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Success Advice

The Secret to Your Weekly Success

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Before a pilot jumps in the cockpit, he or she will always conduct pre-flight planning. It takes between one and ten hours to plan a single mission in the fighter pilot world, depending on its complexity. Pre-flight planning includes researching the target or destination, route of flight, weather, aircraft maintenance records, fuel, and so on.

Imagine what would happen if a pilot said, “We don’t need to do our pre-flight planning; we’re just going to wing it today!” In the fighter pilot world, that would result in chaos, misalignment, confusion, and botched goals – not good!

How many times do people go into their week without a plan and expect a different result than pilots would get without doing their pre-flight planning? Just as pre-flight planning is critical for a pilot, pre-week planning is just as essential when people want to take control of their lives and make sure that they do what matters most.

Pre-week planning is far more than just penciling in your important to-do items throughout the week. This focused planning activity is the key to proactively scheduling your priorities rather than prioritizing your schedule.

In the spirit of good-better-best, take whatever planning approach you are using today and see how pre-week planning can enhance it and lead to better results.

Here are the four key steps to effectively do pre-week planning.

Step 1 – Review your vision and long-range goals

Take a few minutes to review your overall vision and goals, then ask yourself what you can do this week towards accomplishing your goals. By first reviewing your vision and goals, you are looking at them and taking in the 30,000-foot view of where things stand at least one time each week. This puts you in an elite statistical number of people — only 1 percent of people regularly revisit their vision and goals.

Step 2 – List your roles

Identify the five to seven roles that matter most to you (personal, manager, parent, spouse, etc.). This approach helps you plan your week through the lens of what matters most in each role, rather than just thinking about your professional role. It also empowers a person to have a balance of success stories across each area of their lives.

“By Failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin

Step 3 – Set action items for each role

Whether you call them action items or weekly goals, the bottom line is that you have a personal brainstorm with yourself to determine what actions matter most in the coming week for each role. Imagine how powerful that is to sit down each weekend for a few minutes and identify specific actions that matter most in each of your important roles! Completing step three of pre-week planning can enhance almost anything you might already be doing when planning. It could be as simple as planning a date night, sending a note to your son or daughter, scheduling an important client interaction, and so on.

Step 4 – Schedule a time for each action item

Whether you use a weekly planner or an electronic calendar, this step is when you assign a time on your calendar for the coming week for each action item.

These four simple steps allow you to schedule your priorities rather than prioritize your schedule. That is what differentiates it from every other planning process out there.

What’s the impact?

A person who does pre-week planning accomplishes an average of 20 to 30 more activities/tasks during the week (with less stress) than someone who doesn’t. Over a month, that equates to an additional 80–120 activities. In a year, that equates to an additional 900–1,200 items that are important to you!

On paper, those are numbers. Yet, every one of those numbers represents a meaningful activity that you’ve accomplished in your life. It could represent exercise, a gesture of kindness to your spouse, an important activity related to your job, taking care of a client or team member, or spending quality time with a son or daughter.

Imagine the cumulative impact of maintaining the habit of pre-week planning for the rest of your life. By making pre-week planning a habit, you empower yourself to consistently do the things that matter most in your life while finding time that you didn’t know you had.

Rob and Steve Shallenberger, Founder and CEO of Becoming Your Best Global Leadership, are devoted to helping individuals and organizations achieve their maximum potential. Steve has successfully led companies in four different industries and has a keen understanding of how to thrive in business. Rob has trained and coached hundreds of companies around the world, including many Fortune 500 organizations, in leadership, planning, and time-management. Previously, he served as an F-16 Fighter Pilot in the Air Force for 11 years. Their new book is Do What Matters Most: Lead with a Vision, Manage with a Plan, Prioritize Your Time (BK Publishers, Inc., May 18, 2021). Learn more at becomingyourbest.com.  

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Success Advice

How Your Beliefs Can Supercharge or Sabotage Your Success

Your life is dictated by beliefs and biases that drive your thinking, behaviors, and decisions

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Your Beliefs Can Supercharge or Sabotage Your Success (1)
Image Credit: Midjourney

Pause for a moment and ponder two pandemic-era beliefs: First, closing schools will control the spread of a serious virus. Second, the consequences of such school closures—particularly social interruption and the prevention of immunity—are worse than becoming sick with the virus. (more…)

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Success Advice

How to Break the Cycles of Mediocrity and Manifest Your Greatness

There is no greatness without becoming and there is no becoming with authenticity

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Image Credit: Midjourney

In just a few weeks, we will be wrapping up 2023. Can you believe it? This year has been absolutely incredible for me.

I have seen amazing doors opened, new relationships formed and I am seeing dreams realized in my life. While this seems like the hallmarks of a great year, this has also been the most challenging year of my life. With all of the change happening in my life, I have been forced out of my comfort zone and challenged to grow in every area of my life.

I can truly say that I have made the most of my moments this year and I have used everything as a catalyst for maximizing my greatest potential.

As a revolutionary leader, I have the pleasure of consulting and advising leaders around the world to fulfill purpose, realize their greatest potential and make an impact.

I want to share some insights with you that will help you to break cycles of mediocrity and manifest your greatness

Everything legal must come through the matrix

I am sure that some of you are wondering why I am using the term matrix. However, what you have to understand is that I am trying to make a highly complex spiritual principle practical to understand.

Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, every life has an origin and I believe that origin is divine and begins with eternity. You are birthed from eternity and into time to fulfill a unique purpose and assignment in your lifetime and generation.

The matrix is simply the portal or vehicle that brings something out of the invisible realm and into tangible form. The problem with much of the teaching today is that it excludes the matrix. We are told to believe that success is instantaneous and overnight.

Nobody talks about how a dream progresses through stages beginning with visualization and ultimately culminating in manifestation. Without a matrix or portal then everything that you attempt to birth and build will be illegal.

The matrix not only makes you legal but it gives you the authority and power to function as the greatest expression of who you were created to be. 

Every matrix has an incubation process

While many people admire and respect me today, I remember a time when nobody knew who I was or the significance of my message. How did I get to where I am today? I got here through an incubation process.

In other words, everything that has been destined for your life is incubating and awaiting a set time of manifestation. The problem is that most people live their entire lives idle and never initiate the incubation process.

What do I meany by that? Most people are living reckless and very few people are living intentionally. I am amazed at the number of people I have conversations with that have no vision, goals or strategies for their lives. They show great promise and they have undeniable potential.

However, without development they will die with their dreams still in them.

Everything that has been destined for your life must be incubated and converted to become realities born to time. 

“Visualize this thing that you want, see it, feel it, believe in it. Make your mental blueprint and begin to build.” – Robert Collier

You must give expression to that which is not yet born to time

When you think about a matrix or a prophetic incubation process, you have to understand that potential is often unrealized and untapped. In other words, your potential is in raw form and your potential cannot serve you as long as it is untapped.

The thing that makes me valuable is that I have the ability to convert potential into power. I have done it in my own life and I have empowered leaders around the world to do the same. How do you convert potential into power?

First, it is important to note that you have to perceive potential. If you cannot perceive your potential then you can never cultivate your potential. In addition, you must take the time to cultivate your potential. We often get excited about our capabilities; however, we never expand our capacity in order to realize our greatest potential.

In other words, the strength of your potential is only discovered through your willingness to stretch. The more we are challenged the more we are empowered to expand our capacity for greatness. Most of all, you must begin to express your potential. The expression of potential is different for every person.

For example, the expression of my potential is best demonstrated through the thoughts, ideas, products, services, books, etc.

For another person the expression of potential may look like a screenplay, artwork, sports, scientific discoveries, medical breakthroughs, etc.

Regardless of the form of expression, I know that you will live empty and unfulfilled until you make the decision to express your potential. The expression of your potential gives voice to your dreams, life to your vision, significance to your moments and activates your true power.

You must manifest your greatness

As a revolutionary thinker and leader, my work has impacted people around the world. I am grateful that my life is a source of empowerment to so many people. However, before anyone could ever benefit from my life, I had to make a non-negotiable decision to become who I was born to be.

I wish I could tell you that this journey is easy and that you will get there overnight. However, in a world that celebrates us for doing we are often criticized for being. As a result, I wasted a lot of time trying to be who other people wanted me to be instead of being who I was born to be.

There is no greatness without becoming and there is no becoming with authenticity. It is through our bravery to be vulnerable that we ultimately manifest our greatness. We do not bless the world by being a duplicate. We bless the world when we honor our difference. When you honor your difference you honor your potential.

Ultimately, your difference is how you manifest your greatness.

When you present anything but your authentic self to the world, you are playing small and you are robbing the world of your significance. Manifesting your greatness requires you to master your gifts.

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Success Advice

Here’s a Young Man’s Antidote for the Uncertainty of the Modern World

Why do a lot of young guys lack confidence in today’s world? 

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How to boost your confidence
Image Credit: Midjourney

We all have been told that confidence is a key factor in achieving success and happiness in life. But what is it exactly? (more…)

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Success Advice

Toxic Leadership: 5 Ways to Identify a Bad Leader

if you have a leader who displays any of the toxic traits, it’s time to move on to greener pastures.

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Toxic leadership
Image Credit: Midjourney

Let’s be honest, we’ve all crossed paths with a toxic leader in our careers at some point. Unfortunately, while some toxic leaders don’t even bother to hide their behaviour, some know very well how to conceal their true selves behind a strong-built facade. The latter is the most dangerous of the two. (more…)

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