You can avoid growing apart by focusing on growing together. This goes for any relationship – with your spouse, your kids, your parents, siblings, or friends. If you don’t do things with them, you will eventually lose touch. If you don’t keep in contact with them and reach out occasionally, you will be an afterthought to their current life. It’s not because you or the other person don’t like each other anymore, but growing and keeping a relationship strong takes work. If you don’t work at it, it will weaken over time.
Category: mindset
Random thoughts on leading, managing, business, and goals
One difference between great leaders and great managers is the ability to innovate. Being creative, progressive, and moving forward with new ideas is important for visionary leaders. But keeping the boat from rocking too much and making sure to implement the visionary’s ideas intelligently are key to great management. You need both to be successful…ideas are great, but if they are scattered all over the place and not aligned with the stated future overarching goal(s), and if they are changed before really being given time to succeed, the business will flounder.
Start out with a couple of great goals. Know why you want to achieve those things. Then figure out what milestones you need to hit along the way and what processes you need to develop/follow to make those milestones happen. After you achieve them (or when you’re 90%+ done), start thinking of adding new goals, techniques, and strategies that are natural extensions of your current goals. Don’t do a 180 degree turn and pivot to something completely unrelated where you have limited-to-no experience.
Ask yourself these two questions when goal-setting
When you’re developing your goals, you should be clear on why you want to achieve these goals. You should also follow the S.M.A.R.T. acronym (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based). But after all that, you should ask yourself these two questions:
If not me, then who? If not now, then when?
Your goals are not going to be achieved if you’re not taking action to make them happen. If you don’t make that phone call, talk with that person, let others know about “x,” wake up early to go workout or read or master your craft, etc. who is going to do it for you? If you’re not going to do them right now, when will you prioritize them? Don’t keep procrastinating. If your goals are truly important, you’ll find the time or make the time to do the activities (to follow the process goals) that help you get the results you want.
On care
You can be very knowledgeable and “have the answers” that others are looking for, but until they know how much you care – how passionate you are about that topic, how interested you are in their well-being, how much you understand what it means to them – that’s when you win them over.
Just like in most things in life, it’s not about you. People’s first thoughts tend to default to thoughts about themselves. You can say it’s selfish, but it’s true. That’s why people tell you to be interested in others, to listen twice as much as you talk, to ask questions about them, to use the other person’s name in conversation…they want to know (or at least think) you care about them. If they believe that, you will earn their trust and then they will be more receptive to your “knowledge.”
Mistake-free living is impossible
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein
And they still make mistakes! You might as well try to push the limits to further your education and experiences and to grow as a person.