Archive for confidence
5 Ways to become Action Oriented
Posted by: | CommentsOver the course of my time studying and teaching about personal development I have shared many tips on how to get what you want faster than you dreamed possible. In order to become a high performing person myself and teach others how to become the same I have taught everything from goals setting to brain storming to masterminding. However, while all these are true anchors in one’s travel to success, perhaps one of the most important traits of the high performing man or woman is “action orientation.” For if you do not take action all the brainstorming, masterminding and goal setting in the world will not help you. You have to become an action oriented person if you want to achieve your dream, goals and desires. So here are five ways to become an action oriented person.
- SET ASIDE TIME TO THINK AND PLAN
Action oriented and successful people set aside time to think about their goals and dreams, to plan their next steps and ways around potential obstacles and of course to set priorities in all these goals, dreams and next steps. All this thinking, planning and priority setting enables them to focus on taking action on the important tasks and execute large chucks of work far faster than the people that spend that same amount of thinking, planning and action time on activities that do not take them closer to their goals – assuming that those people even know what their goals are. - GET INTO THE ZONE
One of the benefits of that thinking, planning and priority setting is that you will be focused on high value tasks as your next steps. When you take action on your high value next steps continuously you will get into ‘the zone.’ All of us have experienced it at one time or another – that state when things just seem ‘to come to you’ with minimal effort. You feel clear of mind and almost euphoric as everything you do seems effortlessly accurate, and just want to keep going. - STAY ALERT AND AWARE
Keep a mindful eye out for some of the interconnected ways that people and circumstances can be leveraged to help you achieve your wants, dreams and desires even faster. Remember that one of the fastest ways to get what you want is to help others get what they want. So while you are in ‘the zone’ use that heightened state of creativity and mental precision to spot ways you can help others reach their dreams. I find that these unselfish acts always find their way back – with interest. - HONE YOUR SENSE OF URGENCY
I can hear the question now “How do I get into the zone Tracy?” Well one of the quickest ways is to hone your sense of urgency. Your sense of urgency needs to be impatient, for that is when it will motivate you and drive you to get things done. Your sense of urgency when impatient will stoke that inner drive or desire you have to reach your goals. When you have a sense of urgency and begin taking those next steps towards your goals, dreams and desires you will find yourself in ‘the zone’ far more often than you ever had before. - Be prejudice against procrastination
I do not like to lean to the negative but when it comes to procrastination, negative is what we need to be. When you hone your sense of urgency you will become very negative to procrastination and lean more towards being action oriented. You will find yourself talking less about when you want to do and actually doing it. You will find yourself coming up with ideas and next steps (probably back in step one) and immediately want to do something with that idea – so do it!
Okay now that you have the five ways to become action oriented what can you do now?
- Pick one goal, dream or desire that you have and jump into it right now. Yep right this very minute. Heck I don’t even mind if you stop reading this post to do that – your dreams are WAY more important than this post.
- Ok well your still here. Hopefully that is because you want more advice not because you don’t have dreams and goals. Anyway the next thing you can do is take these five steps EVERY single morning so that they become a habit. Then you will be realizing your dreams, desires and goals fasters then you ever imagined!
Think Successfully & Take Action
Tracy Brinkmann
One of Today’s TOP Motivated Coaches & Author of Success Atlas Programs
You ARE already goal setting
Posted by: | CommentsWorthy goals push, drive and motivate you to do more, to be more and to have more. If I think back to my childhood, I can remember one of my earliest goals in life. I was a small child, and I mean that in stature not just being young. To give you a better vision of what I mean, I was only four foot three inches in the ninth grade. So as you can imagine, many of the bigger boys made not only a goal of but a pastime out of picking on me. I internally set a goal to create situations in my little life that would help me avoid as much of this school yard harassment as possible.
So, how does a small boy accomplish this large feat? I accomplished this goal by breaking it down into three smaller goals. First, I learned from my father (who by the way was six feet three inches tall) that making people laugh was the quickest way to reach inside them. So my first sub goal was to hone my sense of humor. You see, if you can engage a person, and make them laugh, I found they were far less likely to want to mistreat you.
Second sub goal was to leverage a powerful force to my side. What powerful force you ask? Well, let me explain and I am sure you can figure out which one of the primary human drivers I was leveraging for this goal. Every school year (and throughout the summer) I would make friends with some of the more popular and pretty girls. I did this knowing that some of those ‘more manly’ boys would want meet and learn about these girls. Thus, having those lovely ladies as friends gave him and I some common ground. A side benefit of this goal was the obvious ego boost that came with being friends with some of the more popular and attractive girls at school.
Sub goal three was set as a back-up plan…when all else fails you should know how to
1) Run
2) Fight
So I learned both. Why fight? Because you cannot always far enough or fast enough. Why run? Because you cannot always fight your way out. Even though by the time I had gotten into high school I had about three years of martial arts under my belt (no pun intended) – there were times when running WAS and IS the best option. One such time was when I was surrounded by nine guys whom did not like the fact that I had befriended a girl named ‘Tracy.’ Tracy’s boyfriend was in juvenile hall and when he got out they surrounded me as I left school. I am no Jackie Chan or Jett Lee, heck I am not even Steven Segal, so running in this case was the best solution. However, in those times when the odds were a little better I was able to use the martial arts I had learned to defend myself and others. Again a side benefit of this sub goal was the self-esteem, self-confidence and inner calm that come from feeling strong enough to protect yourself and those you care about even when you choose not to use it.
All this goes to show that goal setting has been a part of my life since very early in my life. I am betting that setting goals has been a part of your life from an early age as well, directly or indirectly. Did you have your eye on someone you wanted to date? Were you able to get that first date? Did you see that new TV in the advertisement and figure out how you could make it fit into your budget? Did your child come to you and say how much they really really really wanted you to be at their play/recital/show? You see even indirectly goal setting is already a part of your life.
Now is the time to make it an ACTIVE part of your life and truly compound and reap the benefits that a focused goals plan can get you. It has been said that we are only truly happy when we are actively working towards a worthy goal. And you know what – this is not new news!
You need to set and work towards worthy goals and yes I will be taking you through an entirely new way to set your goals in up-coming posts – but in the mean time you can find many other great tips and techniques for goals setting, (including brainstorming your goals) in previous postb. Let me know your thoughts, questions and concerns!
Think Successfully & Take Action!
Tracy Brinkmann
One of Today’s TOP Motivated Coaches & Author of Success Atlas Programs
Making Mistakes – Getting Older AND Wiser
Posted by: | CommentsSo many make the assumption that as you get older you automatically get wiser, sadly I have come to learn that this is not always the case. I have watched many a friend, client or colleague make the same mistake over and over again – pushing me to the realization that not everyone pauses to learn from their mistakes. This inability to learn from their mistakes and travel down a more productive path of self-improvement, not only traps them in their own “groundhog’s day” (where Bill Murray keeps reliving the same day over and over again) but this reliving of mistakes will open up a whole new jar of mistakes for them to NOT learn from.
Let me let you in on a little tip about mistakes and learning from your mistakes. Your Success At Last tip about making mistakes is; first let’s be honest with ourselves, you are going to make mistakes so do not beat yourself up over them. Forgive yourself for your mistakes! Then second, learn from your mistakes and you can and will grow older AND wiser.
You see hind sight is 20/20. You can always see the mistakes you made, however wisdom is the ability to see the mistakes looming on the horizon. The only way to gain this coveted wisdom is not by avoiding the mistakes in your life or even in denying the mistakes you have made. Rather getting wiser comes from learning from the mistake you made and of course escaping with some, and hopefully, all of your dignity in intact.
While getting older is something we all are going to do; only the smartest among us will get wiser. The older you get the more opportunities you will have to make mistakes. Thus the more opportunities you will have to grow wiser from those same errors in judgment, stumbling of footing and failing of your ways.
As long as you are able to look back at the mistakes you have made, see where you went wrong and resolve to yourself that you will not make those same mistakes again – then you are all the wiser for taking that time in self-reflection. Also this self-reflection will impact how you treat others, because you will realize that others are getting older right along with you and that some of them may not be getting as wise as quickly as you are. You will find yourself a little more patient, kind and forgiving of their mistakes once you truly take this Success Atlas tip of learning for your mistakes to heart.
So go out there and do, fear not your mistakes only fear an inability to grow wiser from them, for you see wisdom is not about avoiding mistakes nor just about making mistakes – wisdom is about learning from your mistakes and growing within from them.
Think Successfully & Take Action
Tracy Brinkmann
One of Today’s Top Motivated Coaches
Build competence by feeling competent
Posted by: | CommentsHow competent do you want to be at what you do? How competent do you want to be at something new? How do you base that competence? Do you have periodic tests, or evaluations against yourself, or against other perhaps? Do you put your work(s) on display in public for the whole world to see, or at least for your office & boss to see? You see, no matter how you demonstrate your competence in what you do – there is definitely always an objective way by which you can and should consider yourself a success in that activity or skill.
While, as I just noted, there is always a way to prove and evaluate your competence, what I find most peculiar is the fact that people who really think they are incompetent at what they do, will often not change their mind when presented with indicators of their success and competence. Their self doubt overrules the evidence of competence, like a judge in the court of their mind. However, this also works on the opposite side of the street. The proof of this would be most evident in all the reality shows we have seen explode onto the scene over the recent years.
One such show that has captured by attention features dancers from all skill levels and walks of life performing weekly to entertain and to win the shows grand prize. The early episodes have many of those people that ‘believe’ they can dance at a level they believe makes them worthy of appearing on the show but truly they can not. When they are given sincere critique by the judges of the show (all of which have been in the industry for many years) they balk at the critique and proclaim their future success in dance. All the while you, the audience member, sit there wondering “how in the world do THEY think they can dance?”
Now I am not saying that they will never reach the level they believe they already have, what I am saying is that their belief in their competence is a driving force and that same driving force can work to your own advantage. I say this from my own experience as well as the experience of people I have come across over the years.
From my own experience, I can share a brief story of how my own belief in my competence launched my programming business. Shortly after leaving the US Military, I did computer programming – mostly as a hobby. While in the military I did use it to make my job simpler by programming a few record keeping tasks and the like. But mostly I did it as a past time – reading up on what was going on in the industry and studying the current programming languages and seeing what I was able to do with them. After I got out of the service I decided to see what I could do with my hobby by trying to turn it into a career. I was able to land a job at a medical billing company as a systems analyst, and then a couple months later I was promoted to their programmer.
How? Well I believed in my ability and my competence in the programming language they were using for their billing system. But, here is the catch… I had only been programming in that particular languages for about six months. So it wasn’t my length of time or experience in their system or its langue that landed me the promotion. Nope it was my belief in my ability to use the knowledge I did have, and my ability to learn everything else I needed to in the time line they expected me to. That’s just what I did, I programmed their doctors billing system over the course of the next few months, by applying the all the best of what I had already learned. Applying all the knowledge and competence I had; not just from their system’s language but from other languages that I had alli and sales previously studied and read up on.
You see, I am willing to bet that you are like most other people (myself included) and that like most people the first step toward improving your job performance, sports performance, relationship performance or any other performance has nothing to do with the job, sport or skill itself. But rather it has to do with improving how they, and you, feel about yourself as a whole and how you feel about yourself relative to that skill or competence. Studies I have read bear out the fact that in eight out of ten people, it is self image that has far more to do with ones performance and competence then their actual level of skill or competence in that skill.
So, you see the next time your sitting down watching one of those reality shows and giggling to yourself as you see the person with that seemingly unrealistic belief that they have the skill to be a winner on that show. Stop for moment and ask how you can take on that same belief in your desired skill of choice. For that passionate belief will bear some wonderful fruit in your competence in that skill as you strive to build it.
Here are a few action steps you can take right now to build your own belief in your competence:
• Create positive affirmations in an area you would like to build competence in and stand tall and recite them with feeling – without feeling and passion the road to competence is much longer
• Read, listen, and study the different nuances of what you are trying to become competent in.
• Everyday practice your skill(s) in the area you are wanting to become more competent in. Do not focus on only one area but grow outward step by step growing your competence and confidence.
Think Successfully & Take Action (with competence!)
Tracy Brinkmann
One of Today’s TOP Motivated Coaches & Author of Success Atlas programs
What Does Cheerleading Have To Do With YOUR Success?
Posted by: | CommentsWhat does cheerleading have to do with your success? Well before I tell you let me take you back for a moment. If you have read my blog for any length of time, you are well aware of the love and pride I have for my daughters. As a parent and a father I try so hard to instill in my girls all the learnings I have gathered over the years – in the sincere hopes that they may avoid some of the pitfalls of my past through me. This is sage advice about becomeing successful that I learned and have offered to you and my clients over the years – find someone that has successfully traveled the path you want to travel and learn from them, either directly or indirectly.
But as a parent I am ever concerned about just how deeply the life lessons I am sharing are being absorbed, until I read this essay my daughter wrote a couple years back. I want to share it with for a couple reasons.
- It embodies everything I believe will make her (and YOU) successful in whatever path or goal she (or you) chooses
- Because while I have been trying to teach her, she taught me and in turn I would like to pass some of her sage wisdom on to you.
Oh and did I mention she was only 12 when she wrote this?
Read and enjoy as you learn just what Cheerleading has to do with your success in life, your success in business and yes even your success in your relationships.
Think Successfully & Take Action!
Tracy Brinkmann
One of Today’s Top Motivated Coaches & Author of Success Atlas Programs
The following is by Shandi’rae Brinkmann
Glitz. Glitter. Glam. That’s the part you see, the show we put on. What you don’t see is what we go through to put that two minute and thirty second performance onto that stage. The long, hard, grueling practices, going over the routine what seems like millions of times. The bumps and bruises received while trying to perfect every stunt. There is a lot more to competitive cheerleading than meets the eye, but in the end, all of that is worth it. To me, the worst part is the feeling of doubt and the nervousness that fill your head right before you step onto the enormous stage, under the lights and the pressure of perfection feeling like the world on your shoulders.
“You’ve done this before, calm down, you will do fine,” I keep telling myself that, but somehow it doesn’t seem to help. There are three teams in front of us still waiting to perform, that means we have about eight minutes before we go on.
“Girls,” Coach Christina calls to us, “Come over here, we need to say our prayer” I gather my thoughts and linger over to where Coach Christina and the rest of the team had formed a circle. Christina begins, “Dear lord, please take all of these unneeded nerves away from my girls, and help them do their best and remain safe on the stage tonight. Lord, help us hit all of our stunts and stick all of our tumbling, and most of all have fun!” in unison the team says, “Amen.”
I return to the team line up, breathing deeply, and going over all the counts in my head.
“Chill, you’re going to psych yourself out if you don’t calm down. We have done this how many times at practice? We got this, you have nothing to worry about,” Justin reassures me.
“Ugh, I know, I know, I’m just extremely nervous. I mean, look out there, there are so many people, and the it’s so loud it feels like my heart beat is actually beginning to get in sync with the beat of the music. I can feel the pounding bass drum in my stomach, almost like butterflies, but worse, oh so much worse,” I ramble on about all the things that I really shouldn’t be thinking about.
“Just breathe, we got this girl” Justin says as we hear them call the next team to the stage. This meant I only had about five minutes to get myself together. I could tell I wasn’t the only one nervous, for fear seemed to be struck across many of the athlete’s faces awaiting their turn on the stage. All of a sudden bells, horns, and loud cheers filled the auditorium, as a team ran back through the streamers, returning backstage after their performance. This made things even worse. I kept thinking about how good they must have done to receive a reaction like that; we couldn’t possibly be able match up. With the worries of failure consuming my thoughts the fact that we were next had become like a fan blowing in an empty room, quite and unnoticed, that was until the announcer loudly and quite obnoxiously said “Please welcome to the stage Aero Dynamic Elite All-Stars!” Reality hit me like a bolder falling from a cliff I seemed to have lost my breath as nerves over took me. Our fate relied on the moments about to occur, who knew that two minutes and thirty seconds could be so important.
The fog machine comes on and as I step out through the streamers onto the stage suddenly nothing else exist, it’s just me and my team. All the fear and anxiety disappear. As I make sure I’m in the right spot I smile at Justin before lowering my head standing set and waiting the music.
“There is nothing to worry about, I belong here,” I thought to myself seconds before the music started.
“Five, six, seven, eight!” the team yells simultaneously to assure we start on the same count. One, two three, four, I grab Justin’s wrists setting for a basket, using all of my strength; I throw Alyssa into the air. The basket is perfection, without time to take in what was happening I move to the corner and have to do a round-off into four back handsprings, and sticking a perfect landing. So far so good, moving on to the stunt I begin to count out loud again to make sure my group on time. Set one, two, dip three, four, and on five six Sarah is in the air hitting a perfect scale. Finishing the stunt we cradle, set out and move to our cheer formation. We all flash a cute smile to the crowd and begin yelling the rhyming words of our cheer to the rhythm of the music. Squeezing every muscle in my body with each motion, trying to be as sharp as possible, I finish the cheer and move to the second stunt. My bases are set, but something seems wrong… they were facing the wrong way! Trying to fix the situation as quickly as possible and trying to avoid unwanted attention being drawn to their mistake, I grab Sarah’s shoulders and position her the correct way. Thankfully, Lexi and Whitney followed my lead, but I hadn’t done it quickly enough, we end up setting a half a count late. I regained control of the stunt to be sure to cradle and set out on the right count.
“Now comes the hardest part,” I thought to myself.
Arriving at my spot for the pyramid, I knelt down and securely grabbed Lexi’s ankle. Neither one of my bases were necessarily strong, so I knew I had to do most of the work. We dip, and using every ounce of energy in me, I push up on Lexi’s leg and drove the stunt to a full extension.
“Yes!” we hit that part, “stay tight Lexi,” I scream right before we dip for the cradle into flat back. Sure enough, Lexi doesn’t stay tight enough and I had to push myself twice as hard to reload her into a scale.
“Please, Briana and Whitney, come through for me and try to get this stunt to hit” I thought to myself as we dipped for the reload. Hitting it almost perfectly, the largest smile my lips were capable of appeared on my face. We cradled and set out, then moved to our positions for the jumps, my favorite. I hit a high-V with a wide grin still on my face, and then swing my arms beginning my double toe touch. Turning to the side I began to do the hurdler jump into a pike jump. As my feet return to the ground, I turn to the crowd and wink right before going into a standing double back handspring step out onto knee. Landing in perfect correspondence with Meagan and Justin, we all stand and begin the dance. Every muscle in my body ached, but that didn’t matter, I had to push myself to stay tight and finish perfectly. We finally reach the last eight counts and I smiled in relief as I grabbed onto Meagan’s arm and hit the ending pose.
The thunderous sound of clapping and cheering filled the area as we ran off stage. I honestly couldn’t believe what had just happened. Once we returned backstage, we went over to the television to watch our play back. While viewing it, I tried to find every mistake or out of place step that they could have deducted points for. I was pretty pleased with our performance. As the video finished we all started looking at each other and all at once started jumping around, screaming and hugging each other.
“I’m so proud of you! You girls did amazing out there!” Coach Christina says, “Now, let’s go see your parents.”
As we ran around the edge of the stage, the patiently waiting family and friends come into view; I ran straight to my mom. I end up with her arms around me, and she has tears streaming down her face. I look up at her not understanding why she is crying.
“Mom, what wrong?” I asked.
“If you only knew how proud of you I am right now, you did so amazing up there! Your dad is waiting right there, you should go talk to him” she ends her sentence with a reassuring smile. As I turn to find my dad, there he is standing right behind me with a white rose clasped in his out stretched hand. As I take the rose joy seemed to fill every part of me. Just receiving that single rose meant the world to me, it reminded me that everything I went through, and everything my team went through, was well worth it.
Before I had gotten onto the stage, I didn’t believe that I could accomplish the task that lied ahead front of me. I was so terrified of failure that I almost gave up my dreams and passion for cheerleading all together. Going out there on that stage and proving to everyone, and more importantly to myself that I could do it meant an indescribable amount to me. At that point it didn’t matter what place we got, or how big our trophy was, because in our mind giving it everything we had, was enough to make us feel as if we had become the grand champions.
