This issue is made up of the following sections:

1. Personal Effectiveness Tips
2. Questions for Growth
3. Reality Check - Process versus Outcome

1. Personal Effectiveness Tips
1. What is the best advice you've ever received? For me, it was the idea that work supports life, not vice versa. Your occupation, your career, should be used as a tool to allow you to spend more time doing the things that you love, with those you love. Don't hide behind the "I love what I do!" explanation for being a workaholic. Many people love what they do, but they also realize the end result of doing what you love is simply more time and resources to pursue outside activities and relationships.

2. More helpful advice I received this week: "Choose the hill that you're willing to die on, and realize that this choice may mean withdrawing from all other hills." In other words, concentrate your efforts toward the outcomes (in your business, in your team, in your family) that you most desire, and forget about all else that distracts you.

3. Surround yourself with those that are smarter than you, different than you, and more creative than you. But most of all, make sure to surround yourself with "no" people rather than "yes" people. The former will give you honest appraisals and opinions, the latter, superficial compliments and feedback.

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2. Questions for Growth
1. How comfortable are you when someone tells you that you are wrong? How often do you hear contrary opinions in your life? (Hint: more is better)

2. What three outcomes are you most committed to in each area of your life?

Feel free to update me on your own progress with your New Years Resolutions! Perhaps you know something that the readers of Personal Best could benefit from applying in their own life. Or perhaps you simply want to share your success with others! Send me an email at leif@personalbestconsulting.com.

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3. Reality Check

February's Reality Check deals with managing process versus fretting outcome. One (process) is within our control, whilst the other (outcome) is not. Process entails how we go about doing things-how hard we play, how effectively we work and manage our time, how genuinely we invest ourselves in our relationships. Outcomes-winning, getting the sale, making new networking contacts that are fruitful-are those end results we seek to attain. Don't confuse the two, because many people do.

It is much more empowering to focus on process rather than outcome, though the outcomes may indeed be essential to greater success. I am fully aware of how important it is to win big games, to increase net sales volume, to lose that extra twenty pounds. However, focusing on those outcomes can be frustrating when you are also simultaneously battling forces outside your control-economic cycles, natural disasters, bribed game officials, genetics.

Process is and always will be under our control. It is at the heart of all the work I do. Though I work with others to help them achieve better outcomes, I do this through managing the process more effectively. You can control how hard you work, how you spend your time, what you eat, who you allow yourself to learn from or be vulnerable to, etc.

So, make a choice today to achieve more through focusing less on results and more on how you will achieve those results. Outcomes are important-no doubt-but they are merely the stars that guide how we go about living.

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