Balancing the Scales by Kelly Robertson

If you’re like most people you are probably working harder and longer than you used to. As a result, finding balance in today’s fast-paced world is more difficult than ever before. Yet, a healthy balance has also never been more important. Here are a few strategies that can help:

1. First and foremost, you must love what you do. We spend over a third of our life at work – doesn’t it make sense to enjoy it? I learned many years ago that the more you enjoy your job or work the more successful you will be. Even a high-pressure job is less stressful when
you fully enjoy it. I know several people who have high-profile and high-pressure careers but they still maintain a sense of balance because they love their business. Enjoying your work gives you more satisfaction and personal fulfillment.
If you find yourself in a job that doesn’t motivate or stimulate you, consider making a change. There are lots of great books on the market that can help you discover what type of work you are best suited for.

2. Make time for family and friends. Regardless how busy you are it is critical to spend time with people who are close to you. In the last several years my wife and I make sure to schedule a ‘date night’ once a week. This usually means having dinner at a local restaurant or going to a movie, show, or concert. Although we often talk about our business it gives us the opportunity to catch up and discuss things we don’t always find time to talk about during the rest of the week. Spending time with friends is also a great way to recharge mentally, particularly if your friends are not employed in the same industry.

3. Find a hobby. I think it is important to engage yourself in a pastime or hobby because they help you forget about work for a while. My two favourite pastimes are reading and running. In additional to releasing stress, this ‘escape’ helps recharge your batteries and maintain your objectivity. Plus, a clear energized mind is more creative and open to accepting new ideas.

4. Schedule “me” time. As selfish as it sounds we all need a few hours of personal time. I usually schedule this when my wife is out running errands. Most of the time I’ll read, watch a movie, or sometimes take a nap. I don’t feel guilty for taking this time to myself because it actually helps my marriage by allowing me to engage in something I fully enjoy without worrying about distractions from other people. One word of caution, “Me” time should not be scheduled at the sacrifice of others or occupy a large portion of your schedule. If you have been on a business trip for a week it’s not fair to your family to schedule the entire weekend as “me” time.

5. Take vacations. Vacations are critical to your well-being. It is essential to take a break from the hectic and fast-paced business world. Too many people in business wave their lack of vacation time as a badge of honour but I feel that a lack of a break from the business negatively affects your ability to perform at your maximum potential. When I started my business, I set a goal of taking a one-week break at least three times a year. I adhered to this goal in the first three years because I made sure to plan my breaks early in the year.
Then in my fourth year I neglected to plan this time off. Before I knew it, October had rolled around and I still hadn’t taken any time off. By this time, I was feeling burned out, I experienced more stress, and I had less energy, drive and motivation.

6. Disconnect yourself. Today’s technology has made it very difficult for us to completely disconnect from business. I find that I am drawn to email on the weekends and even on vacations. We don’t want to miss anything and sometimes our boss even requires that we stay connected to the office on our time off. However, I strongly believe that disconnecting yourself completely from voice mail, email, your PDA and BlackBerry is essential to creating some semblance of balance in our lives. There is no question that you will have more work to catch up on when you return to work but this complete break helps your brain recharge.
I won’t suggest that creating this balance is easy – it’s not. However, with a bit of focus and attention you can start to balance the scales. It’s worth the effort.

© 2006 Kelley Robertson, All rights reserved

Kelley Robertson, President of the Robertson Training Group, works with businesses to help them increase their sales and motivate their employees. Receive a FREE copy of “100 Ways to Increase Your Sales” by subscribing to his free newsletter available at http://www.RobertsonTrainingGroup.com.
For information on his programs, contact him at 905-633-7750 or Kelley@RobertsonTrainingGroup.com.

Books that will change your life!

Ken Blanchard is one of my favourite authors. The One Minute Manager series explore the skills to become an effective self leader and can help any manager to assist his people to become peak performers.

Self Leadership and the One Minute Manager clearly and thoroughly reveals how power, freedom, and autonomy come from having the right mind-set and the skills needed to take personal responsibility for success.

Ultimately, It's In

Your Own Best

Interest To Accept

Responsibility

For Getting What

You Need

To Succeed In

The Workplace.

The One Minute Manager is an easily read story which quickly shows you three very practical management techniques. The credo of the one-minute manager rests on the implementation of three ideas, namely: the need to establish clear-cut goals, the need to praise good performance, and the need to reprimand people when their performance fails to contribute to the attainment of commonly agreed goals. This three basic ideas are known as the three secrets of the one-minute manager, namely: one-minute goals, one-minute praisings and one-minute reprimands.

I highly recommend these books. They have life changing lessons that I plan to implement in my every day. They taught me to look at empowerment as an opportunity to think, communicate, and cooperate more effectively. Also, to get what we need, we should start by taking the lead within our organizations, and

“DISCOVER THE MAGIC OF NO EXCUSES”

The Two Choices We Face by Jim Rohn

Each of us has two distinct choices to make about what we will do with our lives. The first choice we can make is to be less than we have the capacity to be. To earn less. To have less. To read less and think less. To try less and discipline ourselves less. These are the choices that lead to an empty life. These are the choices that, once made, lead to a life of constant apprehension instead of a life of wondrous anticipation.

And the second choice? To do it all! To become all that we can possibly be. To read every book that we possibly can. To earn as much as we possibly can. To give and share as much as we possibly can. To strive and produce and accomplish as much as we possibly can. All of us have the choice.

To do or not to do. To be or not to be. To be all or to be less or to be nothing at all.

Like the tree, it would be a worthy challenge for us all to stretch upward and outward to the full measure of our capabilities. Why not do all that we can, every moment that we can, the best that we can, for as long as we can?

Our ultimate life objective should be to create as much as our talent and ability and desire will permit. To settle for doing less than we could do is to fail in this worthiest of undertakings.

Results are the best measurement of human progress. Not conversation. Not explanation. Not justification. Results! And if our results are less than our potential suggests that they should be, then we must strive to become more today than we were the day before. The greatest rewards are always reserved for those who bring great value to themselves and the world around them as a result of who and what they have become.

To Your Success,
Jim Rohn

Jim Rohn is considered to be America's Foremost Business Philosopher. To subscribe to the Free Jim Rohn Weekly E-zine send a blank email to mailto:subscribe@jimrohn.com Also to learn more about Jim’s best-selling CDs, books and videos/DVDs, as well as receive 20-60% off on all, including Take Charge of Your Life, The Five Major Pieces and Building Your Network Marketing Business, go to http://www.jimrohn.com Copyright © 1999, 2006 Jim Rohn International. All rights reserved worldwide.

Self-Induced-Whiplash.com

THE MOMENTUM FORMULA:
MOMENTUM = GOALS + ATTITUDE + SKILL SET + ACTION + NETWORK

YOUR CAREER PROGRESS IS A FUNCTION OF:

GOALS: DETERMINING WHAT YOU WANT
ATTITUDE: APPROACHING EVER TASK WITH THAT GOAL IN MIND
SKILL SET: GAINING KNOWLEDGE ON HOW TO ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING
ACTION: GETTING IN MOTION
NETWORK: SURROUNDING YOURSELF WITH PEOPLE WHO SUPPORT YOU

THE GOOD NEWS IS, YOU'RE IN CONTROL OF ALL FIVE OF THE KEY FACTORS THAT DICTATE HOW MUCH MOMENTUM YOU CREATE IN YOUR CAREER.

WANT TO FIND OUT IF YOU'RE ACCELERATING FAST ENOUGH TO GIVE YOURSELF CAREER WHIPLASH?

go to http://radicalcareering.com/action.php

9 Seconds by Jerry Hocutt

That was the time left on the Rose Bowl clock when quarterback Vince Young cleaned USC’s. Well, maybe not cleaned their clock but he certainly stopped it and their 34 game winning streak. The University of Texas Longhorns went on to upset the favored USC Trojans in one of college football’s most memorable national championship games 41-38. It was all over with 19 seconds left, except for the singing of “The Eyes of Texas”. (Okay, okay, I’ll admit I’m from Texas, but we haven’t been able to gloat since 1969.)

But not to worry. Today’s article is not about the Longhorn’s stunning upset. (Just had to get it in again.) It’s about getting what you want. Ran across an interesting book couple of weeks ago by T. Harv Eker, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. It makes you feel a little uneasy reading it. The theme of the book is about getting what you want. Made me think. Can you? Get what you want?

Vince Young and the Texas Longhorns did. Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush, and the USC Trojans didn’t. How do you square Eker’s belief that you can get what you want when you don’t?

***
The point? Set goals for yourself. Want something. This is the only way things get done. The only way you’ll stretch yourself and grow. The only way you can have a positive impact on others. Everything you have today you have because someone wanted to create it. Someone wanted to market it. You wanted to buy it. If you get what you want, that’s icing on the cake. If you don’t, you’ve grown and you’ll learn how to do something even better on the other side. You’ll have fun along the way. The journey becomes the destination.

What will give you the confidence to go after what you want? Try this. Picture something you’ve accomplished in the past. Something you got that you wanted really, really badly. Got the picture? Okay, now say to yourself, “I can (not will, but can) get what I want. I know. I’ve done it before.” Remind yourself every day until you get it. How do you know it works? Did you ever get anything you wanted? Then you know. You’ve done it before.

Copyright 2006 Hocutt & Associates, Inc., All right reserved.

www.You'veGotContacts.com

Seth's Blog: Understanding Local Max

My guess is that you've been wrestling with your Local Max.

If your organization or even your career is stuck, it may just be because of this chart.

Everyone starts at that dot at the bottom left corner. You're not succeeding because you haven't started yet.

Then you try something. If it works, you end up at point A.

A is where you see results as the direct output of a strategy and hard work. A is the job you got after investing in an MBA. A is the sales you got after running an ad.

Of course, being a success-oriented capitalist, that's not enough. So you do more. You push and hone and optimize until you end up at the Local Max. The Local Max is where your efforts really pay off.

So you try harder. And you end up at point B. Point B is a bummer. Point B is backwards. Point B is where the outcome of more effort against your strategy doesn't return better results. So you retreat. You go back to your Local Max.

And that is where most people stay. Most people get stuck at the Local Max because changing strategy in any direction (this is really a 3D chart, but I've smushed it to make it easier) leads to poorer results.

You've got a very good job as an art director. To do better, you'd either have to move to another firm, move to another town, switch careers or go back to school. And all of them have costs and very uncertain returns, so you stay.

You have 100 competitors in an industry that is self-described as a commodity. You use the same tactics your competition does, because if you change your pricing or fundamentally alter your marketing outreach, you get punished in terms of sales or profits.

You've got summer camp with 80 kids in it. If you want to grow, you've learned the hard way that hiring one or two more senior staff people won't work, because you can't afford them. So you stick with what you've got.

The lie of Local Max is this: the chart is incomplete. It really looks like this:

Local Max isn't actually that great when you realize that Big Max is not particularly far away.

The problem is that to get to Big Max, you need to go through step C, which is a horrible and scary place to be.

There were 10,000 single-location hamburger restaurants in the world when Ray Kroc decided to build a giant chain of franchised McDonald's. Anyone could have done it. No one did. Because everyone who tried had to go through point C to get there. It took Colonel Sanders more than a decade of pain to get through point C.

Of course, it's not just about growing sales or revenues. The Big Max/Local Max paradox affects everything from education to non-profits to politicians. If you have a "Max", whatever you're measuring, the odds are you're actually dealing with a Local Max, not the Big one.

If your market is changing, this idea is even more important to understand. That's because changing markets are always surfacing new Big Max points, and the only way to get to them is to go through the pain (yes, it's painful) of point C.

You can't reinvent yourself and your organization until you deal with the fear of point C, and that's hard to do without talking about it. I think the benefit of the Local Max curve is that it makes it easy for you and your team to have the conversation.

Seth Godin is the best-selling author of Survival Is Not Enough.

Your Premeire Resource for Negotiation Skills Training

"Your premier resource for sharpening your negotiation skills, strengthening your negotiation technique or providing negotiation training for your organization.



When you hear the word negotiation, what enters your mind? A buyer or seller haggling over the price of a product? A hostage held at gunpoint? Two large organizations putting together a merger? Getting your teenager to clean his room? Deciding where to go for dinner with your spouse? All of these are great examples of negotiating and clearly illustrate that Everyone Negotiates. For over fifteen years, we've had the privilege of enhancing negotiation skills, developing negotiation strategies, and sharpening negotiation technique through our negotiation training programs.

Our programs hold the unique distinction of being carefully customized for business negotiation professionals. So, whether you are a sales or marketing professional, purchasing manager or contract administrator, financial service professional, real estate sales professional, educator, collection agent/loss mitigation specialist, or general business professional, we have training programs and resources to help you become an even more confident and successful negotiator."

How Good a Negotiator Are You?

Determine Your Negotiating Style

Visit our website at www.everyonenegotiates.com for more great resources negotiation