Welcome back everyone!  I have been very busy the last couple of months and have put writing on the back burner.

Yesterday (8/7/2011) I finished up my self proclaimed “28 Day Challenge”.

Mark Rockwell

This challenge was basically me training for the Kelly LeBare 5K Race. Roughly 28 days ago my long time friend Mark Rockwell challenged me on Facebook to compete in this race.  He is having a fantastic journey, (click on his name above and READ it. It’s a true story of guts and determination!) and has motivated me to step out of my physical comfort zone to shock my system. (It couldn’t have come at a better time!)

Stepping out of your comfort zone

I have never been a big time runner, and my view of running was something you did to train for wrestling. Short sprints, and running to failure and exhaustion was the basis of running. Sure, I ran 5Ks during the triathlons I competed in, but I never took running seriously, and never trained consistently at it.  This was going to be a major shift in my physical paradigm, and really required a different way of thinking from me.  (Thus the shift in comfort zone).

SMART goals are not as smart as your habits.

Along with this 28 day challenge I decided to try a mental challenge as well.  I realized there is a correlation to achieving goals and forming supporting habits.  Now, this is by no means a new idea and the goal setting “experts” have been talking about habits and goals for quite some time.  I believe these experts just delivered the idea in the wrong order. I think the traditional concept of SMART goal setting is too complicated and clunky to be successful.  In addition to the “clunkyness”, I feel it assumes that once the idea and the steps are identified, it will be done on shear “WILL”.  Willpower is an exhaustible resource in my eyes because forcing yourself to do something will eventually return less and less positive results as time goes on.  (Think New Years Resolutions!)  I believe cultivating the habits that will support your goal pursuit are far more effective than any super complicated goal achievement plan.

Worry about perfecting only after you get started!

So I decided to put my theory to the test by creating a 28 day challenge.  I did not spend any time planning or structuring it.  I just started doing whatever felt right and adjusted my course to fit my needs.  I basically made it up as I went along and here is what I discovered.

Habits are solely the greatest tool you can cultivate in order to achieve success!

I have been fighting a losing battle to an addiction to tobacco for the majority of my life. Addictions are basically habits coupled with physical dependence.  I wanted to put the theory of using a habit to change a habit to the test and decided to consciously quit nicotine and replace it with exercise by linking both habits in my mind and tracking the results daily.

Parallel to my “habit for habit” theory, I began testing another habit theory based on task

My Daily List

planning.  Have you ever heard the saying, “Plan your work and work you plan”?  If not, it’s extremely powerful to spend a few minutes planning out your day in advance.  By planning I mean figuring out the most important tasks that move you further in your life’s goals.  I know we all have daily tasks that require our attention, but many end up making those the bulk of their day and never make the important “moving forward” tasks a priority. According to Anthony Robbins, ”Most people fail in life because they major in minor things.”

Every morning I woke up, just after brewing my morning coffee, I would sit down and write down my daily task list.  At first, I had to consciously remind myself to do this, to put pen to paper and “think about the important stuff”. Luckily is was very easy to do, and it was fun for me to do it (I am a notorious list maker by nature).  After about 6-7 days I realized that instinctively I was reaching for my list without even thinking about it.  I became very excited that a positive habit could take hold so quickly.  I attribute the success to a couple of factors:

1. Consistent, daily practice of the habit:  I did it directly after making my coffee (also a habit) and…
2. I would reward myself by checking that off the list every day.  (Habit forming should be part of your daily list of tasks to do.

After the second full week of my daily list habit, I felt I needed a “recap”, a review of my progress, so I decided to incorporate a weekly review/look ahead habit.  This habit has been quick to develop because I think it “piggy backs” the list habit and gets absorbed and included.  (Piggy backing may be another strategy that I am going to experiment with). The reviews allow me to track my progress, and it sparks ideas for the future.  It essentially gets me to plan the future by recalling what I finished in the past.  While reviewing and planning, I can begin to see if any future habits will need to be created, or quite possibly eliminating bad habits I already possess.

I can safely say that 28 days later I have developed 4 distinct positive habits that, although in infancy stage and require daily conditioning, are indeed on auto-pilot and support the behaviors I will need to succeed in any goal I decide to pursue.

In summary, when your goal has been decided on:

1. Begin by working from a list every day. (First and greatest habit in my opinion, and will support any goal you have in life!)
2. Determine what habits (unconscious behavior) will best support your goals.  If you have bad habits (smoking, drinking, junk food), consciously replace that habit with a healthy positive habit (running, walking, biking).  All you have to do is mentally tell yourself, “I want to replace smoking with running, and tell yourself that every time you find yourself craving a smoke, or you decide to feel like running.
3. Write those habits on your daily list, and cross them off every time you complete them. (Don’t forget to include the “list habit” as well!)
4. Create the weekly review/look ahead habit and do it once a week.
5. Most of all enjoy the progress, and the challenge.  Also remember to focus on the big picture and if you hick-up one day acknowledge it, blow it off and move on. These are lifelong habits and one day here and there are not going to destroy the grand scheme of things.

Now that we have discussed working with the end in mind, proactivity and the power of choice, I want to discuss two very important circles in your life; the circle of concern and the circle of influence.  Picture two circles, one slightly smaller that resides within the other.  Like how a tire rides on a rim.  The tire would be your circle of concern.  Within this circle of concern resides everything you have ever thought of in your life that concerns you.  This is anything you worry about; are excited about; are angry about; are happy about.  They could be a concern for the environment, or excitement for a wrestling match, or anger about war, whatever the case may be, it resides within your circle of concern.  The smaller circle or the “rim” is your circle of influence.  Anything that concerns you and you can somehow control it or influence the outcome of it resides within you circle of influence.  For example you may have a very tough opponent to wrestle.  You may be feeling anxiety, fear, worry, excitement, anger, etc.  Any concern you have about this opponent falls with in you circle of concern.  How you choose to view these concerns determines whether they are in the circle of concern or the circle of influence.  If you worry about how tough HE is, than your working in your circle of concern.  If you worry about what YOU can do to offset his toughness, than you are working within you circle of influence.  If you fear his devastating double leg takedown than you are working in the circle of concern.  If you are worried how you will offset his double leg takedown, than you are working in the circle of influence.  What it really comes down to is if you ever go outside yourself for the answer to a problem, than that is the first problem.

So each time you are concerned about something always ask yourself what can you do to fix it.  If it is something that is absolutely out of your control, than you need to figure out how to live with it.  Spending precious mental energy on worrying about uncontrollable things is crazy.

Dan Gable prior to the 1972 Olympic Summer Games in Munich, would wake up in the middle of the night and say to himself “the Russians are training!” and he would do push-ups or sit-ups until he was exhausted again.  To me that is an amazing example of someone working within their circle of influence.  He made to conscious choice to take an outside stimulus like the Russians training which he had zero control over, and make it an internal choice to trump their training by training himself harder.  That is an extreme example of working from the inside out.  His concern of having undisputed victories was the catalyst for his choice to train so hard.

You can increase the size of your circle of influence by always being proactive.  Asking the right questions of yourself; doing what is principally right; working from your values; using you power of choice.  All these together will increase you circle of influence to the point where it may be the same size as your circle of concern.  Just remember their will be people out there that do not understand these tools, and might even resent or dislike your approach.  Don’t listen to them, just remember that inside you is all that matters.

So the next time you are concerned with something, make sure you understand where it lies within your circles.  Next, we will discuss emotions and how they should be utilized rather than ignored.

Thanks,

Gerry

When we discussed the power of choice I hope it opened some eyes.  We get bombarded with stressers all day, everyday and it is easy to get overwhelmed and overdrawn and it is easy to blame others for our shortcomings.  When we recall that we indeed have the power to choose our reactions to those stressers, it puts us back in control.  We empower ourselves and work from our constant within.  In this post I discussed principles and their meaning.  When we work out of principles and values, and remember our power of choice it moves us from being dependent on our environment to being in control.  The next step is becoming proactive and move into independency.

What does the word proactive mean to you?  To me it means to be active first, to happen first.  It means to not wait for direction to take action, its action and result oriented behavior that’s done without direction.  This is where the wrestlers in my audience are going to start to have an “A-ha” moment.  How many wrestlers show up to practice and wait for the coach to tell you to start warming up?  How many guys out there show up to practice and start warming up before their coach tells them to?  I am betting that the majority wait for direction.  This is not your fault, we have lived in a society that conditions people to wait till they are told to take action.  This is an ideal that was created back when we moved from the agricultural age to the industrial age.  In industry machines do all the work and people operate the machines.  Since this is a repeatable task, and all the thought work had been taken out of it, people’s thoughts and talents don’t matter, they in essence are viewed as dumb objects that require management.  All that is needed is a supervisor to oversee everything.  One “coach” to take care of all the workers.  This thought process slowly crept into our psyche and conditioned us to handle every aspect of our lives in that same fashion.  We simply wait for directions.  Now don’t get me wrong, there are times when you need to wait for direction, but a majority of the time you do not.

This is where proactivity changes the rules of the game.  YOU know what needs to be done to achieve at your sport, so be proactive and do what needs to be done.  A coach is there only to support YOU, and to help YOU when YOU need it.  Remember that YOU have a choice to take YOUR wrestling to the next level.  No one else is going to do it for you.  No one else is going to make your choices for you.  So a proactive approach to your career might be to determine where YOU want to be.  Do you want to be a conference champion, state champion, national champion, olympic champion?  Whatever it may be you need to acknowledge where you want to be.  Once you know where you want to go then think backwards and WRITE DOWN every milestone that needs to be achieved along the way to get to your ultimate goal.  This is called working with the end in mind.  When you work with the end in mind, you are forcing your brain to encounter every obstacle you may encounter.  When you “reverse” engineer your career, you take the guess work out of what needs to be done.  This will further push your proactivity by pushing you to do what needs to be done to achieve your goals.  Every great champion does not wait for directions, because they already know what direction they need to go in.  They just require the support of others to get there.

All this can only be achieved by being proactive.  If you wait for someone to tell you what to do, you already missed the boat.  Maybe use the slogan I use…..The world doesn’t happen to me, I happen to the world!!!  So now you have a few tools to get started.  You now have a different view of yourself and your career.  You have taken back control of yourself, and are taking responsibility for your actions.  What you do with it is your choice….

Next I will elaborate on the working with the end in mind, as well as talk about your circle of influence and your circle of concern.

Thanks,

Gerry