7 Keys to Avoiding the Winner’s Trap

Mediocrity sneaks up on the unsuspecting winner by flooding them with new opportunities. 

The unaware winners get distracted just enough, just slightly, from doing the things that got them to the top. They lose what would seem to others an imperceptible amount of their intensity and focus. But the line between winning and losing is very fine. Before they realize it, they have lost their winning edge and they slump.

Here are 7 tips that can help you avoid the deadly trap:

1. Realize that your life has changed now. It will be more complicated from a time standpoint. Before you focused primarily on budgeting your MONEY. Now you will need to focus on budgeting your TIME. So limit distractions. Of course you want to enjoy your success but you can’t do it all. 

2. Make a definite choice to put a priority on preparation. Keep your work time a top priority so you have a chance to stay on top. That’s the goose that lays the golden egg! That’s what will keep you in a position to continuing enjoying things. Make sure NOTHING interferes with your ability to continue to WORK HARD.

3. Ramp up your planning. Eliminate the time wasters so you can absorb many of the new opportunities without disrupting your schedule. Everyone has fat in their schedule. Take charge of it like never before. Not every activity is critical. Work to find ways to get the most out of your schedule. Things that take an hour can probably get done in 30 or 45 minutes. Many of the things that you always did in the past can probably delegated to others. 

4. Get better at saying NO. Realize you can’t do it all. Life is all about choices. Think about what is really important and weed out the unimportant. Don’t just keep doing the same things because you have always done them. Move on so you can move up.

5. Be disciplined like never before. Realize the penalty for getting off track is losing your focus is that you will get beat and your victory will be short lived. Don’t allow yourself to get sloppy with your time. Your success has given you the chance to add a bunch of things you want to do to your already large number of things you HAVE to do to keep winning. Don’t apologize for being disciplined and organized and don’t let others tempt you into relaxing your commitment. They are not your friends. 

6. Work SMARTER. Use the lessons you learned on the way up to fine tune your training. By winning you learned for yourself what things worked best for you and what things were not as profitable. This way you can get even more results from the time you put in. You may have even moved up to be able to get access to other people—coaches who can give you inside information on life at the top. How to prepare, how to keep your edge, how to continue to improve and how to get things done in less time. 

7. Most Important - Raise your sights and get BIGGER GOALS. Don’t take a chance on losing your hunger. Give yourself a real solid reason to continue driving yourself hard. It’s great to win once but when you continue to win you put yourself much higher category. Realize that its as hard to KEEP winning as it is to win the first time. Accept the challenge to stay on top.

Choose to go after making winning an ALL the time thing and not just a ONE time thing. 

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Related: The Secret of the "Winner's Trap"—How Winners Lose Their Edge

Money: The 5 Big YOU Questions

It’s your life...
and it’s all about you.

Take a moment and think about what you want for your life. Here are 5 simple questions about your financial life.

The only one who needs to be satisfied with your answers to these questions is you. 

1. How long have you been working in your job? Are you making progress or are you stuck?
2. How much are you making? Are you making what you really need to be making? Are you making what you're worth? Is more coming?
3. How much are you saving? Treading water... or sinking? Getting ahead? Do you have money for the extras?
4. Where are you headed in the next 5 years? Promotions, income, and savings...
5. What can make it better? What are your realistic options?

The great thing about being free and living in a free country is that you can choose to make changes if you want to.

Run!

Want big things?

If you want something big to change in your life, if you want to go after some big achievement you better run! 

Life is too short.  
Whatever it is you want, you are going also want to get there as fast as possible! Why? So you have as long as possible to enjoy it. If you have a goal of greatness you’re going to be miserable until you get there. Why drag it out?  

Run to it!
Chase it. Things always take longer and cost more than we expect, especially the first time we are going for them, so run. Move as fast as you can. Compress time frames so you can get there as quickly as possible and get the maximum enjoyment out of your achievement.  

The bigger the challenge, the harder you must run
There’s a reason that when the young shepherd boy David fought the 7’ giant Goliath he RAN at him.

It was do or die! Ask anyone who has started a new company. In the beginning it almost always turns into an around the clock commitment. People want to get past the pain to the fun side as fast as possible.

That’s why my theme song is “Runnin’ Down A Dream,” by Tom Petty.  

If you want something go get it. Now. Fast. Run. 

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Crank up the volume and get moving...

Retirement - Money Isn't Everything

Boring, BORING, Boring!!!

This is EXACTLY the kind of subject that BORES people to death. That’s why it's avoided. Unfortunately, time marches on, and most people reach retirement totally unprepared and confused about how to make sense out of this phase of their lives. If you would rather not have this happen to you, you might want to spend a few minutes reading and thinking about some of these things.

The Couple's Retirement Puzzle: 10 Must-Have Conversations for Transitioning to the Second Half of Life

This one is ALL ABOUT YOU
That's what makes this an interesting and valuable book for everyone to read. The authors prove there are a LOT more important things besides money to think about as you plan for the future. It's never too early to start looking down the road and getting clear about where you want to wind up.  

When you're talking you can always find solutions and agreements.  
The clearer you are the more focused you'll be and you have the rest of your life to make sure you get where you want to go.  Roberta Taylor and Dorian Minzter’s idea is to present a strategy that gets couples talking about issues related to this phase of life.  

Here are just some of the issues they put on the table.  

1. What are my goals for the next stage of life? Learn a new language, travel, a vacation home, volunteer work.
2. Do I want to keep working and what are my options if I do?
3. How do financial decisions get made in our relationship? Am I happy with that or do I want to make changes?
4. Are our healthcare needs covered? 
5. Do we want to explore a different life style?
6. What is most important for us to do as a couple?  All of these things lead you to draft a shared vision that you can revise annually.  

This book raises an important issue and helps couples get it on the table and begin talking about it and that is how they can have the best possible retirement.

If you don’t take your future seriously, who will?

What 99% of people don’t know about New Year’s Resolutions

Most people start the New Year full of hope.

It’s a fresh start, a clean slate. It’s time to fix things in your life that you’re not happy with. What do people do? They make resolutions. I’m doing to quit smoking, I’m going to lose weight, I’m going to get more sleep, I’m going to start working out. I’m going to spend more time with my family. The list is endless.  

But 99% are headed for failure
It happens every year and with such regularity that it’s become a joke. People almost expect to break their resonlutions even as they’re starting because they know history. Why is it that most fail? What could they do different to set themselves up for success?  

It’s a fresh start
Make a decision not a resolution. The mistake is they make a resolution and not a decision. When you make a decision it is definite you are deciding you’re going to take charge of your life. You’re deciding things are going to change. You are locking in on a goal. You have come to a conclusion about your life and there’s some changes you’ve decided are going to be made. That is a decision. It is non-negotiable. It is not built on a bunch of conditions…if this works out perfect, if that works out perfect—no—it’s going to happen regardless.

A resolution is much weaker
Resolutions are like giving something a try. I’m going to “attempt” to do something. This is a play I’m going to run. If everything works perfectly, if I am able to get myself to do these things then I can get the result. The mistake is focusing on how you’re going to get there. The mistake is making your commitment to how you’re going to get there rather than the fact that you have DECIDED that you ARE going to get there! Resolutions are all about the process rather than the goal so when you commit to a resolution as soon as something comes along in life to interrupt your routine… BAM! You broke your resolution, you give up. 

The critical mistake
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Don’t give up, make an adjustment! Get a new plan, if you, “fall off the wagon,” immediately restart. The trouble with most people starting resolutions is they expect they must follow this rigid new path they’ve set for themselves and as soon as they break the chain they panic and quit.  

Success is getting to your goals  
Once you get there you’ll forget how long it took. It won’t matter. It’s totally inconsequential at that point that you had to make a course correction along the way, you had to regroup and restart your game plan. You had to reschedule, reorganize your time, or any other change you made along the way. The important thing is you will have done it. When you make a decision instead of a resolution, your eye is firmly on your “prize” no how you’re going to get there. Resolutions fail because you focus on the method.

Set yourself up for success in 2012 make decisions not resolutions.

Go For Greatness

You don't win by going for good. You win when you go for GREAT.

How do you do that? Get a Big Goal (Emphasis = Big)! Get a goal that excites you. Lock in on something that “Sets You on Fire!" 

If you can’t fire yourself up, how can you possibly fire up anyone else?
Without an exciting Goal you will get beat again and again. Get your emotions involved – make this MEAN something to you. Find a way to make a long term impact for yourself, your family, your community.

Small goals are killers. 
No one works hard for a small goal. Small goals are like Titanic Goals – you get beat before you get started. No one is inspired by the rallying call “Let’s go for #2!"

The First Step in doing anything Great is having the courage to Go for the Big Goal!

Short Term or Long Term?

Do you have short term goals, or long term goals? You should have both.

Fools think only of today but the Wise think long term. It's one thing to be good for today. But what about tomorrow?

You may enjoy the road you are on but where is it taking you? You may enjoy your job, your life, your friends. You may be having a great time, but where is it leading you?

The trouble with the future is that it gets here fast. If you are heading the wrong way in your life, CHANGE! The opportunity you have today won’t be there long.

You had better seize the moment, do the tough thing, make the changes that you know are necessary—because if you don’t, you soon may find yourself stuck, and too far down the road to turn back.

Life goes quickly. In fact the Bible describes it as a vapor.

"For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away" (Jas. 4:14).

It won’t last forever, so take the chances you have to steer it in the direction you want to go. The one thing you don’t want to do is procrastinate through laziness, neglect, or denial and lose your chance for something special.

Regrets… you don’t want any.