think about your life?

A few questions to ponder…

Do you have a strong self-concept, a powerful sense of your own worth and potential?

How are you dealing with and solving problems in your life?

How can you improve the quality of your relationships with family, friends, fiduciaries and co-workers?

Do you present your opinions and views and speak assertively or aggressively?

Do you have the information, knowledge, and understanding of larger issues that affect you?

Do you and make healthy lifestyle and life choices?

What’s your ability to respond?

Are you setting and achieving goals?

Do you know and understand that you can have an impact on the world?

Do you create projects that improve the lives others and strengthen communities?

How do you discover your purpose in life?

Are you experiencing a yearning and desire to awaken your unique gifts and offer them in service to the world – while living a life of joy and fulfillment?

Is your plan to improve yourself falling short of your goals?

Are you longing to feel fully alive and to fulfill your unique purpose in life?

How do you discover your purpose in life?

Focusing on your own internal controls

Back in the Sixties, Julian Rotter posited that those individuals with an internal locus of control, which describes the degree to which individuals perceive that outcomes result from their own behaviors or from forces that are external to themselves, tend to:

+ Engage in activities that will improve their situation

+ Emphasize striving for achievement

+ Work hard to develop their knowledge, skills and abilities

+ Be inquisitive

+ Try to figure out why things turned out the way they did

+ Note information they can use to create positive outcomes in the future

+ Have a more participatory management style

See, Rotter, JB, “Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement,” Psychological Monographs, 80 No. 609, 1966.

Five fundamental and global power shifts

The founder of the Human Potential Movement, Dr. Jean Houston, suggests there are five power shifts that will help you cultivate your compassion and the infinite possibilities of the moment.

The Five Shifts

1. Your understanding of who and what you are and what you need to become to be able to deal with the complexity of our time is evolving.

2. How you do business and how businesses are governed are shifting in the midst of vast ecological and financial changes as you are able to communicate and transact business in real time with the most remote regions of the world.

3. Human societies are repatterning and new stories are emerging dealing with egality, equity, equality, equanimity and diversity, including the rise of women to a full partnership with men across the globe.

4. As human kind accentuates the uniqueness of each culture, it’s also creating a global gumbo of food, music and beliefs.

5. Spirituality beyond established religions is giving men new views of themselves. Men live in the universe and the universe lives in men.

Power shift: spirituality

Spirituality beyond established religions is giving men new views of themselves. Men live in the universe and the universe lives in men.

Photo courtesy of Kyle Sefcik.

Today!

Today is an opportunity to make tomorrow better!

Have you had a moment of purpose?

Richard Leider calls a “courageous act to go into the ‘storm,’ to save another person’s life” a purpose moment.

And everyday, you face many purpose moments — opportunities to give your gifts, your caring, your compassion and your wisdom.

Who have you graced through an act of service beyond yourself?

How can you avoid risk aversion and fear?

Jonathan Fields, author of “Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt Into Fuel for Brilliance,” urges men to stop dropping all those little “certainty anchors.”

These holdbacks are repeated throughout the day as men insist on knowing what is coming next. These “certainty anchors” hold you back from allowing yourself to take bigger risks. In fact, your certainty anchors tether you — very often paralyzing you from making choices and moving forward.

A ship is safest anchored in a harbor.
It is not, however, what it is designed for. You are free on the open seas!

To feel like you are less tethered during any part of the day, say to yourself:

“Okay, this is my job to go and do things that scare me.”

“Okay, this is my job to go and do things that scare me.”

Okay, this is my job to go and do things that scare me.”

Photo courtesy of @HamletVIP.