10 Disciplines To Help You Stay Sharp And Energetic

The book, Shine, is a transformative guide that illustrates how looking inward is the key to unlocking true entrepreneurial freedom. Certainly, Shine is a book for entrepreneurs, however, it is bound to benefit any business leader.

“Entrepreneurs often have a burning need to succeed. But that same relentless brilliance that propels you in your career can take a toll on your teams, personal relationships, and even your health,” explain author Gino Wickman and coauthor Rob Dube. “Our book will help you strike a crucial balance between those inner and outer worlds while taking your success to new heights.”

In Shine, Gino shares 10 disciplines to help you stay sharp and energetic without burning out. The 10 Disciplines teach you how they can lay a foundation that creates space in your busy life for you to consistently and optimally perform and achieve your inner peace.

“I have helped tens of thousands of entrepreneurs achieve significant business success by using a disciplined and practical approach to operating their businesses. Yet I have come to learn that there are disciplines and a practical approach to accomplish significant life success, as well,” says Gino.

As you read the book, you will learn how to:

Set boundaries in your work life (without compromising productivity) that allow you to become a better leader and better person.
Practice practicable sustainable ways to reset your energy and recognize burnout and stress before they happen.
Tap into a flow state to harness unbridled creativity, think clearly, and move through your career and life with ease.

The book includes a valuable self-assessment survey (also available online) and prompts for reflection at the end of every chapter. In addition, within each chapter you will receive how-to's for mastering each Discipline.

Before delving into the 10 Disciplines, Gino teaches you 3 Discoveries that will help you free your True Self.

Embracing that you are driven. It is in your DNA. Embrace it. Manage it well.
Realizing decisions are made out of love or fear. And that making 10 percent more love-based decisions will have a huge impact.
Seeing that it is possible to be driven and have peace. You will not lose your drive when you have peace. You will actually have more drive.

These 3 Discoveries set the stage for the 10 Disciplines. “The 3 Discoveries are the “what” and the 10 Disciplines are the “how,” shares Gino.

Below are the 10 Disciplines for maximizing your impact and inner peace presented at a glance, along with the main point of each. “They will help you succeed in your outer world and your inner world. These 10 Disciplines have evolved greatly over the past few years. I created them when delivering a keynote speech and simply wanted to share with the audience ten things that have greatly impacted my success,” says Gino.

10-Year Thinking – Shift your mind from short-term thinking to thinking in ten-year time frames.
Take Time Off – Take 130 days off per year and don’t think about on any of those days.
Know Thyself – Be your True Self 100% of the time, 24/7/365.
Be Still – Sit in silence for thirty minutes every day.
Know Your 100% – Decide on and commit to the perfect number of hours per week and weeks per year that you will deliver your impact to the world.
Say No…Often – Say no to everything that doesn’t fit into the first five Disciplines.
Don’t Do $25-an-Hour Work – Never do anything you could pay someone $25 an hour to do.
Prepare Every Night – Before your head hits the pillow every night, document the next day’s plan.
Put Everything in One Place – Pick the one place you will capture every idea, commitment, thought, action item, and promise.
Be Humble – View yourself as an equal to every person on the planet.

Coauthor Rob shares that, “Each discipline is simple. Doing them is harder. Please don’t underestimate them, as they will have a profound impact on your life.” Readers should devote ample time with the book to learn all the details behind mastering each Discipline.

By the end of the book, “You will see how to live with a harmonious combination of being highly impactful, while experiencing an incredible sense of inner peace. We call this state being in Flowt™, which is a combination of two words, “flow” and “float.” You are in the flow when you are working and you feel like you are in the zone; time slows down, and you are performing at your best,” explains Gino.

“At the same time, you will float through all aspects of your life with a feeling of serenity, calm, fulfillment, and ease, comfortably letting your freak flag fly. We will show you how to experience total freedom from your mind, ego, and pain, while maximizing your energy, being incredibly creative, having a lot more fun, and making an even greater impact on the world.”

Gino Wickman

Rob Dube

Gino and Rob answer these questions for us:

Question: Of the 10 Disciplines, which one or two do most people struggle to master and why?

Gino: Take Time Off (and not think about work the entire time)…it's the not thinking about work the entire time that gets people.

Say No Often…people don't have their boundaries clear, they have FOMO, they don't want to disappoint people, so they say yes to most things (in professional and personal lives).

Question: Which of the 10 Disciplines did you find the most difficult to master?

Gino: Know Your 100% takes intention and awareness. You have to pay close attention to how many hours you're working and what you're doing during those hours to gauge what is raising your vibration or energy and what is draining your energy/having you working at a low vibration.

There is a tipping point when the driven entrepreneur is not effective but because of their driven nature, just keeps pushing through. This push is the lower vibration/lower energy and is not making the kind of impact in the world that we hope for them.

Question: Why did you feel comfortable sharing so much of your personal life journeys with readers?

Gino & Rob: We are them and we hope our vulnerability will inspire others to share their inner stories. This is part of letting go or shedding, as we like to say. When you let go, you are free. When you are free, you SHINE.

___

An entrepreneur since the age of 21, Gino has always had an obsession for learning what makes businesses and entrepreneurs thrive.

At 25, he took over the family business, which was deeply in debt and in need of help. After turning the company around and running it for seven years, he and his partners successfully sold the company.

Gino then set out to help entrepreneurs and leaders get what they want from their businesses and lives.

Based on his years of real-word experience, Gino created the Entrepreneurial Operating System® (EOS®), a practical method for helping companies achieve greatness.

For over 30 years, Rob has been thriving as a purpose-driven entrepreneur. He is the co-Founder of Imagine One, which has won dozens of awards for its people-first and purpose-driven culture.

Rob is also the author of Donothing: the Most Rewarding Leadership Journey You Will Ever Take, the host of the Leading with Genuine Care podcast, and host of the Do Nothing Leadership Retreat in Colorado.

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.

Comments

Best Reasons For Doing Employee Exit Interviews

Don't be the guy in the picture when an employee leaves your company. Instead, conduct exit interviews and surveys. Leigh Branham explains in his book, The 7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave , what the most favorable conditions are for conducting the interviews and surveys. And, if you need convincing to read the book, take a look at these 11 best reasons for listening and gathering the data when an employee leaves : Bringing any "push-factor" root-cause reasons for leaving to the surface. Alerting the organization to specific issues to be addressed. Giving the employee a chance to vent and gain a sense of closure. Giving the employee the opportunity to provide information that may help colleagues left behind. Providing information about competitors and their practices. Comparing information given with the results of past surveys and employee data. Detecting patterns and changes by year or by quarter. Obtaining information to help improve recruiting. Possibly heading off ...

Seven Ways To Stay Motivated

To learn how to stay motivated, read High-Profit Prospecting , by Mark Hunter . It's a powerful read that includes counterintuitive advice and cutting-edge best practices for sales prospecting in today's business world. Today, I share one of my favorite sections of the book where Hunter describes his seven things motivated people do to stay motivated : Motivated people ignore voices in their lives . These might be people in the office and friends who have bad attitudes. They're out there, and if you're not careful, they'll control you, too. Motivated people associate with highly motivated people . Just as there are negative people in the world, there are also positive people. Your job is to make sure you spend as much time with the positive people as possible. Motivated people simply look for the positive in things . Positive people count it an honor to live each day, learn from others, and impact positively those they meet. Positive people take...

10 Quotes From The 5 Levels Of Leadership -- John C. Maxwell

Soon I'll post my full review of John C. Maxwell's latest book, The 5 Levels of Leadership . In the meantime, here are some of my favorites quotes from the book that I believe should become a must-read book by any workplace/organizational leader: Good leadership isn't about advancing yourself. It's about advancing your team. Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others. Leadership is action, not position. When people feel liked, cared for, included, valued, and trusted, they begin to work together with their leader and each other. If you have integrity with people, you develop trust. The more trust you develop, the stronger the relationship becomes. In times of difficulty, relationships are a shelter. In times of opportunity, they are a launching pad. Good leaders must embrace both care and candor. People buy into the leader, then the vision. Bringing out the best in a person is often a catal...

29 People Who Taught Us Life Lessons In Courage, Integrity And Leadership

The 29 profiles you will read in Robert L. Dilenschneider’s new book, Character , are about people who are exceptional exemplars of character. They’re inspirational because they used their abilities at their highest levels to work for causes they believed in. Because of character, they influenced the world for good. The dictionary defines “character” as the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual, the distinctive nature of something, the quality of being individual in an interesting or unusual way, strength and originality in a person’s nature, and a person’s good reputation. “But beyond these definitions, we know that character is manifested in leadership, innovation, resilience, change, courage, loyalty, breaking barriers, and more,” explains Robert (Bob), “Character drives the best traits in our society, such as honesty, integrity, leadership, and transparency, and it drives others to exhibit those qualities.” Profiled in the book ar...

How to Be a Leader – 9 Principles from Dale Carnegie

Today, I welcome thought-leader Nathan Magnuson as guest blogger... Nathan writes : This is it, your first day in a formal leadership role. You’ve worked hard as an individual contributor at one or possibly several organizations. Now management has finally seen fit to promote you into a position as one of their own: a supervisor. You don’t care if your new team is only one person or ten, you’re just excited that now – finally – you will be in charge! Unfortunately the euphoria is short-lived. Almost immediately, you are not only overwhelmed with the responsibilities of a team, but you quickly find that your team members are not as experienced or adroit as you. Some aren’t even as committed. You find yourself having to repeat yourself, send their work back for corrections, and staying late to fill the gap. If something doesn’t change soon, you might just run yourself into the ground. How did something that looked so easy ...

Important Questions To Ask Your New Hires

In Paul Falcone ’s book, 75 Ways For Managers To Hire, Develop And Keep Great Employees , he recommends asking new employees the following questions 30, 60 and 90 days after they were hired: 30-Day One-on-One Follow-Up Questions Why do you think we selected you as an employee? What do you like about the job and the organization so far? What’s been going well? What are the highlights of your experiences so far? Why? Tell me what you don’t understand about your job and about our organization now that you’ve had a month to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Have you faced any unforeseen surprises since joining us that you weren’t expecting? 60-Day One-on-One Follow-Up Questions Do you have enough, too much or too little time to do your work? Do you have access to the appropriate tools and resources? Do you feel you have been sufficiently trained in all aspects of your job to perform at a high level? How do you see your job relating to the organi...

Effective Listening: Do's And Don'ts

Here are some great tips from Michelle Tillis Lederman's book, The 11 Laws of Likability . They are all about: what to do and what not to do to be a leader who's an effective listener : Do : Maintain eye contact Limit your talking Focus on the speaker Ask questions Manage your emotions Listen with your eyes and ears Listen for ideas and opportunities Remain open to the conversation Confirm understanding, paraphrase Give nonverbal messages that you are listening (nod, smile) Ignore distractions Don't : Interrupt Show signs of impatience Judge or argue mentally Multitask during a conversation Project your ideas Think about what to say next Have expectations or preconceived ideas Become defensive or assume you are being attacked Use condescending, aggressive, or closed body language Listen with biases or closed to new ideas Jump to conclusions or finish someone's sentences

Chick-fil-A Serves Up 11 Leaders On May 6

On May 6 , the quick-service chicken restaurant chain, Chick-fil-A will serve up more than chicken. Because, that's the day when the chain's President and COO Dan Cathy brings together 10 influential leaders during a one-day leadership " Leadercast " available at hundreds of locations around the U.S. and overseas. "We desire to influence leaders at every level within an organziation. Whether you are leading a team of 2,000 or just yourself, the Chick-fil-A Leadercast is designed to help you use your voice to create positive change," explains the organization. I am a big fan of Chick-fil-A because of its customer service. It is also known as a company that has built its success on core values and its focus on developing leaders . I also like that employees respond with "my pleasure" instead of "no problem" when customers say "thank you." Chick-fil-A says leaders can express themselves with five voices (described below i...

Why Your Middle Managers Are So Important

The book, Power To The Middle , shows how managers are the crucial link between a company’s ground floor and top brass. “Too often company leaders view middle managers in a negative light as expendable employees who can slow down productivity and overall strategy,” explain the book’s authors and McKinsey partners Bill Schaninger , Bryan Hancock , and Emily Field . “However, new KcKinsey research reveals that this outdated perspective needs to change and that well-developed managers are the strategy that companies must prioritize to succeed today,” they add. Most importantly, by the end of their book, the authors sum up their insights and provide a playbook that will help senior leaders let go of the command-and-control mindset that has hobbled their managers for so long. The authors define middle managers as the people who are at least once removed from the front line and at least a layer below the senior lead...

Thought Leader Profile: Nathan Magnuson

Ten years ago, I featured l eadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader, Nathan Magnuson , for the first time on my blog. Since then, Magnuson has provided his leadership insights multiple times for my blog and in 2020, I named his book, Stand Out! , as the best new leadership and business book for that year. I’m a big fan of Magnuson’s work and have enjoyed following his ever-growing career during the past decade. Today, Magnuson shares more about his latest endeavors and provides some timely leadership guidance: Nathan Magnuson Question: Tell us about the evolution from Nathan Magnuson Everyday Leadership to Leadership-in-a-Box ® . Magnuson : It's been a great ride! I started the Everyday Leadership blog 11 years ago. I had just wrapped up a consulting project helping the FBI build a brand new leadership development program from scratch. I guess you could say my leadership engine was all revved up. I wanted to find a way to share what ...

Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

Search This Blog