Successful Blog

Beach Notes: Brush Turkeys

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

Australian brush turkeys, also called scrub or bush turkeys. The male is building the hollowed mound nest from leaves, other combustible material and earth. Typically more than one female will lay eggs there and the male then tends the nest for the next seven weeks till hatching. He checks the temperature regularly with his bill, then taking bits out or adding, to manage the temperature in a range of 33-38 degrees C (91-100 F). They look cute enough, but create a lot of mess along the beach walkways and if they nest near backyard gardens are known to acquire the gardeners’ mulch for their nests. Which may help to explain why they are listed on one site as one of a group of Australian “birds behaving badly.”

Hope your weekend doesn’t leave you thinking that brush turkeys have been around.

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

My First Big Failure and What It Meant …

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about my first big failure and what it meant

When I was in my 20s, I lost my job. The guy who said good-bye, my boss, did it in the nicest way. He talked about territory restructuring and other changes. The company gave me a lovely package so that I could move back to my home in Chicago. I might have tried to believe that I had no part in what happened, but in my heart I knew my job was gone because of nonperformance.

It was the first time I had failed at anything.

I’m not going to tell it was fun or that I learned a lesson then that changed my life. It wasn’t and I didn’t.

It took me a long time to even make sense of it. I was a winner, always successful. How was it that I totally missed on this one? How was it that I couldn’t seem to find a way to get to the winning? How did I get myself lost in a spiral of unhappiness that made every small loss lead to another slightly bigger one? What was I not doing or seeing?

Really I was blind to one HUGE thing.

It was the wrong job for me.

How hard I’d tried to fit myself into a space that didn’t fit me.

I bent and twisted, smashed and squished, curled and flattened, until I was walking in circles without direction. All the time that I was doing that, I was sure that my lack of performance was the problem — it was only a symptom. The problem was that I was trying to reconfigure myself to fit a job I’d taken.

We live in a time finding the right job may seem a challenge, but living in the wrong one still isn’t the answer.

Ever wonder what you bring to the world? … where you belong?

Look at what you’ve always done well, what problems you’ve always solved for other people, the things you do that other folks rely on. You’ve been successful before. Look inside those successes. You’ll find the answers have always been there.

I can say it’s so.
I know.
I’ve lived it.

All that my first big failure meant was that wasn’t MY path to change the world.

Be irresistible.

Liz's Signature

Train Your Brain to Generate Ideas When You Need Them!

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Stop Stopping the Ideas from Coming

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Walking, pacing, staring at a blank page, tearing at your hair, and wishing you could be just about anywhere that isn’t this place … the place where you need an idea and your mind is a blank.

The adrenalin is pumping. Mental sweat is dripping. You hear the sound of your own breathing and the irritating tick, tick, ticking of a clock — though every timepiece you own is digital.

Your mind is working overtime to find irrelevant attractions and less than useful distractions keep interrupting any chance of a reasonable thought that appears. One unanswered question — How will I ever get this done? — is from every direction neutralizing any chance of a new thought.

It’s not that you’re out of ideas.

It’s that you need to stop stopping them.

The RAS — Our Brain’s Stimulus Management System

Ever noticed that the best ideas come when you’re least trying to have them? Great ideas show up when we’re falling asleep, taking a walk or a shower, unpacking boxes and boxes, or sitting outside watching people and clouds go by.

Times like those, ideas seem to be everywhere.
But when we need one, we can seem to see one anywhere.

The problem isn’t that we don’t have anything to stimulate ideas! The problem is that we have too many things! Really.

Everyone has plenty of what they need to get ideas growing. The key is knowing how to work mindfully rather than on adrenalin.

The stimuli that get ideas growing are continuously and constantly bombarding our brains, specifically our subconscious. They come at such a rate that, if our brains let them all in, we wouldn’t be able to pay attention to anything — we’d be distracted by blinking, how it feels to be walking. the sound of our breathing, or the feedback of the chair where we’re sitting.

To keep our brains efficient, we come equipped –- at no extra charge –- with a stimulus management unit called the Reticular Activating System (RAS). The RAS is a valve-like screening device at the base of our brains that filters out most of the unwanted stimuli. Think of it as closed door gateway that allows only useful information into our conscious brains.

Unfortunately that same RAS gateway can close access to the great ideas that we’ve been reaching for. The more adrenalin we have flowing the more it’s likely to be closing.

The good news is that the RAS can be trained.

Train Your Brain to Generate Ideas When You Need Them!

Anyone can increase the number of useful ideas they have. The art is in training our minds to see the ideas and pull them in before our thoughts edit, deflect, or vaporize them.

The best way to stop stopping the ideas from coming is to teach yourself how to keep the RAS open. Here’s how to how to practice using the filter the way you want.

Still yourself — mentally and physically. Spend a few minutes a day in stillness. Practice stillness so that you get good at it. Use that still time to develop these three process models. These ways of thinking keep the filter focused on finding the opportunity in a problem or a new idea from an old one.

  • Change points of vision. View the question from the inside out, vertically, laterally, at the detail level, and the aerial view.
  • Change your value system. Imagine the suggestions that you might get from a designer, a composer, a writer, a mathematician, a coder, a dancer, a chef, and understanding friend. Then do it again from the view of an employee, a vendor, a partner, a stockholder, a CEO, and a competitor.
  • Change your scope and sequence. Tinker with ideas and viewpoints to stretch them, bend them, reconstruct them into solutions that fit and work perfectly in specific situations. Make it bigger, smaller. Make last shorter and longer. Take out crucial steps and put them in a different order. Add something that doesn’t belong.

If you get in the practice of thinking during stillness, you’ll find that when you need ideas in a hurry, you can stop, be still and get them.

And

None of your decisions will be reactions to a crisis.

Have you ever tried anything like this?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Beach Notes: Time to Reflect

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by Guest Writers Suzie Cheel and Des Walsh

Right now on my healing journey I have been givine lots of time and space for reflection. The beach is my favorite place to just sit and be still. I find the calmness of the sea and the ever changing patterns that nature provides is the perfect place for me to just be. – Suzie

Do you have a quiet space where when you need to recharge or just take time out that you go?

Suzie Cheel & Des Walsh

What Great Interviewers Ask to Always Hire the Best

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Guest Post
by Riley Kissel

Insight on Interviews from Stan Duncan, SVP, Westfield

People power boils down to one thing: potential. Just ask Stan Duncan Senior Executive Vice President of U.S. Human Resources and Global Head of Management for Westfield. Rome could always have been built with enough hands, but those hands needed a dream to follow and voices to guide them. In the 20-plus years that Stan Duncan has worked with human resources divisions in several multinational companies, he’s learned a thing or two about what makes a good job candidate. He’s learned which specific resources are vital to those who are ultimately hired and, more importantly, which questions to ask those candidates.

Duncan says that it’s all about asking the candidate to tell you what they want, what they have done, what will make them successful and “why.”

According to Duncan, having a prospective employee reveal what they see as their own abilities and competence is a surefire way to not only get a raw understanding of their talents and pros and cons, but also to get an understanding of their ability to adapt and their potential to last in the long term. “We aren’t looking for super-humans; in my two decades as an HR executive, I’ve yet to meet one. We want people who are talented, but most importantly, willing to grow and change as the company grows and changes, too.” I believe people who know a lot about themselves do the best selling themselves in an interview. Basically, make sure you’re introducing yourself, presenting the real you in the interview.

Duncan is certainly not shy about his two decades’ of experience as an interviewer. That was proven when he was asked what he’s learned about hiring the right people: “Doing this for 20 years certainly helps you see the big picture; it’s all about potential.” Duncan has been around long enough to see what works for the long-term and what only succeeds in the short term, and his reflections have resulted in him founding an HR model that prizes a prospective worker’s long-term potential over short-term spunk.

“Working in human resources for companies that focus on everything from career apparel, managed services, aerospace glass manufacturing to chemical agent creation has allowed me to see what always stays the same despite the change in labor practices, techniques, and strategies. Human resources are universal in that HR personnel are always seeking out that potential for a long-term employee presence once they’re hired. That’s because longevity in employment means a stronger, more developed team, which increases the likelihood that each member reaches their potential due to the longstanding support of one another.”

The beauty of Ancient Rome would never have been erected by unorganized stone cutters with no collective vision, no matter how many were hanging around looking for work, which demonstrates the power of potential. Without a guiding vision, the kind that an institution like Westfield has and HR leaders like Duncan possess, the potential of individual talent to serve something greater is often wasted. Asking the right questions and paying close attention as human resources workers is the only way to uncover that potential and make sure the talent stays around long enough to make an impact. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your company won’t be, either. Let Stan Duncan’s success show you what can be accomplished in 20 years if you put your mind to it.
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Riley Kissel is a freelance writer who covers many industries with style. You can find out more about him at RileyKissel.com

Thanks, Riley, for new insights on a critical topic.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!