Category: Life Coaching

Persistence and using the Law of Accumulation

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race”– Calvin Coolidge

Persistence and understanding the Law of Accumulation will help you achieve things you may never have thought possible.

The Law of Accumulation
Everything great and worthwhile in human life is an accumulation of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of tiny efforts and sacrifices that nobody ever sees or appreciates.

Understanding that little wins will accumulate and persistent actions, education, training while building your financial base will allow you over time to achieve massive goals is important.  If you wish to decrease the time to achieve these things you need to increase the volume of little things and the most important thing to develop is your knowledge.

If you wish to decrease the time to achieve these things you need to increase the volume of ‘little’ things especially knowledge.

We have all heard the saying “How do you eat an Elephant?” “One bite at a time” or “A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step”.

These sayings illustrate the Law of Accumulation.  The only thing stopping you from succeeding in your quest is when you decide to quit.  Being persistent and determined and understanding the importance of every little win accumulated will eventually bare the fruit you are after is a mindset I hope all my children adopt.  I hope you adopt think about adopting this mindset too.

However, there are ways to use the Law of Accumulation, that will help you accelerate your quest for success.

  1.  Using the Law of accumulation to improve your knowledge and skills, advancing your ability to find answers or solutions for the hurdles that may lay ahead. Whether you do this through an education provider or simply through your own persistent study, reading, writing and experimenting will help you move things along.
  2. Gaining experience working with those who have been there before, working with a coach or mentor until you can learn no more from them, then seeking out others that have the experience to help.
  3. Accumulating funds and creating assets that help you generate the income to purchase the tools, training and knowledge to keep momentum working in your favour will allow you to do things faster over time.  Building a solid asset base should be a priority the moment you start earning.

All of these actions above will help you keep growing and learning and accumulating those little wins that will help you achieve your greatest dreams.

Sometimes days, weeks, months may pass by with only small wins, so it is important to celebrate every little win and this will help your motivation to be persistent even when you take what feels like backward steps. Appreciate each day for what you have learned that day and make a fresh start to accumulate a win tomorrow.

So do not despair when you hit a wall, fall down and feel there is nothing more you can do – because there is.  You can start again, maybe you needed to rethink your approach, change your approach, research and learn something new, train harder? find help? find motivation? whatever it is pick up and go again.

Be persistent, use the Law of Accumulation every day.

And never stop.

 

 

 

 

 

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Making Quantum Leaps

In your personal life or business life, you may need to change the way you are approaching things if you want to take big steps forward.  In fact, if you are not making progress in leaps and bounds then it is time to embrace the science of the quantum leap.

Simply you can achieve more if you really want too, but it may mean taking a very different approach to things, even if you think your approach is working you will find exploring how to make a quantum leap is the answer to accelerating your success well beyond what you can imagine.

We have all heard of the saying “If you don’t change what you are doing, your results will remain the same” – and in most cases, this is the same no matter how hard you work.  In fact taking quantum leaps get you there quicker and easier than putting in more hours and working harder – brain power rather than burning energy.

Don’t be happy with small advances,  truly if you are not making great gains then it is time to think about how you can make a quantum leap.

So what is a Quantum Leap?

A Quantum Leap in the terms of this blog is a change that makes a significant difference to a person or business that accelerates your success.  And believe it or not often quantum leaps are small adjustments that create massive moves forward.

It is highly likely you already have a quantum leap in your mind, however, for some reason you are holding yourself back in exploring taking the action.  Your ‘gut’ is to make a change, however, you sabotage yourself by either listening to someone else who tells you to stick with the status quo ‘it is safe’ or worst than that, you prevent yourself from taking action on an idea simply because you fear failure.

Changing the way you think

The first thing you can change that will help you find a quantum leap is to embrace failure, for it is often an essential part of this journey.  Looking at and sometimes exploring a variety of different options on a regular basis can help you find that sudden solution that catapults you and/or your business forward.

Let’s apply basic logic to this – the more options you try whether they succeed or fail, the more likely you are to find that once action that jumps you forward.  All you need to get started is to understand where you want to be – and dream big.

The solution could be changing the way you approach things, or fundamentally understanding how important it is for you to strive to be a better all round person. Just making the decision to start on a more positive path is guaranteed to make a difference.

Starting to look out for potential quantum leaps each and every day is the approach to take.  In many cases, people actually have an idea in their head that may provide a quantum leap but for what ever reason they never get around to taking action.  These are the people that look at other very successful people and say “I had the very same idea” or “they stole my idea” the only difference between them and the other person is the other person acted upon the idea.

In sport they call this process ‘lifting your head’ making sure you look around to understand all your options and taking the best one – so adopt this strategy lift your head explore more and find great options – then take them!  The top football clubs around the world actually measure how often a player lifts their head, it is the measure of a great player.

The top football clubs around the world actually measure how often a player lifts their head, it is the measure of a great player.

So OK is not just good enough for you, finding a better way becomes your norm.

Personal Growth

This is where you start.  Let’s face it we all know of things we could do that would possibly help us personally take a leap forward, whether that be joining the gym, taking a course, reading more positive books, being more grateful, changing bad habits to good habits.  The trick is to keep pursuing these throughout your life and strive to become a ‘great’ person.  It really is as simple as that.

Before anything else, know what you want to achieve with your life and write it down.

Business Growth

You need a written plan of where you want to get to, how you get there is not as important if each day you look for ways to move positively towards your goal/s.  By keeping an eye out for quantum leaps and taking more chances with the ideas that ‘in your gut’ could help you take a giant leap forward you have set yourself in the right direction.

NIKE came up with the saying ‘Just do it’ for a very good reason.

In summary

I am very lucky that in my life I have experienced a number of quantum leaps which have included stepping into unchartered territory, applying for and successfully securing senior positions in companies I worked for in my younger days, building a multi-million dollar business from a simple idea which changed the way people recruited people.

I was lucky when I was young that people encouraged me to push forward.  As we age we have fewer supporters encouraging us and it is our own job to mature and make this a positive habit.  The risks seem too dangerous.  The reality is for many not making a change can be more fatal, we were not designed to stand still.

Searching for my own quantum leap to become a better person, I am now working on projects which focus on helping those who sincerely want to embark on the same journey.

Hope this was helpful
Tony C

 

 

 

 

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Find your Motivation then use SMART goals to succeed

Once you have defined what motivates you through working through what you want to achieve in your life, and understanding where you are in terms of your all-around balance between Mental, Physical, Emotional and Spiritual desires the ability to set goals and make plans to achieve them is KEY to success.

Goal-setting will do more to help you achieve the things you want in life than will anything else.

The reward for establishing goals and making plans for them is being able to choose the kind of life you want to live.

Less than 3% of adults have written goals. Less than 1% review and rewrite their goals daily. A goal that is not written is still just a dream.

That means, if today you started writing down your dreams, and specify your goals every day from today forward, you would immediately move into the top 1% of all people!

If you’re in a leadership role, goal-setting is essential to motivating your team. But if you really want to maximise your goal-setting and goal-achieving skills, you must set SMART goals.

This acronym stands for:

S = Specific
M = Measurable
A = Achievable
R = Relevant
T = Time-bound

Most of the problems with goal-achieving are related to a lack of clarity in setting the goal in the first place. With SMART goals, both your personal and business goals will be perfectly clear to everyone.

The other problems will arise if you do not have the right ‘positive’ motivations and or your people are not motivated to succeed.

TEAM ACHIEVEMENT

DEFINE WINNING so people know what they are striving for.

A manager’s job is to ensure his or her people achieve their goals.  If people have been assigned too much, it is the manager’s job to reassess, provide support or distribute parts of the project/task to other members of the team making sure everyone WINS.

You build great teams by getting great results, reward everyone for the win and build a strong team culture.  MAJOR work goals should always have celebrations attached, these MAJOR rewards that acknowledge the performance of the individuals and the team.

Ensuring you motivate teams to achieve this success. 

To get to major goals you need to plan your milestones, each milestone should come with an appropriate award, not necessarily of large monetary value but something that acknowledges the achievement.

Map your project success to the teams individual personal goals and you have the formula for success, retention and a happy work environment.

This all takes planning and the first 5-10% of planning should be identifying what the major goals is, then what milestones you need to get there.

PERSONAL ACHIEVEMENT

Do something every day that moves you towards achieving your major goals.

Go Succeed!

Tony Cutting

If you would like help establishing a strong team environment or developing a meaningful plan for your own success, feel free to call me +6421911722 or email tony.cutting@peoplenet.co.nz and we can discuss how I can help you.  I work with all budgets and have a number of solutions that will succeed if you follow them.

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Personal development on a budget #3

The next book I recommend you invest in if you are truly interested in developing your personal skills – The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference …

Malcolm has written a great guide on ‘how little things can make a big difference’.  In this book, you understand more about the degrees of separation and learn that there is a process that at first can feel quite hard but with consistency, persistence, a focus on quality, and by engaging your mind you will reach that point where life takes off and your hard work pays off.

Turn your ideas into action and let ‘The Tipping Point’ guide you to success.

 

The Tipping Point

 

This book can help transform your thinking and push you in the right direction.

This is one of my favourite business books, I personally recommend it to everyone who wants to build a business or a better life.  I have experienced the ‘magical moment’ when an idea took off like wildfire, and still enjoy using that experience to motivate myself to create more.

Tony Cutting – Coach
tonycutting.com

 

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There are Winners and Learners, nothing else.

If there is one blog I hope my children (and eventually my grandchildren) read I hope it is this one.

Growing up, developing skills comes from experience and learning.  The more we do of both, the quicker we become more proficient at whatever we wish to do.  At times, we learn that something is not necessarily for us, however, if we are put off by other people, or do not give things a go because we are not perfect or proficient the first few times we try then we have not learned this valuable lesson.

Without TRY, there is nothing.  Without persistence, there will never be greatness.

By embracing learning there can be nothing else but success, it is as simple as that.

As parents, grandparents or coaches one of our most important jobs is to install this thinking into those under our guardianship.  With this knowledge, firmly wired into our brains we can create unbeatable people who will go on and do great things.  It simply comes down to “do they LOVE it enough” this is the key ingredient, that will help you persevere through the hours of learning, becoming more proficient, more confident all along learning to be humble along the way. we also simply become better people, more tolerant, more supportive.

It is true, some people learn faster than others, and the better the coach, the quicker you will get to where you want to be. Good coaches make learning FUN, while also embracing the fact there is work to do.  Making it fun encourages persistence.

I was lucky enough to play in some pretty successful rugby (and football) teams when I was growing up as a kid.  I have been in many representative teams and won some impressive competitions. But one team I have very fond memories for was a team where we embraced both ‘Winning and Learning’.  We had a team song we would sing immediately after every game, it was simple and effective.

“We won, because, we won, because, we won, because we won. We won, because we won, because we won, we won because we won …” this would go on for quite some time or alternatively and we purposely would sing this even  louder  and carried it on longer “We lost, because, we lost, because ….” all to the amusement of our supporters and the other team. It also earned us respect and allowed us to move on emotionally and mentally very quickly.

This mental approach enabled the team to get past ‘the learning’ very quickly and we became a stronger team, stronger as individuals and had a blast that year together, sometimes beating teams ranked above us and sometimes learning.  We did not win any championships that year but it was possibly one of the years that made me strong enough mentally to continue on and achieve what I managed to achieve.

This approach is not only great for sports teams and sports people, one of my favourite quotes is from Andy Warhol.

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” Andy Warhol

There is true greatness in this attitude, it takes winning out of the picture and instils learning as the most important skill.  If you can teach your children, grandchildren and most importantly yourself this, you will accomplish what you truly LOVE in life, You will remove the pain of learning, instil patience and persistence and just get on with what you want to do, and is that not what life is all about?

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Personal Development on a budget #1

Too many people do not start down the path of investing in their own personal development as they perceive it to be too expense.  Or they feel they know it all or are too old to get into this personal development malarky…

Lesson one – we are never too old and we should always be spending sometime time each week working on the most important person in our lives – us.  With the knowledge we can help those we love, otherwise, we may just be adding to the problem.

Over the next series of blogs, I am going to share some of my coaching secrets and provide you with great tools at low, low cost to help you get started on your personal development journey.  I just ask if you like the blog please share it with your friends and family whether they be close enough to talk with or connected to you on LinkedIn or Facebook.

If you’re on a serious budget, I recommend you start to read, yes read.  If you don’t like reading – get over it.  Just start.  Once you have read a book you really like and you ‘Feel’ (you know deep down in your gut, or in your heart) that there are valuable lessons in it, read it again and right down the lessons learnt or highlight within the book.  Then share it with the ones you love and talk about it.  Teaching is a great way to learn!

#1 My personal go-to resource I use to sort out my clients thinking about money, wealth and debt.  This gem saved my bacon and I personally make sure all my children read this when they start their first part-time jobs as teenagers.  Of course, they need reminding a few hundred times afterwards but at least as a parent, we have done our jobs.

It costs less than $US 10.

The Richest Man in Babylon.

The Richest Man

I promise you, this is the book I recommend to all my clients, friends and family.  I read it once a year and just re-enforce the lessons from within.

You will love it.  Give it a read then visit my website and let me know what you think.

Take Care and ‘Live the life YOU design’

Tony C (Coach)
tonycutting.com

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What if I don’t know what I want to do for a career?

Firstly, don’t let yourself stress about this.  In my experience, most people do not actually know what they want as a career. It makes you no better or poorer than those who do.  What’s important is what you want to get out of your life.

There are many coaches who would tell you to keep asking the question of yourself each night just before you go to sleep.  But my approach is a little different.  I never knew what I wanted to do as a career, but I did know what I did not want to do and it all worked out fine.

Where I think you can make a big difference is to allow yourself to dream, and dream BIG, don’t let anyone or anything influence what your dream life could be.  The next step is to get your dreams down on paper.  Notice I said get not write.  You see our minds work with pictures and the best way to activate both your logical and creative brains is to picture what you want.  I use Mind Maps but if you do not like drawing (then a visual board might be your thing).

Look up Mind Mapping it is worth having a play and seeing what you come up with.

Your first drawing/board should be massive, filled with all the dreams and desires you want your life to be.  You then slowly start to prioritise the dreams until you have the amount started to picture what is most important.  Then set about achieving your dreams, whether that be acquiring new skills you need or “Just doing” something every day that gets you closer.  The dreams should be massive, it should feel daunting otherwise, you are not stretching yourself and your living in the “safe” and frankly “boring” zone.

Again, don’t stress if you still have not worked ut what your career is going to be, it may be that your life is bigger than a career, yes you will need money.  But, if you are motivated to achieve your dreams you will take jobs and do things that make money.

When you are ready and you have the things you want to really achieve in your life, then find help.  A coach, mentor (not necessarily a family member or friend, they tend to have their own ideas for you).  Ideally, a trained personal coach who can guide you when you need guidance.

Love your life and design the life you will love.  If you don’t everyone else will do it for you.

Take care and have a great day.

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Your biggest battle…

Are you winning the most important battle you need to win, the first stage is to start understanding you are already on the battlefield?

Most of you reading this possibly already know where I am going with this subject. However, it is one thing to realise our biggest battle will always be with ourselves, and another thing to do something about it. When we are young most of us have parents to guide us, and if we listen we start to learn good habits that help us get the most out of our lives.

As we grow older we now depend on our own judgement, for those of us who do not continue educating ourselves and understanding how to get the best out of the tools we have been blessed with we can start to struggle.

In terms of my personal life, I was very much a teenager up until I hit 27 years old. Single, and very independent I really lived life to the max and it took a serious health scare to jolt me into thinking more about the future and the responsibility I had to look after myself, and in my case, that meant spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. I was fortunate enough to take some good advice and visit a wonderful naturopath/osteopath Derek Pratt who really helped me start to understand what looking after your body and soul meant. At this time I was introduced to meditation and started to experience a difference in how to look after yourself.

Then throughout my thirties, life changed dramatically for me, now married and a father I battled with the change this meant and it took another serious intervention (in this case a broken ankle) for me to realise I had to change some of the old habits that were preventing me being a great father and husband. Six weeks at home I started to realise how much work being a parent was for my lovely wife. Plenty of challenges but loads of wonderful memories as we built our family and I started my journey into building a business.

Into my Forties and now with a full family (four beautiful children) and a flourishing business. I think, I really had responsibility nailed, in fact when my business hired the thirtieth staff member. Then my old foe arrived and hit me again … I started to worry “Feeling responsible for thirty families, making sure we continued to win more business and looked after everyone became a burden on me” I still had some growing to do.

In my early Fifties and I am finally realising how powerful our minds are. I am now starting to understand more how the mind works and realising that we can control our thoughts and focus positively. It really is our choice, you see the mind has a job to do but it tends to run riot if we let it. We can train our minds using tools like meditation, visualisation and will, while also understanding the truth is not in your head, be aware your mind is processing thousands of thoughts every day and it does not differentiate between good and bad thoughts, happy or sad, what’s right for you and what’s wrong with you – it just processes everything your senses take in i.e. Garbage in = garbage out.

If you want to find answers to what you should be doing, those live inside your heart. Eat well, exercise each day, meditate or take time for yourself alone, look after your body, soul and spirit and they will help you win the battle with your mind.

Live the life you would love to live. Be positive, be grateful and have fun and don’t let your mind run around your head like an untrained monkey (as the monks call it).

Have a great day

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Becoming World Class – 10,000 Hours?

The Christmas / New Year period is a great time to relax and reflect especially here in New Zealand where most of the country (other than the hospitality, farming and retail industries) take a well-earned collective rest.  It is also the time I recharge my batteries and really think about my personal plan and what activity I will be focusing on during the next year.

As a Coach, I have always been interested in what it takes to be “World Class” and I have decided that in 2017 I am going to dig deeper and try to qualify my own thinking.

I invite you, if you are interested in this subject to reach out and contact me with your own thoughts, I am more than happy to have others contribute to this research, or maybe you are just happy taking part in exploring what the magic formula really is.

I do have some very good connections to a number of real-life world class sports people, but my interest extends far beyond sports to all places people dream to achieve.

Malcolm Gladwell (author – The Tipping Point, What the Dog Saw, David and Goliath etc) came to the conclusion based on his research that it takes 10,000 hours to become ‘world class’ in your field of choice.

Anders Ericsson (Professor of Psychology, Florida State University) concluded that “many characteristics once believed to reflect innate talent are actually the result of intense practice extended for a minimum of 10 years”.

This is what I believe as of today.
As a Coach, I feel that there is much merit in championing the 10,000 hours theory as a part of the formula, especially for youth.  However, I would also add that without the right motivation on behalf of the actual person striving to become world class reaching 10,000 hours may not be achievable.  My stomach tells me it may take adults longer, as they also have to battle patterns of thought and habits that they need to change.

NB: I have been in the Recruitment and Talent Management industry for over 25 years and Motivation is well known globally for being the key to employing the right people for a job.

Before you go anywhere I think you need to have an ounce of talent to work from, it maybe only small but this combined with the right motivation in place I believe is your starting point.

Also, simply just practising a thing will not necessarily make you world class. I fully believe each and every one of us needs a guide or Coach with the skills to take you the next level.  You will also need to upgrade or change your Coach as you reach the full potential with that individual Coach, and continue to develop your own self-management and coaching skills throughout this journey.   Great Coaches are also developing themselves constantly but from my own humble experience in sports, and a career in talent management that extends well beyond the 10,000 hours, believe that as a Coach it is likely a change will be needed when growth slows and or progress is not being made.

So, not only does the individual need to have an ounce of talent, a burning motivation and the determination to work hard to become world class, so does the people supporting and nurturing that talent.

I also believe in the phrase used by our World champion team here in New Zealand “Better people, make Better All Blacks – Sir Graeme Henry” who in the past fifteen years had spent most of this time ranked at number one in the world for their sport.  However, until Sir Graeme took the helm we “choked” at the final stages in world cups for a period of twenty years.

Possibly also upgrade this phrase to “Great people, make great champions”  Richie McCaw arguably New Zealand’s greatest All Black Captain never wanted to be an All Black, from an early age he wanted to be a “Great All Black” and he achieved that dream.

This has brought me to the thinking that to be truly world-class do you also need to develop as a great all round person?  I think for longevity sake this would not be a bad course to set your thinking on.

Taking Richie’s thoughts into account it also adds a major factor “It has to be the person’s dream” not Mum or Dads dream.  If Mum or Dad introduce one of their kids to something they then fall in love with and the kid dreams of becoming world class then you have the precious flicker take can be developed into something further.  Nurtured well, given the right positive coaching and hard work across all facets of the person’s being and well-being (life / work balance) a willingness to work a minimum of 10,000 hours of quality training (not just doing time) then, just then, you may have the formula to become a World Champion at whatever it is you love to do.

Please feel free to comment or email me with your thoughts.  This article is just the beginning I am keen to hear your views. 

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Have a wonderful 2017

As we launch into a New Year, I genuinely wish everyone to have a happy and healthy 2017.  I wonder if we all actually felt this way what the world would look like?

My year starts as it has for the last few years with my review of my personal plan.  I am actually well down the track as I am so excited about making 2017 absolutely wonderful I started my review early in December. The reality is we have a choice, we can either make it a great New Year or we can choose to “See what happens” and take that great big risk.

I like many Coaches in the world have chosen to a great year, so how do we do it?

In the wise words of Mary Morrissey, “the world is happening through us, not to us”

My interpretation of this is we all have the power to control what we do, who we choose to be with and what we plan to do.  Given just these simple facts we have all we need to design, plan and implement a wonderful New Year.

Mine starts with that personal long term plan based on what I want my life to look like, well not just want, more like desire, love and dream to have.  Then I simply go through the processes I have learnt over the past 53 years on this planet and start mind mapping my plan.  I then break this plan down into the areas I need to work on and will use this plan every morning to design my day, knowing that if I work my plan every day, not only am I already living the life I would love to live but I am also making it happen.

That is the basic framework.  Only you can fill in the details and if you need someone to help you move on I suggest you consider finding a Coach that you can work with.  I am extremely lucky as I work with a mastermind group of Coaches here in New Zealand, as well as work with my own Coach.

Every person needs a Coach, someone to guide them and keep them on their desired track.  You can try and “go it alone” but ask this question of yourself, how quickly can I achieve my goals alone?  Would I get there faster with someone who is dedicated to helping me?

Happy New Year everyone – choose to make this year a great one!

 

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