Tag Archive for: leadership

From New Year’s Resolutions To New Year’s Renewal

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Making New Year’s resolutions is for those interested in growing, being a better person, and improving themselves. New Year’s is a good time for taking an inventory of our lives to discover where changes need to be made. Just as the fiscal year end of a business  provides an opportunity to take an inventory of stock, a new year provides an opportunity to take stock of our lives. It’s a good time to celebrate successes from the past year, reestablish intentions for the new year, evaluate your life, and set goals for the future. This is a ritual I have done at the close of each year and opening to the next, for many many years now.

Here is some of my thinking about New Year’s resolutions for you to reflect on…

  1. Whatever you call it – resolutions, goals, habits – make sure they are yours. Make sure that your intentions are authentically yours, not someone elses. Resist that natural indication to compare and conform with others. Joy in life comes from being true to who you are meant to be. If you are trying to keep up with the Jones, sooner or later they will refinance! One way to ensure that your resolutions will last no longer than a few weeks is to make them out of guilt or inadequacy or inferiority, rather than an honest desire to make a change in your life that comes from within you.
  2. Before making any kind of resolution for change, be sure to celebrate the past year. There’s a correlation between those who make resolutions and those who are hard on themselves. It’s always easier to find areas that need changing than to find areas that need celebrating. Make it a point to bring gratitude and recognition of progress into your new year’s resolutions.
  3. Along with celebration, bring kindness and patience – for yourself and for others. Life can be difficult, but it’s a lot easier with compassion. A new life is much more likely to grow in the soft, rich soil of compassion than in the rocky ground of judgement. As Thich Nhat Hanh beautifully expresses, “Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with the eyes of compassion.” When you think of compassion, think first of yourself. This is where true compassion starts.
  4. Before making any kind of resolution, ask if you are actually committed to change or if you simply making a resolution because that’s what you do this time of year. There’s nothing wrong with not making a resolution if there’s nothing in your life you want to change right now. And there’s nothing wrong with a resolution for the sake of a resolution. Just be honest when you find yourself “off track” in the middle of January. Don’t make a promise to change if you aren’t ready. Whenever you break an agreement, either with yourself or with others, you erode your self-respect.
  5. If you are serious about making changes in your life, find a mentor, someone who will guide you, support you, and hold you accountable along the way. From my experience, you will never make changes in your life alone. You’ll only create discouragement.
  6. Take an inventory of what “growth” means to you. Be careful about defining growth as simply “more” or “bigger.” “Bigger” isn’t always better. “More” isn’t always satisfying. Think about growth as qualitative not just quantitative. Just because you lose weight doesn’t mean your life will be better. Just because you make more money doesn’t mean you will be happier. Peace is reflected in your relationship to the present moment, experiencing the beauty and magnificence that surrounds you now. Quality of life will sustain you in a way that quantity never will.
  7. Whatever changes you decide to make in your life, make room for rest, renewal, and delight in your busy life. In the relentless busyness of modern life, we probably all need to rediscover the rhythm between work and rest. The only life form that doesn’t rest is cancer. A truly successful life is one of balance, perspective, and presence.

“The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year,” writes G.K. Chesterton. “It is that we should have a new soul.” As you let go of last year may you enter the new with a renewed energy that is fresh and vital. Be good to yourself, and be well this new year.

The Annual Review: Assess and Refocus

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I took a couple of days between Christmas and New Years for my annual inventory of the past year and to clarify my key priorities for the coming year. I always get inspired and find it valuable to review my successes and mistakes of the past year, and then carefully and thoughtfully examine my priorities for the coming year.

In 2010, I will be writing a new book on organizational culture – an area that I am passionate about these days. I’ll be continuing to develop my strengths, deepening and renewing the material that I bring to the marketplace, and finding new ways to add value to my clients. A great idea from a little book I read over the holidays called “The 21 Indispensable Qualities of A Leader,” by John Maxwell, was to think about how you can add value to five people this year. They can be family members, colleagues, employees, or friends. Now that’s a good goal. Especially when they get surprised. I’ll also be continuing my Yoga practice and staying healthy. And I’ll be focusing on being a little more present each moment to the amazing blessings that surround me. I am loved and I can love. What else really matters?

New Year’s Resolutions – or New Year’s Revolutions

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It’s that time of year when people make all kinds of resolutions: lose weight, spend less, quit smoking, improve a relationship, etc. But so often these resolutions turn into clubs to hit ourselves with come February when we are already off track. Here are some suggestions for turning resolutions into revolutions: lasting change in your life.

  1. Be honest with yourself. If you don’t really want or need change your life, relax. After all, you don’t have to make a new year’s resolution just because everyone else is. Either let go of this “resolution” thing or have some fun with it. If you are serious about making some changes in your life, read further.
  2. Think carefully before you make a promise to yourself. The Law of Integrity means that making promises will affect your self-respect. Whether you make a promise to your banker, your son, or yourself, honoring or dishonoring that promise will have an impact on your self-worth. So… only make promises you know you will keep.
  3. Take a careful inventory. Evaluate your intentions to change: Have you clearly identified what you want in your life and set a date when you expect to manifest it? Have you identified the obstacles you must overcome in order to manifest it? Have you identified the groups, people, organizations and what it is you need to know in order to get there? Have you written all this down? Have you clearly stated why the goals are important to you? (When your “why” gets stronger, the “how” gets easier; purpose is always stronger then the objective.)
  4. Turn goals into habits. Get out your day-timer and schedule in the promises you have made to yourself and others. Change one small habit at a time. Success comes through small consistent habits, not big inconsistent splashes. The universe rewards action. And when it comes to New Year’s resolutions, it’s the tortoise who wins the race.
  5. Stay focused. Write your goals down and carry them with you. Read them in the morning and in the evening before you go to bed. Visualize. Mediate on them.
  6. Get support. You will never change your life alone. Ask for help. Get an accountability partner to hold you to your promises. Get involved with a support group. Find a coach or therapist to help you. Learn about the changes you want to make in your life. Study the art and science of success. I recommend two books: Deepak Chopra’s, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success; and Jack Canfield’s, The Success Principles.
  7. Enjoy your life now. If you aren’t happy now, don’t expect it to get any better when you achieve your goals. Joy in life has to do with your relationship with the present moment. Fulfillment comes from enjoying the process of discovering and expressing yourself more fully in the service of others. What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now. Relax. The universe is designed to help you out. The purpose of life is to grow and evolve your soul and find joy on the journey, so you can bring joy to others.

Christmas Is About Opening Your Heart, Not Your Wallet

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I heard a great quote this week on a movie trailer: “I don’t like Christmas, but I like getting presents.” This could be said about me. Every year I say to myself, “I don’t like all the materialism that comes with Christmas… Santa is a myth perpetrated by the consumer marketplace to get people spending in the fourth quarter!”

But then I stopped to examine what was really going on. If I were truly honest with myself, this righteous attitude was an excuse to let my wife do all the shopping. After all, “I’m busy at work, earning money so we can afford presents. I’m doing more important things than hanging around crowded malls full of materialistic shoppers.”

But something in me woke up this year. I started to realize how I have not only abdicated my responsibility for shopping, but in the process, kept my heart closed.

Even though I procrastinated my shopping, this week I am actually getting into the stores, but more importantly I am getting into my heart. And it’s been good for me to tune in to the people I care most about and ask, “How can the most important people in my  life feel loved right now?” It’s a question that needs answering all year round, but this time of year awakens us to the importance of the question. In the words of Charles Dickens,“I have always thought of Christmas as a good time, a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time. It’s the only time in the long calendar of the year when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely and to think of people around them as fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

Bringing this attitude into the season has opened me to love and gratefully connected me to my soul, to my fellow travelers on this human experience, and to the spirit of life that goes well beyond the meaningless purchasing of presents under the pressure of another to-do list.

And then, I had a conversation with a friend this morning who just returned from visiting his dying sister. He talked of the unsung heroes in our world, not the philanthropic executives who donate money to charity this time of year to make a public appearance of benevolence. The real heroes are people who serve and give to their communities every day of the year without any expectation of personal or public recognition. An example are dying patients who, in the midst of their own suffering, comfort a fellow patient lying in a bed next to them.

Christmas brings to our attention our life-giving need to love and realize our connection to each other. It truly is about the heart, not the wallet (even though the wallet is be a good place to start if there’s money there).

What is your experience of love, both now and after the glow of the season is extinguished?

Holidays, Rest, and Renewal

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A coaching session with an executive earlier this week reminded me that this time of year is so hectic: social obligations, family commitments, shopping malls, company parties. Is it really meant to be so crazy? Our family has made it a habit to stop, reflect, and design the holidays in a way that is right for us. Life – and time – is getting too precious to spend it on obligations that are not in alignment with our deepest values. I’ve lived enough of my life under other people’s conditions, and am learning to be true to myself.

For me, the season is about four things:

  1. Rest – from a very busy fall;
  2. Relationships – with people that matter the most to me;
  3. Reflection – an inventory of 2010 and goal setting for 2011;
  4. Renewal – time to do what we love to do: playing games as a family, spending time outdoors, catching up on some reading, being still, and just hanging out.

I have learned that one of the keys to a full life is to say “no” to the wrong opportunities. No better time to test and practice this than during the holiday season. Learning this is still a work in progress.

I feel enormous gratitude for my blessed life. I hope you will take time to design this holiday in a way that is true to you, and I wish you and your loved ones the greatest blessing of all: inner peace.

Obuntubotho – The Essence of Being Human – And of Being A Great Leader

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When Bishop Desmond Tutu introduced Nelson Mandela at his inauguration as the new president of South Africa, he described him as being a man who had Obuntubotho. “Obuntubotho,” he said, “is the essence of being human. You know when it is there and when it is absent. It speaks about humanness, gentleness, putting yourself out on behalf of others, being vulnerable. It embraces compassion and toughness. It recognizes that my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”

Obuntubotho is not only the essence of being human. It’s the essence of great leadership, because the essence of great leadership is being human.

Who do you know in your workplace or in your life who has this quality of Obuntubotho? When you stop and pay attention, you know when it’s there, and you know when it is absent. As a leader, how are you consciously developing this quality within yourself?