It's Sunday and I don't have a post ready. This is happening far too often. Life is getting in my way of writing. What gets in your way of doing what you want? Maybe you want to save money, or learn a new skill, or work on a project that you've started but never finished. Or maybe there are things you think you should do, but never have gotten around to doing it. Why do we let things get in our way. I've always thought that if you really wanted to do something you'd find a way to do it, you'd prioritize it. But then something gets in the way. Life can put things in our path that have to be dealt with then and there. And that gets us off course. My reason is the recovery from my fall. There are doctor's appointments, physical therapy, pain, need for rest. It is amazing how much energy pain takes. And it's not like I don't have time. I do. I just find that once I'm off track I forget to get back on track. So I'm sitting here looking at my to-do list and it doesn't have blog post on it! I need a cattle prod, I guess. So I'm curious. What gets in your way? And how do you get youself back on track? Or are you one of those folks who never gets side-tracted? Share please.
There are many definitions of "leader". But not all of them fit if you are wanting to create real change, positive change. One definition is that a leader is someone who has followers. Broad and literal and doesn't involve a plan and a goal. You can call fans "followers", but having fans doesn't give the fan any power or plan to follow to achieve a positive goal.
You may be a "fan" of social justice or of saving the environment. But until you influence others to act toward achieving those goals, not a whole lot will change, at lease as a result of your concern.
So what does it mean to lead? What is leadership? According to Kevin Kruse*, creator of an eLearning program for managers, and author of Employee Engagement 2.0, it is "the process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal."
He points out that the key elements of this definition are:
Leadership stems from social influence, not authority or power
Leadership requires others, and that implies they don’t need to be “direct reports”
No mention of personality traits, attributes, or even a title; there are many styles, many paths, to effective leadership
It includes a goal, not influence with no intended outcome
Does this sound to lofty an ideal for you? It's not really. You can use it to achieve even less lofty, more mundane goals. You probably use it every day to achieve family goals or community goals. The idea here is to use it to achieve goals that make the world better, even the world where you live and work. Identify your goal and determine who and how you want to work toward the goal with you. It doesn't matter what style of leadership that fits you. The important thing is the goal. In my next post I'll look at what makes a good leader.
When I worked as a Mental Health Counselor in the Department of Corrections I taught a Life Skills Class. One of the lessons was on goal setting. But that was more than ten years ago and I couldn't recall all of the lesson. So I had Bing searching for me and found this: https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/smart-goals.php. It uses the same acronym I used and reminded me how to explain what a good goal would look like.
The acronym is SMART.
A SMART goal has five features:
It is specific [S]. For instance, if you want a better job you describe the specifics of what a better job is for you. You may want a job that has regular hours, has health benefits, pays a certain amount, and is working with people or things or nature, etc. So describe what a better job means for you, specifically.
It is Measurable [M]. There is a way to measure the goal so that you can identify when it is accomplished. You may have a time limit for reaching the goal. Or you might have a specific way to know it is accomplished, like "before I am X number of years old" or "before I get married", etc.
Goals that are vague "someday" goals do not keep you focused on them.
It is Attainable [A]. Your goal must be possible for you. I might want to be a millionare by the end of next year, but that isn't possible for me at my age and experience! And you want your goals to be in agreement with the rest of your life. If you want to have more time with your family and at the same time you want to get a job that has you travelling often, this could create a problem.
It is Realistic [R]. Be realistic AND optimistic. Be careful to not underestimate yourself. But also set goals that you know you can reach. Be reasonable and rewarding so that you can maintain motivation to acheve it.
It is Time-based [T]. Set reasonable time limits on the goal. One way to do that is to determine objectives that get you to your goal For instance "I will create a resume by the end of next week." and "I will research the job market for the kind of job I want by the end of the month and schedule an information interview with potential companies next month.
It is very helpful with long-term goals to break them down to bite-sized objectives. It is also important to be sure that those objectives do not create a time-crunch with your other goals and objectives.
You may want to write out a timeline of your goals and objectives to be sure you don't over-schedule your time. Running into time crunch is one way we sabatoge our goals.
Check out the wibsite noted above and download SMARTER Goals Template.
If you have taken the time to identify your own values and you have explored how your behavior does or doesn't match your values, you may or may not feel you are living a fulfilling life. Why might you feel unfulfilled even when you are successful?
The thing is, our journey to success is often soley goal focused. We strive toward a goal and feel glad for a bit. But then we find compelled to work toward another goal. Goal after goal we experience success and still don't feel fulfilled.
Perhaps we have failed to choose goals that are based on our values. We focus on the goal and lose sight of finding the values on the road to reaching each goal. We end up frustrated or disappointed even if we achieve that goal. Take a look at this brief and simplistic video to illustrate that point.
So much in our lives depend on our values, on who we are as a person. Take a look at your goals and the way you travel toward them.
Maybe you find that the goal you have chosen requires you to be away from your family a great deal of the time. And you highly value building a close and happy family. You may want to modify your goal and find other ways to achieve it that don't take you away from your family so much of the time.
Go back to look at your values and take a hard look at how your goals relate to them. Enjoy your journey to the successful completion of your goals.
What have you decided about your attributes/goals for YOUR life? Which of those listed are highest priority for you? [You can always look at previous posts to refresh your memory.] Are you investing proportionally in those that are your highest priority? If not, that may be what keeps you from being truly happy and truly authentic.
After looking inward you can begin now to chase after what you REALLY want and follow what is true for YOU. When you are doing this you cannot help but help others somehow.,
Way too many people are terrible unhappy with their jobs. The stay in them for the financial reward of a paycheck and health insurance. But they take no pleasure in the jobs and the rewards give them little pleasure either. They feel stuck and become resentful. They would rather do stuff that feels authentic than because of the reward.
One way to address this dissatisfaction, if you see no way to change jobs, is to look for ways to do the job that relate to the attributes/goals that are your highest priorities. Let's look at them again:
Affiliation: to have satisfying relationships with family and friends
Community feeling: to improve the world through activism or generosity
Conformity: to fit in with other people
Financial success: to be wealthy and materially successful
Hedonism: to experience much sensual pleasure
Image: to look attractive in terms of body and clothing
Physical health: to feel healthy and free of illness
Popularity: to be famous, well-known, and admired
Safety: to ensure bodily integrity and safety
Self-acceptance: to feel competent and authentic
Spirituality: to search for spiritual or religious understanding
Take some time to consider how you might invest in your higher priority attributes/goals in your job. Be creative. Think outside the box. Talk to someone you trust to brainstorm things you can change about your job - how you do it - that is more authentically you.
And, of course, consider changing jobs. This might mean going for some training or education that prepares you for something new. Or it might mean exploring what tasks you do in this job that would transfer to another kind of work. Or it might mean developing better life-skills/people-skills that help you advance in your job to another level or location.
You may be in a situation where there is no way to leave your job because of financial or health reasons. So you might need to set a long-term goal about how long you need to continue before you can leave it. And while you are getting to that time limited goal you can change your perspective about your goal in order to get through it intact.
I was in a job situation once that I came to hate. It was not going to take me where I wanted to go in my career and I was feeling really stuck. Every morning that I had to go to work I was depressed and angry. It was affecting my health, both physical and mental. So I figured out how much money I would have to have saved in order to just quit and look for another job. I figured three months of my income would do it. So I started saving as much money as possible until I reached that goal. It made going in to work so much easier, because my goal was to earn enough in that job to be able to quit! It worked for me! While the job wasn't any better, my attitude definitely was. And that make the days go better. Thankfully, I was offered a better job in the organization that would lead to my career goals and didn't have to actually quit one job and go job hunting. I'd learned a valuable life-lesson about using my personal power to control my attitude and make my life easier.
You may also make your life better by pursuing your priority life goals outside your job. Your job is just one part of your life. It doesn't have to be the most important part, however. It may just be what you do in order to pay your bills. You can get fulfillment in many ways by becoming involved in community activities, in developing relationships, by improving your health and wellness, by developing spiritually, or by making the world a better place.
By now can you see how making yourself happy you can make the world a better place? From the world that is immediately around you to the world that stretched out beyond you, everything you do affects the world. When you are living authentically, your effect is to make everything better.
Be happy! But you are the only one who can make that happen.
Really. What do you really want that having it will make you happy?
Every day we are being told by way of advertisements what we SHOULD want. And, of course, there are people in our lives who also tell us what we should want, a better education, a better job, a bigger house, etc. Television and movies project images of people they think we should be like, what we should want. We are inundated by messages about what we should want.
But how many of us know what we really want? So few of us take time away from all the distractions to contemplate who we are and what we want.
Is that edge of anxiety you are experiencing a sign of dissatisfaction in your life? What area of your life are you least satisfied with? What is it lacking for you? No, not by someone else's standards. From your own inner senses, where is the most dissatisfaction? Is it from trying to live up to someone else's idea of what you SHOULD have or be? Is it from your bosses idea of who you must be to be successful in your job? Is it from not having all the things you see others have? What is missing that makes you feel good about you?
Where is the real you today? And what are your aspirations? Here are eleven aspirations or goals for many people as put forward in Colin Beavan's How to be Alive.
Affiliation: to have satisfying relationships with family and friends
Community feeling: to improve the world through activism or generosity
Conformity: to fit in with other people
Financial success: to be wealthy and materially successful
Hedonism: to experience much sensual pleasure
Image: to look attractive in terms of body and clothing
Physical health: to feel healthy and free of illness
Popularity: to be famous, well-known, and admired
Safety: to ensure bodily integrity and safety
Self-acceptance: to feel competent and authentic
Spirituality: to search for spiritual or religious understanding
Take some time in the next day or two to decide how much of these are YOUR goals, how much would you like to invest in achieving them. Beavan's suggest using a clock face with twelve hours marked on it and you indicating how many of those hours you would want to invest in each of these goals. Try it.
