Are you choosing to live a happy, fulfilled life?
That’s right, studies have proven that ninety percent of the factors that make the difference between a happy life and an unhappy life are factors within your control. One life hack proven to help unlock your best life is setting, pursuing, and achieving goals.
But you don’t have to take my word for it; many other people are proving this point every single day. They are setting goals, doing the work and building the life of their dreams.
Don’t Take My Word For It, a new Operation Melt blog series, shares how other people – people just like you – are choosing to achieve happiness through their goals.
Yes, you can choose a happy life, but don’t take my word for it!
Amuse-Bouche Before we jump into today's post, I offer you this "dad joke" as a light "amuse-bouche" to entertain your mind before we get serious. Like any other amuse-bouche, you may hate it, but it is worth every penny you paid for it, right? If a man has 1000 bees, you should marry him right away… he's a keeper.
How To Overcome Life’s Unexpected Storms
Surprise Life Coach explores the goal success strategies, tips and mindsets found in the most unlikely places. From television shows to movies to music to books and more, life coaches are all around us, hidden in the most unexpected places. We simply need to pay attention, and we can reap the rewards from this free coaching.
Just before bedtime, I started seeing distant flashes of lightning and the roll of thunder. I knew storms were coming and expected they would wake me up overnight. When I got up the following day, never having been awakened by the storms, I assumed they fizzled out and became a non-event.
I was wrong.
As I walked for coffee, I discovered that the storms were quite strong and were accompanied by powerful winds. These winds resulted in a fair amount of damage throughout my neighborhood, including downed trees and wires.
This carnage of storm damage inspired this week’s Surprise Life Coach.
As I have shared repeatedly, one of my six steps to project managing your life is to anticipate and plan ahead for problems. No project ever goes exactly as planned, especially your most important transformational projects. As I explained in Here Comes The Rain: A Simple Example Of Risk Management, learning to effectively plan for and react to risks could make the difference between success and failure.
Also, in prior blogs, I have said that nearly all problems you encounter are things you could have predicted and planned for well in advance. By doing so, you can avoid getting side-tracked by these problems. I stand by that advice and the techniques I shared to do this.
But… what happens when you can’t anticipate the problem? For example, while these homeowners knew storms were approaching, they could not have anticipated these limbs would fall and take their power lines down with them. That was an unpleasant surprise.
Fast forward a couple hours when I walked for a second cup of coffee, the clean-up efforts were nearing completion. The limbs were gone, the power lines back up, and traffic was flowing through the streets. It was almost as if the damage never happened.
These unpleasant surprises and proverbial storms are bound to happen in our lives. But just because you can’t plan ahead for these issues doesn’t mean you are helpless. If you are prepared to react to unexpected problems, they won’t throw you off your game.
Here is a three-step process to mobilize your clean-up crew and get things back to normal when unexpected problems occur.
Mindset:
Like so many things, successfully responding to surprise damage from life’s storms begins with your mindset. Yes, this situation sucks, and there is no denying that. But you’ve successfully navigated sucky situations before, right?
Remind yourself that you are a master of responding when needed and that you’ve got this. Starting off on the right mental footing will prevent this temporary situation from turning into a “whoa is me” moment. It will allow you to direct your energy to more productive actions.
Assess:
Once you have reminded yourself that you can tackle this situation, it is time to start doing so. Before taking that first step, it is helpful to assess the reality of the problem. Survey the “damage” and ask yourself:
- What all is broken and needs to be corrected?
- What is the priority to address first?
- What options do you have that may resolve the issues?
Once you have completed your assessment of the situation, you can decide on the best first step to start cleaning up your storm damage.
Take Action:
Predictably, the final step to starting your storm damage clean-up is to take action. Start with the highest priority action, do it and then move on to the next item. This situation can only be tackled one step at a time. Things will return to normal or even better before you know it.
In our lives, unexpected storms will occur, and they may cause damage. But storms aren’t a reason to panic. We each have the power to respond to these storms in a deliberate, confident manner to clean up that damage and restore things back to where they started.
Do you need help getting your mindset right, assessing your storm damage or taking action? This is something I can help you with as a certified Master Life Coach, and I would be honored to work with you.
Click here to learn more about my coaching services.
Meet Coach Tony
My name is Coach Tony, and I am a coach, author and project manager on a mission. I am working to build a world where no goal ever dies of loneliness.
I almost allowed one of my biggest life goals to die without ever being attempted for forty years. My goal almost died, not of failure but of loneliness. But, I took a risk and leveraged a simple, logical process that helped me wildly exceed my goal.
I transformed my life, and you can do the same with the help of Operation Melt.
Operation Melt provides engaging, practical content and hands-on coaching to inspire, motivate and equip project managers and other left-brained high-achievers to pursue and accomplish their biggest goals.
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