Thursday, February 20, 2014

Trust

Thursday's Thought Provoker:

Imagine if more people were raised in an environment where their life experiences instilled an ability to trust.

I recently identified a correlation between how coachable people are to the type of home environment in which they were raised.  Now this might be old news as I see a few studies on the issue, but I felt the need to pontificate on the matter.

As a coach and educator, I can quickly assess the environment at home, with about a 90% accuracy, based on how the child seeks and accepts coaching.  You see, when I child seeks out, accepts, and implements coaching you can tell that they have been raised in an environment where they learned how to trust.  In this environment, the child has had real life experiences where promises, advice, and direction have been honored and produced positive results or feelings.  Most of the time, the kids that are the most coachable, have been let down the least in life.

On the other side of the equation are the kids that avoid, deny, and reject coaching.  Typically, these kids have been raised in an environment where there has been little if any support.  Instead of reinforcing our natural desire to trust, these children's life experiences have been full of broken promises and bad advice.  These kids have been forced, through experience, to only trust themselves and their inability to trust acts as a steel blockade to coaching.

As a father I hope to create and maintain an environment where my children learn not only how to trust but also how to discern who is deserving of their trust.  I can string together a bunch of cliches to sound smart, or I can simply say that I want my children to understand that they can always get better.  Even when they believe they know everything or are performing at their highest level I want them to know there will always be room for improvement and in order to improve they have to seek out, accept and implement coaching.  They have to know who and how to trust so that they can be their best!

#DIFGTBAF

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Motivate or Hate?

Thursday Thought Provoker:


Imagine if more people found motivation in others success rather than hating on them.

I am a firm believer in focusing on what you control.  I believe that living in a world where multiple constraints on resources will always exist, it is important to focus on how you appropriate these limited resources.  With that being said, I don't see the need to spend my most valuable resource, time, hating on the success of others.  Even if I don't care for the person or organization, I don't feel my time is well invested if I spend it hating on them.  I much rather use their success and all success around me as motivation.

My wife blogged about something along these lines a few weeks ago in Types of People.  It's amazing to think that people would want to hate on us and disturbing how many women spend time wishing ill on women they have never even met.  These same people probably spend the rest of their time wondering why they don't have or haven't accomplished things in their own lives.  Here's a tip...... Stop spending so much time worried about things you can't control.

90% of the time, you have little to no impact or control over the success or failure of others.  Therefore, if you are spending 90% of your time, energy, or mental effort trying to influence the success or failure of others you will not only fail in your hating! but you will also fail in your own life because you spent too much of your limited time on something you didn't control, other people, instead of what you do control, yourself!

Instead of hating, you should find motivation in the success of others.  As a father, I plan to model and teach my children how to wish well for all while finding motivation in their success.  I want my children to know and understand that their time and energy are valuable and should not be wasted focusing on others instead of improving themselves.  The steadily increasing number of haters in society is alarming and detrimental to the overall growth and development of a people or country.  If more people found motivation in the success of others to also do great things and succeed, there would be a continuous self sustaining growth.  Instead, we have too many people that look at what others possess or have accomplished with disdain and a dark envy that has shown to cause stagnation in their own lives.  SMH!

Imagine if more people spent less time hating and more time congratulating.