What is your genie in the bottle?

Being successful in life involves doing things that are a real struggle for us, as well as others that come easily. If we spend most of our time (sometimes ALL of our time), though, on things that drain us then we really limit the energy we may focus on being truly remarkable.

Some areas that always deplete you and, therefore, you should do LESS of may include:

• Being patient
• Focusing on the details
• Focusing on the possibilities (strategic,futuristic)
• Accounting
• Selling
• Technology
• Working alone
• Getting results through others (managing,leading)
• Creating (designing, drawing, etc)
• Writing
• Speaking
• Doing the same thing over and over
• Change

No matter how hard we buckle down, train, go to school, etc to try to become strong in our weak areas – we’ll never become more than adequate. Average. Mediocre. It just ain’t gonna happen.

Now, what if you spent the vast majority (say, 70%) of your time on those things that create what I call the Personal Flywheel Effect? You know, those things that the more you do them the stronger you get, the better your results, the more fulfilled you become, the more you want to do them ...

That’s your genie in the bottle. Activities you need to be doing MORE of may include:

• Selling
• Empathizing with others
• Working in teams
• Leading others to deliver stronger results
• Solving problems
• Implementing change
• Speaking / influencing
• Tracking and communicating data
• Strategizing / forecasting
• Working independently
• Taking care of your prospects and customers (customer care, receptionist, greeter, call center agent, etc)
• Transforming spaces (architect, designer, painter, sheetrocker, etc)
• Finding great deals, spend less, don’t get ripped off (Clark Howard, Mary Hunt, Lori Bowen - my wife! – www.CheapThrillsNetwork.net)

I’ve personally discovered through my own life and the lives of many, many others with whom I’ve worked closely that we don’t ever really hit our stride until we meet and release our genie in the bottle. Truly, it’s not enough to meet our genie and acknowledge he exists. That’s “self discovery”. We must take the next step, to embrace our genie and put him to work … doing nothing else except what he was designed to do. Sure, sometimes our genie has to wash his dishes and clean his room.

But he isn’t truly remarkable until he’s doing what he was designed to do MOST of the time.

Our genie has endless energy to serve us, and others with whom we come in contact. That’s when others applaud our genie!

Be sure to rub your lamp daily and release your genie on the world. It would be a shame to use him only to take out the trash, wouldn’t it ...?