Personal Growth – Page 34

3 Steps for Asking Great Questions

Asking great questions can unlock opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable to us. Asking great questions help us connect with others, build better ideas, and provide new perspectives to grow our awareness.

But how do we become better at asking better questions? Here are three steps to consider in using questions to expand your capabilities:

1. Preparation. The best questions require preparation. You must invest some time to think and possibly research the person or subject under discussion. You can consider history, current events, challenges, resources, etc. Then put your thoughts into the form of probing questions.

2. Listening. After you have completed your preparation, and have reached the point where you can ask questions, ignore the temptation to read your questions. In fact, ignore your prepared questions and just listen. Allow the conversation to dictate the appropriate questions. Be present and fully in the moment for the discussion.

3. Get Out of Your Head. Don’t analyze the discussion from your perspective. Don’t put the conversation in terms of you. Stay focused on the other person, and ask questions that reflect your true and genuine interest in the subject.

It is counter intuitive to prepare and then ignore the preparation. But if you don’t, then you risk being perceived as scripted. And if you fail to do the preparation, you will not be able to ask the best questions when the opportunity arises.

We often don’t think of asking questions as a skill. But it is a very important skill that can be developed, and utilized, to open the doors of opportunity.

Are You Ready for Your Next Opportunity?

It was Benjamin Franklin who said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” When opportunity arrives, it is too late to prepare for it. The time to get ready is now.

Personal growth is a choice. However, John Maxwell tells us that growth is the great separator of those who succeed long term from those who do not.

To take advantage of an opportunity it is not enough to be in the right place in the right time. You need awareness and preparation. So what are you doing to prepare yourself for your next opportunity? Here are a couple of things to consider:

1. Set aside time to grow in your calendar daily. Growth requires effort. Growth doesn’t happen automatically.

2. Decide on your areas of growth. What will help you achieve your dream? Your purpose? Where is your passion?

3. Apply what you learn. Growth is not effective without application. Integrate what you learn in your daily life. Take risks. Stretch yourself. Embrace failure with a plan to learn and grow.

As you grow take advantage of the opportunities as they come to you. Larger opportunities usually appear through taking smaller opportunities. If you are waiting for the perfect opportunity, you miss many opportunities that could lead to your success.

This approach seems so simple and necessary. It makes me wonder why more people don’t prepare. If you need help getting started, let’s talk.

Are You Living Purposefully?

I recently read an article that made me reflect on how I set and track my goals. The challenge is to live life purposefully. To be effective life goals need to be brought to mind frequently.

I have a system that I use for keeping track of my tasks, my priorities, and my calendar. It drives what I do on a daily basis. However, this article forced me to think about how I track my purpose. I have business goals that I track. I have life goals that I could verbalize. But I don’t have my big goals captured in a way that they would be in front of me at all times.

I knew I could do better. I decided to take some actions.

1. Write down my big goals. This is needed to bring clarity to what I want to achieve. I had written yearly and monthly goals, but they seemed too tactical didn’t capture the true essence of what I wanted to achieve. I wanted my goals to include not just “what” but also “why”.

2. Visualize my goals over time. I want to be able to sense how my goals will feel in one month, three months, one year, five years, and even ten years. Goals are easier to connect with if they are less abstract and more real. Not just in the sense of a number or a target, but how achieving them will affect your life.

3. Reaffirm these goals on a daily basis. Every day I create my daily task list, I have added reading my goals every day. I want to answer the questions: Am I aligned? Am I working towards my purpose? Is the “why” still important?

4. Reflect daily. This may be the most important part of a daily routine. You need to know if you stayed on track. I want to ask myself everyday these two questions: Were my actions today effective in moving me closer to my goals? What do I need to adjust for tomorrow?

Every day counts. It is too easy to be distracted and become disconnected from your “why”. Living purposefully requires daily attention, but it is a discipline that pays big rewards. How are you staying connected to your goals and dreams?

How to Avoid Being Average

The average person is, well, average. Why would you want to be only average, when you have the chance to excel above average? There are a few things that you can do that will help you lift yourself to a performance above average.

The average person puts limited effort into being better. If you spend some of your energy to improve, you will become better than average. Here are three things that can help you get started.

1. Be with better people: If you want to be better, then spend your time with people that are better than you. They will help you set your vision on improvement. If you spend all your time with people that are not as good as you, then you will seem better than you really are.

2. Work on it every day: Improvement does not happen overnight. It also doesn’t happen just because you decide to get better. However, making small efforts to improve every day will make a huge difference over months and years of effort. No one becomes great without practice and effort. Put time in your daily agenda to invest in yourself.

3. Know where you want to be: Becoming better than average is a great goal, but better than average in what? I know it is impossible to be better than average in all things. You must have a focus and a target of what you want to achieve. Create a goal that you can track for your progress.

These three points are not difficult to implement. They do not require hard labor. To avoid being average you must think, plan, and act on what it is you want to achieve. However, most people are satisfied with average and quit. As Orison Swett Marden once said, “It is just the little difference between the good and the best that makes the difference between the artist and the artisan. It is just the little touches after the average man would quit that makes the master’s fame.”

Participation in a mastermind group is a great way to develop the skills to take you beyond average. You can find out more information about groups that are forming now, by registering at the following link: http://newroadsleadership.com/mastermind