Just as you watch a child move through stages of growth or watch people progress through a class, you can tell just how they’re growing based on the questions they pose.  You can actually see what kind of perspective a person has in his/her world by the questions they ask.  

In this week’s Wednesdays With Wayne, you get to explore your own growth and challenge your perspective.  Are you seeing enough?  Are you asking the right questions?  Have the questions you’re asking changed?

My clients show their maturation through the process of leadership in a variety of ways.  Over the course of weeks and in just a few months, my clients gain a new perspective about their lives.  In so growing, the nature of the questions they ask changes.

Maybe you have kids.  Maybe you’re around people who act like kids.  Maybe this is you.  Think about your current situation.  Whether you’re at work, at home, or just...

You’re probably on the go… again!  It’s been a week already and we’re not even done.  Like most high performers, you’re feeling the pressure to get it all done.  

In this week’s Wednesdays With Wayne I’ll show you THE best way to hold it all together.  It actually hit me in the shower and I knew I had to share this with you.  Yep, I was wet and naked and thinking of you.  (Okay, so… maybe you didn’t need to know that.  Let’s keep going here.)

I have a lot on my plate.  

• I’m getting ready to bring out a new course, I’ll be presenting it live, and that’s something I’ve never done.
• I’m involved in a TeleSummit on athletic excellence, which is good for everyone, actually.  It’s free if you want to check it out – whether or not you consider yourself an athlete, you’ll learn something at the Forever Elite Athlete FREE teleconference....

The themes that come up in my work with my clients across the country inspire me to share this with you as a Wednesdays With Wayne post.  It feels a little more personal when the themes my clients wrestle with are the same ones that seem to crop up for me.  If there are that many indicators of a direction, I’d better pay attention.

And that leads me to the concepts to consider this week. We have wishes and desires.  We have intentions.  And we have the things we do.  

Life is AWESOME when those align.

Last week I asked you to explore what was important and to really define for yourself what is important right now vs. what is important and can still wait.  When you have wishes and desires you choose to DO something about them.  You can choose to simply wish.  Or you can choose to move toward attaining your wish.  

You create an intention.  And then, you take action.

When you create an intention, you move that wish to a planned...

Life can be pretty complex sometimes.  What I bring to you via my Wednesdays With Wayne often reflects the themes that are coming up for my clients pretty regularly.  Sometimes, what I write about is parallel to what’s going on in my own life.  So by joining me here, we’re working through some things together.  Thanks for that.  It’s a pretty amazing journey and it’s good to have you along!

As we enter the third month of this year, it’s not a bad time to give some thought to what you intended as you stepped into 2017.  I taught my kids to ask themselves this question:  Is what I’m doing right now getting me closer to or further from my goal?  That’s an important question because it presupposes that you actually set goals (vs. wishes) and that you are taking action to move towards them.  

It’s the beginning of a new month and we're still in the first quarter of the year, so it’s a GREAT...

We recently switched the kind of pans we use when cooking on the stove.  Sure, that’s a strange thing to think about for a Wednesdays With Wayne topic.  And here we are.  What do stovetops, pans, and you have in common?

Conduction!

Sometimes the pan brings elements to the food being cooked that we don’t always account for.  There are flavors that come through based on the type of pan you use.  AND there’s a cooking speed that certain pans have, and that affects the food.  That is, some pans heat up quickly and transfer that energy to the food evenly.  Some seem to take forever, but when they’re at temperature, they hold it.

So… to bring this analogy back to you – what do you bring to your day?  How fast do you come up to speed and how brightly do you burn?  Do you hold that energy throughout your day or do you need new infusions of energy to keep you going?

You transfer your energy to fuel your...

What’s next for you?  Not, what are you working on now, but really… what’s next?

It’s a huge question because in the world of motivation, that’s the key.  In this week’s Wednesdays With Wayne you get to do a little reflecting and THIS will help your leadership.

I recently finished shooting a series of videos for my online course on Leadership, Success, and Significance.  When the last one was done, it didn’t feel great.  I didn’t have a surge of “wahhooooo!”  I didn’t feel relief.

I wanted to think about what’s next.  It turns out, there’s some research in the area of neurochemistry that backs up the great feeling that comes with “next.”  Being almost at the finish line drives you to feel a whole lot better than actually crossing the finish line.  

Research in aging shows the need for a need for “next,” too.  To stay engaged, we need to...

You know those moments when you think about something and cringe?  You know, the time that you look back and you just  know you could have handled something differently?  And then there are times that things go sideways and you don’t know how, but you end up feeling badly about how something seemingly so small played out to become that conscience-heavy burden that you now carry.

While that seems to happen less and less, the thing is… it does happen.  In this week’s Wednesdays With Wayne, we’ll look at the one “dance” that we all need to know… it’s what I call The Dance Of Forgiveness.  

It’s something we do for ourselves or, more likely, to ourselves when we replay what might have been.  Sometimes, we need this Dance Of Forgiveness as a reset for our entire mindset for the day.  That thought cascade of “now what” will be offset and reset by reframing.  Instead of “now...

Never was I struck by the obstacle of ego more than with a recent group I was coaching.  Some members were so mired down by the need to hold onto control that they failed to look beyond what they already knew.  In so doing, they fought for being “right” and missed key opportunities to propel themselves to the richer, fuller lives they claimed to want.

The one key thing that all leaders need to get out of their way is… themselves.  That’s it.  That’s so simple, right?  If you want to grow, then you’re growing into something that you’re not already.  To do that, you have to do something (or think something) that you haven’t already.  So what needs to get out of your way?  You.  

Leaders learn.  They lean in and are aggressively hungry for new knowledge, new experiences, and new applications of what they're taking in.  Real leaders aren’t spectators, vaguely curious about how...

It may sound odd to say that HOW we think affects WHAT we think and that now, more than ever, we all need to understand certain cognitive processes.  Multiple studies over this past decade have explored the dual-process concepts of how we think.  

Have you ever been talking with someone (in person or even on Social Media) and the conversation turns into an argument that ends up going sideways?  You wonder how could a rational person think that way.  Your friendship might be threatened because the need to defend the deep belief system is so powerful.  

In this Wednesdays With Wayne you’ll learn how to use both types of thought processes to your advantage.  It’s a little different than my usual writing, because heavy academic studies make this kind of dry.  So I’ll break it down a bit and give you what you need on this page.  Just stick with me here and, in the comments, let me know what you think!

First, start with the notion...

We all have something we’ve hung onto for too long.  Maybe you have a habit.  Maybe you even have a resolution… a New Year’s resolution from four or five years ago… maybe yours is a “someday” kind of thing.  It’s time to give it up.

Yes, really.  As your advisor I’m saying that if you’ve hung onto something for this long, it is no longer driving you.  It’s an anchor.  You’re not feeling driven by it.  You’re actually feeling guilty and weighed down.  It’s now a “supposed to” instead of a “want to” or “joyfully get to.”  

I have a couple of academic pursuits on my list that I’ve been dragging with me for about two decades.  Someday, I’ll study xyz and then . . .

And you know what?  “Someday” isn’t on the calendar.  I’m not compelled to make that happen.  It was on the...