Once you had to be up early every morning, suited ready, sowing seeds, driving results making crucial far ranging decisions.  Now you are wondering what is on morning tv.  Once you were cheered when you were brought in a room; now people avert their eyes.  Once you were surrounded by top staff, extended invitations of honor and now you are with the “B” and “C” team.  Once you depended on loyalty; now you hope for discretion and benefit of the doubt.

As an executive coach I would diagnose you with a low-grade case of mourning.  You were rejected by people you once esteemed.  In time the ego can rebel.  You can’t get over what just happened to you.  Inside you have moments of hubris and then a twinge of self doubt.  You feel something happen when after the loss people say you should have been promoted, given the job, you feel validated, but it still doesn’t change anything.

You can look for excuses or you can look at yourself and say what role did I play in this?  You either win or you learn.  You can also understand what role others played in the outcome and acknowledge that you have a chance to build a different future. Once you own what happened and realize you have a different future, then you can start to build again and take the lessons learned and look for new connections, a group of people that need and want what you have to offer.  Once you become future focused you have a chance to see what is next for you. One thing you will need to do is reconcile the story you tell yourself about what happened.  Calibrating your thoughts into creating a new vision for a different future is key to moving from what could have been to what will be.  Surround yourself with people that believe in you and with you to help rebuild confidence and belief in yourself.

Fuel your dreams with thoughts of what could be and start again, create a new plan. The most successful people fail their way to success.  Progress is about trial and error.  There are over 30 million companies in the US.  You will never live long enough to make a contribution to many, and there is abundant opportunity.  You have to get off the bench, suit up and go out to the field, engage those who are playing, inquire what they need, evaluate what you offer, package it for them in a meaningful way and go make a difference.  Life is short and taking a gap year may be ok, taking 2 or 3 gap years is tough.

Every bit of encouragement and every opportunity comes from people.  Your goal right now should be to commit and go connect with people.  Meet them and see how you can help them, don’t go meet them and moan and plead and pitch what you want.  Instead see what they need and how you can help them.  You can do this, it is a choice.  We make choices and then our choices make us.  Today is full of opportunity so go out in this big beautiful world and see what happens.

One of the best gifts you can give anyone is being a good example.  Modeling good thoughts, choices and actions is a gift to those that you influence and observe what you do and how you do it.

Building this network takes effort.  Most people dislike networking events where people are schmoozing and trolling for prospects to sell.  My preferred approach is to meet people in a variety of settings professional, personal, community, recreational, etc…I am naturally curious and learn about their interests and business and over time I build a database of people that I may refer.  I intentionally set out to invest in others more than I want to ask for something or take from others.  Part of my personal brand is to be generous, to invest and develop others.  What I have found is the more I invest in others the more opportunities I have.  One of my most valuable tools is my 30 year network of proven best practice relationships.

Not only do you have to meet them, write down their vitals in a. database you then have to maintain the relationship and periodically check in.  Send an article of interest, send congrats on a promotion or change, inquire if they know about a new trend or merger, touch in on important anniversaries.  Being intentional about connecting is disciplined hard work and totally worth the effort.

Happy networking!

When you make choices that align with your dreams you will find you are in harmony with yourself.  When you find others that share your purpose, cause and meaning and do life together joy is multiplied.  When you find someone who will inspire you to be who you want to be you find a kinship and connection that will help you endure the pursuit of your dreams when the inevitable challenges come.

You have the power to decide and each choice and action when compiled is the sum of your life.  Dream big and choose well.

Put the list in your pocket.  Take out your phone and schedule meeting with yourself every 15 minutes.  Every 15 minutes pull out the list and take action on completing the tasks.  By midday if anything is preventing you form doing the important things consider how to change the environment or schedule to make time for the most important.  By the end of the day you should have accomplished at least 4-5 things toward your goals.  If you failed to accomplish 4-5 things then you know you worked on other things that are not as important and tomorrow you should commit to the task on your card.

Look for patterns or triggers that pull you off task.  Figure out how to create a moat to protect your time to focus on the most important list in your pocket.

If you think you are the entire picture or most important you will never see the big picture.  Is your priority the team or yourself?  Have your actions over the last week demonstrated a focus on self or on team?  What percent of time did you spend on you or on helping others?  All players have a place where they add the most value.  If each person is not doing what adds the most value to the team, you won’t achieve your potential as a team.  Great leadership must know the individual contributors, the team and the situations.

You should constantly ask yourself what is my best contribution and how can I help my teammates?  Build yourself and your team today to be able to meet the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow.

1. Define team challenges and opportunities
2. Define team goals
3. Define team outcomes
4. Define individual challenges and opportunities
5. Define individual goals
6. Define individual outcomes
7. Make sure team and individual outcomes are in alignment

There are résumé virtues, which may make you rich, but it is the eulogy virtues that will make you wealthy. You can be rich and irresponsible or responsible. You can be rich and meaningless or meaningful, but wealth means you have accepted the responsibility that goes with riches. Being merely rich is about counting money. Wealth is concerned with what counts in a life well-lived. You can be independently rich, but you cannot be independently wealthy, because your family, your neighborhood, colleagues and others have a rightful claim on your life.

Your eulogy virtues are the ones talked about at your funeral.  Were you kind, brave, and honest?  Were you faithful, loyal and virtuous?  Were you full of character and adventure?  How did you show up in the world, timid and shy, jubilant and exciting? Who and what did you love and how did you love them?  What did you find important and meaningful?  How did you enrich the people and community you lived in?

Our work is often a vehicle for loving and caring for the needs of others.  We do it with those we work with and for and in what service or product we provide.  You are the author of your life and you want to invest in both resume and eulogy virtues.