Thirteen quick things to change your life today

If our lives are the sum of things we do, then changing what we do can change our lives, one moment at a time. Here are thirteen things that can be easily achieved.

1. Exercise. If you are currently doing nothing, then ten minutes exercise will make a difference. If you are already exercising, make it an extra ten minutes.

2. Wear sunblock. Australians have the highest rate of skin cancer in the world, so as a red-head growing up in Australia, I know what I am talking about! Sun block is not only the one thing most guaranteed to keep you looking young, it may also save your life.

3. Eat some vegetables. Preferably green and leafy ones. A variety of fresh vegetables will keep you healthier and help with weight control.

4. Do the hard thing first. There is probably something you have been putting off, some emotionally challenging thing. Do it. Delaying doesn’t make it any better (in fact it usually makes it worse), and having it dragging around your neck doesn’t help your enjoyment of life now.

5. Act As If. A psychological principle whereby you can trick your brain into believing you are what you want to be. Smile, and your brain will think you are happy, and studies say you will start to feel happier. Michelangelo decided he was the world’s best artist years before he achieved it, but having this image meant he accepted the big projects (Sistine Chapel) that made his dream a reality.

6. Get organised. But don’t be overwhelmed. If your house is a mess, try scheduling fifteen minutes a day to do one room each day. Fifteen minutes is achievable and not overwhelming.

7. Stand up! Studies show that the more you sit down during the day, the earlier you die. It is now possible to get a desk to work at standing up.

8. Make time for a friend. Our lives can become very isolated a we get busier. Make time to enjoy others.

9. Have some downtime. Meditation is ideal, but even if you don’t know how to, have some quiet thinking time in a peaceful place. It doesn’t matter if you all asleep.

10. Get enough sleep. While we don’t really know he purpose of sleep, we o know it is necessary. Regular, sufficient sleep rejuvenated the body and mind, helps us think straight, manage our emotions, and have enough physical energy to exercise, dal with cravings and look after ourselves.

11. Give up one bad habit now. One less cigarette, one less biscuit, one less alcoholic drink – one less s a good thing. Then build on it.

12. Drink water. Water helps flush toxins from the body, helps control hunger, helps develop healthy skin and organs, and can help resolve headaches (some headaches are related to dehydration).

13. Live your life one moment at a time. (thanks to Maggie for this one). If losing weight, getting fit, finishing your study, tidying your house etc is too much, don’t think of he big goal. Just make he best decision for now. Faced with a range of lunch options, pick the healthy one now. How will you spend the next ten minutes?

Doing the impossible

Richard Branson arrives at the British Grand Prix
photo credit: Richard Smith, licensed under Creative Commons.

“Life is a helluva lot more fun if you say yes rather than no”

My step-son and his friend have produced a musical. They wrote it, set it to music, choreographed it, sold tickets and put it on for a season in a theatre. They are 22 years old. The son of a friend of mine made a movie – full length. He is 18. Clearly no-one told these boys that this was impossible.

You might say this is the up-side of Gen Y. They see the world as full of possibilities, they understand technology and how it can be used to overcome the barriers that stop others. And luckily, they haven’t been taught what is not possible and told not to strive for the impossible.

But there have always been people who saw the opportunity instead of the barriers, took the risks, aimed for the giant goals instead of the small ones, did things that seem to be impossible, but somehow achieved them anyway.

Which brings me to Richard Branson.

Now admittedly, it was the swinging sixties in England, when youth culture suddenly took off and opportunities that didn’t really exist in the staid, respectable and conservative 1950s suddenly opened up. Youth became a market – a very lucrative market, and a market that wasn’t already dominated by established labels.

But still… what made a dyslexic student with poor grades think he could start a magazine at age 16? Or a mail-order record company at 20? Or a record company at 22?

“You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”

“Although my spelling is still sometimes poor, I have managed to overcome the worst of my difficulties through training myself to concentrate.”

“My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long university education that I never had – every day I’m learning something new.”

And who in their right minds thinks they’ll start an international airline to compete with the likes of British Airways and Qantas?

picture credit Richard Humphrey, licensed under Creative Commons

“What does the name Virgin mean? We are a company that likes to take on the giants. In too many businesses, these giants have had things their own way. We are going to have fun competing with them.”

“I’ve had great fun turning quite a lot of different industries on their head and making sure those industries will never be the same again, because Virgin went in and took them on.”

Yes, the answer is Richard Branson, now the 4th richest man in the UK and worth an estimated $4.2billion US. The man who brought us The Sex Pistols (arguably better known for their on-stage antics and off-stage murders than their music, although God Save the Queen has had a bit of a revival in this Jubilee year by those who want to be seen as alternative and retro at the same time) and Culture Club with the androgynous Boy George.

And along the way he has attempted world-record balloon flights around the world, bought an island, socialised with Princess Di, worked with nelson Mandela on peace projects, and been photographed in all sorts of PR stunts.

And generally, it would seem, had a lot of fun.

“Above all, you want to create something you are proud of. That’s always been my philosophy of business. I can honestly say that I have never gone into any business purely to make money. If that is the sole motive, then I believe you are better off doing nothing.”

Have all his ventures been successes? Probably not, although if you believe the hype, you wouldn’t know it.

“I am prepared to try anything once.”

“My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them.”

“You never know with these things when you’re trying something new what can happen. This is all experimental.”

“We’d love to be involved with the creation of something very special, something quite large and something quite exciting.”

Reading Branson’s autobiography, various quotes and articles that have been written about him, there are a couple of strong themes that come through.

1. fun – he does all this because he enjoys it
2. risk-taking, almost fearlessness in the business sense
3. barriers, challenges and competitors are seen as exciting, not intimidating

“My interest in life comes from setting myself huge, apparently unachievable challenges and trying to rise above them…from the perspective of wanting to live life to the full, I felt that I had to attempt it.”

Your life is the result of the decisions you make. If you aren’t happy with the life you have, then make some other decisions. You are limited only by yourself.

That’s what Gen Y knows.

Interested in more business tales?

Top Five New Year’s Resolutions

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the top five New Year’s resolutions are:

1. Lose weight / get fit

2. Give up smoking and/or drinking

3. Achieve financial security

4. Spend more time with family

5. Get organised

Yes, sadly, we are not unique, everyone comes up with the same resolutions. And somehow we aren’t all thin, fit, smoke-free, financially secure and living well-organised lives with our lovely and loving families.

The stats also show that 35% of New Year’s resolutions are abandoned within the first week – or not actually started at all.

But some people do make resolutions (New Year’s or otherwise) and succeed. How do they do it?

Richard Wiseman, a psychologist from the University of Hertfordshire is quoted in The Guardian as mentioning two factors…

1. Don’t make the resolutions spur-of-the-moment

2. Break the goal down into smaller steps.

So following on from the recent posting on planning …here are a few suggested steps for consideration.

1. lose weight / get fit: aim initially for ten minutes exercise per day. Drink a glass of water before each meal. Cut portion size. Replace one junk food meal a week with something healthier.

2. quit smoking / drinking: this is one area where cold turkey seems to be the best option. However, you are not alone. There are prescription medications available to assist (ask your doctor if they are suitable for you) and over-the-counter substitutes.

3. achieve financial security: set up an automatic pay deduction for savings. Work out a plan for paying off debts. Set up an investment account / share-market account. Read a book to educate yourself about finances. Write a financial plan.

4. Spend time with family: set a particular time to spend “hanging” with the family. Write a list of activities you can do with the family (that they will enjoy as well). Sit down with the family and ask them what they want to do.

5. Get organised: Write a plan on what areas of your life you want to get organised in, and put in a weekly / monthly schedule of what you will do to achieve this. Perhaps it is one room in the house per week / month.

The steps need to be small, doable but meaningful. They need to build – so you might start with ten minutes exercise per day but build in five-minute increments to half an hour a day. But the most important thing about putting the plan into action is that if you skip it on day or week, that doesn’t mean the entire plan goes out the window. New Year’s Resolutions fail when you see them as all or nothing (one lapse means you have failed) or you allow lapses to snowball (I didn’t exercise yesterday or the day before, so there’s no point in doing it today). Pick up where you left off and keep going. Your plan tells you what you need to do next.

That’s how you achieve your New Year’s Resolutions.

This post is part of a series on goal-setting. Others are below:
Goal Setting – Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!
Goodbye to old (bad) habits
It’s about the JOURNEY (as well as the goal)
Harvard Business School study….or urban internet myths
Being Accountable
Analysis Paralysis

Analysis Paralysis

Summit of Mt Everest

A friend sent me a blog where the author was saying how he had completed a marathon (from starting as a non-runner), started eating healthier, and got rid of his crippling debt through four easy steps.

And the kicker was, that he had given up setting goals.

Now given the overwhelming focus on goal setting that this blog has had over the past few days, it is possible that she was trying to tell me something……but instead it got me thinking more about goal setting and analysis paralysis.

The author of the blog linked above proclaims that his success is that he gave up setting goals. Instead he focussed on starting small, doing one change at a time, enjoying the process of the small steps he was taking, and being grateful for each step.

Now kudos to him for finding what works for him. He seems to have changed his life in some very significant ways.

But while he may not be writing goals…..he is clearly still setting them. He is looking at his life and deciding what aspects he is unhappy with. And he is developing a plan of small steps to get there. And he is integrating the changes into his life, celebrating the wins and recognising the importance of the changes he is making.

So the question is, do you set big inspiring goals, or do you set little do-able goals? Clearly the answer for me is both, but the downside of the big inspiring goals is they can be scary, demotivating – paralysing. If your goals is so big that you can’t actually see the path there, you might find you don’t do anything. But if they are small and don’t add up to a bigger goal….then are they worth the effort?

PS – this might be an example of confirmation bias – finding things that support your opinion and ignoring those that do not support your opinion – but the following posting on the same blog focuses on the importance of focussing on one thing at a time, and in fact focussing on one aspect that will build to the bigger goal, then moving onto the next. I have to say, that is a plan if ever I heard one!

This post is part of a series on goal-setting. Others are below:
Goal Setting – Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!
Goodbye to old (bad) habits
It’s about the JOURNEY (as well as the goal)
Harvard Business School study….or urban internet myths
Being Accountable

Being accountable

photo credit Ethan Bloch

Sadly, we aren’t very good at being accountable to ourselves.

Oh, we start each New Year with the best of intentions. And then slowly – or sometimes quite quickly – it gets a bit harder, we break the resolution “just this once”. And next thing you know, it’s the next New Year’s Eve, and we’re making the same resolution agin. And this time we mean it, and we are really, really going to achieve it?

Sound familiar? No? Just me then?

Here are some secrets that Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig know that you should too.

The secret formula to their success is not some magic potion in their diet plans. It’s not some secret tool or chart they give you. The secret formula is being accountable to someone else.

You pay your money (that’s the committment) and then you have to turn up each week and get weighed and talk about how you have gone with your diet and exercise plan (that’s the accountability). And if you have fallen off the wagon, you confess AND MOVE ON. That’s right – falling off the wagon doesn’t mean the end of the goal achievement plan. You just brush is aside and get on with the plan, no excuses.

The study on goal setting by Gail Matthews from Dominican University demonstrated that those participants who made public committments to a friend were more likely to achieve their goals, and those who wrote weekly progress reports (accountability) were even more likely to achieve their goals.

Study on goal setting by Gail Matthews, PhD, Dominican University

So the question is – how do you set up this accountability, with someone who will hold you accountable? For weight loss programs, there are many options as discussed briefly above. Exercise accountability can be set up by hiring a personal trainer, or setting a regular meeting with a friend to exercise together (providing you don’t both make excuses for each other). Career or financial goals can be through an executive coach, smoking cessation might be with your doctor. Get your team together and set up the mechanisms – make yourself accountable for what you want to achieve!

This post is part of a series on goal-setting. Others are below:
Goal Setting – Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!
Goodbye to old (bad) habits
It’s about the JOURNEY (as well as the goal)
Harvard Business School study….or urban internet myths
Being Accountable

The Harvard Business School study….or urban internet myths

I mentioned in a previous posting the Harvard Business School Study where a graduating class was asked whether they had written goals, then followed up ten years later. The source of this story seems to have been the book by Mark McCormack, What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School: Notes From A Street-Smart Executive. The details of the study are reported to be as follows:

The 1979 Harvard Business School Graduating Class were asked the following question: “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” 3% reported they had written goals and plans; 13% had goals, but not written down and 84 percent had no specific goals. The follow-up, ten years later showed that the 13% who had goals were earning an average twice as much as the 84% who did not have goals. And the 3% who had written goals and plans were earning ten times as much as the other 97% put together.

A pretty compelling case, wouldn’t you say? If only the story were true.

Like many urban myths, while there is truth in the sentiment – the moral of the story, if you will – the actual story is not true. This study was not conducted on the Harvard Business School Graduates. Nor was it conducted at Yale in 1953. Yale apparently gets a lot of questions about this and even have a response posted on their website.

Thankfully, Gail Matthews PhD from Dominican University has now done the study – and more . Her study looked at the benefits of having goals v writing the goals down v having an action plan v having an accountability mechanism (in this case, submitting a weekly report to a friend on progress). And the results all support what you would expect.

Study on goal setting by Gail Matthews, PhD, Dominican University

So the keys are:
1. be clear on your goals and write them down.
2. develop a plan on how you are going to achieve them.
3. Develop an accountability mechanism. This needs to be external to you – sadly we are not very good at keeping ourselves accountable, which is why the various weight-watching companies which require you to turn up weekly are all so successful.

This is part of a series on goal-setting. To read the other postings, click below.
Goal Setting – Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes!
Goodbye to old (bad) habits
It’s about the journey as well as the goal
Being Accountable

Life would be so much easier if……

It’s almost time to start thinking about those New Year’s Resolutions again. I love goal-setting. I actually do it four times a year, not just annually. I have specific dates for the reviews: My birthday (March), End of Financial Year, Halloween, and of course New Year’s Eve. For those of you not into goal setting that probably seems a little obsessive, but it works for me. Any longer and I lose motivation, any shorter and I can’t actually achieve anything noticeable in the time period.

I have achieved a number of goals over the years: saving money, getting a new job, investment, study etc. However, there are some that seem to come up every time and never seem to really get anywhere. And I know all the tricks about phrasing them in the positive (you don’t lose weight, you gain fitness), making sure they are specific, measurable, and have a timeline attached to them. Developing baby-steps and plans to sit behind each goal. Keeping them written somewhere obvious so you need to keep reading them adn reminding yourself. Yes, yes, done all that.

But I’m guessing some of these might plague you as well. So here are some of my “wish list”, should a Fairy Godmother come flying by….. If these things could come true, life would be so much easier (and I would be achieving those stubbornly resistant goals).

If only……

photo credit Charlie Brewer

1. Buying a book counted as having read it (and you absorbed all the knowledge through osmosis). Particularly educational literature.

photo credit Adactio

2. Buying diet food counted as having dieted.

photo credit Magnus D

3. Signing up for the gym counted as having done the workouts. Ditto for buying the exercise equipment, clothes and running shoes.

phto credit: all day I dream

4. Printing the journal article counted as having read and absorbed the information (for study purposes)

phot credit getzzy photography

5. Buying the clothes and/or makeup counted as becoming the model in the advert for the clothes

Unfortunately life doesn’t work like that. SIGH! Off to diet, exercise and read now.

I am sure there will be a posting about goals setting coming along shortly, so please pop back if you are interested, or sign up to get updates delivered by email.

When organisations turn cannibal

Many years ago I worked for a boss who fits all the criteria for “psychopath in the workplace”. He, and the place I worked, shall remain nameless for the purpose of this blog! (Disclaimer: If one of my former bosses is reading this and worried it is them – the fact you are worried means it is not you.)

This man ran a small organisation with four different operational arms. I can only suspect he was worried about his managers getting together and overthrowing him (much as he had done to the previous CEO) because the culture he encouraged was for each of the managers to attack the other managers’ units as a way of deflecting attention and negative focus from their own. To say that the organisational culture in this workplace was toxic is an understatement. When a manager came through your office you hid whatever you were doing and said nothing of any value to them at all. Non-cooperation was the order of the day. Staff turnover was endemic – people couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Years later I had risen through the ranks and happened to work alongside one of the “other” managers from this workplace. Her view on the experience was illuminating. She did what she had to do to survive and to keep her staff safe – as we all did. Imagine how effective the organisation could have been if everyone had been focussed on achieving organisational goals instead of cannibalising each other.

So a recent Forbes India article about leadership intrigued me. There were of course the usual “bad” manager types (Sociopaths, Opportunists and Chameleons) but one of the “positive” leadership types – Achiever – also had some cautionary tales attached to it.

The Achiever, according to the article, is highly prized for reaching goals and achieving outcomes. However, they tend to have a shorter term, insular view of their goals. An example given was shutting down investment in R&D as a cost-saving measure. Very effective in the short-term, but ham-strings the organisation in the medium to long-term.

Another example is where the achiever is competing against internal competitors. They do things that benefit their unit (and disadvantage other units) without understanding or perhaps caring about the broader organisation. Short term personal gain – their unit is working well, they may look good – but causing problems for the organisation.

Management book “Think One Team” uses the example of a jelly bean company (one of my former staff called the book “Jelly Bean Dreaming”) to illustrate how silos that compete against each other and don’t have an organisation-wide view actually work against the company.

While silos exist for a reason – the coalition of like services into units makes sense organisationally – silos that don’t see themselves as achieving for the whole organisation, or worse, compete with each other and actively disadvantage each other, equal a dysfunctional organisation.

The impact of Marshmallows on the DS generation

In 1972 Professor Walter Mischel at Stanford University devised a novel way to torment small children.

It should be noted that tormenting small children was not the aim of the study. The aim was to see what techniques some children used to overcome temptation and the differences to those used by children who surrendered to temptation. It was only when it was followed up years later when the children were teenagers that the impact of this ability to delay gratification on the rest of their lives began to become clear.

The study went something like this. A small child, aged approximately 3 to 5 years of age was led into a room where there were a number of treats on display. These included the eponymous marshmallow. The child was allowed to select one treat. At the point at which they were about to consume the treat, the researcher offered them a deal.

One marshmallow now. Or, wait a few minutes and have two marshmallows when the researcher came back. There was a third option – if you chose to wait then changed your mind, you could ring a bell, the researcher would return but you only got one marshmallow. Approximately 30% of children were able to wait and get two marshmallows.

The Marshmallow Experiment is probably well-known to anyone who has done Intro Psych. When followed up as teenagers, those who were able to delay gratification had higher grades. Even later on, those who were unable to delay gratification were more likely to use drugs or be overweight. The ability to wait to get a better reward rather than gobbling up quick and easy rewards now seemed to be a fundamental precursor to success.

Delayed gratification was seem as aligned to long term goals and perseverance – study to get a degree, save to buy a house, start a business. All of these things require a long-term view of life, to understand why it is worth persevering with something that is not immediately rewarding.

So how does this impact on the DS generation? OK, so to start with I am not anti-DS games. I would never have survived long car-trips with my children without plugging them into Mario-kart and Pokemon. And I am quite a fan of the Tomb-raider Series for Playstation (although Lara Croft’s impossible figure and flexibility puts Barbie to shame in terms of physical impossibility).

But if you are going to learn something new, you practice. And what my children are practicing on DS / Playstation / Xbox / Wii etc is a warped version of Newton’s third law of motion – every action receives an immediate reaction. Neuroscientist Baroness Susan Greenfield warns that the impact of screen-culture is to develop shorter attention spans, reliance on instant gratification and self-centredness. And this is what children’s growing, developing, learning brains are being trained to.

The other thing they are learning is that entertainment comes from external input. They have no tolerance for boredom. My response “It’s good to be bored – it makes your brain work to entertain you” was recently echoed in an Advertiser article, which is now, to my children’s disgust, laminated and stuck to the fridge door. If it’s printed in a newspaper, it must be right, right? The children remain unconvinced.

As well as my annoying sayings, the second front in the fight-back – less welcome – is “No-Screen Sunday”. From first thing in the morning until 5pm at night, there are no screens on. No TV, no computers, no DS. The only exception is for homework.

At first, of course, I was the meanest mother in the world (I have explained that “mean” is part of the job description but they look at me blankly). But gradually, they have actually started playing together, reading, riding their bikes. Doing things that involve live human interaction and/or physical movement on their part. Maybe I am channelling my 1970’s childhood, but it seems like a good thing.

There’s no getting away from screen culture. It is here to stay. Many jobs are dependent on screens, study now requires computer literacy for researching, writing and submitting. My current study and much of my last two degrees were conducted online. It is a major form of entertainment and a source of information.

But No Screen Sunday just goes to show, there is life after all.

PS: The New Yorker printed an amusing story about one child who worked out where the other treats were being stored, broke into it and helped himself. According to most of the “Success” coaches who coach thinking differently and not being limited by externally imposed rules, this child should be the most successful of all. Or perhaps a criminal. Turns out he works in the creative arts industry. Maybe a different type of thinking is good for a different type of success.

If you liked this posting you might also like Where are they now?

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