Human Behaviour | Kathy Santini, Coach, Educator and Speaker

Success Tip – Stephen Covey On Setting Priorities

January 6, 2011 By Kathy Santini Leave a Comment

Success television features a short (less than a minute) clip of success guru Stephen Covey’s thoughts about setting priorities. He outlines the difference between important and urgent.

Remember, just because it’s urgent for someone else DOESN’T mean that it has to be urgent for you. As the saying goes, someone else’s lack of planning doesn’t mean that it should be an emergency for you!

For more tips on time management, join us for the FREE New Year’s edition of the What Successful People Know Success Summit, being held Jan. 10-14.

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Filed Under: Choices, Creating a Foundation For Success, human behaviour, Success Tip, Time Management Tagged With: how to prioritize, Kathy Santini, Stephen Covey, success strategies, success tip, Success TV, urgent versus important, YouTube

Success Tip – How Conquering Procrastination Can Help You Reduce Stress, Fourth of Ten Articles

January 4, 2011 By Kathy Santini 3 Comments

Simply put, procrastination causes stress. Throughout history, great thinkers have noted the connection between a failure to take action and the feeling of anxiety. The American philosopher William James once said, “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.”

If you continually put off tasks you fear; if you tend to avoid situations and events that terrify you, then your fears have grown out of proportion. Every time you decide not to do something because you’re afraid of failing, your self-confidence takes another hit. There is only one way to overcome fear, it’s to feel the fear and do it anyway. Over time, doing what you fear will allow you to one day laugh at the imaginary fears that have kept you from becoming all that you can be.

Get started by establishing some goals. Prioritize. Measure your progress. Ask friends and office mates for feedback. Adjust your goals if necessary. Reward yourself when you finish jobs.

Being proactive, instead of reactive, and overcoming your procrastination will decrease your stress. It will also give you more time to spend it where you want to: not worrying about what you’re afraid to do.

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Filed Under: Creating a Foundation For Success, Fear, Goals, human behaviour, Success Tip Tagged With: establishing goals, fear and procrastination, Kathy Santini, overcoming fear of failure, stress and procrastination, time management, wasting time

Success Tip – Enthusiasm – A Great Weapon in the War Against Procrastination, Second of Ten Articles

January 2, 2011 By Kathy Santini 1 Comment

Enthusiasm is what makes the difference between reaching our goals and giving up before we get started. Thomas Edison said, “If the only thing we leave our kids is the quality of enthusiasm, we will have given them an estate of incalculable value.” Edison’s research laboratory burned to the ground when he was 67. As the fire consumed his world-famous “invention factory,” Edison told his children, “Kids, go get your mother. She’ll never see another fire like this one.” Edison knew that enthusiasm is the best antidote for tragedy, and it’s the most powerful weapon to use in the war against procrastination.

Your level of enthusiasm has nothing to do with your feelings; as your feelings wake up on a different side of the bed every day. To take control of your life, choose the way you feel, don’t let your feelings control you.

Ask yourself this: can you talk yourself into a positive frame of mind when you’re discouraged? Can you keep yourself motivated? Can you stay focused when a job is tedious? Can you handle failure when your plan isn’t going well?

The following suggestions will help you do that:
- Stay away from negative people, because attitudes are contagious. Start associating with positive thinkers; their self-confidence is contagious, too.
- Schedule difficult tasks during the time of day when your energy is highest. If you haven’t determined the best time for tackling your day’s least appealing jobs, try doing them as early as possible.
- Tackle a problem that’s been a thorn in your side. As you get in the habit of making things happen, your enthusiasm will go through the roof. Inactivity is a major cause of depression and anxiety.

Take Action Now

When you breeze through a task with particular ease and competence, make a note of the time of day it is. Next, ask yourself what other factors might have contributed to making you more productive. As you discover patterns, you’ll be able to operate at a higher level of productivity. Conversely, identify the time of day when you are usually most efficient, and schedule some of your least enjoyable tasks for that time.

Being enthusiastic is a choice. Which kind of people do you prefer to be around, enthusiastic, or unenthusiastic people?

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Filed Under: human behaviour, Mindset, Motivation, Success Tip Tagged With: enthusiasm as aid in procrastination, Kathy Santini, Overcoming procrastination, positive frame of mind, positive thinking, Thomas Edison, timing difficult tasks

Success Tip – Overcoming Procrastination, First of Ten Articles

January 1, 2011 By Kathy Santini Leave a Comment

Some food for thought on something many of us wrestle with – procrastination.

Author Denis Waitley believes that one of the main causes of procrastination is a fear of success. “People procrastinate because they are afraid of the success that they know will result if they move ahead now,” he explains.

Great thinkers throughout history have known that procrastination is the main reason people fail to live more rewarding and more prosperous lives. The following quiz will determine if a fear of success is causing procrastination in your life:

- Are you passionate about the life you’re living? Have you discovered your mission in life? Do you have a written list of long-term and short-term goals you want to achieve?

- Do you always ask yourself which of several tasks is the best way to spend your time? Do you always ask which task should be your higher priority in view of your short-term and long-term goals?

- If you won a large amount of money, would you continuing living as you are now? Are you living the kind of life that even money can’t buy?

- Do you concentrate on the job you’re doing in the present, rather than feeling sorry for yourself because you aren’t living the life you wish you were living?

If you answered “yes” to all of the above questions, you’re winning the war against procrastination. If you answered “no” to any of the questions, you need to recognize the possibility that procrastination is keeping you from living a richer life.

Ask yourself this: why haven’t you written a vision for your life. Do you postpone tasks for justifiable reasons, or do you simply look for excuses to procrastinate?

Take Action Now

Ask yourself if a job needs to be done at all. Make a list of what you most regret not having done in your life because of the poor decisions you made in the past about how to spend your time. Social scientists tell us we spend as much as 80 per cent of our time on tasks that don’t contribute to our projects’ success. Many people load themselves down with work that is unnecessary or that could be justifiably postponed.

Are you passionate about your life and work? How would you spend your time if you won ten million dollars and never had to work again? These questions can lead to some surprising revelations about what your priorities should be.

As the novelist George Eliot said, “It’s never too late to be the person you could have been.” Why not start today?

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Filed Under: human behaviour, Motivation, Success Tip Tagged With: causes of procrastination, Denis Waitley, deterrants to success, Kathy Santini, long term and short term goals, obstacles to success, Overcoming procrastination, poor decisions, social scientists, the problem of procrastination

Success Strategy – Become More Successful By Being Your Future Self For A Day

November 24, 2010 By Kathy Santini Leave a Comment

Think about a few things that you find easy to do today, that you once found hard. Maybe you can speak two languages now, but like us all, struggled saying “Dada,” when you were less than a year old. Or maybe your thing is running marathons, which your family thinks is hysterical, given that you split your lip on the coffee table when you took your first step.

Whatever they are, the point is that it wasn’t always easy to do what you can so easily do today. These activities got easier by doing the same thing you have to do to get invited to play at Carnegie Hall, “practice, practice, practice.”

If you listened to my presentation during the What Successful People Know Success Summit earlier this month, you might remember my main theme. It was this: that all human behaviour is motivated by two things, our desire to avoid pain and our desire to seek pleasure. And here’s what’s important: that we’ll do more in the short term to avoid pain than we will to seek pleasure.

What that means is this: we’ll do more to avoid expanding our comfort zone, or feel the fear and do it anyway, than we will to become the biggest, best version of ourselves that we can be.
Given this tendency, if you are really committed to self actualization, a term coined by Abraham Maslow, then do this: declare one day this week future self day.

In coaching, your future self is that person that you are committed to becoming. Someone who speaks three languages and not just two. Someone who participates in triathlons, not just marathons. (As someone who tried to run a marathon but whose body wouldn’t let her, I can’t believe I just wrote, “just marathons,” in that last sentence.)

It means doing what your current self might be reluctant to do, but that your future self has no problem doing. It means deciding to leave your comfort zone and feeling uncomfortable doing something new. It means feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

Take Action Challenge

Before you do this exercise, give your future self a name. It might be your name, but with future in front of it, or something entirely new. On the day that you decide to be your future self, do at least three things that your future self would do, and that your current self wouldn’t.

What did you learn about yourself? How did others react? How can you use the knowledge that you gained doing this to help you get closer to your goals and dreams? How will you summon your future self up again, when the going gets tough?

I’d love to hear how it went. If you’re so inclined, leave me a note at the end of this blog.

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Filed Under: Habits, human behaviour, Success Tip Tagged With: Abraham Maslow, achieving goals, achieving success, becoming more successful, becoming successful, carnegie hall, coaching, comfort zone, feel the fear and do it anway, future self, human behaviour, Kathy Santini, self actualization, success summit, what motivates behaviour, What Successful People Know

Be A First Class Version Of Yourself, Rather Than A Second Class Version of Someone Else

November 17, 2010 By Kathy Santini Leave a Comment

Have you ever noticed that we spend our youth trying to fit in, and as Carl Jung observed, our adulthood and old age accepting and becoming who we really are? As someone once said, it’s better to be a first class version of yourself than a second class version of someone else.

This is great advice, especially in the arena of personal and professional success. Wonder why? There’s tremendous pressure on us to conform, through advertising, peer pressure and social mores. But when we do, we become just like a flock of sheep, one in a cast of thousands, to quote Cecil B DeMille.

Have you ever noticed that no one notices the white sheep? It’s the black sheep that stands out, precisely for that reason, because they are different and being true to themselves. It’s a noisy, busy world out there, with lots and lots of competition for our attention, resources and dollars. When everyone’s the same, it’s harder to stand out, be accepted, noticed and ultimately successful.

I once coached a lawyer who was 6 feet 2 inches tall. That was without his clogs. With them on, he was 6 feet 4 inches tall. Talk about standing out. When I asked him why he wore clogs with his Nordstrom suits (an odd combination to say the least) he said that he always wore clogs, that was just his thing. By being true to himself, instead of wearing the standard issue shoe that the rest of his crowd wore to court, he had people talking about him. The added bonus was that he got to be himself and there’s something so appealing about being around people who are comfortable in their own skin.

People like to do business and to be around people who they like, know and trust. As a friend of mine once said, “If you’re a cactus and living in a jungle, get thee to a desert.” Be who you are, not a second class version of someone else. At this time in our history, the world needs everyone’s unique contributions like never before. It’s time to leave the herd behind and start living your authentic life.

Take Action Now

What one step can you take today to be more of your authentic self? It might be speaking up with an opinion that’s different than others. It might be dressing how you want, instead of how everyone else in your social circle dresses. Whatever it is, know this: most people can sense when someone isn’t being themselves, even if they can’t put that feeling into words. The more you remain true to yourself, the more people will want to be around you and better yet, the higher your self esteem will be.

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Filed Under: human behaviour, Success Tip Tagged With: authentic life, authenticity, becoming more successful, Carl Jung, coaching, doing business with people you like know and trust, Kathy Santini, nordstrom, personal and professional success, success tip, your authentic self

Success Tip – Stephen Covey Assures Us That We Can Change And Become More Successful

November 10, 2010 By Kathy Santini Leave a Comment

In this YouTube vignette, Stephen Covey, the author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People reassures viewers that change is in fact possible and that people can become more successful.

“You’re the product of your own choices,“ Covey says. “Despite what so many people think, people aren’t captive to their past.”

It’s not nature or nurture, the pre-eminent leader in the human potential and business fields tells us, rather its choice.

As an example, while some of us may carry a genetic pre-disposition for a genetic disease, we can influence the outcome by the choices that we make in the areas of exercise, stress and what we eat.

With this knowledge, how are you going to rewrite the story you’re telling yourself about yourself? Your success to date doesn’t have to predict the level of your future success. As Covey says, your personal success has a lot more to do with your choices than with your nature or your upbringing.

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Filed Under: Creating a Foundation For Success, human behaviour, Obstacles Tagged With: achieving success, achieving your goals, assumptions, become more successful, becoming more successful, becoming successful, change, foundation for success, greater success, human potential, increasing chance of success, increasing success, increasing your level of success, Kathy Santini, personal success, Stephen Covey, Stephen Covey and Success, success tip

Become More Successful by Learning What Successful People Know And Do By Participating In This FREE Virtual Success Summit

October 20, 2010 By Kathy Santini Leave a Comment

Success Leaves Clues, Making It Easier to Replicate Than You’d Think. Learn The Mindset, Habits and Activities Successful People Embody From Our Five Highly Successful Presenters.

Tony Robbins said it best: success leaves clues and it’s possible to become more successful by learning what successful people know and do. Success can be replicated, by learning and adopting the mindset, habits and activities that successful people know and use, day in and day out.

As a coach and success journalist who has been studying, teaching and helping others to be more successful for years, I have seen more than my fair share of people who want to become more successful. Yet despite their desire, many people struggle unnecessarily (wasting valuable time and money) by doing the wrong things and using the wrong strategies to achieve that end.

In my desire to help my clients and others who struggle with becoming more successful, I’m hosting a FREE, five-hour virtual success summit, from Nov. 1-5. Learn more here.

During the What Successful People Know Success Summit, my five highly successful guests will share what mindset, habits and activities have led to their success, as well as the success secrets they have modeled from observing others. All five presenters will share their tried-and-true success strategies during the hour call, which starts at 4 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, each day of the summit. A replay of the call will be available for 24 hours after each call.

Millionaire Marketing Mentor Adam Urbanski, my guest on Nov. 1, will talk about How The Rich Get Rich; Five Simple Truths About Money, Work and Success That Will Change Your Life! On Nov. 2, online visibility expert Nancy Marmolejo’s topic is: How To Increase Your Visibility, Both Online and Off, And Watch Your Success Skyrocket. On Nov. 3, Michele Scism, aka The Results Lady, will share how her decision to be successful changed her life and the bottom line in her business. On the second last day of the summit, Nov. 4, Master Certified Coach Mary Allen, who’s coached a couple of billionaires, will tell guests How To Stop Sabotaging Yourself; Get Out Of Your Own Way And Give Yourself Permission To Become More Successful. And on the last day of the event, I will take the guest seat and tell telesummit participants What No One Talks About But Is Pivotal To Your Success: The Two Things That Control All Human Behaviour And How Knowing Them Can Mean The Difference Between Success and Failure.

This summit is both for those who are already successful, but want to become more successful, as well as for those who are younger and just starting their success journey. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Our very successful guests will outline their personal roadmap to success and what has helped them become successful. All five have agreed to share their most powerful success strategies with you.

For more information, click here

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Filed Under: Goals, Habits, human behaviour, Mindset, Motivation Tagged With: become more successful, learn what successful people know and do, more success, success principles., success strategies

Success Tip – Find Solutions And Resolve Problems By Looking At Them With Fresh Eyes

October 6, 2010 By Kathy Santini 4 Comments

We’ve all heard the definition of insanity, doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. I realized the other day while I was driving that the same analogy could be made for finding new solutions to old problems.

This thought came to me as I drove along a street I had driven along for years. Sixteen years to be exact. And yet, for the first time, I realized that behind the building on this street that I had passed so many, many times was the depot which housed our city’s local buses. I had never seen it before. Not once in 16 years.

While not quite, “the shock and awe,” that we spoke about when I was a civilian editor working for the military in Afghanistan, to me it was still startling. And it got me thinking. What else might be right under my nose, say a solution to a perplexing problem that I just couldn’t see for looking?

Take the time today to look at a challenging or perplexing situation, problem or relationship with new, fresh eyes. Pretend you’re seeing it for the first time. And with your new 20-20 vision, look for the solution that you might have overlooked. It might be just underneath your nose. Like me and my local bus depot.

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Filed Under: Habits, human behaviour Tagged With: challenging situations, finding solutions, Kathy Santini, problem solving, resolving problems, success tip

Become More Successful by Learning What Two Things Impact All Behaviour, Choices and Actions

September 24, 2010 By Kathy Santini Leave a Comment

Tony Robbins, the world’s best known coach and a giant in the human potential field says that the controlling force in our lives is what we link pain to and what we link pleasure to. And here’ the interesting fact: we’ll do more in the short term to avoid pain than we will to seek pleasure. Knowing this can help unsuccessful people become successful and successful people become more successful.

You have the ability to change your focus and therefore your behaviour instantly by learning to control pain and pleasure and what you link them to.

For example, what if you could change your focus when cold calling from pain, “God, I hate it when they hang up on me,” to pleasure, in this case, “I’ve learned that I have to get 14 no’s before I get a yes, so bring on the “no’s.”

By associating pleasure to the “no’s” rather than pain, you increase the chances that you’ll do your cold calling, which will increase the chances that you’ll get the results you’re after.

A second technique to use if you want to change your current associations to pain and pleasure and the subsequent behaviours that come from that association is to focus on how not doing something is going to be more painful than doing it. In coach speak, this is leveraging the situation.

What if you could do this, link pain and pleasure so that they work for you instead of against you, say when you’re networking or going after business, How would your life be different, what would it look like?

Success is chiefly about you, not your environment, your circumstances or other people, it’s about what you link pain and pleasure to and mastering your mental and emotional states. What if you master your mental and emotional states to a greater degree than you do today, how would your life be different, what would it look like?

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Filed Under: human behaviour, Motivation Tagged With: how to be more successful, Kathy Santini, strategies for success, Tony Robbins, two factors that determine success

Success Tip – Stephen Covey On Setting Priorities

Success Tip – How Conquering Procrastination Can Help You Reduce Stress, Fourth of Ten Articles

Success Tip – Enthusiasm – A Great Weapon in the War Against Procrastination, Second of Ten Articles

Success Strategy – Become More Successful By Being Your Future Self For A Day

Be A First Class Version Of Yourself, Rather Than A Second Class Version of Someone Else

Success Tip – Stephen Covey Assures Us That We Can Change And Become More Successful

Become More Successful by Learning What Successful People Know And Do By Participating In This FREE Virtual Success Summit

Success Tip – Find Solutions And Resolve Problems By Looking At Them With Fresh Eyes

Become More Successful by Learning What Two Things Impact All Behaviour, Choices and Actions

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