For most athletes retiring and their Olympic sport, these next few months can be a time of feeling lost and alone. Until the closing ceremonies in Tokyo, medalists and qualifiers previously knew what their job was. Now - "What's my purpose?" bounces around in their brain (and body) like a balloon on a windy day.

From personal experience, my post-Olympic experience was a long, insidious slide into feeling lost. Heck, it was only this year, I finally wrote a book to summarize that feeling. While the rest of us carry on with our lives, retiring athletes generally feel some form of being untethered.

In addition, the I.O.C. just upgraded their motto to “Swifter, Higher, Stronger - Together." Ah yes, together. Does this ring true for you too?

Athletes either have individual pursuits (skiing, gymnastics, pole vault, wrestling) or team pursuits (hockey, water polo, volleyball). In both cases, you're still one athlete trying to get better in your sport. But, when the lady of a larger persuasion sings, there's not team, no organization, no nothing. It's a void of "meh." 

If you know an athlete who competed in the Olympics, or a newly minted army veteran, or a person who retired from their job, reach out and check in with them. Include them in your plans. Co-create a project. Find out what the athlete's passion is and introduce them to that special someone in your network who shares the same values.

Let's remember the pursuit of swifter, higher, stronger excellence is best achieved together!

You may think you're the exception. BUT... Everyone has Blind Spot Bias. We each have a tendency to see other people being more biased than we are. In fact, in one study over 85% of Americans reported they are less biased in their thinking. People are motivated to seen themselves in a positive light while biases are generally seen as undesirable.

Everyone has unconscious patterns and personal ‘factory defects’ if you will. There are things about you, you don’t know you have. Let’s say elbow skin for example. Roll your sleeve up and give your elbow skin a pinch. There, see that, you have no feeling in your elbow skin. A factory defect you weren’t aware of. Another 'factory defect'... you have a Blind Spot.

Take this quick test. Cover your left eye. Keep your right eye on the + sign while you slowly bring your face closer to the screen. At some point you the black spot will disappear then reappear. THAT is your blind spot.

When it comes to topics you’re passionate about, you also have any combination of blind spots. Blind Spot biases are enhanced by confirmation bias and repetition bias. You recognize data as aligning with your way of seeing the world, and bingo you have reinforced, or confirmed your bias. Or, you hear a certain bit of information repeatedly and you are in the sights of repetition bias. 

If you hold your gaze from a fixed position, there is nothing you can do about your optical bias. It is by seeing something from a different angle or position will you then see what you couldn’t see before. The same can be said in life.

If you are posting your bias on social media, or arguing your point with a significant other, know, you may have an unconscious bias, A BLIND SPOT that’s a factory defect somewhat like the unfeeling elbow skin of objectivity. 

3 Ways to Protect Your Business

If you're facing a veritable rodent in your midst; be it a hacker trying to disrupt your business, a knock-off competitor who wants to steal your clients/prospects, a rip-off copycat who can't come up with their own ideas... you have to think like them. Using a metaphor of raccoons that set-up residence in our attic, here are a few ideas to fend off the business rodents who can infest your space.

1. Don't Blindly Trust the Professionals. 

   Without going into details about how the roofing pros didn't ensure raccoons got into our attic, suffice to say they fell short of keeping the sound of raccoons ballroom dancing on our upstairs ceiling. Thousands of dollars later, the "pros" were never invited back while the raccoons never needed an invitation.

2. Overestimate the Tenacity of Your Competitors.

   It turns out that raccoons are pretty tenacious creatures. I custom built a layer of hardwood and stapled chicken wire all along the point where the raccoons were getting in. I even hired a small man to squirm into the space between the roof and soffits to ensure the barrier was screwed in. Months later, the sound of raccoons doing a remake of Saving Private Ryan echoed through our entire attic space. Again, I humanly relocated our furry guests. 
   
3. Overcompensate Your Barrier(s) to Entry. With the roofing company and skinny helpers permanently in my rear-view mirror I decided to take matters into my own hands. With the barrier of wood and chicken wire torn back and tossed aside by raccoons determined to exercise their squatter's rights, I squeezed into the tiny space. I sprayed Coyote Urine in and around the opening. I tripled the number of screws in the wood/wire barrier. I caulked the entire perimeter. I cut out sheet metal to cover the space with extra-flaps to surround the top, sides and bottoms. Screwed another dozen screws into any available opening. Then caulked the entire length and breadth of the metal edges. 

By thinking like a raccoon (not lazy roofers or uninvested skinny guys) did I conquer this first world problem. May your business be fortified by your attention to not blindly trusting professionals, overestimating the tenacity of your competitors, and overcompensating any barriers to entry into your business space. 

A self-serving bias can cut two ways. Avoid any form of self-destruction.

As you'll see in this video, if you take credit and say, "Those good things are due to me," then you have a self-serving bias. If you say, "Those bad things are not my fault, they happen to me because of someone or something else," then you have the other side-of-the-sword where you are playing the victim.

Basically, having these kinds of biases hobble your growth.

The solution is to let go. Let go of the credit. Let go of the victim language. Just let go of the bias altogether.

It all correlates to the versions of the truth. There's your truth. The other person's truth. Then theirs likely 'the truth.'

Having a bias may make you feel good. You may feel vindicated. You may feel 'right.' Your bias may launch you into, "The good fight." But if bias has anything to do with ego or fear, it is a bias that is on the road to dysfunction.

If you absolutely HAVE to HAVE bias, then have a bias for LOVE while you have a bias against hate.

As Martin Luther King said, "Hate is too great a burden to bear."

Look for ways you can observe without judgment. Look for opportunities to clarify someone's point of view. Challenge yourself to actively listen over silently formulating what you're going to say next. Self-serving biases diminish your relationships with others, and, get this, your self.

Breakthroughs in life happen when you are constantly in the solution loop of listening, not talking. Test out what you think and challenge your own beliefs. Be part of a conversation not a one-way stream of your biases. Being right is far less important than being happy.

Let go of the self-serving bias.

Fear can be the bane of our existence. Getting rid of fear(s) will be a lifelong pursuit. 

The paradoxes surrounding FEAR is multilayered: 

• Run away from fear it gets larger.
• Run towards fear and it gets smaller.
• If you let fear go up, confidence goes down.
• If you minimize fear, confidence goes up.
• Fake that you're not scared and you're only kidding yourself.
• Embrace your fears and you are courageous.
• If you ignore what you fear, you're ignoring what is important to you.
• If you dive into the middle of what scares you you're on your way to fulfillment. 

This video is a small exploration into the power of fear. Whether that power is in your hands or out of your control is absolutely up to you.

Enjoy.

Here's your breakthrough for today. You'll gravitate to that which you believe to be true, so be the architect of that truth. Let me say that again, backwards. Be the architect of your truth so that you can gravitate towards that truth.

We could spend an hour on this topic and give you all sorts of good examples of celebrities that had a truth in their mind and they gravitated towards that, positive and negative. Gosh, the first person that comes to mind is Muhammad Ali.

He thought he was the greatest in the world, he told everybody he was the greatest in the world, and you know what? He probably was, in terms of boxing, the greatest in the world.

There are people that have a truth they are the architect of. There are some people, it just occurs to them. So be the person that chooses the truth that you want to gravitate towards. Be the architect of that truth, design it.

Now, how?

Well, repetition, repeating things over and over help. You keep telling somebody something, in some form or fashion it's gonna come true. Negatives can occur too.

If you're not conscious of your truth, negative things can occur because you may have a subconscious truth that's going to take you backwards.

So be the architect for maybe a positive truth, and really design that in a way that has not just repetition, but has emotion attached to it. When you think about it, you feel it inside, there's this buzz inside, you just go, oh, I would love to do that.

So when you establish that truth, you'll gravitate towards that.

You do that, well, we got this.

Today’s message has to do with not being so fixated on making the other side wrong.

Whether it has to do with business growth, overcoming obstacles, maintaining resilience or a simple conversation that finds itself on the topic of politics. 

I'm a DIY (Do It Yourself) kind of guy.

There are really two categories of people.

There are the "DIYs" or there's the “I don’t care how it works just fix it” kind of person.

Remember the book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It is a book from long ago that triggered a lot of us to say I want to figure out how this works and get after it. It did not trigger people that went I don't care how it works and quite frankly I'm going to pay somebody to figure out how to make it work because I got better things to do.

Those two categories of people are very different. But here we are. Two sides who don’t see eye to eye yet they coexist wonderfully.

They don't try and make the other one wrong and say, “Well you got it wrong. My way is the right way!”

They coexist. They get along.

So whatever category you find yourself in, we can get along with the other side.

In fact when it comes to getting along … we got this!

Coaching for Business Growth

Growing your business can be a challenge. Growing your business when employees are working from home can seem like an insurmountable challenge. We have found that coaching has a massive impact on employee engagement and keeping leaders happy.

The problems that exist with remote work environments is managers struggle to know if people are delivering on the work-time they've committed to. But the real focus should be on the results that the employees are producing.

This video is designed to have your people understand how to stay engaged and deliver those results that you're looking for. It's also designed for your employees to enjoy the message in a short, brief, and fun video.

If you're curious about how coaching (from an outside perspective) can improve team productivity or individual productivity, then give us a call. We hope you have a great day and enjoy this breakthrough video.

Conversations with Dune explore a variety of inspirational topics, practical tools for entrepreneurs, insights for parents, and anyone searching for a better way... Enjoy this one hour and fifty minute interview. 

Here's a quick BREAKTHROUGH video on how to approach a "system" that is not working.

With the backdrop of a swimming pool that cost hundreds of dollars to throw possible solutions to getting it 'balanced' - the ultimate solution was to drain the pool and start over. With systemic failure in organizations, institutions and even relationships, the higher the complexity the more a "start over" approach may be the best solution. Clearly, this can be a painful process. In this isolated case, draining the pool was costly but, in the long run, less costly than a series of chemical additives, backwashing and water loss. Oh, and the physical labor involved in washing away the persistent algae with gallons of muriatic acid and the safety protocol involved makes it even more arduous.

BUT - still - necessary.

If you're in a position of influence to change a system, you may find yourself in a similar situation. "Draining the pool" is a metaphor of cleaning house. Which is a metaphor for wiping the slate clean. Which is a metaphor for starting over. Enough mixed metaphors already.

Get honest with the system you are a part of. Can you influence the courage necessary to start over.

It will be painful, costly and taxing, but you will find it is worth it for those who want to play in your pool later. (ugh.... another metaphor ;-) Reach out to us if you need help with the tactics necessary to start over. Leaders, this is your chance for change.