A Commitment to Personal Development

“Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle!”

Anonymous

“The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up

confidence as it goes along.”

Anonymous

To be competitive in the foreseeable future I must learn from others successes as well as their mistakes and what was learned from those disappointments. If they can do it, I can do it. The biggest mistake I can make is that of underestimating my own potential.

Ambition, achievement and high morale are inseparable. To that end, I now focus intensely on the following five-point commitment.

I. If I’m not as good as I can be in my chosen profession, then what’s my plan for improving – short of making the same mistakes others have made in order to learn?

II. I have been feeding my mind on a daily basis but the piercing question is of what has that diet consisted? From this point forward I refuse to cheat my mind by the quantity or quality of nourishment I feed it. Whatever adds to my personal effectiveness, regardless of cost, is worth the price.

III. I will develop a keen awareness for stagnated personal development. My one stinging motion through this life changing process will be that if I’m not growing, I am planting the seeds for some future failure. I will build a personal environment that fosters rising ambition. My life will slant upward.

IV. As my time on earth decreases in twenty-four hour segments, my commitment to the development of personal potential must increase on a daily basis. Therefore each succeeding day becomes more exciting than the previous day. I now make it a life principle to never delay the remedy for anything that is holding me back.

V. I must now develop the skills to make the best use of my God-given talents.
That process takes courage. I am now ready.

Danny Cox

24 Lessons in High Performance Leadership

Lesson Sixteen
Overcome Roadblocks to Goal Achievement

I once had a salesperson that was the most frustrating person that ever worked for me. I saw potential in him that he himself, refused to see because of a self-imposed barrier. He made $4,000 on straight commission, almost to the penny, every month. One month, I did everything but move in with him. I big-brothered him to death. He couldn't go to the men's room without me standing guard at the door. I'm proud to say that, in that one month, he nearly doubled his productivity. He made almost $8,000! The following month he made zero dollars. The month after that he made $4,000.

I had forgotten that his breakthrough had to be on his terms, not mine. When we dug deeper, he confessed that he had never had any more money in the bank than his father did when he was growing up. His self-imposed barrier stopped him just short of ever earning more than his father. Once he realized that he was setting the same standard for his children, he broke through his roadblock––and he was still pushing his envelope at last report.

The following roadblocks might be impeding your progress and you may not be fully aware of them:

• Team members fear success: Many people are much more familiar with mediocrity than they are with success and therefore lack the drive to pursue goals. Fear of success is natural if you have little experience with it.

• Team members don’t understand the goals or they seem unattainable: If so, examine how you’ve presented the goals. Did you take the time to think through, from their point of view, their possible reactions to these new goals? Did you break the goals down into doable segments for each person? How clearly did you communicate?

• The effort doesn’t appear to have adequate rewards: When rewards don’t seem forthcoming or consistent with the level of effort required, it’s time for the leader to start selling to the team. Actually, the time for selling is when the goals are being established.

• The procedures for achieving the goals are too rigid: Flexibility is one sign of a confident and creative leader. Too many people impose rigid structure on their organizations because they lack basic confidence in their own abilities and the abilities of their team members. Focusing on results instead of methods will open the door for your people to contribute more of their own originality.

Try these techniques to get your people on the road to achieving goals:

Include the whole team in the goal attainment picture: Make everybody part of your success story from the beginning.

Break down goals into manageable, doable increments: Goals that intimidate can become obstacles. Map out the long journeys as a series of small steps.

Frame the goals so that the rewards are clear: If you can’t sell them on the benefits for then, you’ll probably have to push them all the way.

"Goals are all found upstream."