What is old is new again — The model car DEE President Todd Gifford assembled and painted after 34 years since doing his last plastic model project

Over the holidays, I was ‘sequestered’ at my wife’s folks’ home in Pueblo, Colorado.  I am not very good at just sitting around and relaxing for very long.  I did not have my typical house chores to do, nothing broken to fix, no cars to wash or work on, and none of my normal list of things to do.  Since it was right after Christmas, everyone wanted to just hang out at home.  I was getting restless and had already done a lot of reading and football game watching, so I started to think about things I could do.

We had given our 5 year old nephew a little wooden Lion puzzle 3D model for Christmas from a craft store.  Lots of little balsa wood pieces that you have to figure out how to assemble (puzzle), and when you are done, you have a ’model’ of a Lion.  After several adults in the family had tried to start this model puzzle and gotten no where, everyone agreed that it would be too difficult for our nephew to try to assemble it alone.  I grabbed the project and started to take a look at it.  I was dying for a challenge, so I started into it.  Even though the package said “for Ages 8+”, this thing was fairly difficult to figure out (although it should be noted I have never been any good at puzzles).  After about an hour, I started to make some nice progress.  I began to get some oooh’s and ahhh’s from family members, as they checked on my progress — which made me feel pretty good.  After a couple hours, I had a Lion model completed that looked just like the picture on the package!  That project was done, and now I was back to my original situation of needing something to do.

That wooden Lion model sparked some memories I had of when I was about 9-12 years old, sitting in my basement putting together 1/18th and 1/24th scale plastic models of tanks, airplanes, and some buildings for an H.O. train setup.  I remember really enjoying doing that, but could not figure out why I just stopped building models somewhere around age 13.  I have not even looked at or thought about a plastic model project in over 34 years.  I got excited and thought “I am going to take all this free down time and put together a plastic model just like the old days.”

I really like old cars, so I decided to hunt down a cool old car model that I could build.  So, within a half hour, I was looking for my project at the local hobby shop.  A few days later of 6 hours per day effort carefully painting and gluing, I completed my first model after 34 years since I stopped building them.  It was every bit as fun and rewarding as I remember it from when I was very young.  And in some ways, it was more rewarding.  My two daughters (10 and 13 years old) helped me with the project, which made it even that much more fulfilling (and they really enjoyed it).

This experience got me thinking.  If I had forgotten about something this fun and rewarding for 34 years, what else am I missing or have forgotten about that is just as rewarding?  The fact is that there are hundreds upon hundreds of activities, books, techniques, tools, learnings, etc… that you have used or been exposed to in the past — that you simply just forget about or stop using or doing.  Why?

I suppose there are a lot of reasons why we (I) just stop doing or using valuable or important things that we have done in the past, but the reason that I think is the biggest is: that I am always looking for the ‘next thing’.  As human beings, we have a fundamental need for growth and excitement.  This is a good thing, but the bad part about it is that we can leave behind some very good things we have been exposed to, only to be forgotten and replaced by new things.  This phenomena applies equally to business and personal life.

On the one hand, searching and finding ‘new’ allows us to become exposed to a lot of different things and experiences — but on the other hand, it may not allow us to fully maximize the value of what we already have learned or been exposed to.  In the plastic model story I talked about above, if I had stuck with building models over the years, what could I have accomplished?  Same goes with business tools, strategies, and techniques.  So many times we move on to the next ‘thing’, without fully leveraging or maximizing strategies or techniques that we have already learned.  In the end, it is all about ‘balance’.  Not searching for ‘new’ inhibits our growth potential.  But constant searching for new or better without fully mastering or leveraging the good stuff we already know can also lead to falling short of our potential.  It’s a bit of a paradox where you need to do a lot of both.

Take time to look ‘back’ at some of your lost or forgotten ‘good stuff’ that you can rediscover. What is old can be new, important, and valuable again.

Be Your Best,

Todd D. Gifford

Todd Gifford – Success Coach

I found out several weeks ago that one of my friends had passed away.  It happens to all of us, and as we get older, it will happen more frequently.  The real troubling thing about this situation is how he died.  This one really rocked me.

I was contacted by my friend’s son to let me know his dad had passed way.  The last time I spoke to my friend’s son, I think he was only about 6 years old.  He is 21 years old now.  This friend is someone who I got to know very well in the early 1990’s.  I spent a lot of time around him in my job and he was someone that I highly respected and my wife and I got to know his entire family.  After that time, we had moved away, as did he and his family, and we moved on with our families and lives.  From then on, we had only stayed in touch by phone occasionally, some emails, and exchanging Christmas cards.  Regardless of how often we communicated, I considered him a very good friend.  Not sure about you, but there are certain people I know and no matter how much time goes by in between seeing or talking to each other — the next time you talk it is like no time had elapsed.  This was one of those situations.

When the son contacted me via online, I gave him a call right away.  When I asked if his dad had gotten sick, he explained to me that his dad had attempted suicide, immediately determined that he had made a huge mistake, called 911 himself, but ultimately could not be saved and passed away that night after coming off life support.

I was nearly speechless, as I simply could not understand why my friend would attempt to take his own life.  Wonderful family, beautiful home in a great place to live, healthy, and just a super person to be around or associate with.  Even as I write this I am still somewhat in disbelief.  This was a very tough phone call for me, and I can only imagine what it was like for the son I was speaking with, and the rest of their entire family.

After I hung up the phone, my mind immediately went into the mode of thinking about the last time I spoke with him.  Why had I not spoken to him more recently or frequently?  When I spoke to him last, was there anything he said that I should have picked up on?  Could I have done anything that might have made a difference?   I was racking my brain to try to figure it out.  Ultimately, after talking to a number of people including my wife about it — there is no ultimate answer that makes you feel any better about it.  Although I don’t want to keep beating myself up about it, I do want to take something important from it that is constructive and apply it going forward.

My takeaways:

1. Yet another reminder that life is really really short.

2. Keep in touch with friends and family more often than you think is necessary.  Work hard at it.

The 6 Reasons Why People Give Up

This is what I was going to write about in this month’s letter before I learned about the death of my friend.  But I think there are some interesting and potentially spooky parallels between what happened to my friend and the topic of why people give up.

In the book “Mojo”, Marshall Goldsmith outlines the 6 Reasons Why People Give Up.  I wanted to list these here because they are so universally applicable to just about everything we do, everything we want, and anything we want to achieve in life.

The better we can manage these ‘give up reasons’, the better off we will be in our quest.  Not being able to overcome these 6 reasons means falling short of goals, underperforming to expectations, and not achieving what you want.

6 Reasons Why People Give Up:

1. It takes longer than we thought.

2. It’s more difficult than we thought.

3. We have other things to do.

4. We don’t get the expected reward.

5. We declare victory to soon.

6. We have to do it forever.

It is not just a matter of discipline.  Optimism has as much, if not more, to do with success than self discipline.  Remaining persistently optimistic despite repeated setbacks is a “behavior” that must be mastered.  Most think that optimism is just a mindset, but it is most effective as a ‘behavior’.  Behavior is action — mindset is thinking.  Action wins over thinking, although both are important.  Goldsmith in the Mojo book is not suggesting that you employ ‘blind optimism’ and forget about realism or realistic thinking.  But you want to understand that optimism is a behavior that is positive, attractive to other people, feels better, can be self-fulfilling, and is contagious.  Know that these 6 factors listed for ‘giving up’ will happen.  And when they do, you will be ready, because they are normal and expected.  Planning how you will optimistically deal with the 6 reasons and then behaving optimistically when any of the 6 reasons happens puts you way ahead of the pack.

Be Your Best,

Todd D. Gifford

Todd Gifford – Success Coach

This is that time of the year you tend to reflect on how your past 12 months has gone, how you are doing, and where your are going.  I am not sure which of these two following things presents more pressure to me these days — the clock or the calendar.  Time flies by so quickly that it is easy to fall into measuring time by the calendar instead of the clock.  The reality is that we should be scrutinizing our hours, not our days, in order to maximize our time and be ultra-successful, based on whatever definition of success you have for yourself.  The problem with assessing your day’s or week’s productivity or effectiveness is it allows you to generalize and round, and not reach your true potential.

Measuring your productivity or accomplishment or happiness by the clock seems daunting, but can be very effective. Planning and scrutinizing your time at the hourly level makes you much more accountable to your goals and objectives – no doubt it is more rigorous, but the payoff is significant and worth the effort.  We only have 1,440 minutes in a day, 10,080 minutes in a week.  Sounds like a lot until you translate it into hours: we have only 168 hours in a week.  Keep in mind that you are sleeping a good portion of those 168 hours (a very good use of time that you should track your # of hours on by the way), this is really not that much time if you are not making the most of each hour.

Ok, so planning every hour of your waking day may not seem feasible.  But why not?  I think for many of us (and speaking for myself) it’s because of three things: 1. We/I tend to be a bit lazy with our time without some form of hard deadline (whether it be at work or at home), 2. We are heavily distracted as a rule throughout most days, unless we have proactive disciplines in place to prevent distraction, and 3. We are ‘taught’ by others around us that you do not plan out each hour of every day — it is simply not something that 99.9% of people do.  But these reasons should not prevent you from attempting to do it.  Any amount of precise planning and discipline around your time at the hourly or minute level will increase your productivity, success, and overall satisfaction (no matter how you define these things).  You will simply accomplish more, achieve greater results, and because of this, feel greater satisfaction more often.

The Power of Subtraction

In the book “Mojo: How to Get It, How to Keep It, and How to Get it Back When You Need it”, Marshall Goldsmith talks about the concept of the Power of Subtraction.  I bring this principle up because when talking about making every hour or minute of every day count, I think this Power of Subtraction concept is something we should all explore to help us.

Goldsmith describes the Power of Subtraction as when something of significance is removed from your life (by choice or by chance), and because this thing has been taken away, we humans (that are motivated) tend to seek out new and better passions and uses of their time as a result.  One example Goldsmith describes is someone who lost their vocal cords due to throat cancer.  This person had been a professional salesperson, who used his voice regularly.   When faced with no voice, he found a new direction, and something far more fulfilling as a result.  We can all use the Power of Subtraction concept proactively to create need and direction, AND to free up time to be used for other things.

Obviously, no one wishes for a disability or illness to take something away.  But the power of subtraction is a tool that we can all experiment with to free up time as well as create space for new direction.  It’s something interesting to think about for the New Year.  The bigger the subtraction, the bigger the opportunity.

New Years Resolutions

I typically don’t create a set of New Years Resolutions, per se, because I feel “why wait ‘til New Years to make a resolution?”  I prefer to nail down more of a ‘plan’ for the year, with goals and objectives.  Call it whatever you like, there is a lot of value in formally establishing goals or resolutions.  Many people, including myself, struggle in creating a personal plan for the year.  It can tend to feel contrived or forced when trying to do it one sitting, and I don’t have all the plan ideas together at a single moment in time.  So, here is what I do, for whatever it’s worth.  I basically have an evolving set of written short/mid/long-term Goals and Objectives (‘resolutions’ I suppose), as well as a running (and changing) list of ’Want to Do’ items (aka Bucket List).  There is really never one point in time I create the plan — I just periodically review it, update it, cross completed stuff off, and add new goals and bucket list items.  Deadlines and due dates are important (critical, actually), and I try to set timeframes for just about everything on my plan with exception of certain bucket list items (deadlines on those are before I kick the bucket — or I will grab one from time to time and set an earlier deadline).  At this time of year, going into the new year, I am not ‘creating’ a plan, but rather I am reviewing my existing evolving plan, assessing results, making some changes, and adding some new goals.  A new aspect I will be adding to the plan this year is some things I will be ‘subtracting’ or not doing —  I need to make space for new goals!  Happy New Year to you, your family, and friends.

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford

Todd Gifford – Success Coach

It’s that time of year where things are almost moving in a blur-like pace.  Get up in the morning, exercise a bit, get ready for work, grab something to eat — whatever you can, work-work-work, head to the store, shop-shop-shop for gifts, make dinner, clean up after dinner, wrap presents, clean up again, make a pie or dish for a party or gathering coming up, clean up again, get ready for bed, go to bed.  Whooo!  Hardly enough time to take a breath, let alone just relax and think.

It is times like these where you have to force yourself to carve a moment out periodically to ‘stop and smell the roses’.  In the heat of the holiday battle and hustle and bustle, you can literally miss the fun, beauty, and happiness of the season.  As part of  that stopping to smell the roses, it is  a great time to spend some time just ‘thinking’.  Sound like a foreign concept?  No one just sits and thinks anymore, right?!  That was something they did in the old days, before Radios, TV’s, iPods, Smart Phones, Web surfing, Wii and Xbox.

All of this non-stop ‘doing’ and activity can really wear you down and just plain wears you out.

Today, it is very easy to conclude that there is simply no time to just THINK.  In fact, silence is so uncommon it can almost be unnerving for some of us when or if it happens.  If we have silence and nothing to ‘do’, it can seem like a huge void where we have to find something to fill or kill the silence.

Let me tell you something — you have got to take some time out to just relax, recoup, rest, and silently just do some thinking for yourself.  And we should all do this with some degree of frequency, hopefully at least on a weekly basis.  Time set aside to just wind down in comfortable silence (or at least with nothing playing that you have to actively concentrate on) is important.  Why?  This down time allows you to rest and recoup mentally, much like your muscles need to rest and recoup from workouts.  This down time also allows you to think creatively, develop ideas, find solutions to nagging problems, think of new things to do, as well as discover brand new opportunities.  Even just 30-45 consecutive minutes of good quality quiet time every week or two makes a huge difference.

If you are like me, I get a lot of ideas and key thoughts to write down while I am getting ready for work in the morning…likely because it is quiet time to myself.

There is something very powerful about scheduling in some quiet relaxation time for yourself.  It can feel almost like you are slowing the whole world down for a little while you take time to think.  Give it a try.  It’s a super simple concept, but very powerful.  A lot of times, I like to take a topic or problem that I know I need to figure out and the next time I can carve out some quiet time I just try to think only about that one topic.  When you don’t have phones ringing, email chiming, text messages flying, videos playing — it is amazing how you can figure things out.  Eventually my mind starts wandering off the focus topic, but I always seem to come up with some great ideas and thoughts.  I don’t force myself to go back to the focus topic, but having that initial core problem or topic allows me to get into a good focused state.  I keep a pad of paper and pencil nearby to make a note as things pop in to my head.  If you don’t write them down at that moment, many times they are gone as quickly as they came.

Here are some great questions to ask yourself when you carve out some quiet time to just ‘think’, especially at this time of year at the cusp of a brand New Year:

• What am I most proud of achieving this year?
• Who am I most grateful to this year?
• What is blocking me right now from being my best?
• Am I healthier, happier, and wiser vs. a year ago?
• What am I committed to accomplishing next year?
• What are the most important things I can do to grow myself?
• What unfinished business or open projects do I need to complete and finish asap?
• What am I willing to do differently that will change my life for the better?
• If I knew that everything in my life was going to work out and I had no worries, what would I do differently?

I can just about guarantee that you cannot develop high quality answers to these questions without some focused and quiet quality thinking time.

This holiday season, give yourself the gift of relaxed silence and thought.  It’s free, but uniquely and infinitely valuable.  Happy Holidays!

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford

Todd Gifford – Success Coach, President

I was watching the CBS ‘Sunday Morning’ show recently, and they had a piece on ‘Positive Thinking’.  The crux of the story (the headline) was that: “Many experts believe that positive thinking does nothing in the way of healing illness or overcoming problems.”  On the surface, this story had kind of a negative tone by refuting the popular belief that ‘positive thinking’ does help heal people quicker and helps overcome problems.  They had both sides of this issue represented, but the slant definitely was that just because you think positively, does not mean you will have a positive outcome.

As I watched the CBS Sunday Morning story, I reflected on a concept that I had learned some time ago called the Positive Power of Negative Preparation coined by author, copywriter, and business consultant Dan Kennedy.  I do a lot of reading on the topics of the power of the brain, achieving success, and personal improvement.  Basically, the power of negative preparation concept articulates that ‘thinking positively’ is not just about ‘thinking in a positive way about positive outcomes’.  The positive power of negative preparation (positive thinking) should also include thinking about potential negative outcomes.  In other words, thinking about all the ‘what is’s’, not just about the ‘what ought to be’s’.  This is thinking more in the way of a ‘what if’ approach, and then determining how to deal with or preparing for all those what if scenarios.

Another Key Irony about Positive Thinking

On the CBS Sunday Morning story, they interviewed some top professional athletes, who all believed in positive thinking as having a very important impact on their success.  But as I listened and watched, another key principle or truth was glaringly obvious.

Although each of these top athletes was talking about positive ‘thinking’, what appeared to really make the big difference in their success was positive “DOING”.  Yes, ‘Thinking’ has to happen before ‘Doing’, but ultimately, the difference between two people who think the same exact positive thoughts about the same successful outcomes, is what they DO.  The doing is usually the difference.  I think we can all agree that positive thought alone, without action, will not yield success, regardless of your definition of success.

Some more examples of Positive Thinking through Negative Preparation

Someone who prepares for a presentation by writing down and thinking about every possible question, concern, or negative opinion they can come up with that the people they are presenting to might have is positive thinking through negative preparation.

Another example is an athlete going into a match or game thinking about all their weaknesses and how they can proactively counteract or turn those weaknesses somehow into strengths.  Having multiple game plans created in case the primary game plan is not working well is a form of positive power of negative preparation.  This is all positive thinking, and again, largely translates into positive action vs. just thought.

6 Steps to Leveraging the Positive Power of Negative Preparation

1. Try to forget about any preconceived labels of positive and negative.  Focus on what is, or what if, not what ought to be.

2. Make a list of every potential negative response, concern, question, or objection you can think of related to the task or situation you are focused on.

3. Make a list of everything that could go wrong.

4. Develop and document positive responses and actions to all the negatives you thought of.

5. Organize and document your information so that you can easily reference it and use it.

6. Have great confidence and a positive disposition that you have thoroughly prepared.

Notice that many of these steps are ‘action’ oriented, not just thought-oriented.

The Elusive Pursuit of Perfection

As a side note to Positive Thinking, most of us are ‘perfectionists’.  We tend to see what others are doing as somehow better, we set lofty goals for ourselves, and that we simply need to do better.  Nothing wrong with that continual motivation to improve, however, it is important to understand that every pasture, from a distance, looks greener than yours.  Most are not.  Taking some pleasure in your own imperfect pasture is a very challenging, but important skill to master.  Although it is our dissatisfaction with our current situation that produces most of our achievement, this same source of power can also be a source of inaccurate thinking — the thinking that somewhere, somehow,  somebody has it all figured out.  Far too often, we use the word ‘perfect’ as a synonym for ‘successful’.

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford

Todd Gifford With Iain Calder, former Chief Editor of the National Enquirer

The National Enquirer was one of the most widely read magazines/periodicals in the world.  Over 6 Million copies are sold in a given week, as a weekly publication, for several decades.  I had the opportunity to meet Iain Calder, the leader, editor, and man behind the rise of the National Enquirer from insignificant circulation to multi-million issues per week as a major news source from the 1970’s to through the 1990’s.  Listening to the unbelievable stories that Iain told, even though I have never read an issue of the National Enquirer (although I have seen the magazine cover many times in the checkout lane at the grocery store), I now have tremendous respect for what they accomplished.  In fact, after listening to Iain, I think the National Enquirer can teach us all one of the most important lessons there is about success in life.

The Story About How They Got The Story Is Better than…

Let me share with you a couple of the amazing stories that Iain talked about, and see if you can identify the Big Lesson we can take away and apply ourselves.  Also, as I share these stories, I think you will see that the stories about how the National Enquirer got their story are really more amazing than the incredible stories they published!

Interviewing Pete Rose by Sneaking INTO Prison

Iain said that everyone in the magazine business wanted to interview Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds of professional Major League Baseball, who at the time was in Federal Prison in Marion, IL for tax evasion.  Every magazine and newspaper in the country was trying to get the Pete Rose interview with no luck.  The National Enquirer team brainstormed the idea of having a couple reporters offer a free concert to the Prison warden, which worked like a charm.  On the day of the setup for the concert, they put a camera inside the front of one of the concert speakers.  As the concert gear was being brought in, the woman reporter, flirting with some guards, offered them $50 to meet Pete Rose.  And they were now interviewing Rose!  Rose was so impressed with how they snuck into prison to see him, that he allowed them to take a photo with the camera they smuggled in.  But then it gets even more interesting…

They loaded up the equipment after the concert, and while they were fueling up the car with the speaker/camera in it, the car was stolen!  Needless to say, they were going crazy to hunt down the car with the camera with the incredible Pete Rose photo.  They did finally track down the car and the speaker with the camera, and published one of the biggest stories of that decade.

The Last Photo of Elvis

The death of Elvis Presley, ‘The King’, was one of the biggest news stories of the 20th century.  Iain Calder and The National Enquirer wanted the last word on this news story, which they felt, would be accomplished by getting the last photograph of Elvis before he was buried.  Problem was that Elvis’ body/casket was heavily guarded with no photographs allowed.

Knowing if they got something big it would mean huge circulation, Calder sent 5 reporters to Memphis with $100,000 in cash, plus 25 other National Enquirer staff, including some detectives.  They came up with the idea to dress one of the team as a Priest!  After casing the area, they discovered who the extended family members were, and followed two of Elvis’ cousins into a nearby bar men’s restroom.  One cousin was offered a nice sum of money and a camera to take a photo of Elvis at night when no one was around.

When nearly everyone had left the room that Elvis’s casket was in, the cousin quickly and discretely snapped 4 photos and returned the camera.  Two of the four photos were of the ceiling, but one of those two remaining photos, along with the headline “The Untold Story”, graced the cover of the National Enquirer that sold just under a record 7 Million copies that week.  The National Enquirer had the last photo of The King.

The Important Lesson

If you have not guessed by now, the important lesson that we can all learn from Iain Calder, and the National Enquirer, is that persistence overcomes just about all barriers.  Regardless of what you think of the National Enquirer, the persistence, creativity, and tenacity by which they went after their goal was unmatched.  Publications and reporters with more skill and resources fell short of what the National Enquirer was able to accomplish in these situations.  It’s an important lesson to remind ourselves of periodically, especially when times are tough.

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford

Todd Gifford, on Right, Helping to Clean up the Maquoketa River

Recently, I had the opportunity to do something I had never done before, or anything remotely like it.  It was tremendously uplifting for me and a great learning experience, but best of all, helped a county and community in Iowa that needed help.  It was a great reminder for me of one of the most important opportunities in life that brings me tremendous satisfaction, pride, and sense of accomplishment, but yet at the same time provides so much value to others.  And it is free (ok, pretty darn close to being free).

I volunteered my time to help with a River Cleanup project to remove large debris from the Maquoketa River in Delaware County Iowa that was a result from extreme flooding in July of 2010.  15 inches of rain within much of the watershed had taken the river level and downstream dammed up lake up 15+ feet in the course of 24-36 hours.  The 40 foot high dam gave way and breached on July 24, 2010.  Many homes and property were heavily damaged and a massive amount of debris littered the resulting river bed.  Parts of damaged homes, decks, complete docks, boat lifts, and other large debris became partially sunken and littered the water over a 9 mile stretch of river.

Because there is very little money in the IDNR (Iowa Dept of Natural Resources), County, and State budgets these days, public areas like this would simply not get cleaned up without a significant volunteer effort.  Here was an opportunity to help clean up the river by removing large debris to make the water space usable again for the public good.

“The most precious things in life are free” is the famous saying.  Ironically, the cost of volunteering is actually very ‘expensive’ and costs the most precious thing you have next to your health — your time. Giving your personal time towards an effort or cause or to people who need it may be the most important gift you can give to anyone.  But unlike simply writing a check and donating money to a cause, what you get back in return from volunteering your time and effort is simply amazing and unquantifiable.

Whether you volunteer coach a sports team, donate your time to a school, volunteer for a board or committee position for a non-profit, help out at a local shelter or elderly home or care center, or volunteer your time to any effort that helps others, you are providing one of the ultimate gifts that can be given to other people.

The Thing I Always Forget About

Like many of you, although I have volunteered my time coaching various sports as well as at kid’s camps over the years, and volunteered time for non-profit organizations on a number of occasions; I still seem to forget how big of a deal this is — but not just for the people who are helped.  I have always done these things because it was the right thing to do and the opportunities presented themselves.  But what I tend to forget about these unique opportunities is how they positively impact me.  This is not the reason I volunteer my time…or is it?  Looking back, I have always felt that I walked away from the volunteer activity getting more out of it than the people or community I was trying to help.  I have always had a sense of exhilaration and accomplishment not quite like anything else during and after every volunteer activity.  Is this because I am a terrible volunteer (hopefully not) or is it because volunteering is one of those very special and unique opportunities where you get an incredible feeling of satisfaction and pride while helping other people at the same time — in exchange for just some of your time?

The fact is that volunteering is one of life’s most rewarding uses of your time.  This, in large part, may be fundamentally due to the definition of a volunteer: a person who freely offers to take part…

The act of freely offering your time, unconditionally, not asked or required to do it, may be the key ingredient that produces this tremendous exhilaration.  It’s an amazing thing.  Add some excitement and satisfaction to your life while helping others by volunteering more for whatever you are passionate about.  The return on investment is incredible.

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford

Todd Gifford with Dad and Brother on Dad’s 75th Birthday

What does the number 75 represent?

75 Years ago, Jesse Owens won 4 Gold Medals at the 1936 Olympics, setting multiple world records in the process, to upset Hitler’s Aryan racial superiority showcase.  75 is considered the ‘Diamond’ anniversary year, 75 is the atomic number for the chemical element rhenium, and 75 (degrees Fahrenheit) is the perfect temperature for a nice picnic outing or a wonderful score in golf.

But more than these things, the number 75 this year represents how old my dad is.  It’s hard to believe that he is 75 years old, as I tend to take mental snapshots at certain points in time in my life and see things based on those static images, regardless of how much time passes.  The permanent image that I have in mind of my dad is from when I was about 5 or 6 years old.  At this age, dad is larger than life, with a strength and toughness that is unmatched.  Basically he can do no wrong, and he is pretty ‘old and wise’.  Ironically, at that age, he was about 14 years younger than I am now!  Wow.

Although I remember a fair bit from that 5 year old to 8 year old timeframe, my most vivid memories with my dad are from family vacations and holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, and from playing hockey.  This is probably because I have viewed photos in photo albums of these events quite a few times since then, embedding the images even more permanently and clearly in my mind.

What do you get for 75 years?

Not sure about you, but buying birthday presents for my dad and my wife’s dad is usually pretty tough.  When you get to their 75th birthday, you are looking at doing something pretty significant.  However, my dad made it very clear this year, for his 75th birthday, all he wanted was to play a round of golf with his two kids (his two sons) and then have lunch with us and mom afterwards.

Although this seemed to me like too insignificant of a gift for him for a milestone like 75 years old, being the wise man he is, he knew it was actually the most valuable gift he could receive AND give at the same time.

It was, of course, sunny and 75 degrees outside that day, for a wonderful round of golf.  Although none of us shot 75 for 18 holes, or anything close to that, it was a near perfect day.  How many times do you spend 4-5 consecutive hours of quality time with your dad or other significant loved one these days?  Not nearly enough for me.  Although I now live just a couple of hours away from my dad and mom, the distance makes it such that I don’t see them often enough.  It turns out that on his 75th Birthday, my dad did the gift-giving, and gave me a priceless gift — which was to spend quality and undistracted time with him, my mom, and my brother.

Which is a great reminder…

This is an excellent reminder for me, to make sure that I schedule in more quality time with my family.  I say ‘schedule’ not because it is something that should have to be scheduled, but because it needs to be.  And if I don’t schedule it, time gets away from me.  Just spending time with family seems so easy, that it will just happen naturally.  The fact is that nothing of high value happens naturally.  Everything great and valuable requires hard work, consistent effort, and practice — and quality time with family is no different.  My dad understands that, and hence, scheduling golf with his sons on his 75th birthday.

Just this past weekend, I was watching a TV show that really reminded me how short of a time we are on this planet, which temporarily put me in a bit of a downer mode.  But that transformed quickly into reminding me that I need to get a lot accomplished each and every day, starting with today — right now.  So, lucky number 75 is all about the “now”, and maximizing your time with friends and family and maximizing your life experiences.  Schedule them in and often!

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford

DEE President, Todd Gifford (white shirt) in the last mile of a Triathlon on September 4th, 2011…that he was never ‘ready’ for

“I will when I am ready” or “I am just about ready” are phrases I here a lot, and I probably say myself from time to time.  How many things are never started, let alone, never completed, because we are not quite ready…yet?  How many goals are not met because people did not get ‘started’ because they were not ready? Being ‘ready’ is a very interesting concept that I want to dig into a little bit.

What does ‘ready’ really mean?

Based on the dictionary, ‘ready’ is “in a suitable state for an activity, action, or situation; fully prepared.”

“Being Ready” is really a concept of your imagination or someone else’s imagination.  How do you ever really know when you are ready for anything or to do anything?  To me, not being ready really means procrastination most of the time.  And procrastination is just a fancy name for an ‘excuse’ not to do something.  Sure, there are certain things where there is a well-documented training or preparation process to prepare for an activity (like flying to the moon).  But, hey, are those astronauts really every totally 100% prepared to fly to the moon?  I doubt it.

The big point here is that ‘not ready’ is in the way of getting a lot more done and accomplishing your goals and objectives for probably almost all of us.  The perfect example is when you have a good idea, and then you write it down, but you do not act on that idea right away.  Not even a little action to move it forward.  Not quite ready yet.  What happens a lot of the time?  The idea starts to dissolve and lose its body and importance, and then…pooof, it’s gone and forgotten.

The Antidote to Procrastination or Not Being Ready

The widely accepted antidote to procrastination (and stress, anxiety, and fear by the way) determined by many experts, is…action.  That’s right, just ‘action’.  Doing something, anything.  Movement…physical and mental.

Another version of this is the Principle: “Start Before Ready”.  Taking little steps forward immediately after having an idea, before you are ready to, is an example of “Start Before Ready”.  Does it guarantee success with the idea?  No.  Does it put you in 1000% better position to accomplish much more?  Yes.

Aristotle: “We are what we Do.”

An interesting example:  Walt Disney bought 122,000 acres of swampland in Florida, opened a visitor’s center before any other construction on his theme park began, and in the visitor’s center he started selling Disney Theme Park souvenirs.  That is Start-Before- Ready!

One personal example of how Start Before Ready really works is my experience with triathlons.  My long range dream goal is to finish an ironman distance triathlon (having never done a triathlon when I created that goal).  Within a couple hours of hatching that idea/goal, I signed up for a shorter distance triathlon event before I really even knew what I was getting into — certainly before I was ‘ready’.  I was not even ready to get ready!  Plunking the money down after registering for the event, buying a triathlon book, and then telling people I am going to do it was my start-before-ready actions.  Nothing like putting a non-refundable deposit down to help you figure out how to complete a triathlon!  If I had not registered within minutes of deciding on my goal, I likely would not have completed even one event by now.  Never ready.

Most all of us are perfectionists in some way, and we tend to like to get as close to perfect and ‘ready’ as we can get before implementing.  Unfortunately, our version of ‘ready’ is blocking progress and effectiveness more often than we realize.  Recklessness is obviously not good, but being feckless is worse.  A big irony in all of this is our reasoning for waiting to be really ready so we can accomplish great things is THE reason why many things don’t get done (or started).  Start Before Ready and see what you can accomplish.

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford

Todd Gifford, Exiting the 1.1 Mile Swim of the Olympic Distrance Triathlon on Sept 4, 2011

It never ceases to amaze me how I act and feel when I am constrained (or ‘guided’ might be a better word for it) by some type of plan vs. with no plan.  Even though we typically like to think of ourselves as being more productive and effective without lots of guidance and constraints, I really question the logic on that when I look at my own behavior and results.  My conclusion is that what most of us don’t like is other people constraining us (unless we ask them to to), but constraints, guidance, and a written plan absolutely make us more productive in whatever it is that we are doing, whether it be at work or outside of work.  I think this applies to every thing right down to the grocery list, which is really a specific ‘plan’ of action.

Anything I am tackling without a plan or specific constraints or goals laid out is basically relying on self discipline.  Many experts have studied self discipline, and define it generally speaking as “marshalling one’s willpower to accomplish desirable things”.  The problem with relying on self discipline to accomplish anything ranging from getting the groceries, losing weight, completing a marathon, or finishing a major work project is that we are up against major natural forces that can be extremely difficult to overcome or power through.

The reason I bring this up is to make a key distinction between Self Discipline and Self-Imposed Discipline.  Sounds about the same, but to me, there is a huge difference — and the results you can achieve understanding this difference is significant.  One critical point of distinction:  Self Discipline is based largely on dealing with your own natural instincts and emotions.  Self-Imposed Discipline is non-natural, fabricated, and very systematic.  Those sound like pretty opposite sides of the coin, don’t they?  They are.

I really like the following quote from Les Brown, an author and motivational coach and speaker, because I think it sums up a lot of what Self-Imposed Discipline is all about:  “People fall short of their potential not because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low and hit.”

If you don’t select and document a lofty goal to begin with (and this really applies to even the most mundane of tasks or activities), and rely only on your self discipline, chances are you will fall well short of any expectations or visions that you had, or what you were capable of.  Self-imposed discipline, on the other hand, is artificially creating a discipline ‘system’, where your natural emotions and willpower bump up against virtual ‘guide rails’ that inflict pain greater than your natural instincts can conjure up.

Specific Example of Self-Imposed Discipline

I just completed an Olympic distance Triathlon earlier in September, which was a mid-range goal that I have had moving me towards obtaining my longer range bigger goal of completing an iron man distance triathlon.  I implemented a 13 week training program leading up to the event that I was following based on a book written by a professional triathlete.  Each morning waking up I never waffled or debated about ‘if’ I was going to do the training required in the program that day.  It was not about ‘if’.  There was no ‘if’ choice to be made.  I paid my event registration money, told many people I was going to do it, and the training plan prescribed had to be followed very closely if it was going to be effective.  The pain of not doing the training each day far exceeded any pain of doing it, that my mind could come up with, making it a ‘no brainer’.  The interesting thing is that once the triathlon event was over and completed, it was pretty challenging to settle back into a training routine that was only half as rigorous.  My general daily training is relying more on self discipline vs. my preparation for the triathlon was done with self-imposed discipline.

It’s no different whether you are dealing with managing the tasks and projects for your work day, accomplishing everything you want during your weekend, or trying to lose 12 pounds.  Telling yourself what you want is not enough.  Left to self discipline and willpower, your odds are pretty low to achieve what you desire.  You need to artificially create a self-imposed discipline system that has: (a) a very specific documented goal and deadline (the more aggressive the better), (b) a plan written down to achieve your goal, and (c) systematic designed-in ‘pain’ factors that are greater than what your natural instincts push you towards.  See what self-imposed discipline can for you!

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford