Change the Outcome

I attended an amazing training session with The Coaches Institute this weekend...more on that to follow over the next year.  In the meantime, I want to share with you one of the things that occurred to me.  We all have patterns in our life.  Some of them are good and some of them are not.  For example, for me, it always seems that just when I've found an area in which I can contribute quietly and effectively (because no one else cares about it) there is that person who suddenly cares just as much and beats me out for the job.  I'm not proud to admit that for a couple of years, I wondered why I should bother caring about anything because this will always be the outcome.  This weekend I remembered why I should care.  Because caring is so much more fun than not caring.  I also thought a lot about how to handle that person the next time they showed up in my life to take something I care so much about.  Then it finally occurred to me.  If I want a different result, I need to do something different to achieve my desired result.  After all, Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  And you might be wondering what it is that I'm going to do differently?  Well, thanks to a wonderful weekend of insight through coaching by the best group classmates I've ever had...I realized that I have a tendency to undermine myself by floating ideas rather than proposing them.  It may sound like word-play, but it is more  than just the words.  It is the attitude with which an idea is floated until it finds a champion or actually championing the idea from the beginning.  It means putting my ideas out there as my ideas and gracefully handling rejection if they aren't enthusiastically embraced.  What sounds like the easiest thing to fix is now my main professional focus for 2012.  What will you do this year to change the negative repeating pattern in your life?  Join me in this ambitious goal!