#TryDifferent #change #reorganization
If you don’t like change, as some leadership experts will argue, too bad! It’s going to come whether you want it or not.
If you embrace change, you will more likely be successful, those same experts may argue.
What if change comes, and you are excluded? Can you embrace that?
In his book, “Try Different, Not Harder,” Karl G. Schoemer offers 15 rules for mastering change. He says the information and technology revolution is redefining our work – what it is, how and where it’s done, who does it and how long it takes.
He also says we are also reshaping our business organizations – from how they function to what they expect of employees and what employees can expect in return.
His point: these changes create a fertile environment for even more change, and opportunities. Whether these opportunities are seized, or missed, depends entirely on you, he says.
Many of us have been through change at work. As employees, our natural reaction to change is to resist. What was comfortable yesterday is taken away today, and that can upset us. Eventually, though, we get over it and adapt, presuming we are still around to do so.
Some workplace changes leave us completely out. We are laid off, offered incentives to leave etc. If you’ve been laid off, hopefully the company will give you enough to tide you over for a time. If not, there’s not a blessed thing you can do about it – or so you think.
Sometimes, disappointment can morph into rousing success, if you don’t let the disappoint take over your life.
If you are offered an incentive package to leave a job, more often than not, there will be little time to think about it and you will not be given enough information to make a totally informed decision.
That is, no one will tell you your future with the company if you stay – unless, of course, the company tells you they won’t accept your resignation. That rarely happens. Chances are, if are determined to be eligible to take the package, the company tacitly is encouraging you to take it.
Also, most people who take such packages ultimately have few regrets. They may struggle at the beginning, but most people land in a decent place. In recent years, though, that has been the case less often. So, if it happens to you, you’ll be between a rock and a hard place, at least in your mind.
If you are between two undesirable things, remember there is always a way to crawl out.
Schoemer, like many leadership experts, recommends that we embrace change at our place of employment. It’s tough to embrace change when you are not included in it. So what to do?
Embrace yourself. Embrace your ability to ensure you will be successful. A job loss is a temporary disappointment. Don’t let it consume you. View your departure as your employer’s loss, not yours.
If you are confident in yourself to succeed, despite what might be thrown at you, and are looking for something that will enable success, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You may find something that will not only bring your self-confidence to the fore, but also enable you save money.
Perhaps, using Schoemer’s title, “Trying Different,” may have nothing to do with your current employment. Perhaps you are still employed, and trying harder to do what you’ve always done. In this milieu, that may not cut it. You may have to escape to “Try Different.”
Sometimes, those unexpected exits from your employer can be openings for something so much better.
Peter
Monthly Archives: November 2015
BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
#BelieveInYourself #Sales #Success
It’s no secret that the secret to good sales is believing in oneself.
Tom Black, a sales consultant, wrote in an Oct. 18, 2015, column in The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville, that successful people in all professions, especially sales, begin with a basic belief that they can achieve success.
OK, many of us think we are good at something. A few of us think we are not good at anything. Another few believe we are good at everything. Consultants, using their considerable ability to persuade, tell others that all they have to do is believe in themselves.
Black boils it down to three steps: write down one’s beliefs and read them regularly; surround oneself with those who believe in him; thirdly, tell someone important to him what he believes he will become.
These are simple concepts on their face, so why isn’t everyone successful? Why don’t we all believe in ourselves?
The simple answer is that, in the process of creating belief in ourselves, our beliefs change. A setback here, a mistake there, can, and often does, modify strong beliefs in ourselves.
As we proceed to surround ourselves with people who believe in us, we run across naysayers, competitors (those who would succeed because we have failed) and well-meaning folks who tend to prick a pinhole in our balloons and deflate our beliefs.
We want to stay strong in our beliefs. But even when we know that what we have, and what we can achieve, is all good, a comment here, a sidetrack there and failures to act bring setbacks. Even successful people have setbacks and run into people who trash their beliefs. The difference among them is that they don’t let circumstances alter their beliefs.
They press on, even when it’s difficult to do so. Their eyes, and their minds, are always on the prize, and they have the ability to ignore, or do away with, everything else.
It takes a strong mind, not just a smart one, to do that. Perhaps you know people in your field who are not as good as you at what you do, but are more successful. The contrary can also be true: those in your field whom you may hold in high esteem may not be as successful as you.
If you want to be a successful person, and believe you have the strength of mind to do so, but still may be looking for the best way to channel that strength, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. You’ll see stories of strong-minded people who, as Black suggests, found other strong-minded people who believed in them, to put around them. They are not waiting for other shoes to drop. Nor are they planning to give up when setbacks arise. For them, the prize is just too good not to go for.
There are many reasons out there to be concerned for your well-being. They are well-publicized. You can pay attention to them, or choose not to. You can see the world for what is, and believe the sky will fall, or you can see the world – and yourself – for what can be, and rise above the “circumstances.”
Yes, there are choices here. You can ask people around you what they would do if they were you, or you can ask yourself what YOU would do for you. Choose wisely.
Peter
SHAKESPEARE: IS HE NECESSARY TODAY?
#Shakespeare #Education #Literature #Drama
Many of us have read something William Shakespeare has written.
Some love him. Some hate him. Certainly, though his language is pure, it’s not always easy to understand. We certainly don’t talk like that in daily conversation.
For many of us, he was required reading at some point in our education. Today, however, a debate is raging over not only whether he is relevant to today’s world, but whether, in the name of diversity, he’s just another dead white guy.
Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis had this very debate in a column they wrote together. It was published in the June 21, 2015, edition of the News Sentinel of Knoxville, Tenn.
Boychuck is associate editor of the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal. Mathis is associate editor of Philadelphia Magazine.
In Boychuk’s view, if a teacher can’t make violence, murder, insanity, greed, witchcraft, betrayal and other elements of Shakespeare come alive in the classroom, he or she is probably in the wrong job. Some of us, when studying Shakespeare or performing in one of his plays, could hurdle what language barrier there was – his old-time English and modern English.
Mathis, however, had the benefit of translation pages when he studied Shakespeare in school. Were it not for those, he says, he may not have survived that course.
“There’s a WORLD of really exciting literature out there that better speaks to the needs of my very ethnically diverse and wonderfully curious, modern-day students,” says Dana Dusbiber, a teacher at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif. She told in a Washington Post column that she hates teaching Shakespeare.
Boychuk and Mathis refer to her column in their column.
If any student’s education is devoid of Shakespeare, how would they know that centuries ago, people actually talked and wrote that way.
On the other hand, many of today’s students have English as a second language. Do they need literature whose English is a bit more basic, to better master their second language?
The Boychuk-Mathis column points out that plays are best seen performed than read. Very few other playwrights get the attention in school that Shakespeare does. Perhaps that’s because Shakespeare is special, and, as the column points out, many of the phrases used today originated with Shakespeare, i.e. “there’s the rub,” it’s Greek to me,” to thine own self be true.”
No matter how one feels about what and how we teach kids, it’s clear that kids need a well-rounded education. They need to learn the niceties as well as the evils of today’s and yesterday’s world.
They need to be able to communicate clearly, to talk so as to be universally understood, to sell themselves to a prospective employer or client. A smattering of Shakespeare can teach them a good bit of how the language was formed and modernized.
Also, they need to develop a great image of themselves. How do you feel about yourself? Are you still looking for who you really are, or are you having to change things up to thrive in today’s world. If so, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. Many of those whom you will see may, or may not, be Shakespeare fans, but they’ve certainly learned that their curiosity has paid great dividends.
Studying the Bard may be hard, but he has many lessons to teach.
Peter
SETBACKS WILL COME, BUT THEY SHOULD NEVER DEFEAT YOU
#setbacks #OvercomingAdversity #LoseTheVictimMentality
Life is going your way. Suddenly, a setback – an injury, death, business disaster etc.
“It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get back up,” says legendary football coach Vince Lombardi.
Andy Bailey, lead entrepreneur coach with the firm Petra, quoted Lombardi in an Oct. 11, 2015, column he wrote for The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville.
“A setback defines your company or career only if you let it keep you from trying to move forward, “Bailey writes.
In other words, no matter how well things may be going now, setbacks will come. Perhaps you will lose a job. Perhaps your biggest client bolts. Perhaps the one person you relied on the most in life dies.
They all hurt, but they shouldn’t kill you. You can recover from almost anything if you want to. You just have to use the inner strength to move on.
Bailey suggests three things: lose the victim mentality, recalibrate and do the hard work.
Let’s discuss each of those. Do you know anyone who can’t escape “woe is me?” A setback will send them right into a tailspin. They will blame everyone and everything for ruining their lives. They will believe they were meant to have something bad happen to them.
They are the victims. However, good, strong people are NEVER victims. They believe when bad things happen, they can, and will, overcome them. It may take them a bit longer to achieve what they want, but no matter. They know to press on, and they do.
Maybe you’ve done something wrong in your great life plan. Presuming you can figure out what it is, you fix it and move on. Most strong people can determine what they should have done differently, and recalibrate, or adjust.
Of course, these same, strong people know about hard work and do it. They look at problems as fixable, as long as they are willing to do what it takes.
It’s not just working hard. Some very hard-working people lose their jobs every day. Sometimes it means finding something different to work hard at.
If you are someone who has worked hard, and suddenly have what you’ve worked so hard for disappears, there are many ways to recalibrate, or adjust. You don’t have to be a victim. If your job disappears, there are many ways to make money that have nothing to do with a traditional job. For one of the best, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. Oh, you’ll still have to work hard, but you may find life more fun and more lucrative.
It doesn’t necessarily take a village to overcome a setback. But an individual could create a village to get him past what was holding him back. Let not your circumstances define you. If things go badly, turn them around. Anyone can do it, if you have the motivation.
Another tip: hang with people who encourage you, rather than those who discourage you. Sometimes, when one combines bad circumstances with pessimistic people, the mixture is toxic to one’s psyche.
As motivational speaker, author and leadership expert John Maxwell has said, one will not necessarily be a great singer just because he believes he can. He has to have some God-given talent to get him there. But, for many other things, you can achieve what you believe.
Follow Bailey’s advice: don’t be a victim, recalibrate if necessary and do the hard work. No matter what you are trying to achieve, don’t let setbacks squash you.
Peter
CONTENTMENT VS. HAPPINESS: GO FROM FORMER TO LATTER
#happiness #contentment #HappinessIsCreated
Most of us would probably say we are happy with the way things are for us.
Some, of course, would say they live one crisis after another. These folks may never see happiness, perhaps because they don’t pursue it. They wait for it to come to them.
But let’s talk about the former group.
Pose this question to yourself: are you HAPPY with the way things are for you, or are you CONTENT with the way things are for you?
Though it’s truly a blessing to be alive, let’s not talk about those who are just happy to be standing upright, or those happy to be on the right side of the dirt.
Let’s focus on those who say they are happy with their lives as a whole. If you are HAPPY with your life, you ALWAYS wear a smile. You have no worries about anything. The sky is never falling. Tomorrow will always be better than today.
If you don’t look at life this way, but feel that, when you balance your ups and downs, that life is OK, you are merely content. If you say to yourself, “I’d really like that, but I’ll settle for this,” you are merely content. If you look forward to your good days, but have occasional bad days, you are merely content.
So let’s take this premise a step further. Once you determine whether you are HAPPY, rather than merely CONTENT, what do you do next if you discover that what you thought was happiness was just contentment?
Chances are there are steps you can take to change your status. It’s not just a mood change, or putting on a façade of happiness. It’s a life change.
Ask yourself whether you are governed by your circumstances, or whether you are governing your circumstances. If it’s the former, what do you do to change to the latter?
To borrow from the song Dusty Springfield made famous, wishing, hoping and praying alone aren’t going to give you what you want.
You have to determine what you want that will make you truly happy. You certainly can live with contentment for a time, but you have to really aim toward happiness. Once you aim toward it, you have to pursue it relentlessly and continuously. That, for some, is the hard part.
You see, contentment may be good enough once some of us realize what it takes to achieve true happiness.
For others, they have the determination to achieve happiness, but need the vehicle that will get them there. If you are one of those, visit www.bign.com/pbilodeau. It’s one of many, and indeed one of the best, vehicles for those who not only know what they want to go from content to happy, but also want to take others on the same journey.
Going from content to happy may not always be easy. However, for some, it could be a simple adjustment in the way one leads a life or uses his time.
For those happy to be content, perhaps now, at least, you may understand the difference between contentment and happiness.
For those who want true happiness, find out what that is for you and do what you need to do. It seems simple, but, for some, it’s very hard.
Remember: happiness is not given. It is created.
Peter