Remember “Curly”, the ascerbic senior wrangler played by Jack Palance in City Slickers? In the movie, Mitch (played by Billy Crystal) is in the midst of a midlife crisis brought on by his 39th birthday. So he and two friends go West to “find themselves” by participating in a cattle drive. Curly is the cowpoke in charge and gives Mitch the answer to his midlife crisis — he needs to find the “one thing” that is central to his being and that becomes his life purpose.

Now there have been a lot of books written in the past ten years regarding finding one’s purpose in life (First Things First by Stephen Covey; The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren; Life on Purpose by Brad Swift) and that is not the point of this entry.

Rather, I would like to tie in the idea of “one thing” to New Year’s resolutions. The other day my wife asked me if I was going to work on my New Year’s resolutions and I said, “No, I don’t do those anymore”, which is true to an extent. I don’t make a list of things I want to do or change in the coming year (largely in response to either a sense of failure in past years, or a desire to be more honest now.) But I do focus on “one thing”.

I have learned that if I am going to change something in my life, either to do something I haven’t done before or to remove something from my life, I need to focus on one thing at a time. Otherwise, I become overwhelmed, get bogged down, and none of the x number of changes I wanted to make actually happen.

So let me share some key components of making change in our lives. The more of these you include in your plan, the higher the probability is that you will be successful in incorporating new behavior in your life. The fewer involved in your plan, the more difficult it may be to make the change happen and “stick”. But the list isn’t an “all or nothing” proposition. Rather, pick which ones work for you in your life right now and go for it!

1. Define your goal in observable and measurable terms. Set a goal (to exercise a total of 240 minutes a week; to take a 10 week class in conversational Spanish; to save $1,000 by Memorial Day). If your “change” is amorphous and ill-defined, you really can’t develop a specific plan to achieve the change and you won’t know when you reach your goal.

2. Make a firm (written?) commitment to yourself that you intend to reach this goal and set a target date for achieving the goal. Most of us set “sort of” goals, like “I think I’m going to …” or “I’d like to …” This is in contrast to: “I am going to …. by x date.” Feel the difference in the level of commitment?

3. Determine how and when progress toward the goal will be measured. Often we set long-term goals (anything over two weeks is really long term in the realm of change) but don’t set up interim goals that will help us track our progress and help keep up accountable. If you are going to save $1,000 by Memorial Day then you should set up interim goals for every week or month between now and then.

4. Use social support. One of the key factors to successful behavior change is not trying to do it by yourself. Hence, the success of WeightWatchers or exercising with a friend or taking a class together with someone. Although the support can be in the form of reporting and accountability, the best form is by doing it together. That way, you encourage and support each other along the way.

5. Accountability — have an external reporting source verify your progress. If you really want to get serious about accomplishing your goal, set up a system to “check in” with someone who has to verify (by physical evidence, not by your verbal report) your progress. They see the balance on your savings; they check with your friend about class attendance; they watch you weigh on the scale. It’s tough, but effective.

6. Use rewards and consequences for reaching (or not) your interim goals. Although goals and consequences for reaching your ultimate goal work sometimes, usually the timeframe is too long to make a difference in our daily decisions. If you go to your Spanish class and get all the homework done, treat yourself to a dessert. If you reach your exercise goal for the week, rent a movie you have been wanting to see. I would encourage you to focus more on rewards than consequences; otherwise, you can develop a negative and resentful mindset toward the life change if you don’t reach your goal in one or two weeks, which results in giving up.

7. Focus on a short-term project rather than an exceptionally long period of time. If you want to make a long term change, break it up into a series of short term goals (3-4 months). Most of us only have so much mental and emotional energy, and from a perspective point of view, short-term goals are easier to start toward and complete.

With regards to choosing that “one thing”, let me offer some different ways to decide what change you should pursue. Sometimes you pick the one thing that really irritates you the most about you, and that would significantly change how you feel about yourself if that behavior or characteristic were different. Sometimes it is best to choose an “easy win”; some behavior that you know you can (and will) change if you just set your mind to it. And then you use this as a confidence builder to attack a more menacing behavior next quarter. Or sometimes you pick a behavior or pattern you have been thinking about working on, and one of your friends is planning to attack the same area — that way you have a built in social support system.

Whatever it may, I hope you find “one thing” you want to improve in your life and develop a plan that has a high probability of success rather than just go through the motions of making some New Year’s resolutions with no definite plan — that will probably lead to frustration and negative thoughts about yourself (and nobody needs that). I’m going to decide what my “one thing” is and work out a specific plan, and I will have it done by 8 a.m. CT 1/2/2008.

This is the time of year when families gather together – college students are on break, young adults return home to visit, and the extended family celebrates Christmas and New Year’s together.

So it is also the time when parents who have been successful in business turn their focus to their family. This is both a good thing and it creates difficulties. It is generally good for parents to engage relationally with their family; unfortunately, for some this is an infrequent occurrence due to their focus on work (or hobbies). But when we try to “re-enter” into the family relationally, the style and manner in which we do so can create tension, discomfort, and result in conflict.

Having grown up in a family owned business with a father who was an extremely hard worker, but who also cared about his family, we would experience this pattern. Through the year dad would work long hours, and my mom was the primary conductor of family matters. (This is not to say that he wasn’t involved at all, but until later in his business life, she had the primary responsibility of interacting with the kids regarding our daily affairs.) But around the Christmas holidays, dad would refocus and engage at a higher level in family matters. And, right or wrong, this pattern has largely continued in my own nuclear family.

So, both from observing and experiencing this pattern as a child, and now as a parent, I have seen some ways that “parent re-entry” can go better, or not so well. Let me share some of these observations.

Leading a family is different than leading a business. In business, there is a formal hierarchy with established patterns of communication and decision-making. In family matters, the structure, communication patterns and decision-making procedures are more fluid – largely influenced by which family members are involved and the specific areas of discussion or decision – and obviously, tend to be more relational. As a result, “top down” communication and decision-making that many business owners and executives try to transfer to the family doesn’t go over well (in some families, this is a extreme understatement.) The implication? Don’t try to run family meetings during the holidays like you run business meetings.

Influence is largely a factor of the quality of the relationship in families. Many parents want to utilize the time with their children and grandchildren to communicate important information – their goals and desires for the family, what is important to them, principles they want their children to live by. And this is good. However, the method by which this is done can “backfire”. If the parent does not currently have a positive relationship with the child (or whoever the family member is), the message will, at best, be ignored, and more probably may create a response of anger, resentment or disdain. I would suggest the following:

a) Spend individual time with family members. Talk with them, listen to them, ask them about their lives: what they are excited about, what they are learning, what are some challenges they are facing.

b) Share personal stories about your life. Rather than give a lecture (along with a handout) with your “five core principles for life”, share stories about experiences you have had and possibly the lessons you learned (sometimes the principles are better left unsaid). Think about what makes a good story: build the context, focus on the people involved, share sensory experiences (what it looked, sounded, smelled like), and share your thoughts and feelings throughout the experience.

c) Be aware that you may first need to rebuild relationships with others before they are going to be willing to receive input from you. If you haven’t ever read it, read The Five Love Languages by my friend, Dr. Gary Chapman. Then discuss it with the family member and see in what way love is best communicated to them. Then do it!

When planning activities for the family, give options and choices. Let the family give their input on what they would like to do and how they would like to spend the time together. Although your ideas may be great (and I am sure they are, just like mine are), they may not be what the others in your family want to do. If you want to have positive “family time”, then it makes sense that the family should be able to choose what would be fun for them.

I hope these suggestions will help your time together with your family over the holidays to be fun, positive and lead to significant interactions with those whom you love.

Merry Christmas!

Paul

Earlier this week, I had the unique opportunity of a quiet evening alone at home. I had been working fairly hard, so I decided to “kick back” a little and I rented a movie. Now, my movie watching patterns are different than most adults. Given the type of work I do, I usually am not that interested in some high intensity, adrenaline-rush thriller. And rarely do I want to see a drama with a lot of intense relational issues. No, when I watch a movie I often want to escape from reality into the realm of comedy — and even further from reality into the world of animation (I really am a kid at heart).

So this week I picked up Meet the Robinsons, a delightful film about a boy who grows up in an orphanage and who wants to be an inventor. Lewis repeatedly meets potential adoptive parents but usually blows the interview by trying to impress them with his latest invention which always malfunctions and creates some kind of chaos. There are a lot of wonderful lessons from the story, but let me focus on one scene.

Lewis is visiting a family in the future (he traveled there in a time machine) and they ask him to try to fix a machine they have that is malfunctioning. But, like all the other times, after he “fixes” it, the machine goes haywire and makes a mess of everyone. But, instead of getting angry or being disappointed, the family starts to congratulate Lewis. “Way to go!” “Great failure!” “We’re so proud of you!” They are smiling, laughing and clapping. It is a stunning moment — both for Lewis and for me.

Lewis expresses his confusion at their responses and they go on to explain that their father, who is a highly successful and famous inventor, taught them that failure is a good thing. Because when you fail, you are able to learn what doesn’t work. Failure, from their point of view, was the beginning of success. As a result, failure is to be celebrated and embraced.

“But failure, in and of itself, isn’t the key to success”, they continue. They then inform him of the family motto, which they repeat so often he gets tired of hearing it. “Keep moving forward.” When ever one experiences failure, they explain, you learn from it but also pick yourself up and “keep moving forward”. You try again. You don’t give up. You try something else to overcome the challenge in your way.

So, like all good children’s books and movies, Lewis succeeds — both in becoming a famous and successful inventor but also in finding a family that loves and values him. And it has a nice, “feel good” ending. My kind of movie.

But the lesson was stunning to me. Here is a simple children’s animated movie and it is teaching a key component of life and business success I hear over and over from the successful businesspeople with whom I work. “To what do you attribute your business and financial success?” I ask them.

“Perseverance.” “We didn’t give up even when times were bad.” “We kept doing what we knew was the right thing to do.” “We didn’t accept ‘failure’ as an option.” Essentially, they did not accept failure as the the stopping point of their efforts. They kept trying.
I am still challenged by the response of the Robinson family in the movie — they rejoiced, were excited and not at all discouraged when someone failed. They maintained a positive outlook, supported and encouraged the person, and had the perspective — “OK, now what are you going to do to make it better this next time?”

This is not “pie in the sky”, let’s hold hands and sing Kum-by-ya. This is reality based feedback. Perseverance works. Giving up does not. I need this encouragement as I face my own small setbacks throughout the week. And it was a delightful surprise to hear this message from a silly, animated movie.

“Great failure!” “Keep moving forward!” I hope I can foster this attitude in my life and in my interactions with those around me. Let’s try it!

p.s. For another “feel good” animated movie with positive life lessons, watch Robots which has the wonderful theme of an inventor whose motto is “Find a need, meet a need.”