FMF #9 - Was Week One A Hit or Miss?

It's No Secret with Dr T.

Well, we’ve made it to the end of week one, 2018 and by now I would imagine you’ve probably seen at least fifty or so post about making New Years resolutions and setting goals.

If you haven’t, you’ve either been incarcerated the past week or lucky enough to be on a cruise ship with no Internet.

So is this podcast about setting goals for 2018?

No it’s not. It’s about reflecting on the past week and seeing how you feel about it.

Would you say your first week back at work was a hit or a miss, or maybe it was somewhere in between? I would honestly say my week was definitely somewhere in between.

So how did you do?

Did you achieve everything you wanted to get done, or did you achieve very little, because busyness got in the way? You need to answer this question.

I heard two quotes this week that I think are worth repeating.

The first one was from the Born to Write podcast with guest Pat Flynn and it wasn’t exactly a quote, he was making reference to a book titled, What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There, by Marshall Goldsmith.

If you care to Google this title there is a mountain of FREE information worth reading, but to give you a very brief idea of what he’s talking about; he explains it’s our habits that often hold us back from making that huge leaps forward in our careers.

Check out this extract by Marshall Goldsmith: The 20 Bad Habits – Challenges in Interpersonal Behavior.

Now if you think about your own week, how many things did you do, or not do, out of habit?

Remember, not all habits are bad

If you woke up early and dove head first into your most important task for the day and had it knocked over before the rest of the household woke up, you’re a champ and that’s a good habit.

So what type of activities are we talking about?

• Blog article for your website
• A financial report
• Editing an audio or video file
• Morning workout or yoga session
• A household task that needed doing

The point is your doing something worthwhile that adds value to your day and to those around you.

In contrast, if you slept in, or you woke up early and immediately checked your emails and social media pages, and that’s all you did before the house was alive with activity, then that’s not a good habit.

Controlling Actions

So, taking all this into account how would you rate your week? Was it a hit or a miss?

Did you control your actions, or did your actions, or should I say habits, control you?

I’d love to tell you my week was perfect, but I’m going to stick with it being somewhere in between.

It’s about reflection

If at the end of each week you can reflect and honestly rate yourself I think you can consciously eliminate your bad habits and replace them with good habits.

This leads me onto the second quote I heard this week from my friend, Wilson Lawrence, who hides up in the hilltops of Germany, and he got it from the Order of Men podcast:

‘To change the output of your life you’ve simply got to change the input’.

As Wilson says, how simple is that? It’s very simple.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

If you remember the old computer phrase, garbage in, garbage out, this was exactly what they were talking about.

If you input incorrect or poor quality information into a computer it would produce faulty output.

Therefore you should be thinking of your brain the exact same way, garbage in, garbage out.

What are you putting in?

Have you considered what goes into your head on any given day? We’re surrounded by negativity.

It could be negative co-workers, or negative friends and family, and if you’re watching the news, whether it’s on TV or online, your head is being filled with garbage.

To counteract this you’ve got to fill your head with good stuff as well. Of course you’re listening podcasts, which is great, but you need to pay attention to who you’re hanging with, especially when you have a choice. You also want to read good books.

Conclusion

If you can combine the book title, What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There, with the quote ‘to change the output of your life you’ve simply got to change the input’, and if you read it aloud every day as a reminder, I believe you’ll have far more hits than misses over the next fifty-one weeks.

If you have any questions about this podcast episode, or feedback from previous episodes please email me [e-mail]

Also, dates have been set for my There's Money in Small Business Conference, Cairns 17th - 18th August. Booking details and list of speakers coming soon.