ARTICLES
Written By Rich For You.
Be Like Jack LaLanne.
I grew up with Jack LaLanne. I used to watch him, his wife Elaine, and his dog every morning on TV. Jack taught me a lot of things about life — especially to stay positive all the time. Why be like Jack? You might know him from his juicer — but he was so much more.
I grew up with Jack LaLanne. I used to watch him, his wife Elaine (yes, Elaine LaLanne), and his German shepherd Happy every morning on TV. Jack taught me a lot of things about life — especially to stay positive all the time.
Why be like Jack? You might know him from his juicer — but he was so much more.
1. Make a bold change.
At 15, he was a wreck — sickly, skinny, and eating all the wrong foods. He realized it was a dead-end and radically changed his diet, behavior, and focus. Where can you make a bold change in your life?
2. Break the mold.
Up until Jack LaLanne, gyms were for men who wanted to box or wrestle. Jack opened the prototype for the fitness spas to come — a gym, juice bar, and health food store. What antiquated molds need breaking?
3. Keep true to your vision (and yourself).
Jack said, “People thought I was a charlatan and a nut. The doctors were against me — they said that working out with weights would give people heart attacks and they would lose their sex drive.” Never ask permission - get out and do it.
4. Think BIG.
Jack then took his idea national — “The Jack LaLanne Show” made its debut in 1951 as a local program in the San Francisco area, then went nationwide on daytime television in 1959. Pick a big dream and take one step closer to it today.
5. Speak to your audience — all the time.
“My show was so personal, I made it feel like you and I were the only ones there. And I’d say: ‘Boys and girls, come here. Uncle Jack wants to tell you something. You go get Mother or Daddy, Grandmother, Grandfather, whoever is in the house. You go get them, and you make sure they exercise with me.’ ” Learn how to better communicate to key people.
6. Keep it simple.
Most of his exercises on TV were done with a chair or broomstick. Don’t over-complexify your life - simplify!
7. Keep fresh with new ideas and offerings.
He invented the forerunners of modern exercise machines like leg extension and pulley devices. He marketed a Power Juicer to blend raw vegetables and fruits and a Glamour Stretcher cord, and he sold exercise videos and fitness books. When was the last time you read a good book?
8. Know when to get out.
Expanding on his television popularity, he opened dozens of fitness studios under his name, later licensing them to Bally. If it isn’t working for you - run away.
9. Be a showoff.
At 60 he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf handcuffed, shackled, and towing a 1,000-pound boat. At 70, handcuffed and shackled again, he towed 70 boats, carrying a total of 70 people, a mile and a half through Long Beach Harbor. Be assertive in all that you do.
10. Walk the talk.
He ate two meals a day and shunned snacks. Breakfast, following his morning workout, usually included several hard-boiled egg whites, a cup of broth, oatmeal with soy milk, and seasonal fruit. For dinner, a salad with raw vegetables and egg whites along with fish — often salmon — and a mixture of red and white wine. He never drank coffee. Be authentic to everyone you meet.
11. Stay positive — all the time.
He brimmed with optimism and restated a host of aphorisms for an active and fit life. “I can’t die,” he most famously liked to say. “It would ruin my image.” SMILE!
Jack passed away 10 years ago at the ripe old age of 96. He brought a lot of energy, motivation, and happiness to millions of people. I hope someday, I can do that too.
How Do Busy Leaders Make More Time?
One of my clients sent me their daily schedule. I was so blown away by it's simplicity and it's ability to fit many professional and personal things in — I just had to publish it for my audience. In their own words: "I want to put myself on a schedule. I need a schedule where I meditate 2x per day, exercise, have ample time for self-education and time to relax."
- 5:00 AM - Get Up.
- 5:00 to 6:00 AM — Meditate for 20 minutes, Walk for 30 minutes, Lift weights for 10 minutes.
- 6:00 to 6:30 AM — Eat Breakfast, Coffee.
- 6:30 to 7:30 AM — Self-Education.
- 7:30 to 8:30 AM — Get Ready for work.
- 8:30 to 9:00 AM — Drive to work, Listen to Audiobooks/Podcasts.
- 9:00 to 5:00 PM — Work.
- 5:00 to 5:30 PM — Drive home, Listen to Audiobooks/Podcasts.
- 5:30 to 6:00 PM — Meditate.
- 6:00 to 7:00 PM — Cook & Eat Dinner.
- 7:00 to 8:30 PM — Self-Education.
- 8:30 to 9:00 PM — Ready for Bed.
- 9:00 to 10:00 PM — Relax, Read, Watch TV.
- 10:00 PM — Go To Bed.
My client is a successful senior executive at a prestigious company who has accomplished a lot and has been gainfully employed and promoted regularly. They're not a slacker.
As you can see, they get it all done in a relaxed schedule, allocating adequate time for all of their activities. Of course there might be subtle deviations due to travel, emergencies, and unplanned activities, but for the most part, they stick to this plan.
So for all the people out there who say they "don't have the time" — Yes, You DO.
Hitting A Wall In Your Career? You Need A Breakthrough.
It's tough today. It’s hard when everything is coming at you. Hard to think. Hard to act. Hard to react. As they always say — the first step is always the hardest.
It's tough today. It’s difficult when everything is coming at you. Hard to think. Hard to act. Hard to react. As they always say — the first step is always the hardest.
You’re constantly focused on getting the work done — satisfying your boss, your clients . . . just keeping your career going!
It’s now time for you to step back and look at the long view:
Where you’ve been... Where you are... Where you want to go...
This isn’t time consuming, but it ain't easy. I only ask is that you don’t capitulate to “Career ADD” which creeps in when we try something new and difficult.
“Oh, this won’t work” or “Let me just put this down for a second and I’ll get back to it tomorrow.” Or even the "I've done this before and it never worked."
Stop doing that. Now.
Take the first step and let the momentum take you. But don’t stop.
I have something to help you — I've used it with thousands of clients. And guess what? IT WORKS.
The BEST part? It's FREE. Download Breakthrough right now. It's a life-changing solution.
You're welcome.
Task Ninja: Form the Action Habit.
A lot of us get stuck in inaction –procrastinating, doing a lot of unimportant tasks to avoid the important stuff, worrying about failing or about being perfect, having a hard time starting, getting distracted, and so on. It’s time to start forming the Action Habit instead. Get all Ninja on your actions.
A lot of us get stuck in inaction — procrastinating, doing a lot of unimportant tasks to avoid the important stuff, worrying about failing or about being perfect, having a hard time starting, getting distracted, and so on. It’s time to start forming the Action Habit instead. Get all Ninja on your actions.
By Leo Babauta at Zen Habits.
And it’s really not that hard if you focus on it for a little while. Like any other habit, start in small doses, little tasks, just short bursts, and then build on that momentum.
Some quick steps for forming the Action Habit:
1. Figure out your key actions. Focusing on the right actions is just as important as the doing. Don’t spend a lot of time in this step — just quickly decide your Top 3 actions for today.
2. Pick one key action, and visualize the outcome. How will it look when you’re done? Again, don’t spend a lot of time here — just form a quick picture in your mind.
3. Just start. Tell yourself, “Do it now!” Make it a mantra. Don’t mess around with tools, with distractions, with anything that will get in the way of doing this task. Strip away everything but the task, and get going!
4. Focus on the moment. Just be in this task, don’t worry about the future or what mistakes you might make or might have made before. Just focus on doing this task, as best you can. Immerse yourself in it.
5. Get to done. Complete the task. Feel good about it! Pat yourself on the back!
Now repeat with the next task. The more you practice this habit, the better you get. Do it in small doses, and keep practicing. You’ll fail sometimes. See the next section for how to deal with that. But don’t let failure stop you — just practice some more.
Barriers to the Action Habit: But what if you’re having trouble actually taking action? Some quick thoughts:
Don’t worry about perfect. Too often we want to create the perfect plan, but while it’s important to know where you’re going, it’s more important not to get stuck in the planning mode. And while it’s important to do your best, perfection isn’t necessary.
Stop fiddling. Are you messing around with your software or other tools? Are you playing with fonts and colors and other non-essential things? Stop! Get back to the task.
Remove distractions. Turn off the phone, email, IM, Twitter, etc. Shut off the world around you, and just focus on the doing.
Improve it later. Just do it now. You can make it better later. Writers call this the sh*tty first draft — and while it sounds bad, it’s actually a good thing. You’re getting it done, even if it’s sloppy.
Break it into smaller chunks. Sometimes the task is too intimidating. If the task takes more than an hour, start with a 30-minute chunk. If that’s too big, do just 10 minutes. If that’s too hard, do 5. If you have to, just do 1 minute, just to get going.
Stop thinking so much. Thinking is a good thing. Overthinking isn’t, and it gets in the way. Put aside all the thinking (analysis paralysis) and just do.
If you can’t do something … figure out why. Maybe you don’t have the tools. Maybe you don’t have the authority. Maybe you need something from someone else. Maybe you’re missing some key info.
Maybe you don’t know how to do something and need to read up on it, or be taught how. Maybe you just don’t want to do it, and you should drop it altogether. Figure out what the barrier is, and solve it.
Keeping Unscheduled Time.
Making time to reflect and think is a critical leadership practice. In its simplest form, reflecting is just thinking about what happened. It’s the process of thinking about and examining what we’ve experienced, how we reacted and what changes we need to make to become more effective.
I love the The Practice of Leadership blog - and George Ambler hits it out of the park with this topic on buffering time:
“Every leader should routinely keep a substantial portion of his or her time—I would say as much as 50 percent—unscheduled. … Only when you have substantial ’slop’ in your schedule—unscheduled time—will you have the space to reflect on what you are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes. Leaders without such free time end up tackling issues only when there is an immediate or visible problem. Managers’ typical response to my argument about free time is, ‘That’s all well and good, but there are things I have to do.’ Yet we waste so much time in unproductive activity—it takes an enormous effort on the part of the leader to keep free time for the truly important things.” – Dov Frohman
Making time to reflect and think is a critical leadership practice. In its simplest form, reflecting is just thinking about what happened. It’s the process of thinking about and examining what we’ve experienced, how we reacted and what changes we need to make to become more effective.
There are few people who make a conscious effort to learn from their experiences and fewer still learn from their mistakes. This is because reflection is not an automatic process for most people. Most of use make our way through life simply reacting to circumstances. To be effective leaders must make reflection a regular practice.
“Leaders like everyone else, are the sum of all their experiences, but, unlike others, they amount to more than the sum, because they make more of their experiences.” – Warren Bennis, Why Leaders Can’t Lead
A simple way to start the practice of reflection is by asking questions, questions about how we feel, about the results we are getting in our life, and what we can do differently to get different results. For example, find a quite place where you are not going to be disturbed then, take an issue that’s important to you, and ask yourself the following questions:
What happened? What was I trying to achieve? What went well and why? What didn’t go so well and why? How did it affect me? How did it affect others? What were the consequences (positive or negative) for myself and others? What could be done differently next time? Would this change improve the consequences?
“Reflection is asking the questions that provoke self-awareness” – Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader
As leaders much of our success is dependent on the way we think. Given this, it’s important that we schedule regular time-out to reflect on how we are behaving, how we are thinking about a situation and what adjustments we might need to make to improve our effectiveness. When was the last time you spent reflecting on an issue that is important to you?
How David Beats Goliath or When Underdogs Break The Rules.
Gladwell again uses history to reinforce his argument that with the proper planning and doing something different (something that your opposing team (i.e., competition) isn't expecting) even though you are the underdog — you will succeed.
Malcolm Gladwell is one of today's most innovative 'connectors' of knowledge. His most recent New Yorker article again proves he is the master.
Gladwell again uses history to reinforce his argument that with the proper planning and doing something different — something that your opposing team (i.e., competition) isn't expecting — even though you are the underdog — You Will Succeed.
Enough of my blather — go read this great article!