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Balance Your Portfolio of Goals

How many goals do you have? Some days I have too many to count. It's easy to lose track of how many goals I'm working on at any given time. How about you? It's better when we keep a definitive list. It's easier to track and complete those goals when we know what they are and when they are right in front of us every day. The real advantage to keeping a careful watch on how many goals we have is to avoid holding onto competing goals. When we have goals that not only oppose each other (by competing for time, resources, attention) but distract us then we are not at our optimal best. How can we complete two goals that compete with each other? Setting goals that compete with each other is not a formula for success. When it happens, spot it, fix it, and move on. Each and every goal should support our overall vision or mission. When they don't, they might compete with each other -- and with our focus of attention. Do you have any competing goals? How can you rec

Courageously Prioritize Your Goals

Do you ever get stuck setting priorities? I work with lots of people who struggle with what to work on. By trying to work on everything, they feel like they aren't finishing anything. That's a formula for frustration. We need to prioritize. We need to decide what is most important and also what is less important. What's less important then must get less attention so that we can focus on what is important. That takes courage. It takes the courage to make the decision. It takes the courage to let people know. And, it takes courage to stay the course when other people resist your decision. Not all goals are created equal. There are some goals that we will never finish. Why not finish the ones that are important? Why not focus on the goals that contribute to and align with your mission? That's what centered, high performance leaders do. That's how goal achievers achieve. Sometimes it takes courage and determination to prioritize your goals. Take that c

The Truth About Problems

Why do people fool themselves about their problems? We trick ourselves into thinking that our problems are someone else's fault. We fool ourselves into thinking that our problems are insurmountable. We fool ourselves about problems constantly. What if problems had a secret? What if there was a basic truth about our problems that we tend to avoid - and by avoiding it tend to miss on solving our problems? Underneath every problem is an unachieved goal. That's it. That's the truth about problems. I teach people to redirect their problems into goals. Once we're able to state our problem as a goal, it becomes much easier to achieve. Focus on the goal, and get what you want. Focus on the problem, and you might just get more of the problem. Which would you prefer? What unsolved problem can you convert to a goal today? Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High Performance Leadership Training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals What have you lea

Let Go Of What You're Holding?

Are you holding onto something that is slowing you down? Is there something from the past that acts like a drag on your future? Sometimes we need to let go of something to speed up our motion. Sometimes we're working on too many things at once and getting nowhere fast on any of them. Prioritize. Let go. Decide. Sometimes we need to let go of what we're holding to reach the next achievement. That trophy's too heavy. That task should be done by now. That feeling stopped resonating an hour ago. Let go. Are you ready to let go of what you're holding? You'll grab the important stuff back up in a hurry. Doug Smith Front Range Leadership:  High Performance Leadership Training doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals What have you learned today?

Take Charge of Your Performance

Who's in charge of your performance? Who's in charge of your results? The past couple of days I've focused these articles on performance and how we can always do better. We can't wait to do better. It's up to us. We need to read what we need to read, train where we need to train, develop in ways that keep us moving. We need to keep setting clear, noble, ambitious goals. Growth. It's our best direction. Achievement: it's the destination of growth training. You are in charge of how great you perform. Are you training hard enough to get to where you want to be? -- Doug Smith doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership:  High Performance Leadership Training

Take Your Performance to The Next Level

Yesterday, in this blog, I suggested that your best performance is still inside you. What do you think? Even as we take time to acknowledge our success, we hunger for doing even greater things. We long for achieving more. That's a positive motivator. Enjoy the moment, savor the success, and take a breath. Then, when you are fully centered and able to focus without any chance of criticizing who or where you are, get ready to go bigger still. Get ready to set and achieve an even better, even more noble, even more life-enhancing goal. There is always a way to take your performance to the next level. Are you willing to find it? Are you willing to work for it? Are you ready to start right now? -- Doug Smith doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership:  High Performance Leadership Training

Keeping Working Toward Your Best Performance

What was your best performance? When did you perform so well that you remember it as the best you could do at the time? You likely have several times in your life when, given what you had and who you were at the time, you did your very best performance. Things clicked. Results mattered positively. You felt satisfied. One of the challenges to constantly improving our performance is that sometimes, even during our finest moments, we feel a sense of lacking - a downturn caused by the desire to do even better, or the let-down of a great performance followed by, what - normal behavior? We do need to keep striving. We do need to keep improving. We do need to keep setting assertive, clear, noble goals that cause us to stretch and we do need to act relentlessly on our plan without satiating our desire, but -- why not also savor those moments of success? Why not celebrate the series of high performance results we have achieved? All the while we continue to grow, continue to stretch, a

Let Your Creativity Surprise You

Have you ever been surprised by a flash of creativity? Maybe it helped you solve a problem, maybe it gave you the answer you'd been looking for, or maybe it helped you develop something beautiful and new. Creativity is the source for much of our joy. When it comes to achieving our goals, we benefit greatly by keeping ourselves open to our creativity - and the creativity of others. That means letting the element of surprise get a fair hearing from our brains as we move forward on our plan. It could be something so new that we don't consider it important at first. It could be something so different from what we thought we were looking for that we overlook it completely. Instead, let's stay open to surprise. Let's let our creativity show us better ways of doing things. Are you ready for your own creativity to surprise you? You'll be glad that you did! -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership: High performance lea

Go All In On Your Dream

Are you all-in on your dream or simply flirting? A dream is a serious affair. It requires your attention to move forward. It requires your relentless action. Setting goals to achieve your dream is a great step. It's what your dream wants. But, your dream wants more. It wants your undivided attention. It wants your passion, your thirst, your hunger, your relentless action. Until you have the courage to go all-in on your dream it will remain a dream. Are you all-in? -- Doug Smith doug smith training:  how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership:  High performance leadership training

Seek Clarity of Purpose

Do you know exactly why you do what you do? For the goals that you set, do you make sure that they all align with your purpose? I know it's not always easy and perhaps not always possible, but when we are able to align our goals exclusively with our purpose the energy and effort gets much closer to the kind of flow that gets things done fast. When we aren't sure of how our goals align with our purpose the lines become blurred and it's easy to miss on a goal, easy to get stuck. Find that clarity of purpose. Find that thing that you're working on to make your mission complete. Do what's really important. There is no substitute for clarity of purpose. Almost everything else takes second place. How is your clarity of purpose? Have you identified your mission? -- Doug Smith doug smith training: how to achieve your goals Front Range Leadership: High performance leadership training