Are you responsible for your results?

What comes to mind when I say that?

When you hear that you're totally responsible for the results you produce in your business and in your life---you might jump to a conclusion. You may think that I'm suggesting that you should take the blame for your results.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

By taking responsibility for your results and your outcomes--- you grant yourself great power.

If you acknowledge that you're truly responsible for the way your projects end ---good or bad--- you give yourself great power. You can use this newly discovered power to make your projects end up another, possibly more desirable way.

Before I go on, let's agree on a few things.

The first agreement: The results you produce are determined by your choices and your actions.

Second agreement: A lot of people look upon failure as a bad thing.

What if there was an optional way, a more productive way to view a failure?

I believe that failure isn't really as much about failing as we might believe.

I'd like you to think of failure as a success. You don't fail.

You are successful at reaching an outcome 100% of the time.

Here is a question that will help shift the traditional mindset. Is the result you produced the result you had intended to produce or was the result unplanned?

I want you to start looking at failure in a new light. I want you to start thinking of failure as a process that generates unplanned results.

Using that definition you can begin to view your results as a stepping stone to greater success.

This shift in thinking will provide you with the chance to change the choices and/or the actions that are producing your unplanned results without making yourself feel like you've been doing something wrong.

Here is a story I use to illustrate the point.

The genius inventor, Thomas Edison had performed more than thousand, unsuccessful experiments while on his mission to create the electric light bulb.

Edison was asked, "How were you able to continue with your experiments after encountering so many failures?"

Edison replied, "I did not look at the unsuccessful attempts as failures, but rather as a thousand ways not to make a light bulb."

He took responsibility for each outcome, made adjustments and continued on to success.

For most people, the ability to take responsibility for unplanned outcomes and adjust accordingly calls for a new "skill set". You have to develop and exercise the "skill muscle" called responsibility.

Focus on developing your "skill muscles".

One way to develop these "skill muscles" is to pattern your results oriented behaviors after the model for Effective Communication.

Effective communicators know their outcome and state it in the positive. In other words they focus on what they want versus what they don't want.

Effective communicators have the awareness to know whether they are moving away from or towards that desired outcome.

Effective communicators have a flexibility of choice and action that allows them to make a course correction, especially if what they were doing was producing unplanned results.

As your "skill muscles" grow stronger your ability to achieve your desired outcomes more easily and more often will emerge. Your ability to communicate effectively with yourself and with others will grow proportionately.

Be ready and willing to ask yourself, "For what parts of the project am I willing to take responsibility?"

In addition, I suggest that you stop taking things as seriously as you have been.

That is not meant to imply that what you're up to is not serious. It's just that life is serious enough without making it more so.

Remember that life is an adventure over which we have little control.

We make choices, we take action and we play the game the best we can.

Being enlightened is the best mindset to have when you play the game.

So--- keep in mind that the greatest pathway to enlightenment is to--- Lighten up.

Remember to--- Play the game, take responsibility and lighten up.

"Angels fly because they take themselves lightly." -G.K.Chesterson

? 2005 Ian Krieger

Ike Krieger is the founder of BusinessSuccessBuilder.com. He is a nationally known business language expert, mentor, speaker, radio and TV talk show host, educator and author. He is a former communications instructor at Ohio State University.

He has served as business makeover specialist for the LA Times and writes for the San Fernando Valley Business Journal. He is the current Chairman of the Board of the North San Fernando Valley Regional Chamber of Commerce. Ike's business success builder programs have helped thousands of entrepreneurs, executives, salespeople, consultants and professionals get an even bettershot at networking, selling and business success.

Ike can be reached at 800-700-4334 or by e-mail at ike@businesssuccessbuilder.com.

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