Is the glass half empty or half full?

As I mentioned last week, I was at the annual National Speakers Association convention, hanging out with about 1,500 speakers from all around the world. One of the most amazing things about being at this annual event is the people you meet. Yes, we have great presenters, like Steve Forbes and Penn Jillette, but the real impact is made by the people you see or get to sit with at a meal.

For example, at one lunch, I sat with an astronaut who had commanded three space shuttle missions. Wow. You can just imagine all the questions we asked and how fascinating the conversation was. The biggest takeaway from that conversation was the enormous amount of preparation and training those folks went through to be able to do what they had to do. Just like the rest of us, they had a job to do and they took it really seriously.

I also got to talk a bit with a former NBA basketball player, an Olympic gold medalist, and a former combat pilot, all of whom are now professional speakers. In other words, our profession attracts people who, because of their life experiences, have learned some things they want to share and/or have a story to tell.

But in addition to the people like the ones described above, there are others who really touch your heart. One of our main platform speakers was Sean Stephenson who, when he was born, doctors predicted would not survive past birth because of a rare bone disorder that stunted his growth and caused his bones to be extremely fragile. Sean joked that all of those doctors are now dead and he’s still alive. But he is 3 feet tall and lives on a wheel chair. Despite his challenges, Sean has taken a stand for a quality of life that has reached millions of people around the world. If you want to see something truly inspiring, check out Sean at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9i6calKZwk

I also got to see several people with no arms, some with one leg, I attended a session given by a quadriplegic, and one of our most inspiring speakers was in a plane crash and had other events that left him scared, handless and in a wheel chair. All of these people have used their lives to be a source of inspiration to others and they are surely that.

I share this with you because these events are always such a wakeup call for me. Yes, I’ve had my challenges and I’m sure you have had yours. But I promise you, for the vast majority of us, what we have gone through has been a cake walk compared to those like Sean. Yet, a third of the country is on anti-depressants. There are more drugs and anti-depressants sold in the USA than the rest of the world combined. On the list of countries with the happiest people, we in the USA are about number 20 or lower.

Why is this? Because instead of focusing on how blessed we are, we focus on what we don’t have or what we want to have. Most people aren’t happy. They’re waiting for life to turn out, not realizing that it’s already turned out and it’s turned out pretty damn well.

Is the glass half empty or half full? The answer is: both. The better question is: how do you see the glass (i.e. life)? My experience is that far too many choose to see the glass as half empty and that is a formula for a bad attitude. And as I’ve written about before, your attitude is everything. Your attitude determines your vibrational frequency and what you attract into your life.

So if you want a dose of reality, if you’re not waking every day saying: Another Day in Paradise, if you’re not focusing on how great your life already is and counting your blessings every minute of every day, I’ll see you next year in Washington, DC for the 2015 annual National Speakers Association convention.

Are you being the best you you can be?

I’m here at the National Speakers Association annual convention in San Diego, CA. Once a year, about 1,500 of the best speakers in the world gather to network with and learn from each other. This year, in attendance are speakers from 22 countries and people who speak on every imaginable subject, and many more that you couldn’t even imagine. We have many main stage speakers and over 50 concurrent sessions to choose from.

For me, after over a dozen years of coming to these events, the best part is not how much I learn, but how effectively many of the presenters provoke my thinking and leave me asking questions I don’t have ready answers for. This year was no exception and I’m going to offer you two questions that have really made me step back and look. I hope they will do the same for you.

The first question is: how much time are you taking each day getting better at your craft? For me, as a professional speaker, the question was intended to have me look at how much time I’m spending daily getting better on the platform, getting better as a presenter, getting better as a seminar leader, getting better as a coach, and getting better as a retreat leader. Really great questions and my obvious answer is: not nearly enough.

So I ask you: how much time are you taking each day getting better at what you do? Do you just go to work every day and do the same thing over and over again? Or do you take some time, any time, getting better at what you do? Do you take classes, go to seminars, read books, ask for help? Or do you just take it all for granted and assume you’re as good as you need to be. Here’s something I can promise you: you may be as good as you need to be, but you’re surely not as good as you could be.

I’m really going to take this question to heart and I encourage you to do the same. I’ve been doing most of what I’ve been doing for many years and I think I’m pretty good at it. But after watching some of the presenters here, I’m clear I can be a lot better than I am. And I’m confident that’s true for you to, which is why I said you’re surely not as good as you could be. I encourage you to take some time each day getting better. It surely can’t hurt and may really help take your career up to the next level.

The second question is: Am I providing the best ROI for the minutes I’ve been given on the stage? For me, again as a professional speaker, the question was intended to have me look at whether my client is receiving the best return on his or her investment for whatever time I was given to present my program. My first reaction was to answer yes, but I’m surely not going to leave it there. I’m really going to take a look and make sure that the answer really is yes.

So I ask you: someone is paying you for what you do, correct? Whether you work for a company or yourself, someone is paying you for what you do. Is that person or company getting the very best return on the investment they’re making in you? Are you giving whoever is paying you the best of what you have? Are they getting the best of you and your talents and abilities?

One of the saddest realities of the American workforce is reflected in the latest Gallup poll which said that 70% of full time workers are either checked out or actively disengaged. So for them, the company that is paying them is surely not getting the best ROI for the investment they are making in them. But just because the other 30% are engaged at work, the question still remains. Again, I don’t know what the answer to this question is for you, but I surely invite you to look, as that is exactly what I’ll be doing.

If you really really want to be happy, here's more on forgiveness

In a recent post, I said that if you want to have a really amazing life, forgive yourself and everyone else in your life for everything. Why?: Because an unwillingness to forgive often doesn’t hurt the person we refuse to forgive at all, but it always hurts us. As long as we don’t forgive, we are bound to the other person with bonds of pain or anger or a desire for revenge. Forgiving doesn’t mean finding a way to excuse someone. There may be no excuse in the world for what they did. But forgiving does mean giving up the desire to punish them. Holding on to the need to see them pay for their words or actions is holding on to the injury itself. Forgiveness releases us from the power a wrongful action still has over us and sets us free to heal and move on.

I was having a conversation with someone who had read this, who they are is not important, and she was lamenting about her disappointment that some of her children were unwilling to forgive her and, of course, there were a number of reasons for their unwillingness to do so. Because her situation is surely not unique, I want to write about what I would have liked to tell her had there been more time.

First, if you’re disappointed that anyone in your life is unwilling to forgive YOU, then you are clearly not forgiving THEM. What you’re wanting is for  the other people to be the way you want them to be and unfortunately, that is not a choice you get to make. People are the way they are, they will do what they choose to do, and all you get to do is to practice the serenity prayer: grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

What you can do is discuss with them their grievances with you, give them an opportunity to communicate, listen with compassion with no need to explain or justify your behavior, apologize, and then ask if they are willing to forgive you. The decision is then theirs. If they choose not to forgive you, they are the ones that get to suffer, not you, as long as you’re willing to forgive them.

More importantly, you’re not responsible for anyone’s happiness other than your own. How you get to be happy is to follow the instructions I’ve been writing about, including this piece on forgiveness. When you’re willing to forgive, you get to be happy. But that includes being willing to let them not be happy. And I know it’s tough with close family members. There was a time, many years ago, when one of my daughters struggled with forgiving me. We tried to do what I’m writing about with her many many times, I would listen, she would communicate her upsets, I would apologize, but she couldn’t forgive. And it got so bad that the only possible choice for the sanity of both of us was for us to go our separate ways.

Was that a happy choice? Yes and no. It didn’t make me or her happy to have to make that choice, but we were both happier after the choice was made. She didn’t have to continue to confront her issues with me and I didn’t have to continue to deal with her unloving behavior. So one of the things I would say to any of you who are in this situation is that you have the right to set boundaries. If people are unwilling to forgive and continue to be angry or resentful, tell them to go and deal with it someplace else and not on or around you.

With my daughter, we both lived with this for over seven years while she worked out her own issues. Thankfully, she was able to get to a place of true forgiveness and now we have a truly amazing relationship. Now could I have counted on that happening? No. But I surely held out hope that it would and miraculously it did.

In conclusion, as I opened, if you want to have a truly amazing life, forgive others, even if they’re unwilling to forgive you, and give up the need to control anyone else or take responsibility for anyone else’s happiness. The greatest thing you can do for unhappy people is to not be one of them.

Are you clear about your intentions?

One of my all time favorite authors is Deepak Chopra. I have participated in weekend seminars with him and have gone to numerous events to hear him speak. He has written over 30 books and the man is absolutely brilliant. I especially like that what he teaches is totally consistent with the Unshackled Leadership philosophy and for all of these reasons, when he says something, I listen.

One of the things he says is that your life is created out of your intentions and what you have your attention on. And, given the series of posts I’ve just concluded writing, that’s totally understandable since what we have our attention on and what we are intending live in our thoughts and it is our thoughts that create.

If you’re with me so far, you can understand why I stress that it’s critical to be thinking about the future you want to create rather than your current problems, challenges and circumstances because both are what’s grabbing your attention. If you have your attention on your problems, challenges and circumstances, you’ll create more of those. But if you have your attention on the future you want to create, that’s what you’ll manifest.

What I want to focus on here is the issue of your intentions. It’s not my experience that most people focus much on that. To encourage you to do exactly that, let me share with you something we at Unshackled Leadership Co. do every week. I learned this from reading The Intenders Handbook and if you want to learn more about this, you can go to their web site and there’s lots of information there.

Bottom line: in order for all of us to spend time thinking about what we want to intend to happen, we have a weekly phone call every Monday morning. We all call into our bridge line since we’re scattered around the country. What happens on the call is as follows: Understanding that each of us has declared our intentions for the week to the group the week before, each person in the group has an opportunity to report to the others how their week was, with particular emphasis on what we had included on our intentions list for the previous week.

For example, one of the things I always put on my list is that some new, unexpected business opportunity comes my way. Well last week, out of the blue, I received a call from someone who was referred to me by two people familiar with our work, wanting to talk about my willingness to participate in a meeting of their company. Another member of our group has been intending for several months to get a brand new car and this week she was excited to report that the new car had arrived.

There may be some questions or discussions about what each of us reports but that is not a major part of the call. Anyway, after each of us has shared our report from the previous week, we again go around the circle, so to speak, and each of us shares our intentions for the coming week. As each of us completes, the rest of us say: “And so it is.” We then forward our list of intentions to everyone else in the group.

Why do we do this and what are the benefits? Well, if what we create in life is based on what we have our attention on and our intentions, the most obvious answer to that question is that it forces us to create our intentions. What most if not all of us do is to take some time Sunday evening to think about the week ahead and what we would like to intend will happen. At least for me, this forces me to look at every aspect of my life and get clear about what I want to intend will happen. Then, every morning, I not only read my intentions, but I read everyone else’s intentions and take a few moments intending that all of us will see the manifestation of our intentions.

We’ve been doing this for well over a year and we have all seen miraculous events occur which we attribute to this process. New jobs, new cars, wonderful events, breakthroughs in results, profitability, and all manner of things. So I highly highly recommend that you put together a group of like minded people and start doing this. I know many people who have been in groups like this for years where they actually meet in person. Since our group is scattered around the country, we do it by phone. But however you do it, start a group and get to work being clear about your intentions and sharing them weekly with people who will support you in whatever you’re up to in life.

ATTITUDE: Is yours worth catching

Summarizing what we’ve discussed over these past few weeks:

You were born with the same exact power to create as everyone else.

• You can create anything
• And, you’re creating all the time
• There’s never a time you’re not creating
• There’s not one thing you see with our eyes that’s the truth – it’s only a projection of your past thoughts
• Your thoughts create your experiences 100% of the time
• Your emotions are the fuel that either makes everything happen or prevents things from happening.

This week, let’s talk more about how to put these principles into action and create the life of your dreams:

Since your emotions are the fuel that either makes everything happen or prevents things from happening, you must learn to “choose” your attitude. No successful person allows the circumstances to dictate their attitude. Successful people choose their attitude and bring it to the circumstances of life.

So, what does it mean to “choose” your attitude? First, it means you choose to be satisfied and happy. If you’re waiting for the circumstances to be exactly the way you want them to be in order for you to be satisfied with your life and happy, I promise you’ll have a long wait. Your life’s the way it is and that’s that. Now you get to decide if you’re willing to be satisfied and happy. You can still want a lot more, but why not choose to be happy and satisfied now and take your satisfaction and happiness along with you on the journey rather than waiting for some day that will likely never come before you are that way? Makes sense to me. Furthermore, if I can’t trust you to be happy and satisfied now, when you likely already have an amazing life, how can I trust you to be happy and satisfied and some unknown time in the future when you’ll probably still be waiting for life to turn out.

Choosing your attitude also means to be optimistic, positive and enthusiastic and to have faith and trust in your future. Every truly successful person I’ve meet had this genuine knowingness that everything was going to turn out great and they looked forward to the future with optimism and enthusiasm.

Get in the habit of looking for things to appreciate wherever you are. My favorite way of saying this is: cultivate an attitude of gratitude. Learn to be appreciative of and grateful for all of the things you now probably take for granted, like: having a house to live in, a bed to sleep in, food to eat, a car to drive, roads to take you places, traffic lights to keep you safe, your family, friends, co-workers and customers, and most of all, when you awake each day, for the privilege it is to be alive and contribute to life.

And if that’s not enough, here are some additional thoughts to think about: Speak only about what you love and brings you happiness. What good could possibly come from speaking about what you hate or makes you unhappy. But isn’t that what far too many of us do? Makes no sense. Stop watching CNN, which stands for “constantly negative news.” Focus on what’s working in your life and the good news of the day. I personally love the way the NBC evening news with Brian Williams ends with a section called Making a Difference where they focus on people and organizations who are doing just that. I often turn on the show just for that section.

And for the grand finale, do not allow yourself to feel irritated or disappointed. Learn to accept people and life just the way they are and it is and just the way they and it are not. Give up complaining, blaming, criticizing and gossip. Could you even begin to imagine what life would be like if you did that? We so take those things for granted, as if life is just supposed to be that way. No, it’s not supposed to be that way, it’s just that we have made it that way. And the fact that we have is probably the biggest reason why people are not happy and don’t have the life of their dreams.

To be continued . . .