Rituals Provide a Foundation for Success

Have you ever watched Tiger Woods golf, or a star baseball player step up to bat. You will notice that they both have a ritual they follow as they get ready to take that next shot, or swing at that next 90 mile per hour fast ball. They have trained their body to perform a series of events in preparation to make the next big play of their game.

What are the rituals in your life? Do you have strategies that lead you to have greater success in your everyday life? In Jon Gordon's book titled Energy Addict - 101 Physical, Mental & Spiritual Way to Energize Your Life he states:

"...rituals are the key to turning our goals into reality - or chaos into concrete action. Rituals help us create positive habits that will become our foundation in a crazy world."

I have been thinking about this concept for the last couple of days and feel that this is really an important statement. When I look back at my times of peak performance I realize that this performance was achieved because I had a commitment to a goal that developed rituals that I performed every day. We each performed a ritual this morning as we woke up and got ready to go to work. Think about it, you have a "routine" in the bathroom and you have your routine with the kids to get them out the door on time for school. Life is filled with rituals.

So ask yourself what are your rituals that you performed today?
Are these rituals leading you to your peak performance or are they holding you back?

It is critical that we match our rituals to our goals and work to strengthen the habits that will lead us to the level of achievement we want to have in life. If our rituals are not constructed to lead us towards what we want, we feel stress in our lives and an inner conflict. The great news of the day is that we can chose our rituals, we can change rituals that are not helping us achieve our goals and build or strengthen the rituals that will help us reach our Peak Achievement.

Book Review - The No Complaining Rule

The No Complaining Rule: Positive Ways to Deal with Negativity at Work by Jon Gordon

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Well I really liked reading this book after completing the "Energy Bus". I am definitely on board with both of these books and plan to implement them into my life, home and business. I think when Jon got to the end of the book he pulled the pieces together very nicely, and if you really study the plan it will direct you back to key sections in the book to remember and plan your own implementation.



Be sure to visit his web site as well. I think that the posters, discussion guides and other items that he provides are very helpful and make bringing these practices into the work place much easier.



If you don't like this book, remember that there is "No Complaining". :)


View all my reviews.

Get're Done - Start with a master task list.

Lets talk about your task list.

• Is it helping you get the most important things done?
• Is it allowing you to work with integrity by helping your deliver on your promises?
• Are all your tasks available for you to review in one spot?
• When was the last time your wrote an item on your task list that you had already completed, just so that you could put a check mark next to the item.

Task lists play an important role in helping us remember the items that we need to complete at work, at home and for the family. I believe in maintaining a master task list for all my tasks and ideas. The master task list is a depository of the items that I want to do for all aspects of my life. Maintaining a master task list has many benefits:

Remember what you promised:
How many times have you been in a meeting and made a comment about something that your would do for someone. This casual statement is now an expectation for the person that you were with. They are counting on you to get that items done. Capturing these items on your list when you promise them to others helps you remember what you said you would do.

Sleep Easier:
Do you know someone who has a hard time going to sleep, because as they lay there in bed trying to relax, there brain is working overtime on what they need to get done. I know someone like this. Capturing a list of these items on a sleepless night onto a master task list is even better than counting sheep. Writing them down tells your mind that it is alright for it to relax about that task, you have it written down in a foul proof system that will remind you about the task tomorrow.

Capture Ideas:
A master task list is a great place to capture ideas that you have. Because you are not going to assign due dates to your master task list items, you can write down that ideas that your would like to figure out and try. I wonder how many good ideas have been lost because they were never recorded and went by the wayside.

Maintain Lists:
Within my master task list I often maintain other list of things that I want to record. For example you will always find a list of books that I want to read in my master task list. Maybe it is a list of items that you want to order from a vendor, but you want to make sure that you meet their minimum order. Keep your list handy so that you can refer to it the next time you want to place an order and make sure you do not miss anything.

Your master task list does not have to be perfectly organized, you will do that when you move the items to your daily task list. Remember that you can delete these items later if you feel that they are irrelevant or no longer apply. Just get all your ideas down onto your list.

Making Your Weekly/Daily Plan

The next step is probably to most important step you can take in reducing stress in your life. What we want to do next is to move those items that we have identified for each of our roles, as the most important items in our lives, to our daily task lists. How does this reduce your stress? Our minds are very powerful and if we have a single list of things that we have to get done or accomplish, our minds are going to try and work on all the items on that list all at once. We might not be thinking about all of them conciously, but in our subconcious, are minds are wearing themselves out trying to deal with all these items once.

Take the list of items that you identified, and assign them to a particular day. Make your self say "I am going to take care of this item on Tuesday.", or "This item can wait until Thursday, but I need it for the meeting on Friday," By placing the items into a daily plan you are allowing your subcouncious to say, "Alright, I do not have to worry about this item until Wednesday. " You are now able to focus on today's tasks more effectively and allow your full power to be focused on what is important today. You can relax because you know that on Wednesday, your planning tool will remind you that you need to take care of this other important item.

You can even go a step further. You can assign a particular task to an exact time in your calendar. For example let's say that you have an important proposal due later this week and you want to get the draft completed a few days early so you have plenty of time to review it. Make an appointment with your self to work on that task. Thats right, actually put it on your calendar as an appointment. If someone tries to schedule something at that time, you have the ability to say "I sorry that time will not work for me, I have an appointment. Can we find a time that will work for both of us." You have now protected the time that you are going to dedicate to that project.

There is an old saying that I say all the time, "How do you eat and elephant? One bite at a time." By breaking down your roles into tasks and planning those tasks into your day you are breaking the larger project into achievable action items and planning your time to get the most important items done first so that you will have Peak Achievement Today.

Using Roles to Make a Plan

Once you have established the roles that you have in your life you can use them to establish a monthly and weekly plan that will guide you to achieve the items that you put the most value on. At the beginning of each month, and on Monday mornings is sit down with my list of roles and walk through this process:

1. I review the list of ROLES and make sure that they are all still current and viable. I add or subtract roles based on the month or week.
2. I then go through each role and determine the key items that need to be done for each of these roles. As I do this I write down the key tasks that need to be done for each of these roles.
3. Not all roles are equal - achieving balance does not mean that each role has the same number of tasks that need to be completed. Some roles my have 7 key things that need to be done, and roles may even have only 2 or 3. (I sometimes maintain a role with 0 tasks for a particular week)
4. Make sure that you do not ignore roles that are important in your life, but do not "seem" urgent. One of the roles that I have on my planning list is "husband". I always try to think of one or two things that I could do for my bride that will let her know that she is important to me.
5. Place your list somewhere where you will look at it daily.

This does not need to take a lot of time. When you are first starting a process like this it may take you 30 -40 minutes. As you practice over time the time will decrease. I challenge you that if you take this time here, you will save hours throughout the week by eliminating distractions that come in day to day life.

I have been taking these steps every month and most weeks for the last 19 years. I can complete this process in about 15 minutes a week. I will be amazed at the volume of work I get done by Tuesday night, just because I sit down on Monday morning and identify the key priorities of the week.

On the next posting we will look at moving these items from your weekly plan, and getting them into your daily schedule.

The Gas Pump of Life

We have a choice between positive energy and negative energy. Positive energy is high octane fuel for the ride of your life while negative energy causes sludge to accumulate in your energy pipeline.

With high gas prices, I know that we are all used to going to the pump with the cheapest gas. Yes we could splurge and buy a tank of high octane gas for our car, but we pull up and fill up with good old regular gasoline. Our car survives on regular gas, it gets us from point a to point b, right.

This may work well for my car, but when it comes to my attitude I have to believe that I am worth the very best octane I can buy. (With a diesel car I understand high fuel cost :) ) My attitude is like that Lexus my friend owns, it requires high octane fuel or you void the warranty. If we can fill our life with positive energy, we will achieve more. We will find the extra spark to tackle a tough problem or to push that last bit to achieve the goal we set.

Sometimes we may need to add a fuel additive to our tank to clean out old deposits, but from now on, I AM BUYING THE HIGH OCTANE FUEL FOR LIFE.

Quote - Taking Action

" There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."

John F Kennedy
35th President of the United States