Are you midway through your career and wondering what direction to take it next? Or is some other looming decision driving you nuts because making difficult choices just seems too overwhelming?

Me, too! And I’m no stranger to making big changes. After an exciting, demanding and lucrative deal-making career I switched to a coaching career – teaching people how to master their own thinking in order to generate more success in their lives. Now I am expanding into speaking, writing and teaching online. I have so many irons in the fire and ideas swirl so fast that they actually clog my thinking and hold me back. Not helpful, brain!

In order to clear my own muddled mind, I like to use this framework to “test” each new idea that pops into my head and either pursue it, or trash it, quickly and without regret.

Here are my top 5 criteria for what to spend time pursuing:

1. People - I know that if I enjoy the people, I’ll enjoy the work. So I pursue ideas that place me with people who are thoughtful, creative, kind, prepared to take action, emotionally stable, interested in changing something, take responsibility, have a forward outlook, share truthfully, and want to make a difference in someone else’s life besides their own. What kind of people are your favorites? Focus on directions that place you amongst them.

2. Personal Power – Certain activities feed my creativity and ingenuity, two primary sources of my personal power. Where does your personal power come from? This is not about your power or authority over others, but your inner drive and fire. Pursue directions that provide energy, not those that sap it.

3. Profit - Profit takes many forms. Pursue directions that are lucrative, yes. But also those that bring you the profits of pleasure, intellectual stimulation, and outright joy. Jettison any thinking about directions that do not deliver an ample return on your investment – they are literally not worth it.

4. Passion – Following your passion is perhaps an overused phrase, but it does not necessarily mean drop everything and pursue your dreams of becoming an actress. I used to love creating deal spreadsheets – not because of the mental girations necessary to put the monster together, in fact I disliked that part! I loved it because it provided a tool to help solve a problem, to test and maneuver and reveal different angles and results. I love figuring out a solution that no one else has thought of – that’s a passion! And I still do that today – create new ways of thinking that help people find solutions to their own roadblocks, take charge of their future and learn to generate amazing new outcomes for themselves. What’s your passion? Pursue opportunities that allow you to experience it often.

5. Peace – Let’s face it: Everything involves some angst from time to time. But if something is troubling enough to keep you up at night however, you have two choices – either get more involved and fix it, or move away from it. Pursue directions that bring you peace, at least most of the time.

There you have it – 5 simple tests to guide your choices and clear a muddled mind about what directions to pursue. Try them for yourself!

photo credit Gustavo Facci

You’ve just been handed a “free” day, an extra day of your life, the first in four years. What should you do with it?

One thing is certain – you better decide RIGHT NOW, lest you spend the entire day making the decision how best to use it.

You could make it just like any other day. Get up, go to work, come home, watch some TV, go to bed. Day over.

Or… you could make the choice to use the Leap Day to take a LEAP!

Here are some LEAP suggestions to make this free day really count.

Work on something you absolutely hate. That’s right – just get it over with.

Work on something you absolutely love. Immerse yourself and see how great it feels.

Take the day off and do something completely out of the ordinary - go to the movies, to an art museum, or to the gym for the entire afternoon.

Call someone you’ve been thinking about.

Ask a burning question that you haven’t had the courage to ask.

Do someone an enormous favor or service.

Makeover something - your desk, your closet, your workshop.

Get started on a project.

Finish a project.

Plan something – a trip, a book, a conversation.

Investigate or learn something. Go to the library or get lost on Google really researching something you are interested in.

Now here’s the zinger. Did you know that you can make ANY day a LEAP day?

What if we all realized that EVERY day is a free day, a given day, an extra day that we can never count on? How would we change the way we spend the day?

Some disappointments are so enormous that a natural response is to look for someone to blame. Someone other than ourselves, that is.

When Giselle threw the receivers under the bus (“I can’t believe they dropped so many passes”), what she was really saying to Tom Brady was, “It’s not your fault. Don’t feel bad.” She was offering comfort, albeit at the expense of others.

But comfort at the expense of others is an excuse.

And there are 3 problems with excuses:

Excuses do not reveal the root cause of the problem.

Excuses do nothing to resolve the situation.

Excuses do not lead to improvement or the next win.

Tough-minded leaders do not accept excuses. In fact, tough-minded leaders will shoulder burdens that they are not even responsible for. Guilty by association.

Businesses, families, even societies, are like teams: you win and lose together. Every player has to perform at their peak AND the entire team has to pull together, without finger pointing or excuses. And if someone drops the ball, perhaps it was not thrown as well as it should have been.

How do you handle disappointment? Do you look for an excuse or do you try to learn from it and improve for next time?

Here are 5 ways to change how you deal with disappointment:

1. Ignore your first emotion. Letting an uprising of sadness or anger overtake you will only cloud your judgment and potentially lead to creating an even bigger problem than the one you have right now (ie. the media frenzy over Giselle’s comment.) If there was ever a time to invoke Emotional Intelligence, it is when sadness or anger are guiding you. Ignore these powerful but unhelpful first emotions!

2. Recognize the efforts of others. No one intentionally drops the ball, and who do you think feels the most devastated? The person who actually did drop the ball. Adding blame does nothing to change the outcome. When someone fails in a really big way, recognize that they gave it everything they had, and mistakes happen. A pat on the back works wonders to restore someone’s confidence in their own performance. And you’ll feel a lot better than if you ream them up and down.

3. Take responsibility. Choose guilt by association and own the entire mistake all on your own. Sound heavy? It’s actually enlightening to step up, put yourself in the middle of the huddle and say, “I could have done a better job.” Then get back out there and try again. I have the feeling that Brady did just that, after every dropped pass.

4. Look for the root cause. There are so many reasons mistakes happen. And sometimes there is no reason at all – just bad luck. Instead of quickly looking for someone or something to blame, step back and look underneath the mistake for the root cause. What happened just before the mistake occurred? Often the root cause lies there.

5. Make a decision. One reason mistakes feel so lousy is that they are an in-your-face demonstration that you have lost control. Take control back by making a decision to change something, practice something, learn something, purchase something – and then follow through with action that supports your decision. Be intentional, make a plan, and do it.

You’ll get over the disappointment in no time, AND set yourself up for success next time, when you choose these steps instead of wallowing in excuses and blame.

“Have a grand vision.” “Pluck the low-hanging fruit.” “Eat your frog first.” “Focus on the task at hand.” “Just do it!”

The motivational market is full of advice, all of it useful, some of it conflicting, and none of it perfect, on how to start every day leaping out of bed with energy and enthusiasm for accomplishing your to-do list.

And frankly, as much as I love the concept of tackling the hard stuff first, I just can’t get excited about starting every day by eating a frog*. I only want to do that when I absolutely HAVE to!

So, in addition to these effective but difficult-to-keep-up-day-in-and-day-out ideas, how can we learn to jumpstart every day?

My favorite technique is this: When you wake up, immediately think about something FUN you are going to do that day. (Hint: In order to do this, you need to have something FUN planned every day! It can be as small as enjoying a cup of coffee while you read the news on your iPad, but you have to recognize and acknowledge the activity as FUN.)

Why does this work? Because your first thoughts trigger the way you start your day (jumping out of bed with energy and enthusiasm). Even if your FUN plans are later in the day, anticipating FUN helps you get through whatever you do before the FUN. And the feeling of satisfaction after FUN will carry  you through the rest of the day. Some days, you might even have FUN twice!

(Note: If you notice an analogy between FUN and sex in this article, it is unintended, but also unavoidable. FUN that incorporates physical activity, including sex and sports, has an even more powerful impact on your mental alertness than a solely intellectual activity.)

So, do you want to jumpstart every day? Make sure every day includes some FUN!

*Author’s Note: Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy is an excellent book on overcoming procrastination. It is referenced here solely to make a point, with complete respect for his work!

photo credit: isolino.

Was 2011 a rough year for you? In my view, this year seemed like a fire-storm of never-ending bad news. War, floods, accidents, divorce, layoffs, foreclosures, disease, death. I personally know someone who was affected by each one of those calamities in 2011. Major, catastrophic, life-changing events. How then, do we put bad things behind us and carry on? I asked people affected by terrible misfortune, and here is their collective, insightful advice:

1. For immediate distraction, get lost in a lengthy book where the characters suffer great loss yet are redeemed in the end.
2. Start writing yourself, from letters to memoirs to fiction.
3. Physically hold another human being or a pet. Medical science has proven that physical contact is necessary for humans to thrive.
4. Don’t isolate yourself – find a group where you feel like you belong. Even if it’s just the morning Starbucks crowd!
5. Find a way to laugh every day. Watch funny movies, buy a book of New Yorker cartoons, or listen to a comedian on tape.
6. View tough times from a “bigger picture” perspective: Life is a journey, and ups and downs are an inevitable part of it.
7. After a loss, also consider what you have gained by the change. There is always a bright side.
8. Get involved with helping others who are even worse off than you.
9. Create! Get your right brain very, very active and it will quiet the left side that is busy staying focused on your problems.
10. Control the next change that occurs in your life. Intentionally do something you have always wanted to do; go somewhere you have always wanted to go; even changing the car that you drive can redirect your sense of being in control rather than becoming a victim of circumstances.

Thanks to the folks who contributed these great ideas for handling any kind of transition with some degree of grace. May 2012 bring better times for all. Wishing you peace, health, and prosperity in the New Year!