Some people react to that feeling as if giving back to the world is a monumental task, and that making the world a better place is outside of their control.  Others look at that question and take a simple, yet appreciated, route of monetary donations to charities in their communities or abroad. 

We believe that every one of us is born with a cause strategy. 

In our careers, we’ve become accustomed to talking about things we’re good at.  In our hobbies, we turn to our passions to decide how to spend our time. 

Yet, when it comes to giving back, we seem to hope that completing an online donation form will do the trick (or worse, we go running the other way, out of a guilt that we’re not doing enough – and in the meantime, we even forget to click submit on the online donation form!)   

Don’t misunderstand our intent.  Monetary donations are great ­­– and we wouldn’t get very far in our charitable endeavours without a solid cash flow to fund them. 

We just happen to think that each of us has a greater potential than what lies in our bank accounts.  By looking at our strengths and our passions, we can start to see volunteering in a new way.  It may be volunteering your time with an organization that means a lot to you.  Or, it may mean that you can find a way to take your inner drive and come up with a big idea that could raise money for a good cause.  A strategy for volunteering that is personal to you.  That inspires you.  Ignites you. 

What causes can benefit from your strengths and passions?

We’ve recently begun working with imagine1day.  They are a fantastic organization that not only builds schools in Ethiopia and helps a third world country achieve its education goals, but they do it in a way that is unique to them.  Fuelled by a passion for possibility.  Dedicated to developing leaders.  Driven by equal parts inspiration, participation and action.

When we were introduced to them, we immediately realized that imagine1day aligned with our cause strategy:

• They believe in the power of possibility
• Their work celebrates individuals doing things locally that ultimately helps improve lives globally
• They encourage and enable individuals to harness their strengths and passions to do great things (and they’ve even coined a great term for the contributions that these individuals create: Creatribution^TM!)

Your Practical Action Plan:

• Make a list that captures the causes that are important to you.
• Make a second list of your strengths and passions.
• Brainstorm ways that you can marry up the two lists. 
• Identify who you can reach out to in order to get started.  What are your friends involved with?  Who can you talk to at the organizations that matter to you?  Who can help you build your cause strategy? 

And always remember:  

Sometimes you might only be able to give 5 minutes of your time or spare the change in your pocket.  Every little bit counts. 

The world loves a giver – no matter the size of the gift.

At first, they run on sheer excitement.  A dream of something better.  And when they take the first step, they get a taste of being closer to that dream coming true.  

And then life throws a curve ball.  The date with the cutie from the online dating site turned out to be an awkward disaster.  The job interview that went well didn’t turn into a job offer after all.  The goal to trek up a mountain suddenly seems impossible after the first few days of hiking.

Confucius summed it by saying, “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”

And we have the power question to help you rise every time you fall:

How bad do you (really) want it?

Don’t just skim over that question with a courtesy, “of course I want it.”  Give it some real thought.  On a scale of 1-10, how bad do you really want it?  Hint: if your answer is anything less than a 10, then I have some bad news. 

Cut your losses.  Go do something else with your time and energy.  Ouch, right?

The truth is simple:  if you aren’t committed to a 10 when it comes to reaching your goals, then why would those around you be compelled to help you get there? 

And even more so, why would life deliver your dream if you don’t have a 100% desire to want the dream to come true?

The people who rise after they fall are the ones who reach their goals.  And sometimes, they need to fall – and rise – many times before it happens. 

It may take 50 first dates to find the right match.  How bad do you want the relationship?  Are you willing to look at each date as an opportunity?  And if the date goes wrong, are you willing to get back online?

In today’s job market, there are qualified managers who spend over a year job searching, interviewing and networking before they find – and get offered – the perfect role.  How bad do you want the next step in your career? 

Trekkers want to get to the top of the mountain, but they have to constantly remind themselves to just get through the next part of the trail.  Then the next part.  Then the next part.  How bad do you want to reach the summit?

If you fall, you need to rise.  If you want to rise, you need to commit. 

Your Practical Action Plan:

• Write down your current goals.
• For each goal, give yourself an honest rating for how committed you have been to date.
• Ask yourself if you are willing to commit to a 10 to make it happen.
• Make a list of at least 3 things you can do to make sure you rise the next time you fall.  (If you’ve thought about falling before it happens, it makes rising up easier to do.)

Have you ever passed someone on the street and heard just a snippet of their conversation? 

I often wish I could hear more about those stories that are being told with such vim and vigour.  But not that day.  Almost every snippet I heard was rooted in the negative.

I then started to notice conversations at the coffee shop.  In the office.  At the grocery store.  For whatever reason, most conversations were complaints.   Complaints about other people, events that happened in the office, events that happened in the news.  The late start to summer.   

But let’s be honest: 

How much space for happiness can you allow in your life if you inadvertently fill so much of your dialogue with negativity? 

We all do it to some degree.  And we all probably underestimate the amount that we do it. 

I’m sure you’ve heard of a little law in the world of quantum physics called the ‘law of attraction.’  You get out of life what you put into it.  So if you keep dishing out the negative, how do you think life will respond?  I would wager a guess that it won’t be rewarding you with finding the love of your life, landing your perfect job, or winning the vacation contest you entered last month. 

Your Practical Action Plan

Go positive.  For a day.  Yes, a full day.  We dare you.  Pay attention to every word that comes out of your mouth.  And try to catch anything that comes out negative – and restate it as a positive or as an opportunity. 

And when you’ve mastered what you say, give yourself the ultimate challenge.  Watch your thoughts.  See how many of them have a negative connotation.  Based in worry.  In fear.  In anger.  In sadness. 

You won’t be able to course correct every negative thought right away.  And there will certainly be times when life will through you something that will trigger a few negative vibes.  But at least be in control of when you’re letting yourself go down the negative route.   After all, you’re the only one who can be in the driver seat of your attitude.  So go to bed tonight with a big smile on – because tomorrow is your day of positivity!

But what if you haven’t reached your potential? 

What if you could become more?   Would you take the risk?

The photo and inspiration for this post came from a walk around part of Vancouver’s seawall.  Painted on a rock near the Cambie Bridge were the words, “Take a Risk, Sweetheart.” 

And for us here at Free the Goldfish Coaching, that’s a mantra to live by.  In fact, the premise of freeing the goldfish lies in taking risks and becoming all that you can be.  

People, like goldfish, can only grow to a certain size when they’re in a fixed surrounding.   Literally.  If you put a goldfish in a fishbowl, it will only grow to a certain size – because the air exchange through the surface area of the water is a fixed amount.   If you put the goldfish in a larger tank, it can actually grow – because it has a larger surface area for the air exchange.  Blimey.  Who knew?!

So that begs the question:

Are you stuck in a fishbowl with a fixed and limited air supply?  Or are you willing to break the glass and go for something bigger so that you can be bigger? 

Taking risks is no easy feat.  And our body’s reaction can make us feel like turning around and running the other way.  A faster pulse, sweaty palms, or just a rising pit in your stomach. 

But those are actually cues to freedom!  Your body is physically telling you that you’re pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.  It’s going to have to do things differently to get used to being with the new you.  Starting today, look at those cues as a good thing – like an inner high five because you’re about to hit the jackpot!

It doesn’t matter where in life you want to make changes.  The harsh reality is simple:  if you do nothing, you’ll stay at the size that a fishbowl allows.  If you take a risk, big or small, you move yourself closer to being the real You.  The You that the world has been waiting for. 

So what do you say?  Wanna take a risk, sweetheart?

Your Practical Action Plan

• Identify one area of your life that you’d like to change.
• Think of at least 3 things you could do to help make that change – and focus on the ones that make your stomach do summersaults.  Don’t worry; we’ve got your back.
• Take the easiest of those 3 and put it into action. 
• Take some time to appreciate that it wasn’t that bad after all.  (We may not be fortune tellers, but we’re pretty sure the story in your head will be a lot worse than the reality that will come to be.)
• Proceed with putting the other 2 ideas to action.
• Toast to your success!

It’s the moment when you have an a-ha moment, only to remember that you’ve had the same a-ha moment before. 

There’s an old adage that says that life will keep teaching you the same lesson over and over until you learn it.  But like a good teacher, it won’t keep telling you the lesson in the same way, hoping that you’ll eventually get it. 

Nope.  Instead, life has an incredible skill to come up with clever scenarios, each one subtly different than the next, until you finally learn the lesson.   

Perhaps you keep trying for a new job, but something keeps getting in the way.  At first, it’s a poor job market.  Then you find something, but you don’t get an interview.  Then you finally get an interview, but you lose out to another candidate.  Or you decide to withdraw.  Either way, by now, you could let your frustration get the better of you.

Or you could choose a different way to look at it.

If life is genuinely supposed to be easy, then why is it proving to be such a challenge? 

Maybe life is hinting at a lesson for you.  Perhaps you’re chasing a career path that isn’t true to what your passions are.  Perhaps you’re vying for a role that will conflict with other priorities in your life.  Perhaps you’re hoping for a role similar to one that nearly sent you to hospital on stress leave a year ago. 

Stop. Pause. Listen.  If life was whispering a lesson, what could it be?

Life is running the same genius teaching methodology when you have a trend of relationships that eventually turn sour – or office conflicts that seem to crop up no matter where you work. 

If life was whispering a lesson, what could it be?

Your Practical Action Plan

• Look for re-realizations that pop into your mind.  Have you had the realization before?  What’s similar between the situations?  What’s the truth for you here?
• Look for patterns in the challenges that come up in your life.  Patterns are a typical sign that there’s a lesson that still hasn’t been learned.
• Look for blocks in certain areas of your life.  Blocks come up when life looks at you and basically says, “I don’t think so, my friend.  Keep trying.”   Life wants the best for you, but you might be trying to head down the wrong path.
• And whenever things seem to not be going your way, stop, pause, and listen.  Ask yourself: if life was whispering a lesson, what could it be?

But first, let’s ensure we all agree on the two rules of promotion-readiness:

1.  Avoid the potential to become disengaged if you get passed up for a good role, or if things seem to be moving at a slow pace.  The recency effect is always at play in the office: you’re only as good as your last project.  Said another way, the management team in your organization will have the clearest memory of what you most recently did.  It doesn’t matter how great you were over the past year.  If you suddenly spend a month mulling about, making errors, or picking up a megaphone to announce your negative outlook at every turn, your manager will probably draw one conclusion:  you’re not ready to be promoted.

2.  Never, ever say you won’t do something because “it’s not in my job description.”   You get promoted by demonstrating that you can do the role ahead of you – not by merely mastering the role you’re currently in. 

Cue the segue: the job description. 

Here’s how to use your job description to help get you promoted:

Question 1 - Are the success measures clear for all of your current projects?  

• If not, take a crack at identifying what success would look like for each project – and focus in on the aspects that you have accountability for (delivery dates, sales targets, creative quality, etc.). 
• Talk to your manager about how they define success on your projects.  When you have success measures in place, you’ll be able to objectively showcase how well you did at the end of the project.

Question 2 – Does your job description make the best use of your passions and strengths?   

• If not, find a few projects to add on to your job description.  You’ll have the most success on the projects that bring out your best. 
• And given point 1 above, anything you can do to get a few slam-dunk successes bodes well for Promotion Land.

Question 3 – What does the person in the next level up do that you don’t do?   

• If you’re going to prove that you’re ready to take on a role higher, find out what their job description says.  Then identify a few things that you can take on yourself. 
• Do you know any manager that will resist a team member asking, “Why don’t I take that off your plate?” 

Question 4 – What do others outside your organization do that you don’t do? 

• Perhaps you’re contemplating a move outside of your organization, or perhaps you want a broader understanding of what success looks like out there.  Either way, search your professional networks to reach out to people doing the job you next want. 
• Some sites, like LinkedIn, have a paid feature that allow you to send emails directly to people that you may not be able to reach with basic profiles.  Explore a monthly trial to see if it helps get you in touch with those that you need to talk to. 

And when all is said and done, rewrite your job description to reflect the above.  We’re not interested in the job description that shows you how to do your current job – but the one that gets you closer to the job you want. 

Your Practical Action Plan

• Refine your current job description using the above questions.
• Share your career goals and updated job description with your management team.
• If you’re looking to change companies, share your career goals, experiences and successes with relevant contacts outside your organization. 

Unfortunately, we’re probably just going to go in circles again for today.  For tomorrow.  Maybe even for months or years.

The trick?  Unless you can see the forest through the trees, you’re never going to be in a position to make a meaningful decision. 

List-building is like marking and counting trees.  It’s a lot of busyness without a lot of accomplishment. 

Focus on the forest.  With big questions that get you out of the details.  Here are a few of our favourites:

Are your values aligned?  If you don’t share the same values about big things in life, you’re going to constantly end up arguing.  Over money.  Over communication.  Over anything that matters to you, but doesn’t seem to matter to them.  What values are most important to you?  Do they share them?  What things do you argue about?  What does it say about differences in values?

Are your goals aligned?  You don’t need to have the exact same goals in life, but things will go much more smoothly if your goals are aligned.  Do you both want to live abroad?  If only one of you does, can that be achieved in the relationship?  Do you both want to get married?   Are you both open to having children?  Bottom line: can you both achieve your goals over time? 

Don’t expect that someone’s goals are going to do a 180-degree turn because of the relationship.  Compromises might be made on smaller goals, but big goals that go unaddressed are like a smouldering volcano that will eventually blow. 

Do you feel like you’re being your best self?    Seriously.  When you’re in a great relationship, you should be feeling like you’re growing and being the best possible version of yourself.  You should not only enjoy the moments in the relationship, but the process of becoming you.  As Arianna Huffington says in her book Fearless….in love, work and life, “it’s all about finding you best self, not losing yourself in another.”   Who are you when you’re in this relationship?

What do you spend your time thinking about?   If you’re spending a disproportionate amount of time evaluating the relationship or the other person, it could be a warning sign.  The best relationships enable positive thought patterns – about you, your partner and the relationship as a whole. 

(Don’t panic if you sometimes have thoughts on how to make the relationship stronger – after all, relationships do take time, effort and imagination.   But if the thoughts are more along the lines of, “Why is this so hard?” then you may want to start asking the other power questions above.)

And when in doubt, learn to trust your gut.  Your brain can be overly rational.  Your heart can lead you astray.  But your gut can be your best tool to reconcile the two. 

Your Practical Action Plan

• Avoid the temptation to build lists upon lists of every attribute about the other person or the relationship.  In the end, does it really matter if they don’t like brussel sprouts or if they dig their top 40 music?
• Focus your efforts on the forest.  Ask the big questions that are the deal-makers or the deal-breakers – about your values, your goals, your growth and your thoughts. 

When it’s done properly, the scorecard can set us up for a great relationship of trust, spontaneity and happiness.  When it’s done incorrectly, the scorecard merely acts like a hammer that pounds one nail after another into the relationship coffin.  Sounds dramatic? 

Perhaps.  But the prevalence of poor score-keeping in today’s relationships means we need a dramatic statement or two to wake us up from our bad habits. 

The current relationship scorecard usually runs something like this:

1. Keep track of what you do
2. Keep track of what the other person doesn’t do
3. Point out the gap until you’re blue in the face
4. Argue
5. Begin to feel like the relationship is going nowhere
6. The relationship goes nowhere

In an ideal world, relationships wouldn’t even have scorecards.  We’d enjoy the moments that rock.  We wouldn’t dwell on the ones that don’t.  And we’d always be on a positive trajectory. 

We’re a little more practical minded than that.  And for those of us who have long managed our relationships the wrong way, we need something tangible to help remind us how to look at things differently.

Hence we use the 1-column scorecard.  Yup, 1 column.  And the only column on it keeps track of what you do in the relationship that rocks.  For real. 

(Those of you who are single or in strained relationships may have just fallen off your chairs.  We’ll wait for you to get back up – because this is an important concept to get!) 

First – here’s the reason why the typical scorecards don’t work – and it lies in what you’re tracking:

Your scorecard is trying to do two things at once:

1. Track all the things you do that rock
2. Track all the issues in the relationship

And then we look at the gap between those two things.  We constantly compare them.  Apples to oranges anyone?  Those are two very different things!

Hence the 1-column scorecard.  Focus 100% of the scorecard on what you’re bringing to the relationship.  The benefits are enormous:

1. You feel good – because you benefit from the feeling of giving and investing in the relationship.
2. You feel good – because you’re doing things selflessly – without a need to receive something in return.
3. Your partner feels good – because they feel like you genuinely care.
4. Your partner spontaneously starts to do/say genuine things because they no longer feel manipulated (and trust us, when they felt manipulated before, they likely only did things out of guilt, or said things to tell you what you wanted to hear.  A harsh truth, but one worth noting, and one worth pro-actively avoiding by using the 1 column scorecard). 

But what about the things you were tracking in the second column – the ones that weren’t working in the relationship.  Surely they should be addressed somehow? 

Absolutely.  But that’s a whole other topic that we’ll explore in our next relationship post:  “How to really know when the relationship isn’t working”

Your practical action plan

• Use the 1-column scorecard as a tool to come up with different ways to show your partner you care – and to ensure that you do or say those things regularly. 
• If you find yourself falling into the traditional scorecard, remember these three words:  Mind The Gap.  It may be common language for the subway system in London (“The Tube”), but used here, it can be a powerful way to remind yourself of the gap you’re creating by using the wrong scorecard.   Literally: notice the gap you’re focused on and shift your attention the 1-column scorecard instead.

Before long, everyone is charging down a project path – one likely filled with a bitter taste, a bad attitude, and the occasional dagger coming from someone’s eye. 

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be this way. 

And a change can start the second you apply the golden rule to office behaviour:

You have to demonstrate the very thing you expect to receive.  And you have to be the first one to dive in.

You want respect at the table?  You first have to show others respect for their ideas.

You want autonomy?   You have to demonstrate that you’re ready and capable of running things on your own.

You want to be trusted?  You first have to trust that others are doing the right thing for the business and the organization.

And it all starts with parking your own ego at the door.  It doesn’t matter if you think the other person’s ego is the one that’s too big to fit in the room.  Yours is the one that needs to get checked first.  If not, egos will collide in a feud before you’re even on the second slide of your PowerPoint presentation. 

Remember:  egos are masks for insecurities. 

Someone comes off as a control freak because he doesn’t feel in control himself.  Someone else comes off as a know-it-all because inside she’s afraid that she isn’t up on the latest innovations. 

If you can back off your ego, their egos won’t feel as threatened.  And the second they don’t feel threatened, they’re less likely to launch an outward attack. 

Focus your efforts on listening.  On asking questions.  On discovering what is interesting about the other person’s ideas.  On better understanding their concerns.  (And you may need to do the occasional biting your lip as you get used to doing this…)

By recognizing that your adversary is a contributing partner, you can remove the emotion from the discussion, and steer decision-making into an objective one – or at least one that doesn’t end right away in a flat out “No!”  Your goal is to keep the dialogue open and positive – so that over time, they trust and respect you, and provide you with the autonomy you crave. 

In the time you’ve been reading this, your own ego has probably made up excuses for why this approach won’t work with your sparring partners.  That’s because your ego wants the battle.  It lives for the battle.  And it will do everything it can to justify why you need to fight.

But if it hasn’t been working for you until now, why do you think it will work tomorrow? 

Be open to the idea that things may shift – but remember you’re the one who has to demonstrate a shift first. 

This won’t solve every problem – and it won’t solve them overnight – but it will go a long way to help build a foundation for the relationship (and if nothing else, it will help you keep your blood pressure in check in the meantime!)

5 Points to Specificity

Congrats!  You’ve made it to the 5^th and final week in our program of how to build your Nowolutions and reach the goals that have evaded you until now.  This week, we drill down into your goals once more; it’s time to get specific. 

Really specific. 

We often phrase our goals in a generic way, without having a really clear picture in our mind of what it is we want to achieve.  When you added the dimension of emotion last week, you started to bring that picture into focus. 

But updating your goals with our 5 points of specificity is like moving from a 3 megapixel camera to a 10 megapixel one!   Let the pixel party begin….

Get Specific #1 – how will you know when you’ve reached it?

If you don’t know what success looks like, how will you ever know when you’ve actually reached your goal?  Spend some time mapping out the end destination.  Knowing where you want to end up will help you stick to the right path along the way. 

Example:

• If your goal was to achieve more work-life balance, success might look like being home by 6pm 3 nights a week.

 Get Specific #2 – when will you achieve it?

Put a timeline in place for when you want to achieve the goal – and for some milestones along the way.  If you leave it open-ended, tomorrow will turn into next week, and 2012 will hit you in the face before you know it. 

Example:

• In the work-life balance example, you may not be able to execute the ideal plan right away given your current projects. 
• Set some interim milestones for 1-month, 2-months and 3-months from now.  Perhaps getting home even 1 night a week by 6pm is cause for celebration after the first month of your plan!

 Get Specific #3 – what’s the next step?

Always know the next step.  And by always, we mean ALWAYS!   Staying in an action-oriented mode will help you continue momentum – and maybe even pick it up a notch as you reach more milestones.  Starting out, map out at least the first 3 next steps.  And then start chipping away at them!

Example:

• If leaving 1 night a week by 6pm was the first milestone, what needs to happen this week to start paving the way to reach that goal? 
• What can you delegate?  What can you cancel completely?  How can you be more efficient in your day?

 Get Specific #4 – what will you use to keep you on track?

Document your goals with the success measures, the timelines and the next steps.   This document can be your ongoing tracker so you can evaluate your progress.  By writing it down, it’s there in front of you.  Your progress is there in black & white.  There’s no avoiding it. 

Side note:  if you have a week where you didn’t make the progress you wanted, don’t lose too much sleep.  Instead, focus your energy on acknowledging what got in the way, and identifying ways to get you back on track for next week. 

Example:

• In the work-life balance example, you could try setting up a ‘calendar’ where you record the hours you work each day. 
• In each day block, you can note what you’re going to do to help get you closer to being home by 6pm 3 days a week. 
• Keep track of the tactics you try that work or don’t work.  And be sure to reapply the ones that work the best!

 Get Specific #5 – how will you celebrate?

Nowolutions are meant to be celebrations!   When you set out to achieve a goal, make sure you know what you’ll do to celebrate the key milestones along the way.  Having a reward system in place for you will keep you focused on the positive steps you’ve made and will set you up for success for the next milestone. And don’t forget to identify how you’ll celebrate when you’ve reached the end goal! 

Example:

• So you’ve made it home by 6pm 3 nights a week for the first week in a very, very long time.  What will you do that night or that weekend?  Might we suggest an indulgence that you normally wouldn’t give yourself permission to do? 

Phew!  That wraps up 5 weeks.  5 reasons why resolutions fail.  And 5 practical techniques to get you back on track. 

You’ve worked hard; now it’s time to play hard!  A toast to your Nowolution success!