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Why Do You Work?

May 31, 2018 By kwmccarthy

How many times do you say, “I’m off to work”?

Does saying that conjure up emotions of joy and excitement, or do your teeth clench and does your stomach churn and turn?

Your answer to this question goes to the heart of your life, health, and well-being in your spirit.

Are you one of the fortunate people who loves their work and has skillfully integrated (not “achieved” a work–life balance) the lines between work and life?
Have you become so fully integrated that you are on-purpose in business and in life? Are you compromising or being conditioned for your next great assignment?
Are you selling your soul or sailing along on-purpose?

Lots of questions for you to ponder.

Does thinking about this sound like work to you?

Sooner or later you will either answer the questions or pay the price for not answering them.

Got a comment to make? Go for it below. Let me hear from you.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

Have You Bought A Lie?

May 29, 2018 By kwmccarthy

Have You Bought a Lie? If so, it’s time to put it in the trash.

In the video portion of this On-Purpose Minute, I describe the “IABC” four types of lies we hold on to for all the wrong reasons.

Image
Attitude
Belief
Concept

Words are creative. Words come to life.

Many of us have had lying or hurtful words spoken into our lives in our innocence and/or in our adulthood. What we do next is up to us. Here are some tips to being whole.

Welcome truth, thirst for it, accept its pain, and embrace its liberation. In helping people to be on-purpose, I frequently come against seemingly irrational and obtuse behaviors from otherwise very accomplished and respected persons even in the face of contrary evidence. It’s their “old stuff” and patterns haunting their present and diminishing their future.

Why?

Words, more precisely lying or hurtful words, spoken into our truth lives by those closest to us or in whose care we depend strike hard on the soul. Lies falsely tarnish our self-image, attitude, behavior, or concept.

We pay dearly … for life unless we intervene. Holding on to the wounding is like tearing off a scab day after day and wondering why it doesn’t heal. The first offense is not of our making. The second offense, however, is all on us.

Forgiveness is the key.

Judith and I have an expression about forgiveness. “Forgive now and pray for sincerity to come later.” Forgiving someone who has hurt or offended you can be extraordinarily difficult, even painful, but it is the ONLY pathway I’ve found to MY recovery. It may or may not lead to reconciliation and recovery, but at least the injury stops hurting so much and with time, 99% recovery is possible.

Weighty Matters

Perhaps you think these self-deceptions or denial of damage are harmless? Hardly! They can literally have life and death consequences.

For example, within the health coaching team of On-Purpose Partners, we find the following kinds of Images, Attitudes, Beliefs, and Concepts can prevent clients from being qualified candidates for success in our program.

Image: I can’t imagine myself at a healthy weight anymore.
Attitude: I know what to do; I just don’t do it.
Beliefs: My family has always been big.
Concepts: I just don’t get enough exercise.

These mythologies of weight loss are factually inaccurate and crippling to us being in a healthier place. Even clients with the deepest desire to get healthy will scuttle their success unless and until they are aware of their personal mythology and clinging to old wounds that affect their well-being today. Coaching clients to health is more about their life experiences and views than it is our program. The program works, but will the client work the program?

You’ve seen the price of pain! Most of us are emotional abusers of some “drug of choice,” such as food, alcohol, smoking, drugs, shopping, or a host of other addictions. Think there isn’t pain? Ashley Madison had 36 million paid members who knowingly were seeking discreet affairs outside of marriage. Consider the trauma of a divorce, pain to the children, and the lawyers’ bills.

Lies are the words that keep on taking.

Lies we buy make it that much harder to sell our ideas, opportunities, and opinions. Lies steal from our livelihood and sap our worth. Lies corrode our productivity and undermine our careers.

Are you ready to uproot lies with greater truths? It begins by being open to living in truth. With truth comes greater freedom and abundance.

Do you have a coach or a health coach? Then share this On-Purpose Minute with them. Consider giving them permission to help you identify any lies or festering wounds. Ask them to help you work through forgiveness of the offending party, even if it is you.

Counselors and clergy are great sources of recovery. Clergy are especially versed in the area of forgiveness.

Do you need a coach? Certainly we offer life coaching to unburden your spirit and health coaching to relieve your joints and back from the physical burdens weighing on you. Contact Judith McCarthy for a free health coaching consultation so you, too, can get to your healthier place.

What Would You Do With $100,000 In Your Pocket?

May 24, 2018 By kwmccarthy

Lessons learned in business can often help us in life.

Here’s a true story of one of the several times I’ve been taken advantage of in business and lived to tell about it. Someday, perhaps, I’ll tell you more war stories.

For now, this On-Purpose Business Minute speaks for itself. It is longer than normal at 6 minutes, but it is a story that needs to be understood because it is rich in many lessons.

After watching this, here are some questions to ponder by yourself, with your family, or among your team:

Are money and confidence related? If so, how and why?
What are the limits to your service and compromise to keep it from becoming abuse and disrespect?
What can you do to avoid putting yourself at risk of being dangled by dollars?
If you had $100,000 extra in your pocket, what would you be doing differently from what you’re doing today?

Please share your thoughts, experiences, and insights in the Comments section below.

Am I A Natural Born Leader?

May 22, 2018 By kwmccarthy

6a00e551c6499c8834019affa9fcd9970b-320wi.jpg.jpg — Click on the book cover
to buy *FIT 4 Leading*
from amazon.com

Decide to discover your inherent leadership capacity and your obstacles.

You’ll transform your life plus the lives of those around you presently and those to come. Shuck the shackles of being a victim and grasp the freedom of being yourself, prospering, and making a difference … on-purpose. Yes, it can be risky, but it is better than living life in a fragile glass jar.

Discover the joy from taking a hard look at yourself.

In my book, FIT 4 LEADING, this haunting question of natural born leadership is addressed. Below is an excerpt from the book from Chapter 9.

“Many of us think that leadership is like athleticism—either you were born with coordination or not. This thinking emerges because of this ridiculous debate around the question: Are leaders born or are they made?

“Here’s the final word on the question: Yes! It is both.

“Leaders are born and leaders are made. You were born to lead.

“What you’ve made of or how others have helped fashion or develop your leadership may be a missing refinement, but the raw material of your existence is designed for leading.

“What? I was born to lead? But I never thought I was …

“Yes! You were born to lead, period—end of story. Take this as fact.

“How can I unequivocally state to you that you were born to lead? It is because I know you are especially fit for leading. You have a unique design and purpose in your life that is unlike any other person.

“Isn’t the real question: How can you not be fit for leading? The evidence is overwhelmingly clear if you’ll look at it. You have this good fortune of a Body, Mind, and Spirit that has an absolutely incredible capacity for expression and becoming. In fact, it craves to productively come alive in ways you aren’t even imagining, especially if you’ve relegated yourself to follower status.

“A subtle distinction is needed here. Being a leader versus being a leader in a given situation is different. The President of the United States of America is the leader of the free world. That’s a large domain. But if the President is hosting a reception for a visiting President of an allied country, and his guest falls to the ground with a heart attack, the President is no longer the leader in that situation. The doctor from the crowd who emerges immediately becomes the leader of that situation. The U.S. President is relegated to the role of bystander.

“Leaders understand that they step forward in some situations and take a backseat in most. Those who think otherwise are just arrogant people who are egomaniacal control freaks. Only needy minions and groupies will follow them. Strong leaders have strong followers.

“If you believe anything other than the fact that you were born to lead, then you’ve bought a lie spoken upon your life. However it got there doesn’t matter anymore. Stop living into that lie now! Choose to be the leader of your life. Otherwise, you’re the one who is paying the price. Someone other than you is benefiting from it at the expense of your Body, Mind, and Spirit.”

Visit the FIT 4 Leading website. There you can read the first chapter of the book, watch a free 30-minute webcast, and much more. Softcover and Kindle versions are available on Amazon. Use Prime for free shipping.

So How Are Your Shortcuts Working?

May 17, 2018 By kwmccarthy

Shortcuts are almost always shortsighted.

The pressure to produce immediate cash flow in business can tempt one to take shortcuts or put in minimal effort. I’m not talking keyboard shortcuts, fraud, or other illegalities here. We’re talking cutting corners in order to shade performance lightly to hit a short-term goal. While not illegal, it is a bad business practice that dampens future opportunity.

One trait of a true leader is the ability to make the call between the short-term effect and the long-term consequences. Knowing when something meets standards, however, is different from cutting corners.

One might think that doing right is a matter of business ethics.

Ethics, however, begin by having a heart for caring, honesty, courtesy, and a desire for a life well lived, even if it costs a few coins at the moment.

A few years ago, I bought a used iPhone from a retail store here in Winter Park. I was mid-contract with my cell carrier and my mobile phone was failing. I thought I would give an iPhone a try, especially since I was a longtime Mac user.

At the store, I put my name on a list to get a used one. I got a call to come see it. The salesman in the store showed me the phone. The phone checked out—looked nearly new with no scratches to the back or front. It was in the box. Dropped in my SIM card and it worked like a charm. I got home, however, and the charger was rejected by the phone. That’s odd!

I returned to the store and get the tech guy, not the sales guy. Turns out the sales guy who sold me the iPhone yanked the OEM charger and replaced it with a cheap version that didn’t work. That little cube costs $30 to buy. The tech guy told me, “Yeah, I don’t know why he (the sales guy) does that,” as if this wasn’t the first time! But he can’t do anything about it. I walk out unhappy.

The sales guy cut a corner on me! And he nearly got away with it. If the phone hadn’t known the cube was a knock-off, then I wouldn’t have known any differently. I trusted him and got shortchanged.

Thinking I had found a great little local business to support, I was prepared to recommend this store to several friends. Now I’m cautious because a corner was cut.

Later, I returned to the store, talked to the owner, and was immediately given an Apple charger. Kudos to the owner who mitigated some measure of the damage to his business reputation. Then again, why does he have a “corner cutter” like that working there?

I’ve never sent a person to their store.

A few years back, I had the pleasure to interview Philip Crosby, author of Quality is Free. In essence, this thought leader of the quality movement in the 1980s had a simple message:

“Do it right the first time. It costs too much no matter what to make it right after the fact.” Crosby proved the cost of cutting corners doesn’t pay.

Little people cut corners! Real leaders lay cornerstones.

Which are you?

Are You Owning Your Mistakes?

May 15, 2018 By kwmccarthy

Mistakes are inevitable, yet the fixation on perfection in our society is debilitating.

Whether it be lawmakers, bakers, payroll makers, or homemakers, the fear of making a mistake can flatten one’s life into a “safe zone” of mediocrity. Risks and loss are inevitable when one ventures into life or work with a sense of wonder and discovery. You are better off to have a mistake than to miss-a-take at what could be.

It is a mistake to view mistakes as merely mistakes.

Instead, mistakes can lead to retakes and become invaluable guideposts to life and growth of one’s personal growth and leadership. Mistakes open doors to learning or blaze new pathways that might otherwise go undiscovered.

“Mistakes” enabled Thomas Edison to discover 9,999 ways a light bulb couldn’t work. And in the process, he developed a reliable means of tracking research and increasing his knowledge of elements.
“Mistakes” created the Post-It^® Note. “Mistakes” often open doors to new frontiers of thought, use, and development.

Just Say It!

“Yes, that’s my mistake.” These are the four magic words that when said sincerely are your path to a healthier and happier life without the stress and strain imposed by the pride of perfection and the need to be right. It will take practice and some hard swallowing, but you’ll be amazed at how much simpler life becomes.

Problem ownership is your best chance to open the door to mercy, grace, and forgiveness. The risk of owning up has a downside of consequences, but it also has the upside of building trust and rapport. In practical terms, when the mistake is out in the open versus covered-up, a solution or fix will happen sooner and with less cost.

Take Your Mistakes Like A Leader

When we make a mistake, our natural reaction is to be defensive. We retreat and distance ourselves from the mistake and then look to whom we can pass off the blame. Shedding responsibility for a mistake may momentarily soothe the psyche, but each pass of the buck creates a self-inflicted bite upon one’s soul.

Admittedly, most of us prefer to cover our mistakes under a blanket of embarrassment, shame, or self-pity. Stopping dead in our tracks at our mistakes to point fingers at people, circumstances, and systems invites a bitter and negative stronghold to enter our emotional and spiritual system. We’re stuck in a self-imposed unhealthy manner of living that taints every aspect of our lives. Now that’s a tragic and true mistake!

Compounding our initial mistake with another more sinister mistake knits a habit of ill-fitted denial into the fabric of our lives.

Do this too often and we live in a straitjacket of fear of failure and bitter close-minded defensiveness. In time, the fear of exposure arrests our maturity and so we become the very thing we fear most—a dull and ordinary blank slate of a person with no distinguishing quality. We live small (which is different from living humbly). Repeating these actions and circumstances reinforces a debilitating pattern and fuels a vicious cycle of defeat.

Image via Wikipedia

A Penny For Your Thoughts

Life need not be this way. Instead, what if mistakes are friends in the form of hard lessons? They’re not roadblocks, per se, but guideposts revealing a better way to navigate life. Mistakes can help us know who we are and what we’re called to be about with our special gift of time on the planet.

Mistakes are an odd currency of redemption. Their true value comes with a cost in the form of a workout where we have to face ourselves. Throwing “good money after bad” is viscerally upsetting. We’ve been given an intellectual and spiritual capacity to rise higher and dig even deeper to strengthen our condition regardless of the proposed outcome. It only requires us to admit our mistake and gain the clarity and opportunity to set things right—stronger and better than before in some cases.

Wisdom is often the byproduct of mistakes, provided we invest in processing the lessons to be learned. Here’s where a mentor or coach can help us reflect and grow. If you’re seeking that mentor or coach, perhaps we can help you?

Podcast: From CEO to CLO with CB Bowman of MEECO Leadership

May 10, 2018 By kwmccarthy

Enjoy this podcast interview with CB Bowman of MEECO Leadership Development and The Associate of Corporate Executive Coaches.

What I really love about this interview with CB is her curiosity and sense of wonder as she’s listening and learning. Here’s a master executive coach with an open mind and a willing spirit to engage fresh ideas and integrate them rapidly. Chief Leadership Officer^® is on the edge for most corporate executives and CEOs. CB was hungry to explore, eager to assimilate, and excited to discover new frontiers of corporate executive leadership.

Feel free to drop a comment or question below. I hope this casual yet thought-rich interview serves you well.