The Power of Strategy-Story-State

If you are looking for a great financial book that make learning how to manage and take control of your financial future then Money Master the Game is the book for you.  In the past I have struggled making it through most financial books on investment but in this book he makes the concepts easy to understand and puts it in a logical order that is easy to follow. Now be prepared it is over 600 pages long so it takes a while to get through but isn't your financial freedom worth that? He designed it so you could read a chapter a day and get through it in 6 weeks.  It has really jump started me into taking control of my financial future.  This book has helped teach me how to better plan in the now so that my money works for me instead of me having to work for my money.  That is right up this frugal girls wheelhouse!

Even though the book is financial based he also goes into great detail about his teachings of the Power of Strategy-Story-State that I would like to share with you today.

The premise is quite simple, if you want to change your life you have to change your strategy. You have to change your story and you have to change your state.

Strategy is having a plan for action.  The best way to develop your strategy is to find the best people with long term results and learn from them.  Study what has made them successful and model that behavior.  Learning from those that have been there will save you time and hopefully you can avoid some of the struggles they had to endure by listening to their advice.  Really listen and learn from their experiences.

Everyone has a story.  Is your story empowering you or disempowering you?  It is not conditions but decisions that determine our lives. Our stories control our emotions and our emotions drive all of our behaviors and actions.  Disappointment can drive us, or it can defeat us.  Let your disappointment drive you to find new answers and discipline your disappointment. Most of us know what we need to do, want to do, have the right strategy but we don't take action because we lack the drive or emotions to get us started.   You get to decide, you can use your story or your story can use you. Which story are you telling yourself? You want the story of empowerment. Those are the people who make change happen and get things done.  They grow, learn, and take strategy and attach a new story of "I can and I will."

State refers to your mental and emotional states. These are what color your perceptions and experiences in life.  You can change your state of mind by changing your physiology. I shared with you an example of this in my blog post Power Poses . Tony changes his physiological state each morning by taking a cold shower or a dip into his 57 degree pool to shake up his state of mind and get "primed" for the day.

When you change your state and your story, you will find or create the right strategy to get what your are committed to and focused on.  Put yourself in a strong, determined, and empowered state and this will breed the beliefs and stories that you can, must, and will achieve. Stop tolerating excuses within yourself, limiting beliefs of the past, or fearful states. Use your body as a tool to snap yourself into a place of sheer will, determination, and commitment. An ice bath might just be the answer!

Are you looking to make a breakthrough in your life? A breakthrough is a moment in time when you finally decide to take action. Everything changes in a moment. It is when you finally make a decision and act upon it.  Maybe it is seeing a family picture and you decide you have to lose weight. When did you have your last breakthrough moment?

To create a breakthrough you need a new state with a new story and a proven strategy.
When you change your story (your belief) you will change your life. He preaches to divorce the story of limitation and marry the story of truth and everything changes. Get rid of your limiting stories and take massive action to find strategies that work.  Massive action is the cure to all fear.  Emotion is created by motion.

What has helped me in my own personal development has been to focus on what I want to become.  I I do not settle for just TO DO goals but also create and set TO BE goals.  The best investment you can make is to invest in yourself. Invest in yourself to become the best version of you, that you can be. Robbins preaches, "Work harder on yourself than you do on your job. " If you want to be great you must learn how to serve many. How can you add value to others lives? Make sure you are learning new skills.  You are the master of your own destiny.  Take the reins and design the life you want.  My three values that drive me are to Teach, Lead and Mentor others.

"Learn from every failure, act on those learnings and success becomes inevitable."

Emotions determine Destiny

They say the best way to learn is to study the best.  Over the past year I have listened to several of Tony Robbins speeches, interviews, and I am currently reading his most recent book Money: Master the Game.  What he does better than most is really make you dig deep into your personal motivations, drive, and understanding how your emotions lead to action.

He encourages you to explore your needs, beliefs, and emotions that are controlling you.
He helps you reach your full potential and understand what is preventing you from fulfillment and success.  He believes we all have the ability to make a positive impact and it is up to us to overcome our fears to reach that potential.

Spend 20 minutes & find out for yourself by listening to his 2006 TED talk, "Why We Do What We Do."



Here are a few of my takeaways from his TED talk.

Start with your Why.
Why power connects your dreams and values. Your Why has to be motivating. It's not will power that matters it's why power. Your why is the fuel of your passion.

Discover your Inner Drive.
What is your motivation for action?

What excites and inspires you?

What is your emotional force of life?
Internal drive is what activates you. Emotions is what leads you to action.

Understand that DECISION IS THE ULTIMATE POWER.

Change your mindset. Most people blame failure on a lack of resources. Instead learn to become RESOURCEFUL. YOU have the power of decision to change.  Decisions are what shape your destiny.  Decide what you are going to focus on and give meaning to that focus.  That meaning is what is going to produce emotion which will lead to your actions!

My next post I will talk in great detail about his Power of Strategy, Story and State. If you are looking for a breakthrough then don't miss it!

Influence and Gratitude

I had a great visit this week with one of my former youth soccer coaches and his wife. Last spring I spent a great deal of time reflecting on why I coach and one of the reasons is because I had great coaches growing up that really had an impact on me as both an athlete and a person.  

I spent a morning writing personal notes of thanks to several of my youth coaches who had really made a difference in my life. I wanted to thank them for their time and effort and to let them know that I was grateful to have had them in my life and how they were still influencing me as a coach. It was so great to reconnect and hear from them all.  The responses I got were so uplifting to me and I wish I had reached out sooner to thank them.  It has been great exchanging notes, emails and even this week had a great in person visit. Coach Keagle and his wife Kathy went out of there way on their travels out West to swing by Denton.  What an amazing gesture and what a wonderful time I had catching up with them after 20 plus years!  Kathy told me when John got the letter he said to her, this makes sacrificing all those weekends and spending time in the sun worth it.

What their visit has reminded me is to all of us out there who coach we truly have a big responsibility.  Besides my family the coaches and teachers I have had were my role models.

Coaches and teachers truly impact lives and hopefully as a coach/teacher you are impacting in a positive way.  Trust me, you are having influence on young lives. How you coach/teach them is what they are going to pass on.  People tend to teach/lead how they were taught. Make your legacy one you want to be passed on.  

I am so grateful that I had such positive, high character coaches who saw the best in me when I could not see it myself.  They motivated me to be the best I could be. They saw the best in me.  The respect they showed me made me work hard so that I would not disappoint them.  Even now I coach to make those who have invested in me proud of the person I have become. Their time and dedication has stayed with me. I hope I am instilling the same work ethic, kindness, discipline, sportsmanship, and integrity on to the next generation.

Please learn from me. Do not waste time reaching out to those coaches and teachers who have made a difference in your life. Trust me, you will not regret it.

Creating Your Goals

Today I wanted to share with you a great article, The Art of Setting Goals,  from the January 2015 issue of Success magazine by Shelley Levitt.  She has a lot of great book references and systems to help you set your goals. You can read the entire article at

http://www.success.com/article/master-the-art-of-setting-goals-in-4-steps

I have found that most people say they have goals but do not have them written down.  Every year I take time to sit down and write down my goals for the year and then I post them in my house where I can see them everyday.  I also put together a project list of things I want to accomplish to help me achieve my goals.  The written list helps keep me on task and reminds me to think about what I want to accomplish in the short and long term.

If you have struggled creating your goal list here are some ideas to get you started thinking.

The 4 step WOOP method from Ph. D. Gabriele Oettinge, from Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation.

1. WISH: Spend 15-20 minutes of quiet time to identify a challenging wish.
2. OUTCOME: Imagine the great things that would happen or how you would feel if you made this wish a reality.
3. OBSTACLES: What are the possible challenges of making this wish come true? Think about both external and internal obstacles like what behaviors may need to change?
4. PLAN: Name one action you can take to overcome the obstacle.

How to set HARD goals by author Mark Murphy's Hard Goals: The Secret of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be.  He starts by explaining that if your goal is powerful enough, implementation won't be such a problem. In nearly all cases where greatness is achieved, it's the goal that drives the motivation and discipline-not the other way around.  HARD goals are:

HEARTFELT: you need to feel a deep-seated attachment to the goal.
ANIMATED: The goal has to be vividly alive to you.
REQUIRED: You are so convinced of the absolute necessity of the future payoff of your goal that you are able to overcome procrastination.
DIFFICULT: The goal has to hit your sweet spot of challenge, positioning you to push past your comfort zone into extraordinary performance.

Create your goal list, write it down and post it where you can see it everyday!

The Seahawks Mental Edge

After 16 years of coaching there is one thing I am sure of and that is there are many different methods to coaching. I wanted to share with you today a great article about Pete Carroll's "relationship-based coaching."    He believes that it is critical that everyone feels valued and can communicate effectively so the Seattle Seahawks have a sports  psychologist around in practice and on game day because it helps build relationships and gives players and staff an outlet. They believe that in Seattle that their success/outcomes have been a by product of their approach.

Read the full article by Matthew Futterman in the Wall Street Journal at http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB21585079730968673336604580422300739375676#

I can tell you personally that this year we have had a sports psychologist work with our staff and team and it has been a tremendous asset.  Athletes want someone to talk to about their anxieties.  As a coach it has been great to bounce ideas and receive feedback to see if I am taking the best approach to motivate/reach/inspire our players.  That feedback from a third party has been invaluable to my development as a coach and as a person.

How to Help Develop Maturity

Sorry for the long delay in posting but I plan on getting back to at least posting every Thursday during season and hope to get back to posting three times a week after season.  I have been accumulating some great content over the past few months.

Today,  I would like to share with you a book recommendation and a great article.  As leaders, teachers, parents and coaches I think it is fair to say that this generation is growing up in a way different environment then we did.  With that being said, how do we as the adults in their lives help them navigate their way to adulthood with the skills to become successful adults?  First, we have to understand the times they are living in. Secondly, how can we help them become mature adults.

A great resource is Dr. Tim Elmore's Artificial Maturity: Helping Kids Meet the Challenge of Becoming Authentic Adults and here are a few insights from his book:

• Kids think they know a lot but it's virtual because they have experienced so little. They are overexposed to data but under-exposed to real life experiences.
• Kids assume they have experiential knowledge when they only have informational knowledge and with this abundance of knowledge, their confidence soars but it is based on a virtual foundation.
• The overload of information is causing kids to think they are mature. It is fostering over confidence and arrogance. It is also creating low self-awareness.  Self-awareness is what is developed through real-life experience.
• Adolescence want independence but not the responsibility.

Today's kids no longer know the experience of innocence, exploration, and imagination that most of us adults recall from our childhood.  Parents have become so focused on safety that it has prevented children from taking calculated risks and learning to fail, both of which help to mature.
Kids are failing to learn how to resolve conflict, think for themselves, or  do real life problem solving.

How can you help?

• Know they are confident on the outside but anxious on the inside. Create real life experiences.
• Provide autonomy and responsibility simultaneously.
• Provide information and accountability simultaneously.
• Provide experiences to accompany their technology-savvy lifestyles.
• Provide community service opportunities to balance their self-service time.

Another great article I found in Southwest magazine, In Criticism of Praise by Heidi Stevens discusses how to tackles the issue of how too much praise by parents has left a generation of kids with no resilience to deal with failure.  Click here to read the full article. Here are some great take aways from the article which references several resources and professional points of view:

• Failure can motivate kids to brush up on skills and tackle problem from a different approach. And, perhaps most importantly, it can build their resilience.
• When we praise children for their intelligence, we tell them that this is the name of the game: look smart, don't risk making mistakes says, Carol Dweck, Stanford University psychology professor.
• We also harm their long-term performance. Because when they do take a risk and inevitably stumble, kids fed a steady diet of praise rarely receive failure as an invitation to try, try again.

Again, we ask how did we get here?  We know technology has changed the game but so has parenting.  In the early 70's the Self-Esteem movement of parenting began. In a Columbia University study of American parents, 85% said it was important to praise their children's intelligence in order for kids to feel smart. Dweck concluded from her study that the self-esteem movement changed people's intuition, their common sense.

We have created a generation that expects to be rewarded for just showing up.  We need to challenge them more and give them more credit and realize they will rise up to the standards we set. Kids are used to going into different environments and figuring out what's valued, how to succeed, and what's going to be praised. What we need to be aware of is that our constant praise is not cultivating self-esteem or resilience.

Help by Calibrating the FREQUENCY and STYLE of our praise.

• "When kids are so focused on the outcome and see mistakes not as something they can learn from and overcome but as something to be defeated by, it contributes to more anxiety and worry. A mistake or a failure becomes something I AM, not something I can change.  'I'm so stupid. I'm so dumb. I'm no good at soccer.'" says author Kristin Race Mindful Parenting: Simple and powerful solutions for raising creative, engaged, happy kids in todays hectic world.

• Recognize that the way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice recommends Peggy O' Mara the editor and publisher of Mothering Magazine. Research is clear that RESILIENCE is equally important as that inner voice-if not more. And if our overwhelming praise is stripping them of the power to hop up and try again, then we're helping neither their competence nor their contentedness.

• We all want our kids to be safe but we need to realize is that if we weave a protective cocoon of hyperbole to shield them from harsh realities of the world, they'll emerge too weak and ill-equipped to bounce back from the inevitable obstacles.

• Understand that Praise fits into two categories; process-oriented and outcome-oriented. 
• Process focuses on effort, persistence, and resourcefulness.  When kids are praised for hard work they want to keep engaging in experiences.  They see that the process, not just the outcome, provides value.
• Outcome-oriented praise emphasizes the place they arrived rather than the effort exerted to get there. It becomes problematic when challenges arise, which kids perceive not as opportunities but as threats to the greatness their known to exhibit. If they attempt things they might fail and then everyone will have been wrong states Kristin Race.

• Be specific in your praise. Let them know exactly what they did right rather than general comments like "good job." That will go a long way according to Kristin Race.

• Make sure your praise is genuine. Kids know when you are insincere. What they truly desire and need is your mindful engagement and attention.

• Validate your childs area of interest and help them become their authentic self. This will help give them an internal security and may take edge off the inevitable setbacks and failures they will face.  Let them know you love them and your love is separate from their performance.  Connecting affection to achievement also turns love into a reward rather than a given, from author Ashley Merryman, NutureShock

I hope you find these resources as interesting, informational and influential as I did.  As a leader of young adults I think it is our responsibility to help them navigate through this information age and help them grow and mature to be responsible and successful adults that can contribute and give back.

10 Commandments of Good Human Relations

A great reminder for us all on how to treat others.

1. Speak to people. There is nothing as nice as a cheerful word or greeting.

2. Smile at people. It takes 72 muscles to frown, only 14 to smile.

3. Call people by name. The sweetest music to anyone's ears is the sound of their own name.

4. Be friendly and helpful. If you would have friends, be friendly.

5. Be cordial. Speak and act as if everything you do is a genuine pleasure.

6. Be genuinely interested in all people. You can like almost everybody...if you try.

7. Be generous with praise and cautious with criticism.

8. Be considerate with the feelings of others.  It will be appreciated.

9. Be thoughtful of the opinions of others.  There are usually three sides to a controversy: yours, the other persons and the right one.

10. Be alert to give service. What counts most in life is what we do for others.

Add to this a great sense of humor, a big dose of patience, and dash of humility and you will be rewarded many-fold.

-Robert G. Lee