Productivity | Rohini Ross - Part 2

The Answer to More Motivation and Greater Productivity

I love this story from the book Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland:   The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pounds of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so...

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What’s Driving Your Behavior Your Shoulds or Your Inspiration?

I promise this is not a paid testimonial. Barb Patterson is a colleague and good friend. She is also a brilliant coach and a genius when it comes to business development. I love working with her in our Masterminds for Solopreneurs, and a few weeks ago, I got the personal benefit of participating in a Business Accelerator with her. It was a beta test, and Barb knocked it out of the park. I learned from her and all of the other participants. What the group did was help me get perspective on my business. I hadn’t realized I had been...

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Are You Fueled by Insecurity or Inspiration?

Barb Patterson and I are preparing for our next Engaged Space 30-Day Experiment. This is an opportunity to play with being engaged in any area of your life in a light-hearted way and to step into the unknown and see what is revealed to you.   One of the themes that has been coming forward in my coaching conversations with clients recently is the distinction between insecurity and inspiration fueling actions. As a coach, I work with people who want to take their performance to the next level. Frequently the reason people reach out for coaching is that they feel stuck. They...

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Optimal Performance With or Without Confidence

I've been preparing for a corporate training next week and the theme they want to explore is confidence. There are two things that occur to me about confidence right now:   Confidence is our natural state. It doesn't matter if we feel confident or not.   Regarding confidence being our natural state, I used to think the exact opposite. I thought that confidence was something I was lacking, and I needed to find it, create it, and fix my issues so that I could experience it. This was a very painful way to view confidence. It reinforced my belief that I was...

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Extraordinary Performance Calls For Ordinary Measures

As I prepare for upcoming corporate trainings, I have been reflecting on how, paradoxically, extraordinary results arise from being ordinary. You perform your best when you are being yourself. I love the metaphor of walking across a plank of wood. If you put a plank of wood on the ground that is wide enough to walk across and ask able-bodied people to walk across it, they would have no problem doing so. They would also be able to run, skip, and maybe even cartwheel across it without a second thought. However, if you put that same plank of wood 100 feet...

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He Said, She Said: Getting Comfortable in the Unknown

Life is more fun when we get comfortable being in the unknown. It is funny that we even get uncomfortable because we are all actually living in the unknown moment to moment. But we kid ourselves into thinking that we have a comfort zone, and get uncomfortable when we think we are outside of it. The truth is a comfort zone doesn't exist. It is a made up idea. When we see this, it gets easier being comfortable with what is.   Angus and Rohini are both coaches. They work with individuals, leaders and organizations to increase performance and success. They also...

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Gain With No Pain

There is a prevailing view that success requires blood, sweat, and tears. It cannot be easy! I absolutely believe that success does require effort and engagement, but I don't agree that effort and engagement need to be hard and painful.   In most areas of life, pain is recognized as a healthy feedback mechanism that lets us know something is wrong. We override it at our peril. I learned this in my twenties when I used a garlic poultice to treat a rash on my chest. It hurt like hell, but I persisted because I thought it was working. I pushed through...

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Don’t Miss Out on Life Waiting to Hear Your Wisdom

This week I had the pleasure of being a guest on Phil Goddard's The Coaching Life Podcast. At the end of the podcast he summed up a theme from the interview as the importance of listening for what is right for you and taking action on it. I wholeheartedly agree, but it does make it sound like I knew what I was doing all along. When in fact, much of the time, especially when I was younger, I was more of an impulsive risk taker rather than a reflective listener. What I see now as most important is recognizing my...

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Inspiration Takes Care of the How To

I remember my first coach Steve Chandler telling me the "how to" is never the problem. The challenge is always with the "want to". If the "want to" is big enough people always figure out the "how to". This was echoed to me in a conversation with Steve Hardison. I couldn't comprehend how I could possibly pay his fee. He said to me, "If one of your children was sick and you needed this amount of money to save their life you would figure it out." I knew he was right. I realized my "want to" simply wasn't big enough,...

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Recovering From Perfectionism by Seeing Self-Worth Doesn’t Exist

After all the great religions have been preached and expounded, man is still confronted with the Great Mystery -- Luther Standing Bear   The second Mastermind for Solopreneurs that Barb Patterson and I co-facilitate is coming to completion next week. One of the themes we explored in the program is getting comfortable in the unknown. I catch myself at times thinking "I" (meaning my intellect/ego) am running my life. This, of course, includes my business. However, the magic happens when I see the bigger picture and recognize that life is really powered by a source much greater than me. It is so...

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