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Woosley Coaching

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Ten Years Gone

It’s interesting to reflect on the past sometimes, though I have to be careful not to get stuck there.  As we close the door on 2009, I’m thinking not so much about the events of the past year, but of the past 10 years.

And that leads me to cast a vision for the next 10 years.

Ten years ago today was December 31st, 1999.  Bill Clinton was still president, and we were gearing up for an election in November 2000 that none of us could have predicted.  Y2K was all the rage as we prepared for the world to end (it didn’t, and probably won’t in 2012 either).

Me, I was a First Lieutenant in the US Air Force working as a computer systems manager at Offutt AFB outside of Omaha, Nebraska.  I think I remember having the day off, but had to report to the office a few hours before midnight…just in case everything in the world went wrong and Y2K happened.  Half an hour after midnight we locked the doors and headed out.  I met my wife at a friends house in rural Iowa and we stayed out until 3 or 4 am (sober).

I had no children, though we would learn of Anna’s impending arrival in just a few more days.

On that day I launched a new website, PerfectParanoia.com.  I picked that day because I wanted to be able to say that the site spanned two millennia!  It would soon become one of the most popular NASCAR sites on the web.  I made friends (and a few enemies) throughout the racing world, capped off with a behind the scenes weekend with ESPN at Atlanta Motor Speedway in November 2000.  Though I loved the site, at that time I had no idea how to turn it into a full-time business.  A few years later I would take the site down as it was too big of a burden on my family and career.  If I only knew then what I know now…

On that day I had no clue what change would be coming!

I never would have imagined leaving the Air Force, becoming a road warrior consultant for a huge firm that would later go bankrupt, moving to Alabama and living next door to my in-laws, or adopting a baby boy from Taiwan.

And I didn’t see an appointment with God that would leave me a Christ-follower.

Friends and family have been born and died.  Ten years is a long time after all.

So what’s my point in all of this?  Very simple:  Ten years from now, on December 31st, 2019, what do you want to be looking back on?

I didn’t have a master plan ten years ago, just a lot of raw ambition (and much of it misdirected).  I’ve experienced a lot of success from that point in time, and much of it due to hard work.  But I also missed a lot of opportunities because I just wasn’t prepared and didn’t have a vision.

Today, I’m building a plan for ten years from now to see just how much I can accomplish—as a Christian, as a husband, as a father, as an entrepreneur.

What about you?  Do you have a plan?  If you’d like some help, I highly recommend our goals program over at http://www.GoalVictory.com (the seminar series starts January 13th).

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Overdoing It

My constant pursuit of perfection is both a blessing and a curse.

God designed me that way, and I’m more than okay with it. I certainly leverage the positive aspects of being a precisionist. But in some areas I need to do a better job of protecting myself from myself!

Working on the Goal Victory presentation over the last few weeks was incredibly enjoyable, and in spite of a few technical issues, the seminar was very successful. We were able to provide a lot of info in just an hour. The replay is available at GoalVictory.com if you want to check it out.

The preparation for the call was both energizing and exhausting. I poured so much effort into the presentation. For several nights I stayed up until 2 am working on it…and went to bed with a smile on my face. But once it was over, I crashed. I crashed hard. If something didn’t absolutely need to be done in the days following, I didn’t do it (hence the lack of posts).

There is a time and a place to surge, but you can’t do it indefinitely. Pacing is important. Going without sleep will only leave you productive for a short period of time.

A former boss and friend of mine is not a precisionist (not even close!). But he leverages different strengths to get things done and is very successful. He once told me “to not ruin good enough with perfect”. Sometimes good enough is good enough.

I need to hear that when I’m in the throes of perfecting things.

Now, I’m fully enthralled in the celebration of the holidays with my family. I won’t be working much for the next week. I hope you can find the time to put the rush of the holidays behind and simply enjoy the true reason for Christmas.

Merry Christmas everyone! See you more in 2010!

James

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No More New Year’s Resolutions!

Seriously, can we just ignore New Year’s Resolutions this year? After all, most of the time they are simply defining what you plan to fail at in the first 45 days of the year. Why set yourself up as a failure for the entire year, before you make an empty promise to yourself to do better next year?

Goals are important, but these New Year’s Resolutions are simply goals gone wrong. The aura of a fresh start at the changing of the calendar is powerful. We’ve all failed, for legitimate reasons or not, and we all desire a do-over.

My challenge to you is to simply take a do-over if that’s what it takes to succeed. How many stories of fallen celebrities turning their lives around are out there? Or former criminals now doing good? Why should you give up because of one mistake or failure? You think Tiger Woods is going to retire from golf because of his “transgressions” against his family?

Your life isn’t over until God says it’s over…so go out there and do something! Take a do-over today and don’t wait for January 1st.

Action is critical, and I want you to get started. But as much as you need to take action, you need to have a plan as well. Goal setting is mapping out that plan.

My friend Victor Encinas is a master at goal setting…and more importantly, goal ACHIEVING! In talking with Victor, we discovered a similar passion for helping people achieve their goals. And from that discussion was born an online seminar that we want to share with everyone in our audiences (and anyone else for that matter!).

We’re going to present a more authentic way
of starting 2010 than empty resolutions!

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TAKE ACTION: On Dec 16th, please join us for a FREE online seminar called Goal Victory: Winning with Goals in 2010. For more information and to register, just visit GoalVictory.com.

PS — I’m going to be posting a lot of articles about goals and sharing my tips and tools. Maybe December’s theme should be Goals…maybe, but there are some other things on my mind I’ll be posting about as well! Just visit often and see what’s on the menu!

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Is Your Future Sabatoging Your Career?

Who is to blame for your failures? Are they a result of the decisions you’ve made? External forces beyond your control? Or could it be a future so afraid of your success destroying the universe that it comes back to stop you from succeeding?

Scientists are blaming their failures on the Large Hadron Collider project on the “future” according to an article in the New York Times by Dennis Overbye:

“More than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang.

Then it will be time to test one of the most bizarre and revolutionary theories in science. I’m not talking about extra dimensions of space-time, dark matter or even black holes that eat the Earth. No, I’m talking about the notion that the troubled collider is being sabotaged by its own future. A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.”


Impossible science courtesy of Hollywood’s Marty McFly (Back to the Future) and John Connor (Terminator)!

I’m a bit of a nerd and think it’s a pretty interesting experiment (though the notion of a “God particle” is ridiculous). And while these scientists have bigger brains for than I do, I have to wonder if they’re setting a dangerous precedent.

If you’ve lost your job and are struggling to find one in our current economic client, is that a function of the future? Has time somehow worked its way backwards to sabotage your career?

Imagine you’re in a job interview and asked why you were let go from your last job. Your answer: “The future sabotaged that job just so you could hire me for this one.” I don’t recommend that approach!

There are lots of possibilities, but I think if I were you I’d take a more traditional approach. Maybe you should look at your past and see what you can learn from your prior successes and failures. Maybe you should look at your present and determine what you need to be doing right now to get the results you want.

Can your future determine your present? Normally we’d say no. But I’m wondering if perhaps it can. Do you have a vision of the future you would like to create? If you don’t you can only get there by accident.

So go build yourself a time machine. Get to the future you desire by working hard today–with goals in hand–to get to where you want to be tomorrow.

Particle physics aside, that’s the only way to get there!

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