Author: Al McCormick

Socrates said, “Wisdom begins in wonder.” Those who never ask, never will be, yet it is a question every athlete or business person should want to know the answer too! So, aren’t you Curious?

What does it take to be good at anything?

Here’s a hint. We must reengage the child in us which takes more than just blurting out the answer, ‘YES.’ According to the book, “Born to Win,”  we all have three ego states; Parent, Adult, and Child.

I call them choices because we get to choose how to react or respond. Here’s an example.

Picture viewing a piece of modern art

• Parent: Good grief! What’s it supposed to be!
• Adult: That costs $350 according to the price tag
• Child: Ooo, what pretty color!

Wouldn’t you agree these Parent and Adult ego responses are not much different than

• The athlete who claims they are not playing or doing well because they are too small

OR

• The corporate sales staff who refuse to make one phone call, claiming the competition or incumbent has an edge

Our ability to wonder, our Child ego, is blocked with preconceived excuses. Excuses that justifies mediocrity versus ever taking a chance and wondering what it takes to be good at anything. Excuses we are comfortable with because everyone else is.

So how is it, that a 5’6” 170lb shortstop with a total of 35 homeruns in his 10-year career, a David Eckstein, was able to become the 2006 World Series MVP on the same team with a 6’3”, 240lb Hall of Famer Albert Pujols who hit 49 homeruns during the 2006 season (He has 614 homeruns over 17 years)?

We fail to see the pretty color in the modern art!

My guess, as fans, WE chose to see the size difference, but David Eckstein and Albert Pujols only saw themselves as teammates. Both who wanted to be GOOD and both who wanted to WIN the World Series!

I challenge everyone to be in awe of the things around us and add “wonder, sensation, curiosity, inquisitiveness, awareness, responsiveness, reaction and answer” to our thought process. Then, and only then will we become passionately curious and find the answer To what it takes to be good!

Until next blog,

Al McCormick

What is the real meaning of the Edgar Allan Poe saying, “Believe nothing you hear, and only one half that you see?”

Why is that? Is it the words we choose to express our thoughts or… how we choose to express them? Either way the WORDS we use to communicate with others actually creates the world we live in. Words can be used to pass on knowledge helping colleagues become Intuitive and Creative while performing a task or force them into performing the same identical task mechanically. The difference between a Leader and a Boss!

The choice is always ours; or should I say the words we choose and how we use them..is ours!

• We can focus our words to ensure an individual becomes Intuitive and Creative in the way they accomplish the task; or
• We can blurt out commands in a ‘my way or the highway’ tone that results in a Robotic response that prohibits creativity.

Whether the word choice is based on our own lack of knowledge fears or defensive approach based upon our own insecurity; one this is certain, ‘it is not something we are born with!’ It is something we learn. According to Hal Gregersen, Director of MIT Leadership Center,  “As children, we’re naturally curious-it’s how we grow and learn-but by the time we start school that sense of wonder starts to escape us.” Children are not afraid of being wrong and are always curious. What is interesting, neither are the Most Successful People.

Very successful curious people express themselves using words that allow themselves to be wrong, to seek “…insights and opinions of others…” Always using words in a “non-blaming, non-shaming, and supportive, working together [manner]” according to Kathy Taberner.

The good news, simply by changing the words we use, and how we use them, we too can be that Very Successful Curious Person;  A condition everyone can overcome.

A condition we control based upon the words we use as Doctor Natalia Wiechowski helps us see when she asked,

“If words are NOT powerful, [then] why…”

• Do athletes and whole sports teams win (almost) lost matches in the last quarter [innings] of the game after a “conversation” with their coaches?
• Do companies yearly invest huge amounts into motivational speakers and life coaches?
• Do people who chose their words wisely have the tendency to live a happier life?

Here is a short, touching video showing how the Power of using the Right Words to gained Right Results.

Until Next Blog Choosing the “right” words matters and how we relate with others MATTERS. Choose Wisely,

Al McCormick

Even knowing how much it means to us when we receive a handwritten note, our “lol” “omg” text/email society seems to prevent us from writing a short note sharing our gratitude. We never find the time.

As simple as this note is, I can’t help but feel good when I read it . I think you will agree, it  makes you feel appreciated. That’s the power of the handwritten note. Can’t you see it mounted at her mom’s office or taped to the refrigerator at home?

Even though we recognize the value, the power of the handwritten note, we never find the time to do it. I even saw a company on Shark Tank who recognized the Value of the handwritten note and developed a business plan based upon the tag line, “…just do the typing and we’ll handle the rest.”

Kind of loses the sincerity, especially when you realize the power generated in this young lady’s single sentence to her mom. Dawn Bryan advocates, “Think of writing letters and notes by hand as opportunities, not obligations.”

So here’s my challenge: Lets use our Smart Phones/Tablets/Computers to schedule, to remind us, at least one day a week to write a brief appreciative note to our customers, colleagues, and family members.

Want to see the true power of the handwritten note?

• Send a kind note to someone, to put it nicely, we have had differences in the past
• Maybe even a congratulatory message to your competition

It may result in them returning the favor, help you with an issue, or even create future where you all work together to win future business!

It is just a matter of attitude, a way of thinking or feeling about someone or something… and according to Winston Churchill

“Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference”

So until next blog, how a about a little Jimmy Buffet, “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” …chill and take 5 minutes to write a short handwritten note to someone! It just may make a BIG difference!

Al McCormick

We are all quick-change artists. Like actors and actresses who go on stage or screen to portray different people, we too, have many faces. We’re happy one minute – unhappy the next; confident yesterday – doubtful today; or even successful at one point – yet fail because we question whether we deserved to be successful.

Why? Because we’re afraid we don’t have the ability to be successful. We lack the necessary confidence to step to the front and say, “I am here for one of the top spots.”

Confidence: Keys to Success

Confidence may not always bring success; but there is seldom success without confidence. Now I agree talent and ability play a part in success, but confidence is the key ingredient necessary for success. One thing is certain, the most talented individual with poor self-belief rarely, if ever, succeeds. In fact, Success stories and confidence go hand-in-hand.

Confidence; Can it be developed?

Yes, it can, and it is as simple as, Censoring (or selecting) the thoughts that enter the mind. In other words, selecting the good, useful, beneficial thoughts and rejecting the bad. In fact there are thousands of books written on this subject by clinical psychologists, sports psychologists, businessmen, ministers, coaches and even hypnotists, all on the subject of creating your own confidence. Confidence building is nothing more learning to think “good” when there is “bad” all around. Glenn Moore, author of  Handbook for Success states, “I am not a doctor, psychologist, or any of the professionals mentioned, but those who continually said, “I doubt,” I can’t,” or “I won’t,” usually weren’t among the most dependable members of the team.” To be successful in athletics, academics, or in life, Mr. Moore went onto say,  “To believe you are capable, you must be able to select the thoughts you have about yourself.” He describes the very powerful, yet simple YES, BUT…THEORY which helps gain confidence and how to be a WINNER. Don’t just read Handbook for Success. Study and apply it.

It won’t be long before you realize your success will actually breed future success.

Success Breeds Success: The batting glove was born!

In 1964, Ken “Hawk” Harrelson (presently the announcer for the Chicago White Sox), was playing for the Kansas City Athletics and, prior to his game against the New York Yankees, he played a round of golf where he developed a blister on his bottom hand. To cover the blister and allow him to swing the bat, Harrelson decided to wear his “Red Golf Glove” to bat. Initially the Yankee players greeted Ken Harrelson and his bright red glove with heckling, but with what happened next the Batting Glove was born. Ken Harrelson hit two towering homeruns off Yankee Hall of Famer Whitey Ford and the next day, Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle had the club house order him two dozen Red All-Star Golf gloves!

Until next Blog recognize it is just as easy to “look up” to yourself, as it is to “look down” at your capabilities and potential.

Al McCormick

 

Whether it is our job or the sport we play, most of us take an Osmosis [unconscious absorption of ideas] approach over knowledge and Intuition to gain what Forbes magazine claims we are looking for; “flexibility, purposeful labor, and economic security.” Whether we know it or not, without knowledge and intuition, we actually drift farther and farther away from what we are looking for. Instead we become disgruntled; “nothing I do makes a difference, and everyone else gets all the credit.” Soon entitlement places a mental callous over our ability to become intuitive and the Johnny Paycheck’s song, “You Can Take This Job and Shove It,” become the words we live by!  

Sure, we know how to do our job, and most do it quite well, but in many cases we have no idea or could care less, how what we do affects what we are looking for! We become emotional and ignore the key mental technique necessary to gain the flexibility and economic security we are looking for; Imagination.

Imagination provides the ability to come up with ideas and future possibilities to become Intuitive about Our Job! An understanding of HOW our job fits into the bigger scheme of things, not just for the company or the team, but for OURSELVES. In fact Jonas Salk, the American Medical Researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines, stated,  “Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.” Intuition, based upon knowledge and expertise, will provide the necessary direction to find the flexibility and economic security we are looking for. All that is left, Become Intuitive!

To help, here are Seven (7) Things Intuitive People Do Differently according to Travis Bradberry, recognized author on emotional intelligence.

1. They Slow down enough to hear their inner voice

2. They Follow their Inner Voice

3. They Observe and are Aware of what others are thinking and feeling

4. They trust what their Inner Voice is telling them.

5. They develop their creativity

6. They trust their gut. The emotional battle between your reasoned mind and your feeling

7. They analyze their dreams, and then implement them

Be patient, be knowledgeable, explore your imagination, but most of all, become intuitive!

Until next blog,

Al McCormick

We all know the definition of Assume, so let’s make sure in business or as an athlete we truly understand the definition of Focus.

Focus is giving a lot of attention to One Particular Thing. May I suggest it be that one thing you want to be GREAT at!

Winning a squirt gun battle is probably not at the top of your list, but most of us fail to Focus at all. Not because we couldn’t do it, but because we “Choose not to.” Think about it. We are at dinner with the family, in a business meeting, or working on an important project and all it takes is a beep or a buzz from our mobile device to divert our attention. With each beep or buzz our ability to be great begins slipping further and further away. True, we can get back to what we were doing… once we take this call or respond to an email, tweet, or whatever… but what we lost was TIC, TIC…Time. It is also been proven, without focus, it is very difficult to become good at anything, much less be GREAT! What is sad, the choice is Always Ours.

Walter Isaacson wrote in the Harvard Gazette, Bill Gates “would sometimes fall asleep at the terminal…in the middle of a line of code…doze for an hour or two…open his eyes, squint at the screen…[then] resume precisely where he’d left off.” He and two other colleagues ignored “everything except the task at hand,” remaining focused for 8 weeks and the rest became history.

The beginnings of what is now Microsoft.

So just how focused are we and do we want to be successful? Since our chance of winning the lottery is one in 175 million, we need to identify our dream, eliminate distractions and start FOCUSING on it. We need to detach ourselves from all the diversions and institute a form of Time Management. Time to focus on what we want to be great at, and yes, even set aside time to have a squirt gun battle or two.  At a minimum use Time Management to mentally get prepared the night before by organizing an hour-by-hour approach to what you need to accomplish the following day. Here’s four musts if you want to be successful at Great at anything.

1. Mental preparation is not a time for multi-tasking! True, the problem is what our brains are very capable of doing; observing billions of things going on around us. It is OUR Job to select the one action we want our brains to FOCUS on.
2. Kill instant distractions – Turn off ALL MOBILE Devices!
3. Close your mind of all unnecessary issues – Let everyone know you are busy. Even ignore your friends, disregarding all issues unrelated to the task at hand.
4. Eliminate things you cannot control. Just do your job!

Keep a Journal. Its a form of Lessons Learned, but over time as we absorb what we write, we also recognize what is successful, why it is successful, and what is not. Use the journal to establish present and future goals.

• Try new things. What happened?
• Recognize habits of successful people you meet with. Make them your own

Pick your Friends wisely. The choice is always ours, so doesn’t it make sense to hang with those who are interested in the same goals. So, surround yourself with friends who have similar purpose in life.

• Learn to say no – especially to things counter to what you are trying to accomplish
• Recognize and talk with the Quality Individuals –

Become absorbed as Billy Chapel, played by Kevin Costner in “For the Love of the Game.”

https://youtu.be/aXrpmN6hHqc

Until next blog, “Clear the Mechanism”

Al McCormick

“When I was five years old, my Mom told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment and I told them they didn’t understand life.”

~ Unknown

Since the advent of the smart-phone, the day of watching and enjoying our children playing sports has been replaced by filming every action they take. It’s not the videos, it’s what the videos are focused on. Ask any parent or player, ‘what’s the purpose of the video’ and with a smile they quickly respond, “To see what they are doing wrong!” It’s the same in the business world. It’s what we focus on versus the dynamic ability of todays smart phone or computer.

So, let’s pause the video taking and note taking for a second and recognize that our brains are success driven organs! With one goal in mind,  to “make us successful!” Regrettably, Success is a relative term we define.

Yes, I said regrettably! It is because most of us have forgotten our brains are success driven organs and through knowledge, we get to identify what we view as SUCCESS.  Instead we use the Smart Phones and computers to enhance our ability to smudge our view of success. With each negative video and/or documented fact we post, we clouded our vision of success and completely forgotten the fact, what we see is our choice.

 

 

 

 

 

How we interpret/view hiccups is our choice. Our brain just wants us to be happy. So doing well or doing poor is vision we create, the brain is just happy to create it, and both are considered successful.

The key is to paint a clearer visual understanding of how our brains fail to differentiate positive or negative. Glenn Moore, author of “Success for Young Athletes,”  provided a very useful visual in his example where he told us to, ‘NOT DO SOMETHING.’ An exercise that helps us understand that our brain really does view everything as successful. It is our choice to decide what we want to focus on; punishing or improving. The key is Focusing Our Picture on the Right Things, versus smudging our pictures with video identifying “…what [we] are doing wrong!”

So here’s what I want you to NOT DO.

“Don’t think of rattlesnakes!”

Even though we were told not to, a picture of a rattlesnake is visualized in our mind. No matter how many times we are told, “NOT TO THINK of a Rattlesnake, the opposite occurs. In fact the vision of a rattlesnake becomes more clear with each command. Now imagine when we listen or view being told over and over what we are doing wrong. We become MORE Successful performing what we are being asked NOT to DO. The opposite of what our intent is, but as they say, the fact remains.

Here’s the simple fix: Improve what we are focusing on!

• Create a Mental Picture of HOW and WHAT is the correct way to perform something 
• Be “happy” and enjoy what you are doing versus focusing every minute worrying about what you or your children are doing wrong.

Remember success is relative, the choice is ours and I am guessing it is better than:

Until next Blog Improve what we are focusing on,

Al McCormick

I agree it sounds a bit odd to have someone compare your work ethic approach to a single cell organism without a brain. Maybe it’s not politically correct to tie us to an amoeba, but the more I understood what slime mold could do, the more I realized my mental picture was incorrect. Yet, isn’t that the case with most nicknames?

Think about it, to many, “Ears” creates a funny, negative mental image of Ross Perot and/or Don Mossi. Yet, both were very successful! Don Mossi is one of the Top 100 Greatest Cleveland Indians, pitching 11 years in Major League Baseball and Ross Perot, who started Electronic Data Systems (EDS), turned around and sold controlling interest to General Motors for $2.4 Billion.

You have to admit, “Slime” does have a certain edginess to it.

So where was I going with this? Our ‘yucky’ visual impression prevents us from recognizing how similar the Successful Traits of Slime Mold really are to the traits of successful people.

• A Slime Mold is continually experiencing and adapting to change.
• A Slime Mode’s has the ability to maneuver using what they call “a discipline mode of inquiry.”
• A Slime mold Takes Chances and explores new environments.

In much the same way Slime Mold becomes aware and adapts, successful people stop and ask the question, “What if?,” versus doing it the same way they did it yesterday. Creatively they take off the blinders, look around, modify and reshape how to perform every day tasks.

Want to be successful?

Open YOUR Eyes, become AWARE, and ADAPT to your surroundings in the much the same way brainless, single-celled Slime Mold does when looking for food.

Check out this short video on the success of Slime Mold.

 

Until next Blog, You mind if I call you “Slime?”

Al McCormick

Want To BE SUCCESSFULL?

LISTEN UP, as Psychologist Shawn Achor is telling us our approach to success in sports and business is backwards! Stating, “We believe we should work hard in order to be happy [and be successful]…unfortunately that approach is WRONG!

In fact taking the harder you work tactic… is the complete opposite attitude we should have. Because, as it turns out, “happiness inspires us to be more productive [to be more successful].”

What is so great, we get to choose!

Now before you think I am playing with your mind, well, in a sense I guess I am, I think we can agree being successful is a function of being effective at whatever we do. U.S. Soccer Player Mia Hamm said it best, “Success breeds success.” Well it so happens Dopamine is a motivation molecule that creates focus and concentration, while controlling the pleasure and reward centers of our brain. Simply put dopamine helps you focus on what it takes to be more confident, more successful and upbeat in business or as an athlete! But wait…, there’s more. Dopamine is something we can create on our own.

It’s a mindset that helps us:

• Quit Procrastinating
• Eliminate your focus on failure
• Start Viewing Hiccups as an Opportunity to Improve

All we need to do is “Change the WHAT” we focus on.

Shawn Achor calls it, “Positive Psychology.” Change the lens and focus on the positive and we will – Work Harder – Gain More Success – Be Happier. Just take a few minutes to rewrite our brain to operate more optimistically and operate more successfully by increasing our use of our motivation molecule dopamine. In fact, make Shawn’s simple two (2) minute challenge our part of our everyday way of life and we will work harder, we will be happy, and we will be SUCCESSFULL.

It’s simple, all we need to do is focus on these five (5) things for the next 21 days and we will improve our approach and our results.

1. Grateful: Identify three things you are grateful for – Seeing the world more positively
2. Journal: Post one positive thing you accomplished in the last 24 hours and RELIVE IT
3. Behavior: Introduce a new approach designed to help you improve what you want to get better at
   
4. Meditation: Focusing on a particular task you need done or need to improve on
   
5. Random Acts of Kindness: Send one e-mail or text to and individual in your social network telling them Thanks.

Five simple thoughts to help rewrite how we think and it won’t be long before we get to reap the rewards of becoming more successful and optimistic in everything we do.

As Jim Rohn said, “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced every day.”

Check out Shawn Achor’s video

Until next Blog Be Happy, Be Successful!

Anthony Iannarino, Sales Leader, Author, and Speaker states the majority,

“…stop learning because we are rigidly attached to the idea that we know what we need to know to succeed.”

This is my definition of mediocrity! Iannarino went on to say, prevention against our own personal mediocrity is simple, “…become a perpetual student.”

Whether that game is business, sports, or music it is our own responsibility to cure ourselves of our own ignorance by becoming a perpetual student of the game. The question we have to ask ourselves, “Are we a student of our game?” Or have we convinced ourselves, “I pretty much know what I need to know, and this is about the best I will ever be.” 

A YouTube sensation at the age of 13, Tina S. is more than a young girl who can play the guitar. Tina studied music, composing music, music theory, and listening to her art form.

Showing complete command of the guitar and musical expertise playing riffs from Pink Floyd to Ludwig van Beethoven. When you stop and appreciate the range of music this young lady continually studies, you quickly realize, “Tina is a Student of her game!”

Listen as Tina plays a tribute to famous 1741 Italian violinist Antonio Vivaldi.

Until next Blog, Never Stop Learning.

Al McCormick