Knock The Little Guy Off Your Shoulder

When Ernie Els won the British Open, he blew a three-shot lead with three holes to go to force a playoff with two other players. He said that as victory loomed on the horizon the voices of doubt returned. He heard the little guy on his shoulder say that he didn't really deserve to win. In the end, he fought off the doubts, stopped listening to the little guy and won the tournament on the fifth playoff hole. Later, he admitted to hiring a sports psychologist to deal with the overwhelming shadow that Tiger Woods cast over his sport. His mind had become filled with doubts and his performance had suffered dramatically over the previous year.

Imagine this. Golf is an individual sport. Tiger Woods cannot touch his club or interfere with his ball. However, the prospect of trying to beat Woods weighed on him so heavily that his performance suffered. Ernie Els is a very talented golfer. He won two majors while in his early twenties. Yet he allowed the thoughts of another player to interfere with his thinking and his performance.

For many people, the cascading stock market and the slow economy have become their personal Tiger Woods. The stock market cannot touch their sales presentations, their management meetings or their individual conversations with direct reports. Yet, they have allowed the economy and the bad business news to interfere with their thinking which has hurt their performance. This has led to the proverbial self-fulfilling prophecy of having a bad performance year.

Here's a suggestion: take the little guy on your shoulder who's whispering doubts in your ear and knock him out with three punches.

Punch #1: Make a list of all of your strengths. Ask other people what your strengths are and add those to your list. Review your list daily. Realize that your strengths are more than sufficient to overcome the economic challenges you are facing today.

Punch #2: Recall your past success stories. Mentally relive the times you achieved what others thought you could not achieve. Identify what obstacles you overcame, how you overcame them and why you were successful. List the lessons you learned from each experience. Then look at the challenges you are facing today and ask yourself how you can apply what worked for you in the past.

Punch #3: Visualize exactly what you want to achieve in the current situation and how you are going to achieve it. (Remember: don't give any time to the little guy on your shoulder who is trying to distract you from staying focused. Ignore the talk about how it will never work. Knock that little guy off and stomp on him.)

Your success is what you make it. It's not in the hands of the economy or the stock market. Right now knock the little guy out with three punches and get on with your day.

Take care and have a great month!

Dan Coughlin

Accelerate Update This section is always current to the current month

I suppose every book changes an author's life to a certain degree. My first book, which was self-published in 1995, was called Inside Out: A Catalyst for Conscious Living. It's out of print now for a number of good reasons. The layout, which yours truly did, looks like something a first grader could do today. And the ideas are very theoretical, which doesn't fit my approach anymore. However, I read the book a few months ago, and I was pleased by how clearly I had explained my early thoughts on improving performance.

My second book, Corporate Catalysts: How to Make Your Company More Successful, Whatever Your Title, Income, or Authority was published in 2005 by Career Press. That book was a step forward in clarifying my ideas on improving performance and understanding how to write a whole book. It's one thing to dream about getting a book contract and another thing to write a 70,000 word manuscript.

My third book, ACCELERATE: 20 Practical Lessons to Boost Momentum, which was published in May 2007 by Kaplan Publishing, has changed my business dramatically. Up until that book was published, I mostly did projects for four companies: McDonald's, Marriott, GSD&M, and Toyota. In the past 12 months, I've worked with business owners, executives, and managers within dozens of small, medium, and massive organizations in more than 20 industries ranging from boats to banks to software to financial services to trucking to lighting to home healthcare to hospitals to optometrists. It's been an exciting adventure.

If you want to see my speaking calendar for 2008, which we'll try to update every two weeks, please click here.

Currently, I have 66 speeches scheduled for 2008. If you would like for me to speak at one of your events in 2008 or 2009, feel free to contact me at dan@thecoughlincompany.com and I will be glad to see if we can make it work.

If you want to see my speaking topics and a video of footage from some of my keynote speeches, please click here.

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