Since the time of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich over 70 years ago, desire has been inextricably linked to the attainment of goals. A burning desire, it was said, is the key ingredient in the realizing of our dreams and goals. Legions of contemporary personal development trainers have enforced this belief system.

Psychiatrist David R. Hawkins’ consciousness research illuminates the truth about desire. Desire, according to research, is only useful for the unmotivated, apathetic person who lacks the necessary energy within him to take action.

The reality is that most people pursuing goals, personal development, and self-growth—the higher needs on Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs—are already self-motivated.

For us, desire actually tends to block the manifestation of our goals. Why? Desire represents a destructive level of consciousness governed by a weak energy field. Think about what a truly starving person is willing to do to get food. Animalistic urges and primal programming run desire. These impulses don’t bring out the best in the human condition.

We need not feel guilty about having desires—they are innate to our humanness. Harnessing the energy of desire for the attainment of our goals, however, is counter-productive.

We all have had the experience of really wanting/desiring something, but giving up on it, only to see it materialize in our lives. The job or the relationship we wanted presented itself when we let go of the desire for it. And this is key: Identify what you want, but then let go wanting it. It may sound paradoxical, but try it and see what happens.

Here are a few things you can do to help transcend desire:

1. Let go of wanting what you desire by realizing that you’re okay if you have it and okay if you don’t.
2. Release your resistances around desire itself. A book like Patricia Carrington’s The Power of Letting Go can be a helpful guide.
3. Come from a place of gratitude for what you have now. The energy of desire masks gratitude so we forget that we are complete and total at every moment.
4. Instead of vilifying desire, identify and accept its presence as part of ancient programming. With total acceptance, you’ll find that you won’t be run by it anymore and will naturally begin to let it go.

You don’t need desire to attain goals or realize inner growth. Simply set your intention on what’s important to you and get out of your own way.

A few months ago we discussed the importance of adopting a coaching style of management in the workplace. Now, let’s look at how an effective coach would offer feedback in the office.

Feedback is continuous and in the moment. A good coach understands that the most effective feedback is given right or near the time the issue requiring feedback is raised.

Feedback is honest and conversational. A good coach doesn’t talk down to his players; but he is real with them (this means no office politics and no backhanded comments).

Feedback is inquisitive instead of forceful. A good coach empowers the team members with self-directed questions. He guides with questions instead of instructs through demands. He looks to have team members take ownership for their own work.

Feedback is specific, not general. A coach offers specific feedback with clear action steps directed toward achieving an objective or increasing performance. The team’s ultimate vision is what fuels the feedback, not a drive for personal gain or power over others.

Feedback is descriptive, not critical. Simply put, critical and judgmental comments destroy performance as it demotivates people. Effective feedback is highly descriptive and objectively points to ways of improvement.

Feedback is mainly focused on building strengths instead of highlighting weaknesses. If your feedback is always focused around the person’s weaknesses, it’s going to frustrate both of you. A good coach knows how to work around certain weaknesses and capitalize on the player’s best qualities and attributes that ultimately serve the team.

Finally, a good coach is always available and listens to his players. He owns his own feedback. Yes, you can ask for feedback on your feedback. If your players trust you, they will feel comfortable giving you honest comments upon your request.

Feedback shouldn’t be about a report or pay raise. Players listen to good coaches not because they are authority figures but because they respect their coach and know that the coach has the players’ and the team’s best interest in mind. If you genuinely care and want to support your teammates as well as your business, your feedback will be welcomed and received.

All effective communication comes from the heart. If, however, you feel “heart” has no place in the work place, you’ll find your feedback falling on deaf ears. Business may be business, but people are still people. When people know you genuinely care, they generally listen. Follow these principles and watch your team’s performance soar.

With no delay:

1) Find Meaning: Find an empowering meaning for your life. Victor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning and developer of logotherapy, explains that meaning is a primary driving force behind what we do. Meaning can help you get through even the toughest of circumstances.

2) Breathe Consciously: When challenges arise, we tend to tighten up our bodies and our breathing becomes shallow. Consciously breathe deeply, inflating your stomach, not your chest. By fully oxygenating your lungs, you’ll have more energy to think clearly and manage your emotions more effectively.

3) Grieve When Necessary: Give yourself permission to grieve. Sometimes knowing that “this too shall pass” does not provide enough emotional nourishment in the moment. If you allow yourself to grieve, you’ll let the grief up into your conscious mind and then let it go.

4) Smile Often: It’s okay to smile during shaky times. In fact, smiling is essential; it alters your emotional response to the environment and positively infects those around you. You can always give the gift of a smile.

5) Create Value: Our society is built on human ingenuity and the constant creation of value. In shaky times, focus on what you can contribute; focus on building something bigger than yourself. Giving can be a fantastic remedy for overcoming tough life challenges.

6) Embrace Today: Learn to fully embrace the beauties of each and every day. In The Greatest Salesman in the World, Og Mandino provides a valuable mantra: “I will live this day as if it is my last.”

7) Go on a Media Fast: Carefully monitor what you feed your mind— with Internet, TV, radio, newspapers and conversations. Remove negative influences that poison your mind. Create an environment that invigorates your body, mind, and spirit.

8.) Manage your Emotions: You can never control the event, but you can always manage your reaction to the event. You have the power of decision. Which emotions do you want to energize during difficult times?

9) Live Gratitude: Learn to live gratitude everyday. Ask yourself, What can I be grateful for right now? Feel gratitude for everything you currently have in your life—including existence itself.

10) Move On: The only constant in the universe is change. Instead of living in the pain of the past, allow the pain to be there and then let it go. Focus on what you want, not what’s wrong. Adopt the trait of adaptability, embrace change and move on.

Upon observation, we realize that simultaneously doing two tasks that require mental effort reduces the brainpower available for either task. But most of us rarely do two things at once; we do three to five things at once.

We respond to text messages in the middle of a conversation. We answer emails while we’re on the phone. We finish reading articles while we’re working on a document. We check the weather and traffic, sip our coffee, change the radio station, talk on our cell phone, and change lanes at the same time.

We are conditioned to multitask and, as such, destined for fragmented attention and reduced performance.

Multitasking is today’s default. Focusing on one task at a time has become a lost discipline in the digital age. Our minds convince us that if we do more things at one time, we get more accomplished. Theoretically, this makes sense; in practice, however, it’s simply not true.

As systems theory points out, the system with the most amount of diversity has the least amount of energy. Similar to how water pressure is weakened when it’s funneled into multiple outlets like in a showerhead, fragmenting your attention into different channels simultaneously reduces your capacity to think clearly, focus intensely, deduce creatively, and act effectively.

The solution is obvious: Do one thing at a time. Understand, however, that this is not natural for most of us—especially in a wired world. Mental practice and training is required. We must set our intention on focusing on the task at hand and then mindfully move throughout our day, making course corrections and adjustments when we default back to “multitask mode.”

To assist in this effort, block off time for specific tasks and stay consciously aware of your focus during these time blocks. For example, schedule 15-minute blocks for emailing. Focus on your email correspondence in that brief period, but then close your email program when you reach the end of your time block. (Keeping your email program perpetually open is the surest way of reducing your productivity.) The same goes for text messaging.

Remember: If every form of communication is urgent, then nothing is urgent. Select whom you’re going to text with carefully and make sure they know you only use text messaging for genuinely urgent communication.

If you don’t consciously create a hierarchy of urgency in your communication systems, the world will demand urgent responses on all levels. The only way out of this cycle is to consciously structure your communication systems and mindfully watch where you spend your time.

In the beginning, the above process can feel daunting. It may also seem that more time is spent organizing and scheduling your time rather than on actual work. That’s good. It’s an upfront investment that pays long-term dividends on your available time, productivity, and overall quality of life. Try it and see for yourself.

Many of the world’s great inventions were created with the intention of saving us time. Cars get us to our destinations faster than a horse and buggy. Email messages are received faster than snail mail.

But what do humans do with more time? They fill it up with more activities—more work, more events—more demands on their time. Air travel made it possible to cross vast distances in a short period of time. Now, we work on our way to the airport, in the airport, and on the plane. Although we can work globally, we have less time, not more.

Few of us leverage modern invention to establish more quality time with our loved ones and ourselves. Few spend more time in contemplation and reflection, or wandering and incubating ideas.

In fact, most people experience less free time and more demands each year. Instead of just checking our emails and voicemails like we did only a few years back, now we check our daily texts, social networks, RSS feeds, IMs, and a host of other technologies that are supposed to improve our lives in some way.

I’m not suggesting that these technologies are “bad.” In fact, as BJ Bueno noted in Why We Talk, the social media phenomenon serves our biological drive to communicate.

I am suggesting, however, that left unchecked, the human mind coupled with technologies will keep you busier and more restless. Each new technology and communication medium will likely increase your neurotic tendencies and throw you further off balance. (If you don’t believe me, try completely unplugging from the world for a few days and report back on how you do.)

We’ll become more and more off-centered until we learn to tame our minds, to be able to nurture healthy perspectives, and simplify and/or scale back when appropriate. We must take great care as we move further into the digital age where entertainment and communication dominate our lives.

What can we do? Here are a few things I’ve found to be helpful:

1. Become the watcher—notice the inner drive to continually stay active and to get ahead. (Do nothing about it; just watch and notice it. Awareness alone has therapeutic value.)
2. Learn to unplug periodically. Go offline for a few days and enjoy life without technology.
3. Allow yourself to just be; allow the world to be as it is too. Don’t fight or resist the fast pace of change. Just allow it to unfold as it will.
4. Learn how to master the creation of time blocks. Craving out time blocks help you shut out distractions and focus on what’s important to you.

Happy Journeys!

We often try to extract the human element out of business and view our team members, employees, contractors, or vendors as hired help. From a mechanistic worldview, each person is simply another part of a big machine.

Why should I need to be nice, considerate, gracious, or supportive to these people? After all, they are paid to do a job so that’s what I need them to do!

Yes, employees and contractors are being financially compensated for the work they are hired to do, but there’s a good reason to offer positive recognition and honor your team members as human beings. You’ll find that graciousness raises the quality and standard of people’s work. People will do more and better quality work when they feel they are being respected and appreciated—when they know they matter.

There’s another benefit to honoring humans as humans: Your work and interaction with others becomes more positive and uplifting. A positive work environment raises the entire field—everyone benefits. A destructive work environment where people are viewed as automatons produces lackluster results (and isn’t much fun either).

Honoring others is an inner choice available to each of us in every moment. We may slip up from time to time, get self-involved, and forget how our moods and attitudes affect others. That’s okay. We’re human. Once we notice our negative mental state, we can take a deep breath, go for a quick walk, cool off, and readjust. Compassion for others requires compassion for ourselves.

Judgment is a double-edged sword. When you judge another, you end up striking yourself. Judgment is the ego’s default position. It’s easy to be judgmental and critical of others. Compassion takes willingness, effort, and training.

Compassion in the workplace, where each person honors each other, helps breed trust and lays the foundation for effective team building and open communication.

When you’re having trouble being compassionate toward a co-worker try this: Look at him and silently acknowledge that he has a difficult life (like the rest of us), filled with challenges at home and work. Realize that, yes, this person has defects in his personality (like the rest of us), but he is doing the best he can. Socrates noted over 2,300 years ago that man can only do what he perceives to be the Good.

Compassion and judgment are opposites. At all times, you are feeding one or the other. One destroys communication and creates a negative work environment; the other leads to trusting, empowered relationships. Which will you choose?

Here are some simple guidelines to help you live a good life:

Hail creativity, not busyness.
Be loving, not fearful.
Seek value, not criticism.
Be forgiving, not resentful.
Operate with caution, not fear.
Seek to understand, not judge.
Work to collaborate, not compete.
Honor the Spirit within, not the ego.
Be courageous, not reckless.
Drive toward results, not toward more demands on your time.
Come from a place of inner confidence, not arrogance.
Be allowing, not controlling.

And a few guidelines for running a good business too:

Celebrate your customers, not your sales.
Be honest, not deceitful.
Cultivate customer loyalty, not more transactions.
Focus on educating customers, not persuading them.
Be grateful, not greedy.
Grow by organic attraction, not forceful promotion.
Come from a place of service, not expectation.
Be serving, not ambitious.
Come from power, not force.

Our lives and our businesses can be as simple or as complicated as we allow them to be. Unconscious mechanisms and programming often hinder our ability to manifest what we truly want.

Living our lives and operating our businesses through simple yet powerful spiritual principles leads to a divinely guided life. This journey is privileged with inner rewards that trump any amount of external compensation.

We’ve all had the experience of having a big decision weighing on our psyche. We think about it constantly, evaluating it from every conceivable angle, creating various scenarios in our minds, and often playing a mental movie, highlighting the ramifications of making the “wrong” call.

The process can be emotionally draining and it’s almost never fun. But what happens after you’re made the decision? Oftentimes, you feel lighter as though it doesn’t matter if you made the right decision or not—you’re just happy you don’t have to think about it anymore. Making the decision often lifts the pressure from our minds.

Is the psychic tension intrinsic to the decision-making process itself? Or is it a function of our resistance and drive to control the outcome of events? With honest observation, it becomes apparent that we are creating the tension within us.

What if there was another way of approaching big decisions and major problems that didn’t compound the stress and anxiety associated with the unknown?

What if instead of “handling” our decisions, we allowed them to handle themselves? I’m not advocating passivity; I’m suggesting we tend to get in our own way when handling stressful situations and making decisions. You still need to do your homework; you just don’t need to hold the anxiety related to the future’s uncertainty.

The alternative approach to making big decisions is to call upon Divine Guidance, the Inner Teacher, intuition, or whatever term feels most appropriate to you. Then, listen intently with all your heart. Trust that the answer or the most suitable course of action will present itself.

All that is needed is faith, courage, discipline, and patience. Patience is especially difficult for those of us living in the digital age. Yet it is our ability to quiet the mind and sit in stillness that allows true intuition to reveal itself. Haste blocks the answers we seek. Our want-it-and-need-it-now mentality is part of the reason big decisions weigh on our psyche.

Practically speaking, it helps to take time out each day to be still and stay quiet. It’s a discipline few appreciate and even fewer master. But the rewards are plentiful. You no longer have to sweat making decisions—big or small. You no longer have to agonize or fear making the “wrong” decision. You can allow things to unfold as they will.

We tend to think of innovation as explosive ideas that produce radical change. Apple is the poster child for innovation. In the last decade, they reinvented the computer industry, music industry, and mobile industry—and the iPad may create a new mobile computing industry. Not bad at all.

But for most businesses, innovations can be far less sexy and monumental—yet still lead to positive change. The drive behind innovation is to constantly find ways to improve. The operative word is constantly as the innovation process for businesses is never-ending.

The Japanese have competed brilliantly against American manufacturers over the last several decades, utilizing their concept of Kaizen—“constant improvement.” The Toyota production system had been studied by academia and American businesses for years, and yet American car manufacturers continued to lose ground. (Recently, however, even Toyota fell prey to the seduction of the “rush to grow.”)

Kaizen is a philosophy in action that American workers have a difficult time integrating into their businesses. Why? We’ve been programmed to “swing for the fence” every time we’re at bat instead of trying to hit a single. We expect massive change immediately; otherwise we abandon our strategies.

How many brilliant ideas have we failed to capitalize on simply because we don’t have the discipline to execute?

Learn to honor the creative process, live one day at a time, and commit to constant improvement in both your business and personal life. It’s not sexy or glamorous but it produces sustainable results.

Let go of the programming that says it has to happen now. Most “overnight” successes take at least a decade. Accepting this reality brings tranquility; it also leads to a more mature and disciplined approach to business and our personal lives.

Minor improvements compound into significant positive changes over time.

It’s easy to stay unaware of how much our potential goes unrealized. Operating in a kind of “Monkey Mind,” we simply go about our day, being dictated by the demands of the moment.

But there is an alternative. We can set up the conditions to facilitate our best work—our most creative efforts. Doing so requires conscious focus as the demands and realities of work don’t innately provide the conditions for creativity and effectiveness.

Interestingly, achieving greater levels of effectiveness and productivity doesn’t necessarily require learning a new habit. It requires unlearning a set of destructive habits that limit our ability to be in flow.

If you’d like to learn a simple strategic process to help increase your level of effectiveness, watch this brief slide show presentation: