doug smith training

What stands in your way when it comes to achieving your goals? Life will give us lots of obstacles. We have to learn how to deal with them. But, we also give ourselves some unnecessary barriers. We build walls out of our limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs are those thoughts that we believe so strongly that they prevent us from doing what would otherwise be possible. They are different from person to person, but they often sound like this: "I'm not good enough...they would never appreciate me...I failed at this before so why try again...that's the kind of person who always gives me trouble..." and on and on. Our limiting beliefs are so deeply ingrained, many of them formed when we were very young children, that we often are not even aware that they are there -- or that they are limiting our possibilities. Our job is to increase our possibilities and choices, not limit them. Not to take unnecessary risks or subject ourselves to danger, but to overcome the lit...

Have you ever been on your way somewhere and suddenly realized that you were on the wrong road? Before GPS, that would happen to me frequently. I'd get lost. Things looked different than I expected. On our road to our goals, things can get distorted. Our expectations, formed with optimism and trust, can get twisted or tumble over a cliff. The road to any goal requires a toll. Are you prepared to pay that toll. One early toll is seeing thru the distortions. To achieve our goal we need to see clearly. That could mean seeing things thru someone else's viewpoint. Find out the facts, sort out the feelings, and focus on as much objective truth that is available. The road ahead is distorted. It's up to us to stay centered, focused, and on the right route to our goal. Keep you map handy. -- doug smith

What are you selling yourself? Before we can convince anyone else of anything, we first convince ourselves. What have you convinced yourself about your goals? Are your goals backed by plans? Are your goals exciting, enticing, and tasty? Are you so proud of your goals that you can't wait to tell other people? Or are you building a case for the status quo? I'd let that go. The status quo is far too heavy to carry and leads to nowhere. There is no real status quo, only slow decay. Instead, I like to make a case for action. A case for moving forward toward achieving new goals. How about you? -- doug smith

Don't let anyone or anything stop you from being creative. It's power you have to use to make things better and achieve your goals. Sure, it sometimes might aggravate people. It might cause some people to bristle at having to look at things a new way. It's important. Stay with it. Creativity will get you out of more trouble than it ever gets you into. -- doug smith

Team building. It's a never ending process. It starts with recruiting. Who you bring into your team makes the chemistry of your team. Who you bring into your team sets the players in place to do the work that needs to be done. Take your time with recruiting. Start by getting to know the best talent you can. You never know who might be interested in joining your team, but first get to know them. Learn from talent everywhere. Explore places you might not usually explore to find the talent that can take your team to the next level. They might not join your team now. They might not even be interested. But, someday they might. The only way that someday arrives is if you start the dialogue today. Who do you know who you wish was on your team right now? What if you gave them a call? -- doug smith

Leaders do not settle. Good enough is not enough. Almost will never do. As my dad used to say, "Anything worth doing is worth doing right," and leadership must be done in a fully attentive, fully focused, high performance way. High performance leaders insist on ever increasing performance. To get there, they encourage positive action after positive action. Step by ever reaching step to a higher level, to a better degree, to a higher quality. It's what high performance leaders do. High performance leaders provoke positive actions. What positive action will you provoke today? -- doug smith Leadership Call to Action The next conversation you have with anyone on your team today, take a moment to provoke a positive action. Encourage your team member to do more, to add quality, to add value to something otherwise routine. Keep provoking until that positive action is a reality -- and then keep provoking until that positive reality is a habit. You can do it. You...