Where successful entrepreneurs go when they're ready to take action

How to take action now!

10/16/13

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Stepping Into Big, LLC

It's Time

To Get Off The Hamster Wheel!

Just being in motion will never get you to your Big. To do that, you need to be sure you're doing the right things, in the right order, for the right reasons.

Enter the Take Action Now System (tm).

With this five-step system, you'll clarify the activities that are mission-critical to your success. You'll then be walked through a process for creating step-by-step action plans to implement those key activities.

The result? You get off the hamster wheel of motion-without-progress and get on a more direct route to more clients and more money.

Forget about being busy; start getting focused by downloading your no-charge PDF version of the Take Action Now System (tm) today.

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It's True Confessions time.

Yes, I actually did rent and watch High School Musical a couple of years ago, and, yes, I did have fun watching it.

I remember that at one point, the young male lead was practicing for a basketball game and mentally encouraging himself (in song, naturally): "Get your head in the game." While we'd probably all agree that this is essential for athletes, do we entrepreneurs fully acknowledge just how critical it is for our success, too?

Your self-talk is powerful; that's the good news. This is true whether the talk is encouraging and uplifting or critical and demoralizing; that's the bad news.

If you're too often getting bad-mouthed by your own brain, use the following tools to get your head in a winning game.

Tip of the Week

Evaluate without being harshly judgmental.

This is a tricky one for me. I get to be very careful, when I look at performance that's less than impressive, not to go into critical Kathleen-bashing mode.

To evaluate means to look at what you did well and what you did not so well, all while coming from a position of neutrality and power. The goal is to improve your performance the next time, not to verbally flog yourself for "screwing up."

Here's a good clue as to whether your personal performance evaluations are moving you forward or holding you back.

If the evaluation focuses on non-productive behaviors and how you can change them, it will ultimately get you better results.
If your evaluation focuses on character attributes (especially those you consider to be flaws), it will inevitably act as a chain around your bottom line AND your heart.

A Really Good Resource

This one is TIME CRITICAL.

Whereas psychological research used to focus on what was wrong with people, the focus in the last ten years has shifted to researching what's right with them. This has become known as Positive Psychology (go figure).

This is not just of interest for counselors and therapists. As a business professional, you work with many important stakeholders, whether they're clients, strategic allies, managers, or subordinates, or whatever. In other words, if you work with others - and especially if you acknowledge that you do a lot of talking to yourself - you can benefit from understanding more about positive psychology. And you can learn about it at a one-day seminar being held at sites around the country.

You can go to the seminar website to find out more about Happiness: How Positive Psychology Changes Our Lives.

By the way, if you decide to go to the one in Cedar Rapids, let me know. I'll be there, and I'd love to connect!

How's This for Success?

Here's yet another happy-ending story from my favorite source of seemingly unlikely successes: the moderate-to-maximum security penitentiary in Anamosa, Iowa, where my sister teaches GED courses.

One of her students was getting totally psyched out at the thought of taking the math test. He had such test anxiety that his brain pretty much turned off as soon as he walked in the test room.

This was probably helped by the fact that he constantly told himself things like, "I'm no good at taking tests" and "I just don't get this math" - despite the fact that he's done well on other (non-math) tests and does just fine on his math homework assignments.

Since his head was definitely not in the right game, my sister worked with him to change his attitude. She gave him some very practical tips for handling math problems, and - more important - gave him tools for staying mentally calm and remembering how it felt to be successful at math outside the test room.

He passed.

Thanks to my friend Flickr.

Here are this week's heroes who graciously allowed me to use their images, posted in the Creative Commons area of Flickr, in this issue of Stepping Into Big:

hamster on her wheel by Heindraus
light bulb by aloshbennett
trophy by Longs and Shorts

The Bottom Line

Are you one of those talented entrepreneurs whose greatest talent is beating up on yourself? Could you benefit from having someone in your corner who will both encourage and challenge you? Someone who's equally willing to give you a high five or a kick in the butt, depending on what will serve you best at the moment?

That's what I do.

If that kind of business buddy sounds like it might be the missing piece you've been looking for, call or e-mail me to set up a let's-see-what-we-see, get-acquainted call.

Wishing you joy on your journey into Big...

Kathleen
Stepping Into Big
319-270-1214

The Universe rewards action.