That voice inside your head knows what it’s talkin’ about.

In the face of adversity, do you dig in your heels or crumble? Does that little voice inside your head tell you to keep going or to give in or up?

The other day, I caught a few minutes of a television show in which a couple was trying to sell a house. Their realtor urged them to lower their price, citing the property’s numerous disadvantages. The owners were enamored with their house, saw the “disadvantages” as a benefit to the “right buyer”, fired the realtor, and proceeded to sell it themselves for far more than the realtor had recommended. Life is a lot like this. You will always find someone who will gladly shoot holes in your plans or recommend a different course of action. How do you tell if you’re making the right decision? Listen to that little voice inside your head.

Many years ago, I had the opportunity to partner with a local businesswoman to purchase some land. Our plan was to develop the land, relocate each of our businesses to the new building, and rent out the rest. It was going to cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars, of which I would take out a loan, but everything about this deal flowed so there was no concern. The day we were to furnish the attorney with information to establish the new corporation, I sat in the early morning hours, sipping my coffee, excited about this new venture. From out of nowhere, that little voice inside my head awoke, telling me not to proceed. It was so strong and powerful that I could not ignore it. I called off the deal. Everyone involved asked, incredulously, ‘why’? I couldn’t explain it. I just couldn’t go through with it.

Some six months later, I learned the answer.

The woman who would have been my partner went ahead with the purchase. Because of new homes that had been built on the bluff above this land, she had been unable to clear the land for development. The property sat idle as she tried to find a way around the problem.

I think of the numerous times I heeded the advice of others. As I took different paths other than the ones the voice inside my head instructed, I cannot tell the opportunities missed. But living in fear of what our instincts tell us to do is no way to live. Will listening to the voice always have you avert disaster or, at the minimum, discomfort? It is likely, provided you fine tune your ability to listen. It is sometimes not easy to decipher the messages you receive. Sometimes they are as strong as the voice I heard on that fateful morning; other times, it is only a feeling that something isn’t quite right. Sometimes, it is futuristic. The outcome of the decision you make today may not reveal itself for years to come. Either way, the voice inside your head is a navigation system that has been refined over the evolution of humankind. You would be wise to pay attention.

Getting past your Upper Limit Problem

Have you ever wondered why, after working very hard, you just can’t seem to break through a certain level of success? Do you self-sabotage or are you just plain mean to yourself? Have you ever looked at someone who is successful and thought they weren’t any smarter or more talented than you, and wondered how they did it? The problem may not be your IQ, EQ, work ethic, or talent but something entirely different.

Gay Hendricks, author of The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level, offers some real insight. He calls it: The Upper Limit Problem. According to Hendricks, the Upper Limit Problem is having “a limited tolerance for feeling good … (you) do something that stops (your) positive forward trajectory … or do something else that brings (you) back down within the bounds of (your) limited trajectory.”

Perhaps your Upper Limit Problem is manifested when staying out late so you can’t focus on your work the next day, spending too much money, despite a resolution to save, wasting time watching television instead of taking a course that would help your career, or any other non-productive behavior that stops you from advancing. In the throes of feeling gloomy about your prospects, it’s easy to assure yourself that, even had you tried, you didn’t have the education, know-how, contacts, talent, or fortitude to succeed anyway, so why bother? This is where understanding your Upper Limit Problem helps.

If you can identify the behaviors that stop you from achieving what you want, you’re halfway there to getting it.

The single best way to increase your productivity.

It requires more effort and elbow grease to get a job done when using a dull knife, scissors, or saw. We recognize facts like that and, if we’re smart, we’ll stop and do a little a sharpening. People work a lot like this as well. When we’re rested and recharged, we get more done. It is such a simple concept and yet many of us push on with our work as though our attention and energy will remain as sharp as it was the first day back from a restful vacation. What are we thinking?

We Americans are no slackers, however, so the notion of stopping to smell the roses – and not pruning them in the process – is, well, a bit akin to anarchy. We have sayings like, ‘work hard and play hard’ or ‘working vacation’, as though our playtime has to be difficult or contain an element of work or we can’t enjoy it. There are lots of articles out there on why this is a bad thing and I won’t reiterate them here because you also know it is a bad thing. The problem is, you probably just can’t stop yourself.

Years ago, I lived in Switzerland. The country shut down for one month in summer. Literally; one entire month. In addition to businesses closing, many shops also closed. You had to be patient or clever to be able to buy something you wanted if you remained in the country during that summer month. But it didn’t matter for the majority of Swiss because they were off somewhere delightful like Spain lying on a beach. When they returned, they were rested, pleasant, and ready to go to work. How did they do it? They had sharpened their most important tool – self.