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The Real Reason You Aren’t Hitting Your Metrics

Have you ever had a vision for personal growth that really excited you? Did you love thinking about it, imagining this idealized version of yourself finally becoming real? But then, much to your chagrin, when it came time to take action you just couldn’t or wouldn’t do what was needed to bring the vision to life?

When we delight in visioning, but avoid or procrastinate taking action, we need to look within ourselves for this thing called shame. Shame is the feeling that we are not good enough. No one wants to talk about it, even though we all have it. Shame is often buried deep. We know it is present when we think these kinds of thoughts:

  • I will look like a fool if I do this.
  • I know this is going to fail, so why bother trying.
  • I’m not really clear about what to do, so I’ll fill my time with something else instead.
  • Doing this new things sucks. It’s hard. It doesn’t feel good. I’m not doing it anymore.
  • I can’t do this. I don’t have enough time, budget, connections, etc.
  • Yesterday these ideas felt powerful. Today they seem stupid, ineffective and wrong.
  • I’m wasting my time trying this. It’s better to stick to what I know.
  • I will take action when I have it all figured out in my mind. (Perfectionism.)
  • I can’t stop thinking about that one time I made a mistake. I failed. I was embarrassed. What if that happens again?

High performers get great results because they consistently take action toward their goals. Consistently taking action toward your goals creates measurable results. Not taking action, procrastinating action or taking wrong action keeps us from accomplishing our goals. When we aren’t reaching our metrics or when we can’t take action, we need to ask ourselves whether shame is the hidden culprit.

Shame thrives in secrecy. When we can speak our shame to a trusted confidante, an amazing thing happens. Its grip on us begins to lift. What felt dark and murky suddenly feels clear again. What felt impossible to accomplish suddenly feels worth trying again. When shame is brought to light, a path between vision and action reappears.

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Have You Been Wasting Your Time Trying to Change Others?

Have you ever experienced the frustration of trying to change a person, believing that you are taking all of the right steps to get a successful result, only to have that person stick to their old habits? It can lead to the most volcanic eruptions of anger, can’t it? We yell. We get red faced. We point fingers. All the while, we completely overlook the most obvious answer to the problem at hand.

The best way to successfully change others is to first change yourself. Wait! Don’t slam your laptop closed. Stick with me here…..

Changing ourselves does not mean we are suddenly taking responsibility for other people’s behavior, but rather focusing our efforts where we actually have a chance of being successful. When we focus on changing ourselves, we get these types of results:

  • We change our self-awareness, thus better understanding how we are contributing to the problem at hand.
  • We learn new information, thus increasing our knowledge base to come up with new solutions rather than trying the same old ones (that haven’t worked), over and over.
  • We change our thoughts, so that we let go of anger and past stories of failure and create the mental space to figure out how to lead others to a new reality.
  • We change our communication style to be more resonant with the people we are persuading to change.
  • We change our actions, showing our team that personal change is not only possible, but powerful.

Trying to change others leads to frustration. Changing ourselves leads to results. Max Planck, the originator of quantum theory, said it best, “when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” When you truly understand how to change yourself, you will suddenly and miraculously see those around you change.

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How To Surprise Yourself With Your Own Success: Cultivate a Growth Mindset

If we accept the fact that self-improvement stems from a lack of self-love and that it limits our results, the next question logically becomes, what do we do instead? The answer is to cultivate a growth mindset. A growth mindset stems from the roots of self-love and self-belief. It facilitates an expansion of one’s self, one’s capabilities and results.

This is what I love most about the work I do. I thrive on empowering others to accomplish results. When I initially meet someone, they are often hesitant to believe in their ability to change long-held habits. When those changes do inevitably happen, I often get a very excited phone call that starts with, “you won’t believe what happened.” I am never surprised by these phone calls. I easily “believe it” because I know the very reason the client has gotten shockingly positive results is because he has learned to believe in himself. He has cultivated a growth mindset.

When you have a growth mindset, you get results better than you thought possible because you are able to do the following three things:

  1. You embrace discomfort. You are willing take smart risks and make mistakes.
  2. You use the VAM (Vision-Action-Metrics) model to grow beyond your comfort zone.
  3. You bring your vision to life by completing your action steps within the planned timeline, which in turn increases your metrics.

When your thoughts are in alignment with self-love, it is a million times easier to take the necessary action steps to create the change you want. You let go of old habits. You stop worrying that making a mistake means you’re not good enough. When you do inevitably make a mistake or fail, you don’t get bogged down with feelings of failure and concerns regarding what others think of you.

A growth mindset starts with loving yourself exactly as you are and believing anything is possible. When you love yourself and believe anything is possible, you take the action steps to get what you want out of life. You are willing to take risks. If you don’t get the outcome you anticipated, you easily and swiftly try again. When you take this type of ballsy action consistently over time, it creates results that will surprise you. I guarantee it.

 

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What if Self-Improvement Has Gotten You Good Results?

When I tell clients that self-love is the foundation for self-growth and maximizing their capabilities, I can almost read their mind in response. “Yeah, sure it is, Amie. It’s great that you can sit around cross-legged, reveling in self-love, but I have things to get done!  Goals to hit! Business to grow! Self-improvement might be bad for me, but it has gotten me good results.”

I understand where those thoughts originate. I work daily with clients who cling to the idea of beating themselves up to get good results because that is all they have ever known. I, too, used to be unable to separate my desire to be my best self from using self-punishing techniques to accomplish my goals.

I am sharing one of my own painful stories today to help you understand why self-improvement is actually keeping you from being your best. I want you to know, I get it. I get the desire to cling to self-punishment when you believe it has gotten you results.

In September 2009, I embarked on a food detox, bad-habit purging and spiritual fasting where I took practically everything away from myself, except the air I was breathing, in order to further my career and my life.

Here are the kinds of goals I wrote for myself:

  • You will wake up each day determined to take advantage of all the opportunities that particular day has to offer.
  • You will make a list of things you want to accomplish the next day and face them head on.
  • You will create a life map of places to go and things to accomplish. You will think about your ultimate destination and take the steps to get there.

Maybe that list doesn’t look so bad to you. Maybe you have a similar list. Read the list again and look for these things:

  • A dictatorial tone of what you will do.
  • A lack of belief that you will do these things. (If you really believed you were going to do these things, you wouldn’t have to write them down for yourself. They would naturally happen.)
  • Sentences written in future tense. (When we don’t love ourselves and don’t truly believe we’ll do something, we often write in future tense. We do this because we like the idea of the action step, but aren’t ready to do the work.)

Guess what results I accomplished? None! (Unless depression is a desirable result.) Before my detox, purging and fasting, I already had a good reputation in the community. I was already the top sales person at my company. Friends would have said I was a great wife and mother. I was already successful, but I couldn’t see that my beliefs and self-improvement techniques weren’t expanding my success, they were limiting it.

Fast forward to January 2016. Self-love is now the daily foundation for myself and my work. My results now are shockingly different from my past. I make more money. I work fewer hours. I influence top leaders across the country. I am happier. Way happier. I am present in my home life. I know that I can and will accomplish my goals, because I am working from a foundation of love and I truly believe in my ability to accomplish the goals I set.

I bet the same is true for you too. I bet you are already successful at work and in life. But, ask yourself, are you punishing yourself to get those results? Because if you are, you are not operating at your fullest capabilities. You too can do more. And it can hurt a lot less. While self-improvement may get you results, those results are nowhere near your true capabilities.

 

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Save Yourself From the Nightmare of Strategic Planning: Have a Vision

When a strategic plan does not produce the planned results, lack of action is often cited as the culprit. It is a fair assessment. Writing a strategic plan does not produce results. Taking action on it does. Let’s consider for a second though, that there may be an even more sinister culprit behind ineffective strategic plans.

“Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.”

~Japanese Proverb

Many well written strategic plans lack vision. A vision is not a goal. A vision is not a succinctly written statement. A vision is a clear picture in your mind of what you are working to create. Visioning requires us to imagine the future so clearly and vividly in our own mind, that we empower others to see it. When we have a vision, we are seeing the future. What we can imagine, we can create. What we cannot imagine, we cannot create.

Lack of vision is like putting together a 5,000 piece puzzle without a picture of the completed puzzle. When an organizational vision is lacking, employees cannot envision the future they are working to create OR they have a starkly different vision of the future than leadership. This leads to frustration, apathy and dissension because everyone is working to create a different picture (vision) with the same puzzle pieces (action steps). It creates a nightmare.

When an organization has a clear vision for the future, employees actively participate in the creation of that future.  There is less resistance to taking strategic action because the anticipated end result is clear. We create the intended result because we can see, collaboratively and collectively, what we are working to create.

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Vacation: The Surprising Way to Increase Your Productivity

Ask yourself these questions:

  • Have you gone more than six months without a vacation?
  • When you schedule a vacation, is your excitement diminished by a lingering feeling of guilt?
  • Do you fear that your absence will lead to a decrease in results?
  • Do you fear being seen as a less committed leader because you are taking time away from your work?
  • Do you dread your inevitable return because you know it means an overfilled e-mail inbox and line of people waiting to speak to you?

If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, you are compromising your own productivity. When we are chronically busy, our fatigued brains become robotic in the scheduling and completion of tasks. We lose the ability to be present. Our efficiency decreases and our error rate increases. We become impatient and short with others. We lose sight of our vision and myopically operate within day-to-day tasks. In short, in our quest to do more, we actually accomplish less.

Vacation allows our brains to rejuvenate. As we dig our toes into the cool, wet sand, we become reconnected with our senses. As we look at our spouse and really see them, we remember why we fell in love. As we experience new sights, foods and cultures, our sense of adventure returns. As we decompress, our motivation renews. As we think less and feel more, our creative mind reengages, allowing us to see new and different ways of doing things. As we bask in the glow of doing nothing, the idea of doing something becomes appealing and exciting again.

When we return to work, we reap the advantages of our renewed brain. We are more efficient and creative with problem solving. We are better able to be empathetic and patient with our team. We have renewed passion for our vision and the energy to take the steps to realize it. Therefore, if you are feeling burnt out and haven’t scheduled a vacation in the past six months, it may be time to pull out your calendar and make time to take one. Your productivity depends on it.