Be Your Best

Todd Gifford - Success Coach

Over the holidays, I spent a lot of time with family and friends.  As the New Year comes around and we turn the corner into 2010, discussions start to include New Years resolutions.  Personally, I have always had a hard time with the concept of New Years resolutions, because I have always thought…why wait for a New Years day to ‘resolve’ to do something that needs to be done now?  How about resolving to do new things or change things that need to be changed all year long, at the point where you realize something needs to be done?  How about calling it “New Day resolutions” or “New Hour resolutions”.  While I am on a bit of a New Year’s thread, it does not surprise me (and I kind of expected it to happen some day) that the first ‘Internet Addiction Clinic’ opened up in 2009.  Yes, you heard that right.  This is an addiction clinic to wean patients off of the Internet by combining traditional talk therapy with social skills training.  Patients of the clinic apparently also feed goats, raise chickens and do home-maintenance work as a way of getting reoriented with the offline world.  For a mere $14,500.00, in a 45 day period you can be rehabilitated of this dreaded disease.  Boy, I am thinking there are some farms in the Midwest that could kill two birds with one stone — generate some additional income from this new Internet Addition Clinic thing, as well as getting some cheap farm labor!  What’s the point of all this?  The choice of ‘Self-Management’ is of critical importance for Success, whatever you define your Success to be.

To that end, I have assembled a list of 8 Keys to Success.  None of these rely on circumstances, money, luck, or anyone else to do anything.  They are all about Self-Management and choice.  Whether it’s creating job satisfaction, advancing in your career, fulfillment with family and friends, general happiness, etc… these apply.  I try to keep this list in front of me as much of the time as possible, to avoid falling into bad habits.  In no particular order, here they are:

1. Resourcefulness – also known as ingenuity, imagination, and creativity.  Simply put, resourcefulness is extremely important to success, and 100% within your control.  It is not a special skill as much as it is a mindset.  You choose to be resourceful or you don’t.  Constant and continued learning is also an important part of resourcefulness.  2. Speed – for the most part, moving slow, deciding slow, and acting slow are all worse than moving, deciding, and acting fast.  Taking faster action brings about success, and if it occasionally leads to failure (which I like to refer to as ‘testing’) it just gets that ‘testing’ behind you quicker.  3. Change, fast – the choice of being flexible and adapting to change is extremely important to success of any type.  The faster you can change and adapt, the better.  4. Curiousity – a close cousin to resourcefulness, and possibly the most difficult to understand about success, is the ability to constantly ask good quality questions of yourself and others.  The power of ‘the question’ is massive.  5. Intolerance – this is intolerance to mediocrity or average.  Place high expectations upon yourself (ie. lofty goals written down help).  6. Work Hard – not that working ‘smart’ isn’t something you want to strive for, but anything worth doing requires some hard work.  Sorry, no free lunch!  7. Accurate Thinking – here is another one most people would not include in a list of ‘success principles’, but it is key.  Think ‘real’ as much as you can.  If it is out of your control, accept that fact unemotionally.  However, do not forget that outcomes are never the result of just events that are out of your control — they are a result of your response to those events.  Taking full responsibility for outcomes is accurate thinking.  8. Follow-up and follow through – the grand daddy of them all…taking action.  Nothing happens until action is taken.  All the New Years resolutions in the world do nothing without “action”.  Just doing #8 alone takes you a long way toward success.  Happy New Year to you, your family, and your friends.

Todd Gifford
President of Dee Electronics