Rob Moshe

How are you feeling?

Exhausted? Overwhelmed? Unfocused? Miserable?

You are getting descent sleep and you are eating OK but you just can’t seem to get out of your rut.

It could be that your Procrastination List is way to long.

Have you ever tried to navigate your computer with 50 windows open, or not defrag your computer for a year? So to with your physical and mental world. When you mind is filled with dozens of things left undone, the clutter uses up all of your energy and makes you move slower than molasses.

But when you close all those files and defrag your computer? Whoosh. Every thing just flies.

When you remove the clutter of things undone from your life you experience a sense of ease, lightness, clarity and an abundance of energy.

The exhilaration that you feel after a physical clean up is far greater when you do a mental clean up.

The mental clutter in your mind that leads to procrastination is often as a result of three types of decisions.

Not Making a decision.

Being indecisive is a way we fool are selves into thinking we have multiple options. In truth we are in the paralysis of analysis and nothing gets done. Not choosing will sap your mental energy.

Look at being indecisive as if you made a decision. It is the decision not to act at all. By seeing it this way one of two things will happen, you will either close the issue as it has been decided “I’m not taking any action” or it will force you into making a more deliberate decision.

Deciding But not acting

Deciding but not acting on the decision.

This is related to what we spoke about in the last post
The Enemy Of Change

If you plan to start tomorrow then it will never happen. We can never be sure that tomorrow will come, all we truly have is today.

If you don’t take action on your decisions it is as if you never decided. ” I am going to start eating healthy tomorrow.” tomorrow arrives but you already forgot about your decision. It’s like you never decided.

When you make a decision take action. Action builds momentum, it gives life to your decision. With even the smallest action you begin the process that will lead to success. When you have made a decision, take action immediately. No matter how small the action, take it.

Decision with incomplete action.

As the saying goes “There is nothing like a job well done”. The key word is DONE. You know that feeling you have when you have been working on a project, a report, or maybe refinishing a bedroom and you finally finish it. That feeling is a key in building your momentum to continued success.

When you decide and take action but leave things hanging, you are continually nagged by that incomplete task. Again it drags on your energy.

When you complete something relish in the moment and celebrate, then take the high you are feeling and immediately begin on another task. The energy from the previous success will grow in the new project.

Success requires focus.

In order to succeed you have to be able to focus on the objectives at hand. When your mind is all cluttered with uncompleted projects, your focus is weakened and you are hampered in achieving your highest level of fulfillment.

So are you choosing to clean our your physical and mental clutter?

Here are 5 action steps.

1. Make a list of “My Incomplete Projects” – Make sure to include physical and mental things that are incomplete; Work, home, relationships, education, dreams, goals, meditation, fitness, healthy living, un-returned calls, an incomplete assignment, or a broken friendship left unresolved, etc.

2. See if there is anything on the list that you can complete immediately. – Maybe there are some items that you will decide that you will make no decision and remove it from your thoughts. For example, You can’t decide between a Blackberry or an IPhone. Instead of being indecisive maybe you will decide to buy neither. You’ve gone this long without them you might as well just let it be.

3. Pick a few tasks that you complete this week. A few that you will complete this quarter and a few that you will complete this year. Take an action immediately. -Break down the tasks into manageable pieces, don’t try to do everything at once or you will become overwhelmed and end up wasting your life watching TV so you can sit in oblivion and avoid real life.

4. When you complete a task Celebrate and Take Action. - Don’t take celebration for granted. When you complete a task celebrate whether you buy yourself and ice cream, treat your self to a massage, take a personal development course or go on the vacation that you always dreamed of (this last one might be save for finishing your whole list). After you have completed and celebrated TAKE ACTION. Move onto the next task and immediately take action. Remember no matter how small take action. If you decide that you what to exercise more, don’t wait till tomorrow, do 5 push-ups NOW.
5. When you have cleared your slate enjoy the moment and anticipate the future. – When you have removed the clutter from your physical and mental world, reflect on how you feel, really embrace that feeling. Then take joy in the amazing potential that lies before you. With a clear uncluttered mind, you will be able to take the things that matter most to you and focus your full and abundant energy on them.

Find the clutter! Clear the clutter! Feel the energy!

Have an Abundant Weekend,

Rob

You’ve read so much.

“Think and Grow Rich” – Napoleon Hill

“The Magic of Thinking Big” – David Schwartz

“Creating Wealth” – Robert Allen

“Unlimited Power” – Anthony Robbins

“The Go-Giver” – Bob Burg and John David Mann

and so much more.

To your frustration you don’t find yourself so much further ahead than before you started reading. You’re wondering why you ever bothered reading these books in the first place, you can’t even talk about them at parties. Who wants to here your success opinions if you are not succeeding?

I’m going to share with you a three step approach that will not only move you toward success but will also save you money on books and possibly shrink your library.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
- King Solomon

Step 1: It’s time to FOCUS

Have you ever reflected on how so many success books start with the same forward “Why another book on success”?

They all say the same thing. The title may be different, the text arranged in story format or pictures, but at the end of the day the message is more or less the same.
So why do the authors keep writing and we keep buying? You read a book, think the ideas are great. A few months later you see another book, you know that you have a success book at home on the shelf, but your situation hasn’t improved, so you figure it probably wasn’t that good and you decide that maybe this one will do the trick. Wrong.

There is little wrong with the book (especially if you enjoyed it), what is needed is a shift in your approach.

So for step one lets begin to focus ourselves. Choose a book from your shelf that you really enjoyed. The ideas were strong and the reading was easy. Next get out a highlighter a pen and some paper. The more you engage yourself in the book the more you will get out of it.

As you read the book highlight ideas that stand out to you. Make notes on each chapter, put it in your own words. The ideas in a 150+ page book can be condensed to around 10 pages. Take ownership of the ideas, reflect on them and work with them till they become your own.

The goal is not to cover as much ground as possible. Read one chapter at a time and really “Get it”. If you cant write out the concept in the chapter in a short sentence then go back through it until you can.

When you finish this process the concepts in the book will no longer belong exclusively to the author, they will also have become yours.

Step 2: Lets Take Action

Knowing is not enough; we must apply! – Goethe

Action is the ultimate key to your success. The reason books don’t bring us success is because we read read each chapter, like the ideas and action steps, say that we will apply them after we finish the book, finish the book put it on the shelf and forget about it. Its like getting a membership to every fitness club in the city, never going and then complaining that you are not in shape.

You have to have to apply the knowledge for it to become valuable.

So the next step in our process is to decide what to take action on. Well if you have gone through the first step, then you have some great notes and ideas on how to build your success. Go through your notes and pick three action steps that you want to focus on for the next week. When you have picked the ideas right them down on a sheet, putting the three action steps at the top of the page. Below the actions steps make a 3 X 7 table with enough room to write down a few sentences in the boxes.

Before you go to bed reflect on the action step and state your intention to develop them within your self, and in the morning do the same thing. Be aware through out the day of opportunities to apply these action steps, because the opportunities for success are always there. At the end of the day reflect on how you applied each action step, what you could improve, and what you did well. Repeat the process for a week and then add 3 more action steps. By the time a month has passed you will have taken 12-15 action steps and you will be seeing greater success.

Step 3: Accountability
If action is the key, then accountability is the lock. Action is so important you can’t move forward without it, but if you try to put the wrong key in the lock the door wont open.
There are to areas of accountability:

1. To the process – You are going to ensure that your focus and action is properly directed. You will be accountable in making sure that you choose a path and stick to it.is ensuring that your focus and action are directed towards your goal.
2. To Yourself – you have made the commitment to take action. Don’t let yourself down.

So in this final step you will need to find a way to be accountable to the process and to yourself. Accountability in the process means reflecting weekly on the overall approach you have decided to take, and to make sure that you are not negatively modifying the process. Negatively modifying means changing the process because you are lazy and looking for excuses. If you see there is a way to make the process more effective then cautiously modify.

Being accountable to yourself can be accomplished in a few ways;

You can set up strong reward motivations for your self (A new outfit, a day at the spa, concert, etc.) to help you stay on track.
Maybe when you tell others this keeps you accountable.
Blog about it.
State your commitment 2-3 times a day.
There you have it.
The end of ill used reading has arrived. The simple process of Focus, Action, Accountability, will prevent your books from becoming dusty paper weights and book end, and transform them in to powerful tools for growth and success.

Read On.

This past week I began working on a new project which I am very excited about. It is a site that will be focused on growing the Professional Coaching field.
Initially I was going to build it in the framework of a multi-user blog, but then found a seemingly impressive open source content management system called Joomla.
Being excited and impatient and not taking the time to design the complete process, I immediately downloaded the software and began teaching myself how to use the system.
Yesterday it hit me, that in the past week I had numerous thoughts to blog about, but had not posted a single thing. In fact I was so focused on playing with Joomla that I didn’t take the time to write down the thoughts so I could blog on them later.

Now I could justify that there is the big picture of this great new project that is worthy of my focus, but the truth is that after 5 days, though I know much more about how the interface works, I am far from being able to complete the basics. Even with my ability to learn quickly, at this pace it will be weeks before I am done.

Fortunately I had my AhHa, and have stopped working on the area that doesn’t need me, and returned to the place that doesn’t happen without me.

I have smartened up and am now looking for a developer that will probably be able to accomplish the task in a day or so.

My mistake:
I indulged one of my old habits of doing everything myself, due to lack of patience and misperceived cost savings, and the belief that I always do it best (no matter what it is). I also assume that because I am working nonstop I am being very efficient.

My lesson learned:
When I indulge these old habits I end up being highly ineffective. I spread myself over a number of tasks that I am mediocre at, and there for pull myself away from the tasks that are my strong points and give me the greatest return for the effort. It doesn’t save me any money. In fact the amount of money wasted in the past week will far surpass the amount that it will cost me to hire a developer on Elance, who will finish the task in a few hours.

Forward Focus:
Five minutes of planning, can save days of time wasted. Next time I am ignited by an exciting idea I will take a few minutes to set an effective strategy on how to approach the project, and realize where I will create the most value and where I should be outsourcing.

Next week is looking great…

I wrote this post back in October of 2006. It’s amazing the impact getting off autopilot. The off season becomes a time for regrouping and re-energizing, and sometimes even starting new things (I started my Coaching Path in the off season of 2007)

………

I am an avid Squash player, I play 4 times a week, Monday-Thursday. I consider myself an OK player, but yesterday it seemed as if it was my first time on the court. Reflecting on the situation (while I was playing) I came to the conclusion that my overall attitude was affecting my ability to play.

I am entering my slow season for my label business ( www.label-land.com ) , and when business is down so is my mood. Then I got wondering if I am like this every November? Further reflection showed that for the past 4 years November to January tend to be months where I spend my time in a more down and negative state.

This realization got me thinking. Though my season was slowing down, it is still far from dead, so why was I already feeling down. Also when I though about what I was doing to improve business at this time, the answer was a resounding “nothing”. I was not working to improve business at all.

Why was I acting this way?

Then it hit me! I was on auto pilot.
The first few years of starting a business can be financially challenging and the times that will always be slow are even more pronounced in the beginning. The problem is that sometimes we can lock in the habit of getting in to a certain mood even before the time arrives. Subconsciously I told myself that for the past three years this has been a down and depressing time, so I might as well get a jump on things and start feeling lousy now.

Awareness proceeds change.

Now that I know the cause I needed a solution.

-you ready

Become Activated.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the routines of life. I’m sure most of us have found our self in that last month before the end of the year, wondering what happened to all our resolutions, why we are still in the same situation we were 11 months ago.

The process of self activation, is taking defined steps to bring about change. The steps should be small so you don’t get overwhelmed by the process.

Example time.

Say you want to loose weight. You decide that a good approach would be to start cutting down on your sugar intake. To cut it out completely would be very difficult, but say that we just started with your coffee. Usually you put two heaping spoons of sugar. For you next cup put one heaping spoon and one level spoon. After a week level both spoons. Another week one and a half spoons, and in the next week one spoon.

Now that might not seem like such a big deal but lets look at the big picture. Say you drink three cups of coffee a day, you were originally consuming 50 calories of sugar/cup (12 grams of sugar) and you cut it down to 15 calories/cup (4 grams of sugar). Over the course of a year you will decrease your calorie intake by 38,325 calories, which could help you knock off about 13 pounds (3000 calories to a pound).

By activating your self with little steps you will soon find that you have accomplished great things.

So what do you do to get started. Here is the tough part. Take out a pen and paper – most people get stuck at this step. You might have to take out a pencil for one week and add paper the next week and write on the paper in the third week ( Just kidding ) – and write down what you want to accomplish and what small steps you are going to take, and the time frame that you will take for each task.

After a month review your goals and you will be empowered by what you have accomplished.

Turn off the auto pilot. Become Activated. Unleash your ultimate potential.