Now really, what is this thing called “high performance”?  

Over the past few years, business people in offices around the country have been subjected to quite a lot of talk, some action, a survey or two, workshops and a sizable amount of hoo-hah and theory on the concept of organisational high performance. Sound and feel familiar?  Under most circumstances, such a level of activity and awareness would result in a high level of agreement, understanding and familiarity with the topic under discussion.  Yet, less so with high performance.  There are probably as many definitions for this concept as there are people in a particular department or office, and one would be a bold person to say that any one of these definitions is either fundamentally the “right” one or categorically “wrong”.  This piece is an attempt to foster a greater degree of clarity about the topic and to create a common understanding of what we mean by high performance.
 

When one asks people who are acknowledged top performers in their field to share their “secrets” and attitudes towards high performance, it makes sense to take note of what they say about the topic and to try to find common threads in their various recipes for success that we can copy in our own working lives.    

Over many years, I have worked with and come to admire scores of really top achievers in many disciplines, among them being sales, administration, customer services and human resources.  Whenever I’ve had the chance, I’ve asked these “winners” what they think about high performance.  Here is a broad summary of what they have had to say about the subject:

• High performance comes from commitment, which demands a sense of responsibility and real understanding of what you’re doing, whilst never accepting mediocrity.  It requires an ability to push beyond boundaries and constantly to challenge the existing ways in which things work in a quest to be and do ever better

• High performance is to exceed people’s expectations of excellent service and then to maintain that level of excellence time after time

• Getting the job done, no matter what, in a spirit of creativity and innovation

• Exceeding all targets by a “stretch” margin, every time

• Setting your personal goals above the expected standard from the start, and then to exceed them consistently.
  

When one takes a good look at these definitions, (and remember they come from proven, high performing winners!), there is actually nothing deeply theoretical or “business school-speak” about them:  they are ordinary, down-to-earth truisms that people apply on a day-to-day basis while performing their jobs.

The common denominator in all of them, however, is the concept of not being satisfied with doing just what is expected, together with the notion that high performance comes from constantly going beyond what we have come to accept as the standard or limit.

 

 

These high performers all have a restlessness with the status quo and a drive and passion to go to levels that they themselves have not achieved before.  They translate this passion into daily action, constantly pushing themselves to beat their own personal bests day after day.  No “resting on their laurels” for these people!  And most importantly, they take personal responsibility for doing this.

When these same top achievers are asked for their personal words of advice to others who wish to be high performers, it is amazing how simple it all seems.  Sheer common sense seems to be the watchword.  There is the notion amongst accomplished achievers that high performance is not only something quite basic as a concept, but also completely within the grasp and capability of just about anyone who has the right attitude about it.  Their advice generally covers the following:

• Believe in yourself and your dreams and cultivate a competitive spirit

• Be committed to becoming a winner in all that you do

• Know and abide by the rules of the game and set your own standards higher than what is expected

• Love what you do

• Never be satisfied with just doing the ordinary, push yourself to the limit, then exceed that

• Don’t let go of your dreams

• Develop and expand your knowledge

• Measure yourself and your outputs, otherwise you will never know how good you can be

• Start every day with a challenge that you know will stretch you beyond where you’ve been before

• Never give up – keep going no matter what and be personally accountable for your actions

We have all heard these things in one form or another, and many of us have probably thought that they are soppy “motherhoods” that are dreamed up by people out of touch with the “real” world who just want to sound “motivating”.  Yet, when one realises that these are practical, day-to-day recipes that real winners use consistently to propel themselves to ever higher feats of achievement, they take on a whole new meaning.  Quite simply, they have been proven to work, so copy them!

So, to return to our opening question: what is high performance?

Given that we have read what top achievers say about the topic, and the few lessons that we learned about how “ordinary” and “simple” it actually is, here is a suggested “lay person’s guide to high performance”:

• High performance stems primarily from a personal attitude that resides within us

• This attitude translates into a practice whereby we are never satisfied with the best we achieved yesterday, because today’s best tastes even sweeter

• We know this because we keep score by measuring what the “best” was last time so that we will know next time how much better we have performed

• High performance grows through consistency and the multiplier effect that says that the more people who regularly better their personal bests, the greater the cumulative outcome and the higher we will want to go next time round

• High performance thrives when people know what they’re supposed to do, have the knowledge and skills to do it and know the target level at which they have to aim

• High performance exists in a climate of competition, creativity and innovation, where individuals, teams and businesses match themselves against the proven best performer and are determined to surpass existing standards by setting new ones and maintaining their superiority against all challengers by finding better ways

• High performance motivates; it energises; it produces its own recognition and ultimately, it generates its own momentum 

High performance only remains such until someone does it better!

 

Here’s the challenge:  start talking about high performance in your working circles and play with it like children play with clay – experiment, make mistakes, learn, but DO, and DO AGAIN!  Go and strip high performance of its “theoretical veil” by reinforcing its practical nature and simplicity.  Finally, set out to adopt high performance as your touchstone in whatever business or enterprise you are active.  From now on, never be satisfied with “good enough” - not now, tomorrow or ever!!

Go ahead and perform.  The heights you will achieve will simply astound you. Take the first step – pretty soon you’ll want to do nothing else but walk this way!

Hear the applause – it’s for you.  Take a bow!

Graham

 

How to set yourself up for success as a first-time Manager

 

So, you have just been appointed to your very first managerial position, starting next month. The right people have identified your potential and have given you the opportunity to demonstrate that you have what it takes to succeed in a managerial role. Fantastic - congratulations. This is what you've worked towards for years now, and finally it has become a reality. 

Depending on how you tackle the first three months of your tenure, that reality can either turn out to be the launching pad to a bright, successful career in management for you, or it could be the first and last shot you have at the art of management. The way it turns out will be the cumulative result of the attitudes, actions and relationships that characterise your first 100 days "in office".

By no stretch of the imagination do I want to prescribe to you what you should and shouldn't do in your particular job as the new manager. It would be presumptuous of me to pretend that I know your world well enough to be able to tell you what to do on a practical day-to-day basis. What I do, however, believe I can help you with, are a few broad suggestions in respect of the following:

• your attitude to the job, the people who will be reporting to you, your peers in management and your boss;
• the actions you take in setting up and role-modelling the behaviours, structures and routines that will become "your style"Ý as a manager and
• the core, critical relationships that you will establish and nurture as you build your managerial support network aimed at enhancing your potential for success.

ATTITUDE

In my Graham's Gear piece, Year-end Detox, I included a few "home truths" on attitude. If you haven't already read it, make some time to go and take a look at them as you start shaping your own attitude to your job as a manager. Over and above that, I would like to give you a few ideas to chew on that just might come in handy as you settle into that swivel chair behind your new desk.

• You are new to this role of manager. No matter how much you have read (including this!) about managing people, observed (and maybe been on the receiving end of) good and bad managers in your own career or listened ad nauseam to colleagues, friends and family about what and what not to do, your success will be determined to an incredibly high degree by the approach or outlook that you personally bring into the role. It doesn't matter how much you try to copy or avoid what others have done, in the final analysis you have one chance to make that first impression - the essential YOU - on those who WILL be watching, waiting and even preparing to test you in your first days and weeks. You will have to break new ground as yourself.
• Go into the role believing that you are going to succeed. However, in that belief, do not adopt an "I know it all" attitude that WILL put others off and lose you valuable credentials. Nobody likes an arrogant know-all. The degree to which you temper an air of confidence and assuredness with the pragmatism of being prepared to learn from others and the odd mistake you make yourself, will position you both as a self-assured person and one who is not too important to learn. Balance!
• Know for a fact that you will encounter "friends" and "foes". The degree to which you acknowledge this and prepare yourself to deal with people who will seek to make you successful, whilst others will want to trip you up, will make you more or less successful. Remember that you cannot be all things to all people: there will be many who will accept you as their manager because they have confidence in your abilities and because they are reasonable in affording you a chance to prove yourself. Yet there could be others who, for a variety of reasons (not least of which might be that they believe that they, and not you, should have got the job), will seek to make your job as tough as they can, challenging you and seeking to find you wanting. Focus primarily on your managerial task at hand, not the people, and you'll be fine.
• See yourself as the carer for and developer of your direct reports. In a very real sense, your role is to care for and facilitate the growth of the people who report in to you. You must accept that this is what people will be expecting from you as their manager. This is by no means a softie, touchy-feely role; it comes with a requirement for demonstrating loads of support for people, having, expressing and demonstrating an interest in their development in their roles and careers, as well as the necessity to set ground rules and apply consequences for transgressions of the legitimate parameters and boundaries that you and they agree upon up front.
  
  See it as a combination of being a benefactor to those who perform and excel and a firm but fair referee and judge for those who require tough but well-intentioned discipline. To care for and develop your people entails both an ability to enable and accelerate people's career development and also to pull them up short in a fair and equitable manner when required.
• Consider your boss to be your ally, your strongest supporter, and your fairest critic. It is one of the oldest adages in management that it is your job to make your boss look good. Whilst this is often misunderstood to mean that you should be a slave and "yes person"Ý to your senior, that could not be further from the truth. The principle here is to ensure that you find out precisely what your boss expects from you in your role - his or her agenda - and then to plan and execute everything necessary to achieve that. Of course, you have your own objectives and strategy, which you need to discuss, agree and align with that of your manager. Do so in an attitude of partnership, acknowledging that both of you need to have the space to be your own persons, whilst collaborating to achieve the overall organisational objectives. Challenge your manager where necessary - BUT, always, always be absolutely sure of your facts and, if you do challenge, challenge the issue, not the person.
• Acknowledge your fellow managerial peers as members of the same team. Make sure that you understand the boundaries between your job and theirs. Keep them as informed about you and your role as you and they agree they should be. See them as co-contributors to the greater organisational goals, and graciously accept well-meant advice, support and even criticism. Make them understand that you are there to pull your full weight and that they can rely on you to contribute fully to the broader burden of collective management of the operation. Never take short-cuts with them and show mature respect towards them. In return, you will earn their respect.

Actions

There are a few core things you need to do right up front that will indelibly set the tone and substance of your management style. It is a fact that you will need to make the first moves in this regard. Your staff, especially your direct reports, will wait for your initiative. You have come into their lives as their manager and you will have to take the lead in getting the job off the ground, so to speak. Do not delay this aspect, but also make sure that you prepare well for your first meeting, your first statements, and your first crucial decisions leading to actions.

• Set up meetings with all your direct reports to introduce yourself and get to know them. Whilst there is nothing wrong with addressing your whole team briefly at your earliest possible opportunity - in fact, it is a necessary step to break the ice - make appointments with each of your reports to meet separately with them. An hour for each such meeting is a good yardstick, and give them adequate notice of the meeting, setting out in broad terms what you wish to achieve and allowing them generous space on the agenda to raise their own important issues.
• Make a point of getting to know the names of all the people in your team. Everyone in your team will know your name and use it. It is a good idea to be able to reciprocate as soon as possible. If you are new to the team, or if there are some whose names you don't know, make it an early priority to get to know everybody by name. The more information you gather about them, the better you will be able to establish a rapport with each one as an important individual. People like to feel that they are fully recognised as a unique, whole person, and it is in your interest to show them that you know who they are, understand their place in the team and acknowledge them as individuals who matter to you.
• Learn the jargon, find out the current "hot issues" and gauge the "smell of the place". You need to be able to talk with authority and understand the "state of play"Ý in the department or team at the earliest possible opportunity. Find out who's who, what the key issues are, what the state of the morale / motivation is in the area and what the current challenges and recent successes are.
  
  The quicker you can speak with confidence on any topic affecting the team, and start giving leadership and guidance on all of these issues, the quicker you will become what is meant by being "on top of the job". Allow yourself only a little time within which you can legitimately ask questions about things that, technically, the manager should know. This has to be a very short, sharp learning period and the quicker you start giving rather than asking for directions, the quicker you will be in "credit"ݠas a manager. You cannot afford to be out of touch for more than the absolute minimum time – a month maximum.
• Share your vision and plans early. Once you've started understanding the who, the what, the where, why and how of your operation, you need to start putting together your plan. Give yourself no more than two months to formulate this, and then convene a session with your direct reports to share it with them. Reveal your core vision and macro plans to them and genuinely invite their contributions. Listen carefully, weigh up the merits of all their inputs and try to find a place for as many of their suggestions that truly augment and complement yours, while not compromising your core objectives and goals on the altar of consensus for simple consensus sake. That which you reject you need to be able to justify fairly, and that which you accept must advance the overall strength of your plan.
• Look for an opportunity to take an early, well-considered and positive decision. There is nothing that establishes a manager's authority as emphatically as a decisive act early on in the role. Of course, we are talking here about a decision of some gravity - not whether or not to give your PA the afternoon off, or to rearrange your office. This will be a decision likely to impact on many people and one that signals a significant change or a brand new practice in the operation.
  
  Once you have "scouted the lie of the land" of your operation, analysed the array of issues at play and considered the various options available in terms of certain actions needing to be taken, it will be time for you to take, announce and execute your first decision. Take particular care to do your homework; by all means discuss the issues with others, especially the more senior, experienced people in your team and canvass their points of view. Then go away on your own and consider your options and course of action.
  
  Once you have weighed up all your options, decide alone on what action you're going to take. Think it through one more day, adapt anything you think is necessary, then inform your manager what you are going to do. It would be best to set up a short meeting with him or her, and simply inform your boss what you're going to do and why. You are not doing this to seek "permission"Ý for your decision - you have the authority to do so. Yet it is prudent to share your first important decision with your manager as a matter of courtesy, and also to demonstrate your decisiveness and the thoroughness with which you have come to the decision you have. This will help to enhance the confidence your manager has in you and will cement in his or her mind that the judgement in appointing you in the first place, was sound. It will also provide an opportunity for your manager to point out anything that you might have missed or simply not known about that could potentially bring you to a different conclusion. You don't want to have egg on your face, especially not with your very first meaningful decision.

Relationships

As you commence your career as a manager, it is wise to acknowledge that there are several important relationships that you should cultivate and nurture in the interests of your own success and that of the operation that you are managing. I am not in any way implying that these relationships should be developed for ulterior or inappropriate purposes - they simply make good, practical business sense. A good, strong relationship with key people will always go a long towards smoothing otherwise potentially rough waters in your daily interactions with staff, colleagues and seniors and are perfectly proper in the normal practice of business, as long as they are characterised by integrity and a respect for good governance, ethical conduct and scrupulous honesty.

How you develop these relationships is up to you, but I would like to list three of the important people with whom it would be a very good idea to strike up and deepen a positive working relationship early on in your life as a manager.

• Your PA / secretary. There will be few, if any, people in your team who will be working more closely with you on a consistent basis and who will get to know more about you and what makes you tick than your office assistant. As s/he becomes more familiar with your world, your ups and downs, s/he will eventually get into a position in which s/he will have the power to determine how tough or otherwise your days will be in terms of appointments, messages and day-to-day administrative chores. This person will either become your most trusted confidant, protector and supporter, or the source of leaks out of your office and the creator of potential embarrassments and even failures for you.
  
  Treat this person with the utmost respect and ensure that s/he knows exactly what you expect from them. Keep them fully informed about everything they need to know in order to manage your office, your time and your routines in an exemplary manner. By all means become friends, but NEVER, NEVER more than that!! Keep it a strictly professional, yet friendly business relationship based on mutual respect and trust. Always remember that you should never get yourself into a situation where you would be unable or unwilling to exercise censure or discipline with this person due to the specific relationship you have with him or her. In fact, that goes for everybody who reports to you, but none more so than your PA.
• Your manager's PA / secretary. This person is the gatekeeper to your boss and can facilitate important appointments and other opportunities for you to better manage your relationship with your boss. S/he has the power to fast-track documentation, other information and requests to your manager on your behalf and is likely to prioritise your interests above those of others with whom s/he does not have such a warm, respectful relationship. Take it from me, you can make life immeasurably easier for yourself in your important working interactions with your manager if you have his / her PA "in your corner". Again, decorum and professional conduct are the watchwords in this context. This will be time and effort richly invested.
• Your most senior, experienced managerial peer. This person is the "elder statesman" of the management team and is most likely to have immense influence and the stature to achieve things above and beyond that which his/her positional power affords them. Again, here is a person who could potentially become your mentor and indirect benefactor in ways far beyond the immediate confines of your current role. Of course, this relationship needs to be very carefully, and naturally, cultivated and is probably going to be the one relationship that will take longest to establish. Just one caution, however: if the chemistry doesn't feel right, and you start getting vibes indicating that your interest in this person is not appreciated or reciprocated, back off immediately. In an important sense, this is not someone you unnecessarily want to turn into an enemy or opponent.
  
  Try to find out what topics or issues interest this individual, and whether you and s/he might have something other than your managerial roles and your mutual boss, in common. Examples include having gone to the same school (albeit years apart), lived in the same place, studied in the same field or discipline, etc. A shared hobby, interest or pastime might possibly be the common point around which the relationship might be started.
  
  Alternatively, you might choose to approach this person at an appropriate time for advice or guidance on an issue you need to address or a decision you need to make. Failing any of that, try to get chatting to this person in a social setting if it presents itself, and find a way to share some of your aspirations and ideas with him/her. Make it natural and take your time on this one. Once you feel that there appears to be a degree of rapport developing between you, you might even consider asking the person for more generalised advice above and beyond the narrow confines of your immediate role. Again, this must be approached with great sensitivity and come across totally natural, otherwise the person might suspect you of trying to curry favour with him/her or that you are "sucking up" to them for your own selfish purposes. Positively the last possible thing you want to develop a reputation for is that: be your own person, hold your head up high and assert yourself and your personality without fear. You got this far on your own steam - there's no need to become a "brown noser"!
  
  There is little else that can be as mutually rewarding in a business career as a naturally evolving mentor / mentee relationship. If done correctly, you might find this person walking your managerial path with you far longer than you might imagine possible at this point. Give it a chance. You might have found your Merlin.

Congratulations on becoming a manager! Go ahead with confidence. You're on the runway, ready for take off. This is going to be a rewarding, challenging phase of your development in business. Enjoy it - there is everything to go for. Shape your future managerial style and reputation with care and you'll never regret the time and effort that you put into preparing extra well for this first part of the journey. What an incredibly exciting time you're going to have over the next several months - I envy you.

Cheers.

Graham

Affirmations in Action

I wrote a piece recently about affirmations and how they can help us navigate in relative calm through the sometimes turbulent and unsettled conditions along our life's journey. You will recall that I grouped affirmations into three broad categories, namely emotions, intentions and life states. I believe these groupings help to concentrate thoughts on specific areas of focus in the context of what kind of an affirmation we're looking for at a given time, and they also provide a nice balanced menu from which to draw inspirational sustenance as we proceed towards cresting the curve of our individual horizons.

Just as an aid to your discovery process, here are some affirmations that each respectively fits into one of the three groupings. The idea is simply for you to get a feel for what an affirmation in each of the three groups would potentially look like, without providing you with an instant, ready-made affirmation that you can pick as if it were available on a shelf. As we discovered in the article, an affirmation must be a deeply personal and unique statement of what you've discovered - one that resonates most harmoniously with you - and in that respect, this list is merely a little sample of the kind of thing you are surely going to find for yourself.

Emotions

• I wake up every day with love in abundance to share with the special people in my life.
• There is excitement in my heart about all the gifts I get from living my life.
• I will show compassion to every person I encounter today who is less fortunate than I am.
• Every time I am moved to anger I will extinguish it with humility and understanding.
• Wherever I find prejudice today I will seek to neutralise it with the truth.
• I will find personal inspiration in every elderly person I might meet up with today.
• Everyday life is full of opportunities to find humour, fun and laughter.
• My life is filled with joy because I look for and regularly find goodness in the people and situations I encounter.
• Every day I will express gratitude for something special in life that I have received for free.
• Hope and optimism are the strongest weapons I have with which to live a fulfilled life.

Intentions

• I will end every day feeling fulfilled.
• I will value my loved ones and friends and tell them so on a regular basis.
• I will make people feel good about themselves.
• Today I will find a way to give something of value to someone who needs it.
• I will offer comfort to everyone in distress who crosses my path.
• For every complaint I think about or express each day, I will explore opportunities to balance it with two compliments.
• There is an opportunity every day for me to teach someone something new.
• I will put a smile on the face of every person I deal with today who has a frown on their brow.
• As I get older I will use the good in my past to contribute to the best still to come in the future.
• On every birthday I will unconditionally forgive every person who has made me angry, upset or caused me pain or harm during the past year.

Life States

• I have every reason to believe that the vast majority of people want to do good in this world.
• Children are the primary reason why we try so hard every day to make the world a better place in the future.
• I will use every opportunity to contribute towards the achievement of harmony between people who are different from one another or myself.
• The elderly are the rich dividends paid to a caring and compassionate society and I will do all I can to ensure that they feel appreciated.
• The seeds of all the wisdom that I might have in me today were planted by generous, well-meaning people in my past and I acknowledge them every day.
• I will be happy and fulfilled in the remaining years of my life if I cultivate the company of optimistic, positive people every day.
• I am a talented, skilled person and I want to share this abundance with the next generation of adults.
• Good health is a privilege and I am grateful to be blessed with it.
• The strongest currency in life is happiness and I am rich beyond measure.
• People who have told me the toughest truths I needed to hear about myself in my life have all become best friends.

Let me know how you're getting on with prospecting for your own affirmations. I would also be very interested to hear from you how they have started influencing your life for the better.

Happy exploration!

Graham

Year-end Detox

The year enters its last month and as you contemplate the final fortnight of your work-year, you are feeling like a marathon runner approaching the stadium for the final 400 metres of the distance. Not just any marathon runner, but one who realises that it is going to take a near-superhuman effort just to stay upright, let alone finish the race. Continuing the metaphor, you start thinking back over the various stages of the race since the starting gun almost four hours ago, berating yourself for not preparing well enough for the event, for setting an incorrect pace in the first third of the distance and for having the wrong mental attitude about the marathon from the start. Many a work-year finishes like this: with people feeling frazzled, over-exerted and worn out - with little prospect of something really positive and memorable to show for the massive effort it took simply to get to there.

What you need during the coming work-break is a thorough mental and emotional "detox"Ý - a systematic process of first ridding yourself of bad thoughts and habits that have hamstrung you during the past year, and then to adopt and entrench new, empowering and achievement focused attitudes and practices in your "training regime" for the coming year. How does one do this, however?

A. The Diagnosis:

1. Prepare a blank worksheet and record as many of your mistakes, poor decisions and missed opportunities that occurred during the year as you can remember.
2. Alongside each of these, jot down what negative or poor thought, attitude, habit or action of yours contributed towards producing the unsatisfactory result that you have written down.
3. Once you have completed this process for each item you had listed in step 1, carefully review what you've recorded in step 2 to identify any common trends or discernible repetitive patterns at play. Highlight them, as they are significant. However, don't disregard single, unique factors that are not part of the general pattern, as they are equally important.
4. Now try to remember and note the dates when these “badâ€Ý results happened and then try to identify the specific circumstances and events that coincided with these outcomes. Lastly, write down the names of the people who you believe were involved in the shaping of the result.
5. Repeat the whole process above for all your triumphs, achievements and fulfilled opportunities during the past year, of course noting your positive thoughts, attitudes, habits or actions that played a part.
6. When you've completed all this data collection, take a good “helicopter viewâ€Ý of your year. Make sure that you have a good understanding of all the elements or ingredients that "conspired"Ý together to shape both the outcomes that you regret and are unhappy or disappointed about, as well as those that brought you joy, satisfaction and upliftment.
7. Now make two columns on a clean worksheet and head them "The Good - to repeat"ݼ/em> and "The Bad & the Ugly - to avoid"ݼ/em> respectively. In the appropriate column, summarise the major factors that you have distilled out of your analysis from the six steps above. Here you are not simply repeating everything you've done up till now, but you are interpreting it for yourself in terms of the core elements that they represent.

Think of things like your and others' attitudes, state of mind, degree of confidence or ego; state of health, stress or lack thereof, supportive or destructive people, time of year, etc. It is especially important that you include in this list whether or not you felt good or bad about yourself in the scenario that you are reviewing, and, most importantly, try to identify why you felt this way and how the event contributed to this feeling and how this feeling influenced the next set of events, whether good or bad. Remember, you are delving into your inner self in this task, and the more you learn about and admit to yourself, the greater the clarity you will gain about the "blueprint"Ý for the future.

Spend sufficient time and energy on this. Make this part of the exercise as solid and revealing as possible - no-one but you are going to see it, so be totally honest and open with yourself. The work you put in here will determine how much better you are likely to fare in the next year.
Finally, this comparative table now becomes the basis document of material for the work you are going to do in the second phase of your "detox", namely the "Cure"Ý®

B. The Cure

Using the data that you have populated into the two columns ["The Good - to repeat" and "The Bad & the Ugly - to avoid"Þ� as input, you now need to set your goals for the coming year. Here we are not talking about the specific tasks or assignments that you will be doing in your job, but rather the "conditioning programme" that you wish to design for yourself to ensure that when you get to the end of next year, you are mentally and emotionally fit. With this programme, the "marathon"Ý that you will have run during the year will not have taken its toll on you; instead, you will be able to look back on a "well run"Ý race and be confident of a "strong finish"Ý® There is absolutely no reason to get to the end of a year virtually down and out and figuratively needing to be put on a reviving "drip"Ý® Many people end the year just as invigorated as they started it.

1. The first thing you need to do in this phase is to review your affirmation(s) (Refer to "Affirm Yourself") and, in the context of potentially changed circumstances or challenges, either recommit yourself to them as is, or adjust or renew them for the next phase of your life. This becomes your foundation for the new journey. List your affirmation(s) at the top of a new worksheet which you are going to use to spell out your plan for mental, emotional and spiritual health over the next 12 months.
2. Next, consult your two column document from the diagnosis phase, and select the most important elements from both your "Good"Ý and "Bad"Ý columns. They now become the structure around which you should be setting specific attitudinal and behavioural goals for yourself.
   
   If, for example, one of the elements from the "Bad" column was something like "I often took negative work-related feedback from my manager as a personal attack on myself"ݬ turn it around into a positive and enter it into your "plan"ݠas follows: "When my manager gives me negative feedback about my work performance, my attitude will be that my manager cares about me. I will accept the feedback as a well-intentioned early warning to me to make changes and improvements to my work performance. I will consider such feedback to be a valuable gift."
3. Do this with each element - reinforcing the "good" things and turning a "bad"Ý one into a positive, as in the example above.
4. The final step is to calibrate your attitude to the overall "flavour" of the year you want to enjoy. No matter how grandiose your intentions are on paper, as articulated in step 2 above, it is your attitude above all else that will determine whether or not you “stay the courseâ€Ý and finish the next year on your feet with energy and a sense of well being. Here are some "home truths"Ý about attitude:
   • You control your attitude. If you are negative it is because you have decided to be negative, not because of other people or circumstances
   • Your attitude towards life determines life's attitude towards you. Despite beliefs to the contrary, life plays no favourites
   • Act from a good attitude. Note that actions trigger feelings just as feelings trigger actions
   • Treat everybody as the most important person in the world
   • Develop the attitude that there are more reasons why you should succeed than reasons why you should fail. When faced with a problem, believe that you can and will solve it
   • Attitudes are based on assumptions. In order to change attitudes one must first change one's assumptions
   • We become what we think about. Control your thoughts and you will control your life
   • Radiate the attitude of confidence, of well being, of a person who knows where s/he is going. You will then find good things happening to you right away.

The great South African golfer, Gary Player, always used to say "the more I practice, the luckier I get!" If you think about it carefully, Gary was simply saying that you make your own "luck" by being totally prepared and fully "practiced up"Ý® The so-called luck comes from years of dedicated application, manifested practically by hours and hours of weekly practice, doing the basics over and over again. In this manner, you are always going to be better placed than the less "practiced"Ý person to take advantage of the opportunities that come your way. And, yes, when you're in that space, it is amazing how many times more often you get "lucky"Ý than the next person.

Hone your new-found skills during the year-end break, "practice"Ý on all and sundry as you go about your energising "mental detox" and, believe me, your new year's challenges will suddenly be that much easier to overcome.

Remember to "launch"Ý yourself into the new year by affirmation.

Here's to health!

Graham