BLOG

“What you are doing is so loud, I cannot hear what you are saying.” – Nick Saban This quote is so crucial for communication and its effectiveness.  Whatever message you want to send to your team, you need to make sure your actions align with that directive.  For example, if you want your staff be organized and systematic but you are scattered, the message will be lost.  If you want your staff to be caring and warm but you constantly look at your phone or have something more i

Are we human doings?  Or are we human beings?  We often mistake the doing for being.  Yes, we do a lot and we have a lot to accomplish every day but if we let the doing decide who we are we lose the opportunity to decide who we want to be.  This is what distinguishes us from all other species on earth.  We have the conscious ability to choose.  Choice is what makes us human beings.    The tasks will always be there, the Haitian Proverb says, “Behind this mountain is another m

We are doing one of two things in any moment; we are either creating or consuming.  When we create, we are in control. When we consume, others are in control.  Think about that in terms of teams and teammates, if I am a consumer, I am completely depended on their attitudes and moods.  I just take in whatever they are putting out.    If I am a creator, on the other hand, I am the one who decides the moods and attitudes in the room.  As a leader, what I create is what makes the

When we get into autopilot, we create a “get it done” mindset.  This is so natural.  So common.  We just go through our routines and check our boxes.  We are accomplishing a lot and we fall into comfort.  We are making it happen and that is great.  But the nature of autopilot is that it becomes rote.  It can become stagnant and we can forget to do things with purpose on purpose.   This is where changing the view matters.  We had another storm here in Florida this week.  No re

Is the glass half full or half empty?  Does it matter?  An interesting analysis of over 61 studies involving 221,000 people about optimism and pessimism’s effect on health was just released. The results show that being optimistic does not matter as much as not being pessimistic.    The study revealed that while optimism helped create more positive results, the absence of negativity was two times more powerful in terms of results.  Let me dive into that a bit.  The researchers

Sometimes things do not go as planned.  I had finished a presentation at about 10:30 am and was feeling good about the three-hour drive across Florida via Alligator Alley to get home.  I figured I would be home by 2:00 pm and have the rest of the afternoon to relax and decompress.  About two exits before the start of Alligator Alley, my dashboard lit up and showed that one of my tires was rapidly losing air.  Yikes.  I pulled to the side of a busy stretch of road and got out

What’s next?  What am I looking forward to or looking to get through?  What is the trip I am excited about or the event that I get to attend?  What is the next thing to push through at work?  What is the next adventure, the next time that something is exciting and new and fresh for me?    How often do we adopt the mindset of looking ahead and being excited about what is to come rather than being in the here and now?  How often are we time traveling and thinking about what is

In terms of mindset, I had the following thoughts this week.  I needed to evacuate Sarasota as Hurricane Ian bore down on us.  I thought about the Hurricane readiness plan my family had in place.  It consisted of the following:   Shop for food that we did not have to refrigerate. Get lots of water. Have an evacuation route. Pack essentials. Fill gas in the car, fill five-gallon portable gas tank. Wait for clarity about hurricane landing path. Evacuate to a place where the hur

I was recently asked if I could only teach one mental training skill to athletes what would it be?  My response was simply to exhale without sound.  I have used this tool with elite athletes in pressure situations throughout the years and it is the quickest way to reduce stress and harness nervous energy.    What happens is that when someone breathes in deep and then exhales as quietly as possible, their focus goes into keeping the breath quiet.  To do that they must be in co

This week was a full fast one.  It blew by.  The days were long, yet were over before I even knew it.  Five flights in three days. Two cities and eight hours of presentations.    There was not time to be tired until today.  I am gassed.  Running on put our heads down and just go.  That was this week.   I have to say though that the thing that made it doable was that I was very clear about what I was doing and what I needed to accomplish.  That clarity allowed me to perform at

In the classic movie Platoon, there is a line "feeling good is good enough." I love that line. I often will say it when I am in a good place and it just brings a smile to me. But the question becomes, if feeling good is good enough how to get to feeling good when we don't? Let's investigate feelings. We often think of feelings as things that just shows up and that we do not have much control over. "I feel tired, I feel sad, I feel happy". There is some truth to that. I