Over the years, thousands of people have been asked, what are you thinking about most of the time?
Their answers tend to be the same worldwide. Successful people think about what they want and how to get it. As a result of this mental focus, they accomplish much more than the average person, even though they may have started with no particular advantages.
Unsuccessful people, on the other hand, tend to think and talk about what they don’t want. They talk about who they are mad at and who is to blame for their lack of progress and fulfillment.
Winners know winning starts with discipline in how they think.
Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania organized interviews with more than 350,000 men and women over a twenty year period to find out how they thought most of the time. He summarized his findings in his best-selling book, Learned Optimism.
What Seligman found was that the predominant quality of successful people is optimism. Successful people – winners – in life and in leadership are far more optimistic than the average person. They have a positive mental attitude toward themselves, their situation, and others.
Seligman discovered that your level of optimism is the very best predictor of how happy, health, wealthy, and long you live you will be.
Becoming determined to be a more optimistic person and leader in every part of your life will do more to ensure your success and happiness than any single quality you can develop.
Seven Ways to Think Like a Winner
- Think about your future. I recently updated my four-page life-vision plan in my journal. Write your story!
- Think about your goals. Only 3-5% of people write their goals down. Goals focus you on the positive results you want to achieve.
- Think about excellence. It will lift your self-concept and your personal pride.
- Think about results. In business, health, and relationships review your victories.
- Think about solutions. Take my challenge today and pivot toward a solution.
- Think about building, not maintaining. What is your best possible life? Build your health your home, and your business.
- Think about dreams. Places to travel, people to meet, passions to experience, and purposes to be realized.
Here is to thinking like a winner!
-Steve Gutzler
Image credit: performancemarketingdemystified.com
Let’s take Emotional Intelligence out of the laboratory and drive it into your leadership. I would like to offer 15 ways to shine with Emotional Intelligence. When you use these methods, you will connect more strongly with your team and the result will be higher levels of performance that have a lasting longevity.
- Use handwritten notes to show how much you appreciate a team members contribution or ideas.
- Practice regular apologies.
- Feel comfortable with asking for help. Your team will feel valued.
- Find out about those you work with; discover their passions.
- Greet members of your team with a smile.
- Know the names of the children of those you work with and often ask how they are.
- Spend time asking each team member what they enjoy and excel at in their job.
- Spend time with your colleagues to help them find their way.
- Actively promote talented members of your team and speak to them as leaders.
- Ask colleagues and team members for feedback.
- Catch people “doing it right” and bring attention to it.
- Give team members a car wash certificate (my personal favorite!).
- Give team members a personal development book with a handwritten message in the front of the book.
- If a spouse of family member is ill, send your team member home early and guilt free!
- Every Friday, tell a different team member what a privilege it is to work with them.
Remember: Leaders with strong Emotional Intelligence skills know how powerful the emotion of feeling valued is. And they show it with words and deeds.
Here’s to building better leaders with Emotional Intelligence!
-Steve Gutzler
Image Credit: athleteassesments.com
There is a story of a World War II expedition of six planes launched from a Navy Aircraft carrier. They dropped their payloads, and under the cloak of night began to make their way back. Radioing the ship, they called for increased lighting on the ship tossing in the rough seas so they could find their approach to the deck. The call came back that the carrier would be maintaining a complete black of due to heavy surveillance by enemy planes.
The pilots called back, asking again for lights. Without them, they would be unable to find the dark ship against the pitch black ocean. The radio operator again refused their pleas.
“Then just one light” the lead pilot begged, “Just one light on the bow, and we will take our chances!”
“We are only following orders,” the operator radioed back, “I’m sorry, really sorry.” The ship tower’s communication lines went dead. All six planes were lost.
What’s Your One Light for Leadership?
I am witnessing a lot of leaders struggling to maintain altitude. The pressure of finances, home life, and sustaining your health can be truly rough seas.
I have recently pulled back in some of my activities that were snuffing out my light. In order to maintain a vibrant vision, an attractive attitude, and an uncommon enthusiasm, I must keep my light bright.
It all begins for me at around 5 AM when I go to my solitude sanctuary, my sacred enclosure. Nothing is more important to me than that “light-filling” time. Every leader is uniquely different. Find your own space, morning, midday, or evening, and refuel your light. E
I am always saddened when leaders fall, fail or burn out. I never rejoice. Never. On the other hand, when I hear of leaders fighting to maintain their light, I rejoice. Always. I want you to succeed and to succeed you need to refuel. You need to ensure that whatever it is that keeps you motivated and working remains fully in your vision. You will make it home safe and sound each day when you see the light. Can you take a few moments to rediscover your light and give thanks? Remember, this vision, this goal, allows you the privilege to keep leading.
Be thankful for your leadership!
“My personal leadership Light precedes my greatest achievements”
-Steve Gutzler.
