After putting all your ideas out, you can then decide which ones you’ll keep and which ones you’ll eliminate in finalizing a goal.  While this may seem like a timely process, it assures that all your great ideas are captured, regardless of how silly or how seemingly impossible they may be, towards helping you accomplish your objective.

It’s always best to work on a large paper or even a dart board, as seen here on the left, (since this can be a fun process too).  You want to be sure you aren’t restricting your ideas with too small of a writing or working space. 

Get all of your ideas out – both those that are strongly or mildly interesting and even the crazy ones.  With even the wild and crazy ideas, there can be kernals of something useful and powerful to include.  So don’t be too quick to discard these kinds of ideas.   Then see where there are similarities, where your experience, skills and strengths most occur, and with which ideas you’d have the time, energy and resources for.  In other words, begin the narrowing and focusing process after you’ve got all your ideas out. 

Best not to jump into action on any of these ideas until you’ve done the shuffling process of discarding the true misfit ideas and see the patterns emerge on what you really want to pursue.  Now with less ideas you can move into the R&D phase and do examination of these ideas or goals in more detail, to determine the best one to pursue.

You know those times when things are awkward and you feel backed into a corner.  You’ve said or done something inappropriate or you feel you were right and others wrong, maybe you’re too harsh in how you communicate your view.  Or you feel wronged and you stand your ground and feel justified in your actions.  Then you are either proved wrong, or you don’t get your way even if you’re right.   Your embarrassment can compound it all.  You’ve backed yourself into a corner.

There’s a cellphone commercial out about a manager who blasts a group in his office when he sees them all meeting and socializing and he accuses them of not inviting him and it’s clear he feels they disrespect him.  He’s backed himself into a corner with his superior stance, his notion of right and wrong and his need to blame.  He’s embarrassed to learn that he’d been ”texted” an invite like everyone else and that’s how they all know to meet, but he hadn’t checked his phone messages.

Before you go blaming others or yourself, take a deep breath – or even step away for a minute if necessary – to ask yourself these three questions:

1.  What am I really upset about?  (you may be blowing this out of proportion for other reasons  than this situation)
2.  What else could be going on here?  (take a look to see if it’s possible you don’t have all the facts)
3.  Am I more committed to being right or resolving this? 

The next time you find yourself upset, instead of saying something off the top of your head or taking an action you’ll regret (backing yourself into a corner), stay calm and ask yourself the above questions, find out the facts, then take actions that won’t embarrass you or reflect poorly on your judgement, but show you as a problem solver and keen negotiator.  As the expression goes, “You can catch more with flies with honey than you can with vinegar.”

Ever set out to get somewhere and just as you go to hop in your car to take off - you find something is in the way?  Maybe you forgot it’s the day they’re repaving your driveway and you can’t get your car out of the garage.  Of course, this is an analogy for a lack of goal planning.

You get a passionate idea of something you want to do and jump into action without more careful observation of your current situation.   Here’s some simple questions to start with asking yourself before you launch into action:

1.  What resources will I need to accomplish my task?
2.  What’s my timeline?
3.  What needs to be taken care of first, second, third?  (organize your action steps) 
4.  What possible obstacles might I run into that I’ll need to address and how will I do that?
5.  What support will I need and  who can I expect it from?

Coaching helps you look at your current and future situation and make sure you have the know-how, skills, time, financing, energy, support and resources to get where you want to and expect a high success rate.  Whether you hire a professional to offer guidance and focused action steps or not, take the time to stop and do your prepatory work.

If there’s a cement truck in your way, you don’t need to drive up on your lawn and ruin the axle in your car as you go down on the curb, just to get around it.  You don’t need to miss your appointments or get angry because your actions have been stifled or you feel a loss of momentum for your change.  That’s because you’ve had the foresight to plan your trip at an optimum time and safeguard your journey by knowing when it’s best to take action and how to best go about it. 

Is there a goal you’d like to pursue where you’ve asked yourself these startup questions?

We’ve all met the “Sue Sylvester,” the bully who has their own agenda and wants to push us around till they get what they want.  (Sue is the girls’ cheerleading squad coach on Glee, if you’ve not seen that t.v. show).  A few of the common bullying traits you will experience, or may be experiencing now are:

1. Aggressive behavior that is often rude, inappropriate, and many times over the top. 
2. A frequent urge to add shock value so those around them are awed, even if the attention they get is negative.
3. An overblown sense of themselves and their accomplishments, while underneath they have fragile egos.
4. A strong need for recognition, but it’s reward is only temporary for them.
5. Their power is fed by the faction of people around them who frequently respond to their requests out of intimidation, yet they don’t respect these people.
6. Poor tolerance for anyone’s excuses, because they feel no one cuts them any slack.  (the victim, though they victimize)
7. Awareness that the people who support them are  just trying to stay on their good side, stand to gain by their wins, and/or hope to convert them, so they often feel alone and act independently.
8. Can generate big wins, though they often steamroll over people or other projects to get there.

What can you do in your dealings with someone like this?  If you continue to do the right thing and use ethical, courteous behaviors that follow certain timelines or procedures, face it, you will threaten their tough guy “eat or be eaten now” approach.  Regardless, your best approach is to stand firm in your confident choices and behaviors, even if it means you now have an enemy you didn’t create.  

It is frustrating when bullies get their way easily if they have gone around policies and procedures that you’ve painstakingly followed, delaying your wins.  But just because they can push their way to the top of the hill doesn’t mean they won’t be the first one to fall off it.  Even if you’re not there to witness it.

Even so, don’t look for them to fail, don’t focus on them at all.  Stand your own ground, while being bottom-line and professional in any interactions with them.  They may even target you more and try to bring you down, as Sue does the Glee Club’s coach, Will.  But don’t be so easily knocked off course and don’t show them at any point that their intimidation practices are getting to you, as they may have a tendency to dig in harder.

Whenever possible, avoid someone with these character defects or keep a low profile.  When you have to deal with them, don’t take things personally or let it affect your own performance.  Get your encouragement and support from yourself first and then others you can depend on that have your best interests at heart.

Today I go and get my breasts individually squeezed between two, cold metal, vise-style clamps. I typically walk away pink and tender. Yet, this is the best devised machine for early detection of breast cancer – go figure. Okay, I’m grateful for a procedure that can alert me to a possible health problem.  So suffice it to say this is a necessary evil.

Sometimes you have to face less pleasant experiences, where avoiding them might lead to more serious problems.  You could face a whole host of problems you could have more quickly dealt with if you hadn’t procrastinated.  It’s also commmon to find after something you dreaded doing, that your effort output and the experience itself wasn’t as big of a deal as you thought it would be.

I also find that if I don’t use regular health maintenance and get sick, not only do I suffer, but those around me who have to pick up my work load and responsibilties do too.  It’s typically caused by my not taking precautionary steps to care for myself.  Now when I get a cold, I look at how I didn’t slow down when I felt beat and didn’t say no to things that overspent my energy and ran down my immune system. 

The trick is to not only be aware of your behaviors, but change them before sickness occurs.  Men tend to be less present to their need for regular self care and push through, while women are generally better at this, yet still caretake others first, even when they’re aware they are tapped out. 

Rest is a necessary evil,  because it can re-energize you, though you have to give up something in your busy schedule to make room for it.  Or, in my case, stop to go have a mammogram which displaces other things I’d rather do with my time.  I’ve decided it’s important to take this action and go through this minor inconvenience for its beneficial results.  And when it’s not immediately apparent that taking actions will result in a positive benefit, it is character building and strengthens your muscle to self motivate.

What actions are you not taking, but are a “necessary evil?”