3 Things I learned last week…1/25-31/2016

Experience alone doesn’t teach us anything.  Only when we evaluate our experiences do we actually learn from them.  My weekly blog post “3 Things I learned…” is exactly that.  It is my opportunity to evaluate the week before and say “What did I learn” or “What can I learn.”  I suggest you do the same, that is how we get wiser and learn from our experiences.  In some cases my lessons learned are from others and then a lot of time they are from my own actions.

Don’t second guess so much: Have you ever second guessed yourself?  You know what I mean.  You just keep questioning yourself.  You kind of have a feeling in your gut that this is the right way. Then you start saying to yourself “Is this the right way”, “What should I do”, “If I do this, what will the consequences be”.  As humans I think it is natural for all of us to do this.  And guess wha,  sometimes it can be good, depending on the situation and what the risks associated are with the decision and the people involved.  However, I believe that there are many times where we second guess too much and we don’t get anything accomplished.  Instead it stays the same and nothing happens.  At one time I will admit I would “shoot” and then “aim”.  Now I have gone the other way in some cases, and I “aim”, “aim”, “aim”, “aim”, “aim” and I never pull the trigger or when I do pull the trigger and shoot, it is too late, the opportunity is missed. Timing does matter, ask Napster founders.  I am not going to do anything crazy here, but I am going to go with my gut, and if my gut says shoot, I am going to shoot and shoot more often.

Am I the best I can be: There is something we all suffer from as humans.  That is, we give ourselves more credit than we deserve.  For example:  We think we are better drivers than we are, we think we are smarter than we are, we think we are better employees than we are, we think our jokes are funnier than they are, we think we are better leaders than we are, we think we are better communicators than we are.  I could keep going, but I won’t.  I know you don’t feel this way, haha.  But it is a reality that we are all faced with.  This is the value of having someone come in to our lives and give us a different perspective.  We all need coaching in our lives, but very few of us seek out coaching and rarely do we appreciate it when we get it unsolicited.

Systems work: I am in a new position as a leader.  This is fun and challenging at the same time.  It’s fun, because there are lots of new stuff that I haven’t done before.  It is challenging, because I inherited a team of people who have done it a certain way for so long.   Years ago, I was put in to this situation as well.  I was the person who had been around for a while and a new leader came on board.  And we had done it a certain way for so long. The new leader had a system that they had followed and it worked in those previous situations.  I could either trust the new system or not.  Either way it was my choice to make.  I chose to adopt the new system, because I knew the old system didn’t work.  I had the results to prove it.  So as I fast forward to my new position.  I am in the process of implementing the system I have developed throughout my career and my life. This system has been proven to work.  We have the results to validate it. So the chances are this system will work again because that is what good systems do, they work.  Develop a system and follow it.

To your success and your future.