You’re pushing to get it all done again, aren’t you?

Yeah… it’s mid-year and there are tons of reasons (or excuses) why you’re pushing so hard.  There’s all that stuff that has been on your “to-do” list. There’s all that stuff that’s looming on your calendar.  

And all of it is important, isn’t it?

It IS important, isn’t it?  

Okay, so there’s the important stuff.  And there’s the urgent stuff. And what we’ve been taught is that we need to handle the urgent right now whether it’s important or not.

The problem is that everything starts to look urgent.  Everything.

Even the unimportant becomes urgent.

And you live your life running from task to task to task to… you get the picture.  You’ve been living it and you forgot to take a breath or two.

So here’s the challenge for your Wednesdays With Wayne:
It’s a couple of action steps....

This past week, I was just in front of a good-sized group of small business leaders discussing the differences between Management and Leadership.   Most of the people-wranglers there commented, in their own way, about finding themselves in this shared place of hopefulness and frustration.

Is this you?

I try to have empathy.
And at the same time, I really want to scream, “Just do your @*!!%! job!!!!”

Balancing the desire to be kind and accessible against the push to just have the team member do their job can tear your insides apart.  (It’s the thing they’re paid to do, why can’t they just do their job?) Beware of letting that frustration spill out.

Welcome to this week’s Wednesdays With Wayne where you’re now exploring how to show that you care while, at the same time, engaging employees (or family members) to do what they’re “supposed to” do.  

In our latest #1 Best Selling Book, Leadership Lessons From...

This process of Dynamic Transitions is dear to my heart as my book by the same name became a #1 International Best Seller (Get It Here).  One of the core foci within the pages is the notion of identifying your values.

Getting from Here To There in this week’s Wednesdays With Wayne.

This one is a simple concept, yet not necessarily that easy.  

What mattered to you 10 years ago?  I mean, what really, REALLY mattered to you?  Was it money? Was it your driving ambition in your career?  Was it sex? Was it family? Think about it, really. You’re not the same person you were ten years ago.  The journey has changed you.

Are the values you held then the same as the ones you hold now?
Some are.  Some aren’t.

That means planning your future needs to be based on future values.

Most people don’t think that way.  Most people don’t recognize that they have shed past values and if they do, they usually fail to recognize that...

You have a responsibility.  

You’re a good person AND you’re probably not showing up as big as you could be.  When was the last time you took your “Good-ness” to the next level? I’m not saying you have to brag about it.  It’s just that I think we all could be that much better to other humans. In this week’s Wednesdays With Wayne, I’ve got a great story to tell you.  It restores faith, just a little, in our humanity.

A few days ago, our youngest daughter was at an event in town.  Her wallet was left on the trunk of a car while she juggled other items.  And after all were packed up and she drove off, she realized what had happened.  Returning to where they had been, they searched the street up and down. The wallet, her wallet with her ID, vital paperwork, and cash… it was all gone.

My wife encouraged her to call the police (non-emergency line) to report that she had lost it and to ask if they...

You’re pretty darn good at what you do.  The people who read my blog are, and you’re here.  That means that you’ve gotten to a level of success, you’ve pushed, and you’ve made a difference.  

Welcome to Wednesdays With Wayne!  Here you’ll look at some key elements to keep you ahead of the game.  The biggest thing to remember:

You’ve come too far to only get this far!
There’s MORE for you!

And… it’s going to take a little more from you.

That means that you need to keep at it.  

Think about any master of their craft.  They never say, “Okay, I’m done. No more practice for me.”  Nope. Professional athletes are out on the field or the court running their drills.  Musicians run their scales. They have outside coaches that give them perspective. And they keep at it.

Complacency is your enemy.
When you get to a place that you feel like you’re good enough, you...

Here’s something that could kill you – it’s known as the phenomenon of putting your attention on something so that it increases the likelihood of colliding with that thing.

This week’s Wednesdays With Wayne focuses on Target Fixation (see what I did there?).  

The phenomenon is so powerful that professional riders and racecar drivers are taught to focus on the road ahead and to keep their eyes and attention off of the wall or the tail light ahead.  Have you ever found yourself drifting to the line when you’re driving while thinking, “stay off the line?” You’ve been affected by Target Fixation.

We are driven toward that which we dwell upon.

Then if that’s the case, extrapolate.  Look at your life – what you focus on comes about.  Why are there so many mean people in the world? Because you’re focusing on mean.  Look at the posts on line that you’ve “liked” and notice what you...

All too often you set off down a path of getting it done… getting it all done… and yet you somehow feel thwarted.  You’re thrown off, stopped by your own doing.

“I can’t submit this, it’s not ready.”

It looks like procrastination.  It feels like a burden. And the process of letting out something that is incomplete makes you feel so horribly vulnerable.

Welcome to this week’s Wednesdays With Wayne!

The truth is, the not-doing actually brings more unfavorable judgment than producing something that’s not “perfect.”

I’m a five-time author with several #1 Best Selling books.  And you know what, I want to go back and fix pieces of each book.  The voice in my head echoes: “I could have done better. That work could have been better.”  And, yes, I probably could have. And yet, when people write to me to tell me how my words have helped them, I once again become the believer in the...

Photo copyright Shannon Pernell. All rights reserved.

My friend and his wife that I quoted a few blogs back are smart people.  And I LOVE how smart people put what they know into action. Sometimes you get stuck thinking about a situation or a person in a certain way.  Maybe you can’t see a solution or maybe you’re feeling judged, or even judgmental.

Here’s this week’s Wednesdays With Wayne where you’re reminded about good ol’ Mental Floss!  Yep. Sometimes the “stuck-ness” continues because you aren’t seeking a new perspective.

Mental floss is about clearing out what’s happening between your ears.  Let go of old thinking and search for new possibilities. It doesn’t mean that you need to excuse the “bad” behavior of another person.  It might mean that you capture a new perspective.

For example, some people are content to create chaos in other people’s lives.  That’s...

I just had lunch with one of the smartest, most accomplished, self-aware men I’ve ever met.  He was born into a life of luxury that was turned upside down in his early teens when his country became war-torn as a political hotbed.  He literally went from having anything he could dream of to having nowhere to sleep.

As he grew to the wise man he is today, he engaged in quite a lot of study.  Beyond studying politics and the health sciences, he studied personal development.  He studied himself and his own reactions to the troubles around him.

We connected because we have our philosophies in common.  Over lunch we discussed how circumstances are 100% up to the individual to choose to respond to.  We talked about response vs. reaction.  

And as we talked about my new project that stems from my #1 International Best-Selling Book, Dynamic Transitions (yes, I’m proud) we talked about why people feel so unfulfilled.

That’s this...

My quirky clients inspire me.

I've recently met with a couple who each had their own challenges.  Hey, they’re human and really, we all have our personal stuff.  

This week’s Wednesdays With Wayne takes you on a journey of looking inward to bring your Best Self out.  

Andrew and Sally struggled to be better leaders for their organization.  As partners, they also were challenged to be better for each other. Their lessons were separate, but so relevant for each of us!

Sally is such a giving person that, ironically, she struggled to demonstrate empathy. In fact, it was because of her efforts to engage in a human connection that by offering assistance and suggesting different fixes for problems, she ended up taking away the opportunity for the other person to actually grow.  To really demonstrate presence, it's important to acknowledge the other person's condition and when you step in as a leader, it's important to leave room for the other person to...