When I (Cindy) first studied the Law of Awareness in the 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth by John Maxwell, I realized the more quality questions we ask ourselves - about us- the deeper an awareness we can obtain on who we are, where we are, and where we want to go.

Not everyone likes questions and has a natural curiosity like I do. But since the Law of Awareness says, You Must Know Yourself to Grow Yourself, we have to start with us.  And know one knows us better than we know ourselves! If introspective questions are not your thing that's okay. We don’t have to like the steps and stretches it takes to grow but we do have to take intentional action in these right areas to grow. And I promise the growth you obtain along the way will be worth your effort!

A good first question to ask yourself is, Who are you? Since we must know ourselves in order to grow, asking who you really are will help you identify things about yourself you may otherwise overlook or take for granted.

Think...

Apparently the last post sharing my near-death experience during that less than half mile run was somewhat amusing… Not only did I receive a few direct email responses about the humor folks were able to find in my stupidity, I heard Cindy laughing uncontrollably from the other side of the house as she read it. I suppose she’s earned the right to laugh at me since she had a front row seat when it happens, and she’s tolerated so many similar instances!

So that was clearly an example setting an unrealistic goal that I was in no way prepared to even come close to achieving, but there are times where sticking with even the best laid plans to reach modest goals can get incredibly hard. In each of the last few posts on this topic, I’ve continued to call attention to the importance of consistency. I won’t be varying from that here either! 

I learned about habits more than twenty years ago through the work I was doing with behavior-based safety. Sure, I...

Now that we’re more than one week into the new year, are you still on track and moving toward any goals you had set to make 2021 your best year yet? As Cindy and I pulled into the gym parking lot early this morning, there were still several extra cars - but not as many extras as last Monday…

I closed the last post by emphasizing the importance of being realistic about how much our circumstances and limitations can impact our progress toward achieving new goals, especially when those goals are really big and require significant changes to our daily routines! I also promised to share a story of a time where I failed miserably because I allowed my ego to take over; it was one of those cases where my mouth wrote a check my butt couldn’t cover…

When Matt was wrestling, he and I were extremely consistent with our workout schedules. We would typically lift weights three or four days each week, even during the wrestling season when he had practice every day after...

First off, let me apologize for the last post. I had no intention of pushing anyone to break any New Year’s resolutions so early on by sharing how little will power I have when it comes to greasy pizza. Judging by a few of the replies I received, I may have been a bit too graphic…

As I closed that post though, I referenced the old fable so many of us have heard about the tortoise and the hare. The hare gets a blazing start, runs way ahead of the tortoise, then decides there’s time for a nap since the tortoise is so far behind. The tortoise keeps moving, ever so slowly, and eventually passes the sleeping hare to win the race. It's a cute story for sure, but it’s not so cute when it matches our own behavior!

I’ll emphasize here again, I’m not knocking the importance of setting goals and working to press forward toward them. But if we give it all we have out of the gate, and the changes we’re attempting to make (like cutting out every bit of...

Picture this: so many times I’ve buckled down and cut nearly all the carbs out of my diet. No candies, very little bread, no macaroni & cheese or pasta… Basically nothing I enjoy except meat and cheese. As I write this, I have an image in my head of Buddy the Elf telling the fake Santa he smelled like beef and cheese. I knew a guy like that once; front lobby Bobby! He ate summer sausage and cheddar cheese every day for lunch and it oozed from his pores, but that has absolutely nothing to do with my point so I’ll get back on track…

With regards to changing my own eating habits, I even remember a time where the only things I ate after 5p was two cans of tuna with a splash of Italian dressing and some hot sauce. Over the course of 30 days or so, I dropped more than an inch off my waistline but I still struggle to even touch a can of tuna and that was nearly 15 years ago!

Regardless of the approach, going all in to cut carbs and trim down was always a chore...

As I post this, Cindy and I just finished our second gym workout of the new year. We went at an odd time earlier in the week so the crowd of Resolutioners that we had anticipated wasn’t there. That said, there were certainly more people milling around that we would have seen at that same time on a day in November or December… But at 6:30a on the first Wednesday morning in January, there were more than a few new faces. And many of those new faces will be red since it was likely just their second or third time inside a gym in who knows how long… Make no mistake though, that didn't keep many of them from having a puffed out chest after they showed us all how awesome their bench press was!

By early February though, the herd will have thinned a bit. And by March 1, we’ll be back to business as usual…

Don’t get me wrong, I get really excited when I see anyone take a proactive approach to managing their health. I also know all too well how easy it can...

Now that we’ve looked at how important it is for us to Control What We Can Control, we’ve started identifying What We Can Control, and we know the role Our Attitude and Our Actions play in all that, let’s get serious about what I believe can provide one of the most significant returns on any investment we could ever make!

About 20 years ago, I read Robert Kiyosaki’s books Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Cashflow Quadrant. I’ve since heard a number of people question whether or not his stories in those books were real… My response to that has always been, “Who cares if they were real, the points he made with them were amazing!” One of the points he made that I thought was amazing was tied to how he explained an investment. He shared how many people considered their home to be their largest investment, then he challenged that idea by explaining why he really believed our homes should be considered an expense. He said an investment should...

In the last post, I referenced what I’ve always heard as the only two things we can control; our attitude and our action. That ties right in with something we looked at in this series a few months back regarding what I heard a mentor of ours call The Cycle of Success. He said, “Our beliefs drive our thoughts. Our thoughts produce our feelings. Our feelings are seen through our actions. Our actions yield results. And those results reinforce our beliefs.” 

So here’s the thing… If we neglect taking complete responsibility for controlling our attitude and our actions, we can’t expect to have any real say in where that success cycle leads us! When we do make a decision to take control of that cycle, then we back that decision with action, we’ll see that cycle have a compounding effect! Understand though, it won’t be an easy path to follow. Remember John Maxwell’s quote I shared before, “Everything worthwhile is...

In the most recent LinkedIn article I published called If You Want It Done Right…, I shared a comment I heard John Maxwell make recently, “A leader who empowers their team isn’t someone who believes they have to do it all themselves for it to be done right.” While that’s not necessarily as easy as it may sound, it’s absolutely something we have to begin doing at some point if we have any hope at all of moving beyond that busy-ness we’ve kicked around over the last several messages to a place where we’re building a team that accomplishes what it’s really capable of!

I closed the last blog by challenging you to really think into how much it really matters when someone on our team makes certain mistakes. If it’s a true life or death scenario, we may need to stay in complete control of the situation. But let’s be brutally honest, those are few and far between! There are far more situations where a mistake here and there...

As we continue digging into the idea that all of us are going to make mistakes and that can’t be what completely stops us from delegating tasks to our team members, there’s one big thing we’ll need to be able to answer: How much does it really matter?

Before we get wrapped up in answering that question, let’s make sure we’re on the same page… Some mistakes come with a higher cost, and none are more expensive than the ones that are covered with excuses! Learning from a mistake is often part of the price of learning, but making an excuse rather than accepting responsibility and finding the lesson means there will never be the slightest chance to pull value from the mistake!

Whether it’s a team member who we’re developing as we begin providing them with new opportunities or a politician who’s “set up” by a salon owner, making excuses for this mistake limits (and sometimes completely removes) our chances of trusting them...