Greg's Right FIT #369

Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Momentum
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Momentum

• Restarting momentum is a challenge because you know the time and effort it took to get going the last time. Don't wait for inspiration to re-start. Use action to jump start momentum.  
• When momentum is lost and action isn't jump-starting the process, bring in an expert. Therapists are armed with great questions and trained to listen. It may take a minute to find the right one, but it's worth the effort. 
• If therapy isn't your cup-of-tea, try freewriting your way back into action. The book "Accidental Genius" by Mark Levy is a great primer for using this technique to problem-solve and create novel approaches to problems, like no-mo-Mo. 
• There are times none of these tactics will restart the big Mo. If you're there, consider doing nothing. It's hard to let go, but once you do it, really let go, and get ok with it, something happens. Sometimes. (this is why it's the last choice)

Being Human - Two types of motivation

". . .a player on a streak has to respect the streak. . ." – Crash Davis, "Bull Durham"

Excerpt from my upcoming book, "Harnessing Momentum."

In my day job I meet with both high and low performers. As we review their activity, I’ve looked for evidence that motivation is driving results. Good or bad. I ask myself, do top performers have more energy? Are they in possession of some magic the low performers can’t tap into? What are they doing different? Talking about this subject, one Senior VP told me, “If you can show me how to motivate everyone, we can take over the world.” I’m not sure if that’s right. 

In our time together we’re going to dig deeper into the idea: if you’ve shown up, you’re motivated enough, so stop focusing on motivation. I will make the case that years and years of focus on motivation hasn’t led to sustained success or “taking over the world.” On the other hand, if we leave motivation behind and focus on Momentum, something interesting happens. 

We see that early motivation, often called Inspiration, gets us up and moving, but this inspiration doesn’t correlate to success. After inspiration fades, it’s the building of momentum that keep us moving toward our goal. Small day-to-day activities, putting one foot in front of another. Then, as Momentum builds, another interesting thing happens. Motivation reappears. This new motivation doesn’t sound like Inspiration, and unlike Inspiration, this type of motivation does correlate to success. This latter stage motivation comes from keeping momentum going, so we’ll call it Continuation. In this sense, top performers are more motivated than low performers. They have moved beyond inspiration and are now motivated to keep their momentum going. They are “respecting the streak.” As one top performer told me, “Greg, I’ve come this far, I will do anything to keep from slipping.” This motivation sounds different from rah-rah meetings or amped up speakers on stage. 
Top performers respect their streaks. People who have been at the top and are no longer there understand what it felt like to be on a streak and know it isn’t easy to get the magic back. People that haven’t broken through don’t know what the streak, a.k.a. the power of momentum, is. 
This book is about how we can do a better job of harnessing momentum. By focusing more on momentum, we’ll get closer to our goals. 

Random Stuff

“Happiness is a warm puppy." – Charles Schultz

For Christmas, Wilson the ABC received two gifts. The first arrived a month before Christmas and when it came out of the box he saw it, and knew it was his. Who else in the house needs a Tough Toy Green Frog with dual squeakers? His little eyebrows went up, his ears perked, and his head tilted. All indicators that yes, he saw it, and yes, he wondered why I didn't give it to him. 

It was too early! 

I put in the back of the closet. Santa must not have remembered there was a green frog with dual squeakers in the closet because she showed up with a fuzzy Llama. On Christmas morning there was double the joy in Wilson's stocking. 

The Llama had a good run. It turns out the Llama also had two squeakers. I use the past tense because the first thing Wilson did was rip off the Llama's ears, then he opened up its little head and pulled the squeaker out. I was a disturbed because the squeaker is in the shape of a heart and I looked at Wilson asking, "did you rip this poor things heart out through it's head, you sicko?" 

Turns out there was a head squeaker. Llama had dos squeakers. 

The frog is curiously untouched. I throw it, he just watches it fly. I try to start a tug-of-war, he just sits. I place it strategically around his bedding, he walks over it. Even our favorite game, "where did I hide it?" goes unsolved. (Wilson is like Hercule Poirot, he always wins) 

It has to be my fault. Maybe when I hid the frog I put some sort of instruction on it, like maybe I said, "No, not for you" before stashing it in the closet. Wilson the ABC is pretty literal. Now this poor little frog, build to be ripped to shreds, sits alone. Unlicked. Untorn. Unloved.  

What about the earless Llama with a hole in its head, you ask? Like a bad penny, it keeps showing up in odd places, just outside my line of sight, always standing up. Always looking at me. 

See? 

I'm workshopping a new thought. It's possible the Llama is cursed and is somehow controlling Wilson? The frog knows this but since he's weighted down with reinforced fabric, he's helpless. The other toys, destroyed, de-fluffed are indifferent. They watch the deaf Llama with amusement as it directs Wilson to put him here and there. 

I need to think this through a bit.