I would like to open this newsletter by sharing a few thoughts from my good friend Ford Kyes of ActionCOACH Pinellas. Ford’s firm is consistently ranked as one of the top business coaching firms in the United States. The nexus of their exceptional success comes from the unique ability to combine personal empowerment with tight attention to financial management. I have seen the results and they can be spectacular. From Ford –
Last time I checked, we all have the same amount of time each day and we all know how much that is: 24 hours, or 1440 minutes or 86,400 seconds are in each day. The difference between successful people and those wishing they were is how they choose to invest their time.
And when is the last time you didn’t find the time to do the things you REALLY want to do? I could call the “busiest” person I know (maybe that’s you) and tell him/her that I have 1 million dollars waiting for him, if he just makes the time to travel to California to personally pick it up. He’d be there (wouldn’t you).
Almost everyone I’ve ever asked tells me they value integrity as one of their most important (usually top five) values. What is the definition of integrity? For me, it’s doing what you say you will do. That does not include doing it partially and providing an excuse (like “I was just too busy” or “I just ran out of time”).
I wish people would stop saying “I didn’t have time”, or even better, “I was too busy”. Who isn’t busy these days? It would be far better if they were simply honest and told the truth. This starts, by the way, with being honest with themselves. The “truth” was they weren’t really interested, or, they had other higher priority things they had to or liked to do, or, they wasted so much of their time on unimportant but seemingly urgent matters that they ran out of available time for things that were truly important.
Please don’t use time as a reason for not doing something you agreed to do. Reasons are simply Excuses and Excuses are lame and below the line.
(Note: This was adopted from a blog Ford Kyes read on linkedin – original author unknown.)
Hope you enjoyed Ford’s comments and that you invest your time wisely this month.
