Resolve to…Forget

When things go particularly well, there’s an cycle of activity that tends to occur…and recur…

Yes, Action leads to Learning, Learning leads to Confidence, Confidence leads to Optimism, Optimism leads to Readiness, and Readiness leads to more Action. It’s a beautiful thing!

Similarly, when things go particularly poorly, a cycle of inactivity tends to occur…and recur…

Inaction breeds Stagnation, Stagnation breeds Doubt, Doubt breeds Pessimism, Pessimism breeds Lethargy, and Lethargy breeds more Inaction. Not so good.

Bridging from Cycle to Cycle

So how can we bridge from an Inactivity Cycle to to a full-on action? With two steps, actually:

1. FORGIVE. Boring, I know. But there’s a lot of blame that comes with the Inactivity Cycle, much of it aimed at ourselves. And it’s got to go – at least for as long as it takes us to complete Step Two.
2. FORGET. For as many times as we can’t remember where we put our car keys or left that important folder, or what was that phone number or nice person’s name, we seemingly ALWAYS remember the things we’ve done wrong. And that can be quite debilitating when we’re trying to forgive ourselves. So we must forget so we can forgive…so we can get back into action.

Forgive and forget our:

• Not losing the weight we promised ourselves we would
• Not being as caring or altruistic as we challenged ourselves to be
• Not having learned that lesson, yet, again
• Failing to update our LinkedIn profile
• Wasting as much time as we did on Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest or any of a number of iPhone apps or…or…or…
• Not getting enough sleep
• Not eating as healthily as planned
• Not calling or visiting mom as much as we should have
• Not being the leader they needed us to be

Or any number or variety of wish-I-would’s and where-DID-the-time-go’s.

So FORGIVE. And FORGET. And get back into action.

Post Script

I hope this post has helped you learn something about yourself. If so, please make a point to share your insight with others as a way to "lock in" your learning.

While you're at it, I'd also appreciate you telling them about LeadershipTraction and the resources available, here, on-line, at www.leadershiptraction.com including:

     • my other blog posts
     • my leadership tutorial downloads
     • my newsletter archives
     • the curated content on my LeadershipTraction Facebook page
     • and, of course, my book, Leadership Haiku

Thanks.

- bz

P.P.S. If you have a question or comment about this post, just let me know. I'll do my best to get back to you, straightaway.