Category — Character Development Plan

Today I am issuing a 30 Day Challenge to each of you to seize or create the magic moment in each day. Over the next 30 days I will share with you one suggestion every day for how to create a magic moment.

It seems most people today are on an eternal search for the magic era of their lives in which they will finally be happy. Are you one of those people? Here’s a quick test.

Have you ever said to yourself one of these things:
“I’ll be happy when I get engaged.”
“I’ll be happy when I get married.”
“I’ll be happy when our first kid is born.”
“I’ll be happy when my divorce is final.”
“I’ll be happy when I start my new business.”
“I’ll be happy when I retire.”

The words, “I’ll be happy,” seem to start a lot of sentences, but for some reason, when those moments come, people are never happy. Why? Because most people are always living for, or fearing, the future. Worse yet, they are always living in the past.

There are basically three types of people:

1. Those who regret the past or live in the past.
People who live in the past are wasting time. One of my favorite sayings is, “The past is a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” It’s okay to remember the good times, but don’t get so lost in them that you ignore the present.

2. Those who worry about the future that never comes.
The majority of people tend to fret a future event. And let’s face it, most of the time the worry we build up over how something is going to happen is never as bad as the actual event. So why do we keep worrying about things? Why do we keep telling ourselves, “Someday I will be happy.”

3. Those who live in the present moment.
The people who live in the present moment all the time have found happiness in the little things. Think about a time when you were the happiest recently. Perhaps it was on a trip to Vegas, as you and your husband dined at the Eiffel Tower restaurant. For that hour, you were completely happy. Why? Because for that hour, you were enjoying the moment around you.

Today I am issuing a 30 Day Challenge to each of you to seize or create the magic moment in each day. Over the next 30 days I will share with you one suggestion every day for how to create a magic moment.

I explain this concept in more detail in my program, Design the Life You Deserve. In the book, you will learn how to create magic moments and build a life where you plan for the future. You make that plan on lessons from the past, and you create steps to find success in every single minute of life.

I once read most employees work just hard enough to stay above the level of getting fired.  When I first read that I thought it was both funny and true.  I have talked to many entrepreneurs, business owners, and even managers since then and we all agree the statement is true.  Why? 

Why Do People Hold Back on Working?
When I first started pondering this thought I asked myself two things:
1. Are most people just inherently lazy? 
2. What makes a person come to work and ask themselves, “What do I need to do today not to get fired?”

As I started thinking about those questions, I realized most people are not driven the way you and I as business owners are driven.  As an entrepreneur, manager, or business owner, you have passion and drive to make your company successful.  You would inherently think your employees share that drive to want to be successful, yet they don’t. 

Why?
Change the scenario.  Have you ever heard someone say one of their goals is to be financially independent?  Then you’ve observed them and realized they never do anything to improve their situation.  They don’t read books on financial success.  They don’t attend seminars.  They never go to a class on investing or savings.  They simply seem to believe money will just drop from the sky into their lap.  Statistically less than five percent of people who set financial goals ever do anything to try and achieve them.

Unfortunately, we have become a society of TV watchers, Internet suffers, and Facebook-ers.  And all of those things promote instant connections, answers, and solutions for the moment while promoting a sense that the easiest way is okay.

Are We Hiring the Wrong People? 
In the book Good to Great, Jim Collins talks about the importance of hiring the right people.  Collins states that great companies spend more time finding the right kind of people than they do worrying about strategy.  But what is “right”? 

It’s hard to identify the right person during the interview.  But after they have worked for me for a while, it is easy to identify if they’re right.  To me right means:
1. You are 100 percent committed to the company’s success,
2. You are intelligent, and
3. You have integrity. 

I call the right person an “employee/partner” and will do almost anything to keep them on at my urgent care clinics. 

But like I mentioned earlier, it’s hard to find the right person during an interview.  One thing that helps is making sure you check BUSINESS references.  I have learned people rarely change their behaviors, so there is a high probability that the behaviors they have with you will be very similar to the behaviors they had in their previous roles. 

Are We Creating the Right Culture? 
There is no right culture for your business.  Our urgent care center promotes a casual work environment entirely centered around the customer experience.  Your company’s culture may be more strict, more formal, or full of more discipline.  But having a culture everyone understands is important.

Most companies who struggle with employee buy-in have never defined their culture.  That is one reason why they continually struggle with motivating employees. Once you know the culture you want, getting the right people becomes easy.  Then, once people are hired, they should be indoctrinated into your culture.  This will only happen as they listen to their co-workers.  Listen to your employees and you will find out your real culture.  

Are You Getting What You Tolerate? 
So many times as business owners or managers we let things slide that we shouldn’t.  Being a leader requires making tough decisions and sometimes having tough conversations.  Leading is about coaching.  It is about taking responsibility for what is wrong and setting it right.  It is about giving credit where credit is due and taking responsibility for the short-comings.

If you continue to overlook things, even from your superstar employees, it will infiltrate the entire organization.  In fact, the hardest person to address sometimes is the superstar.  They believe they are above the law and those silly rules don’t apply to them.  Do not let this happen. 

The word on the street is that a good job is hard to find.  The reality is that a good employee is extremely rare.  You can increase the odds of being successful if you hire the right people, create the right culture, and remember you get what you tolerate.

Most of your life you live playing in someone else’s ballpark. Simply put, you live by rules which you didn’t create. Think about it:
1. You drive a certain speed someone else set as the speed limit.
2. You pay taxes someone else decided were the right amount.
3. You have to obey rules at work that you didn’t create.
In short, you are playing ball in someone else’s ballpark!

You may not always agree with the rules set by the different ballparks you play in, but if you want to succeed, you must understand something: If you are going to play there, you have to play by their rules.

Ballpark Life Example
I remember when I was young and working for Coca-Cola. Everyday I went to work convinced I could run the department I worked in better than my supervisor. I knew the company would be better off putting me in charge. Do you ever have this feeling in the company where you work?

I wish I could say I only felt this way at my job. However, it seemed in my youth, I always wanted to be the rebel. I had to break the rules just because they were there and sometimes because by doing so, I felt I had something to prove. It was a rebellion against the establishment, whatever that establishment happened to be at the time.

Finding Success in the Ballparks
One day I stumbled across an article by Charles Givens about playing in other peoples ballparks. He wrote something that affected me and has stuck with me since. His words: “If you are going to be successful in someone else’s ballpark, you have to learn to play by their rules.”

It really is simple. Sure, you can pound your head against the wall fighting the rules and saying why they are unjust. But at the end of the day, it is their ballpark, not yours. If you choose not to obey the rules, do yourself a favor and take your glove and ball and go find a new ballpark where you like the rules better.

If you cannot stand your overbearing boss, change departments or quit. The worst thing you can do for yourself and for the team you are part of is to stay in the same ballpark and continue to rebel against the rules. Not only is it unproductive, but it is also unfair to the ballpark owner. Additionally, you only succeed in making you miserable.

In order to be successful, to thrive, you have to embrace the rules of the ballpark you play in and become a true member of the team you’re on.

Rules Are Not Always Fair
Don’t get me wrong. The rules you have to play by may not always be right or ethical.

I can argue my taxes are too high, the speed limits are too slow, and I have to work too many hours. In fact, I could spend hours stressing over any of these things. I could go a step further, and with my taxes, I could push the legal limits of paying them. Then, I could spend money on radar detectors to help me break the rules of the road. And I could just show up late at work, not complete projects, or complain to all my co-workers about how unfair work is.

All of those options are one way to handle the situation. Perhaps the better option is to accept you live in someone else’s ballpark. Once you accept that, you can learn to play by their rules. Then all the time you wasted complaining and finding ways to rebel against the system can be spent doing more productive things.