Use This Activity To Develop The Most Crucial Habits for Lifelong Success It’s a cool October night. One of those nights where the sun starts going down, coaxing people back into their houses. The type of night that is actually perfect when you are going to exercise and sweat. Moving through the subdivision is easy enough. You can chart a rectangular course to meet the distance requirement you have. In my case, I’m able to do one big loop to get in 5k of activity. Little did I know that the distance was going to be the easiest part of the night. Most people outside of the military have never heard of rucking. It seems absurd when someone explains it to you. Rucking, is a low-intensity exercise in which you add weight to your back while walking or hiking. But what makes this the best exercise you have never heard of? It creates a unique set of conditions and variables to play with. It challenges you mentally as well as physically. The Physical This part is easy to understand. It’s ...

[ONE] I’m Left Handed There aren’t that many of us, 10–12% of the global population. It’s one of those things that people typically don’t notice and then when they do they are surprised. What surprises me most of all is how often though that people I connect with are left handed. Maybe we gravitate to one another! [TWO] I Used to Shy Away From Leadership Leadership is a huge part of my life. I have been leading teams in my professional life for the last 12+ years. Considering the passion I have for it, this makes me laugh. I distinctly remember talking to an old boss one day where he was struggling with my attitude and sharing why it needed to change — because I was a leader. I couldn’t deny it fast enough. [THREE] I Love Learning This sounds strange. I think a lot of people feel that they like to learn new things. Ask yourself however when was the last time you learned something just for the sake of knowing. This is a big change for me. I was never a straight A student and my parents ...

 Building Habits In One Area of Your Life to Improve Others     Everyone knows that exercise is good for you. We are meant to move. The lifestyles that many of us lead today keep us glued to our chairs, in front of screens. I’m not sharing benefits for your body. This quick hit will share 6 qualities that will improve ALL areas of your life. The experiences we have, the habits we build, are not locked into the activity you developed them in. How you train yourself to behave or react in one situation will carry over to others. Running alone will allow you to build personally and triumph professionally.  [1] DISCIPLINE In order to achieve any goal, you have to take action. The biggest challenge people face is keeping themselves accountable. All too often we quit at the wrong time.  The world is full of distractions. Our mind is loaded with resistance.  Build your inner strength by sticking to a routine not giving up when things are hard. [2] CONSISTENCY...

 How The Cold Calculated Choice Is A Dangerous Habit To Develop The bell just rang, the doors fly open and an avalanche of smiling faces come pouring out into the yard. It’s recess. There’s that period everyone goes through. Usually from grades 4 to 7 where you’re old enough to understand the world around you but young enough to still love to play. These are important formative years. I was an interesting mix growing up. I wasn’t an unpopular kid, but I wasn’t one of the super popular kids either. I was something else, somewhere in the the middle. I always had friends, did sports, wasn’t shy, and was smart enough to do well in school while also being able to play the slacker card. For the most part, things were good. The problem I had though, was that I was always bigger. Growing up a fat kid the 90s was less forgiving than what life is like today. Bullying was quite chic back then, borderline expected as part of growing up. But I was too popular to be bullied openly but not popula...

There was a point in my life when I prided myself on how much stress I could take. No matter what I was dealing with, I would take on more. It destroyed me. I have never been able to tolerate the same stress level since. I’m extremely thankful for that. Feedback is as gift that most people undervalue . No matter what you are doing, there is always a way to assess what is happening. Focusing on those cues, and developing my self-awareness has been vital to dealing everything in front of me. Cues These are personal. The patterns that I fall into are mine. We may share some, maybe even all of them, the point however is to identify the behaviours that are your response. These are some of my reactions to overload: Binge Eating This might seem obvious for you, it is for me as well. It is perhaps “more serious” for me. I used to be a lot bigger. Six years ago I lost a lot of weight and have been able to maintain my form.  I was successful because it came with a lot of understanding, a shi...

 The Simple Awareness of Re-balancing Your Priorities Do you wake up some days and feel like something is completely out of whack? You aren't quite sure, but you know that there isn't the balance you need. Most people think of this as binary, the famous work / life balance. This ends up being unfair because it does two things. First it makes people think in terms of work vs all other. Second, it does not give enough visibility to other area in the "life" bucket. Bill Burnett and Dave Evans do a great job in their book "Designing Your Life" expanding on this concept. They break the traditional work / life balance argument into four categories: work, play, love, health. Another important element in their view is how we see work. Don’t for a minute reduce work only to that which you get paid for. Most people have more than one form of work at a time. One suggestion I have for you, would be to expand the love category and think of it as relationships in general....

Have you ever felt that the universe is screaming at you? I’m not a spiritual person. I’m not a person of faith of any kind. The idea of some higher power may make you uncomfortable, it does for me. How do you explain then what people label as “signs”? You know what I mean. You keep seeing a name. You keep coming across a pattern. You start seeing representations of a ‘problem’ that has been on your mind everywhere you go. This is wildly unsettling for most people.  What you start to wonder is if it’s real. Are you being told something, or are you projecting you own frame to what you’re seeing. From my experience both can happen, the difference — and the importance — comes from if you are being active of passive at the time. Did you know? Scientists have measured the amount of data that enter the brain and found that an average person living today processes as much as 74 GB in information a day (that is as much as watching 16 movies) Active v. Passive This is a straight ...

There is so much talk with respect to COVID and how it has 'changed everything forever'. That's hard to accept. From a professional side, I get it. New restrictions, new concerns and trying to figure out how you can effectively put in place, manage and communicate that it is 'safe' to return to normal. Within a business, changing the culture or the structure of your organization is extremely hard. Businesses have grown and evolved their culture to where it is today. There is a huge amount of shared beliefs, norms and expectations that allow you to operate how you do. You can't just flip the switch and have a totally different picture tomorrow. From a personal side however, I am still waiting to see it. Having been the one who has been going to stores and doing the shopping all throughout this pandemic, I can see that people are done. In the beginning, a lot of people, if not everyone was adhering to whatever guidelines where given. We waited patiently in lines, ...

Coming from an operations world, you are always on the go. While you might work 8 or 10 hours a day, the other parts of your business and/or your responsibility are usually going 24 hours a day. This is one of the most challenging things for people to manage as they get into an operations world. At first you simply believe that you will do more hours, get ahead of the curve and then you will be able to slow down and relax. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. The more you get accomplished, the more 'opportunities' you seem to have. Added to this, you start to deal with the matrix above more often then you realize. The biggest trap that people fall into with their work and responsibilities is not taking the time to understand where each task / problem / responsibility fits. The other major challenge is that we often take on what 'seems' to be urgent and important ... for other people and not necessarily ourselves. With so many people working from home right now, I...

  So I was finally able to get through my second 72 hour fast in the last 12ish months or so. I have been trying to hit this milestone for a while now, but would constantly find myself cracking and grabbing something in the cupboard. This time however, it was really strange, from the second I started the fast, I was good. I didn't really go through massive sugar drops and seemed like my body transitioned really well into fat burning mode. It was important for me to take control of something and show myself that I can still focus my attention and discipline to achieve a goal in front of me. With everything that is going on, a lot of people feel out of control and are struggling. Setting goals and hitting them brings that sense of achievement and normalcy that we are lacking as we manage the outbreak of the COVID-19. This has given me back some of my motivation to now get back into some other work that I haven't been committed too over the last 3 to 5 d...