Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

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Is Your Life Getting Better?

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Note: The video mentions an upcoming On-Purpose Leader Teleseminar. For this updated On-Purpose Minute, I instead want to refer you to the Power of Your 2-Word Purpose Statement webcast, linked below.

Are you or is someone dear to you the proverbial “victim of circumstances”? Don’t Be! A victim of circumstances is a person in an unfortunate position, but those circumstances need not dictate your future.

You may not be able to control your circumstances, but you can manage your responses. Resigning to your current set of circumstances can be negatively habit-forming and send you in a downward spiral. This response means that you’re on the fast track to becoming a victim, no longer of circumstances, but of self-inflicted circumstances.

Choose a better option. In this On-Purpose Minute, we’ll be looking at how you can order your life around a different, healthier perspective of managing your life.

Are you ready to finally know your purpose in life — in two words! Yes, your life will get a whole lot better by being on-purpose.

The Power of Your 2-Word Purpose Statement may be just the introduction for you to order your life, define what’s most important, and begin living as an on-purpose person in creation.

 

Are You Setting Goals?

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This is a classic On-Purpose Minute that first aired in August 2010 so the September offer regarding The On-Purpose Leader Experience is out of date. Alternatively, consider reading The On-Purpose Person and downloading the free preview to The Discovery Guide.

Another option is On-Purpose Peace, a six-session, small group study for Christians reading The On-Purpose Person. 

Goal setting is really the poor man’s way of doing strategic planning. Guess what? For about 95% of what you want to accomplish, writing out your goals will get the job done. If you want to take something to the next level, however, you’ll need to invest in strategic thought and planning. Otherwise, you’ll remain mired in mediocrity.

Research shows that as few as 1% to as many as 10% of all people write down their goals. Why not more people? Here are some of the excuses I’ve come up with. What’s your reason for not setting goals?

  1. I don’t have time to write goals.
  2. I’m not really sure that’s where I’m supposed to focus my effort and energy.

    Marine Institute Ireland, Strategic_Planning_S...Image via Wikipedia

  3. If it is meant to be, then it will happen.
  4. Goal setting is a waste because my goals never come into being.
  5. Who am I to set goals?
  6. No one else I know sets goals.
  7. I don’t know how to write a goal.
  8. What if I don’t reach my goal?
  9. What will other people think? They might think I’m crazy.
  10. I have too many goals to write them down.
  11. I don’t believe my goals can be realized or are realistic.
  12. Goals don’t motivate me.
  13. Goals are too basic for what I need to get accomplished.

Behind every rationale for not setting a goal is a tragic assault on hope and possibilities fed by irrational thought. OK, so maybe you don’t have Killer Goals; that’s still no reason for not learning the process and getting started. In fact, set that as your first goal.

Lose the Excuses, Gain Your Sanity.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

 

4 Sales and Business Growth Strategies

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Guest Star Today!

Sometimes advice is just so good that I just have to share it! With the permission of my colleague, Meridith Elliott Powell, I am delighted to both introduce you to her as well as share her wonderful insights on strategies for building relationships, business, and revenues.

Please post your comments below. Also, Meridith’s email is below; connect with her directly. She would be delighted to hear from you.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

Meridith

Take a moment to assess the current sales and business growth strategies you have in place, then watch this video to get the 4 new business strategies I have outlined. You can email me with any questions or comments. I’m always happy to help! Have a successful week,

Meridith

Meridith Elliott Powell

Ready to get more from Meridith? Download her free copy of
6 Key Strategies for Connecting With Clients!

God’s Proposal. Your Post.

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shareasimage(4)Readers of God’s Proposal requested a webpage for comments.  Here it is! This is a moderated page so your comments may not appear immediately. In posting, you’re also granting us the right to make edits to typos and grammar or to shorten text when appropriate. You are posting your comments in the public domain for others and us to see and quote. Spam will be deleted.

You may remain anonymous or share as much or as little of your personal information as you like by the way you sign in below.

Purchase God’s Proposal on an 11″ x 17″ durable paper, full color poster.

Is your life a question mark, period, or exclamation point?

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Disclaimer: This On-Purpose Minute is nearly 10 minutes long because it is an excerpt from a keynote address. I apologize that the video quality is less than ideal, but the message still comes across.

The Back Story:

This month, I’m celebrating my 7th anniversary of reclaiming my health and creating a lifelong healthy lifestyle. In March 2008, I was tipping the scales at over 240 pounds on my 5′ 9″ frame. While I’ve always had an athletic, muscular build, I was wearing what I jokingly called “My fat suit.” Somewhere within the bundled layers of my fat suit was a trim Kevin W. McCarthy seeking liberation. Perhaps you relate.

Over the years my weight had been steadily increasing with more work, less exercise, and poor eating habits. I would skip breakfast, often skip lunch, and then eat dinner and have desserts the rest of the evening. I’ve since learned that this is how Sumo wrestlers get so big. I did not have a healthy lifestyle by any stretch of the imagination.

About a year earlier I took on a business client project of co-authoring a business book on a very tight timetable. This resulted in even more rapid weight gain as I was sitting for days on end researching and writing. The good news is that when my client sold his business, the book created an extra $15 million in company value. The bad news is the book resulted in me gaining an extra 25 or more pounds over my existing steady weight gain.

In March 2008, Dr. Wayne Scott Andersen booked me (sight unseen) as the keynote speaker for the July Take Shape For Life Annual Convention in Orlando. I asked about the program and got on it. I figured someone had to have figured out this weight thing because my feeble attempts at getting healthy weren’t working.

Three months later I stood on that stage a changed man from the inside out. Yes, I had lost 50 pounds but that wasn’t the half of it. I had learned to better understand my relationship with food and sweets, adopted a number of healthy habits, and discovered the power of using a systematic approach or program to health rather than using a diet.

As importantly, my weight loss inspired several of my friends, my business associates, and my wife to follow my lead. Within months ten people close to me were on the TSFL Program and also experiencing health gains. One friend, a Type 2 diabetic, was able to lose over 100 pounds and get off his medications. He tells me often that introducing him to Take Shape for Life probably saved his life. (Results vary by person so no medical claims are made here.)

Questions To Ask Yourself

1. How can we be on-purpose when we’re packing extra pounds and are unhealthy?

This typically self-inflicted health condition is within our control once we have a proven system to join with our decision to be healthy and apply our existing discipline that carries us well through life. This was much easier than I ever imagined! Over seven years later there’s still so much less of me to carry around since I lost my fat suit thanks to the power of making more informed and mindful decisions about living a healthier life.

The above 10-minute video excerpt is from my keynote address in July 2008. There’s a central question that I pose to the health coaches in attendance that is relevant to any of us about our life and work and being on-purpose:

2. Am I living my life with a question mark, period, or exclamation point?

To set up this video clip, I’m referring to the TSFL logo and referencing the “green dot” in the middle of the graphic to the right.

Enjoy this vignette and take it to heart. We only get one body to care for so get it right because getting it wrong is so costly. I hope this message catches the heartbeat of where you are in your life and inspires you to live boldly by beginning the process of being an on-purpose person in creation.

3. So What About Your Health?

Like I was, are you tired of wearing your fat suit?

If you already have a health coach, then press more deeply into the relationship to get the most benefit you can from the TSFL offerings.

If you don’t have a health coach and are ready to make a weighty lifestyle change to transform your life for the better, then let us help you. My wife Judith became a Certified Health Coach with TSFL as have I! Today, we help clients add health to their overall program of being on-purpose. Email me to set up a phone call. I’ll ask questions and help you determine if TSFL is right for you so you too can be on-purpose and live boldly into your life with an exclamation mark.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

P.S. This weekend Judith and I will be at the Take Shape For Life National Convention. Coincidentally it is in Orlando again and seven years later we’re living a healthy lifestyle as part of being on-purpose persons in creation.

Frances Hesselbein on Serving

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shareasimageThis quote relates directly to being on-purpose.  Your 2-Word purpose statement begins with, “I exist to serve by…”  Being on-purpose, therefore, is a lifetime and attitude of being in service without regard to your current condition or place of employment.

I saw this quote today and took the liberty of setting it up with the image.

If you don’t know who Frances Hesselbein is then dig into her story and life.  She’s a remarkable woman

Read about the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute

Watch her at West Point where she serves.  At this time she was in her early 90s and is now in her late 90s.  Her spirit and pine box are both still open.

 

Frances Hesselbein, To Serve Is To Live. from Hesselbein Institute Videos on Vimeo.

Are you getting caught in the Work Trap?

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Are you getting caught in the Work Trap?Three things prompted me to write this article.

First, the realisation that I need to get my working life into perspective and to practice what I preach!

Second, an article I recently read by Travis Bradberry on ‘How successful people work less and get more done’.

Third, a few weeks ago I had a complete weekend off – went boating, caught some fish, walked and talked with my wife Angela and our chocolate brown labrador – Poppy, (yes, dogs talk too) and generally chilled out.

Nice!

So much so that Angela and Poppy have talked about it nearly every day since!

And I want to do that more often as increasingly I’m working longer hours and often over weekends too! (Those of you who own a business or have high responsibility as an employee know how easily it is to get trapped into 24/7.)

I think there is a serious condition called the Work Trap and we need time to ‘unplug’ (no longer ‘unwind’) from the day-to-day to get more perspective, think more deeply and reflect on the bigger picture of our lives.

… people who work as much as 70 hours per week
only achieve the same amount as people who work 55 hours …

A new study from Stanford found that productivity per hour declines sharply when the work week exceeds 50 hours and productivity drops off so much after 55 hours there’s no point in working any more. Apparently, people who work as much as 70 hours per week (or more) only achieve the same amount as people who work 55 hours.

Successful people know the importance of shifting gears on the weekend to relaxing and rejuvenating activities.

Those who have participated in our Power of Your Purpose programs, will recall the activity where we work together on building your ideal On-Purpose day or weekend. Both of these create space and quality time for the things that matter most – your core wants and top priorities which align with your Purpose and Values.

This might be less difficult than you think!

Activities that successful people do to create life integration on weekends

So, drawing on the post by Travis Bradberry, here are practical things that successful people do on the weekend to re-enter work on Monday morning feeling refreshed and rejuvenated.

1. Disconnect
Disconnecting is the most important weekend strategy on this list, because if you can’t find a way to remove yourself electronically from your work Friday evening through Monday morning, then you’ve never really left work. Making yourself available to your work 24/7 exposes you to a constant barrage of stressors that prevent you from refocusing and recharging. If taking the entire weekend off handling work e-mails and calls isn’t realistic, try designating specific times on Saturday and Sunday for checking e-mails and responding to voicemails. Scheduling short blocks of time to attend to emails will alleviate stress without sacrificing availability.

2. Minimise chores
Chores have a funny habit of completely taking over your weekends. When this happens, you lose the opportunity to relax and reflect. What’s worse is that a lot of chores feel like work. So if you spend all weekend doing them, you just put in a seven-day work week. To keep this from happening, you need to schedule your chores like you would anything else during the week, and if you don’t complete them during the allotted time, you move on and finish them the following weekend.

3. Reflect
Weekly reflection is a powerful tool for improvement. Use the weekend to contemplate the larger forces that are shaping your industry, your organization, and your job. Without the distractions of Monday to Friday busy work, you should be able to see things in a whole new light. Use this insight to alter your approach to the coming week, improving the efficiency and efficacy of your work.

4. Exercise
You have 48 hours every weekend to make it happen. Getting your body moving for as little as 10 minutes releases GABA, a soothing neurotransmitter that reduces stress. Exercise is also a great way to come up with new ideas. Innovators and other successful people know that being outdoors often sparks creativity. Whether you’re running, walking, cycling or gardening, exercise leads to endorphin-fuelled introspection. The key is to find a physical activity that does this for you and then to make it an important part of your weekend routine.

5. Pursue a passion
You might be surprised what happens when you pursue something you’re passionate about on weekends. Indulging your passions is a great way to escape stress and to open your mind to new ways of thinking. Things like playing music, reading, writing, painting, or even playing with your kids can help stimulate different modes of thought that can reap huge dividends over the coming week.

6. Spend quality time with family
Spending quality time with your family on the weekend is essential if you want to recharge and relax. Weekdays are so hectic that the entire week can fly by with little quality family time. Don’t let this bleed into your weekends. Take your kids to the park, take your spouse to his or her favourite restaurant, go to the movies and go visit your parents. You’ll be glad you did.

7. Schedule micro-adventures
Buy tickets to a concert or play or get reservations for that new hotel that just opened downtown. Instead of running on a treadmill, plan a hike. Try something you haven’t done before or perhaps something you haven’t done in a long time. Studies show that anticipating something good to come is a significant part of what makes the activity pleasurable. Knowing that you have something interesting planned for Saturday will not only be fun come Saturday, but it will significantly improve your mood throughout the week.

8. Wake up at the same time
It’s tempting to sleep in on the weekend to catch up on your sleep. Though it feels good temporarily, having an inconsistent wake-up time disturbs your circadian rhythm. Your body cycles through an elaborate series of sleep phases in order for you to wake up rested and refreshed. One of these phases involves preparing your mind to be awake and alert, which is why people often wake up just before their alarm clock goes off (the brain is trained and ready). When you sleep past your regular wake-up time on the weekend, you end up feeling groggy and tired. This isn’t just disruptive to your day off, it also makes you less productive on Monday because your brain isn’t ready to wake up at your regular time. If you need to catch up on sleep, just go to bed earlier.

9. Prepare for the upcoming week
The weekend is a great time to spend a few moments planning your upcoming week. As little as 30 minutes of planning can yield significant gains in productivity and reduced stress. The week feels a lot more manageable when you go into it with a plan because all you have to focus on is execution.

Final comments

Trying to implement all of these at once will be overwhelming. So next weekend pick one or two of these to get you started. Commence with the ones that will give you the most meaning and fulfilment. Start planning your weekends intentionally. None of these will happen unless you are really serious about breaking the Work Trap.

While you are planning your next weekend, get some overall perspective back into your life and ask the big questions:

  • What is the ultimate purpose of my life, work, or career?
  • What am I living for?
  • What do I want my life to be about and stand for?

Wait for the answers to emerge from deep within you. They will come. Just give them time and space.

One more tip.

Start observing yourself more. Watch your actions and thoughts as you develop deeper self-awareness about your life and work. We are all so self-absorbed we give little time to being self-aware.

So now it’s up to you but many people find a coach useful for accountability. If you need some assistance to get you going, please give me a call or send me an email.

This is too important to be left to chance.

© Dr Edward Gifford, On-Purpose Partners®

Queensland, Australia

www.onpurposepartners.com.au

How to Make A Historic Contribution!

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Please allow me to step out of an 8-year tradition of providing On-Purpose Minutes with minimal direct asking for anything in return but your attention. I need your help in two ways:

  1. Please share this message on your social media. We need to get the word out about this historic event. Here is the url: https://kevinwmccarthy.com/making-difference/
  2. Donate $8.50 to provide 1 Bible to the Babwisi people.

Bibles for Babwisi is a crowd source effort I’m spearheading with the Central Florida Christian Chamber of Commerce and Wycliffe Bible Translators.

The Babwisi are a defined people group living in western Uganda. Their heart language is Lubwisi. In all their history, they’ve never had the Bible in Lubwisi, so they’ve never read the Bible in their own language. In conjunction with Wycliffe Bible Translators, we’re campaigning to provide 5,000 Lubwisi Bibles this fall. Your donation prints and delivers the Lubwisi New Testament edition that includes select Old Testament chapters.

Please consider a donation now. Click here to donate directly on the Wycliffe site.

Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to insert this personal appeal. We’ll be back on Thursday with an On-Purpose Business Minute.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin