Author Steve Chandler, in his book, 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself, says, “Whatever type of problem you are facing, the most self-motivated exercise I know of is to immediately say to yourself, ‘I am the problem.’ Because once you see yourself as the problem, you can see yourself as the solution. When we see ourselves as victims of our problems, we lose the power to solve them. We shut down creativity when we declare the source of the trouble to be outside of us. However, once we say, ‘I am the problem,’ there is great power that shifts from the outside to the inside. Now we can become the solution.” This is equally true on your dairy farm and throughout the dairy industry.

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Do you ever feel frustrated with your level of accomplishment in business or in life? I believe we all do at one time or another. You know what, though, it doesn’t have to be that way at all. According to Dr. Kathryn Cramer and Hank Wasiak, coauthors of the book, Change the Way You See Everything Through Asset-Based Thinking. They state: “People from all walks of life (professionals in business, athletics, medicine and consulting, managers, mothers, fathers, teachers, journalists, administrators) suppress their current levels of excellence and achievement just by shifting, ever so slightly, the way they see everything.”

Challenges on most dairy farms seem to arise on a regular basis, don’t they? Ever think what could be possible if we just focused our attention on:

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I love the following quote from General Eric Shinseki of the U.S. Army: “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

What is he saying? We’ve got to keep up with change! Be like the Boy Scouts, who are always ready to – “Improvise, Adapt, & Overcome!” Every producer has lots of new challenges: Higher Feed Expenses, Increasing Fuel Costs, and more Government Regulations.
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Remember the song entitled “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”? Humorous? Yes, you couldn’t help but smile when you heard it! Wish you could do so? Yes. Realistic? Probably Not!

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.”
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In the recent financial turmoil surrounding us, it’s often difficult to find meaning – in effect, to make sense of things that are occurring every day. Victor Frankl was a survivor of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Nazi Germany. Many entered Auschwitz; few survived. Victor Frankl in his book entitled Man’s Search for Meaning explained that the key to survival was that people needed to do six things. There may be some guidance for us, too.

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