Three...Two...One...2010!

A bit less than 3 days left in the year, and the decade, for that matter. What choices could you make in the next three days that will change your life? Are you waiting for January 1st to plan? If so, you're cheating yourself out of 48-60 hours of time that could put you that much farther ahead come the New Year. Besides, who's going to sit around making choices when they could be watching Dick Clark for what could be his last year on Earth? (and we've been saying that for how long?)


I'm busy preparing the 2010 launch of Champions of Choice - a new look for the Challenge and all the Champions who've been a part of it to this point. This includes a re-invigorated approach to the NING site, a re-boot of the Newsletter, and a re-boot of the Facebook Fan Page - and that's just the beginning! More details to come.

How has the Champion of Choice Challenge helped you this year? How would you like to see it improve? Leave your comments, or email me at Rich@richhopkins.com - I want to hear from you. The good, the bad the ugly, about you, and about me.

In the meantime - get busy gettin' ready - the time to jump on 2010 is now!

Career Suicide: 5 Steps to Failure

An Article I wrote 4 years ago, that seems as pertinent now as it did then.

--------

Your career can affect every area of happiness in your life, from your recreational options to your family-life, from your financial stability to your personal fulfillment. Yet so many of us fall into common traps that sabotage our careers and endanger our futures. Don’t let yourself fall prey to any of the self-destructive choices below:

1. Ignoring your talents
2. Living beyond your means
3. Torching the trellises
4. Not planning ahead
5a. Choosing a profession you don't believe in
5b. Choosing a profession you hate

1. Ignoring your talents. So what if everyone told you being an engineer would make you more money than drawing comic books? We get one life – do you want to spend it miserable and wealthy, or fulfilled and, well, maybe still wealthy? Last I checked, Todd McFarlane, the artist who rejuvenated Spider-Man and created Spawn, is worth several million dollars. Your talents exist for a reason – discover where they can take you.

2. Living beyond your means. No matter what you do, if you aren’t making enough money to cover your lifestyle, you will be unhappy, and ultimately unproductive and hazardous to your career. Either find a job that makes more money, or learn to live on what you currently make. When we learn to live a lifestyle that is in line with what we earn, we understand the true value of our efforts.

3. Torching the trellises. More commonly known as burning bridges, leaving a past employer or co-workers with a bad taste in their mouths will haunt you. If your career path doesn’t change, you’ll probably work with or for some of these people again. Even if you make a career shift or move out of state, anyone of them can turn into future clients, members of your church, or even next-door neighbors. Stay professional through every job transition, and you can preserve a wide base of support for the future.

4. Not planning ahead. Technology advancements, market conditions, layoffs – the workplace is more unstable today than at any time in the last 75 years. Stay abreast of changes in your industry. Educate yourself by keeping up with trade magazines, software updates, and company business. Be ready to land on your feet if the firmament under you falls away without warning.

5a. Choosing a cause or employer you don’t believe in. If you do not value the work you do, or the company for which you work, get out! You may be doing what you love, but if you are doing it without a strong belief behind it, it will ultimately undermine any short-term success you experience. Great newspaper salespeople may switch to billboards to make a higher income, but not be able to sell it as well if their belief in the product is too low. Take inventory of your values. Great defense attorneys don’t always make great prosecutors.

5b. Choosing a profession you hate. Sounds rather self-evident, but it happens continually. How many times a day do we deal with someone at a store, over the phone, or in our own offices who clearly hates their job? Don’t let yourself be swayed by prestige, promotion, or money if the job you will take is one you’ve sworn you’d never do, or spent much of your life de-valuing. The day will come when you look in the mirror and wonder who you’ve become.

Career failures lead to financial hardship, family strife, and depression, yet we often make knee-jerk decisions when exiting and entering the workforce. Keep these guidelines in mind next time you shift career paths: Examine your career decisions for at least 24 hours before accepting a position – if it’s the right job, it’ll still be there tomorrow.

Stay true to yourself by finding an accountability partner who can objectively discuss your career path, as opposed to a close friend or family member who may have too large a stake in your affairs. Finally, remember that you are in charge of your career, not the other way around – it exists to enable you to live the rest of your life, not to destroy it.

Who Do You Follow, And Who Follows You?

I've been listening to a lot of speakers talk about leadership lately.

They talk about Vision and Goals, Trust and Authenticity, Experience and Follow-through, and many more wonderful qualities we must cultivate to become leaders, and that we look for in those we follow. Leadership is a buzzworthy topic in any age, and moreso as we seem to see a vacuum in leadership in every sector.

We are so desperate for leadership, we look for it where it doesn't always exist, whether in the promise of a new President, the powerful persuasion of a motivational guru, or the pristine image of a mega-star golfer.

What do YOU look for in a leader? Do you want them to take you somewhere, or show you where you can go? Do you want them to have all the answers, or help you find them for yourself?

Too much faith in anyone is bound to fail us in the end. That's why I'm working to build a world full of Champions of Choice. Champions lead themselves, by both choosing who to follow, and making choices worth following. Who are you going to follow, and who will follow your lead?

Scrooge Always Has A Choice

I both love and hate Christmas.

On one hand, I love everything about Christmas, from the music to the shopping excess to Santa Claus - and that's just the secular aspect. Despite being well aware of Christmas' origins, I love the religious aspects of the holiday. I read the story of Christ's birth AND Twas the Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve. I love stockings and anticipation that keeps kids from sleeping until 2 am just to get up at 5 am to jump on Mom and Dad's bed. I love chocolate santa's, Brach's Christmas candies, and those assorted nuts at the bottom of the stockings.

And I have some great memories of Christmas and Grandpa Bob and Grandma Lula Hopkins house, even though they had a (gasp) FAKE tree! Grandma did up Christmas just like Thanksgiving, but added homemade chocolate candy and chocolate fudge to the mix. There'd be candy bowls full all over the house. How much could I eat out of each one before people started to notice?

But Christmas also stresses me out beyond belief. To the point my wife thinks that I actually HATE Christmas. She's right. I get incredibly tense thinking about whether or not everyone will be happy with what they get (that costs HOW MUCH? then multiply by six...who's going to think they're ripped off? why aren't I a millionaire yet?). I hate dealing with 'arrangements' - where are we going when and to what? Externally, I'm always pretending not to worry, and that we should be happy even if we have a Christmas like they had on Little House on the Prairie when Laura only got a small doll, a tin cup, and a penny. This does not instill confidence in my wife. But internally I'm fretting not living up to the perfection I really want Christmas to be.

Beyond those conscious, somewhat logical irritations, I also have a visceral response to the season that puts me on edge, tensing me with increasing power the closer we get to the 25th, until I'm so stressed and tired that Christmas morning its all I can do to smile and pretend to enjoy watching the wrapping paper fly through the air.

If I was talking with Oprah, I'd probably talk about my parent's divorce and all the Christmases that followed without Dad. I might open up about the many relationships, even an engagement that crumbled over the Christmas holidays. If I was talking with Dave Ramsey, he might suggest I adjust my expectations to my income - though if I were talking to Tony Robbins, he'd tell me to adjust my income to my expectations.
Maybe its just knowing the kids are home for 2 weeks and my productivity is doomed to dive-bomb dramatically.

In the end, all of these excuses for me to be an annually grouchy humbugger are not worthy of the Champions of Choice. The Past is Past, the Present (and Presents) is just fine, and the Future is ours to decide. I never chose to feel negative during the holidays. I didn't think I could control it, as deep-seeded as the emotions were. That's the key - I didn't think I had a choice. Of course, I do. Whether it's Christmas, Fourth of July, or Bastille Day, how we feel, and the actions reflecting those feelings, are completely within our control.

This year, I'm choosing to enjoy every second of Christmas, even if it kills me. I'm certain the kids will be happy with what they're getting - we've been blessed beyond belief this year. The decorations are up and the music is blasting (Harry Connick Jr., at the moment). We're handling the event and the food here this year, eliminating any concerns about who sees who for how long. The real test will come if anything goes awry, I suppose.

I have loved and hated Christmas, know it or not, by choice. Time to choose just love. Which is, after all, what this season should be about in the first place. Welcome home kids - let's have a great Christmas break....now go clean your rooms!

What is Most Important to You?

They say you can tell what's most important to people just by walking into their house.

What is most prominent when you walk in? The TV (as the picture above illustrates, the size of the screen doesn't always determine the size of the priority)? Bookshelves? A family Bible? Perhaps a comfortable sitting area? Perhaps its artwork on the wall, or family pictures. A piano, a china cabinet, or a computer desk.

Closets are a close second. Plenty of shoe storage space? Is it well-organized, or a place where clothes end up hung up only by chance?

And of course their checkbook. Where does all the money go, regardless of how much there is?

All these show the world, and reinforce to ourselves, what we are really about, what choices we really care to make. When the television is the easiest thing to access, its likely pretty high on the list of priorities. This isn't a post to beat any of us up - heck, my family has a TV in the living room, and in all the bedrooms. It's a pretty important part of our lives.

Instead of beating ourselves up over the 500 DVDs that line our living room walls while the Wii Fit sits idly by in the bottom drawer of the entertainment center, can we take a moment to refocus? After all, if you're journaling one moment about changing your life in the fast-coming new year - spending an hour a day exercising, making time to finally write your book, and spending more quality time with the kids - couldn't you reinforce those decisions by changing your environment? Leaving your living space the way it is lends itself to creating the same results you've been getting.

If your DVD's are put in a room out of the way (except, of course, for those Richard Simmons work-out video's), your family games are prominently placed in your living room, and your workspace is void of distracting paraphernalia, do you suppose that would make a difference?

If you are saving for a car or a house, does your checkbook betray you? If you added up the money spent in drive-through's, at movie theatres (even though you have 500 dvd's at home), and the wine of the month club, how much closer to your goal would you be? Amazing how even in the tightest of times, we are able to find money for what's really important, even if we would swear an oath in court denying these things are important at all!

Instead of waiting for the New Year, start taking some inventory. If an archeologist went through your household 1000 years from now, what would they determine to be the most important parts of your life? Of course, even if you're a dedicated exercise nut, you may run the risk of being seen as a Richard Simmons devotee - but isn't that better than being caught with the DVD's of every season of the Roseanne, ER, and Star Trek? But enough about me....

2010 belongs to the champions...The Champions of Choice!

Stop Waiting for the Perfect Time

When I decided to go on the Atkins diet the day after Thanksgiving, my wife was less than enthusiastic. "This is a lousy time to go on a diet! We have Rachel's party next week, then our Anniversary, then Riker's birthday, then Christmas - it's impossible to stay on a diet right now!" She was right, and I'd made similar statements in the past. But...is there ever a perfect time to go on a diet?

With a major holiday virtually every month and a birthday party, or three, six months out of the year, when IS the perfect time? Particularly Atkins, the no-carb, no-sugar diet designed to change your body's fat-burning chemistry, where one little cheat throws you out of whack for at least a day. This was a horrible time to start it.

But I did anyway - and so did she.

For the first time, I've actually stuck to it enough to see results. I'm on six days, off one (which isn't the plan per se, but it has worked for me). After 16 days I'm down 18 lbs. It's been a roller coaster with the off days, waking up two days later up 3 lbs, then down 3 the next, but its real. I'm down one pants size, and am confident I can lose 25 or more lbs by the end of the year. Ultimately, I'm looking at dropping another 6-8 inches off my waist, and another 60 lbs.

The diet is just one example. When writing Win Place & Show and Go Ahead and Laugh, I would sit and wait to be in the perfect mood, to have the perfect atmosphere, and the perfect silence before writing. This resulted in nothing getting done for long stretches. When I finally ditched the perfection scenario, I was able to finish the books quickly.

I'm not sure where this vision of perfection comes from, but my top suspect is the media. From the perfect Thanksgiving dinners by Norman Rockwell on the Saturday Evening Post to moments of romance, success, and victory punctuated by perfect lighting and music, we are inundated with the concept that we should be a part of, and possibly defined by, perfect moments.

Most of us can think back through our lives and remember a perfect moment or two. Maybe winning a competition, or the cool fall night that punctuated our first kiss, or the moment we first held our child. The key to that is 'think back'. Perfection is often an illusion that comes in hindsight - we edit out the imperfect moments that surrounded the few seconds of bliss and victory.

If you're waiting until the time is perfect to make your move, you'll likely never move. Success comes in the midst of chaos when we choose to act while everyone else is panicking. When we take the winning shot whether its open or not. Even when we diet during the holidays.

Champions of Choice, embrace the perfect imperfection of the present reality, and you'll be well on your way to creating many perfect moments to imperfectly remember down the road. After all, there's never a perfect time to diet, but there's always a perfect time to be down 18 lbs!

A Lesson From Brooklyn

Last night, right before our 'family meeting', where we download our day, do a brief Bible study, and send the kids off to bed after a prayer, I asked my two year old to pick up the 30 or so wooden blocks she'd strewn across the living room.

She started by picking up one block, walking to the drawer, dropping it in, and going to retrieve another block. Soon, she started putting a block in each hand, doubling her productivity. She was up to three, then four at a time. When she tried five, they came spilling out over the floor. She still had two in her grasp, put those away, and returned to put away the other 3 blocks.

As I watched her, I was hit by a few different thoughts:

1) She was choosing to learn with each step
2) She was willing to deviate from what worked, to discover what would work better
3) When something didn't work, she didn't quit, she just adjusted back a notch to what did work. No time for self-loathing or frustration.

Its easy to get caught up in the desire to make 'perfect' choices. That drive for perfection, however, can sabotage improvement by creating fear of failure. At two-years-old, Brooklyn isn't tainted by perfectionism yet. She's still adjusting her choices on the run. Are you?

If only we knew now what we knew then.