In keeping with this month’s theme of assessing our leadership fitness, my goal is to make today’s Thought Partner Friday one of my leanest and tightest yet!

Most gurus say if you want to make inroads in your fitness, weight loss, and overall health, you’re not going to achieve the results you want with exercise alone. You have to change your habits, diet, and patterns of behavior as well. 

You can work out every day of the week; however, without addressing these other areas – very little long term success is realized. Heartbreaking, I know.


Success has less to do with what we can get ourselves to do and more to do with keeping ourselves from doing what we shouldn’t.
(BOOM – one of my favorite sentences of all time. That’s it. That’s the lesson for today.)

Okay, maybe just a few more pearls of genius to share:

  • Remember that for every committee, task, project, etc. you say YES to, results in you saying NO to a goal, passion, result, and desire for something else 
  • If you want to master the art of productivity, master the art of saying NO first (Yes, I’m saying say NO so you can say YES)
  • Choose wisely

One last mic drop as I send us off to enjoy the weekend:
If we took stock of our daily commitments, obligations, and patterns of behavior, would we find ourselves in SERVICE of what does not SERVE US?

This can be a loaded question.

From a personal perspective, are our actions, behaviors and commitments serving our end goals and desires?

From a leadership perspective are we growing our people appropriately, are we supporting our teams with the resources they need, are we in tune with the culture we’re driving in the workplace? Or are we slugging it out every day, still eating that cheeseburger and fry combo and wondering why we’re not seeing the results we want?

Isn’t it time to keep ourselves from doing what we shouldn’t AND start being in SERVICE of what SERVES US?