Take Permission

The Right Tools & Mindset For Success

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The Secret To Gaining The Attention of Influencers

1. Stop Trying To Impress Them

Influencers are used to people trying to impress them so don’t try. The influencers that I know don’t want to be impressed, they want to know that you’ve taken what they’ve shared and done something with it.

2. Find Ways To Serve Them

If you see a place that they can be helped, help them. Buying them a random gift is nice but many won’t even accept gifts because people so often give them with strings attached.

3. Spread Their Work

My friend Jeff once bought a copy of every single of Seth Godin’s books for someone. It was a generous gift for the person who won the books and it flattered Seth. He did it because it was a nice gesture to Seth but more importantly, it was a way of spreading Seth’s ideas.

Another idea is to dedicate an episode of your podcast or a blog post to their best ideas. Yes, you can mention them in a tweet after you’ve done this and maybe they’ll find it but the goal isn’t just to gain their attention. The greater goal is to introduce them to new people.

Agenda or No Agenda?

So the secret to gaining attention is to point others to your influencer. If you don’t gain their attention the worst case scenario is you served someone that you admire. That’s not a bad worst case scenario.

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The Unlikely Key To Resolving Conflict In The Workplace and At Home

You want clarity in your relationships at home. Resolving conflict in the workplace is equally important. You’re avoiding the very thing that will bring clarity and get rid of the lingering conflict once and for all.

Conflict brings clarity.(highlight to tweet)

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Conflict is neither good nor bad, it’s just part of getting clarity. When conflict is done well the outcome is clarity. When it isn’t done well it causes even more confusion, hurt and anger.

Three Aspects of Healthy Conflict

1. Honest – Don’t say “It’s not a big deal” when confronting someone. Tell them that you’re hurt, confused or angry and give specific examples.

2. Direct – Don’t talk to someone else about a conflict, talk to the person you have the conflict with. This is the step people get wrong the most.

3. Mature – Planning ahead will allow you to stay calm and discuss the issues instead of just the feelings from the issues. Mature people seek a solution. Immature people seek to get even. Seek a solution over your own feelings of vindication.

Watch the video below to learn how to gain clarity at home and learn the key to resolving conflict in the workplace. Click here if you can’t see the video below.

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The Importance of Elevators: How To Find Success In Anything You Want To Achieve

The most important room in a building with more than two stories is the elevator.

A photo posted by @axelblnga on

Without the elevator every person that needs to go up would have to spend incomparable amounts of effort getting to their destination. My brother works in a building without enough elevators and he’s constantly complaining about it. I’m sure he’s not the only one that it bothers.

Some observations about elevators

  • If you’re going to have one, build it into your plans, early.
  • Elevators put us closer to our destination.
  • They save us energy so we can spend it on our work.
  • They give us time to think about what is coming.
  • They know the way.
  • They’re not difficult to use but they do require us to be all in.
  • If we trust them they’ll take us where we need to go.
  • They let us bring other people with us.
  • They’re generous, they’ll help anyone that trusts them.

The elevators in my life

Pierce, Dan, Cliff, Mike, Seth, Jeff, Jon, Hugh, Tom…

Read this post again. It’s short. This time think about your desire for success and think about who your elevators are.

If you don’t have elevators life is much more difficult than it should be.

Don’t try to succeed on your own.

Build good elevators into your life.

 

(This post was inspired by one woman’s description of Seth Godin at a release party for his book Linchpin. That’s the best description I’ve ever heard of him. You can access the previously unreleased video by going to this page and then reading the first few paragraphs to find the hidden password for the video embedded a bit lower down that same page.)

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How To Waste Your Life 1-Second at a Time

You didn’t think about dying today. There was no urgency because it’s just another day.

You woke up and went about your life like you do every other day. You let your grass grow taller, the car go unwashed, your kids go without a good conversation with their mom or dad and weeks without truly connecting with the people you love most.

How can we waste so much time but never be bored? How are we wasting our lives?

We waste our lives 1-second at a time.

[Tweet “We waste our lives 1-second at a time.”]

Today Instagram (owned by Facebook) announced a new app called Boomerang. I’m not linking to it in this post because I don’t want you to download it. You can now create and post 1-second videos. My parent’s generation put a man on the moon. My generation built an app to post 1-second looping video clips.

Please don’t. Please don’t take the time to create 1-second videos. If you think it’s not harmful I disagree. You don’t get the time back that it takes to capture that “perfect second”.

You can waste your life.

You can waste your life being distracted by the endless options to talk about life instead of living it.

[Tweet “You can waste your life being distracted by the endless options to talk about life instead of living it. “]

I waste massive portions of my life and I’m tired of it. Aren’t you tired of it too?

Your life is too important to spend it making 1-second videos.

[Tweet “Your life is too important to spend it making 1-second videos.”]

How do we waste so much time?

Apps.
Open tabs in your browser.
Updates.
Pictures.
Tweets.
Posts.

They waste your life, 1-second, 140 characters or one filtered picture at a time. They don’t have control though, you do.

It’s ok to create digital content but are you using it as an outlet for a life you’re living or as a substitute for living a good life?

Not all things that are permissible are beneficial.

Skip the app. Do something that matters with those minutes because that 1-second app takes a lot longer than 1-second to use.

Read a book that makes you think. Listen to your heart and ask yourself how healthy it is. Ask your spouse about the condition of their heart. Call someone to encourage them. Anyone, about anything.

We get one life. Don’t waste it on 1-second videos.

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We Can’t Be Friends

If you’re really awesome all the time we can’t be friends. I can’t hang with that. I can’t be awesome all the time. I’m broken. We’re all broken.

My friends are very authentic. Authentic doesn’t mean you suck, it means you’re honest about your strengths and your weaknesses.

If you can’t be honest with me then we can’t be friends.

I can’t listen to Joel Osteen because he’s too perfect. He’s too happy. His life, the part he lets us see, is too shiny. That’s not reality. I don’t need him to be miserable for me to happy but I can’t follow someone who is artificially content.

I can’t follow Donald Trump for several reasons (sexism, racism and classism are a few) but the biggest is that his perception of himself is innacurate. I don’t need him to hate himself but I do need him to be honest about his weaknesses. He isn’t.

If you can be honest about your weaknesses then you’re stronger than most people

[Tweet “If you can be honest about your weaknesses then you’re stronger than most people. “]

I can listen to and have a deep respect for the pastor of my church because he talks about the fact he’s in counseling. I can relate to that.

  • Authenticity is about telling the whole truth.
  • Instagram isn’t authentic.
  • Facebook isn’t authentic.
  • Twitter isn’t authentic.
  • Most of our conversations aren’t authentic.
  • The way we relate to coworkers isn’t authentic.
  • We aren’t even authentic with our spouses part of the time.

Authenticity is being brave enough to tell the truth, especially when that truth is about your weaknesses.

I’ve never regretted being authentic.

Take permission to be authentic.

Let’s be friends, just be honest with me please.

[Tweet “Take permission to be authentic. Let’s be friends, just be honest with me please. “]