Playing Safe

‘What safety nets are you relying upon and how much are they sabotaging you from reaching your full potential in career and business? Have a think about removing a few of them and allowing your success to unfold - you might just surprise yourself.’ Lynette L Palmen

Great question and thought! Here is the full article taken from The Womens Network.

Today I've been shopping for reward where reward is due. I purchased a new computer keyboard and didn't remove the lettering. Let me explain - over the last few years whilst interviewing young women for clerical positions at our office, it has become painfully obvious that leaving school with an ability to touch type with any level of accuracy is no longer a priority. Sure they can text message 'til the cows come home - but accurately type, well that's a whole different story.
Determined not to be guilty of adding to the 'touch typing deficit disorder' gene pool, I decided to tackle this issue head on with my own daughter Maddison who has just turned 12. What I implemented was a very simple technique that I have used over the years to expand my own business expertise and knowledge. I simply took away the safety net that was hindering her potential by removing all lettering from the keyboard on her computer. And, as would be expected, one year later she is a touch typist. Her reward after mastering this skill? The new keyboard I purchased today whilst out shopping, but she wasn't that fussed when I presented it to her - says she doesn't need to see them now!
You see, if we are really interested in accessing something, and in Maddison's case it was playing Club Penguin, Pet Society and chatting to her friends on msn, we will learn the 'how to' of getting there.
What safety nets are you relying upon and how much are they sabotaging you from reaching your full potential in career and business? Have a think about removing a few of them and allowing your success to unfold - you might just surprise yourself.

Lynette L Palmen
Founder and Managing Director
Women's Network Australia
T: 1800 052 476
E: lynette@womensnetwork.com.au
W: www.womensnetwork.com.au

Path With a Heart

She said she had arrived here, in this place, in this small town because of the night. The woman is small and tight lipped and precise, and locks herself behind her own doors. She edits her own life. But I want to prise open the doors, find her keys, see those lips soften. I sit across her table after she’s found her keys unlocked the door and let me in. I sit with a straight back matching her body language. Our sentences are choppy. I’m hesitant looking for the right words, feeling the need to be precise, exact, to the point.

But inside I’m a bubbling brook, spilling all over the place. My curiosity is running into the crevasses. I want to slouch, I want to lean in I want to ask . . . so I ask . . . How did you get here? What brought you here? Things stop, as if some rehearsed orbit has been halted. No answer. Did she hear? Her eyes are bright, waiting for her voice to catch up with her mind. I hear the train whistle, magpies warble a dog bark, and I do lean in, my elbows on the table.

The night she says. I was visiting someone here once and I wandered outside at night to look at the stars. When I looked at the night sky, I decided I would move here. Mouth soft now, speechless, no more to say . . . and I think of plans and paths, decisions and directions and how I said to Ophelia ‘you’re a star’ and she said back to me with a huge beam . . . Nanna you are the moon. How doany of us get here?

From Deciding to Doing

Five frogs are sitting on a log. Four decide to jump off. How many are left? Answer: five. Why? Because there's a difference between deciding and doing.

Statistics from the American Society for Training and Development show that the likelihood of a person attaining a goal (moving from deciding to doing) breaks down as follows:

Hear an idea -10%
Consciously decide to adopt an idea - 25%
Decide when they will do it - 40%
Plan how they will do it - 50%
Commit to someone else that they’ll do it - 65%
And when they have a specific accountability appointment with the person they have committed to – 95% actually achieve the goal.

Honestly

I don’t know where to start this story, so I’ll just start with today. It’s 8am and I’m sitting on my green leather sofa, cup of tea in hand looking out my north facing windows at the oblique winter sun bathing the Chewton bush. The geese are banging their beaks like machine guns against the window pane. I refuse to be terrorized by them, they have been fed. White frost still sits in the shadows, perhaps their water has frozen over, or they have forgotten they are geese and want to come in like any other neighbour and sit by my fire.

So it’s just like any other morning, but it’s this morning. I’m doing what I do most mornings, exercising my habit of drinking tea and writing. I have been writing for 40 minutes now. First in my journal then I change note books and now I’m writing in my blog book. Yes, I like to do first drafts by hand in pencil (a papermate sharpwriter to be exact), then I edit as I put it on the computer. But like every other morning for a long time I have talked myself out of moving from page to screen. Like every other morning in EIGHT MONTHS! Can you believe it? Mmmmm me the coach!

You see I have dug my self into this huge secret hole that I just can’t seem to get out of. It started off with delaying the first follow up blog entries by just a day or two, which ran into a couple of weeks. I laughed and complained about it and asked for tips and hints. I took classes on blogging and social networking, bought books on marketing and found a great website on procrastination. Then it was a month or more and I stopped mentioning it. I played every game in the book with myself. I stopped giving people my web address. I said my site was under construction; it kind of was and besides no one would ever know. I told myself ‘You don’t really need it’ you are getting great referrals anyway. ‘Technology is over rated, face to face human contact is more your thing.’ ‘You are more authentic this way.’

I never stopped writing or having ideas, or wanting to share them, they just didn’t make it to the public domain. So what stopped me? All the usual things I think, a fear of not being good enough, fear of what others will think, of not pleasing everyone, a fear of being seen and heard, of not knowing what voice to use.

But if you are reading and relating to this story you are probably more interested in a different question. What got me on the screen today? What moved me? What got me unstuck? To be honest . . . being honest with myself. Being willing to look at exactly what is right now, not make excuses for it, not justify it, not judge it, and get on with it. To get my feet wet and my hands dirty and to not care too much how I look. Why today? Because it got too painful, used up too much energy and I paid attention to that instead of making excuses for it.

The sun has gone behind grey cloud and its lightly raining. I’m looking out at a gash in the hill between me and the bush. It looks ugly and torn. I miss what was there before the excavator came last weekend. But that gash is where my fruit trees are going this winter. This is how it looks now, how it needs to look before the bare rooted trees grow leaves.

Powerful question

Where am I not telling the truth?
What’s the pay off for not telling the truth?
How would my life be different if I told the truth?