Perspective:

Action counts

In life we achieve results through action. Sustained, purposeful, meaningful action. This is the only way you will create a unique experience, your personal contribution to the world. Prolonged aimless, worthless and unrealistic activity produces inferior results. Ultimately, if you do nothing, you get nothing.


Picture from Reddit

Nobody cares about your intentions. Intentions are a good start. But they are only a start. Intentions without significant action are worthless. Life rewards what you DO.

The world measures your success only on delivery. Results! You may as well choose the same standard. This means no more procrastination. You have opportunities to take. Sometimes the window opens just so long and then it is closed. Forever!   Are you ready to make your own choices, take action and create an experience with outcomes all, uniquely your own.

Taking action means taking risks. Solving problems simply gets you back to where you should have been. Change requires you to create something new, perhaps without guarantees of success. What is the change you need to bring?

There will be fear.  By not taking risks, we seek to avoid a world of pain. By hiding behind your fear you are wasting your gifts, you are not doing what only you can do. You are cheating yourself. You are cheating everyone whose life you could be touching.” Life does not reward quitting. Only we do that for ourselves.   But in our comfort we see our dreams drift out of reach.

Can you justify your hesitation? Are you laying down your arms in the face of a vague, looming threat that will dispel as someone else steps forward to claim your prize. Are you going reach the end of your life filled with regrets of what you didn’t try or are you going to give it a go, learn the lessons the push ahead?

Perhaps you are in pain. If you have been selling yourself and your vision short you may be feeling it right now.  By choosing to put denial aside. By embracing your pain, you can propel yourself onto a new path.

Now is your time. People do win. Winning happens to those who know what they want and move toward it in a strategic, consistent, meaningful, purposeful manner. Get started now. Take  action. Insist on results. Make winning happen to you.

You can read the full article here.

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Technique

Six Stress Types

What is an exciting adventure for one person may be highly stressful for another.  Since 1956, when Dr Hans Selye coined the term ‘stress’ in the 1956, our understanding of stress, its causes, impacts and remedies has grown. The many remedies for stress can be summarised by five generic approaches:

  1. Clarify values and goals.
  2. Develop self-affirming relationships
  3. Reframing and relaxation
  4. Focus on nutrition to build energy.
  5. Exercise to improve fitness

Richard Earle, Managing Director of the Canadian Institute of Stress found that as different people respond differently to different situations, so different people require different stress management plans. He identified six stress personalities with specific approaches:

The Speed Freak

The borderline workaholic or perfectionist. They apply maximum effort to everything, hoping sooner or later to bring success to something. Everything, no matter how (un)important requires an all-out effort. Lasting satisfaction requires more drive, more speed, and therefore more stress. Just the thought of slowing down provokes anxiety. Action is interspersed with periods of deep fatigue.

Focus for Action

Knowing where to go full out and where to kick back to conserve energy, gives you control. Therefore clarify your values, goals and the prizes really worth pursuing in life. Then clearly define the “Small Stuff you will no longer sweat” .

The Worry Wart

Worry Warts are paralysed by analysis and useless, wheel spinning worry. They spend significant time and energy worrying about a small number of issues, rehearsing “What-ifs”, running at high RPM, but rarely putting themselves in gear.

Focus for Action

First itemise and reframe the terrible things that you imagine may happen. Understand  their likelihood, possible impact and  your plan of action.
Then  clarify your values and goals. Shut down options that are not worthwhile and stop worrying about them.

The Drifter

The perpetual “mid-life crisis”. They don’t commit deeply to anything and spread their energy across too many options. They feel dissatisfied, that something is missing in their life.

Focus for Action

Start by establishing one or two self-affirming relationships. A real flesh and blood partner (NOT a dog) will help you realise that some activities are more enjoyable than others.
Then reflect on the experiences in those relationships that bring satisfaction. Set priorities, goals and make action choices to have more fulfilling experiences.

The Loner

Loners feel uncomfortable with others, unfulfilled in relationships and difficulty with intimacy.  They avoid the stress of relationships. But this deprives them of others’ input on their progress, how to manage uncertainties and what to do next. Alone, they carry heavier burdens and higher stress.

Focus for Action

First clarify your core values. Reflect on experiences or activities involving others which have provided real satisfaction. Then set the goals which best express those values.
Then seek out people with the interests you have chosen, with a view to what you can offer rather than what you can expect.

Basket Cases and Cliff Walkers

Basket Cases and Cliff Walkers have similar roots and the same course of treatment.

The Basket Case

The Basket Case is in constant “energy crisis”, overwhelmed by most activities. They have frequent aches/pains in muscles or joints and suffer depression.

Cliff Walkers

Cliff walkers top the “risk factor charts” with smoking, alcohol misuse, no exercise. Their vital signs (weight, blood pressure, heart-rate etc. ) are in ‘the red’.  Yet they are oblivious to the hammering to which they subject their bodies. They  They low energy, frequent minor illnesses, aches and pains.  Their lack of life skills casues them to run on stress chemicals with periodic fatigue-like symptoms arsing as their body attempts to repair the stress-driven damage.

Focus for Action

First focus on nutrition to create a source of energy. This does NOT mean radical dieting. It DOES mean a healthy nutritious diet, generous water intake and a vitamin-mineral supplement.
Then take on an exercise programme to improve cardio-respiratory fitness.
When both these factors are established, learn simple energy conservation techniques such as reframing, relaxation and daily take-a-break sessions. Within two months you will have all the energy you need to take on life.

You can read the article here.

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A small adventure

Are you stuck in a monochrome palette?

One of the newsletters I follow covers the world of presentation skills.  In a series on marketing presentations the writer challenged her readers to create a short video describing the difference they want to make in the world.  I took up the challenge.  The scripting and action for the video took a lot of work, but I found the available technology surprisingly easy to use.

I made the video using the camera on my Android Smart-phone and edited the footage in Windows Movie Maker.  There is just one place where I got a squeak on the movie.

Here is one of my final versions of the painting:

I have embedded the video in the newsletter here, but it may not present.  If the video does not show up in your e-mail you can see it in the blog posting

You can read the story here .

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At StrategyWorks we assist leaders and their teams, with those crucial conversations for clarity, decisions, action and outcomes.  These conversations can be frustrating when people are not heard, the team cannot make decisions or the way forward remains vague.  Leaders contact us at StrategyWorks when they are ready to do something different.  In the process those involved in the conversations feel understood and challenged.  At the end of the intervention, the leaders and their teams feel focused and released around a clear plan of action.

Find out more from our website at:www.strategyworks.co.za or better still contact us at the email address: stephen@strategyworks.co.za to arrange a meeting with Stephen.

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© 2012 Stephen Quirke, All rights reserved.  You are free to use material from this Conversaction newsletter in whole or in part, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear.  The attribution should read:  ”By Stephen Quirke of StrategyWorks.  Please visit Stephen’s web site at https://www.strategyworks.co.za/ for more resources on how to hold effective conversations in your organisation.” (Please make sure the link is live if placed in an eZine or in a web site.)

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