Taboo Words - They Sabotage Your Business and Your Life

There are many words we use automatically. We don't even recognize the words are coming out of our mouths.

Self-talk can be very empowering, affirming, even motivating - if we channel it wisely.

Sometimes our self-talk - whether we think it or speak it is really damaging, especially to ourselves. On bad days, I catch myself starting sentences with "I can't do xxx", or "I don't want to do xxx" or even the proverbial "I'll try... " After years of staying aware of these traps, a little alarm goes off in my head. It is very good at catching me when I fall into any of these traps.

I've learned to take each of these tabot words and turn them around so I'm back in control of the situation. It's become a stress reliever of sorts because turning a negative into a positive is a great game to play with yourself and with your team. When I do this with my kids or on a team, it sets the bar high enough that whiners, do-nothings and complainers can't control the outcome.

Taboo words are poison to your goals and dreams. Even though you may’ intend’ them to be positive, they undermine what you truly want to say and do. Some of the most common tabot words we use all too frequently are:

• Can’t
• Won’t
• Don’t
• Hard
• Discouraged
• Not the best
• I’ll try
• I hope
• These people
• It’s because

How about you? Which ones are part of your vocabulary far too often? What will you do differently? Eliminate them from your vocabulary as fast as you can. Watch your attitude and your altitude soar.

Service Contracts

I purchased a tabletop copier 10 years ago when I started distributing my newsletter by snailmail. It has given me excellent service and when it isn't absolutely perfect, I call my service rep, Lou.

This service rep is your ideal employee. He loves his work. He knows the equipment and his clients very well. He is responsive to calls. He apologizes if he can't be here within 4 hours. He always has all the necessary replacement parts in his vehicle. He goes beyond his job description consistently to provide superior service, not because the company requests it but he knows it's the right thing to do.

What he's done instinctively is bind clients like me to him personally, not just the company and the brand. Such employees are priceless. You can't pay someone enough to provide this level of service. You can't teach it either.

I have an annual service contract now, since I paid off the lease some years ago. I pay annually to continue receiving the on-demand support I've always had. Lou advised me to request a visit at least twice a year even if I don't think I need it - just to tune up the copier and keep it in good shape - since I've paid for the service anyway.

At the regional headquarters it's another story. To book a visit with Lou has become increasingly cumbersome as the layers of telephone automation get deeper and deeper. Then today I got a call from a nice young sales rep, fishing for a sale to upgrade this old machine. According to his boss and his computer screen, my service contract was expired so he was told to call for a new sale.

When I informed him that I had indeed renewed the service contract and had the cancelled check to prove it - he was surprised and did some backpeddling.

He called back few minutes later, after verifying that indeed my support contract is active and flattered me on the condition of my copier - still fishing for another sale. I do commend him on his followthrough. He said he'd check and get back to me either way and he did.

If only all sales and service calls could be so effective, prompt and helpful.

Freedom to choose and accountability

When we are aware that we need to change something and are ready to make a change, there are many decisions to make. We must decide on a direction, the speed, personal and career growth impact, strategic implications for the company and in the marketplace, and what goals to set and strive for. Within each of those decisions, there are many opportunities to make choices, we are not locked in. We can choose paths or speeds or goals to keep us in a rut or stuck in the maze. Or we can choose options which allow us to break out of the old groove and push the envelope of what we can really do, be and have.

This freedom of choice is best exemplified by small business and entrepreneurship.

As a business owner, you get to make decisions about those things that are in your control. You get to select from many options that present themselves at each decision point along the way. With that freedom comes the responsibility to be accountable for the decisions you make. Be sure you have your accountability system in place and you use it to always make the best decisions and choices for your business.

Law of Correspondence

Brian Tracy has written another book about success. This one is the 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of business Success. He covers the familiar principles like the Law of Belief, the Law of Attraction and the Law of Expectation.

The one that struck me today was what he calls the "Law of Correspondence". He says that your outer world is a mirror of your inner world. So if you want to change your outer world - indeed your business as a whole - go to work on yourself first, do the inner work.

It's about getting clear on your purpose, mission and goals and how you think about these things. Do you think positively about success or money? Or is all your self talk about the obstacles, fears and doubts that will sabotage your future? What you think about, you bring about.

What I liked was the way Brian Tracy connected the two - the image in the mirror which reflects your inner world for the outer world to see. If the two coincide, your integrity, commitment and enthusiasm will shine through sincerely. That's what a client, prospect, banker, vendor, investor, employee buys into - you.

The Value of Adaptive Skills

Building your Emotional Intelligence Tool Box

Emotional intelligence is critical in developing your management skills in two areas:

1. managing others and your relationships with them.
2. managing yourself in terms of self-awareness of strengths and emotionally, your impact on the people around you in terms of self-knowledge and self- control.

If you are a change catalyst, building the adaptive skills of emotional intelligence is imperative. Good leaders must do this to build trust. It is both important and critical to your company's bottom- line. Here is an overview of some of the skills required:

• Knowing your feelings and using them to make life decisions you can live with.
• Managing your emotional life without being hijacked by it -- not being paralyzed by depression or worry, or swept away by anger.
• Persistence -- in the face of setbacks, and channeling your impulses in order to pursue your goals.
• Empathy -- reading other people's emotions without their having to tell you what they are feeling.
• Influence and persuasion -- in negotiations. I
• nspiring and motivating others to take on difficult challenges.
• Intuition -- using your instincts and inklings to make hard decisions.
• Handling everyone's feelings in relationships with skill and harmony -- being able to articulate the unspoken pulse of a group, for example.
• Resolving conflicts -- to change the relationship from win/lose to the idea that for me to win, you don't have to lose.

These are no longer luxuries for people with unpressured lives and lots of free time. These adaptive skills are essential for every leader in any size organization. When you build your emotional intelligence skills, you develop balance, which positively affects not only your success, but also your health and happiness.

Get Your Financial Year in Gear Introduction

Just a plug for my Free Teleclass - Tues. Oct 10 at 4pm
Get Your Financial Year in Gear Introduction

It’s an overview chat about the Get Your Financial Year in Gear program. Join us for an introduction to this transforming 6-week teleclass which starts Friday. On the call, we'll cover:

• the scope of the program,
• the homework involved,
• the tools and worksheets you'll use
• the outcomes you'll achieve
• the benefits to your business
• the benefits of 'working the numbers' now - before the holidays.

And we'll answer all your questions.

To save your spot on the call, send email to:admin@breakthrough-business-school.com for conference call details. Do It Now!

2005 Testimonial

I completed the budgeting process of Kerri’s Get Your Financial Year in Gear in November, 2005. The program gave me the courage to think big.

...All I needed were the right tools, some guidance and a little motivation. Kerri supplied these in abundance.

I strongly recommend this program.

Edward L. Kelley, Invention Management Associates

Join us.

Self-Affirming Beliefs

To achieve self-determination, here are ten self- affirming beliefs you can internalize and incorporate in your own life to help bolster your self-acceptance and self-trust. They came from Denis Waitley's program The New Dynamics of Winning.

1. I control my thoughts, emotions and actions and direct them to improve the quality of my health, my relationships, my performance, and my life.
2. I am a good, valuable, and worthy person.
3. I am fully capable of achieving the goals that I set for myself today.
4. I trust my abilities and my judgment in taking risks that will test my limits, willing to live with the consequences and rewards of my decisions.
5. I am responsible for the values by which I live.
6. I learn from problems and setbacks, and through them find opportunities for improvement and more personal growth.
7. My spirit, mind and body are a powerful team which I set free to excel.
8. I am my own best friend and coach; when I talk to myself I am encouraging, supportive and respectful.
9. Every day I am becoming more knowledgeable, more aware, more curious, more caring, and more adaptable, more successful and more in control.
10. Regardless of what happens in my life, I have decided to be happy.

If these beliefs strike a chord with you too, print them out and frame them on your desk; incorporate them into who you are.

Self-Determination and Free Will

The dictionary defines self-determination as, "determination of one's own fate or a course of action without compulsion; free will."

Free will is "the power or discretion to choose; free choice." It is the belief that man's choices ultimately are or can be voluntary, not determined by external causes.

So, what do we need to cultivate to achieve self- determination?

I think it takes:

• Self-discipline
• Self-control/mastery
• Freedom to chose in order to do: what's right, what's most important, and what must happen.

Self determination is what you dream and what you want to achieve. It's that burning desire that keeps you moving forward. With self-determination in play, you can:

• assess what you can do
• take off the blinders others put on you
• grow beyond your current known capacity
• empower yourself to take control and take action

This kind of reflection can turn any lemon into lemonade - in business and in life. It's a wonderful unending source of creativity, energy and motivation.

Break through your resistance

It's officially Fall. Which also means the last quarter of the year is upon us. How are you doing on your goals for the year? for the quarter? Have you neglected or forgotten some of those New Year's resolutions?
Missing your deadlines, dropping goals and letting things slip, are all red flags you should pay attention to. It is important to recognize that we often resist what we need most.
If you are skirting around some of those ambitious goals, ask yourself the hard questions of why? And at what cost? If you keep repeating the same things and expecting different results, you are choosing paralysis and starvation. (If you haven't read it, take an evening and read "Who Moved My Cheese" by Spencer Johnson, Kenneth H. Blanchard).
Instead, to get back on track and still meet those year-end goals, use all the wherewithal you have:

• resources - read a book this weekend in the area where you need to try something new, and apply it.
• people - be accountable to someone who will hold you accountable like a trainer, coach, mentor. That person can dissolve your resistance and keep you focused on what's important.
• money - pay someone else to do it (employees or outside services), just get it done and off your plate so you can move on.

Just do whatever it takes. Make your business roar to life now to herald the end of year, so you can achieve your audacious year-long goals.