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Will You Have A Happy, Healthy, & Prosperous New Year?

January 2, 2018 By kwmccarthy

(This video was originally recorded in 2011. While the year mentioned is not current, the message shared is timeless.)

To kick off the New Year, I’ve gathered a handful of On-Purpose Minutes and Business Minutes relevant to the popular New Year’s toast for a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year. Rather than it being a mere sentiment, why not make it a reality or at least invest your self in making your good life even better?

Put your good intentions into action!

For each aspect of this New Year gesture, dig deeper by clicking on the provided links to relevant Minutes.

Happy On-Purpose New Year!
Kevin

A Happy New Year

Happy is rightfully a great word to be associated with New Year’s Day. Much like time itself, happiness is fleeting, yet so desired. Who doesn’t want to be happy? The term “Happy New Year” embraces the chronological odometer as it turns and makes a fresh start for 2018. Relish the reminder.

Comparing Christmas Day to New Year’s Day reveals an interesting shift of words and implications. We will say Merry Christmas, but the word most reverently associated with this Christian holy day is joy, as in the song, Joy to the World.

Joy can be one’s reality regardless of whether circumstances are happy or unhappy. Trading in happiness is a far less stable currency of emotion. Joy is the gold standard.

Are You Happily Distracted?

How Do You Get The Job Of Your Life?

How Do I Find Peace In My Life?

A Healthy New Year

Several years ago, this over-50 former athlete turned business advisor, author, and speaker was resigned to wearing “my fat suit.” This is going to sound awful, but I was so accepting of my extra pounds that I used to say, “Unless I have a cancer, I probably won’t lose this weight.” Ugh!

Fortunately, that changed in March 2008, when I was booked by Dr. Wayne Andersen (sight unseen) to be the keynote speaker at the Take Shape For Life National Convention. I did the program, lost the weight, and haven’t really looked back at my old weight since. Admittedly, the holidays are the hardest part for me because I get so out of my normal routine; it is a festive time, and I’m addicted to sweets.

Are You Starting A Diet Monday?

Do You Want To Grow Into Maturity?

A Prosperous New Year

Prosperity is so overused, abused, and misunderstood. Let’s set the record straight.

Are You Prepared to Prosper?

Blessed Are The Profitmakers For They Shall Enrich The Earth

What Is In Your September Plan?

August 17, 2017 By kwmccarthy

(This video mentions the year 2010. No matter the year, having a September plan is good for your business.)

Summer is almost over.

Many of us are just returning from vacation and others are just getting ready to close out the summer by heading on vacation. We’re executing on our family and personal plans put in place some months ago. Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together?

Image via Wikipedia

September in the Northern Hemisphere provides a restart of sorts.

It isn’t like New Year’s Day, but in a sense it can function much like it because it gives us the opportunity to finish the year strong. September is a time to reboot the business.

From now until New Year’s Eve is a great stretch to really make strides in your career or business.

But you need a plan. So let’s talk about a September Plan.

With just a couple of weeks left in August, let’s get our heads ahead of the game and start making plans today for September through the remainder of the year.

What do you want to accomplish?
Who do you need to see?
What decision do you need to make?

Plan now and you’ll hit September in full stride and have the momentum to carry you through the fall and into the first days of winter.

How’s Your Trust Account?

July 18, 2017 By kwmccarthy

In polite company, we’re told not to discuss religion, sex, or money. So today, I’m not discussing sex!

God is a very loaded term these days so please let me add an inclusive caveat to the Minute and my use of God.

God is being used in the broadest possible terms without affiliation to a particular denomination, faith, or point of view. I’m using God as inclusive of your worldview even if you’re an agnostic.

You may call God Nature, The Life Force, The Trinity, Jesus, Abba, Spirit, Jehovah, The Big Bang, or some other point of origin for the planet and our lives on it. In other words, unless you are a hard core atheist, don’t be offended.

Trust, not God, is the focus of the OP Minute. If you are searching for purpose, then you can’t avoid the spiritual nature of your quest and the need to trust that something bigger than you exists. Sure it raises important questions that profoundly affect our lives and color our worldview.

Do This: Grab a piece of paper and invest 60 seconds to jot down your answers to these questions:

Can you trust?
Where is your trust placed?
Where has your trust been violated? What did you learn?
Who do you trust … why?
How do you find trust in the midst of the swirl of current world events?
Without trust, can you ever find rest or peace?

God (broadly referenced remember) is bigger than we are. God is present today and around tomorrow. Long after we die, God exists. God is humbling and continuous. There’s something undeniably bigger than us, and God is a widely accepted term for that something.

When I go to the ocean, I often think of the sound of the waves crashing on the beach as the heartbeat of God. We can close our ears, minds, and hearts to the presence of God, but we can’t stop the waves from beating the shores. And we can’t stop those waves from pulsing on our hearts.

Trust, then, is a coming to terms with the world and your place in it.

Money, while nice to have, is a store of value but a counterfeit store of trust. If you’ll accept my premise about money, then where do you place your trust? Repeat this cycle of asking yourself where is the basis of your trust.

Honest repetition of the cycle eventually peels back the layers of empty stores to reveal God. Yet God is more concept than concrete. It defies logic to trust a mere concept. Yet, the mystery of God’s presence for as long as you can remember becomes undeniable. Something is there that our minds alone can’t grasp. And now we’re being asked to trust it more than we do when driving through an intersection with a green light. Weird, huh? Wonderful, yes!

That source of it all is why “In God We Trust” is such an important reminder of what matters most even as we wisely earn, save, and invest money.

Be On-Purpose!
Kevin

Ambition. At What Price?

July 7, 2016 By kwmccarthy

Click on text for more information about the On-Purpose Small Business Package

The desire to make a positive difference is the sweet, soulful heart of ambition. In contrast is blind ambition that tramples all in its path to accomplish an end, perhaps even a noble end at that, which is fraught with unhealthy costs. Much of this rests on your view of people.

Which will mark your life, career, and legacy?

Herein lies the rub for many a business person. To what lengths are you willing to go to realize your ambitions?

Results, especially in the form of company sales and profits, are outward and tangible measures of success. Measurable signs, however, tell just a portion of the story. If you want to know the full story, ask the people along the way who helped to produce the results.

Here’s a painful example. For 12 months spanning 2008 to 2009, I worked nearly full time with a CEO client to author a book that codified his corporate culture, leadership development moves, and business strategy for internal use. Intending for the company to go public via IPO, the book also targeted Wall Street analysts and investors so they could readily grasp what truly made this company great.

The IPO market at that time dried up with the challenges in the economy. Instead, the company was purchased by a national competitor for $130 million. By the CEO’s own admission, the book helped them get more than $15 million in greater value for shareholders over the IPO price, plus they kept their name, and the CEO was offered the position of President over the merged companies.

“Wow!” you may be thinking, “That CEO had to be a happy man.” You would think so. Eight months after delivery of the manuscript, a client satisfaction clause I wrote into the contract was used to deny issuing me an “earned” six-figure stock bonus despite personal assurances from the CEO to the contrary. My concern for my client’s satisfaction and best interests was used against me. Ouch! That hurts on so many levels.

Just because one can take advantage of another person, does that mean one should? Best-selling books on the art of war and being a prince would say go for it. But I say there’s nothing noble in selfishness and greed. True nobility is knowing one has the upper hand and using it to raise up the other person instead of jamming them down further.

The deeper value is seeing people as being above things. Translation: relationships are greater than transactions. Results with responsibilities and citizenship can coexist and produce true greatness.

For a couple of decades I’ve worked with my CEO clients to get them to stop saying things like, “Our people are our greatest asset.” Assets are bought and sold as in slavery. Relating people to assets dehumanizes them and places them on par with the photocopier. By the way, the investment in the photocopier maintenance agreement often far exceeds the equivalent “maintenance agreement” for the people in training, development, and benefits. How sad is that!

Along this same line, the term Human Resources certainly isn’t endearing and doesn’t advance the cause of people as human beings. Resources is just another name for commodities or assets that are traded, discarded, and otherwise moved about indiscriminately. The Human Resources Department is a blind co-conspirator in the loss of human identity and dignity. Instead, rename the department to something like, “People Development” or “Talent Management” but not “human resources.” It is degrading.

I hold no delusions of grandeur that either the perfect person or company graces the face of the planet. Self-serving serpents slither the planet preying on others. We are all capable of being this way, yet deep within our spirit we yearn to a higher self, call, and standard. We’re better to aspire and fail than to have no aspiration at all.

Gazing with admiration upon the shells of “successful” men and women may provide inspiration, but it tends to deliver little instruction. You know better. Get the true back story from the secretaries, bookkeepers, janitors, clerks, delivery persons, and cafeteria workers in corporate headquarters. Look at their personal life. Are their personal lives as captivating as their business headlines? You’ll soon discern whether the person capturing the headlines and your attention is gold-plated or 24 karat solid gold.

Do this: Whether you’re leading your life, a team, or a business, you need to decide: Ambition, at what price? Knowing your purpose and defining your values is a great start to building a life and a career where you can put your head to your pillow at night and sleep soundly.

______________________________________________________________

Here are some famous quotes about money for your consideration and amusement.

“Money makes the world go around.”

From the song Money (Watch the performance!) in the Broadway play Cabaret sung by Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey.

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”

1 Timothy 6

“A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.”

Jonathan Swift

“Get all you can [money], without hurting your soul, your body, or your neighbor. Save all you can, cutting off every needless expense. Give all you can.”

John Wesley

“With money in your pocket, you are wise and you are handsome and you sing well, too.”

Yiddish Proverb

One Love

March 16, 2016 By kwmccarthy

Thanks Anne McCarthy for this challenge to post the look of One Love:

Our dog Hamlet provided our family with deep and abiding unconditional love. Since dog is God spelled backwards and God is unconditional love, then I nominate Hamlet as God’s living stand-in for the years he graced our lives. Yes, I know that the challenge is to make this “about people” but dogs are family members too — often the nicest, most loyal and forgiving member of the family. And when he died on Oct. 5, 2015 his One Love has yet to be replaced in our home, but mostly in our hearts!

I learned yesterday that Maggie, one of his best doggie playmates, died last week. Her owner and I stood in the neighborhood consoling one another and counting our blessings for the One Love, respectively, we had in our homes each for over a decade.

Four-legged love aside, being On-Purpose is another way of expressing One Love: It is the ability to see and feel another person’s heart in such a way that our preconceived notions and impressions melt away as the shell relents to the soul of the person.

Is Your Life Getting Better?

September 8, 2015 By kwmccarthy

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.

God’s Proposal. Your Post.

July 21, 2015 By kwmccarthy

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.

Are you getting caught in the Work Trap?

May 13, 2015 By kwmccarthy

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.

Queensland, Australia