Your WHAT is busted?!

In addition to being the Architect of Wow!, I also like to consider myself as a Give-A-Damn repairman (totally different from the Maytag repairman by the way...). I realize that's blunt and somewhat crass, but to be honest too many peoples' Give-A-Damn be broke!

Well actually that's not totally true. Their Give-A-Damn is working at 50% of it's capacity - but it's the wrong 50%. It's only functioning toward what they want, not for what anyone else wants.

Harry Beckwith wrote a really good book entitled: What Clients Love. In that book he made an interesting distinction between vision and mission. He said that your vision is selfish. It's what you want to accomplish for yourself. Not a bad thing of course, but it's not all about you...

Your mission, on the other hand, pertains to the broader societal impact you want to have. Your legacy, your contribution, the demonstration of your selflessness.

In other words, your Give-A-Damn only works at 100% capacity when you have both your vision AND your mission in place.

By all means, you need to know what you're personal aspirations are.  But that doesn't mean you can forgo helping others get what they aspire as well.

(Although ironically, once you focus your Give-A-Damn on helping others achieve their visions, yours seems to manifest all on its own.)

Take a long, hard look at your Give-A-Damn - does it need an overhaul?

I'll be honest...

I frequently flip-flop between these two extremes:

1. Total and complete resolve to carry out my vision, and
2. Publicly renouncing my adulthood and all associated responsibilities, then digging a tunnel underneath my house just big enough to accommodate me in a fetal position where I will stay until I get hungry enough to come out- so probably a solid 30 minutes or so...

I'm 33 years old at the time of writing this. And honestly I feel like I'm clear enough on the simple fact that I don't want a mediocre life. I want to play a bigger game. I want to create an identity and brand and all the requisite skills sets to help business owners, entrepreneurs, and the rest of humanity (hopefully) be more, do more and have more.

I want to inject "Wow!" into my surroundings. I want to create new economies, new wealth, and new ways of doing business by teaching an amazing philosophy that promotes focusing on the client more than the dollar.

I want to change how people think. I want to impact the philosophies of people that hold them back from jumping off the high dive of life. For instance, I know you wanna jump off. You're just scared. You know it's really no fun hanging out in the shallow end with your silly water wings strapped to your skinny little arms but that's where everyone else is. It's safe there.

You just can't seem to march yourself up and out, climb that 10-foot ladder and take a flying leap into the crystal clear water of the deep end.

What if you fail?!
What if you drown?!
What if you have to get fished out by the lifeguard?! Oh the horror.

I'm taking that leap on a daily basis and sometimes I belly-flop. A lot.

Coincidentally those seem to be the days where my adulthood gets renounced and the fetal position commences.

But other days, ahhhh, other days. On those days I slice through the water cleanly and neatly. It just works.

Those are the days that I'm thrilled that I took the first step up that ladder that seemed to stretch into the wild blue yonder. I'm trying to have more of those days.

Oh, and sidenote, someone just peed in the shallow end so I'd hurry up and get in the deep end if I were you.

Willing to will

I've been thinking a lot lately about this line in As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. The line is this:

"We will be what we will to be."

Powerful! I'm constantly asking myself now, "what am I willing to be?"

Would future Jason look back on present Jason and be satisfied with how I was creating him to be?

With that in mind, here are some of the things I will to be:

I will to be proactive
I will to be passionate
I will to be a great communicator
I will to be a man of vision
I will to be a man of wisdom
I will to be a man of action
I will to be a man of character
I will to be a leader
I will to be a man of "Wow!"

What are you willing to be today?

Clarity: The scalpel of Focus

I'm currently taking a client of mine through the process of creating a business plan.

You bored yet?

Don't be, you can use this whoever you are I promise.

I'm assuming that if you're reading this blog post you didn't just pop out of the womb today. It's probably safe to say that you've been "doing" life for a while.

Well just like you, this client of mine didn't just start their business today. They've been in business for a while. But they've lacked the clarity that they really needed to be effective.

Sometimes in life, or business, it's time to say "Giddy-up!" Other times it's better to say "WHOA, Horsey, WHOA!" Well for this client we had to tug on those reins and slow down a bit.

And in doing so we gave ourselves the permission to go back to the drawing board and ask, "What are we doing and why are we doing it?"

When was the last time you asked yourself this?

One of my blog readers, Kevin (thanks Kev!), gave me a great quote which some of you may have heard: "Insanity is doing the same over and over but expecting to get different results."

Yikes.

Been feeling insane lately? Been spinning your wheels without gaining any traction?

If so, then feel free to do what I've been helping my clients do. Define your values and vision. They did and they immediately closed the doors of one of their businesses. It didn't fit into their vision even though they were poised to take immediate action in that business. They suddenly had the power to say No. 

Today we created goals and objectives, and later this week we'll move onto strategies, actions and plans. We start big and in the future and move progressively down to creating very solid, specific tasks that we can do today.

We gain focus when we become clear. We give ourselves the right, the permission, and the authority to start cutting away the things that don't belong in our lives out of ruthless necessity.

Try picking up your scalpel and seeing what you can do with it. Let me know how you do and also let me know if I can help!