Daily Influence

Perceptions are not always right. Your personality or behavior can betray you - good and bad.  Unfortunately, oftentimes, Perception is Reality.  Even a person with good character can be misperceived.  A direct person can be labeled rude or inpatient, and be of very high character.  A person who is friendly and amenable with everyone can be of low character. But perceptions can find us attracted t...

Your Character is the culmination of your behavior in all aspects and is generally measured by your influence on self and others.   How we communicate and how we perceive others' communication can be influenced by our character.   We discuss the differences between personality and character, and how  these can be confused and lead to pitfalls and/or opportunity.   Measuring character takes tim...

We all have habits - good and bad.  Habits are those automatic actions we have as humans that can oftentimes define part of us.   Creating and overcoming habits is the discussion today and we dive into the different kinds of habits and how to better understand our own habits and those of others.  

Self-awareness comes from self-exploration and self-discovery.  As we always do, we urge you during any self-reflection that if you experience anxiety or negativity, you seek support from a licensed professional or close friend/confidant to help work through the issues causing the negativity.   The goal of becoming self-aware is understanding where you're at today in your mind and accepting th...

We recap the past eight episodes of The Daily Influence as we close out Who Am I? and move into discussing our individual Foundation.   We began this segment of episodes after our Focus section, and dove right into our Ego.  Ego is uniquely human and it can be an advantage or a detriment. Episode 18 is one you may want to listen to again and again.   Episode 19 - Self-Reflection took us on a journ...

Getting clarity in your life will require using the tools we have been discussing for the past 24 episodes.  Slowing down and gaining focus about our individual influence and that which influences us will help to bring clarity to our lives.  We can begin to or understand fully what our purpose is as an individual. And yes, we each have a purpose and we each matter.   Using the new understanding (c...

Believe it or not, we all have intuition.  I like to call it our minds' roadsign to opportunity and challenges.   When your mind offers up something that is often perceived as Intuition, slow down and pay attention.   If you look back at your individual experience with intuition, you may find a pattern that develops that can be learned from and can be used to help you be your best self in the...

We all lie to ourselves. Most of the time, they are white lies.  However, self-deception and self-justification can impede our understanding of who we are and can get in the way of opportunity and understanding of what may negatively influence us.  

Today is my 31st wedding anniversary, I'm reflecting on how this has influenced who I am!

Part of discovering who you are is discovering who you want to be.  Don't let physical attributes – looks, cars, clothes, jobs - define who you want to be.   Perception of how you want to be seen will be influenced by who you want to be. Use this as a tool.  We all have influence and are influenced. Understanding this influence will help us understand who we want to be. 

It's pretty cool that on the day I am flying to Ireland (my roots), this episode is coming out.   Roots is just what it sounds like and is the second part of Self-Reflection where we connect the dots to why looking in the mirror and understanding what has influenced us to this point in life is part of our roots.  We will share stories that contextualize the connections in a positive way and he...

This part of our podcast dives into the deeper part of our work: Self-Reflection.  Looking back at oneself in the mirror and unpacking ourselves can be uplifting and scary.  We will take you through how we self-reflect and how it has been beneficial for us in understanding some of the challenges we have with self, others, focus, slowing down and many of the other aspects we have been discussing  W...

"Who Am I?" will be a reflection on the (I)individual that you and/or your team are. We will dive into understanding the individual and we begin with Ego.   Ego is purely human and offers us challenges to being our best self, as well as advantages when applied positively to creating opportunities.   We will dive into Ego and its individual aspects that can propel you forward or alienate yo...

We have spent over a week discussing and unpacking how slowing down and gaining better focus can be an amazing individual advantage and provide for more positive opportunities.   We started this journey into Focus in Episode 8 with Deliberate Acts and how being deliberate is the ultimate way for individuals to slow down.   Episode 9 had us discussing the human tendency to take focus too far and ha...

We each have a different way in which we react to situations. When we slow down and gain focus, we can better understand our individual reactions and ensure that they are more appropriate for the individual and/or situation you are dealing with.  Key Takeaway: Negative reactions diminish or eliminate our individual advantages and opportunities.   If you feel you must react immediately, take a brie...

Happy Birthday to my daughter Kristin Jade! What is S.M.A.R.T.? Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Timely Many have heard of SMART Goals. We will be reviewing what each section of SMART is and why SMART Goals are just the beginning.  To be truly SMART in the workplace, you need: SMART Action  SMART Tactics SMART Communication  SMART is not just for work; it's for all aspects of your lif...

Your workplace, wherever that may be, should be conducive to your focus.    This is the primary theme of today's Daily Influence.  The human tendency to go too fast can be greatly influenced by their workplace.   We'll discuss how we challenged a client to encourage his team to slow down 15% to increase productivity; it worked.   Some environments require ‘speed of service’; think fast foo...

Our advice on Multitasking; Don’t do it! Multitasking is just another way to go too fast and create more work and problems in the future.   The American Psychological Association states; “Doing more than one task at a time, especially complex tasks, takes a toll on productivity.” (2006) “Multitasking: Switching Costs”.   We will be diving into the negativity of what is often touted as a positive h...

Does time have to fly by? Isn't a minute the same for everyone?  If yes, why do so many people make the statement; "Time flies by so quickly"? Did you know the current foundation and use of time and time zones only dates back to 1884? What did humans do with this new structured time measurement and management opportunity?   How did the creation of this structure speed up time for human...

One of the best ways to slow down is to be Intentional. Setting intentions is making a plan for how to think and act in advance.   Today, we discuss the difference between intentions and goals. We will share six key intentions used by Brian that may provide better context as to how intentions can be introduced into your daily life.   Key takeaways are: One of the best ways to slow down is to becom...

Our best opportunity as humans to make our best decisions is in the present moment.  When we have balance of our understanding and focus on the task at hand, and all that has influenced us for that task, we can be our best self.  Living in the present can be difficult, our minds like to digress, wander and visualize the past and future, putting us into that comfortable focus where we create opport...

In Episode 5, we discussed the tendency we have to fall into our subconscious mode; or what we like to call Comfortable Focus.  Each human has one to many places they fall into this primarily human trait.  We talk about identifying your own comfortable focus triggers and how gaining control of them can lead to a more productive slow down moment and open you up to more productive individual influen...

We dive into individual focus and how to achieve it during this time in humanity where distraction is the norm.  Being deliberate is one action that can slow us down and gain us focus.  We will discuss how to create opportunities for deliberate acts and gain better focus as we learn to practice slowing down.

Our largest chapter in Individual Influence, Find the I in Team is Slow Down.  We have spent the past few episodes exploring the concepts of Thinking Forward, Environmental Urgency, our Subconscious Mode or Comfortable Focus and Immediate Gratification; all attributes that lead to going too fast.  In this episode we will reflect on these as we begin our pivot Focus and how it can be achieved.

Expectations today by humans are that we get immediate gratification of whatever it is we desire.  This can be an answer to a text, email or acceptance of our thoughts and actions.  When we slow down and understand the perils of immediate gratification, we open ourselves to better individual influence.