Do you remember the first time you drove a car, or your first day at work? You might remember your very first kiss. Your first time to a new place, it might be exciting, not totally in control and everything might get your blood to rush a little faster. You were outside your own comfort zone.
All these at first fearful stuff happened to become routine as soon as you took the first and the next step outside your own comfort zone. Have you ever decided not to sign up for a dance class or going to the gym because you might feel out of place? It’s nice to know that none ever started out being an expert at what they do.

Take the first step

It might be necessary to take a good step outside your comfort zone to be able to grow and evolve. What is your dream? What is holding you back? What would be the first step to take? If you woke up one day, realizing that you where one step closer to your dream, what would that day be like?

I made a huge step outside my own comfort zone less than a week ago. I made my debut as a public speaker. I talked about motivation in front of about 150 call center leaders. I have never talked in public before and it was awkward and I fumbled with my own introduction. But as I god started I entered a flow state. And I enjoyed every second of it, and I hope to be able to do this again. My first step was to acknowledge that I can do this. – You can also, just take the first step.

“I do not want to apply to that job, I won’t get it anyway”
“No, I will not ask for that”
“Why bother, it won’t do any good anyway”
“I do not dare to ask her”
“There is no use to try, competition is to hard”

Sound familiar? Well, you will not make anything happen if you do not try. Master Yoda from the Star Wars universe once said; “Do or do not… there is no try” – there is a lot of spilled talent in the world of no tries. Ambition without actions is just a dream. I asked if I could contribute as a public speaker. Nobody came to my door, knocked it down and begged me… (they might in the future…) but the first step is always yours to make. What is your first step?

I once spoke with a woman that was applying for jobs, and she talked to me about an open position, her dream job. “I will never get it” she said. I told her to give it her best. The worst thing that will happen is “no”. I said that the only sure thing is that she will not get it without trying. She applied, and she got it. – To me it seems that the fear of failure is blocking the ability to try.

At least give it a try…

I hope you enjoy my blog and feel free to subscribe. Thank you so much for reading, you rock!

Motivational Gardener

Do you want to throw your stapler across the cubicle wasteland? Are you sick and tired of insane office politics? Is your boss an ape? How are you feeling today? A little frustrated? Did you get another meaningless memo from top level management? Well today I am going to write about frustration at the office. Not only how you can deal with frustration, but also how you as a leader can contribute to reducing frustration levels. As always I would love your feedback if you have some advice to share with me and other readers.

First of all: What is frustration?

I like the definition of Frustration as described in Wikipedia, “it is a common emotional response to opposition. Related to anger and disappointment, it arises from the perceived resistance to the fulfillment of individual will. The greater the obstruction, and the greater the will, the more the frustration is likely to be.” – Frustration is a feeling. Like happiness, anger, disappointment or joy. So this leads me to the next question…

Why are you feeling frustrated?

Frustration is normally a reaction to an obstacle beyond your control. You cannot solve your problem because of company politics you can’t change. You can’t perform well, because your co-workers are slowing you down. It can be related to work overload and stress. Remember that frustration is a feeling; a feeling is often a response to something around you. So if you could change the cause of the frustration, would you stop feeling frustrated? Yes, most likely. But you can’t change it? That’s the freaking problem you say? Calm down….

A coin has two sides. If you can’t fix the cause, can you fix the response? Just imagine if feeling is a choice, you can choose to be angry, happy, frustrated, joyful or sad? Is it even possible to make a choice to feel better? Just imagine that it is possible.

Than this change:
From: Something happened –> you responded
To: Something happened –> you choose your response

How would that change your day? You got the power to make a decision about your response to events in your life. Just try it. It might be hard, it might be close to impossible, but it is possible.

When you work with feelings involved you might end up making a bad call, you might send an angry e-mail or tell your boss things you shouldn’t. Being able to control your response might help you to succeed in your job.

This is not a classic “get rid of the obstacle”-advice. In business there will always be annoying obstacles. Maybe we need to choose our attitude?

So why are there obstacles in the first place…

You still do not understand the insane memo that makes your job close to impossible? I have experienced workers being frustrated because there is a fundamental lack of knowledge, information and understanding. Your focus is often on your job in specific. You are being told to “register orders in the system” and now you need to find some kind of information that you do not understand why it is needed. It makes your task about 30 seconds longer to complete, resulting in you handling 20 % less during your day. Could it be that somebody is working on what you input? Is their day effected by this change? Is their work load reduced with 40 seconds? If so it makes sense. Is the delivery pace to customers improved? Take a helicopter view at your organization, and see all the processes as a whole. From a new customer to the first delivered product, how many people are involved in this process? Could your job affect others in this chain?

You might get a better understanding by climbing into the helicopter for a top down view of the entire company.

Dealing with frustration

You can choose your response to an event. It is your choice to be frustrated or not, if you master this way of thinking, you’ll be provided with a great weapon against irrational thinking. But I must admit that it is close to impossible to control your own feelings at any given time. Sometimes you would rather throw your computer out the window, and that can be understandable. So what do you do when frustration strikes? It might be hard to recognize and act accordingly as it is your emotional center that is in control of you. But make sure, not to answer emails and avoid your boss. If you have some kind of music device, plug it into your ears and go for a 10 minute walk outdoors. When you calm down do this:

1. Ask yourself why you got frustrated? Can you identify the real source?
2. Can you do anything to prevent this from happening in the future?
3. Who needs to be involved to remove the source?
4. Who else is being frustrated?
5. Could some kind of improvement affect other people as well?
6. Will a potential change make things better?
7. Is this something that management should be involved in?

Frustration is an energy demanding reaction and it should be systematic analyzed to remove sources.

Leading frustrated employees

Remember that frustration is a reaction? It is a response to something. What can you as a leader do to reduce frustration amongst your staff? Knowledge is essential, make sure to involve people and share knowledge. Is there anything you can do to remove the source? Acknowledge that there is a real reason for frustration, identify why and see what you can do about it. By just talking to the employees and maybe even explain why you can’t do something might be helpful. Help employees to see the big picture of your business it might help them to understand your thoughts.

This is the circle of involvement, if you try to follow this way of working you might be able to reduce stress and frustration among your employees and be proactive.

I hope you enjoy my blog and feel free to subscribe. Thank you so much for reading, you rock!

Motivational Gardener

Getting the first spark is easy, follow through and actually reaching your goal without failing is the hard part. It is like starting an engine on a cold winter morning, it might take a couple of tries before you get started, and still you need to endure the distance and be persistent. So what do you do to keep your engine running? In this blog post I am going to talk about sticking with the plan.

Achievement goals and Learning goals

Let’s say that you are a salesman and you need to get 12 sales each day. It is easy to do the math and set the goal to 60 for a week. This is called an achievement goal. Now let us examine a learning goal: I am going to continually improve my selling skills. Is this limited to 12 sales each day? No? Is it possible to fail? Maybe, if you are really crap and become worse as time goes by, but as all learning humans we tend to evolve.

A learning goal is a commitment to become better

So how do you become a better salesperson? By learning from those that are better, by improving your skills, by reading some books, by talking courses, by practice and devotion. I have been on a five year long conscious journey to become the best possible leader. I have just ordered six new books on customer service, leadership and motivation. I am on a healthy diet and exercise plan to lose weight, because fat people are according to research losing out to thin people, because we are judged as lazy. There is strong evidence that obese job applicants face weight bias in job evaluations and hiring decisions. I thought the world was less superficial, but I just need to face the facts. So I have lost 15.4 lbs (7kg) in four weeks. I have not been this thin for about 7-8 years. Why am I talking about my diet? It is a part of a learning process, what does it take to reach my full potential? Diet is one of the elements I need to consider, because I cannot let a first impression cheat me of an opportunity. I am committed to becoming better and this is one step on the way, I am committed and it gives me a lot of motivation.

Let’s break it down

There are a lot of myths about motivation and working with goals.

• Don’t set your goals to high
  
• Set yourself big goals, so you got something to reach for
  
• Don’t tell anybody about your goals, so it don’t hurt when you fail
  
• Tell everybody so you feel pressured to continue
  

As you see there are a lot of contradictions when you work with motivation. I like to look at goals as directions, not a place with a finish line. So my first advice is:

• Find yourself a learning goal
  Walt Disney wants to make people happy. If he at first made two people happy, he would still be making people happy, if he limited himself to 5000 people happy it wouldn’t become a worldwide establishment.

As soon as you have your learning goal, you need to break it down to bits. I read books and I exercise and eat healthy. To successfully make my so far 27 days of diet into 2700 days of a healthy lifestyle I need to track everything, I am weighing myself each day, I am measuring my waist once each day. I am writing it down on a white board each day. I am drawing a plan for the next few weeks. I am analyzing the numbers to spot progress, because progress is a strong motivational factor for me. I might not see it from day to day, but as I am calculating average per week I see progress. This works for me. People tell me, you can’t do that every day, you will lose motivation as you stall. I don’t care; I need to do it my way. I have not set a final destination, but I am chasing progress all the time.

So for my second advice:

• Do whatever works for you, not what other people tell you to.If you need to plan, if you need to keep score, if you need to wing it, whatever you feel comfortable with, do it.

A learning goal can be a life long journey. Henry Ford once said: “Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” and I agree. This brings me closer to my third advice; analyze your progress, are you moving forward? Are you stalling? Are you moving backwards? This is actually a way for you to draw new directions, eliminate obstacles.

My third advice is:

• Find out what is stopping you and find solutions
  “Obstacles are things a person see when he takes his eyes off his goal.” – Cossman

Finding a solution to a problem is learning. But still you could fall out of flow and into your old ways. What do you need to do to stay motivated over time? After all I have been dieting for 27 days so far. No great achievement by itself, but I am trying to change my lifestyle, this means a permanent change, not for a set period of time, but for the rest of my life. Hopefully for about 15-16000 days into the future. This is where your inner drive, your why and your values are important. Why do you want this learning goal? Is your goals aligned with your values? I want to teach about motivation, how can I teach you about motivation if I cannot succeed myself? I have no goals of running New York Marathon. But I hope I can keep improving my health. I want to become the best leader possible. I am falling in love with motivational theory, and being able to inspire other is giving me a lot of energy. I want to make other people better. So my goals are aligned with my values of knowledge and sharing. I need to remember why I am doing what I am doing.

This brings me to my next advice: Lockdown.

• Lock yourself to your current results
  

This means that you shall not cross this line ever again. I have managed to become 88 kg (194 lbs). I am never going to weigh more ever again. I need to take action if I am getting close to this limit. This means I can enjoy a juicy burger, fries and a chocolate milkshake, but be on the healthy wagon as soon as I am getting near my locked goal. My next lock will be on 85 kg. As a seller you might lock yourself to 10 sales each day. You might have slow days, but then you need to find out what to do to prevent slow days. Now you will know what actions to take if this ever happens again. You learn to avoid fall backs and you will learn how to get on track fast.

Still it might be hard to succeed, what do you do to keep motivated over time? I need to quote Mark Twain to finish this blog post:

“If He Tom Sawyer had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do and Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.” – In other words make it fun.

I hope you enjoy my blog and feel free to subscribe. Thank you so much for reading, you rock!

Motivational Gardener