Imagine two men in a village. Both have to walk a mile each way every day to a river to get water for their families. After a month, one man starts working on building a pipe underground to connect the river to his house. For an entire year he expends extra energy working on his pipeline. When he finishes, he has the resource of the water directly to his house, while the second man continues to walk to the river. Are there places in your life where you are living day to day? What are the prices and benefits to that decision? Most people can see the prices, and there are benefits! It takes a ton of additional effort to create a pipeline in your life. For an entire year, the first man spent extra time, money, and physical effort to create something from which he was not yet reaping any rewards. For what in your life are you willing to build a pipeline? Perhaps it is your finances. Sacrificing some of the things in this country believed to be "needs" that truly might be "wants" could create income with which to invest. What about those of us who are not healthy? Sacrificing some of the things that are great to taste, and sacrificing time to work out could be building a pipeline for your future. There are a million examples of places in our lives that we could build pipelines. This week, identify a place in your life in which you can begin building a pipeline. Ordinary people think about the now, extraordinary people invest in the future.

Aetna Healthcare hired Klemmer because they were interested in hosting fewer meetings with their teams and the meetings they did conduct needed to be more effective. We delivered training with a primary focus on communication, trust, risk taking and honoring agreements. This training yielded an overall increase in open communication by 51% and a 39% increase in collaboration among team members which was credited with reducing meeting costs by $2 million dollars over 12 months. Since 1995, Klemmer Leadership Training is committed to creating bold, ethical leaders who will create a world that works for everyone with no one left out. We help individuals and organizations dramatically improve results by addressing foundational belief systems. People do not just act on what they are told. They act on what they believe. Our experiential workshops create lasting transformation by exploring core beliefs around commitment, loyalty, communication, honesty, success, leadership, and more. Unlike purely motivational programs, our approach drives sustainable change as participants begin to see the world and themselves differently. We have delivered this work to tens of thousands across the U.S., Canada, Japan, the Philippines, Europe, Malaysia, and more, with over 45,000 graduates spanning 17+ countries.

Hewlett Packard hired Klemmer because they were five weeks behind in developing the ink-jet printer (losing $10 million a week). They were having a teamwork problem between design departments in Barcelona, Spain and San Diego, California. For HP, we completed workshops in San Diego and Barcelona and they credit our workshops with making up all five weeks of their manufacturing delay. Since 1995, Klemmer Leadership Training is committed to creating bold, ethical leaders who will create a world that works for everyone with no one left out. We help individuals and organizations dramatically improve results by addressing foundational belief systems. People do not just act on what they are told. They act on what they believe. Our experiential workshops create lasting transformation by exploring core beliefs around commitment, loyalty, communication, honesty, success, leadership, and more. Unlike purely motivational programs, our approach drives sustainable change as participants begin to see the world and themselves differently. We have delivered this work to tens of thousands across the U.S., Canada, Japan, the Philippines, Europe, Malaysia, and more, with over 45,000 graduates spanning 17+ countries.

All of us have a choice in how we look at our circumstances. One choice is the victim viewpoint, the viewpoint that the events in my life are the result of something being done to me. The second is the responsible viewpoint: I am the cause for my experience because of choices I have made. A key distinction when discussing these two viewpoints is that neither victim nor responsible have anything to do with the truth. One way to understand the difference between victim and responsible viewpoints is to put on different colored sunglasses. If you look at an object through red sunglasses, it appears red. But if you look at the same object through blue sunglasses, it appears blue. Neither one tells you what color the object really is. The object could be another color, or white. This illustrates how your viewpoint can color every experience in your life. Why would you want to look at how you are responsible for anything, and everything? Because when you do, you create options and a chance of turning your current experience into the one you want it to be. Keep in mind that this is not a guarantee, but it is much more exciting than the zero chance you have of changing your circumstances when you wear victim glasses. Let's take a look at the experience of one of our clients, a local auto parts warehouse, to see how the choices we make color the outcome of our experiences. This client wanted to improve the appearance of their building. They were willing to donate their own time to remodel and paint, but they requested that the corporate office pay for materials. First, the corporate office didn't respond to their request. When our client pressed the issue, they were told the money wasn't in the budget. How did our client respond? They took a victim viewpoint. With the help of our coach, however, our client looked at the choices they had made: the tone of their request (insinuating that the corporate office was at fault for the state of their building), their choice of words (this was a project the corporate office would like to do), and expecting the parent company to bear the burden of solving the financial problem (when it wasn't in the budget). How could they change this into a responsible viewpoint? By asking for a specific amount of money, $4,000, under the condition that they raise sales by $20,000 in one month. And, in order to know whether their request was heard, they asked for a definite yes or no within a time limit. The result? The auto parts store received the money, upgraded the appearance of their store and raised their sales even though the money still wasn't in the budget! Perhaps your sales are not as high as you'd like. Perhaps an employee or boss won't listen to you. Or perhaps budget cuts threaten a project you'd like to complete. Here are some ways you can look at these situations through responsible glasses. What choices did you make that might have caused you not to be heard? Did you try to communicate at the end of the day when people were tired? Was there a tone of judgment in your voice and choice of words? Were you vague? Did you match their style of communication (controller, supporter, analytical or promoter)? Would someone else have been better at communicating the request? Examine what new choices you can make. There's no guarantee you will gain what you want, but at least the odds will go up.

Sometimes the key piece that we can forget is that resistance in most cases is not external. Most of the time our resistance is within ourselves, battling our own sunglasses. Have you ever thought that the worst things being said to you are the things you say to yourself? How do you overcome internal resistance? Quit resisting it! First, recognize that you are in resistance. Difficulties are part of the process. Keep your eyes open to the fact that resistance to any goal is natural and WILL come up. Second, welcome the resistance. Welcoming it allows us to flow through the resistance instead of becoming frustrated. Third, stay the course. In order to build muscle you have to keep lifting weights, even when you feel sore. As Brian Klemmer always said, "Nothing great becomes great without overcoming great resistance." Your dreams and goals are worth it.

There is a set of sunglasses we wear that colors our experiences in the context of right and wrong. When considering this, I am not speaking in terms of morality, but about a person's experience. More specifically, within this context one person is right and the other person is wrong. Over the years I have come to see that everyone wears this pair of sunglasses to some degree or another. I have also observed that this way of looking at the world is one of the most difficult paradigms to change. To understand this, let's look at some of the other "sunglasses" that we wear. One example would be someone who is accustomed to operating from a context of low trust. It is relatively easy to see that the opposite pair of sunglasses would be high trust. Another example has to do with risk. If someone operates from a context of low risk, then it is fairly obvious that high risk is the converse pair of sunglasses. However, if someone wears a pair of sunglasses called right and wrong, then in their mind to give up being right would mean they are wrong. That is still operating from behind a pair of right and wrong sunglasses. If you take off these sunglasses, the concept of right and wrong doesn't even exist, and that opens up a realm where abundant opportunities are possible. The difficulty that lies in viewing the world from this paradigm can be illustrated with an example from sales. Suppose you are a salesperson trying to sell a product or an opportunity. Then suppose the customer tells you that they don't have the money for your product or opportunity. If you are coming from a right/wrong paradigm, you will probably respond by showing the customer how they really do have the money. How might this come across to the prospect? It will seem as if you are saying that they are wrong because they do have the money. Since no one likes to be wrong, the customer will probably dig in their feet and look at you as wrong. The end result, of course, is that no sale will be made. How can you — as the salesperson – approach a prospect without right and wrong sunglasses on? You can use a concept called feel/felt/found. When the prospect says they don't have the money, instead of pointing out ways that they (in your eyes) are wasting money that might go toward the product, you could say, "I know how you feel. I've felt the same way." These feel/felt comments get you and the prospect going in the same direction. It is at this point that the "found" part of feel/felt/found comes in. You could say something such as, "What I've found out is, the situation doesn't change unless I do something different. Unless I invest money – which makes the short-term harder – I don't have a chance for longer term gain." Or you might say, "What I've found is, there are ways of saving money that aren't obvious right off the bat, such as…." In this way, feel/felt/found opens up options that could not be seen from within the context of right and wrong.

The saying goes like this: the only way you can fail is to quit. In fact, I heard someone say just last week regarding his business that he was not giving up. I am now going to challenge this belief from the perspective that there is much more than merely not giving up and not quitting. You can apply this to your business, your health, your finances, your relationships – any and all of the important areas of your life where you have so much to gain by giving it all you've got. Where winning, in whatever form that looks like to you, is a big deal. This can be measured by a thriving and profitable business, healthy and meaningful relationships, more than enough money, and radiant health. My mind goes clunk when I hear that someone is not quitting. That could look like standing still, one foot in the game, taking little or no action, and lots of good intentions that, like a baby crying in a theater, should be carried out. What comfort does it bring to just not quit? Some, I suppose, but not enough to win the game. If your energy and your thoughts are around not quitting, you might be missing out on a chance to live a life of much greater meaning and satisfaction. Winning is much bigger and bolder than not quitting. Winning takes strength and determination. Knowing what to do is different than doing it. Playing to win will require and give you back more energy. Like a good workout at the gym, you might get sore from the effort put forth, and you will most likely be excited by the results that you created on purpose. Consistent massive action is more than a substitute for great ideas that linger in your mind. It is the only way for you to close the gap between where you are and what you say you want. On a zero-to-five scale, zero meaning you are O U T, and five meaning that you are taking yourself steadily and consistently toward and across the finish line (even if this is progressive), not quitting is about a two-point-five. Ooh, not so good. This does not sound exciting to me, and it doesn't sound like the results will be very satisfying. If your focus is on not quitting, versus winning and completing, you might want to examine where your real commitment lies. Be definite in your purpose and be crystal clear in what you want. Moving up the scale from not quitting to playing full out will transform your life and everyone who you inspire along the way. Five is better. Go find out for yourself.

Do you yearn to live a life without fear and hesitation? In our last blog we introduced the secret to playing full out with a discussion about operating out of our beingness. Living from the place of knowing that we are whole, unique individuals — rather than from our egos and the perspective of having to fill up our lives with externals in order to be something — frees us to take risks and opens up our creativity. That shift in thinking allows us to play full out. What other aspects are involved in the art of playing full out? One element is coming to the realization that we are going to die, and we are going to die incomplete. The samurai were a group of warriors who grasped that truth. Before going into battle they took time to consider the fact that someday they were going to die. It could be in this battle or the next, but it was going to happen. In thinking this way, they considered themselves dead already. They could therefore go into battle with nothing to lose, could fight without caution, and that is why they became known as the fiercest of warriors. Likewise, we must also come to the realization that our time on earth is short. Each of us is ultimately going to die, and as far as all of our plans, projects, and goals go, we will die incomplete. That incompleteness is compounded by the fact that someone is also going to do better or more than us. Knowing this helps us to let go of thinking that things need to be a certain way. It takes us out of the frame of mind of having to protect ourselves, which is a survival mode that leads only to caution, not living in full surrender to our commitment. "Choosing it like it is" also enables a person to play full out. Often, we have the idea that there is a way things should be and that we need to wait until our circumstances line up perfectly before we really go for it. Trapped in this mentality, we hold back and don't fully engage. The problem is, waiting for everything to be the way we think it should be before moving forward can potentially lead us into resentment and a victim mentality because as we all know, circumstances rarely line up. A good example of someone who faced making this choice was Christopher Reeves. In 1995 this accomplished actor, athlete, and musician was thrown from his horse and paralyzed from the neck down. Reeves had always said that if he "couldn't sail and swim and ride, then life wouldn't be worth living." Right after the accident he seriously considered pulling the plug. Instead, as difficult as it was, Reeves chose to live his life from a place of being already fulfilled and chose not to resist and resent his circumstances. At the point he came to a place of being able to say, "So what?" about his circumstances, he then could also say, "Now what?" That gave Reeves the option to play all out within the condition of his circumstances as they were and enabled him to eventually go on to narrate documentaries, act, write and direct, as well as raise money for spinal cord injury research. Living with these factors in mind allows you to "choose from nothing" and surrender to your commitment, going for a path that makes a difference for you, whether that path is a relationship, a business, a car, or a cause. You can choose from nothing because you are freed from worry about whether or not you are on the right path, and you are freed from expectation about the outcome, whether you will succeed or not. As you meditate on these principles and adopt them as your own, you will experience a shift in your outlook. Freed from fear and hesitation, you will find yourself able to play full out.

Think back. Why did you originally choose to attend Klemmer & Associates workshops in the first place? Were you looking for something more in your life, perhaps in the form of relationships, achieving goals, blasting past personal barriers that were hindering you? In a previous blog we talked about a graduate, who had achieved a lot of his goals, yet still felt unfulfilled. Maybe you can relate to him, having also tried to remedy that feeling by reaching for higher and higher goals and ending in the cycle of More, Better, Different. Or maybe your goals have eluded you. Your chosen direction has proven to be more difficult than you imagined and now you've pulled back and are not playing full out. Maybe you've given up altogether. When we try to fill ourselves up with something external to ourselves we eventually face these outcomes. How do we live then, instead, from our beingness? We begin by realizing why we operate from our mind and ego, rather than our beingness. Our ego is shaped starting at a young age when we experience pain. Pain causes us to shrink back and alters how we feel about ourselves. In a sense we then have "holes" in our wholeness. To help picture this, there is an analogy of a block of cheese. Each of us starts out as a whole block, but every time we experience a painful event, we pull back and that becomes a hole in the block of cheese. As we age and experience more painful events we eventually end up looking like a block of Swiss cheese. In an effort to feel better about ourselves, we fill up those holes with external things such as the love from another person, having a purpose, sex, work, money, going to church… the list is endless and depends on the individual. Then, if you could dissolve the real cheese, what you'd have left are the fillers, or what we call ego. Eventually these external fillers become our image, the identity we cling to. And because we find at least temporary relief from our fillers, we can be very protective about them. We avoid anything that threatens our identity. We attack things that don't agree with it. When we lose one of our fillers, we have to fill up the hole again. For instance, if we are jilted by someone we've received love from, we might blame them for not filling our needs, and again seek to fill that hole with someone else – or we might bail out emotionally altogether. The same is true for the goals we achieve. When gratification from reaching a goal wears off, we have to fill in that hole again. That is how we end up going back for something More, Better or Different. On the other hand, if we don't achieve a goal, we pull back in order to protect our image or we shift gears into something else. Either way, our willingness to play full out is hindered. As we become aware of our fillers, we can stop protecting them. Letting go of having to keep holes filled and guard a false identity all the time opens up our creativity. It frees us to take risks and ultimately to play full out from a different level: our beingness. This is the place of knowing we are whole, unique individuals who are intrinsically valuable. But this is just the beginning. There are other aspects to playing full out that we'll discuss further when we pick up this subject again in an upcoming blog.

Do you know your purpose? If not, you're in the company of a lot of other people. Like those other people, you might share a feeling of aimlessness and dissatisfaction with life. Something seems to be missing, and you know there's got to be more. But how does someone go about finding their purpose? Is there a course you can take? A book you can read? Someone you can talk to who can tell you what it is? There is no magic bullet, no step-by-step formula which you can follow to suddenly be able to say "Voila! My purpose!" Instead, finding your purpose is better looked at as a self-discovery process. The answer lies not outside of you in books, formulas, or the opinions of others. The answer lies inside you, by getting connected with your heart. This is a key, because it takes getting out of automatic pilot where you're living unconsciously and going through the motions of life, to living consciously and "being with" yourself. It requires paying attention to your feelings and emotions when you do something in order to notice what you do and do not like. It takes allowing yourself opportunities in order to figure out what really is important to you. Then, when you make choices based on what you learn about yourself, your life will become more focused and effective. You'll find that even when you admire what someone else is doing, you'll know whether or not what they are doing is also for you. At first, learning to live consciously takes intentional effort. It's like driving a stick shift for the first time and having to think about pushing in the clutch while moving the stick into gear, and then moving your other foot off the brake and onto the gas while you let the clutch out. In a similar way we have to consciously think about the things we're so used to ignoring. This can feel a little awkward at first. With practice, though, your ability to pay attention and be with yourself becomes smoother and easier. As you go through this process, it's imperative to learn to trust what your heart is telling you. As we discussed in our last newsletter, this can be scary at first as it takes you out of your head and into your heart, and sometimes beyond logic. You may find yourself questioning, "What if I trust myself and it doesn't work out? But as you act on the things you sense your intuition is telling you, you will build evidence that your intuition is there to correctly guide you, and that leads to having confidence to take bolder and bolder steps based on what your heart is saying. Discovering your purpose also takes ongoing self-discovery work. That's where workshops such as the Klemmer & Associate's Heart of the Samurai come in, a setting which encourages you to explore your purpose. With the help of books, podcasts, and other workshops, you can replace the belief systems that tell you that you aren't good enough to live out the unique purpose you are here on earth to fulfill, replacing those beliefs with healthy views that open up options for you to live out your dreams. The deeper you go into understanding who you are as a human being, the more likely it will be that your purpose will reveal itself to you. In The Compassionate Samurai, Brian Klemmer wrote that satisfaction is "found in being where you're supposed to be. It's found when you're in alignment with your purpose." If you haven't begun the process of discovering your purpose, determine to make that a priority today.

In Brian Klemmer's book, The Compassionate Samurai, he addresses ways that you can become the person you want to be. If you visualized the ideal you, how would you look, feel, and behave? It can be helpful to write the details on paper. For instance, how much do you weigh, what is your waist size, what color clothes do you wear? Do you feel confident, joyful, energetic? As a parent, are you patient? As a spouse or partner are you loving and compassionate? Are you a thoughtful communicator? Be specific. Give yourself enough time to list as many characteristics as you can think of. This list may extend over several pages. When you're done, you will have what we call the impeccable eye, the ultimate you. The idea behind this exercise is that each of us visualizes 100 percent of the time. Everybody does it; there's no way around it. And what we visualize is what our lives will be like (to discover what our subconscious sees, all it takes is a look at the reality in our lives). The impeccable eye will give your mind something new to visualize, which will help you move in the direction you want to go. After completing your list, make copies and put the list in prominent places where you will be sure to see it — on the bathroom mirror, on top of the pile in your briefcase, in front of your kitchen sink. At least once a day, read your impeccable eye to reinforce that picture of the ideal you. Another thing you can do is print the impeccable eye onto one or more 3 X 5 cards, laminate them and carry them around in your pocket, purse or car. When you're standing in line at the bank or supermarket, or when you're stopped at a red light, pull out the cards and read them. Or, add the list to a "notepad" app on your smart phone. Again, each of us visualizes 100 percent of the time. Why not give your subconscious something constructive to focus on and move your life in the direction you want to go?

We are all constantly faced with decisions. In many cases, these decisions are divided into two areas: Things that will make us happy now versus things that will make us happy later. If life were a three-day weekend, it would be easy to make the right choices, but we have to balance getting the most we can out of today while planting seeds that will make us happy tomorrow. Recently, I read about an incident involving my late friend and mentor, the legendary basketball coach John Wooden. During the 1960s and 1970s, Coach Wooden's UCLA Bruins won 10 out of 12 NCAA National Basketball Championships. This feat was unprecedented then as it is now. When sports analysts and experts debate the records that will likely never be broken, Coach Wooden's run of national championships is always on the list. In the midst of UCLA's dominant streak, there was a great high school center who wanted to play for Coach Wooden. Swen Nater was a top prospect who could have started on virtually any college team in the country except for Coach Wooden's UCLA Bruins. Coach Wooden had just signed Bill Walton to play center for him, replacing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who had dominated college basketball for several years and had just moved into the NBA. Coach Wooden told Swen Nater that if he really wanted to come to UCLA, he could but he would likely never start one basketball game. However, he would play against Bill Walton every day in practice which would make him an attractive pro prospect. As usual, Coach Wooden was right. Swen Nater never started in a basketball game during his college career. He sat on the bench and filled in for Bill Walton on several national championship teams, but after he graduated, he was a high selection in the NBA draft and went on to play 12 successful years in professional basketball including a season when he led the NBA in rebounds. Swen Nater gave up the fame and adulation he could have gotten by being the starting center at any other college in America to fill a backup role on Coach Wooden's national championship teams; but as the wise old coach had predicted, it paid off. Not only because Swen Nater improved his skills while at UCLA but also because he demonstrated to NBA teams-which are often made up of egotistical, immature athletes-that he was an unselfish team player who was willing to sacrifice in order to win. As you go through your day today, remember Swen Nater and make good choices. Today's the day!