How Can Your Best Year Ever Disappoint?

Here’s a riddle for you.

How can you have a great year in your business and not feel good about it?

That’s easy. Just focus on a couple of things … what you didn’t accomplish and what you think you didn’t do well enough.

How you view anything in life is, forever and always, a matter of perspective. You all know that.

But let me tell you a quick story to illustrate just how easily and profoundly our emotional state, in the moment, can cancel out all plusses in a situation and leave us seeing only minus signs.

I was on the phone with a client this week who’s had a helluva year. She’s recently given four or five talks that went very well and resulted in a ton of complimentary sessions and a bunch of new clients.

In the past year of working together, she’s increased her client base 366%.

But, in her words, she was a “hot mess” this week, feeling sad … feeling as if she wasn’t keeping up … that she was “doing it wrong.”

You and I would look at what she’s done in 2017 and say, “Well done … great job!”

But she couldn’t see it. After we talked for a while and did a reality check, she realized, “I guess I just forgot how much I’ve grown.” Uh huh. Exactly.

Look, we all do it. We default too easily to looking at what’s wrong, rather than what’s right.

I caught myself doing it just the other day.

We’ve been down at our place in Puerto Aventuras on the Mexican Riviera the last 3 weeks, and almost every day I go for a walk within the gated community here. It’s a large complex, so there are plenty of places to go … a couple big marinas with beautiful boats … the beach … nice neighborhoods … a couple of upscale resorts.

I always end up at the lagoon where the manatees and the sea lions and the dolphins are. The dolphins are so amazing and sweet and I just love watching them. I feel so blessed. What a way to start the day!

And yet, as I was starting my walk back to the condo, I noticed a couple pieces of litter on the ground. And while they do a great job overall of keeping the grounds tidy here, nobody had picked it up.

Just like that, my focus shifted from what was wonderful to some of the things I don’t like about Mexico.

And then, I thought, “How crazy is this? I’ve just had a wonderful time walking and watching the dolphins and here I am concentrating on litter.

Surrounded by beauty and wonder, and I’m concentrating on trash. I defaulted to focusing on the negative, rather than making a conscious choice to be pleased and grateful for all the good stuff.

That’s no different from killin’ it in business and choosing to concentrate on what’s not working right now.

Bottom line: As 2017 winds down and you reflect on what you’ve done, you have a choice. You can focus on the progress you’ve made … or you can focus on what’s missing.

By all means, look for what you can do better. That’s different from dwelling on the negative.

And give yourself credit for what you’ve accomplished and celebrate your successes. It’ll not only make you feel good, it’ll set you up for more successes.

Best Wishes,
Denise

My Place In Playa

Speaking of Mexico, we’ve been working hard … in between our beach and dolphin time … to have our condo fixed up and ready for vacation rentals. We’ve been down here for nearly a month now and it’s going to be pretty hard to leave the warm, sunny, easy way of life here.

We’re already getting bookings and we still have availability for Christmas week and some weeks in January. If you’re interested in getting away for a bit, take a look.

We’d love to have good people in there … people in our newsletter family. We’d be honored if you’d tell your trusted friends, family, and co-workers about it, as well.

If you’d like more info, just give us a shout.

Hasta la vista,
Denise & Tom