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Focus For The Week

Time is genetic. You design your future. Every moment of every day.

Your Decisions and Actions are your design tools. They bring Results. If your ego is in check, you will Evaluate: D A R E.

Most people take these decisions in a dream.

DARE is the mental model to design your future consciously.

Your Decision

You and I live on an incredible planet. With wonderful people, animals, opportunities. For a finite time. What an opportunity we have.

What will you do with it?

Today I introduce the most powerful mental model I have created. An approach that has changed my life and the lives of tens of thousands of other people over the past twenty years:

DARE

The first step in High Performance and Transformation is accepting your power and your accountability for how you use it – or don’t use it. You can make things happen on this planet. For yourself and for others. Nobody is stopping you. If you don’t make things happen, that’s up to you: but you need to own it.

You design your future. And if you can create results, you can create different results!

Different results need different Decisions and different Actions and you need a different ego management plan to Evaluate your Decisions, Actions and Results honestly:

DARE: Decision. Action. Result. Evaluate.

New Actions are scary. New Decisions are challenging. That internal ‘Tiger’ will roar at you to get back in your lane. But you control that Tiger, too. 

I don’t control everything, of course. You don’t either. 

But we control more than we dare to admit. And if you want to move to high performance or if you want to create change, recognising how much you control is the first step.

For example, we now know that the greatest predictor of all-cause mortality isn’t smoking or drinking alcohol. It’s low VO2 Max.

Well, I sure control how much exercise I do. Barring any health restrictions, you do too. So, we both have the power to increase our time on earth: today.

We all have enormous power to influence our tomorrows and the world around us.

I feel a bit uncomfortable writing this because there is a very powerful movement telling us all that we are powerless; that anybody with the power do things is ‘suspect’. ‘Power’ itself is suspect. 

But you want empowered team members, right?  We want our children to be empowered to ‘say no’ or to eat well or to reject harmful messages on social media.

We want doctors empowered to cure and our military empowered to protect our society.

Embracing your power to make things happen is good. Adult. Transformational. High Performance.

What do you need to change?

What will you DECIDE to do to exercise your power and change it?

Your Action

Choose one small thing that you have wanted to change for a long time. You know the thing.

A ‘real’ conversation with a colleague/partner about a problem that is hurting you. A small fix to your diet that will bring a big long term health benefit. A course for a skill you need to learn. Putting on your running shoes.

Ask yourself whether you are powerless to ACT to create a change or whether it’s just easier to DECIDE to postpone it for another day.

What future are you designing by DECIDING not to ACT?

What future are you designing by DECIDING to accept your power and ACT?

Your Result and Your Evaluation

Never doubt that YOUR changes can inspire other people around the world to act!

I would love to hear from you and share your story. What is the RESULT you achieved by DECIDING to accept your power and ACT to design your future?

How would you evaluate what happened – will you do it again or will you change it next time? What did you learn?

Please send your DECISION, ACTION, RESULT and EVALUATION.

Each week, with your permission, I will publish your stories to inspire our global community of over 25,000 readers.

My Week

The absolute highlight of my week was a trip to Tallinn, Estonia to work with Markus Villig and the global ‘top 100’ leadership team at Bolt. Bolt is one of Europe’s most exciting unicorn companies. Bolt’s mission is to make cities for people, not cars and they are driving that mission hard.

Speaking before me was the fantastic Nick Walker. Nick is BOLT’s CPO and a powerhouse architect of cultural change and High Performance. Our partnership of over fifteen years now has delivered very powerful results.

Home to two family birthdays and a weekend of trying to cheer up a daughter who has succumbed to the winter school bugs and is missing her birthday fun.

I missed two triathlon training days this week feeling fragile from travel and bugs. A disappointing result.

Follow my daily training progress on STRAVA to encourage me and I’ll follow you back and deal you some kudos!

My next race is the Blenheim Palace Sprint Triathlon on 7 June. See you there?

I am re-reading Richard Rohr’s ‘Falling Upwards’ this week on my travels. It is an extraordinary and enlightening spiritual (and not a religious) book.

 Write your story! 🖋️

Jim