What does this mean?
To be strong inside means to know what you believe. To have strong values. To have excellent decision making skills. To have discernment and a host of other attributes.
How strong are you inside?
Let's say that you work in a major department store at a big mall here in the US. What do you know already about your self, your store, the product that you sell, the customers who come into your department, how inventory works, what is the first thing you do when you come in to clock in in the morning? Those types of things.
You see you really do know a whole lot more than you think you do!
OK so let's take that one step further.
In your last performance review; what did you get?
If you got a: "MEETS" ; then you know you are doing the "minimal" amount of work to come in do your job, get paid every two weeks and go home. You will not advance and you will be pretty much where you are until you fall to the next level which is:
"DOSE NOT MEET"; when an employee gets a "Does not meets" as a performance evaluation, then he/she can pretty much understand that they are about to be let go if their performance does not improve. There is usually a time limit on raising the standard to "MEETS". If nothing improves then the person is let go for nonperformance.
You might be lucky enough to receive the coveted review of "EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS"; now that one has the opposite affect on your fragile ego. It means you have performed above and beyond the minimal requirements of your job description and perhaps some other great things are going to be in your future real soon.
Being "Strong Inside First" is the equivilant to "EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS" because you have already done that all important inner work in order to perform and live and work at a higher level than those around you. We know that those of you who are wired like this have less stress and a more fulfilling life than those who do not.
What can you do today to be "Strong Inside First"?
Filed under Growth, Women In Business by 
"Fear Destroys The Capacity To Learn"
Bruce Perry
What is it that you fear the most in life?
When we live from deep inside that dark place of "fear", we are enveloped by the darkness and its sheer weight will allow "no escape".
Reach your hand just outside the darkness and you can be pulled into the light of learning.
Think about that.
Filed under Growth by
This past weekend I had an epiphany about "TIME". I was entertaining out of town guests and we were talking about "TIME" and the management of time and how we use our time in the course of a day. We know we have lots of distractions and interruptions and when those occur our productivity goes down and we almost always do not go back to doing what we were interrupted from. There are lots of statistics out there which are readily available and I will not bore you with them here.
Let me ask you. Have you ever experienced a moment or several moments in your day when you are finished with one thing and you have another coming up shortly and you find yourself standing or sitting there with a few minutes to spare? OK! OK ! You don't have to shout. I know you say you don't have a moment to spare, but here what I have observed over and over not only in my life, but , my family, peers, strangers and others; when these precious few moments show up; we immediately go into our "default behavior". What is your default behavior?
Here are several examples of what I have seen and I have even done myself:
* Pick up the phone and call someone until the next thing
* Pick up the phone and text someone until the next thing
* Check the email, something very important might have come in since I last looked before the next thing
* Smoke get a quick drag before the next thing happens
* Eat something until the next thing happens
* Visit with someone who is working to kill time until the next thing happens
* Go online and shop until the next thing happens
* Go online and check personal email until the next thing happens
All of these are POOR time management defaults and we all do many on this list. I know there are thousands of others that I have not observed.
All of these items listed above have one thing in common. Do you know what that is?
They all involve decision making skills. These skills are the same whether you are at work or you are at home. They know no boundary of any kind.
If you decision making skills are not fine tuned and honed then you will not be as productive as you might have been when employing some simple things.
One of the critical triggers that I have observed over and over is the "inability" for people in general to tolerate "inactivity in the form of being with themselves". They are always looking for the "next thing". We have totally unlearned how "to be". Do you remember when you were a kid and you would tell your parents: "…….there's nothing to do……I'm bored……" ? What did your parents do or say when those words came out of your mouth?
If your parents felt responsible for keeping you busy and happy at all times they probably became your "private entertainment" concierge. You never learned how to just "be" and find something to amuse yourself with where you were learning something or entertained in some other method other than being plopped in front of an electronic device of some kind.
We keep our calendars so full we are overwhelmed. When we have a free moment we are looking to our personal concierge for a "fix" until the next thing!
At your next default moment……S-T-O-P ……..and think we doing any one of the items above move me forward, earn me more money, calm me down "really", or fulfill me in some manner?
Filed under Grow, Growth, Prosper, Start Grow Prosper by