Daily Influence

Failure is one of life's most opportune times to learn something that can offer the most advantage.  As Henry Ford stated, "Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently." When we change our perception of failure, we create opportunities and advantages from failure. Produced by NOVA Media

In this episode, we discuss Goals and the importance they play in being our best self (I)individual.  We are strong advocates of SMART: Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Timely  SMART goal setting is the prelude to SMART tactics and offers us the best opportunity to prepare to reach whichever place we are striving to reach in our areas of influence.  SMART also offers us the best opportunit...

Willpower is our inner voice that keeps up the motivation that can keep you going forward toward a milestone or goal, when quitting seems like the only option.  Our attitude and maturity can play a big part of our willpower.  Our foundation can also influence our willpower and understanding these aspects is key to managing our willpower and being able to build it back up.  Key takeaways are unders...

Maturity has little to do with age, and we will discuss this in Episode 34.  Your maturity is determined by how you act in the world, within your areas of influence.  How you respond to the differing issues in your life can influence the perception of your maturity for self and others.  Maturity is not synonymous with positive influence. It is not good or bad, and it is individual to one's par...

One of our goals at The "I" in Team Series and with our Daily Influence podcast is to further the importance of Individualism.   The next few episodes will be diving into this effort and why we feel the common understanding of individualism is incorrect.  We have previously identified that singular individual to us or when we are writing about one person alone, we use the lowercase 'i&...

Today's episode is a reflection of our Foundation discussions.   We began with Self-Awareness and how understanding self is an important aspect of our Foundation.  We talked about our habits - good and bad - and how understanding our habits can help us create and maintain a positive environment for ourself and our areas of influence  We moved to a discussion about Character and how our charact...

Empathy is the ability to recognize, categorize, and understand the emotions another person is feeling and then respond in a way that makes the experience comforting for everyone in that particular area of influence.  Key takeaways is understanding empathy in your area of influence.  Learning how to utilize empathy as an individual and a leader.  Learning that empathy is not acceptance but is unde...

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...