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Start With Your Focus

Have you noticed how much your performance depends on your focus? Whenever I am clear about my focus, and steady in my attention, my performance improves. It can reach the level of flow, where I'm no longer even aware of time passing or skill execution -- but that only comes after mindfully keeping my focus on the here and now, on what I'm doing. How about you? When you start with your focus, do you achieve better results? Are you goals easier to achieve? Even when our mission is clear, we need to keep our focus on identifying that mission and bringing our actions to the front of achieving our goals in service of that mission. Your performance starts with your focus. Do you want to improve your performance? Improve your focus. What's your focus for today? -- Doug Smith

Make It Matter

How much does your biggest goal matter? What are you willing to do in order to achieve that goal? Big goals require commitment. Big goals can even require sacrifice. In the famous line from "The Untouchables" Sean Connery as Jim Malone said "what are you prepared to do?" What are your limits? Are you all in or partially committe I'm not advocating the kind of all in personal life sacrifice that Malone was requiring, but it is a question worth asking around our goals. What are you prepared to do? Work overtime? Ask for help? A goal doesn't much matter unless you're willing to pay a price. What price are you willing to pay? -- Doug Smith

Grab A Mission With Energy

Does your mission inspire you? Do you move quickly on your goals in order to get closer to fulfilling your mission? A mission must be inspiring or it's not much of a mission. If your mission doesn't give you energy, maybe it's not your mission. It could be someone else's energy (if they're inspired by it) but it's not yours unless it drive you forward. Rewrite it. Review it. Redo it. Your mission is there for a reason: to guide you to success and happiness. Identify your real mission and run with it full speed ahead. Create a better world. Achieve your most noble goals. Walk a life of happiness: grab a mission with energy and live it for all you're worth. -- Doug Smith

Self-Esteem Is Up To You

Do you work better when you feel good about yourself? Of course! At least, I do. When I'm strong, confident, and prepared my work is much better. It builds my self-esteem and helps me solve problems and achieve my goals. But, it's up to me to find that self-esteem. It's up to me to build that confidence. No one else can give it to me and my work doesn't care. Have you noticed that your work doesn't care about how you feel about yourself? Your work is your work. Your problem doesn't care about your self-esteem. Your problem just needs to be solved. Will it? It depends on what you bring to your problem. Do you want to bring a great sense of self-esteem? That's up to you. Think about your previous successes. Think about problems you've solved before. Draw on your own clarity of purpose, creativity of design, courage of action, and compassion for others and then realize what a cool person that makes you. Yeah, you. Self-esteem is up to you --

Extreme Creativity

How extreme is your creativity? It can be hard to be a little creative. Once the creativity flows we tend to let it fly - full tilt, unhindered, unmasked, extreme. That can cause problems. Still we must remain creative. To achieve our goals, to solve our problems, we must remain creative. Extreme creativity is often misunderstood. "Why did you paint it THAT color?" "What on earth were you thinking?" "Did you know that would happen?" We can create something so new that people do not understand it. We can also create something that is distinctive yet flawed. I have at times created something that I loved so much that I failed to see its flaws. That's one reason I advocate collaborating in our creativity. Get help. Build a team. Work together. Our strengths left unchecked turn into weaknesses. Working creatively with other people frees us up while holding us up as well. We might need help seeing boundaries that are there for a reason. C

Keep Developing

We're either developing ourselves or falling behind. What will you do to develop yourself today? -- Doug Smith

How's Your Common Sense?

Calling something "common sense" doesn't mean that you don't need it. We're never finished learning. What have you learned today? -- Doug Smith