Building a Legacy: It's only too late if you never start

By discovering your unique strengths, determining your core values, and directing your future with ambitious lifetime goals, you can achieve amazing success. But be warned-if you don't like change, you will like irrelevance even less. So far, Steve Jobs has made a fairly sizable ding. He has achieved success (to the tune of over a billion dollars) through continuous innovation and sticking to his unique talents. Whether your are about to start your career or already working your way up the ranks, you want to give yourself every possible advantage. You have a lot of decisions before you, no matter where you are in life. It is up to you to determine which path in life you will take - but how can you avoid walking down the wrong paths over and over again until you find the best one? What are your unique strengths? If you don't determine the where, how, when, and why of what makes you truly unique, making that ding in the universe won't happen. What if you knew the Distinct Natural Abilities™ that would give you the edge? What if you knew your core values? What if you had a detailed plan for the rest of your life? What dramatic dreams could you achieve? Professionals say: o I have to continue the path I have already started. o I don't know what my unique strengths are. o How do I measure my success? o How can I prepare for an uncertain future? o With all of the changes coming, how can I gain the advantage? What are you going to do? According to Tom Peters, white collar employment as we've known it is dead. Add that to the fact that an average career consists of ten different jobs in five different companies from three different industries. Regardless of your success, you obviously still have a lot of decisions before you. How can you build a lasting legacy? How can you find success now and in the future? There are serious changes coming, so how will you survive and thrive? While many may find Tom Peter's quotes a little scary, it also offers valuable insight on how to deal with the challenges of the future. How to put yourself on the road to success, and stay there! Gaining the advantage requires balance, uniqueness, a clearly defined path, and values that support your goals. Balance: There are elements of success that are the building blocks of professional and personal life. The Success Elements™ principle is founded on the four elements of Health, Wealth, Wisdom, and Relationships. By achieving balance in all of the Success Elements™, you can be assured that your success will transcend both work life and personal life. Uniqueness: It is not enough to be unique. All of us are unique. The first building block of success requires knowing precisely what your Distinct Natural Abilities™ are. Whether you use our system or another, you need a process to determine what your distinct abilities are. An innovator and brainstormer? An organizer? A researcher? Gifted at coming up with new ideas or gifted at bringing ideas across the finish line? By knowing your unique strengths, you can avoid needless trial and error. Clearly Defined Path: All of us, regardless of age, wish to build a legacy that outlasts us. But how can you develop that legacy? Every study on goal-setting has shown the same thing: people who make tangible goals achieve more than those who do not. The resources to help you determine short, medium, and long-term goals are out there. The key is to make the goals tangible, challenging, measurable, and, most of all, based on your Distinct Natural Abilities™. Values: A core set of values provides the fuel for success. Determining your core values will not only help you achieve success, but it will make the success deeper and richer. The ability to communicate exactly what your values are will help you strengthen occupational and personal relationships and give you direction in your daily challenges. Bringing It All Together The tools necessary for future success will revolve around Distinct Natural Abilities™, clearly defined goals, balance in all areas of life, and core values. Not only will you get the financial and time-saving benefit of reducing costly trial and error, but you will be on the path that is best suited to what makes you truly unique. Think about how you spend many Saturdays: shopping at the mall, seeing a movie, chatting on the phone, playing a round of golf. These activities all have their value, as well as their time and place. However, compare the time spent and the value received from those activities to a day spent discovering where your path to success is hiding. Greg Langston is the President of The Langston Group, which offers a comprehensive 100 Day Leadership and Success system called the Integrated Helix System™. The Integrated Helix System™ helps individuals discover their unique strengths (Distinct Natural Abilities™), core values, and lifetime goals, all with a focus on maximizing potential and work-life balance. The Langston Group's Integrated Helix System™ is offered to executives, coaches, professionals and students. The Langston Group also offers the Wisdom Project, where you can read their collection of the best of the web, updated daily. You can find articles on Health, Wealth, Wisdom, and Relationships-plus a host of articles on technology, interviews with top CEO's, and the most thought-provoking, leading-edge ideas around.When Greg Langston began his career in the international business arena almost 30 years ago, he had two objectives: 1) Become a successful global leader and 2) Maximize the potential of all those he came into contact with. While running operations in excess of $1.2 Billion and 8,000 employees, he learned that without a process and technology, these two goals often worked against each other

Are You Controlling or Loving Yourself?

How often do you hear a parental voice in your head that says things like, “You’ve got to lose weight,” or “You should get up earlier every morning and exercise,” or “Today I should get caught up on the bills,” or “I’ve got to get rid of this clutter.” Let’s explore what happens in response to this voice.

We have a very good reason for judging ourselves: the judgmental part of us believes that by judging, criticizing, “shoulding” ourselves, we will motivate ourselves to take action and therefore protect against failure or rejection. We may have been judging ourselves to get ourselves to do things “right” since we were kids, hoping to keep ourselves in line. And we keep on doing it because we believe it works.

Let’s take the example of Karl, who is a high-powered executive in a large accounting firm. Karl has had a heart attack and is supposed to watch his diet. Right after his heart attack, he did well avoiding sugar, fats, and overeating, but after six months or so, he found himself struggling with his food plan. In our counseling session, Karl told me he was upset with himself for having a big desert as well as a big meal the night before. I asked Karl to put himself back into the situation and recreate what he had been feeling.

“Well, I was out to dinner with one of our biggest clients. He asked me a question and I didn’t remember the facts, so I couldn’t answer him. As soon as this happened, that voice came into my head telling me that I’m stupid, that I should have remembered it and ‘What’s the matter with me anyway?’”

“What did you feel as soon as you judged yourself?” I asked.

“Well, looking back, I think I felt that sad, sort of dark empty hollow feeling I often get inside. And you know what - that’s when I started to eat a lot of bread with tons of butter and ordered the desert! I didn’t realize it was in response to that empty feeling that I hate!”

“So the sad empty feeling is what you feel when you judge yourself. Judging yourself is an inner abandonment, so your Inner Child then feels alone, sad and empty. You are telling your Child that he is not good enough. I know that you don’t do this with your actual children, but you do it a lot with yourself, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I think it do it all the time. After I judged myself for not knowing the answer, then I judged myself for eating too much and having desert. And then I felt even worse.”

“So what did you hope for by judging yourself?

“I guess I hoped that I could control my eating and also get myself to work harder so I wouldn’t forget things.”

“It doesn’t seem to be working.”

“No, it just makes me feel terrible. In fact, I can see that judging myself for not knowing the answer made me feel so badly that then I wanted to eat more. Instead of giving me more control, it gave me less!”

“So you are trying to have control over yourself through your self-judgments, but what actually happens is that you feel awful and behave in addictive ways to avoid the pain. I think what also happens is that some part of you goes into resistance to being judged and told what to do, so you end up doing the opposite of what you tell yourself you should do.”

“Right. As soon as I tell myself not to eat so much and judge myself for eating, that’s when I really want to eat. So I’m eating to not be controlled and also because in judging myself I’m abandoning myself, which makes me feel sad and empty, and I’ve always used food to fill up that emptiness. Whew! How do I stop this cycle?”

“You can’t stop it until you are conscious of it. As long as you are doing it unconsciously - on automatic pilot - you have no choice over it. So the first thing you can do is not try to change it but just notice it. As you become very aware of this pattern, you will have the choice to change it. You will have the choice to be loving and caring toward yourself instead of judgmental once you become aware of what you are doing. You can start by noticing every time you feel that empty sad feeling, and then exploring what you were telling yourself that led to the painful feeling.”

Karl did start to notice and over time was able to stop judging himself. Not only did the sad empty feeling that he had experienced so often in his life go away, but he was able to keep to his medical nutrition plan for his heart. When his Inner Child felt loved instead of judged, he didn’t need to eat to take away the pain.

Are You Addicted To Your Activities?

Activities - such as sports, creative projects, reading, work, TV, meditation - can be a wonderful way to relax, express yourself, or connect to yourself. Or they can be an addiction. How can you know the difference?

    * Angie would surf the channels whenever she felt stressed or alone.

    * Karen would lose herself in a book when things felt overwhelming.

    * Keith would retreat and meditate when his wife wanted to talk.

    * Patty’s work schedule left her little time at home.

    * Carl spent more time in the garage fixing things than with his family.

    * Patrick’s love of running was interfering with his family time.

Whether or not an activity is an addiction depends upon your INTENT.

    * When the intent of an activity is to avoid the pain of aloneness and loneliness, it is an addiction.

    * When the intent of an activity is to avoid the pain of rejection or the fear of domination, it is an addiction.

    * When the intent of an activity is to put off doing something you don’t really want to do but need to do, it is an addiction.

Whenever an activity is used as a way to avoid something - painful feelings, difficult or boring tasks - it becomes an addiction. It’s really no different than using substances such alcohol, drugs, or food to avoid painful feelings or challenging tasks. The problem with using addictions to avoid painful feelings is that the feelings don’t actually go away. They are just numbed for the moment but are silently eroding one’s sense of self. We can get away with it only for so long before it shows up in some way - illness, divorce, depression, and so on. And avoiding tasks means that the tasks pile up, eventually causing the very stress we want to avoid. Our society is filled with ways to avoid. Yet it is avoidance that leads to the very feelings we are striving to avoid!

When the intent of an activity is to take loving care of yourself by providing yourself with fun, creativity and expression, relaxation, personal growth, spiritual growth, physical health and well-being, then it is a loving action rather than an addiction. It all depends on your INTENT.

Next time you want to participate in your favorite activity, you might want to notice your intent. Do you want to relax and watch TV or are you avoiding some difficult feeling or task? Do you find yourself scheduling more work than you can really handle to avoid dealing with aloneness, loneliness, or conflict with a mate, or are you really loving your work and feeling fulfilled by it? Are you exercising to support your health or to avoid feelings?

Once you become aware of using an activity to avoid, here’s what you can do about it:

   1. Welcome the feeling you are trying so hard to avoid. Pay attention to the feeling - fear, loneliness, aloneness, agitation, boredom, anxiety.

   2. Make a decision to learn what YOU might be doing to cause this feeling rather than continuing to avoid it.

   3. Explore what you might be doing to cause this feeling. How are you not taking care of yourself that is causing your painful feeling? Are you procrastinating, judging yourself, or not standing up for yourself in conflict? How are you avoiding responsibility for your own well-being? Are you allowing yourself to be a victim, waiting for someone else to make you feel better?

   4. Once you understand what you are doing to cause your distress, then you need to ask “What would be the loving action for myself?” You are asking this question of your highest self, or of your spiritual guidance if you are connected with a source of guidance. If you open to learning about what is loving, ideas will pop into your mind.

   5. Now you need to take the loving action on your own behalf - complete a task, stand up for yourself and speak your truth with someone, and so on.

   6. Re-evaluate how you are feeling. Are you feeling more peaceful and more powerful? You will feel more peaceful if you have taken the loving action. If you are not feeling better, don’t just turn back to your addictions. Look for another loving action until you find what really makes you feel safe on a deep level, not just the temporary pacification of an addiction.

You will find your addictions fading away as you learn to take loving care of yourself.