Creating a “No Losers” Mindset in Your Marriage

One of the biggest causes of marital breakdowns … and in business relationships … is the inability to resolve conflict effectively; and every married couple runs into conflict because … Conflict is inevitable … two people who are in love … want each other to think and feel the same way about things … how to deal with money … how to deal with children … free time … and more!

The problem is … too many of us have come to believe that conflict is a bad thing … and that we should avoid it at all costs … but that’s not true … nor is it healthy for your marriage …

The truth is … conflict is a sign of connectedness … it says we have a vital relationship here … Remember – we rarely have conflicts with people we do not know or like.

But the most important thing we need to know about conflict is that it does not have to be negative!  When we learn how to successfully resolve conflicts with our spouse … we discover new things about him or her that we didn’t know before (which is why we’re having the problem) … and that helps to deepen our intimacy.

To make conflict a productive force in our marriage we have to establish a “No Losers Policy.” 

If you are “one,” a house divided against itself can’t stand.  If you are a “team” … it is impossible for one member of a team to win while another member of that same team loses!  You either both win … or you both lose … but there should never be an “I win – You lose” mentality allowed your marriage!

You both “win” when you both feel good about and agree together on the solution to your problem.  Maybe one of you came up with the solution … that’s OK … as long as both of you willingly agree that it is the best solution … you have a win-win scenario!  What will break down any marriage is the “my way or the highway” mentality!

The 2 Driving Forces in Life

Both are powerful, but only one will help you build a great life.

There are really only two fundamental driving forces in life. One of them can be helpful, but is short lived. The other one can make you very successful.

1) Running away from something (survival) 2) Running toward something (your Big Why—purpose)

Only the second one creates lasting success. The first one might even create failure.

Survival—Running Away

Moving away from something is a survival tactic. Survival is a very strong instinct, but the negative nature of it will not help you get to great places. It will only help you escape unhelpful ones. Running from something gets tiring.

There are legitimate reasons to run from something—a bear in the woods, a mudslide, that guy who won’t stop talking. Many people look for a new job or start a businesses because they are fed up with the boss or the company they work for. Others do it because they were let go and didn’t want to ever be that vulnerable again. All of these are legitimate reasons to run from something unhelpful.

A negative driving force can be a good incentive to get something started. But the problem with running from things is that it isn’t sustainable. The gravitational pull of that thing chasing you, will eventually slow you down and wear you out. We aren’t built to find long term sustainable motivation from running away from things, but by running toward them.

Purpose—Running Toward

When you find something to run toward you’re much more likely to create a sustainable motivation and succeed. A positive driving force is something that you don’t have, but it has you. It grips you and compels you forward—you can’t help but go in that direction because the gravitation pull in front of you is strong and always getting stronger as you get closer to it.

What drives your life? What compels you to get up in the morning even when you’re not making money and when you’re tired of the struggle? What helps you see the struggle as the road to success rather than the road to nowhere? I call that my Big Why—the big reason to be in business or in life that is so much bigger than just the trivial need to make some money.

If you have a Big Why, a positive driving force that is compelling you forward, you are unlikely to wear out, slow down or give up.

The Paralyzing Middle—Neutral

But there is one other condition that won’t get us anywhere, and is paralyzing—living in neutral. When we’re living in neutral, we’re neither moving away from something or toward something, but simply not going anywhere—dead in the water of life—just treading to keep our head above it all. People who live in neutral many times have reasonably safe, comfortable and predictable lives, but rarely have a story to tell. Movement of some kind is critical. Moving away from the earth might help us eventually find the gravitational pull of the moon. Running away can help us find something to run toward, but neutral doesn’t help us find anything.

Get A Big Why—Your Blue Flame

Get out of neutral if you’re in it—wake up, get a Big Why and run toward it. We call it the blue flame that drives you forward, like the afterburner of a fighter jet.

Do you have a blue flame coming out your back side that is driving you forward? It’s the best way to ensure you’ll build a life you’ll love.

Some day your life may flash before you. If it does, make sure it’s worth watching.

Carpe freaking diem, already.

What Are Your People Afraid Of?

This whole idea of an entrepreneur…what definition should we use?  Within a company, perhaps it should be called “intra-preneurs”… Regardless, the traits we seem to attribute to this idea seems to the same.  These people take risks, they start something new, they never quit, they get the needed resources, they sell a vision, they take responsibility for success or the failure…

If we want any of the above from any part of an organization (including from us), if we’re really honest, we have to battle fear.

Fear that we’ll be found out, that we won’t succeed, that we will succeed, that people won’t like us, that someone will be mad, that we’ll get in trouble, that we’ll fail or flounder or not be whatever we think we should be.

Here’s a few questions to ask yourself:

1)   Do I really want others to act as entrepreneurs?  Really?

2)   Do I want others to act without fear?   If not (i.e. you want them to fear something), what do I want them to fear?  Not to fear?

Stop here...until you’re really clear.  It may take awhile.  It did for me.

Now what?  Depending on your answer, could you take another step?  Could you ask your most trusted team members:

• What are people afraid to tell me?

• What decisions are people afraid to make that they should be making?  What was in the way of making the decision?

• Where do you need my help?  The help of others?

Facing fear, and helping others to do so, is a key to so many things.  In perhaps an odd way, I find it encouraging to know that Paul battled fear – after all, he had a growing organization in Acts that he was trying to care for.  I wonder if we could encourage ourselves and others in the same way God spoke to Paul:

 “Do not be afraid, but speak, and do not keep silent, for I am with you, and no one will attack you to hurt you…”  Acts 18:9-10a (NKJV)

Everybody Should Play the Business Owner’s Game, Not Just Owners

There is a game every person at work should be playing every minute of every day, with every decision they make. It’s called The Business Owner’s Game, and is at the core of building a successful business or career. It transforms your relationship to work.

The objective of the Business Owner’s Game is simple: More money in less time.

Successful business leaders play this game all the time to increase their revenue (or income) and reduce the amount of time they have to personally spend increasing it. The smart leaders have everyone at work playing the same game. The objective is to discover the “highest and best use” of everyone’s time, and get them focused on doing those things.

More Money in Less Time

Anybody can make more money in more time; it’s easy—just work more hours. Except you only have 168 hours in a week. So the better idea is to discover how to make more money in less time. A lot of people intend to make more money every year, but how many of them intend to do it in less time?

Why do we all have the first graph, but not the second one? Because we’re stuck in Industrial Age thinking about how money is made, by trading time for money.

A traditional employee thinks that way as well, but shouldn’t. The Industrial Age was wrong. Everyone working in every business should be on a manic pursuit to answer the question, “How do I make more money in less time?” Your business would make more money if all your people thought this way. And if you, as a business owner, want to build a successful business, you can’t afford to succumb to this old Industrial Age habit. Let’s learn the Business Owner’s Game.

The Game: Two Simple Questions

The good news is that the Business Owner’s Game is very simple. There are only two questions:

1. Is this (whatever I’m doing right now) the highest and best use of my time?

The answer to at least seventy-five percent of what we’re doing will be, “No.” Whatever we’re doing is rarely the highest and best use of our time. We just haven’t bothered to get it off our plate (short-term decision-making).

If the answer is no, and it almost always is, then move on to question number two:

2. If this is not the highest and best use of my time, then how do I do it for the last time?

The answer to that question will lead you to freedom.

If you are serious about getting things off your plate, you’ll come up with a number of ways to offload things that don’t belong there. Freedom Mapping is just one common answer to the question. But if you’re afraid, distracted, believe your business is unique (it never is), have a big ego, believe you’re indispensable (you almost never are), or a dozen other excuses, you will find 1,000 ways to not get things off your plate.

Business Owner vs. Income Producer

This is the most important game a business owner and everyone in your business can play. We waste more time and money doing things others should be doing than just about any other way.

If you are playing this game, you are a Business Owner (even if you don’t own the business, you own your destiny). If you aren’t, you are only an Income Producer, the fatal mindset of the “employee” (yes, Business Owners can be employees of themselves!) You may think you own a business, but all you really own is a job.

How Staff Members Should Play The Game

When Krista first came to work with us, we asked her to create a Freedom Map of the processes she ran. A year later we had her go back over this with the two questions in the Business Owner’s Game, to discover the highest and best use of her time. She circled everything in the process that did not qualify, and we hired Lauren who loved doing those things and was great at them. Both of them were firing on all cylinders now. As she gained experienced and the job changed, we had Lauren re-draw her Freedom Maps another year later, and hired Donna to do the things that were not the highest and best use of Lauren’s time. As Donna gains experience we will have her do the same thing.

Don’t Hire For Jobs; Hire For Effectiveness

We never hire someone for “a job”, but instead, we hire them to take over things that aren’t the highest and best use of someone else’s time. Does anyone ever get to 100% ideal use of their time? Of course not, but everyone in our company is always closer to it than they would be working anywhere else. And they all have more freedom and more meaning in their work as a result.

Get Off The Treadmill

What is the highest and best use of your time? How do you the other things for the last time?

Apply the two simple questions in the Business Owner’s Game to everything you do for one month and see what happens. It will transform your business if you are an owner, or your job if you are a Stakeholder. It will begin to give you the answers that allow you to make more money in less time, get off the treadmill and get a life.

One Change That Can Bring Back Time

We’ve likely all heard the story…you know the one…”There was a college professor who once pulled out a large jar and asked his class, after putting some big rock in the jar, is the jar full?” If you haven’t heard it, do a quick search for “The professor and the jar story”.  Steven Covey relays it in his “First Things First” book as well.

I heard the story a long time ago (at least it feels that way), and I remember how it impacted me.  It made so much sense.  I kept trying to shove more in the jar, never really thinking about what my “big rocks” were.  The list I came up with felt pretty reasonable and important – God, family, self and work.  I’ve tried – and failed – and tried again to prioritize these in the order I had determined.

I wonder, though, is there another way to look at this?  What about different kinds of rocks?

I don’t think many would argue with the above four – maybe friends would be there for some, church for others.  Maybe the list would be longer or shorter, with more or less “big rocks”.  What I found, though, was that I couldn’t practically implement my “rocks” (that sounds weird…but I can’t seem to find a better way to say it).  After all, trying to be involved in what God was up to also included being a dad and a husband.  And I was pretty sure He wanted to be around me at work, too.

Could I put different rocks in the jar?

So I’ve tried one – “keep the Sabbath holy”.  For me, that’s Sunday.  Could I really not check e-mail?  Could I really have it just be a day of renewal?  And if I did, how would it force me to move other “rocks” around to make it fit?  So far, it is different around here.

How about you?  What one big rock should you try to put in the jar?  Can you find one that would push the other ones around in a way that gets you where God wants you to go?

I’ll let you know how it goes.  Let us know what “rocks” for you…