INSIGHTS (on leadership/self-leadership)
Cincinnati Reds first baseman, Joey Votto, once told a young star he admired (while chatting with him at first base), “If you try hard, you’ll be the league MVP someday.” He later explained why he told the flabbergasted player his belief:
“It’s so much closer than we realize. Sometimes we think it’s impossible when we don’t have it, but then it comes, quick, quick, quick, quick. And if you get the hell out of your own way and keep moving forward toward your best self, amazing things can happen.”
He’s right, and research backs him up. In one study, a team of scholars looked at 100 entrepreneur case studies where the entrepreneurs quit their endeavors, after years of labor. In 75% of the cases, it was determined the entrepreneurs were so very close to success when they bailed (i.e., someone else achieved what they were trying to do shortly thereafter).
The point is, keep pedaling. It might feel like you won’t ever get there. But it’s just as likely that success is just around the corner.
IMPERFECTIONS (a mistake many make)
We all do it at times. We get up feeling grumpy, or “off.” Our morning disposition clouds our worldview for that day. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Feels like a sh&$ty day, so it becomes one.
Here’s an alternative – a simple way to reframe your day. I was out and about and saw this painted on a wall.
It read to me not as a feel good, Hallmark store, coffee mug saying, but as a statement of fact. Its boldness, its declarative nature, stopped me in my tracks and made me actually think about the day I was having. “You know what?”, I said to myself, “Today IS a good day.” And click, just like that, it was. Everything that happened before and after was instantly reframed through this 5-word lens.
My intent is not to be cheesy or gag-worthy positive-minded, or to ask you to ignore things about your day that are, in fact, not so good. I’m just asking you to consider the power of self-fulfilling prophecies in a good light. We tend to go through our days on autopilot – if we start thinking it’s not a good day, that temperament sticks. Sometimes we need help getting out of our funk. Sometimes we need a little reframing. So try this reframe. It works.
IMPLEMENTATION (one research-backed strategy, tip, or tool)
Want your team to show more accountability? Ask them to ACT (to recall this acronym, which spells out behaviors of accountability):
Assembly line mentality – Imagine you work in a manufacturing plant on an assembly line. You know you must deliver your part for the team to be able to achieve anything. Everyone on that line depends on you to do your part.
Credit card caring – Imagine that you started the company you work for from your dorm room in college, by maxing out your credit cards and personal lines of credit. You’d do everything you could to get the company to greater success if it was seeing difficult times. That’s the level of personal ownership that those who feel truly accountable exhibit.
Take action – You don’t believe that it’s someone else’s responsibility to take action. You don’t wait to be told what to do, you act. “If it’s to be, it’s up to thee.”
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