Attitude Adjustment, Joe GirardHow’s it goin? Well, if you are not feeling like you are in flow right now, maybe you need to take the next five minutes and switch your mindset and have an attitude adjustment?

And if you’re just “not feelin it” use the technique below to get back in the zone.

Are you feeling stressed, bored, uninspired, or just tired? What do you do to get you out of that funk? Are you feeling irritated by others or just plain apathetic? Most likely, your bad mood didn’t just happen and has been building for a bit, but you CAN do something about it.

Orrr, perhaps as my friend Josephine has asked about, what do you do in the afternoon when you are just feeling tired and need to get re-energized?

Last week, I talked about the difference between action and motivation and how you don’t need to motivate yourself to get motivated.  You need to actually DO something. So follow these steps and get yourself back in flow within five minutes. Get out a piece of paper.

If you really want to get the most out of this, don’t read ahead. Do the activities in real time. Otherwise, too much info might paralyze you…and you do nothing.

Now, keep in mind, I am trying this new WordPress plugin to hide the text until you click, so please let me know if it doesn’t work for you. I wanted to have some fun with this.

5 Minute Plan (Click to expand)

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Write down five names of people who think you rock at stuff

Quickly WRITE them down. Don’t think, just write. And you must write them, not just a mental list. Who in your network do you know that thinks you are awesome?

List those five names on your piece of paper and get it done within a minute. Do it
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Write down the names of five people you admire

Who do you know in your network that you admire the most? Who are just awesome people? Or perhaps someone you don’t know, but still admire?

List just five of them. And perhaps one reason WHY you admire them!

Who are those ones that you think of that have the skills, bank accounts, attitudes, behaviors, lifestyle, relationships that you admire?

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Schedule a call in your calendar for this week for each of the people from minute 1

Now, quickly plan a five minute call for each one of the people from minute 1. Write the date and time beside each name and make sure you spread it out over the next 7 days.

Make sure you just get all the names with a time scheduled. You have one minute.

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Schedule a time in your calendar this week to reach out to each of the people from minute 2

Now, over the next seven days, make some time in your calendar to put about 15 minutes or so into connecting with these people you admire via email, phone, Skype, etc. Just book the time.

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Write down five titles of topics you could write 500 words knowledgably about

This one may be a bit trickier, but within one minute, think about five areas that you are somewhat knowledgeable in and write down some ideas for titles. Just five titles. Simple!

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Next Steps:

What you need to do next is actually make those calls over the next 7 days. Reach out to the people who think you rock and see if there is anything you can help them with. Tell them you were thinking about them and wanted to reconnect and catch up. And that you have some ideas you are working on that you want to discuss.

For the people you admire use the you/because method and tell them, “I am excited to contact YOU today BECA– USE I know how super talented you are at ____ and your passion for ___. I am working on some new ideas right now I want to run by you and see what you think.”

Lastly, take those five topics and write a rough draft for the content. Do some reading of books, reading articles online, read opinions of other experts and really build your knowledge around those topics.

When you talk to each of the ten people over the next seven days, tell them you have been doing research on these topics and are thinking of taking the ideas further. Maybe they would be interested in helping? Perhaps you could do a guest blog post for someone? Maybe you could even build an information product or do a workshop. Or you are looking for a new job or to start a new biz?

Ask each person to help you be accountable to getting at least one of these ideas off the ground. 

In your conversations, see if you can get the other people excited and energized.

Why this works:

Now this probably seems like a completely weird way to try and flip your attitude and make an attitude adjustment, right? I wanted to somewhat surprise you and see if you would actually take action. Did you?

I purposely wrote the the title and intro content that way as well, so you didn’t expect the process. Remember I am a firm believer that action creates motivation. And surprise helps stimulate!

The reason this works is because if you have read some of my previous posts on getting out of your comfort zone and making tough decisions, you will see that if I were to ask you to write a series of blog posts, build an info product, and then go and try and get others excited, it would be most likely out of your comfort zone.  Too far outside our zone creates anxiety and we do what? NOTHING.

If you did the activity correctly, you found it pretty easy in minute to list those five people. Then also to list the next five. Scheduling the calls wasn’t that bad either. And perhaps the five titles wasn’t so difficult in the context either, right?

If you knew WHY I asked you to do those things, do you think you may have over-thought it? Would you ask: What could go wrong? What would people think? Do I have the time?  

I put this post together to show you one simple way you could completely take action on a big idea and actually make a plan for it. In a backwards way. Often, we try and put our ideas together first, then we second guess ourselves, and never complete it. Now that you have set the calls and the plans are in order, you just have to do the work. And once you get into the work mindset coupled with some accountability, you will have definitely adjusted your attitude.

If others get excited about your ideas, perhaps you will already have strong referrals, they will share what you are doing, or get involved in some way. Even linking you to the right markets and resources. You don’t know until you try.

Taking these small steps creates action, and from that action comes momentum, and that momentum will create motivation.

And for those of you who DID take it seriously, leave your comments below on how it went for you. And if you do have some content ideas you want to share with me, I would love to look at having you do a guest post and sharing what you come up with! Happy to cross promote someone who creates action and momentum!

Joe Girard
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    2 replies to "5 Minute Attitude Adjustment: Idea Generation"

    • Josephine

      I did this exercise this morning, as I woke up with a very bad stomach ache and really needed a push to get going. The first 2 steps I was like, “Joe, where are you going with this?” However, by title number 3 I got really excited about this random idea that came to me! We’ll be in touch!

      • Joe Girard

        AWESOME!! I was thinking of YOU when I wrote the post. And also for others who are trying to motivate themselves. Often we do it totally the wrong way. We really just need to take action and DO something and magically stuff happens. I am glad I got you to wonder what the hell I was doing too. Can’t WAIT to hear your idea too. Talk soon.

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