Leave Goal Shame Behind to Achieve Your Biggest Goals
Many leaders never admit their biggest goals because of invisible barriers. One of the main barriers is goal shame. Goal shame is embarrassment about the things you want to achieve. Sometimes it results from internal thoughts like, Who am I to do this? or Who am I to attempt something so big? Self-doubt, fear, and …
3 Questions to Plan Your Life Around
Most people want more from life than what they’re getting. That’s natural. We were created with appetites that long for more. The hard part is taking that longing and turning it into reality. Life often throws us curve balls, and we don’t always have control over how things unfold. What we do have control over …
4 Consequences of Drifting to Avoid
It’s so easy for us to get caught up in life’s current. We start drifting, and we end up in a place we would never have chosen if we had been consciously aware of it. Unfortunately, that’s how a lot of people approach life. Drifting. Caught up in life’s distractions. Maybe you’re hyper focused on …
4 Truths for Overcoming Goal-Setting Resistance
It’s that time of year again. It seems like everyone is talking about their goals, New Year’s resolutions, or how things will be different next year. But maybe you’re an outlier. Maybe you feel resistance toward that and, at the most, are only mildly intrigued. It can be natural to feel skeptical, especially if you’ve …
2 Actions to Avoid When Creating Compelling Goals
We all have dreams for a better future—from improving our health to taking up new hobbies, saving up for a big purchase, or traveling to new destinations. To turn those dreams into realities, we set goals. Unfortunately, most people struggle to set goals. There are several reasons for this, but high on that list is a …
How to Find the Balance You Need for the Life You Want
It’s easy to feel like we’re constantly going from one thing to the next. From our tasks at work, to our responsibilities and commitments at home. There are seemingly endless demands on our time and attention. We can only keep up the juggling act for so long. Soon, some areas of our lives will begin …
3 Truths for When Your Goals Feel Uncomfortable
Having big goals is the only way big things happen. And the only way to achieve big goals is to become tolerant of the discomfort that comes with them. Of course, this isn’t our natural tendency. We’d rather play it safe and avoid failure. That’s perfectly understandable. It’s what’s comfortable. But inevitably we start to …
6 Steps to Trade Limiting Beliefs for Liberating Truths
We all wrestle with limiting beliefs. No matter your age, occupation, or role, it’s a universal struggle. A limiting belief is a misunderstanding of the present that shortchanges our future. These might be assumptions we hold about the wider world, about other people, or maybe, hardest of all, beliefs about ourselves. Some of our limiting …
How Gratitude Makes Us Resilient
There’s a widely held assumption that gratitude leaves us feeling complacent. If we’re comfortable with life, we’ll feel no need to achieve more. And also have no need to set goals, right? But the opposite is true. Gratitude doesn’t make us complacent. Instead, it increases our efforts in the pursuit of goals. There are several …
How to Keep Employees Engaged
Most leaders are good at pushing their organization forward. They’re able to hit their goals, and they might even be decent at profit. But, unfortunately, many leaders don’t prioritize their people. If a leader doesn’t know what to do with their people, morale will be low, people will leave, and the business will suffer. The …
2 Questions to Ensure Your Rituals Work for You
We all have rituals, even if we don’t refer to them in those terms. They’re simply the tasks we do on a regular, even daily, basis. They’re so woven into our days that we’re on autopilot when we do them. Things like showering and getting ready for bed, setting up the coffee maker for the …
How to Stay Happily Married As An Entrepreneur
Being an entrepreneur is as exciting as it is challenging. There are new opportunities to do creative work—work you find purpose in—and to grow as a professional. For all the excitement, though, there are also plenty of challenges, particularly ones that affect a marriage. Gail and I have experienced this in our 40 years together. …
A Pathway Through Crisis for Entrepreneurs
When you own a business, it is inevitable that at some point you will experience crisis and disruption. The question to ask yourself is, should I pull back or lean in? Being afraid in uncertain times is normal, but fear doesn’t have to define your response. When seasons of crisis come, you can strategically pivot …
3 Benefits of Self-Automation
Most of us have tried establishing a new habit. With good intentions, we usually start out strong. But then life happens, and the habit falls to the wayside. Maybe things become busy at work, or the weather isn’t cooperating, or your kids aren’t sleeping, which means you’re not sleeping. Whatever the reason, there is a …
8 Traits of the Entrepreneurial Mindset
Growing up with my dad was like entrepreneurial school. He taught me that I had the opportunity to shape my own future by applying myself to something I loved. I just needed to look for the right opportunity. That first opportunity, at age 11, was selling boxes of all-occasion cards. Honestly, it was a bust. …
3 Roadblocks to Avoid for Optimal Team Performance
Working on a team is complicated. Senior and departmental leaders often struggle with a multitude of demands on their time. These demands then trickle down to the individual contributors who make up a team. As if the day-to-day operations aren’t enough, try adding strategic objectives on top of that. It gets complex, even confusing. This …
3 Benefits of Having a Vision
Many leaders struggle with getting clarity on their vision. With the chaos and clamor of everyday life and business, the bar is often set at just trying to stay afloat. Casting a vision for what you actually want can seem like a far-off luxury. But it comes at a cost. From wasted resources to burnout …
5 Tips for Starting a Journaling Habit
Many high achievers believe journaling is valuable for personal reflection and growth, but few actually open a journal on a daily basis. Perhaps you’ve thought about journaling, but then promptly gotten lost in the flurry of other tasks. Or perhaps you’ve attempted to start doing it more regularly, but then lost momentum. I’ve been there. …
3 Nonnegotiables for Every High Achiever
Some days it feels like our calendars run away from us. It might even feel like they control us instead of the other way around. We can’t possibly get it all done without dipping into our personal time. And that’s what a lot of us end up doing. A primary reason we let this happen …
How Constraints Help Us Achieve More
Like water, work can be life-giving. But it can also flow all over and flood our other life domains. We need boundaries to contain it. When we allow it to travel unrestricted, we’re not accomplishing more. We’re actually bringing something less than our best to both the office and home. We’re scattered and depleted instead …
The First Task Your EA Should Tackle
There are few things worse than walking out of a meeting, looking down at your phone, and seeing emails numbering in the double digits awaiting your response. If you travel or take vacation, the number grows even larger. It can take hours to comb through all of those messages. You probably don’t have the time …
Why We Have a 6-Hour Workday
When I first asked my daughter, Megan Hyatt Miller, to join our company as then COO, she agreed under one condition: she had to unplug from work and leave every day at 3:00 p.m. to pick up her kids from school and enjoy her evening at home with her family. I agreed, she took the …
How to Tell You Need an Executive Assistant
Have you ever felt like, no matter how many things you check off your to-do list, you just can’t keep up? Maybe you’re proficient in some specific areas of your business but aren’t the greatest in others, so they take up more time. The challenge is, even the areas you aren’t proficient in still have …
3 Tips for Creating a Vision Script
We all have dreams and goals for our business. Sadly, leadership isn’t a gently sloping road. In between us and our goals, there can be countless mountains to climb. The only reliable way to the top is to start with a vision. It’s what enables you to make a way when none previously existed. But …
4 Pitfalls of a Vision-Deficit Leader
Passion is a key component of a leader. Leaders generally don’t get to where they are without it. The same is true of drive, good ideas, and execution. Even confidence. But none of that is enough to replace vision. Passion and all the rest can fuel the mission, but vision is the North Star to …
