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So I woke up this morning and immediately went from zero to negativity on the coattails of Facebook. I don’t know what it is. It’s never anything specific but the results are always the same: When start my day with Facebook and social media it’s not a good day.

Negativity is a poison. Once you let it in, It will eat you from the inside out. And what happens when it gets out? You start spreading it to everyone around you. It’s like Negativity is the monkey that starts the zombie apocalypse. Once it bites you, you’re patient zero. Then you go around mindlessly biting all your friends turning them into negativity zombies. Just like you. The only way to stop this from all going down is to run from the monkey.

So I shifted gears. I changed my thinking this morning. I stopped, read a book, and wrote this post in my notebook. I know that reading and writing always makes me shift my thinking so I started there. Then I wrote what my morning should look like:

  1. Wake up (early)
  2. Drink coffee
  3. Eat Bacon
  4. Reflect and Think
  5. Read and/or Write

This works for me. I know because it’s worked before and it always helps me to start my day with a positive attitude and positive thinking. I heard Tim Sanders say once, “If you start your day filling your mind with junk, it’s going to be set up for consuming junk all day. Just as your body responds to a healthy breakfast as part of a healthy diet, so does your mind.”

What you do in the first 30 minutes of your day can set you up for success and give you a chance to get ahead with positive thinking. Give your brain something awesome for breakfast. Let it start working early so you can start working on your dreams. Don’t let your thoughts and your energy be drowned out by the thoughts of everyone else on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. Just for the first 30 minutes or an hour of your day, listen to you first.

I have changed my thinking today. I’m choosing not to be a negativity zombie. I took control of my thoughts as the change was happening. Now I don’t have to run around infecting my friends. I kicked the apocalyptic negativity monkey in the face.

Don’t bite your friends. Think positive.

Questions: I know Facebook is one of my Negativity triggers, Can you think of anything that throws you in to a tornado of negativity?

What would help you get out of it once it starts?

What could you do to prevent it?

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“Hi I’m Chris and I’m an artist.”

Do you guys ever feel like when your introduce yourself you kinda make it sound like you should be in a support group? Like people will respond, “An artist? Isn’t there a 12 step program for that or something? What do you really do? No really?”

What does that say about people who create for a living?

The only thing I can think of is that it says we should be more confident in what we do. We turn our thoughts into something tangible and put it out there for the world to see. We strive to find out who we are and we show it with our work. We get paid for what we do because what we do has value. It’s not why we do it but we know that getting paid for our work doesn’t mean we’ve sold out or that we must not be true artists because we’re successful.

I am not a starving artist. I don’t have to be. I refuse to be.

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Personal growth is something I’ve been working with for the past year. Since I read John Maxwell’s book Today Matters,  I’ve made it a core value of mine and try to do something each day to work on growth personally. Today I realized something about growth. Something that hadn’t really hit me before now. Growth is a slow process? yes. But does it have to be? Yes. I believe it does.

Slow growth will always beat out NO growth. (Duh!) But Fast growth, growth that occurs all at once, wouldn’t that beat slow growth? It sounds awesome! The only problem is? It doesn’t exist. There is no easy way to the top. There is no shortcut. There is work hard, work hard everyday, set goals, achieve them and grow personally everyday. That’s it.

The reason slow growth wins is because that’s all there is. I hear stories of people who “made it” or were over-night successes but that’s not what I want. I don’t want to “make it.” Making it implies that the journey is over. that I’ve reached the top and there’s nowhere else to go. People who “make it” often stop growing when they do.

The cool thing is though, once you start working on your personal growth, you leave everybody else behind. Then you’ll be perceived as someone who was lucky or caught a good break or “made it”. But you’ll know the truth: That you worked your ass off to get here. You’ll also know that this is not the end. Just because you achieve your goals and reach a high point, doesn’t mean the race is over… it’s just a check point. There is no finish line. Only the race.

I heard John Maxwell say once, “If you find yourself at the head of the class, you’re in the wrong class. It’s time to find a new class.” So don’t ever think you’ve made it. It’s all about continuing the journey or as Reid Hoffman, the author of The Start-up of You says, “Live in permanent beta.” Define what success looks like to you and go for it. But when you get there know it’s not the end. You’re always improving, always striving for growth.

Never arrive.

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Happy near year! 2012 was a year of learning, growth, and life craziness and we welcome the new year as a challenge to make 2013 just as freakin’ crazy as 2012 was. In planning for 2013, I’ve decided that my goal writing should be more direct and detailed. Less like resolutions (which never work) and more like actual goals.
A resolution is a promise, a goal is an achievement, an end. Plus it just makes more sense to me.

The problem still with goal setting is that it means nothing without some sort of applicable steps to take towards it. Practicality and daily,weekly,monthly, or quarterly objectives in goal setting are just as important as the goal itself. It’s really easy to do this sort of thing this time of year. We see the reset button and we sense the fresh start in the air. But as the year goes on we usually fall off the wagon in one way or another.

This is how my year usually looks when pertaining to goals and motivation to pursue them daily:

  1. January- March- 95% motivation (“This is awesome! I love me some 2013!”)
  2. April-June- 80% motivation (“Crap! I forgot to do this. I’ll catch it next month”)
  3. July-September- 70% motivation (“Where did I put that goal sheet?”)
  4. October-December- 35% motivation With a jump to 50% mid-December when I realize I’ve been sucking for the past two months. (“I’ll do better with that next year.”)

This steady decline in sticking to the plan has to with several things the least of which is not burnout or just real life “stuff” happening along the way. This year I’m trying a different approach. Instead of letting 2013 get ahead of me I’m going to beat it to the punch.

On Jon Acuff’s Blog, He mentions a 52/7 plan: Working on goals set in the 7 core areas of your life (Spiritual, Financial, Physical, Social, Mental, Career, Family) in 52 day chunks. Making the goals more manageable and much more scalable and also eliminating the pressure of huge year long goals.

I like that. I like the idea of getting to the end of one of these 52 chunks and looking back to see what was working, what’s not, and what needs to be expanded upon or continued for the next 52 days. So I started with Jon’s model from his blog and added space at the top from my “overall goals and bHAGs” for the year because I still want to see those written out. 🙂

Here is the outline/prompt with a few examples:

GOALS 2013

List of Long term/Short term Goals, Dreams, and BHAGS

Long term Goals (2013-2015)-

Daily Steps-

Short Term (Janurary-March)-

Daily Steps-

BHAGs-

52/7 

Financial
Eat 2 meals at home 5 days a week

Physical
Sleep 7 hours 80% of the 52 days.
Work out 4 days every week.

Social

Make plans to have coffee and hang with someone once a week.
Return my Facebook messages/comments in less than 24 hours

Mental
Read two new books each month. (starting with Platform)
Listen to 1 Podcast a day (EntreLeadership, Shoot to Kill, Accidental Creative)

Career
Respond to every work related email and Facebook within 24 hours.
Have purposeful creative experiences once a week

Family
Two Date nights a month
Call talk to my grandfather once a week

Spiritual

Read the first 52 days of a Read Through The Bible in 52 days program.

The biggest goal I have this year is to maintain no less than 85% motivation and consistency when pertaining to goals I’ve set for the year. I know my most productive months are January-June. That’s 50% of the year. What would happen if I used that other 50% of the year last year instead of falling off course? Or even just an extra 25%? This year, 52 days at a time, let’s see what the other side looks like.

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