What Do You Want More of this Year?
The concept of motivating others through the carrot or the stick concept came up this week. You can motivate a horse by dangling a carrot in front of the horse to make it move toward your goal or you can hit it with a stick to force it to move. Not sure about you, but the carrot generally works best in my life. It made me think about what I want more of this year. What carrots am I intentionally pursuing this year?
For the past five months, I’ve intensely worked on building my Vistage executive peer advisory group. While there’s more work ahead of me, the largest portion of work is done. The process was grueling, filled with emotional ups and downs and self-doubt and moments of triumph.
Shifting Your Mindset
I’ve been looking at it as a short phase of the work that required a crazy amount of energy and focus. It’s a short phase I knew I could do for a while, but not long term. Now that I’m almost out of that phase, I’m considering what do I want more of in 2020. It’s a mindset shift from what sticks I want to avoid the carrots I want to chase.
For me, I want more laughter, more time with my family, more peace and joy. I could flip the model to what do I want less of – I want less stress and less time at work, but that puts me in state of longing for something I can’t do a lot to change. There’s always work to be done, life stages to navigate, something unexpected impacting my time.
When I focus on the positive parts of what I want, it causes me to be more intentional about the boundaries I put on my work life helping me naturally avoid the negative consequences of whatever I face. It makes me schedule family game nights or date nights with my husband. It makes me look for things that make me laugh.
Chase the Carrots in Your Life
Many of us take a little time at the start of each new year to think about what the new year holds. We have a choice about what we want it to hold – less of something (a negative state of mind) or more of something (a positive state of mind).
This year I’m looking for more and I’m choosing more. I’m focusing on the carrots I want to pursue. What do you want more of this year?
Vistage chair, keynote speaker, trainer, and consultant, Sarah Gibson, helps organizations leverage the power of communication, teamwork, and diversity to improve engagement and transform teams.
If you are a CEO or know a CEO who would benefit from a peer advisory group, please contact Sarah at Sarah.Gibson@Vistage.com. To inquire about her speaking programs, please visit www.sarahjgibson.com.
