1. Remember the song entitled “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”?
   1. Humorous? Yes, you couldn’t help but smile when you heard it!
   2. Wish you could do so? Yes.
   3. Realistic? Probably Not!
2. Steve Chandler, in his book 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself, states, “Don’t worry. Or rather, don’t just worry. Let worry change into action. When you find yourself worrying about something, ask yourself the action question, ‘What can I do about this right now?’ And then do something. Anything. Any small thing.”
3. Most of us worry about lots of things. Why? We think it will get better if we do. WRONG!!!!!!
4. Chandler also says, “But when we worry, we don’t worry a thing to death, we worry it to life. Our worrying makes the problem grow. And most of the time, we worry it into a grotesque kind of life, a kind of Frankenstein’s monster that frightens us beyond all reason.”
5. He suggests we take four problems – 5 minutes each – No more than 20 minutes! Not too much time to commit! I discussed the following four problems with a client recently:

* Upcoming Bank Meeting -

-  How could I better prepare for Friday morning?

-  What will she want to review/discuss?

* Deadline Environmental Report –

-  What must be reported/measured?

-  Did I need help? If so, from whom?

* Stack of Bills Facing Me –

-  Open and sort them.

-  Pay whom and by when?

-  Set a day(s) to do so…

* Plans for my son at College –

-  What do I want for him?

-  What does he potentially want?

-  Set date to outline plans.

-  Set date to discuss this with his son, Bobby.

And it only took 20 minutes – WOW!

*    Fear cannot coexist with Action!

*    If you’re worried, take some Action Steps.

*    Ask yourself, “What small steps can I take NOW?” I think you’ll be glad you did!

On our way to an important bank meeting, my client turned to me and said, “I wish I had more time to prepare of this – I’ve been so busy I didn’t do a thing for the meeting.” “Are you kidding?” I asked. Busy? Doing what? So we analyzed it: 84 hours per week at the dairy, 21 hours firefighting, and 18 hours in meetings!

In a typical week, the rest of his time was spent playing defense – filling out numerous forms, answering many “urgent” requests, and returning calls. He was spending about 6 of the 18 hours in meetings, listening to others talk about what they’re going to do or have recently done. He spent about 45 minutes actually doing work on new projects he’s currently involved in. And he spent exactly 15 minutes a week on inventing his next breakthrough.

WOW!!! This is frightening! Is this why this client entered the dairy business? Hardly. What’s the solution?

*    Better Time Management – Perhaps

*    Better Prioritization – Probably

*    More Delegation of Decision Making – Definitely

*    More Outsourcing – No Question! Especially in government and environmental reporting.

The reason it’s scary is because if you do the math of what his business actually gets paid for, it’s precisely the opposite of the way my client was spending his time. When he goes on vacation, those minutes of urgent emergencies just sit there, and nothing particularly horrible happens. And in the rare weeks when he doubles his big-thinking time, he’s likely to come up with an insight that will pay the bills for the next six months or a year.

As Seth Godin says: “So, do you really think you’re too busy to work on something remarkable? In fact, you’re actually too busy to do all that (non-urgent) emergency stuff.”

We’ve talked previously about setting goals! There are benefits to being prepared for crises that can occur in your business. We need to have a plan in place for these types of challenges.

Futurists Jim Taylor and Watts Wacker, in their book The 500 Year Delta, stated that every business should develop a “Disaster Agenda”. While all of us are faced with negative challenges and nobody wants to dwell on them, we would be well served if we have given these situations some forethought. This is true for a crisis that might occur in any part of your operation: herd health, nutrition, facilities, management, or finances.

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This is a question many people are asking. I believe it’s something we need to be looking at regularly. As far as when you should fix them, that depends on many factors.

*    Are you planning to stay with your current lender?

Are there any Prepayment Penalties? They have committed to investors to pay a fixed rate on their funds. Thus, you will likewise be committed to the bank.

*    Will you be increasing your loan amounts soon?

Be certain that this doesn’t impact your rates. Often, they’ll set up fixed rates on portions of your loan at various maturities.

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David Allen, in his book entitled Ready for Anything stated:

“You won’t see how to do it until you see yourself doing it. Our brain’s pattern-recognition mechanism is triggered by the images you identify with and the focus you hold. You see the outcome first, and then you are unconsciously made conscious of information. If you won’t see yourself having or doing something until you see how to do it, you’ll never recognize the methods, though they are all around you. Notice what you notice and how you make that happen.”

Allen says: “I am continually amazed at how often I forget about our astonishing ability to create what we want by what we envision. Outcome thinking and the willingness to visualize something’s being true before it’s physically present is a master skill that we all could probably develop to a much greater degree.”

I recently pulled out a long term life plan that I had developed about ten years ago. I was amazed at how many of my goals I had reached, some of them without even realizing it. Wow! What was happening here? My plan included finances, work, and family items.

Allen added: “Those images for years had sparked and supported my significant choices. Some of the pictures weren’t very exact, in terms of what I achieved. I never really got to a proficient level of playing jazz flute, as I had drawn. But much of the little mural was quite exact about what has come to pass. Some of my visions were pure fantasies when I had them. But I allowed myself to draw the blueprint.”

Why does this work? Two lines of thinking include:

1. “Your automatic creative mechanism is teleological. That is, it operates in terms of goals and end results. Once you give it a definite goal to achieve, you can depend upon its automatic guidance system to take you to that goal much better than you ever could by conscious thought. You supply the goal by thinking in terms of end results. Your automatic mechanism then supplies the means whereby. – Maxwell Maltz
2. If you limit your choices to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.” – Robert Fritz

Getting the results you want requires that you start to visualize them. As Dan Sullivan, president of The Strategic Coach stated:

“Getting results doesn’t take much time at all. It’s not getting the results that takes up all the time.”

Think about it!