Skip to main content

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. 

  1. Embracing that you are driven. It is in your DNA. Embrace it. Manage it well.
  2. Realizing decisions are made out of love or fear. And that making 10 percent more love-based decisions will have a huge impact.
  3. 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. 

  1. 10-Year Thinking  Shift your mind from short-term thinking to thinking in ten-year time frames. 
  2. Take Time Off – Take 130 days off per year and don’t think about on any of those days.
  3. Know Thyself – Be your True Self 100% of the time, 24/7/365.
  4. Be Still – Sit in silence for thirty minutes every day.
  5. 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.
  6. Say No…Often – Say no to everything that doesn’t fit into the first five Disciplines.
  7. Don’t Do $25-an-Hour Work – Never do anything you could pay someone $25 an hour to do.
  8. Prepare Every Night – Before your head hits the pillow every night, document the next day’s plan.
  9. Put Everything in One Place – Pick the one place you will capture every idea, commitment, thought, action item, and promise.
  10. 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

Popular posts from this blog

The Five Critical Roles You Need To Build A Winning Team

The book, Team Players , by leadership expert and New York Times bestselling author, Mark Murphy , explains why a team needs more than strong leaders—it needs the right mix of five roles and talents to succeed.   In addition, Murphy reveals that the secret to extraordinary teams isn’t making everyone the same—it’s embracing and leveraging fundamental differences through those five distinct team roles. No amount of teambuilding, trust, or cohesion can overcome having the wrong mix of people in the room.   The five essential roles and talents are :   The Director assumes a leadership role within the team, guiding its direction and making important, difficult, and even unpopular decisions.   The Achiever immerses themselves in the details of accomplishing tasks and getting things done, with a keen eye for delivering error-free work.   The Stabilizer keeps the team on track with meticulous planning, processes and procedures, clear timelines, and organization. ...

How To Become Your Best-Self Leader Everyday

“By focusing in specific ways on five key leadership elements— Purpose, Process, People, Presence, and Peace —you can increase your time, capacity, energy, and ultimately your leadership impact,” explains Amy Jen Su , author of the book, The Leader You Want To Be: Five Essential Principles for Bringing Out Your Best Self—Every Day . Su shares both Western management thinking and Eastern philosophy to provide a holistic yet hands-on approach to becoming a more effective leader with less stress and more equanimity. She draws on rich and instructive stories of clients, leaders, artists, and athletes. And, she focuses on three foundational tenets: s elf-care, self-awareness, and personal agency . Most important, Su explores in depth, chapter-by-chapter the Five Ps : Purpose – Staying grounded in your passions and contributions, doing your highest and best work that has meaning and is making a difference. Process – Relying on daily practices and routines that honor your natural energy rhyt...

Daily Intentions For Leaders

Everyone can benefit from the book, Dear Friend , which features bite-sized, daily notes for contemplation, inspiration, connection, and clarity. Busy and stressed business leaders can particularly benefit from the 365 profound, heartfelt reflections from author Michelle Maros , founder of Peaceful Mind Peaceful Life and cohost of the podcast, Life Happens with Barb and Michelle .   Dear Friend invites readers to go deep and use the notes as a daily practice that compounds over time, nurturing strength, resilience, and clarity.   In just a few minutes each day, this book will offer you a daily reprieve when you feel burned out, beaten down, or overwhelmed by the strains and stresses of modern life.   The heart of Dear Friend began in the quiet mornings Michelle shared with her mom, Barb. Every day, they would sit together, reading affirmations or passages from Barb’s beloved books. These small rituals—simple but powerful—set the tone for each day, grounding them in g...

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 counter intuitive 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 great satisfaction...

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

Six Leadership Actions To Leverage Employees' Differences To Strengthen Teams

The new book, All The Difference: Six Leadership Actions To Bridge Perspectives, Strengthen Teams, and Create Value , teaches how leaders can turn their team's individual differences into deeper trust, greater creativity, and winning results.   “The greatest risk of unmanaged difference isn’t conflict: it lies in the ideas, insights, and opportunities that may never surface,” explain the book’s authors, Susan MacKenty Brady , Stuart D. Kliman , and Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Leslie C. Smith .   They suggest that you look around your team to fully see people with different communication styles, perspectives, cultural norms, and capabilities. These differences are expressed in all kinds of ways, such as casual gestures in a meeting, a colleague's opinion on a current event, or an intense work style.   Often, those differences can lead to friction, even conflict. You may try to manage around them. But, for you and your organization to fully leverage the strengths of your team’s diffe...

Full Engagement By Brian Tracy

Best-selling author Brian Tracy's book, Full Engagement , provides practical advice for how to inspire your employees to perform at their absolute best. He explains that above nearly every measure, employees' most powerful single motivator is the "desire to be happy." So, Tracy teaches you how to make your employees happy by: Organizing their work from the first step in the hiring process through the final step in their departure from your company so they are happy with you, their work, their coworkers, as well as in their interactions with your customers, suppliers and vendors. Full Engagement includes these chapters and topics: The Psychology of Motivation Ignite the Flame of Personal Performance Make People Feel Important Drive Out Fear Create That Winning Feeling Select The Right People Internal Versus External Motivation At a minimum, Tracy suggests that managers do the following when managing their employees : Smile Ask questions Listen ...

Critical Questions To Ask 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 organization’...

The Five Critical Roles You Need To Build A Winning Team

  The new book, Team Players , by leadership expert and New York Times bestselling author, Mark Murphy , explains why a team needs more than strong leaders—it needs the right mix of five roles and talents to succeed.   In addition, Murphy reveals that the secret to extraordinary teams isn’t making everyone the same—it’s embracing and leveraging fundamental differences through those five distinct team roles. No amount of teambuilding, trust, or cohesion can overcome having the wrong mix of people in the room.   The five essential roles and talents are:   The Director assumes a leadership role within the team, guiding its direction and making important, difficult, and even unpopular decisions.   The Achiever immerses themselves in the details of accomplishing tasks and getting things done, with a keen eye for delivering error-free work.   The Stabilizer keeps the team on track with meticulous planning, processes and procedures, clear timelines, and organi...

The Enemy Of Engagement - Book Highlights

" Frustration  in the workplace is a silent killer," claim authors  Mark Royal  and  Tom Agnew  in their book,  The Enemy of Engagement . Further, "in an organizational context, frustration is not as simple as failing to get something you want.  Rather, it involves the inability to succeed in your role due to organizational barriers or the inability to bring the bulk of your individual talents, skills, and abilities to your job." Royal and Agnew further explain that a  staggering number of highly motivated, engaged, and loyal employees quit trying--or quit, period---because they feel frustrated . And what's causing all that frustration?  It's lack of  enablement .  According to Royal and Agnew, as employees grow in experience in their roles, they begin to focus less on learning the ropes and more on achieving desired results .  In the process, they are increasingly confronted with enablement constraints...