Step Out-Step Up

Step Up-Step Out

Daily we are each faced with the opportunities to make choices about our current and future state of life. The circumstances present themselves in different ways. Some may be urgent and some not.  Some may be important, some not. Some may yield great profit and others may set us on a path to make great returns later in life. It is therefore important for us to know which is which because the manner in which we approach any situation affects the outcome.

Stepping out means consciously determining to move outside the normal circle of thought, language, actions and step into an arena where you see things from a magnifying glass. Where you do not only see your life in today’s terms but also in impending metamorphosed state and you be prepared to work at it. Stepping out means you are employing tactics, actions and efforts and work twice as smart and twice as hard as your peers.  It is not a secret that great rewards cannot be and are not associated with regular thinking and ordinary efforts. So you can be in the same place as your peers, but you chose to think outside the moment in a way that sets u apart from them.

Look at your world around you and you will see many examples of people who have employed their minds far out and above what we call normal and we even go to the extent of saying “I never thought about that” and bla, bla, bla! We all are products of our thoughts and work employed "after the thought process".

The ten Virgins.

The story of the ten virgins in the bible illustrate this very well for me. When the girls heard the groom was coming to meet them in the few hours to come, they washed up, dressed up to their best (I believe) and took up their oil lamps to go with in the waiting area. I believe it was known that sometimes they have to wait in the dark night and had to provide for their own lighting.  Interestingly, the bible labels the virgins as five wise and the five not so wise. The wise virgins took extra oil and the not so wise took their lamps without extra oil. Since the waiting did not have a defined period, they ran out of oil in the night and darkness filled their waiting area. 

The girls did not think of the future. They thought about what was needed "now" and made no provision for the unknown or the latter life. Stepping out and up is to be  like the wise girls. You do not only think of your present, but you mitigate for the future known and unknown. The foolish girls resembled a thinking style that I believe is for the poor. They think not of anything but their hungry stomach. They do not think of growing food for more than their stomach or their cooking needs for today. Instead they think of who should be next donor for their next ambition in a way that yields no results for self sustenance or reproduction.

To step out of this low level of thinking and into a better productive life, you need to employ what is called “creative thinking”.

Creative Thinking

Creative thinkers have chosen to do the hardest and most paying work anyone can do: thinking.  Albert Einstein said; Thinking is hard work; that’s why so few people do it. And David Schwartz said “Where success is concerned, people are not measured in inches, or pounds, or college degrees, or family background: they are measured by the size of their thinking.” Now that should call for some thinking about yourself now.

 So here is what thinkers do on daily basis:

• They value ideas
• They explore options
• They embrace ambiguity
• They celebrate the “offbeat”. Meaning they celebrate what people call awkward. 
• They connect the unconnected. They harness the power of being able to take what others have left in despair,rejected and thought it can't bee done. They take everybody's rejected ideas and make them one big idea.
• They do not fear failure. They always jump in and and explore new territories.

Thinking outside the box challenges the thinker first, then those around them. A person who thinks outside the box tends to challenge the status quo. People of this nature are usually associated with more challenges in life and they embrace it as fun for them. Like Richard Branson, who amidst all his successes, he has embraced every challenge in his life as part of fun, and that made him great success in his business endeavours. In obstacles, he looked for the part that has fun, and stepped his game up almost all the times.

I can go on and on, but let me give you these little nuggets that I believe may be crucial for you going forward as you think outside the box and step up. 

1. As a person who wants step out, I want you to know that doing that will improve the quality of your life and those around you. it adds value to you and everything . John Maxwell describe it as “being able to see what everybody else has seen and think what nobody else has thought so that you can do what nobody else has done”. These people see the world through new eyes and develop solutions for problems that are known to them and the people they live with. 

2. Thinking outside the box draws people to you and your ideas. People and money are drawn to people who think outside the box. 

3. Thinking outside the box gives you options or the ability to look for options. Ernie Zelinski puts it this way “Creativity is the joy of not knowing it all. The joy of not knowing it all refers to the realisation that we seldom, if ever at all, have answers; we always have the ability to generate more solutions to just about any problem. But being creative is being able see or imagine a great deal of opportunity to life’s problems.”

As a thinker, you need to learn to recycle ideas, combine two or more ideas that people thought will not work and make an exceptional idea. That is how big business grows. They do not necessarily invent completely new things, the take what already exists, improve it and make it work more efficiently. They stepped out and think outside the box. Remember, it is hard to see a picture while inside the frame. Step Out, and Step up!

Rules of Effectiveness

Effectiveness is a measure of how well does an instrument perform its intended function given the surrounding circumstances. It is a statement that is ascribed to equipments, machinery, medicines and people as well and is attached to the extent to which they do what they do within a certain space of time. Now as I read, make observations and assessments I discovered that the most effective people have discovered some secrets that ordinary people may have not discovered as yet. They have mastered and practiced some activities habitually as rules governing their lives, and this has led to them achieving success. I break them into 11 rules of effectiveness.

Rule 1: BE GOAL ORIENTED

Set up your short, medium and long term goals. Goals give you a measure of accomplishment over certain time.  He who lives to achieve nothing is as good as dead. You ought to have something that you have set over the future that you want to attain and that should be the centre of your thoughts. As you think more about it, it creates new realities in your own life. People achieve what they always think about, whether positive or negative; as a man thinks in his mind, so is he. Know this, whatever you keep meditating on, you will attract.

Goals energise. They propel our minds and action. So set goals, make them as big as you can. Make them as bold as you can. Your goals do not necessarily have to agree with the pattern of life in terms of being realistic. The people who have achieved great results have determined to defy the odds, set goals that no one had attained before and came out better than their peers.

Rule 2: SET PRIORITIES

If you want to achieve your goals, you need to start having a priority based activity plan of action. That should be daily, weekly, monthly and for life.  If you don’t learn to prioritise, then any distraction that you allow can be a thief in your own life.

There is no one who has ever become a great success by doing anything and everything that appears on their tables or drops in their minds. Author and Speaker, Steve Covey talks of a Time Matrix, which has four quadrants which have the following: Q1: urgent and important, Q2: urgent and not important, Q3: Important but not urgent, Q4: not urgent and not important. If you want to achieve success, you need to teach yourself how to set priorities according to these. Urgent things that are important should be treated first. Then the rest will follow.
I have discovered that having to answer to every call and SMS and Email every time your phone receives them costs people so much of their valuable time. Very small things have been allowed to be destructions in our lives that the most important things have been left undone. You end up missing deadlines, having to work yourself under tremendous pressure and robing yourself of the quality of results you disserve.

Rule 3:  MAKE AND FOLLOW A TO-DO LIST

Keep a daily to do list. Update it each morning and review it each night. I have been learning to do this and made a good observation over a two months period. One month I followed a to-do list for all my work days. Then the other I left it out. When I reviewed the two months, I found that I had accomplished more at work and personally during the month that I kept and followed a “to-do list.”
Schedule you day according to specific activities and allocate time for them. For example: allocate time for gym, for reading, leisure, checking and responding to emails, etc. You may at some point miss it, but if you learn to stick to it, you will achieve more. People who read every email that comes in usually fail to respond properly to the ones that are important. Rather set time for those while you focus the rest of the day on other important activities.
The trick is not to over-burden your day. Start with one or two main activities for each day and practice it for at least 21 days. You will soon discover that it comes naturally with practice. Do you realise that you don’t need to consciously think of brushing your teeth each morning when you wake up, its nature to you because you have practiced it many years. The same goes for anything and everything else. The more you practice scheduling your activities in a to-do list, the better your results will be and easier it becomes for you to do so.

Rule 4: DO FIRST THINGS FIRST

DO first things first. Every expert will tell you this is crucial. I can’t emphasise it any better. Doing everything as they come will cost you millions. So learn to prioritise in your life. Start today, the skill become well as you practice it. No one became better at anything by thinking about it too long. Refer back to rule 2.

Rule 5: LEARN TO BREAK YOUR BIG TASKS INTO SMALL MANAGEABLE TASTS

You eat an Elephant by chewing it one piece at a time.  By combining rule 2, 3 and 4, you will realise that nothing can be achieved by pressing on it all at once. Even the biggest companies that exist today started by breaking their dreams into pieces that we can call development milestones. The rule applies to life as well. Life is like building a house or baking a cake. You have to do it one step at a time.

What causes frustration is the desire to see the full picture all at once from start. This frustration can be overcome by deciding which tasks should be done over a certain time. Each activity must be designed to build towards the bigger picture. It should not be done in isolation.

The rules above are not a limiting performance based model, there are many things that we can do to be effective, these are just simple things that we can do.

In my next article, I will give you rule 6 to 11.  I hope you enjoy reading.

Do not hesitate to contact me on ngmafarafara@gmail.com or on twitter @mafarafara for more on these and other productivity reading and training.  Otherwise, leave a message on the comments section