Have you ever heard of the children’s book entitled, “The Little Engine That Couldn’t“?  Very few have.  It never sold any copies.  The biggest problem was that there was only one page:

“The Little Engine didn’t think he could.  So, he didn’t.”
The End

Not very inspiring either.

Most of us are familiar with “The Little Engine That Could” by Watty Piper.  The text for this delightful and insightful little story follows:

A little railroad engine was employed about a station yard for such work as it was built for, pulling a few cars on and off the switches. One morning it was waiting for the next call when a long train of freight-cars asked a large engine in the roundhouse to take it over the hill “I can’t; that is too much a pull for me,” said the great engine built for hard work. Then the train asked another engine, and another, only to hear excuses and be refused. At last in desperation the train asked the little switch engine to draw it up the grade and down on the other side. “I think I can,” puffed the little locomotive, and put itself in front of the great heavy train. As it went on the little engine kept bravely puffing faster and faster, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.”

Then as it near the top of the grade, that had so discouraged the larger engines, it went more slowly, but still kept saying, “I–think–I–can, I–think–I–can.” It reached the top by dint of brave effort and then went on down the grade, congratulating itself, “I thought I could, I thought I could.”

To think of hard things and say, “I can’t” is sure to mean “Nothing done.” To refuse to be daunted and insist on saying, “I think I can,” is to make sure of being able to say triumphantly by and by, “I thought I could, I thought I could.”

Virtually every endeavor in this life falls into one of 4 Quadrants:

1. Those things that are EASY and WORTH IT.
2. Those things that are DIFFICULT and WORTH IT.
3. Those things that are EASY and NOT WORTH IT.
4. Those things that are DIFFICULT and NOT WORTH IT.

When it comes to Quadrant 1, the things that are both EASY and WORTH IT, should we do those things?  Of course, they are WORTH IT.  Being EASY doesn’t trivialize them or make them any less significant.  All it means is DON’T WORRY!  Don’t stress over them.  Just DO them.  After all, they are not only WORTH IT, they are also EASY.

We will skip Quadrant 2 for now and come back to it in a moment.  When it comes to Quadrant 3, the things that are EASY and NOT WORTH IT, should we do those things?  Absolutely NOT.  They are NOT WORTH IT.  Not worth the time.  Not worth the effort, no matter how easy they are.  Just because they are easy is not reason enough to do them.  They still take time, one of your most precious commodities.  Don’t waste your time on EASY things that are NOT WORTH IT.

The 4th Quadrant consists of those things that are DIFFICULT and NOT WORTH IT.  Should we do those things?  You would have to be out of your mind.  If you are not going to do things that are EASY and NOT WORTH IT, why on Earth would you bang your head against the wall and waste your time doing things that are NOT WORTH and downright DIFFICULT to boot?  To me this it the biggest no-brainer.  Being DIFFICULT doesn’t automatically make something WORTH doing.  DIFFICULTY and WORTH must be evaluated independently.  Don’t do things that are NOT WORTH IT, even if they are EASY, and certainly not if they are DIFFICULT.

Well, that brings us back to Quadrant 2, those things that are DIFFICULT and WORTH IT.  Should we do those things?  Of course we should, they are WORTH IT, meaning they are WORTH the DIFFICULTY that must be overcome in order to accomplish them.  Ultimately, it is the portion of the equation you focus on that will determine your success.

Will you focus on the DIFFICULTY?  If that is your primary focus then you will be like the “Little Engine that COULDN’T” defeating yourself with your own limiting beliefs before you ever begin.  Or, will you be like “The Little Engine That Could” focusing on the WORTH, the value, the positive, believing you can and continuing in that belief all the way until you are celebrating that you COULD.

I think I CAN… I think I CAN… I think I CAN… I KNEW I COULD… I KNEW I COULD…

I KNEW I COULD!!!

To your SUCCESS!

Kip Kint
Success Coach & President
Mission Ignition

When something is both DIFFICULT AND “WORTH IT” your success with that thing will depend on your focus.  If you focus on the difficulty of the thing you are defeated before you begin, if you even begin at all.  If you focus on the fact that it is “WORTH IT” to you, then you are acknowledging up front that it is worth the effort required to overcome the difficulty associated with it.

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Mission Ignition Success Blog.  I hope to warm you up with more insight into principles of effectiveness and success, so pull up a chair and put another blog on the fire (sorry, couldn’t resist).  I hope this week’s thought will shed a little light on your path to success.

This week’s blog is just a little longer than usual, but will be well worth the extra two minutes you spend reading it. I thought I would share one of my favorite stories.  It is based on actual facts and statistics provided by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) and it has significant relevance to our journey to success.  I help my clients all the time with their missions, values and visions.  These documents are not only very touching and inspirational, but they typically paint a pretty lofty picture, as they should.  In fact, many clients will describe the mission they discover and the vision they create as a description of their “ideal” or “perfect”.  There is just one problem - they are not perfect.  I am not perfect.  You are not perfect.  So how does an imperfect person live a perfect (or near perfect) mission?  The answer is “Constant Course Correction.”  Enjoy the story; it illustrates this principle beautifully.

TO ERR IS HUMAN
by Raymond Jones

If you were to take a long trip, say from San Francisco to Hawaii, aboard a 747 with several other people, you might be appalled if you knew who was flying the airplane.  It is not the pilots; it is a couple of guys named Fred and George.

Fred and George are two black boxes, and they really are referred to as Fred and George.  Fred is a gizmo called an Inertial Navigation System.  Fred knows at every moment exactly where the airplane is and where it is supposed to be.  In the old days a human navigator took a look at his instruments and did some figuring, and by the time he had the position worked out the plane was long from that spot.  Fred knows now where the plane is.

George is the autopilot.  He moves the controls to guide the airplane this way and that, speed it up or slow it down.  He and Fred talk to each other constantly.  If their conversation were in English, it would sound something like this:  Fred will say, “George, we’re off course two degrees to starboard. And George will say, O.K. Fred, I’ll fix it.”

“George, we’re off course three degrees to port.”
“O.K. Fred, I’ll fix it.”
“George, we’re forty knots below our airspeed.”
“O.K. Fred, I’ll fix it.”
“George, we’re three hundred feet too low.”
“O.K. Fred, I’ll fix it.”

This conversation continues all the way to Hawaii, and George and Fred bring the giant plane within a thousand yards of the runway in Honolulu within five minutes of the scheduled time of arrival.

The incredible thing is not so much the accuracy of Fred and George, but the fact that the airplane has been in error 90% of the time of its flight.  In error 90% of the time and still it lands on target and on schedule!

The secret is that George made thousands of errors in driving the airplane, but for each error Fred called out a correction and George corrected.  The flight line was made up of thousands of small jogs that criss-crossed the ideal straight flight line and still put the airplane at its destination when it was suppose to be there.  A rocket to the moon travels in exactly the same way.

If we human beings could see that we can get a 747 to Honolulu or a rocket to the moon even having been in error 90% of the time, we might be a little less uptight about being in error ourselves.

There’s nothing that kills performance like fear of failure, fear of being foolish, fear of being caught in error.  We are particularly prone to this fear.

The secret to the success of Fred and George is correction.  They work as a perfect team.  Fred spots an error.  George corrects it immediately.  Some human beings work that way.  Most don’t.

To be in life means we are constantly off course.  What is important is not that we are off course, but whether or not we make the corrections that need to be made.  Human beings differ from Fred and George in one important and often fatal respect - the desire to protect one’s position.

Suppose Fred and George were human and Fred had just pointed out for the fiftieth time that George was wrong.  George, the human George, would likely reply, “Will you leave me alone!  I’m doing the best that I can.  If you think you can do any better, come and fly this thing yourself.”

Fred and George, the machines, don’t do that.  They work together and get the job done.  Human beings don’t like correction.  They prefer to protect the position they have taken.  But, in reality, any response that takes offense to correction is inappropriate.  If the person who gives you correction is a fool, to be upset by a fool is to make yourself an even greater fool.  If the input is of value, then to not consider it places you once again in the position of a fool.

Most people don’t make the necessary corrections because they are too busy being concerned with protection.  Most people’s failures in life are a product of protecting themselves when they should have been correcting themselves.

It is almost as if people drive down the highway of life and suddenly notice that the gas gauge is nearly empty.  Instead of correcting, pulling into a gas station, they cover up the gauge and pretend it isn’t there, hoping that when they wake up in the morning, an elf, Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny will have filled up the gas tank.

The unwillingness to be in error and correct it is the source of most failures.  Somehow the notion persists that you can get away from failure, that we can succeed enough to never fail again.  That possibility just doesn’t exist.  It is like trying to eat once and for all.

Successful people, like the 747 airplane, are willing to live in error and are willing to correct.  They are people who are busily doing what they don’t know for sure how to do.  They recognize that life is not a riskless process.

“George, you aren’t going in the right direction!”
“O.K. Fred, I”ll fix it.”

To your Success!

Kip Kint
Success Coach & President
Mission Ignition

How are you doing this week?  Are you executing according to plan?  How’s your balance?  Are you fulfilling your community responsibilities, taking your spouse on a date, playing with the kids, reading, exercising, and walking on water on a regular basis?  It sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?  How is it even possible to do all the things that are important to us?  Here are a couple of ways that many people try:

1.  Sleep 8 hours

2.  Try to get everything done (without much success) in 16 hours

3.  Repeat until you die

or maybe you are doing it like this:

1. Sleep 4 hours

2. Try to get everything done (without much success) in 20 hours

3. Repeat until you die at a much younger age

Seriously, you’ve heard it before, “If I just had more time I could get it all done.” The only problem is you can’t do “it all” because “it all” means everything, as in “every single thing”.  If you can provide the name of one person that can do “it all” (mortals only please), then I will concede that I am wrong about this.  Until then we must acknowledge that time management is a misnomer.  Here are two schools of thought from two very famous people in history:

Isaac Newton: Time is absolute, regardless of human experience.

Albert Einstein: Time is relative to human experience.

Who is right?  Well, ask yourself, do you remember the first few minutes of your day like this, “6:00 AM…  6:01 AM…  6:02 AM…”  or more like this, “Alarm went off…  hit the snooze…  alarm went off again… got up…  exercised…  took a shower…  ate breakfast… drove to work.”

The basic element of time is not the second, or the minute as Newton might have argued, but rather “the event” in our human experience as Einstein suggested.  I have read similar ideas from other great authors. If there is such a thing as time management then the key to it lies in controlling our events.  The only way that can be done is to make better choices about what we will do, and what we will NOT do.  Who would have thought that all of this effectiveness, balance, organization, and time management stuff would all boil down to one, simple, lasting, proven principle… Accountability!

We are accountable for the choices we make. We cannot be effective and simultaneously blame others for our seeming lack of time. Personal Effectiveness and Victimism are mutually exclusive. You can’t be both a victim and effective at the same time. We all have the same amount of time, 168 hours, every week! So, improve your choices and you improve your time. In a sense you will be able to manufacture it. Oh, you won’t REALLY have more, but it will FEEL that way, and in the end that is all that matters. You will be less stressed and more productive. You will be less overwhelmed and more balanced. You will be spending the right amount of time on the right things instead of wasting time trying to do “it all.”

Success is all about choice and accountability.

So, what are your thoughts?  I encourage you to post your comments and discuss your insights and paradigms.  We can all benefit from sharing our successes and insights with each other.

To your Success!

Kip Kint
Success Coach & President
Mission Ignition

Once again it is time to Ignite the Fire! This week I would like to share with you a little from the Success Coaching book I’m currently writing called “The Core 4: Principles of Success (V⁴)“:

I. Vision: To have vision one must see things clearly, or in other words, as they truly are. It starts with discovering the truth about yourself, your desires, and your purpose - who and how you desire to be. Be a Visionary for your own life (discover and clarify your own personal Mission, Vision, Values, & Strategy).

II. Voice: Who’s voice? Your Voice, Their Voice, The Individual Voice, The Group Voice. All voices must be heard, but even more important, they must be understood. Be a Communicator. To effectively communicate is to be in a state of intimate, heightened sensitivity and receptivity with another person or with one’s surroundings. (Empathy, Understanding, Connection, Influence).  Without effective communication there can be no understanding.  Without understanding there can be no trust.  Without trust there can be no influence.

III.  Vitality: To Live with Vitality is to live life being full of life. The Latin root of Vitality is Vita, which literally means Life. To be truly successful one must live life in a state of vibrancy; fully awake, fully alive, and balanced physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. These four areas of balance are absolutely essential to Vitality. Vitality is based on the principle of renewal. If you do not renew yourself then you will lose Vitality, and Quality of Life along with it.  You cannot truly be of service to anyone without excellent Vitality. This goes back to an old Chinese Proverb that says: You cannot give from an empty vessel; to give to others, you must fill yourself.

IV. Velocity: The Speed of Motion & the Force of Action required to break through Inertia and achieve Systemic Momentum.  To achieve Velocity one must have a Propulsion System. Only an effective system which is consistently adhered to can create the Perpetual Systemic Momentum (a.k.a. habits of effectiveness) needed to pull free from the inertia of life’s challenges and our own ineffectiveness. This system (a system of systems really) includes systems for Planning, Execution, Evaluation, Communication, Organization, Accountability, Follow-through, and others.

As illustrated in the diagram below, the intersection where personal application of these success principles meet is where success begins and where it is sustained:

In summary, there is no great mystery to success.  If you are not limiting yourself by negative thinking, if you believe you can have more, do more, be more, then all that is left is to apply The Core 4.  These timeless principles of success, when properly applied and lived by, are the very keys to unlocking success like you have never had before.

To your success!

Kip Kint

Success Coach & President

Mission Ignition