goals

Dust in the wind

April 20, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

What's on your bucket list?

Here are 21 things I want to do before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

Play my saxophone and harmonica in a blues band.
Live and work in a foreign country.
Write and publish a book.
Complete a marathon in less than 4:45.
Own a sports car.
Ride across the USA on a Harley.
Live in a home with a swimming pool.
Live in a new home.
Own a new car, one that’s never been owned by someone else.
Give a TED talk.
Get my unrestricted pilot’s licence.
Work as an overseas aid volunteer.
Write an opinion piece that gets published in a newspaper.
Visit Antarctica.
Do an outback survival course.
Visit Japan.
Pay my respects at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Pay my respects at Gallipoli.
Do the Kokoda trail.
Do an African safari and shoot the wild life – with a camera.
Climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

Image: Vernon Chan

What Jack and the Beanstalk can teach you about the value of achieving goals

March 20, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Disneyland Paris Jack and the Beanstalk castle

What’s your Jack and the Beanstalk story? Image: Jeremy Thompson http://www.flickr.com/photos/32916425@N04/4480849415/

What’s the value of achieving a goal? If your goal is to walk across the road the answer is probably nothing.

But big, stretch goals are different.

Stretch goals challenge us. They pull us out of our comfort zone and scream at us like a sergeant major.

“Get your lazy arse out of bed and move! Now!”

They motivate us to do more.

Achieving a goal can feel amazing. That new car smell, the feel of leather seats, the admiring glances of other motorists.

Those things are great, but they’re not the true value of achieving a goal.

The true value of achieving goals can be learned from reading Jack and the Beanstalk.

Jack’s story is all about overcoming obstacles.

In the fable, Jack’s life was going along fine. One day the little tripper decides to climb a beanstalk. He knocks off some treasure from the man-eating giant who chases him down the beanstalk. But Jack’s too quick. Through a super human effort he chops down the beanstalk, kills the giant and saves himself and his family.

They all live happily ever after. The end.

Of course, Jack gets to be rich from all the loot he flogged from the giant so he gets to take care of his family. But the real win is his personal transformation. Now he’s the family provider and heroic protector.

He da man!

The story arc of Jack and the Beanstalk is repeated time and again in fables and fairy tales and stories told around kitchen tables and in books and movies.

Think about it. Forrest Gump, all the Rocky movies, The Da Vinci Code: they all use a similar story arc.

And guess what!

You’ll use the same story arc when you tell people about how you achieved a stretch goal.

It’ll go something like this: My life was going along fine, then I got a calling to achieve something great. At the start I was doing OK but then I was met with impossible obstacles. Just when I thought I’d made it I got knocked down again. And again. And again. But I persisted. After one last Herculean effort I succeeded.

I achieved my goal. I’m a winner!

And right there is the true value of achieving a big goal.

You see, achieving a goal is nothing in itself. What’s important – the real value – is the story that achieving a goal allows you to tell about your struggles to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

It’s that story from your past that shapes your present and your future. It’s a story that will help you shape a new you.

So what’s your Jack and the Beanstalk story?

Six ways to keep yourself on track to achieve your goals

March 19, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Commitments require us to keep grinding away. Eventually the chisel becomes sharp. Image: Infrogmation of New Orleans http://www.flickr.com/photos/infrogmation/3370682809/

Here are 6 ways I keep myself on track to achieve my long term goals.

Make a commitment. Commitments can become tedious. They mean hard work and nose to the grind stone and mindless, endless repetitions and actions. They take grit and determination and stick-to-itiveness. Know this at the start.
Have a theme. If there’s one theme to my writing it’s commitment. Start something then grind away until it gets done.
Don’t lose heart. Sometimes commitments can feel like your trying to hold back the sea. When you’re feeling down it’s important to just keep on doing what you said you’d do. Like a grindstone on a chisel, eventually the blade becomes sharp.
Make achieving your commitments a habit. The first action I take every morning is to drink a big, cold glass of water. That’s the signal to take the next step, which is to pull on my running shoes. And that’s the trigger to run. And…you get the idea. The commitment is achieved through surrounding it with habits.
Think ahead. But not too far. Thinking too far ahead makes the goal seem unreachable. Think ahead only far enough so that you set yourself up for the next step.
Settle in for the grind. To achieve your commitment means simply doing the next rep, running the next k, or writing the next word. None of this stuff is glamorous but it has to be done so settle in and do what you need to do.

How digging myself a hole has stopped me from running

March 8, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Distractions can come from something as simple as a hole in the ground. Image: Kelly Sikkema http://www.flickr.com/photos/95072945@N05/10158714405/

I’m going for a run in the morning. It’s my first long run for 3 weeks. It’ll be around 16 k’s.

Both my running and chin-up challenges are off the rails. First I suffered a calf injury. That took a couple of weeks to get through. Then I got distracted by two presentations that I’d never done before. It took a lot of time to get the story line right. The investment in time was worth it but the cost of that investment was a setback in my fitness.

There’s something else that’s distracted me. That something is the bore in our front yard. About 3 weeks ago it stopped working. I turned it on one morning then, ‘pop’, a fuse blew. And it wasn’t an ordinary flick-the-RCD-back-on kind of blow. This one was ‘down to earth.’ That’s an electricians way of saying that there’s a live wire shorting to ground.

It’s dangerous.

After some digging and testing the electrician told me that the problem was where the old bore wiring joined onto the new. Find that join, they said, and you’ll find your problem.

I started digging.

I dug and I dug and I dug some more until hole the size of the Grand Canyon appeared in my front lawn. Not only was there a hole but there were also mounds of dirt and mounds of once beautiful lawn that now sat waiting until I could find the problem and fill in the hole.

Finally, I found the join. I was happy. Soon I’d have the sparkies back, they’d fix the problem, I’d fill in the hole and my lawn could start growing again.

But things don’t always go according to plan.

About 7 years ago I had the old bore decommissioned and a new bore installed. We were doing some other work on the house at the time and I had a Bobcat driver on the property. I told him I wanted to fill in the old well.

Quick to seize on an opportunity to save himself some money in tip fees he said, “No worries. We’ll just throw this rubble down the hole then fill it in with sand.”

“Won’t it subside?” I asked.

“Nah mate. I do it all the time,” he explained.

I was convinced, but was fooled too easily.

Within a month a round depression had started to take shape on the newly planted lawn. It was the shape of the old well.

“That’s ok,” I thought. “I’ll put some topdressing on it and it’ll be fine.”

It wasn’t.

A few months later the depression was back. Once again, I did the patch job but in no time the depression was back.

I had to do something.

I called the landscaper.

“Ollie, I want you to come out and lay a patch of concrete over this bore so that it stops sinking,” I demanded.

He did and the problem was fixed – until the bore stopped.

To get to the problem join I had to break through the concrete slab that Ollie had laid.

As luck would have it, Ollie wasn’t the world’s greatest concreter. Even with the tools I had available – I’m no big tool guy – I was able to smash through the concrete patch with relative ease.

But something odd happened.

As each piece broke an ever larger hole started to appear. Soon it was more than a hole – it was a cavern in the size of a bore hole and well over a metre deep.

Now, not only did I have the holes I’d dug to expose the electrical conduit, I also had a hole where the soil had subsided beneath Ollie’s concrete cap.

The Bobcat driver had turned out to tell a lie as big as the hole he’d been filling at the time.

Today, I poured 120 kilograms of concrete on top of the Bobcatter’s rubble. That’s going to act as a plug just like Ollie’s did. But the difference is that this plug is over a metre below the surface with only rubble below it.

Tomorrow I’m going to fill the hole up with good quality fill sand topped off with some nice loam that the lawn will love.

So if I’ve lost a missed a few k’s and a few chin-ups, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

Some tough love that’s stoked the fire inside me

February 24, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

Sometimes feedback can seem harsh but it turns out to be what’s needed to stir up the fire within. Image: Ben Watts http://www.flickr.com/photos/benwatts/4087289013/

If you’ve read this blog at all this year you’ll know that I’ve set myself a challenge to write a blog post every day for 2014. It’s the end of February and I’m already tired from the effort. Instead of curling up on the couch with a good book, I tap away at this keyboard forcing out words that feel as dry as the Gibson Desert.

But I’m nothing if not an optimist.

So I get to thinking, if I’m going to write something every day, why not write a book!?

In round terms I’m writing 500 words each day so by the end of the year I’ll have written over 180,ooo words. That’s enough words for a couple of books and have a third in the pipeline.

But I kind of get the impression that my writing really isn’t up to scratch to get published.

I’m especially aware that my posts have no theme. One day I’ll write about goal setting, the next about dealing with negative people, and then I’ll write something introspective…like this post.

I decide I need some help so I decide to employ a writing coach.

I make a call and explain my idea. He says that he usually assesses manuscripts and helps writers make their work better. Helping someone write a daily blog post isn’t really his thing.

But, he says, he’ll give it a go. I give him the address and wait about a week.

An email arrives. It goes as follows.

From reading some of your blogs it’s obvious that you are both adventurous and a very successful entrepreneur.

Nice, I like this guy…so far.

But at first glance, it is difficult to know what this blog is really about. What is its soul centre?

Yes, I know that. That’s why I called. I can’t work out what it’s about myself.

You like to share enthusiastically about yourself — your favourite music, books etc. And you write very well in the blog format (never a paragraph of more than three lines). But there’s very little depth to anything you share: why do you like something … what does it mean to you, what effect has it had on you?

Now we’re starting to get–well, not personal but–serious. He’s right though, I don’t let on about what stuff means to me. I don’t tell people what effect it has on me. He’s onto something here.

Frankly, there is nothing new or unique or truly insightful about anything I have read so far. There are no meaningful insights that an assiduous reader of blogs could not read somewhere else. This does not make for prime material for a book; not unless you take fifty thousand words of blog copy you have already written and construct it into an ebook for selling on Kindle/Amazon.

So what is your objective in publishing a book? To further which business? Real estate or business coaching or to tell your story? Do you have a good story to tell?

Bear in mind that, though your blog is interesting and eminently readable, the fundamental question in this business is… would people be prepared to pay to read this? That is the bottom line of all writing.

It’s nice to know that it’s “eminently readable” but the hard truth is that no-one would pay for it. Still, I’m not sure about his definition of the bottom line. My best writing was the book I wrote for Rita for our 20th wedding anniversary. The bottom line there was to shed tears of joy together as she ‘discovered’ it in a shop window. You couldn’t write me a cheque big enough to replace that moment.

That said, I take his point–if you’re going to write a book for commercial purposes then it better be good enough for the punters to want to fork out the dough.

So what, if anything, would you like me to do exactly? I cannot choose what you should write; only you can do that and that choice comes out of the heart far more than it comes out of the head.

And there’s the problem, right there. He can’t choose what I should write and neither can I. It’s as though I’ve got something inside me that wants to burst free but when I open my mouth there’s nothing. No sound, no words. Just blankness.

To get me through the blogging challenge I write that which catches my eye, something that makes me curious.

The best books are those about the writer’s journey: a story about yourself—your life, how you got to where you are now – the hard lessons you learned along the way.

So I respond via email.

“Identifying a theme is precisely why I’d like to work with you. I struggle with deciding what it is that I want to write until I’ve actually written it. In many ways the writing helps me clarify my views.

“A prime example is this post about the ethics of shark culling. It wasn’t until I’d written this post that I’d formed the view that it was a political stunt.

“My goal is to self-publish a book for two reasons: self-satisfaction and self-promotion. A book would give me a body of work I’m proud of and it would also give me the opportunity to promote myself as an author.”

It struck me as a reasonable proposition. If I’m a published author I’ll get more speaking gigs. Speaking gigs pay well. Happy days.

Then the response came back.

This time around I got into The Ethics of Shark Culling which was okay but pretty bland and much the same as other articles on the general topic of the preservation of species. From there I went to Tell Me: What do You Stand For? which didn’t really say anything fresh or new and then to Five Ordinary People who Inspire Me which was much better and had some bite and more of a unique point of view (POV). That’s the area in my view you should be pursuing rather than (frankly ) Mickey Mouse philosophy. Your background may be a fertile area for recounting stories which can develop the moralities to which you aspire. Most great lessons are imparted through story — called parables in the holy books. [Hyperlinks added]

Well, it’s nice to know at least one of the three were on the right track. Mickey Mouse philosophies? Ouch. I’m not sure what that term means exactly, but I think it means a philosophy that’s pretty close to worthless.

He continues.

Turning to your last paragraph. As you are a guy who clearly espouses ethical standards, I’ll tell you the truth. Your reasons for wanting to publish a book are pretty shallow. No writer is ever fully satisfied with what they have written: there are no ‘good’ writers – there are lots of bad ones while the rest of us are trying to get better. And as for self-promotion – that’s a ‘How To’ Manual.

And double ouch. Not only are my philosophies close to worthless, I’m now shallow. On the self-promotion thing, I suspect he’s right. And that’s what I was thinking of writing – a ‘How To’ Manual – something that someone could read and learn something from.

But, being proud of a book is something all together different, he claims.

In order to be proud of a book it has to be a good book and no writer ever produced a good book easily. A good book is analogous to raising a child of whom you are genuinely proud: you don’t do it over night; it takes a lot of effort and you suffer a lot in the process. And one book is not a ‘body of work’; an oeuvre is three or more.

OK, so I’ve never raised a kid so I don’t know how hard that is…but I get the idea. It’s hard work. Still, this guy isn’t finished.

The self-promotion angle is, frankly, the kind of thing that hustlers and corner-creepers indulge in. You have plenty of people like that in your business… and so do we. You write a book because you have something to say; something burning inside and you want as many people as possible to read it. That’s what drives you to rewrite it four or maybe five times.

And there it is – same problem, different words. And can I say it again. I don’t know what it is I want to write. Yep, I get the whole burning thing, I really do, but no amount of fire in my guts is going to make words come out. Maybe some black, acrid smoke, but no words.

If you are going to write a book, Peter, I would exhort you to do it for the right reason. If it’s good enough it will get past the gatekeepers in publishing (of which there are many) and be published by a publishing house. Then you can genuinely call yourself an author and be proud.

Yep, I’d love to be proud, I’d love to write a book but I’d also love to pass the first step–knowing what it is I want to say.

And if you’ve read this far, please don’t leave a comment about how nasty the guy was. If there’s a fire inside I’ve just had someone stoke the embers. Sure, he used a pitch fork to do it but it had the right effect.

Now, to bed.

How tiny gains can make a huge difference in your performance

February 12, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

On the Buffer blog James Clear explains the importance of making small, 1 percent gains. These gains are almost imperceptible but over time and added together they make a massive difference in performance.

Equally, make enough small losses and performance degrades exponentially.

In the beginning, there is basically no difference between making a choice that is 1% better or 1% worse. (In other words, it won’t impact you very much today.) But as time goes on, these small improvements or declines compound and you suddenly find a very big gap between people who make slightly better decisions on a daily basis and those who don’t. This is why small choices (“I’ll take a burger and fries”) don’t make much of a difference at the time, but add up over the long-term.

Clear believes that people speak too much about their achievements. Rather, goal achievement is a series of small events that contribute to the achievement.

…The truth is that most of the significant things in life aren’t stand-alone events, but rather the sum of all the moments when we chose to do things 1 percent better or 1 percent worse. Aggregating these marginal gains makes a difference.

The answer then is to create systems that produce great outcomes.

7 ways to handle rejection like a pro

February 8, 2014 by Peter Fletcher

A Lathlain sales rep shows how to deal with rejection like a pro. Image: Grange Realty Group

Paul Brookes is a fighter. He’s one of the regulars at Lindley’s Boxing Gym in Carlisle. There he pounds a bag until the floor around him is soaked with sweat.

Brookesy, as he’s known to his friends, is a nuggety, barrel chested man. In the gym he gives off the impression that he’s not one to be trifled with.

But Paul is also a real estate consultant. As a consultant, he’s likeable and friendly, and a polished communicator.

Put the two together and you have a competitive, determined property professional who doesn’t give in easily.

One of his good mates is also one of mine. Steve owns the Doghouse café in Lathlain. He makes the best hotdogs and doughnuts in the state and he too is a likeable guy. As the proprietor of a popular local fast food outlet it’s no surprise that Steve knows a lot of people, including a lot of agents.

They stop by at the Doghouse for a coffee and doughnut and pretty soon they’re talking about the property market.

So when Steve decided to list one of his rental properties for sale he had a dilemma. Who should he choose? Should it be his mate Paul, another agent he bought a property from, or yet another agent who had the most properties for sale in the area?

For Steve it was a tough decision. In the end he chose the agent he’d bought another property from.

I saw Paul at an auction just hours after he’d been delivered the news. Despite that it was a stinking hot day he never once let on that he’d been hit.

I turned up to the auction with Steve. Knowing what had happened I thought that things might have been tense between them.

But no, Paul greeted Steve professionally, shook his hand, then excused himself to help out with the auction day proceedings. It was a classy thing to do.

As an ex-agent I knew he was hurting. I could see in his eyes that he was feeling let down, dazed and confused. For agents, what happened to Paul makes you question if you’ve still got what it takes or if you can handle the rejection.

He could have ignored Steve and pretended he didn’t see him. He could’ve been snarky or sarcastic. Instead he was polite and professional and dignified.

In short he acted like a true pro.

Over the course of the next couple of months Paul stayed in touch with Steve. They drank beer together at the boxing gym Christmas function. He dropped into the Doghouse for coffee and a chat.

He wasn’t about to let the setback get to him.

Then a couple of days ago the other agent’s listing expired. Paul was back in the game.

Like a true pro he hadn’t let rejection cause him to react emotionally. He stuck to his processes and stayed committed to the relationship.

Next week his for sale sign will go up. I’m sure it won’t be too long before the sold sign follows.

What lessons can we learn from the way Paul handled rejection? Here are 7 lessons I take from his story?

Take responsibility for the setback. Blaming the client, the market or the competition is rarely helpful, especially if you want to grow from the experience.
Recognise that “no” is not the same as never. Often it simply means “not right now.” Paul Brookes recognised this and kept himself in the game until “no” became “yes.”
Acknowledge your feelings. There’s no point pretending that rejection doesn’t hurt – it does. Sometimes it’ll make you feel like a failure or that you’re worthless but with time and perspective these feelings will transform into valuable life lessons.
Acknowledge that you’re not going to achieve 100% of your goals. The current setback has delayed the success train not derailed it all together.
Recognise that any worthwhile undertaking exposes you to failure. Before Roger Bannister ran a sub-4 minute mile thousands of other runners had tried and failed. That didn’t make them failures, it made them runners who helped push the bar a little higher with each unsuccessful attempt. If you’re up to achieving big things in life you’re going to do a lot of failing.
Acknowledge your achievements. Unless you’ve been wrapped in cotton wool this won’t be your first setback. You’ll have had other obstacles that you’ve overcome. Take stock of these and recognise that you’ve had your wins.
Use the setback as a learning experience. Ask yourself what you could have done better? This can be difficult to do when you’re hurting but gets easier as time passes. Harness the pain you’re feeling as the motivation for self-improvement.

What are yours? Please share your tips for coping with rejection in the comments below.