SigmaU Blog

Does it fire you up or frustrate you?

The relationship.

The job.

The hobby.

The course.

F - FACE IT HEAD ON

Often when we’re in survival mode, contemplation mode or busy mode we neglect facing challenging questions or situations head on. The highest performers demonstrate courage more often and get real with their emotions. They recognize that what once served them or made them feel fulfilled now frustrates them and they evaluate if they want to keep the relationship, job, or activity in their lives. They don’t drag out their unhappiness. What situation do you need to tackle head on today with curiosity, clarity, and courage to feel more fulfilled and aligned with your best future self?

I - IGNITE

Perhaps a goal or dream that once created a spark of excitement in you has fizzled. Perhaps the career you thought you should pursue has turned out to be unfulfilling. I have a friend who spent years in school to become a lawyer, who has zero passion for it but continues to go...

I share a lot of high-performance insights on this blog and on social media, but I don’t ever want people to think I’ve got it all figured out. We’re all a work in progress and, yes, even I get off track as a High-Performance Coach™!

If I’m honest about the second half of 2023 I didn’t show up as my best. The reality is, I gave in to old habits, slowly, which compounded overtime until I looked at myself in the mirror a few weeks ago and said, “Who is that?” Has that ever happened to you? You don’t realize just how far off track you’ve gotten until your current situation is unrecognizable.

Rather than dwell on where you’re at, act! Here are a few tips I’ve implemented over the past few weeks and can honestly say, I look and feel like a different human. Change can happen in an instant once we face whatever we’ve been avoiding!

Clean Food

If you’ve ever experienced grief or pain, it’s comforting...

If you’ve ever worked in sales, you know that you must be able to bounce back quickly and move on to be successful. Over the years I’ve had amazing conversations with prospective clients and others didn’t go so well. I’ve been hung up on, yelled at and definitely had some ice-cold responses. Any salesperson knows that they can’t stay in that negative space, nor can they throw in the towel for the day. They must keep going! I have a little routine when that happens. I say “NEXT” out loud and move on.

N- Negative Looping Fix

I recently heard a mentor of mine interviewing someone on a podcast about moving forward after failure. The guest made an amazing point that hit home for me. If you take a wrong turn in the car, your GPS doesn’t belittle you. There’s zero judgement because what you did two turns ago is irrelevant to correcting your course and getting you back on track. Too often though, we tend to punish ourselves for our past...

The days, months and years can slip by in a haze if we’re not intentional about how we approach each day. This can happen during times of extreme stress or change, but it can also creep up on us where we realize that a decade has passed and we’ve been going through the motions.

Here are a few ways we can take deliberate action and be even more intentional and live with purpose.

Set Daily Intentions

Brendon Burchard’s High Performance Planner is an awesome tool to use to set your day up with intention. You start by journaling answers to questions such as how you want to show up that day. What emotions do you want to have that day? Who needs you on your A-Game? Setting intentions about how you want to show up is a fantastic way to increase the way you live with clear intentions. If you have a tough meeting, set intentions about how you want to show up. How would your best self handle conflict?

Have a Kaizen Mindset

Kaizen is an approach to creating continuous...

The other day I was doing a yoga session and the instructor asked us to intentionally lengthen our tailbone. In doing so, I felt a stretch that I had never experienced before, even while doing that same posture which I had done a dozen times before.

It got me thinking, how many times I’ve failed to see the micro-steps and shifts and how much they impact my progress.

I realized that micro steps are a huge part of personal development and high-performance living.

The challenge is that we fail to see the power of micro steps.

We insist that we must have huge stretch goals, from where we are to where we're going to be successful. And that's simply not true. In high performance coaching, we gauge our current circumstances on a scale of one through ten. We don’t coach clients to jump from a three to a nine, instead we ask what would take you from a three to a five. The micro steps help us gain necessary momentum to keep pushing.

There are micro steps we can...

How are you pursuing life? Is it in a reactive state or are you pursuing life with bold determination?

If you are unsure consider the following...

Leaders and High achievers set their sights on bigger goals. They are consistently chasing after a dream or goal that will require them to stretch. They may not meet their goal, but they know it is worth every moment of effort because it is shaping them into an excellent human.

As Jim Rohn famously said…

“The major value of reaching goals is not to acquire it, but it’s the person you become while you’re working to acquire it.”

Leaders and high achievers can think bigger and have possibility vs. limited thinking. You will rarely hear them say things like…

It’s never been done before?

I’m not sure I can do it?

What makes you think you can achieve this?

These questions are examples of limited thinking and a closed mind.

Achievers say things like…

If not me than who?

Why not?

What is...

I picked up Gary John Bishop’s book “Stop Doing That Shi*” at the airport before boarding a flight. I hadn’t heard of the book, and it wasn’t on my reading list so I had zero expectations.  What a ride it was! I gobbled up the entire thing cover to cover on my journey and wanted to share some of the insights with you.  As a side, Gary is from Glasgow and since my parents are Glaswegian, I enjoyed it even more as a I read through with a thick Scottish accent! :D

I had always been taught that you become what you think however Gary took it one step further and shared that you become what you say. He said that you create your reality and experiences by the narrative and language, the self-talk behind the experience. Not only that, but we also create our experiences of the future by our self-talk and then act accordingly. Um mind BLOWN - and we’re just cracking this bad boy open!

Regardless of our life experiences, it’s the way we...

We’re near the end of the year and some of you are STOKED that you’ve reached or surpassed your goals – awesome! For others, you may feel frustrated that you’re off track and feeling in a bit of a funk.  Regardless of where you’re at, I want to encourage you today. You can reignite the fire with a few sparks!

First, revisit your north-star! What is your long-term goal?  Do you take on new things or develop daily habits that support your vision for the future. This also helps you eliminate the crap in your life that distracts you, like cat videos on social. Your north-star will keep petty things in perspective.  You’ll have to let some things go that aren’t worth your emotional, mental, or physical energy. Release and move on, if it’s out of alignment with future you!

Next, you want to revisit why your goal matters so much! What will you feel like once you’ve accomplished your goal? What do you wear? Where do you...

When we think of big goals, we’re often excited when we first write them down. Then reality sets in and we start looking at what could go wrong, the skills we don’t have yet or the barriers that will stand in our way.

Often, the obstacles are self-imposed, created by our minds and given strength through our language. When we ask ourselves dis-empowering questions like, “How the heck am I going to reach this goal?”, we’re not setting ourselves up for success.

When we are careful with our language and how we construct questions, miracles happen!

Instead, ask yourself…

• “What is the best thing that could happen here?”
• “What would it take to reach this goal in half the time?”
• “Who can help me achieve my results even faster?”
• “How would I be thinking differently if the stakes were higher?”

Questions like this challenge the status quo. They make us think in broader and more creative terms, allowing for...

I’ll be honest with y’all! I’ve been struggling a lot lately.  There have been about half a dozen life changes and crises happening at the same time.  While most have been positive, the negative ones have beaten me down.

This may surprise you given that I’m a high-performance coach. It has been small compromises in my training program that have led me here. I know this to be true, because I have navigated crises in the past while maintaining my perspective, a positive outlook, and healthy routine.

So, what went wrong this time around?

I allowed myself to take on a victim mentality and I stopped doing the basics that drive high performance.

Now don’t get me wrong, if you saw the laundry list of challenges perhaps you would say that my victim mentality was warranted. It was not and is not and today is a new day.

Today, I choose to manage my energy, to look for the good and the lessons. Today, I choose to get back to the basics, the habits that...