Scrub the Soul, Get Your Dreams!

Outside my window is our tree trimmer doing his thing in cleaning out the branches to accommodate the massive growth of greenery that happens now and for the next couple of months. I can literally feel the flow of energy open up as he is cutting and thinning out all the unwanted branches.

It reminds me of all of the unwanted excess “stuff” that I hold onto that blocks the flow of energy in my life and that Springtime is a great time to remind us all of the importance of letting go of both physical and emotional “stuff” that impedes our flow of energy in all areas or our life. And just like when my tree guy who cleans up the dead overgrowth in order to make room for a massive growth spurt of new leaves and branches, we too need to get ride of all of our physical and emotional dead overgrowth in order to make room for some real massive growth in our own lives.

Every six months, my neighbors would see me cleaning out the garage to the point where they worried that I was preparing to leave the area and move on to another home. I would let go of “stuff” that was clogging up my life and instead of keeping it “in case I may need it in the future”, I released it now so I could make room for something that benefited me now. If the items were broken or unrepairable, then in the trash they went. As most of the items were in good condition, I’d find a new home for them or give them to a charitable organization that found a great home for the items and someone else would benefit from my old “stuff”. By keeping my energy flowing in my life, it opens up more and more new opportunities that I believe would never had happened if it wasn’t for my continual Spring cleaning habit.

I usually suggest to take an area of your life or in your house or office and give it a good thinning out of “unwanted dead growth”. And you know what I mean when I say “unwanted dead growth”. It can be something physical like that pile of unread, unused and out of date magazine subscriptions that block the doorway into your office. Or the “unwanted dead growth” that you’ve been holding on to in the form of un-empowering, limited belief systems. It’s not by accident that the acronym for belief systems is BS, because that’s just what it is, bull sh*t that we have created within ourselves and it’s holding us back to have, be and do the things that we really want in our life.

So Springtime is more than just cleaning the garage or trimming the trees, it’s about taking out the old emotional trash that’s clogging up your inner flow so you can attract and experience the new massive growth spurt that brings you another piece of your dreams right now!

The North Korean Army Can Teach You How to Manifest Your Dreams

As Americans, we seem more concerned about the saber-rattling of the North Korean Army than the citizens of South Korea, only 90 miles away. Reports come in saying that business is as usual in the city of Seoul and the consensus from  the many interviews with regular people on the street state that they are going about life like normal.

One American reporter asked, “How can you be so calm and nonchalant with the possibilities of war happening right on your doorstep?” To which one young person being interviewed responded, “Sure we are concerned and we are prepared, but to give any more attention to that fact will give the North Koreans and it’s leader, Kim Jong-un  what they want, attention, and then they would have won.”

So what this young South Korean person being interviewed said is that she is committed to being prepared, but not attached to the constant war threatening rhetoric.” Just like when we manifest our dreams, being prepared to receive those dreams is as important as asking for them. By being committed to what you want, the possibilities go way up that you will receive them.

It’s much like the understanding that within a typical American breakfast of eggs and bacon, the chicken is attached to the process while the pig is totally committed! By committing to our dreams as if it has already happened, we are manifesting what ever we want faster and more efficiently into our lives. By being attached to a dream means that you may think about it, and in some cases, it may be the only thing that you think about all the time, but you don’t believe that you have it.

Kevin Trudeau , on one of his radio programs, explains it best with a simple but powerful mind exercise. He would instruct you to think of a money goal, let’s say $100,000. Now think about the $100,000, write down on a piece of paper, think about what you could do with that kind of money and how it would impact your life. How do you feel? Did you think you were any closer to manifesting that $100,000?

Now what he would have you do is imagine that $100,000 again, but this time, imagine that the check has already been written, deposited in your bank account. but you won’t be able to access the money for another 4 months. But it’s there. It’s just not yet fully accessible to be withdrawn.

Now between the two examples, how did you experience one over the other? Which one felt more real? Which one felt like the $100,00 was within reach?

If you’re like most, the second example felt more real. The feeling of anticipation. The feeling that it’s happened and that just we need to be patient and continue going forward with our day-to-day actions that will bring us our dream of having $100,000. The second example creates the feeling of being committed while the first example is the feeling of being attached. It’s the “committed” example that vibrates the energy like a beacon attracting our dreams to us. That energy is created through our feelings and emotions, which communicates to the universe, God, your higher power,  that we are ready to receive.

So by believing that it is so, your dreams become your reality. Have fun, get excited and think about what dreams do you what to manifest for your life!

Virtual vs. Face to Face; What’s More Effective?

Fun Cooking Team Building

With the advent of virtual meetings via Skype, Cisco conferencing, etc…, some meeting planners proclaimed the day of Face to Face (F2F) meetings has gone the way of the Dodo bird! In other words extinct!  And for a while, lots of evidence was out their supporting that theory. But like most things that have to do with any change, especially when it’s connected to new technology, there has been a swing back to what has been traditionally most effective for business communication, face to face meetings.

Relationship building has been the #1 outcome requested from our team building clients lately. These team building experiences have become the glue that emotionally bond work teams together and help them create a solid foundation of relationship and trust. Most of the organizations that work with us say the same thing, our people work virtually on almost all projects and they need face to face time to re-establish a connection with each other. And because that face to face time is limited by busy schedules, they are always looking for more organized and effective team experiences that go way beyond the old time cocktail mingling or brief meal conversation “catch-up”.

Below is a great article that I found in SpeakerNet News by a colleague, Ian Percy who also speaks on team building in the workplace. Here are some of his thoughts on the subject of virtual meetings vs. Face to Face meetings:

Creativity research finds F2F trumps virtual meetings — Ian Percy

The idea of working virtually and not having to actually meet people is quite popular, if controversial, these days prompted by Yahoo’s banning of virtual work. MeetingsNet had an interesting article suggesting that F2F generates significantly more creativity than virtual connections. Maybe Yahoo’s Marissa Meyer is right since the company’s future depends on innovation. In the experiment people were given various creative tasks but some worked together over the phone, some by video and some face-to-face. The two virtual groups were the same when it came to the number of creative ideas generated. However the F2F pairings had 30% more ideas. When it came to the quality of the creativity the F2F groups again scored better but just below a level of significance.

Here’s what’s interesting—all participants reported about the same level of “feeling” and “enthusiasm.” In other words the researchers don’t know why F2F works better. That would make for an interesting discussion—a F2F one, of course. Personally I think it’s due to the influence of subtle energy that most people have yet to accommodate in their thinking. All of the trials happened in the same physical location which means the energy was pervasive and co-mingled. I predict much greater differences if the virtual trial partners were actually spread out across the country instead of in the next room. The lesson is to not be so quick to go the virtual route, especially if the outcome is mission-critical.

Active Listening, Does This Work For You?

I’m just as guilty as the next person in my communication. I walk around totally in my head and when someone asks me a question like, “How are you?”, well I’m off to the races! Next thing I notice is that poor person who was kind enough to ask me how I was, was now a victim of my regurgitation of the mouth.

So I came up with an exercise challenge for myself and for our communication/leadership workshop attendees. Focus on what we call “active listening” for one day and see what you learn from it. Now if one day seems too long for some of you, chunk it down to a time that works for you. A couple of hours, fifteen minutes, just start where ever you feel comfortable and track what happens during your “active listening” exercise.

So this is how it works:

Commit to talking almost always in questions. Like, “What do you think…”
Restrain yourself in over-talking and while the other person is speaking, respond with words like, “I see”, “That makes sense”, “Yes”, or “Go on”. Some people suggest repeating back phrases of what you’ve just heard like “repeating back phrases, I see”.
Focus your eyes on their face, eyes and/or mouth. Don’t let yourself be easily distracted from what’s going on around you, give them the gift of you being present.
Always thank them for sharing and mean it!

Prepare and expect something wonderful to happen. I don’t know what it will be, but something always happens when it becomes about them and not about you.

After practicing active listening on a few people, let us know what did you experience?

“Y Do You Care?”

“Y Do You Care?”

Your first quarter goals are wrapping up quickly. How are you fairing?

Here is the thing about goal setting, for both you and your team, its all good! What I mean by that is that whether you have already hit your marks, or coming close to your objectives, or way-off on achieving your outcomes, its up to you to determine your next move.

First determine if your goal is sound to begin with (read on to the next story), then if it is, choose the next direction you’d like to go. So if you’re underproducing according to your 1st Q plan, check out what needs to be done to get on track. Many times its just a “tweaking” of your action plan to assist in getting what you want. According to John Locke, the author of “How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months”, when he was younger and in insurance sales, he always hit his policy sales numbers. Unlike most of his colleagues who set very high, arbitrary numbers that were never reached; his numbers reflected the amount of action that he took to generate those sales. In other works, if his weeks numbers where lower than expected, rather than change the sales goal numbers, he’d look at how many presentations he needed to do. It got to the point that he could accurately predict how many sales of insurance policies he would do weekly just by the amount of presentations he scheduled. So paying attention to your actions can be just as important as setting the goal.

But the fuel that propels your goals forward is a powerful component called the “why” or finding your purpose. At CEO Chef, we find that this component can easily be assumed because obviously you wrote these goals because they were important to you or your business or career. But the action of taking the time to write them down is huge in determining your “why”. In fact this can be the number one determination to whether you achieve your goal or not!

Start by rereading your goals and immediately begin writing why this goal is important to achieve, or as I said in the title, “Y Do You Care?”. Take the time to dig deep, below the surface to get to the core of your “why”. It’s the reason behind the reason that is the real motivator, the thing that gets you up early to start and to stay up late to complete. Its the rocket fuel that propels you forward and gives you that rock solid focus to never give up. The “why” is your personal purpose and is connected to your core identity of who you really are. Make this the real reason to why you are achieving the goal that you set forth. Some people call it the goal of the goal and because of that, I believe that your purpose must be stated before your even set your goals.

So once you got that “what” clear, make sure the “why” is just as clear, but not just in your mind, but also in your heart!

How Do You Communicate?

In my latest book, “Teamwork: Recipe to Your Business Success”,  I reference NLP (neuro-linquistic programming) as it shares communication tendencies that vary between people. They talk about the acronym VAK as the different tendency breakdowns that mean:
V for Visual,
A is for Auditory and
K is for Kinesthetic.

The idea is that if we understand how a person tends to communicate, we can best predict their behavior and give us critical information that heightens our awareness of what this person is trying to say.

Now with saying all of that, I have observed that we all have these VAK tendencies within us all but in varying degrees. It’s when we’re stressed or pressured is when we tend to focus on our “go to” tendency.

For instance, my wife,  whose tendency is what we call “high visual”, when her communication center’s focus is almost all visual, and when an emergency hits (aka “stressed situation”), she goes into what we call “visual deafness”. I’m sure you know someone in your life like that, the more you raise your voice, the more they can’t hear what you’re saying. In fact, the more you increase your volume, the more the stress levels go up and, well, you got it, it’s even harder to help this person.

So what’s the solution? Well for a visual or high visual tendency person, go visual! With my wife, I’ll use signage, waving hands, bright red stop sign, anything that gets her attention. Then once I have her attention, I’ll calm her down enough to be able to speak with her in a calm and relaxed manner.

This solution is not perfect, especially if you don’t have a sign handy, but at least I understand why she isn’t responding to my voice and don’t take offense which usually means my voice would get louder and racketing up both of our stress levels. So knowing is half the battle to alleviate any hurt feelings later on.

What’s do you think your personal communication tendency is and how does that impact you with the people closest to you?

Can You Hear Me Now…?

I’m just as guilty as the next person in my communication. I walk around totally in my head and when someone asks me a question like, “How are you?”, well I’m off to the races! Next thing I notice is that poor person who was kind enough to ask me how I was, was now a victim of my regurgitation of the mouth.

So I came up with an exercise challenge for myself and for our communication/leadership workshop attendees. Focus on what we call “active listening” for one day and see what you learn from it. Now if one day seems too long for some of you, chunk it down to a time that works for you. A couple of hours, fifteen minutes, just start where ever you feel comfortable and track what happens during your “active listening” exercise.

So this is how it works:

Commit to talking almost always in questions. Like, “What do you think…”
Restrain yourself in over-talking and while the other person is speaking, respond with words like, “I see”, “That makes sense”, “Yes”, or “Go on”. Some people suggest repeating back phrases of what you’ve just heard like “repeating back phrases, I see”.
Focus your eyes on their face, eyes and/or mouth. Don’t let yourself be easily distracted from what’s going on around you, give them the gift of you being present.
Always thank them for sharing and mean it!

Prepare and expect something wonderful to happen. I don’t know what it will be, but something always happens when it becomes about them and not about you.

What “tricks” do you use to stay in the conversation?

Why Build a Highly Effective, High Functioning Team?

You can’t blame us, it’s not our fault!
We’ve been trained from all through our scholastic careers to be the best as an individual. Our motivation is as an individual, our assignments are mostly individual, and our grades are as individuals. It’s no wonder that when we start to work in the real world, they ask us to work together as a team to maximize our results and we scoff at the idea, make a half-hearted attempt or just don’t know how to do this!
I’m not blaming the school systems, they have enough on their minds than have us blame them for one more thing. They on the most part, do a great job preparing us for the business world. So it’s our duty to address the 500 pound gorilla in our work places, our businesses and even in some of our families –
WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO WORK IN TEAMS!

To be prepared to compete in a world economy you must have high performing, effective teams to take your company there! And today, we are all apart of a world economy. Even if all you do is sell product on Ebay, your selling your Aunt May’s tea set to someone half way to Australia. You’re in a world economy whether you planned on it or not.  And the only way you can achieve the visions for your organization is by activating the most powerful asset at your disposal, the people in your teams!

What are you doing to better your team’s effectiveness today?

Top 3 Ways to Employee Change

Change is always a touchy subject with most everyone, especially in the workplace. The three top methods to change are the following:

1. Impact Change
2. Discovery
3. Spaced Repetition

 Impact changes are unforgettable. It’s a time in your  life when something shocked your system, like being fired, a sudden death, a surprise party, winning the lottery, anything of that nature. Lessons learned from an “impact change” can be deep and lasting, but from a training perspective, impact change is hard to plan so therefore, difficult to use in the training arena.

Discovery or “Ah-ha moments” are also challenging to plan, but are very effective in the long-term retention. It’s like the commercial for a famous tomato juice beverage, “I could’da had a V-8!” (smack your hand on your forehead simultaneously for the full effect!)

Than the last method to change, spaced repetition. Also very effective as the other two methods but has the advantage of being plan-able. It’s the way most of us learned our  multiplication times tables (oh, the countless hours writing times tables for Sister Madeleine, punishment for speaking in public. Now I get paid for doing the very same thing 🙂 )

Which one of these three methods have you experienced in your own life and how effective or how has it served you?

Fun – The Secret Team Ingredient!

Smile'n Salad

Summer time still evokes feelings of fun, exploration and more fun. Even to this day, the closer we get to June, the more I want to hear the final school bell to sound and the beginning of summer vacation (aka fun time!) to begin.

This is the secret ingredient we use when we create our cooking team building for you, a fun experience that anchors you back to the time that brought your team together. Fun rips down the emotional walls that we put up; fun transports us to a whole other place; fun transforms our emotions in a heart beat, allowing us to forget what was just “stick’n in our craw!”

Fun is sometimes associate with being a kid. Well if being a kid helps me in being more relaxed, more productive and more successful in my endeavors, then slip on my Red Ball Jets (whoops, I think I just aged myself 🙂  ), dust off my Spider bike’s banana seat and let’s have some kid fun!

What’cha going to do for your kid fun?