I often get curious about how people lead their lives. One thing that really gets me interested is the way they use Facebook (or other social networking tool) to get affirmation about what they do and even attention with respect to the decisions they make.

I think in recent months, especially since it has been rather dark, cloudy and wet in Singapore, and given the fact that it is coming to the close of 2010, I’ve discovered that more people are looking for a new challenge in 2011, or seeking some purpose in what they do. I suppose it’s part of the “let’s do our New Year’s Resolution” deal.

There have been days where I’ve woken up and wondered about what I do and why  I do it. Similar to many people out there, I’ve definitely had days where I didn’t want to wake up. On certain other days, I’m charged and pumped. But this is not just because of the roll of a dice. I’m certain that the difference that I experienced in these two categories of situations was that in the former, I wasn’t focused on my life purpose whereas when I’m charged, my purpose and direction is really clear.

In recent readings in leadership literature, I’ve been somewhat half-surprised that leaders who are task oriented tend to perform better. Of course, it makes perfect sense: the task-oriented person will reach their results faster. However, what was somewhat half-surprising for me was that person-oriented leadership tends to bring up more conflict. And yes, it makes sense that the person oriented leader has to handle more conflict and negotiate through them. Frankly, I think we use them when we need.

In a sense, it tells me that there are two halves of us. One half is focused on achieving our goals. In the short run, that’s fantastic. In the long run, I’m not sure if we can gauge our success by the things we have and done. The second half of us is in nurturing relationships. Yes, you will have conflict, disagreement and argument, but you will also have love,  appreciation and connection.

The essence of purpose comes from not just looking at things that you like to do. That’s a piece of cake. What you’ve done, you’ll be happy doing only if it has a wee bit more challenge. Comparatively, what is it that you loathe (okay, I’m talking about ethical and legal things here) and dislike doing? Why is it that you dislike it? Is it merely because of a feeling? Have you challenged yourself to dislike something but do it anyway?

For those who don’t really know me well, I prefer the quiet of a room (even a Starbucks outlet is considered quiet when it’s crowded because everyone’s noise just drowns out each other into the background buzz) anytime to the hustle and bustle of the Christmas crowd. Yet, just because I don’t like the Christmas crowd doesn’t mean I won’t go out there once in a while. I’ll bet I can find one of my readers who prefers to sleep all day and not go out and exercise, just like me on a lazy Sunday morning (when there’s no training). But what if you just got up and did something you didn’t like? I don’t always like running, but I know it’s important for my general health, and when there’s a clear goal, I get it done and I have what I call “small-s” satisfaction.

Challenges in small bits and chunks helps us develop this broadening sense of satisfaction. However, I believe that it’s about the “big-s” satisfaction most people are worried about. Here’ the thing: fulfillment in life cannot be measured by things you do alone. It’s also got to do with the things you know. By that, I don’t mean that you just study textbooks. Wisdom is a function of your ability to apply your knowledge into practical realities of life. It’s a different kind of knowing. When you go through, or help others go through, a tough patch in life, you activate resources that move yourself (or others) through to a better place. It may take time, but you move.

It is this movement that you seek.

Most of the time, staying in one place at a time retains safety and security of the environment. There may even be fear to wander outside the comfort zone. However, things happen. Whether it be the 1997 financial crisis, 9/11, dot com bubble, SARS, H1N1, sub-prime mortgage crisis… these things can shift where you stand. You just need to adapt. How?

• Wisdom networks. You need to be surrounded with people who are collectively going to increase your wisdom. That’s why I like hanging out with people who foster the growth of my experience of life, not just talking business all the time. This is the group that allows you to prepare for challenges that you might face through the sharing of tough moments. It’s easier to recall: “I’m facing a problem today, but so-and-so did it before, and I think I can handle it too” in order to take a step into a challenge.
• Life challenges. I began to wonder why some people do the marathon. Or any crazy thing that comes along. Sometimes, we just want to test ourselves and see how we stack up against the rest. It improves our sense of self and the desire to achieve more. If you know you came in 4000 out of 8000 runners, you’re going to up the scale the next time around. Seems like simple goal setting, but now it’s not just a statement: it’s an aspiration.
• Emotion networks. Similar to Wisdom networks, I believe that what makes us feel satisfied is the ability to feel emotion. As a counselor, I know a lot of people who aren’t able to experience emotion or hide them because of past traumas. Personally, a group of emotionally supportive people can help you to process these emotions. They could be family or a coach or a simple bunch of friends. To be human is to feel and to ignore feeling is to de-humanize. When you are bouncing back from difficult life challenges, you need this network to propel you. Also, you need your emotions to guide you to what you feel passionate about.

Purpose isn’t a “thing”. I believe this is summed up in the belief that life is not a destination, but the processes as you move toward that destination, wherever it may be.

“What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
~ General Dwight Eisenhower

I was quite taken by this quote, as you might tell. I’m not the biggest dog in any fight. Heck, if there were a fight, I’d be somewhere else. In my earlier days, confidence was a central issue in my life. I wasn’t willing or able to interact and make friends, so I spent most of my childhood alone. It wasn’t until several years later that I found that almost everything we do can be a fight – as long as we are willing to be a part of it.

In school, my fight was with my examinations. I remember after having acquired really good skills when I was 13, I came in top of the class at 14. But when I was 15, a nearly flunked out of class with 3 passes out of 8 subjects. That was pretty heavy! I was somewhat devastated and this wasn’t even my final paper! I remember going home and writing on a bunch of flipchart papers, all my goals and words of encouragement and posted them all around my room so that I could see them everyday. The following year, I beat the odds coming in top 4 in my class (I tied with the smartest guy in our class, heh) and went to a school of my choice.

Even then, I was beaten down because my next challenge was leadership. I had literally zilch in leadership experience. While I was in Junior College (17 years old at that time) I was nominated and voted in as President of the Student’s Council. Unfortunately, we went though quite a tumultuous time. Quite a number of situations left our leadership team disheartened and it came to a point of time where many were keen on quitting. Fortunately, I did have some really good buddies in there and they were supportive enough to give me the reason to keep ‘fighting’ on.

In 1995, one of my first speaking gigs came on. It was an absolute mess, considering I was partnering another senior trainer and the audience liked him far better than me. When the evaluation sheets came back, I was literally broken. However, I took the pain to read it and figure out what else I had to do and I had never faced such a terrible evaluation ever.

I suppose all these stories illustrate one thing. Sometimes, it’s not a matter of what you do but the spirit you carry when you take action. We were all meant to experience sadness and joy, failure and success so that when the negative side of experience hits us, we learn to appreciate the positive side and work harder toward it. After all, it’s not the destination that counts, but rather the effort you put in and the thrill of the fight, isn’t it!

In my seminars, I often talk about the concept of the Ultimate Success Formula. In this model, I am adamant about the fact that people can achieve any kind of success that they want. However, they will need to learn how to learn from their past, and hopefully, other peoples’ pasts.

The main reason is simple. In learning, we develop flexibility and new objections, new perspectives and new ways of being. For instance, if you know that the present way in doing business isn’t right for you, learning something about it will allow you to do things differently. You keep changing the strategy that you’ve executed until you achieve your end desired outcome.

Personally, I find this to be liberating. However,  a lot of people come to believe that this means shifting goalposts. I’m not suggesting that you do this because I’ve learnt a lot from my own experiences enough to know that focusing on your target and making it as clear as possible in your mind as you can will help you to reach to that goal. You may not know exactly how, but the clarity of that goal will allow you to move in that direction more readily.

So the real question is how do I learn from my experiences? Well, it’s important to realize that this question has been answered many, many times. The problem is not so much that there isn’t learning. The problem is that people mistake knowledge for learning. This is an open conversation, not an article to get you to go “uh huh” and forget about it. The open conversation also means participation.

I’ve posted hundreds of articles on various topic areas, and very few people actually bother to comment, let alone be involved, although I can count thousands who actually visit this site, not counting the hundreds more who are reading this on secondary sources such as EzineArticles and Facebook.

Sharing Completes Your Experience

I see the problem in learning when people think they can go it alone. That’s fine if you’re taking a traditional exam that gets you to spit stuff out from what you’ve read. But this is life. And life requires opinions and counter opinions.

I’ve always made it a point to share things that are normally inaccessible to other people’s experiences. I used to work in a mental institution in Singapore, and I also treat some people who have mental illness, so it’s easy for me to share odd and unfortunate experiences so that people can learn to get along with their lives more readily.

I’ve also done what I can to share personal experiences of the countries I do business in with others who haven’t had the opportunity but would like to know how to operate in those cities. It’s a way of exchanging ideas, which I believe to be a fundamental asset in building relationships and expanding knowledge at the same time.

The point here is that our own experience is just ONE perspective. Imagine if you had the ability to gather with different people to share opinions and ideas. These ideas are going to be worth so much more to you if you had shared them, nurtured them and gotten different perspectives from people who can then kindle the small idea into a flaming bonanza. After all, ideas are free, the rest is action, which depends on you and the way you align to your goals.

What Stops The Conversation

I’ve spoken to a lot of people over the years. Close to like 250,000 people over the course of my 15 year speaking history. The problem is not that they have nothing to say. The problem is that they have stuff to say in private. That’s a little silly, especially for me. I find that the best way for my ideas to germinate into reality would be to share it with the world. That way I touch far more people and much faster. I have this wild dream of reaching out to 5 million people before my 40th birthday, and while it’s just a number, I think it’s something that gives me a reason to use the internet to share ideas and spark useful conversations with others.

Here are the limitations people face in expressing online:

• They claim they don’t have time. Solution: simple – ask questions, post opinions in 140 characters or less, and keep the conversation open.
• They claim that their opinion is not valuable. I know exactly what you mean. Personally, I don’t find my opinion valuable to everyone all the time. But when it is valuable, I can tell because someone tells me about it. For every 100 messages I send out, I get 1 or 2 really heartfelt responses. That’s good to last for the next 100 or 200. Your opinion is yours. The value it has depends on how deeply someone else considers it, so let society judge it further long after your idea has been planted, not just today.
• They claim it’s silly to share their idea. I know exactly what you mean. You might think that your idea is laughable, and unlike the above point where the idea or opinion is ignored, you actually find people will ridicule it. Let’s be honest for a while here. To be laughed at is a great thing. I’ll bet there are many people laughing at my ideas. I’ve had people say I’m idealistic. I’ve had people tell me that my posts were worthless. I’ve even had people mail me and tell me that I’m talking crap. It’s fine. It’s a free country (or cyberspace for that matter). The real trouble you will have is when you have that seedling of an idea or opinion that you have not yet voiced that could be the last message you ever give. This is the reason why I find that Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture is such a powerful reminder of speaking your truth simply and clearly. It’s the same message you’re speaking about over and over because it means something to YOU. Somewhere, someone will validate that, even if it is just one person, that will fuel your desire to go on because you’ll still be searching for those who hare your ideals.

Learning is about keeping that mind open. Keeping that opinion engine running. There’s a way to reach me below. Are you going to keep learning and winning like the 3% of the population that is growing, happy and increasing their capacity for life, or the 97% who will watch this very opportunity pass by?

A client of mine just spoke to me with respect to goal achievement.

photo credit: HikingArtist.com

He had been talking at length about improving his business but he seemed to be quite hesitant about actually doing something about it. Eventually, I asked why he hadn’t really started on it, and asked for an honest answer. He said he was very doubtful as to whether he could pull it off.

We did an experiment, just listing down the factors that would make his business grow. It totaled over 30 factors, but when rating his competence and access to resources in every single one of those factors, he rated them above 7 out of 10.

So what was stopping him?

He had a desire to move toward that goal, but was being held back by the belief that he could not do it, in spite of the fact that he was competent to do it. Fortunately, in NLP, there is a process known as the Belief Change Technique. It is a powerful process, and when I get the chance, I’ll post it in WorldOfNLP.com.

Beliefs are powerful. We know this from our own experience, we know this from medical science. Most, however, don’t know how to change beliefs and that is the reason why we don’t do much about it. Left to fate, old beliefs especially those you are not aware of will leap out and sabotage even the most successful of people.

In a recent seminar, someone came up to me and told me how inspired she was about the event, and that she was impressed at how she could stay awake compared with other seminars she had attended where other trainers were not as compelling.

You have to realize how awkward it must have been for me. On the one hand, this lady has learnt something, but she hasn’t really learnt much. The only measure for success in her life is that she doesn’t fall asleep in the classroom. While I honestly feel flattered, I think that the trainer has far less bearing on the success of a student.

If you analyze the situation properly, a trainer spends between 2-4 days in an average person’s life in a year. That leaves about 361 days for a person to be totally alone by oneself. That’s time spent at 98.9% away from the trainer. Sure, the trainer may have good qualities you would like to model, but the trainer is never in charge of your everyday living.

After running a training program, I find that the best thing people can do is to keep focusing on their goals and be more aware of their direction in life. This requires not just a seminar, but a range of other things such as:

• Life Builder Groups. To learn more about LBGs, you’ll need to attend our Patterns Of Excellence program, where we show you how the power of teams can make a difference in your everyday life. LBGs are great to build and maintain a culture as an organization. Without a structure, LBGs are likely to fail, relying only on dogma and personality to run the show. It’s important to build a culture of commitment and organize this properly so that it is a culture for life.
• Coaching. Contrary to what a lot of people think, coaching does not help you achieve a goal. You have got to achieve the goal yourself. Coaching is a way to open yourself up to resourcefulness in the achievement of your goals. It is also a way to remain accountable to your results. Probably the hardest question to ask is if you are honest with yourself while undergoing coaching. A lot of the time, ego forms a barrier and a good coach is able to break those down and confront the real issue.

This allows you to focus on what direction you want to take. No matter how inspired you feel after a seminar, you really need to use this to take action on the things you want to achieve.

ACTion Planning

You would agree with me when I say that our emotions drive a lot of our actions. The question is where do those emotions come from? See, if you are motivated, it probably means that you have a significant set of needs and desires. You want to look good? That will drive a set of actions. You got hungry? Same thing.

It’s not really rocket science, but I think action planning requires much more than just setting a goal. It means you need to align your needs and emotions toward the attainment of short-term and long-term goals.

Step #1: Create a vision of the future.

You need to be able to project and see into the future, dreaming up your ideal situation.

Step #2: Identify the reasons why you would like to be able to do this.

The “why” is very important. In most cases, you should ask several “whys” to reach depth of the reason. Let’s say you want to buy a new house. Of course the most simple reason for it is to have a roof over your head. But why do you want that? Maybe a deeper reason is that you want to provide a safe and secure environment for your children and family to grow closer. Now that might be a deep enough reason to drive you.

Step #3: Create Daily Rituals

Did you know that having lots of choices creates a lack of action? That’s the main reason why it is important to cut down everything to one choice if that is a must for you. Instead of taking two or three things at the same time, cut out all bridges that allow you to go elsewhere. Make sure you finish them and complete your cycle and turn it into a ritual every single day. If it’s exercise, do it every day like a ritual, just like breakfast, lunch and dinner (unfortunately some people don’t even do these as a ritual).

Step #4: Make it as natural as you can.

When you do something often and create a habitual cycle, it’s going to make you more focused on what you need to do because you took that for granted. Unfortunately, many people believe in waiting for the feeling to do something. You can’t afford the luxury of that time. You have got to do it as though it were a part and parcel of your everyday life, that if you don’t do it, you will feel extremely uneasy. Make it a “you” thing.

Step #5: Keep track of your successes while propelling yourself to the future.

All successes eventually become a thing of the past. However, you can use this to solidify the belief that you can get things done. Collect your trophies not for display, but for encouragement. If you’ve done it before, you know you can do it again. Then, focus on what you have to do next.

This year I’ve been on a number of different trips out of the country, most of them for work purposes. While I seldom go to different places for the purpose of looking at things or ‘vacationing’, I do enjoy the getaway in a foreign place once in a while just to chill.

For some people, though, this vacationing is like an obsession. It’s planned several times a year and given deadlines as though there were a profit margin to be earned from it. It must mean that they will end up “musting” their desires into reality.

I thought about it a while and wondered at the concept of obsession. Yes, it’s an emotional state, but how often can we control it and get into this obsessive state so that no matter what happens, we will turn up at our destination?

I remember times when I was literally obsessed with things, getting things done. It was because of a greater purpose. For example, there was a time when I had difficulty understanding the new area of study that I was involved with in the past – internet marketing – and I literally grew to be so obsessed with it, I could clock 14 hour days just watching the screen, testing things out and making things happen.

For some others, this obsession comes from the absolute need to stay trim and fit. I have a friend who spends 6 hours a day in the gym, and you can tell that this kind of effort really can sculpt a body.

The secret ingredient for this is a catalyst. You need a big push forward, which is like a propulsion mechanism. It’s placing all your forward thrusters and boosters toward the direction you want, and often requiring you to just stop thinking so much.

A lot of time, we are obsessed with inner thoughts – what if this… what if that… and by the time we are done with these inner thoughts, the desire is ‘talked away’. You end up not doing anything. Reverse that sequence. Talk yourself ‘up’. Get yourself excited and intensify the reality of the goal and outcome that you are striving toward.

By seeing it everyday, you get a chance to live in the moment of your emotions, which then drive the specific behaviors required to reach your goal, and turn that goal into your only solution with no other way out. Sometimes, choices do spoil the ability for someone to take action!

Here’s an example. You’ve been telling yourself you need a vacation, but in your head, that goal is blurred by you saying that you don’t have time, you’re too tired and so on. Now instead of doing that, take the goal, and give yourself all the reasons why you need to reach that goal, and the consequences of not going there. Everything that detracts from that direction is now considered a distraction – use the excuses you are good at giving and put off those distractions! You don’t have time to rest. You can’t afford to waste time.

As you build up the intensity of this, dive in and get your things done, because the emotional state has been geared up to get you going, so, use that to move along with the flow of energy you’ve built up.

Oh, and once you achieve your goal, list it. It’s always good to give yourself a pat on the back for having achieved the things you’ve accomplished… then use this as your springboard to even more goals you wish to accomplish.