RENEWAL—Priority One.

It’s the end of the year and that time for discussing your goals and objectives for next year. It seems to be on the mind of every person right now—what do I want my life to look like next year? What do I want to accomplish? What have I learned through my recent experiences? This thought process is called “RENEWAL” and when you look at it on a macro level, many great companies do this all the time as well. If you look at perennially successful companies they often have one common ingredient, namely, R & D (research and development). It is quite difficult to be successful perennially without a passion for R & D—it’s what keeps great organizations at the top of their industry. They understand the importance of RENEWAL to keep things ‘cutting edge’, at the top of their game and their industry—they don’t just do it, they obsess about it, every day.


Think about your own R & D, your own RENEWAL—how often do you contemplate it? How often do you actually work on it? If you acquire a personal R & D/RENEWAL mindset, you’ll focus each day on developing creativity and personal growth, basically on ‘auto-pilot’. If your daily focus becomes continual learning and commitment to growth, you have embodied the R & D mindset, and can place yourself at the head of the pack (in a leadership position).

Every project, assignment, position/role/job should be an experience that you can learn from, and therefore embody RENEWAL. If they are not, you should re-consider the amount of time you’re devoting to each and move onward. Why is continual learning and renewal so important?

1) Simply, to make a better living for yourself

2) To improve your problem-solving and decision-making skills

3) To cultivate an openness to new/other possibilities

4) To increase your ‘brain power’

Questions to ask in developing and maintaining your renewal mindset:

1) What have I learned in the last week? the last month? Repeat frequently.

2) Does my current project/role/assignment have specific learning goals? If not, restructure it.

3) What have I learned in my current role? Is the learning experience positive? Is the learning what I had expected? If that learning experience has not broadened you, you should reflect on the time and commitment you’ve invested and consider alternative paths to place you on the route to renewal and continual learning.

Don’t wait to start your own personal R & D/Renewal/Learning Plan. Chances are someone else has already made that personal commitment for some time and they may have beaten you to the punch (career-wise or R & D-wise) just by sheer determination for personal or career growth….

How's Your ATTITUDE?

If You Believe You Can, You Can. Did you know that it took Thomas Edison ten thousand attempts to find the right materials for the incandescent light bulb? Edison had a quality that can be difficult to possess in tough times—POSITIVE ATTITUDE. Edison himself stated: “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” He developed the modern research laboratory and was the eternal optimist, stating, “If we did all the things we were capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”


If Edison hadn’t been such a positive person, he never would have achieved the great level of success as an inventor. Those who achieve lasting success in any profession almost always possess a positive attitude and positive outlook toward life. If you desire to be an effective leader, having a positive attitude is essential. It not only determines your level of happiness, but also has an impact on how others interact with you.

Things To Ponder:

1) Your Attitude is a CHOICE. Many people wait for someone else to motivate them or perceive that your circumstances dictate how you think. No matter what happened yesterday, your attitude is a choice TODAY.

2) Your Attitude Determines Your Actions. Those that win have a winning attitude, not aptitude.

3) Your ‘Followers” Are a Mirror of Your Attitude. Simply, who you are is who you attract. If you display a poor attitude, don’t expect others around you to be upbeat.

4) Maintaining a Positive Attitude is Easier than Regaining One. Once the cycle of negativity or self-pity starts, it can literally distort reality and hold you back.

When you face new experiences, does a voice in your head say that you’re going to fail? If you’re hearing negative messages or thoughts, you need to learn to give yourself a pep talk and re-train your attitude toward a positive one—prevent your mind from going down a negative path.

How Can I Improve My Attitude?

• Feed yourself a diet of motivational material. You can become a more positive thinker and turn your attitude around by looking for the right material that helps you stay positive.

• Achieve a goal every day. Some fall into a rut of negativity because they feel they’re not making progress. Begin setting achievable goals for yourself every day. A pattern of positive achievement will help you develop patterns of positive thinking.

• Write it on the wall (or any place that you can see as a reminder). This will help keep your thinking straight.

The MIND is what elevates the ‘best’ to the highest level. If the mind is strong you can do almost anything you want to do.

Do You Have PASSION?

Have you ever worked with a leader that is really PASSIONATE about what they do? Have YOU ever been passionate about something that you’ve worked on in your life? If so, you can’t mistake it—leaders that are passionate leaders will always be met by passionate followers, and thus a productive outcome. Many studies have been done, looking at the lives of effective, legendary leaders—what has made them successful? Most legendary leaders don’t fit into a stereotypical mold—Many CEO’s had a C or C- average in school. Many U.S. presidents were in the bottom half of their class rank. What makes it possible for ‘ordinary’ people to achieve great things? The answer is Passion. Passion can overcome any other deficiency you may have.


Your desire determines your destiny. Anyone who lives beyond an ordinary life (passionate) has great desire (look at Martin Luther King Jr., Bill Gates, Gandhi). Weak desire brings weak results. The stronger your fire, the greater the desire, and the greater your potential and achievements.

There is no substitute for passion. It is the fuel of your will to achieve—if you want something badly enough you can find the willpower to achieve it. The only way to have that kind of desire is to develop passion. Passion changes you. If you follow your passion, instead of others’ perceptions, you can’t help becoming a more dedicated, productive person. And that increases your ability to impact others. Your passion will have more influence than your personality, CV, etc. Passion makes the impossible possible. A fire in your heart can lift everything else in your life. A leader with great passion and few skills will always achieve more than a leader with great skills and no passion.

If passion is not a quality of your life, you’re in trouble as a leader. You can never lead anything you don’t care passionately about. Next Step—Questions to Ask Yourself:

How passionate are you about your life and your work? Does it show? You won’t become passionate until you believe it can make a difference in your life. What things are you passionate about in your life? Try to recapture your old enthusiasm and apply to your career and lifestyle. Do you associate with people who are passionate? Passion is contagious.

You’ve heard the old saying: Concentrate on what you do well and do it better than anybody else. What do you do better than anyone else? It could end up as your new passion…

Identify Your Limiting Factors

What Is Holding You Back? What sets the speed at which you achieve your goals? What determines how fast you move from where you are, to where you want to be? Why haven’t you achieved your GOAL already?


Whatever you’re looking to accomplish, there is always a ‘limiting factor’ that determines how quickly and well you will achieve it. Study the objectives you’re looking to accomplish and identify the ‘limiting factors’ or constraints you’re facing—then focus all of your energy on alleviating that factor (s).

The 80/20 Rule applies to the constraints in your life and in your work: 80% of the constraints—the factors that are holding you back from achieving your goal—are internal. They are within yourself, your own qualities, abilities, habits, disciplines. Only 20% of limiting factors are external. In your own life, you must have the honesty to look inward for the limiting factor or limiting skill that sets the speed at which you achieve your personal goals.

How Can I Get There?

Identify your most important goal in life today. What is it? What one goal, if you achieved it, would have the greatest positive effect on your life? What one career accomplishment would have the greatest positive impact on your work life? Once you are clear about your major goal, ask yourself—What sets the speed at which I accomplish this goal? Why don’t I have it already? What is it within me that is holding me back? Whatever your answers, take action immediately. Do Something. Do Anything. But get started TODAY!

Leverage Your Special Talents and Abilities

You are Different! You have special talents and abilities that make you different from every other person who has ever lived. There are certain things you can do, or learn to do, that can make you extraordinarily valuable to yourself and others. Your job is to identify your special areas of uniqueness and then to commit yourself to becoming outstanding in those areas.

Take stock of your unique talents and abilities on a regular basis. What is it that you do especially well? What are you good at? What tasks come easily to you? What do you do easily and well that is difficult for other people? Looking back at your career, what has been most responsible for your success in life and work to date? What have been your most significant accomplishments in the past?
You are designed in a way that you’ll most enjoy doing the very things that you can be the very best at. What is it that you enjoy the most about your work? What accomplishments do you enjoy the most? The fact that you enjoy something means you have the capacity to excel in that area.
Look at that various things you do. What is it that you do that gets you the most compliments and praise from others? What do you do that positively affects the work and performance of other people more than anything else?
Leaders take the time to identify what they do well and most enjoy. They know what they do, those unique talents that really makes a difference in their work-- Then they concentrate on that area of activity, exclusively, which doubles your chances of success.
Continually ask yourself these key questions:
What am I really good at? What do I enjoy the most about my work? What has been most responsible for my success in the past? If I could focus on any talent, ability, task at all, what would that be? Whatever your answers, move your focus to excel in those areas and get started TODAY.