Year: 2020

Have you ever struggled with trying to meet your goals? Even for high achievers, life is demanding, the busyness never ceases, and success in one area is often accompanied by lackluster performance in another.

The continuous demands of a high-performance lifestyle can make reaching your goals seem impossible. What you need is a guide. 

Below is a simple step-by-step process to help you identify, set, and achieve short and long-term goals.

1. Identify Growth Areas

One of the first steps to take is deciding where you want to grow. Your growth will start with your intention. You won’t become healthier, wealthier, or smarter by accident. 

Think about the areas you want to set goals in. Set physical, spiritual, mental, emotional, financial, professional, and relationship goals.

Preparing to set goals in an area doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing poorly in that area of your life. You should always be seeking to improve yourself. Often doing good is what keeps people from doing great. 

2. Identify Your Important Roles

Why set goals for your different roles? Have you ever met someone that is successful at work but at the cost of relationships and health and fitness? We can be successful in our careers and our personal life but we have to be intentional! What roles do you fill and wish you could be better at?

Take some time to think about little improvements that can make you a better leader, spouse, parent, friend, sibling, or son/daughter.

These improvements can start with one small, easy thing. Ask yourself what you can do today that will make you a better X. If you don’t spend time thinking about what you want to grow in, you can easily go into autopilot and not reach any of your goals.

Once you’ve decided on the roles and areas of growth, you need to set goals.

3. Set SMART Goals 

If you want to see improvement in your chosen areas of development and various roles, you need to set SMART goals.

SMART goals mean that your goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-based. 

Setting the right goals is vital in achieving your goals and growing as a person. If your goals aren’t specific and measurable, you won’t know when you’ve met them and can’t track any progress. 

SMART goals don’t have to be complicated. For example, here are some SMART goals you can set:

• Exercise 5 times a week for at least 30 minutes
• Read 25 books per year
• Save 10% of my take-home income 
• Pray each day
• Meditate for 15 minutes 4 times per week 
• Connect with 1 friend per day 
• Make 20 sales calls per week

All of these goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-specific. You could easily track the progress you make and celebrate when you reach them.

4. Have a Weekly Plan  

Take time every week to look at your goals and develop plans to achieve those goals. If you only think about your goals when you set them, you will quickly forget and not make progress.

Your weekly plan needs to identify small steps to accomplish your long-term goals. Add those activities to your weekly calendar. 

If reading 25 books per year is a long term goal, you need to have a short term goal of reading for 15 minutes in the morning every day. 

I recommend reading Dr. Robert Maurer’s book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way.

In this book, Dr. Maurer explains that taking small steps is the best way to circumvent our natural resistance to change and allows us to build new habits. 

5. Track Your Goals

Keeping track of your goals and progress towards them is just as important as setting goals in the first place. 

If you’re not tracking your progress, you won’t know if you’re getting closer to achieving your goals.

Long-term goals can seem out of reach until you begin tracking your progress. We often look at our day-to-day progress and don’t see any improvements. If you improve by 1% every day, that progress can easily go unnoticed. 

On the other hand, if you can look at your monthly progress, a 25–30% improvement can’t go unseen.

I designed the Weekly Game Plan to help you track your goals and make it easy to see your progress. The tracker helps identify weekly activities to reach your goals.

6. Conduct Monthly Reviews 

You should be taking time at least once a month to talk with a friend or mentor about your goals. Take this time to celebrate your successes as well as develop action plans for improvement.  

Monthly reviews are a time for you to analyze your goal tracking sheet, find any gaps, reassess your long-term goals, and discover opportunities to build a plan to improve.

You will find that reaching your goals becomes easier when you have someone you can be honest and open with.

If you’re looking for an accountability partner, you can schedule a free assessment call with me.

7. Develop Action Plans 

Your monthly reviews should result in a clear action plan of what you need to work on. The plan should include what you will do and when you will do it.

If you have a plan to exercise more, your action plan needs to be clear about what that means.  

Document your progress. For example, I might say,(This year I’m averaging 4 days of exercise every week. Last year I averaged 3 days a week. Now I want to set a plan to achieve my next goal of exercising 5 times per week. )

Don’t just focus on weaknesses, make sure to celebrate the improvements! In the above example, I would be exercising 33% more this year! 

During my monthly review, I might notice that Mondays are the day I usually miss my workout. My action plan for improvement may include running with my spouse or friend every Monday at 6:30 a.m.  

When creating your action plan, try to add some fun. Include someone to keep you accountable to help reach your goals.

8. Apply Sustainable Renewal Practices

What happens when you don’t accomplish your goals in a week or month? How will you handle the stress and anxiety that may come with setbacks in your life?

This step is the part of goal setting most people don’t talk about. I’ve found that there’s a need to practice how we deal with the anxieties and uncertainties of life. 

I incorporate renewal practices into my schedule so I don’t get off track. These practices include regular exercise, practicing daily gratitude, prayer, and meditation. 

Read this blog about renewal principles if you want more in-depth information.

9. Find Coaching Support

I know firsthand that this lifestyle is not easily built on your own. Having people who support you and help you accomplish your goals is necessary. 

Investing in a mentor and coach is one of the best ways you can track your performance, create an action plan, and plan your next steps.

I have over 30 years of experience helping business leaders reach their goals, and one of my biggest goals is to continue providing value to people. Schedule a free assessment call with me to see how I can help.

I know that when you implement this step-by-step process, you will make progress and reach your goals. 

Please reach out if you have any questions.

Practices to reset when stressed by your high performance lifestyle

Change, even good change, takes its toll.

In a recent coaching session I had with a client, he expressed that a recent job change had introduced newfound and unwelcome anxiety in his life.

Overall the change was good—he was excited about a new opportunity that would help him achieve his professional goals. However, despite the excitement, he found himself dealing with an uncomfortable amount of stress in his new role.

His experience likely sounds familiar. Change, whether small or large, and even when that change is positive, brings excitement and stress, both of which can be exhausting. Working through his issue, we spent most of the coaching time talking about the importance of the principles of sustainable renewal to manage anxiety and uncertainty.

Sustainable renewal is the final step of what I refer to as Sustainable Performance Excellence (SPE).

SPE is an approach for achieving long-term, sustainable performance and it involves:

1. Dreaming big with purpose
2. Planning small steps 
3. Engaging in renewal practices

Learn more about Sustainable Performance Excellence

My client was doing fantastic on the first two elements: dreaming big and taking small steps towards big goals. Unfortunately, he wasn’t taking the time out to practice renewal and found his mind harboring anxiety throughout his day.

Staying present despite anxiety

If left unchecked, the mind will often race on both the excitement and the fear of an uncertain future. 

My client was suffering from both elements of excitement and fear. During our discussion, he framed his concern as follows: How do I stop my mind from racing?

The answer: Mindfulness through sustainable renewal practices.

What is mindfulness?

This term has gained popularity over the last few years, though the concept is by no means new.

The definition of mindfulness I most prefer is:

A mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.

Mindfulness sounds like a great place to arrive, but the key concern remains: How do you reach mindfulness when your mind is racing? How do you focus on the present moment when your mind just won’t let you?

To achieve mindfulness, you need to engage in regular renewal practices.

Regular Renewal Practices for Sustainable Performance

On our call, I coached my client on 4 practices of sustainable renewal to manage the anxieties he was facing due to the uncertainty of the future. Here they are:

• Write a gratitude list daily
• Exercise regularly
• Pray and ponder inspired literature 
• Meditate daily

Write a gratitude list daily

Starting each day with an attitude of gratitude is a great way to teach the mind to stay focused on what is going right vs. what you feel is missing or going wrong in your life.

Amy Morin, the author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Do (which I highly recommend), shared in Psychology Today seven proven scientific benefits of gratitude:

• More and stronger relationships
• Better physical health
• Better psychological health
• Greater empathy and reduced aggression
• Better sleep
• Better self-esteem
• Improved mental strength

High achievers often have the bad habit of focusing excessively on what needs to change. Writing a daily gratitude list of 3-5 things is a great way to remind yourself of what about your life is already good and that you should celebrate.

See my podcast for additional research and practical tips on enhancing gratitude.

Exercise regularly

What’s the most transformative thing that you can do for your brain today? According to neuroscientist Wendy Suzuki, exercise! 

In her Ted Talk, Suzuki discusses the science of how working out boosts your mood and memory—and even protects your brain against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. 

Exercise is a keystone habit as Charles Duhigg suggests in his book The Power of Habit:

“Typically, people who exercise start eating better and become more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.”

Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit

Here are my thoughts on exercise and keystone habits:

Pray and ponder inspired literature

Together with prayer, studying inspired literature like scripture has been proven to quiet the mind and slow down (mind racing,) among other mental health benefits.

According to Marilyn Schlitz, Ph.D., a lecturer at Harvard:

“It’s clear from the correlational studies within the epidemiology data that positive relationships exist between religious and spiritual practice and health outcomes on a variety of different conditions.

According to the Heritage Foundation:

“We have a logical reason why religion might influence physical health through mental health, through enhancing social support, through influencing health behaviors, all affecting physical health outcomes.”

Taking time to read and pray can get your mind more focused on something big than yourself and your life and put things into perspective.

Meditate daily

In 2017, Dr. Matthew Thorpe, MD, PhD, wrote a great article on the 12 science-based benefits of meditation, talking about how meditation can help:

• Reduce stress
• Control anxiety
• Promote emotional health
• Lengthen attention span
• Potentially reduce age-related memory loss
• Improve sleep
• Improve kindness
• And more

I have recently found the benefits of short meditations to be quite powerful in managing anxiety.  When your mind is racing because of uncertainty or a setback in your daily or life goals, try doing a short 10-minute meditation from the Ten Percent Happier app. Meditation works.

Consistency Brings Capacity

None of these activities stands alone—each one needs to be done regularly with the others to manage a high-performance lifestyle.

There is power in building capacity to manage your mind. When building muscles in your body, you know you have to do regular muscle building activities. Otherwise the muscle weakens.  

The same principles apply to achieving mindfulness: You need regular practice to quiet your mind and stay focused on your goals and dreams.

Start practicing these 4 elements of sustainable-renewal today and start enjoying the journey towards sustainable performance excellence.

Finding Sustained Happiness and Success

Have you ever met a person who is rich, maybe even famous, and not happy?

Have you ever met a person who is chill, seemingly happy, and not able to really achieve success in their chosen field?

Can we be both productive, successful, and happy?

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.”

Let’s talk about the ROOT, the complete solution for a happy and successful life.

Some well-meaning, high-performance experts bring part of the solution, while few bring the whole and sustainable model for excellence.

1. Dream Big with a Clear Purpose

Robert Fritz, the author of The Path of Least Resistance, authored, “If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.”

Deepak Chopra, the author of The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success says, “You must find a place in yourself where nothing is impossible.”

Additional authors such as Jack Canfield, who wrote Success Principles, and Tony Robbins author of, Awaken the Giant Within, all preach about dreaming big and setting lofty goals for life.

What happens on the days, weeks, months, and years when you are not making progress towards your big goals and aspirations? 

Studies have shown that less than 25% of people actually stay committed to their resolutions after just 30 days, and only 8% accomplish them. Don’t be a part of that statistic.

Are the big dreams and big goals a false paradigm? Do big goals only set you up for discouragement? Is there more to the formula? How do you really know what goals to set? How do you find the clarity and motivation to accomplish your goals?

It Starts by Defining your Purpose

Victor Frankl, the author of Man’s Search for Meaning, said,  “Everyone has his (or her) own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated; thus, everyone’s task is unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.”

What is your unique calling? What are your specific strengths? What are your areas of passion and interest?  If you can thoughtfully answer these questions, you can unlock your genius; you can unlock your energy.  The answers to these questions may not tell you the specific job you should have, but it will give you insights on what career path to follow. 

Have you ever been around somebody that works with a sense of purpose?  How confident are they?  How passionate are they?  When you are clear on your purpose, you are clear on what to say yes to and what to say no to, in essence you are clear on your priorities.

Stephen R. Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, wrote, “Creating a mission statement is not something you do overnight. It takes deep introspection, careful analysis, thoughtful expression, and often many rewrites to produce its final form. It may take you several weeks or even months before you feel really comfortable with your mission statement, before you feel it is complete and a concise expression of your innermost values and directions. Even then, you will want to review it regularly and make minor changes as the years bring additional insights or changing circumstances.”

This link will give you a step-by-step guide on how to develop your own purpose and start driving clarity and energy into your life. Learn more about the importance of defining your purpose. Listen to this podcast episode on how I defined my mission.

Measurement and Accountability System

“When performance is measured performance improves. When performance is measured and reported performance accelerates.”

Thomas S. Monson

When we set big goals for our life it is also important to have accountability and measurement systems to help us accomplish them.  Set up a spreadsheet or buy an app that will help you set and track your goals.  As you share those goals, and their progress with friends and trusted advisors, you will find increased motivation and desire to accomplish your goals, and you will develop new actions and behaviors to accomplish those goals. Learn how to set up your whole life goal setting systems.

2. Small Steps Planning System

Dr. Robert Maurer Ph.D., a recent guest on my podcast, (find the episode here), wrote a book called, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. This book shows research on how your brain reacts very positively to small steps towards a goal rather than bigger steps. He writes, “All changes, even positive ones are scary.  Attempts to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of Kaizen disarm the brain’s fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play.”

Dr. Maurer was struggling to help interns and patients in his training medical practice at a large hospital.  By good fortune, he read an article on Edward Deming and what the Japanese did with Deming’s philosophy on continuous improvement and Kaizen. Kaizen is a Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement for personal and corporate efficiency. Dr. Maurer’s breakthrough happened when he had a stressed out patient in his office again with no change to her personal health practices.  She was supposed to start exercising and losing weight to improve her heart conditions and general health.  Check-up after check-up the patient wasn’t changing her behaviors that would lead to better health. Dr. Maurer on the next visit asked her if she watched TV at night to relax after the kids went to bed.  She did.  Dr. Maurer then asked her if she should walk in place during the commercials of her favorite show each night.  She said she would, and she did.  On the next visit the patient reported success, then Dr. Maurer asked her if she could do a little more and she said she could.  In a few months she was running and lost, and kept off 20 lbs. and vastly improved her health.  With small steps, she developed new habits that changed her life.

In my blog post from June 1^st of 2019, By small and simple HABITS, great things come to pass, I wrote, “For every long-term goal, there’s a daily habit you can develop to take action today towards that goal. Of course, consistency and discipline are key to success. Try starting every day with your most important routines. Wake up before everybody else does so you can start your day with your small habits that will eventually lead you to excellence in your chosen goals.”

We know that breaking down big goals into bite-size chunks works and is a key step in a successful practice of personal excellence.

But what about when you are still not hitting all your goals?  Or even worse, what happens when you are hitting your financial and career goals and aren’t happy?

What happens when your kids need things that are not in your daily plan?

Can you be happy, content, flexible and productive?

3. Renewal Activities for Acceptance and Sustained Commitment

Not all goals will be accomplished right away. We need practices in our life that help us deal with the day to day setbacks of missed expectations, tragedy and stress. We need to build capacity to deal with the successes and the failures. Renewal activities give you the mental and emotional strength to accept where you are at and keep learning and working towards your goals.

There are many good renewal practices. I recommend four regular practices:

1. Exercise
2. Prayer and Study.
3. Meditation
4. Daily Gratitude.

Read my blog containing a complete review of the research on the benefits of sustainable renewal practices.

Get to Excellence, Then Sustain Excellence

I would argue that these teachings when applied interdependently bring the complete picture of true success.  It is possible to be productive, successful, happy and content. As we install these three principles (little by little) we will experience success and happiness!

1. Dream Big and Have Purpose
   1. Have a purpose statement.
   2. Set a balanced set of goals in all areas of your life.
   3. Set up a measurement and accountability system.
2. Small Steps Planning System
   1. Identify the small steps that must be accomplished this week to advance your goals.
   2. Complete your weekly plan.
   3. Plan daily.
3. Sustainable Renewal Activities
   1. Complete a daily gratitude journal for what you were able to accomplish.
   2. Meditate
   3. Exercise
   4. Pray and ponder over inspired literature

These are the three principles of sustainable personal excellence.

Get started now: Self-evaluation questions

1. What has stopped you from applying the ideas of sustainable personal excellence (SPE) in the past?
2. What tools/ideas mentioned in this article has or will help you overcome your roadblocks with SPE?
3. What small steps could you do to start/continue your journey towards Sustainable Personal Excellence?
4. When will you start the small step?

If you need help getting started, schedule a free 30 minute assessment on how you are applying Sustainable Personal Excellence.

What financial investing teaches about Personal Development

As 2019 ended, were you able to look back and say to yourself, “I made significant growth this last year”?

If you were able to see growth, congratulations! You probably had measurable goals that you regularly followed up on, problem solved, and put actions into place to accomplish those goals.

If you found it difficult to perceive growth in your own life, then you likely failed to create a growth strategy for the previous year. Thankfully, now is a great time to do a reset and start building a growth strategy for 2020.

Creating a Growth Strategy

Lately I’ve been managing my own stock portfolio. Stock portfolios have highly measurable returns with clear performance benchmarks, which makes measuring performance simple.

As part of managing my own portfolio, I’ve aligned my strategy closely with the practice of growth investing, which focuses on identifying stocks with high growth potential so I can beat the market.

As I study about the strategies involved in growth investing, I can’t help but think about analogous strategies we should be applying in our own lives. In effect, we each need to become our own best growth stocks.

Becoming Your Own Growth Stock

If you were a stock, would people invest in you?

Thinking of yourself as a stock might seem strange, but the analogy can expose some interesting concepts. Ask yourself the following:

• Am I a growth stock?
• Did I beat the market return of 30% last year?
• Am I growing or am I losing value?
• Would people want to invest in me?

This growth stock concept is as applicable in the financial performance of your personal or work life as it is for non-financial performance. Consider this: Have you achieved above average performance in the following areas of your life?

• Physical. Are you healthier this year than last year? Will you be healthier at the end of this year?
• Mental/Learning. Have you increased your knowledge over the last year? Will you do so in the coming year? Will your mental health be better at the end of this year?
• Spiritual. Will you be more spiritually balanced at the end of this year? Has your spirituality grown over the past year?
• Work. Are you providing more value at work this year than you were the previous year?
• Relationships. Did the quality of your relationships improve from year to year? Are you finding more quality time to spend with loved ones? Are you increasing the quality of the time you spend?

These questions get at the heart of personal continuous improvement. Goals and the proper goal setting process are at the heart of becoming a personal growth stock.

In episodes 3 and 29 of my podcast Continuous Improvement 4 Life, I reviewed a 4-point system for setting and accomplishing goals.  Even with the best goal-setting system, we sometimes find ourselves not accomplishing our goals.  Sometimes we get discouraged and give up on our goals.  Sometimes we just keep trying the same thing harder and expecting different results.  I’d like to teach you a problem-solving method for getting any goal unstuck and back in growth mode.

A popular lean problem-solving method is the DMAIC framework. DMAIC (pronounced de-MAY-ick) is as follows:

• Define. What is the business problem or project goal?
• Measure. How can you measure current and future performance?
• Analyze. What are all the factors that could be affecting performance?
• Improve. Which factor should we change for the greatest net improvement?
• Control. How can we embed the change and ensure sustainability?

Example: Applying DMAIC to Personal Investing

To see how DMAIC works, let’s walk through the framework in the context of personal investing.

Define: What is the business problem or project goal? In the case of personal investing, I wanted a higher return on investment. Specifically, I wanted to beat the market by at least 20 points. This was my problem and opportunity statement.

Measure: What does the data say? What is my baseline performance? Last year my investments achieved a 28% return on investment. Here are the achievements of various index funds:

• Dow: 23%
• S&P: 30%
• Nasdaq: 37%

An additional metric of note was that over the last 20 years, the returns of the Dow were 7% and the S&P 5.9%. So last year was an incredible year for sure.

Analyze: What are the root causes? Why was my return on investment last year roughly the average of the most common stock indexes? The answer: I had over 200 stocks and ETFs in my portfolio, so my stock picks were so diversified I was destined to achieve market averages.

Improve: What can I do to eliminate the root causes of my issue and prevent future problems? My favorite way to approach this step is to ask, “What are the best doing that I can replicate or learn from?” For those investment firms that achieved over 50% last year, what are they doing differently from me?

For example, over the last 16 years, David Gardner of the Motley Fool has achieved a 621% return. What can I do more like Gardner to achieve similar results?

For me to achieve the right results, I started to apply lessons from the best advisors I’ve come to trust.

A key learning here is to become a researcher of your own performance. Be curious, be an objective observer.  Analyze your areas of improvement as dispassionately as possible and put a plan in place to improve.  If you can’t analyze objectively, then get an accountability partner or coach to help you.

Control: How can I embed the changes to ensure sustainability? Now that I’ve identified qualified advisors, I’ve started reviewing their recommendations every Saturday in preparation to make the appropriate investment changes for Monday.

To beat the market by 20 points, I started to focus on the Technology and biotechnology sectors. They have been high growth areas of the market.

Also, I started focusing on companies that have double digit growth in sales and whose stock volume trading has been growing.

So far, this practice has returned a significantly higher return than the general market in just over six months.

I am not trying to become a professional trader but trying to prove a point: with the right mindset, toolset, and skillset you can achieve any goal in life!

Apply DMAIC to Other Aspects of Your Life

I encourage you to apply the DMAIC process to any area of your life. As I mentioned above, you can use DMAIC for the spiritual, emotional, physical, financial, work, or relationship goals you have in your life.  You can problem solve using DMAIC with yourself or use a trusted accountability partner or coach.

At work if you were 20% off target, you would gather as a team to problem solve and implement new actions to improve. Why don’t we do the same thing with our personal development?

Just ask, “Which area do I want to work on first?” Pick the area and run through the DMAIC problem-solving process. Review your solutions during your weekly planning process and you will achieve outstanding improvements and results in your life.

You can achieve any improvement in your life. You just need the right mindset, toolset, and skillset to analyze and improve.

I hope these tools and examples have inspired you to work on your own personal or professional continuous improvement.

Be a Personal Continuous Improvement Growth Stock!

With questions or comments, email me at rheyland@gmail.com.