I'm the boss of me

Did you know that you lose most of what you learn from training within a week?

I didn't. I don't know I completely believe it either (depending heavily on the content and quality of the training), but in an effort not to lose the benefit of my Seven Habit of Highly Effective People (SHHEP) I thought I'd document some of my efforts here. I have a 'contract' with one of my classmates to follow up weekly but truthfully...as someone who is a known performance-oriented person I will not fail in front of my contractee and will only admit to carefully scripted failure if forced.

(Um, the fact that shortens down to sheep is not lost on me)

Alrighty, so this week is about circle of influence versus circle of concern. Those things which I can directly influence versus those things that might effect me but I have no control over. As an example, my flight being late is in my circle of concern (affects me but I cannot make it be on time) versus my decision of what to do with the time I've 'gained' because of the late flight (e.g., drink, make friends with co-passengers, read).

Things in my circle of control:

• How I spend my time - right now, I spend too much time on FB. I could be spending that time one things that will benefit me like reading, writing, spending time with actual friends not virtual friends, sleeping more, working out more).
• What I put in my mouth - seems now that I've reached my goal weight and reset a new one that I'm not totally buying into new goal weight. The key here is I need to decide if current weight is satisfactory, or if I want the lower weight. Because, if I don't really want the lower weight, I am mentally beating me up for my eating habits unnecessarily. So, in the meantime I'm being less careful about my calories...which leads to the next thing...
• Degree to which I work out - last week with having to be into the office earlier my morning workouts dropped off. And, because I wasn't going to bed earlier to make up for the earlier hours, by the time I got home I was too tired. But the thing is, working out is finally to the point where it feels good and I want to get back to it (course, massive fail this morning because I didn't set my alarm and by 9am when I woke up it's just too hot to go run).
• How clean I keep my stuff - the house being clean is a regular point of contention in my household. But, I played a little game with myself a few weeks back and just picked up my stuff. I decided, I can't really complain at PC if my stuff was laying around - so to be able to make the point that PC needed to pick up more while making sure my kettle wasn't black, I picked up only my things. I'm a little embarrassed to tell you how much cleaner the house was. Um, yes, I am guilty of being a slob.
• How I perform at work - ok, this is a tough one. I don't like my job. I don't like the bureaucracy of the organization and I think it leads to inefficiency. I don't think high performance leads to improved chance of promotion (because there are no promotions available) or raises (raises are based on tenure). Further, I seem to be praised regularly for doing nearly nothing so I'm not terribly motivated to perform more when I'm already seemingly well appreciated. All that being said, as a professional. I am not behaving well. I can blame it on my environment. But in truth, I know better. If I was a boss, I'd expect better. So, less FB at work, less socializing at work, and less fanning the flames. More doing the things that they send me a paycheck for. And you know what, even if I don't get promoted or raise for it, I can feel less fear that I'm going to be reprimanded for performance reasons every time my phone rings and every time an email pops up and I can STOP FEELING GUILTY.

And, lastly. Stop trying to influence others' behaviors.