Lawrence Fine

People typically want to stay inside of their comfort zone. They don’t want to do something that might cause them uncomfort or embarrassment. Because of this, they only do what they feel they can do well and never stretch themselves to do something outside of their comfort zone.

The problem with staying inside of your comfort zone is you will never know what you can actually accomplish if you never take the chance and try something different.

Stretching yourself doesn’t mean doing something where you are destined to fail. Rather, it simply means doing something that might make you a more complete person.

An example of a ways to stretch yourself without embarrassing yourself is if you are uncomfortable with public speaking, instead of avoiding it at all costs, join Toastmasters (http://www.toastmasters.org/) and start by speaking in front of the small group and slowly build up to larger groups.

If you are afraid to go to a yoga class because of fear of embarrassing yourself in front of people you know, find a class where you don’t know anyone and start there.

There is nothing wrong with stretching yourself in small increments and most likely, it’s something that will be easier than going for a huge stretch right away.

Start slow, take a chance and stretch yourself and see how much more you are capable of doing

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Have a great day!

Lawrence

Tags: Leadership, Management, Motivation, Uncategorized by Lawrence Fine
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When we stop learning we stop living. That might seem like a pretty extreme statement but it’s reality. Living to me consists of experiencing new things, taking chances and growing as a person.

If we aren’t constantly growing as people we will stagnate and when you stop growing you start withering away.

The reason it’s frustrating to see people who stop learning is there are so many ways to learn. The obvious one would be formal education but there are so many other options as well.

Read a book
Join a book club
Watch documentaries
Attend (and listen to) a speech
Go to a conference
Attend a seminar
Join a discussion group
Read Online

Those are just a a few ideas off the top of my head.

Whether you participate in some type of formal or informal education, make a point to learn something new every day.

Keep learning and keep living

If you find this post helpful, please share with others and encourage them to subscribe at http://lawrencefine.com/blog/subscribe/

Have a great day!

Lawrence

Tags: Leadership, Management, Motivation, Uncategorized by Lawrence Fine
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Parkinson’s Law says work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. This means if you have 8 hours to write a report, the report will take you 8 hours. If you have 16 hours for the same report, you will use all 16 hours. It’s not a case of the 16 hour report being higher quality or better longer but rather, people take as much time as they are given to accomplish a task.

This is a valuable concept to keep in mind when doing goal setting because it usually means you can get more done in the same period of time if you push yourself in your time allotments. Rather than giving yourself a lot of time to get something done, now that you have a better understanding of Parkinson’s Law, you will realize you can frequently get the same amount done in a shorter period of time.

It’s important to understand there is a limit to how tightly you can schedule things. If you schedule too little time for a project, the quality will suffer. If you schedule too much time, Parkinson’s Law will result in waste of time.

Scheduling requires a great deal of testing to do it well but please realize, those who are good at it (usually the result of a lot of testing and practice) can get a great deal more accomplished than can others.

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Have a great day!

Lawrence

Tags: Leadership, Management, Motivation, Uncategorized by Lawrence Fine
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Be understanding to your enemies.
Be loyal to your friends
Be strong enough to know you cannot do everything alone
Be generous to those who need your help
Be frugal with what you need yourself
Be wise enough to know that you do not know everything
Be foolish enough to believe in miracles
Be willing to share your joys
Be willing to share the sorrows of others
Be a leader when you see a path others have missed
Be a follower when you are shrouded by the mists of uncertainty
Be the first to congratulate an opponent who succeeds.
Be the last to criticize a colleague who fails
Be sure where you your next step will fall, so that you will not tumble
Be loving to those who love you
Be loving to those who do not love you, and they may change
Above all, be yourself
(Author Unknown)

Have a great day!

Lawrence

Tags: Leadership, Motivation, Uncategorized by Lawrence Fine
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The following was a comment by Joe Nebel posted under the Heroes post at http://lawrencefine.com/blog/2008/05/heroes/ I think the message Joe is making speaks volumes

There are six frogs on a lilly pad…..All six make the decision to jump off the lilly pad into the water.

How many frogs are left on the lilly pad?

The answer….ALL six!

Just making the decision to do something does not mean you take the ACTION to do it. To effectively make a change in your life takes not just interest, which is the convenient thing to do, but instead takes commitment, which is changing your thought process to attain your success.

Have a great day!

Lawrence

Tags: Leadership, Management, Motivation by Lawrence Fine
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People are so afraid to stand out from the crowd that they make it nearly impossible to be outstanding.

There is a saying used at various e commerce companies that “you can’t out Amazon Amazon”. Meaning, because of their size and because of their experience, the likelihood of creating a better online shopping experience than what Amazon.com has already created is not very likely. Yet everyday, people try to do just that.

In women’s college soccer, coaches go and listen to Anson Dorrance(he is the women’s soccer coach at UNC and a former US national team coach and the most successful coach in womens soccer history) speak and watch his clinics and videos and try to do the exact same thing. The thing these people don’t understand is you can’t out Anson Anson. You can learn from what he is doing and adapt it based on your strengths and weaknesses but to think you are going to use the exact same methods that he is using to beat him doesn’t make sense.

An example of a web site that does things differently is www.woot.com. Instead of trying to sell many things, they sell quantities of one product each day. In other words, each day at midnight (central time) they put one item on their web site. That items is available until they run out or until midnight the next day when a new product goes on sale. The description of the products are always amusing (or at least interesting) and everything about this site is different. I’ve heard complaints of their customer service so am certainly not endorsing the site but it’s an excellent example of doing things different than the norm.

The difference between success and failure is frequently the willingness to try different things and to be a bit of a risk taker.

Are you willing to take some chances and stand out from the crowd? Are you willing to be OUTSTANDING?

Have a great day!

Lawrence
PS There is a new tutorial on how to use a FTP (File Transfer Protocol )available for download. You can use a FTP program to transfer large files to a server, upload a web site, install scripts etc. You can see this tutorial (and others) at http://lawrencefine.com/tutorials.html

Tags: Leadership, Management, Motivation, Tutorials by Lawrence Fine
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How often do you see someone going through the motions which makes it very apparent they don’t care what they are doing?

For example, you ask a person at a store where a product is located. Do they point off in the distance and say “Aisle 14” or do they walk with you to aisle 14 and show you exactly where the item is located and then check to see if they can help you with anything else? Does the person who walks with the customer to make sure they know where the product is located necessarily love their job? No. But, it usually means someone in the organization is passionate about what they do and they have transferred some of this to others.

When you speak, do you speak with emotion in your voice or does it sound like you don’t care about the subject? Does your voice say something completely different than your words? When speaking with one person, I tend to speak very softly and in a somewhat monotone voice. However, when I do public speaking (on subjects such as traits for success, leadership and Internet Safety for kids), I am much louder, much more animated and much more inflective. The reason for this is it’s important for people to understand that when I’m speaking on these subjects, it’s not because it’s my job but rather, it’s because it’s something that I care a great deal about. When you speak to a group, do your words say one thing and your voice say something very different? If so, does this create some doubt to these people whether you are talking about something you care about as opposed to something you are supposed to talk about?

When I use the words passion vs profession, I don’t mean to imply it’s an either/or scenario. Ideally, you would be passionate about your work. Even better is to get paid for doing something you care a great deal about.

Keep in mind, when you truly care about what you are doing, it’s quite apparent to all around you. Likewise, when you don’t care about what you are doing, that is also quite apparent to others. Rather than fake the passion, find something you truly enjoy doing and that is the first step toward success.

Going through the motions can sometimes speak louder than any words that are spoken. Do what you are passionate about and that will transfer to those around you.

Have a great day!

Lawrence

Tags: Customer Service, Leadership, Management, Motivation by Lawrence Fine
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It’s extremely important to stay abreast of what is happening with current events, whether related to business, politics, local happenings etc.. There are many sources to do this including your local newspapers (whether paper on online), magazines and other periodicals, news on TV etc (personally, besides reading a few newspapers online each day and going to the library weekly, I use www.news.google.com to see what is happening in various subjects around the world). However, it seems that many people neglect books these days as a way to further their learning.

While most books could be considered “out of date” by the time they are in print, the reality is many of the lessons from the past are still very relevant today. The old adage that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it is so true.

There are some books I have read over the years that I would consider to be useful for all to read. There are many more I could recommend but rather than listing a lot of books that might get skipped over, I would like to start with these three with the hope that some people reading this post might take the time to read some, or all of them.

The first book I would recommend for all is “Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In”. While the subject might give the impression of only being applicable to someone who is involved in business negotiations, the reality is, every one of us is involved in negotiations every day of our lives. Whether it’s negotiating a contract to buy a company, or negotiating a plea bargain with a defendant or negotiating with a loved one about what to cook for dinner, we all negotiate on a daily basis. This book has some great reminders that we don’t need to be thinking in terms of zero sum agreements (which means for one side to win the other side must lose). Instead, in many cases, there are win/win solutions available. I have read this book at least once a year for at least 15 years and strongly recommend it to everyone.

The second book is Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search For Meaning“. This is a must read for many different reasons including learning how if you think things are going poorly for you, things could be worse yet you can survive, thrive and learn from all situations. This book can definitely make a difference in your life!

The third book is “Who Moved My Cheese” by Spencer Johnson. This is an extremely quick read that teaches a great life lesson through a very simple story. I enjoyed the story so much and also found it to be such a powerful way to teach that it was the impetus for me writing the book SoccerAtEase (which can be found at www.socceratease.com). Considering it can be read in an hour or two, Who Moved My Cheese is well worth anyones time to read.

If you have any recommendations for books people should read, you can either send them to me or add them to the comments section of the blog

Have a great day!

Lawrence

Tags: Leadership, Motivation, Uncategorized by Lawrence Fine
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(Author Unknown)
Heroes:

Deal in Transformational change. No one ever became a hero by perpetuating the status quo

Adopt the highest level of values and are committed to these values even in the face of adversity

Overcome a number of substantial obstacles that threaten their ability to create the desired changes

Deal effectively with uncertainty. At most times during the hero’s journey, success is in doubt

Rarely work alone. Achievement of the desired goals usually requires the hero to enlist the assistance of others

Are Values Driven. The hero influences others through the strength of his or her ideas. In most cases, the hero is more driven by a sense of purpose than opportunity

Are persistent even in the face of skepticism

Think differently. They are marked differences in the way the hero thinks and what is considered convention wisdom

Create a different sense of order. Challenging the present system in order to create a system that is consistent with the hero’s purpose is central to the hero’s actions

Are internally driven and seem relatively unaffected by external rewards, threats or punishments

Are you a hero?

Lawrence

Tags: Motivation, Uncategorized by Lawrence Fine
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“If you stop today because the pain gets to be too much, tomorrow you will stop a little earlier and the next day you will make no effort at all.” (author unknown)

How many times were you on the verge of a breakthrough when you stopped just short of the end? The answer to that question is, you will never know. The difference between success and failure is frequently simply the willingness to go one more step

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.“ (Thomas Edison)

How many people are willing to find the 10,000 ways that don’t work in order to find the one way that does work?

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. “ (Dale Carnegie)

What opportunities have you lost because you weren’t willing to take one more chance?

“Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in my tenacity.“ (Louis Pasteur)

Do you have some secret that surpasses tenacity and persistence?

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” (Victor Frankl)

Whether you look at it as dedication, determination, persistence or some other word, it’s a trait that nearly every successful person possesses.

Do you?

Lawrence

Tags: Leadership, Motivation by Lawrence Fine
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