Here’s 5 ways that Thinking NAKED helps your customer service:

1) You listen – with the intent of completely understanding what it is the customer is asking for. Since your mind is open to possibility, you are solution oriented, not policy and procedure bound. When this is true, you turn your imagination loose to discover new ways to delight your customers! You view complaints as gifts, as opportunities for continuous improvement.

2) You become externally focused – You let go of antiquated and internally oriented rules, and find ways to profitably satisfy your customers. You don’t settle for offering GOOD service, you search for ways to offer GREAT service!

3) You concentrate on adding value – this allows you to separate the actions that customers are willing to pay for, from those that add no value. This is the waste that you can take steps to eliminate.

4) You seek to give rather than get – You regularly give away service, advice, support and smiles. You constantly ask yourself how you can better serve others. You pay no attention to the state of the economy, knowing that your needs are always met.

5) You ask for feedback – You ask customers for advice on how to improve your service and products, and you take action as appropriate.

Best of all, because you’re thinking NAKED, you’ve dropped all your excuses and justifications, all of your
complaining and procrastination. Your customer service is improving, almost without any effort!

Life Lesson # 1 – Don’t let anyone talk you out of your dream! Human engineers say it is impossible for bumblebees to fly.  They claim that the bumblebee body is too big and heavy and the wings too light to lift them off the ground and sustain them in flight. But bumblebees can’t read, so they continued to fly!  Be a bumblebee and hold fast to your dream, not matter what the so called experts tells you.

Life Lesson #2 –   A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step! This is a well stated adage by Confucius, but it should be the mantra of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird. They normally spend the winter in Central America. From March through May they migrate north, some through the eastern two thirds of Texas, some through Cuba and Florida, and some fly directly across the Gulf of Mexico.   Hummingbird.net states that many Ruby-throated Hummingbirds travel nonstop for 18-22 hours in order to migrate.  Imagine weighing anywhere from 2 to 20 grams and completing a nonstop journey over 600 miles! I don’t know about you, but I find these facts both mind-boggling and motivating.  Better yet, my own flimsy excuses for not pursuing a goal tend to pale in comparison, and I use the image of that small bird on its migration to get myself moving on my own journey to success.

Life Lesson #3 – You can overcome dismal surroundings, if you are willing to change! At one time or another you may have admired the giant Swallowtail butterfly, known as Heraclides cresphontes or Papilio cresphontes. You might not be aware that as it emerges from its dark and confining chrysalis it must hang vertically to allow its wings to expand and dry.  The process can take a few hours, which may not seem like much to us. But consider the plight of the butterfly, hoping its’ wings dry before a predator finds it and wondering if (or when) it will be able to fly off.  Like the butterfly, we sometimes find ourselves in the throes of a precarious change. It can be comforting to know that if we just hang in there, we can emerge in a better state than we could have ever imagined.

I hope these simple lessons from the smallest of creatures will help guide you to the success you dream about!

2) Give your knowledge away. I know it sounds crazy, but sharing your knowledge in the form of a blog, ezine, magazine article, or Twitter page is another new way to brand yourself as a subject matter expert.  Just be sure that the information you share is your own and not the intellectual property of your employer.

3) Volunteer. Giving away your time can pay off in spades!  You will be able to learn new skills and hone the skills you already have.  Most associations, church, youth, and civic groups are always in need of volunteers and are usually quite willing to teach you the basic skills necessary for your volunteer position.

4) Keep an updated catalogue of your accomplishments. Include all new projects you complete and skill sets you acquire on the job or through volunteering.  Review your catalogue at least once per quarter and make sure you don’t overlook anything, including those volunteer efforts.  It’s easy to overlook those skills or discount their value in the business world.  But roles such as little league coach, scout leader, producer of a church play, or programs director for an association require many business skills.  If possible, ask for a job description when you take on the role and a letter of recommendation once you complete the assignment.  Place it immediately in your skills catalogue.
5) Ask to cross-train in other departments.  Don’t immerse yourself so deeply in your own department that you fail to recognize the efforts of your coworkers in other departments.  Ask your boss if you can spend a small amount of time learning the basic responsibilities of your colleagues.  Offer to help others learn your job as well.  You will not only develop new skills, you’ll view the company from a different perspective, and you may find ways to improve the interaction between yourself and your coworkers.

SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timed.  Here are examples of how to set SMART goals:

Specific - this describes the target condition exactly.  If you want to increase sales, you must state how much of an increase you expect. For example: “our goal is to increase sales by 15%”.

Measurable -In order to know when they’ve arrived, your team will have to know the starting and ending conditions.  Using the example above, you would state: “sales are at 100K, let’s set a goal to increase sales to 115K”.

Achievable - The goal should stretch your team, but be within reach.  This provides the motivation that activates the brain chemistry necessary for team accomplishment.  If you were trying to set a goal for a 100% increase in sales, your team might not believe it was possible, and give up before they got started.

Realistic – Your team must have the skills, time and resources to accomplish the stated goal.  Increasing sales by 15% might be realistic if they have product, marketing material, access to customers, and a reasonable amount of time for achievement.

Timed - Goals must include deadlines. Without a deadline, your goal is too vague, and will likely produce vague results.  A time frame provides the  finish line, which motivates and drives action.  It allows your team to know that they have arrived at the desired destination!

Here are 5 thoughts and thought patterns I believe harm us the most:

1) “I can’t”.  This thought actually weakens your body!  “I can’t spell, sing, find a better job, etc, etc.  Does it sound familiar?  “I can’t” usually means we don’t know how or we choose not to do something.  Try turning your “I can’t” statement into an “I won’t” statement and feel the shift in power you feel once you turn that small phrase around.

2) “I’m not”  Once again you can fill in the blank with your own “I’m not” thought.  Have you tried to convince yourself that super successful people are that way because they have more talent, money, lucky breaks,  and powerful friends than you?  Well, it isn’t true!  The super successful achieve more because they don’t waste their time worrying about the things they don’t have, they focus on using the talent, abilities, and other resources that they do have.

3) “I’ll never”.  Examples of this deadly dogma are “I’ll never get rich working here”, I’ll never convince my spouse to support me in this”, or “I’ll never be able to speak in front of a group”.  Unless you have a crystal ball and can see into the future, you can’t absolutely know that any of these are true, but you can sabotage your chances of succeeding and you can make yourself miserable in the process.  Challenge this thought and ask yourself if the thought is moving you towards your goal or away from it.  Pick the thought that moves you in the direction you want to go.

4) “No one wants to help me”, “buy from me”, “promote or hire me”.  Unless you’ve asked every single person in the world, multiple times and  in multiple ways, you can’t possibly know this is true, so why bother holding onto the thought?  Throw it away and ask another, and another, and another, until you find that person who will help, hire or buy from you.

5) “It’s impossible”  Like the thought above, we really can’t know for sure whether or not something is possible, can we?  Christopher Columbus, Roger Bannister, and Mother Teresa are just a few of the successful  folks who refused to believe that their dream was impossible.  Tell yourself you can, and you’re half way to achieving your goal.  Ask for help, from others and from above, and you’re closer than you think.  You can do it, if you just believe!

What if organizational leaders could help their workforce learn to apply these same concepts to the thoughts they think and the actions they take?  What if we all could learn to harness our minds and eliminate wasteful, negative thoughts so that we added value to every interaction we experience?

I think we could transform our society if we all learned to blend Lean thinking, Strategic Planning and the techniques outlined in Jack Canfield’s bestselling book, “The Success Principles” into the fabric of our lives.  I believe that we could  eliminate the wasteful thoughts and resulting actions that sabotage our efforts to achieve greater health, wealth and happiness for ourselves and others.

My goal over the next weeks and months is provide a series of blog articles and Facebook postings that you can adopt and share with your friends, families and coworkers.  These articles will condense the essence of Jack Canfield’s Success Principles, Best Practices of Strategic Planning, and Lean Principles of waste reduction into a 3S framework to Sort, Support and Sustain your efforts to achieve the success you envision in all areas of your life.

Living with abundance is quite different from living for abundance. When we live for abundance we go about gathering, collecting, and wanting more in the way of material things, and we never seem to have acquired enough.  When we live with abundance we are serene in the knowledge that all we have is all we ever need. I offer this month’s lesson from a very small teacher.  The black-capped Chickadee is one of the cutest little birds and a master at Living with abundance.  He comes to my window and perches precariously on a small branch. I notice that his little feathered suit has no pockets in which to store any seed for tomorrow.  He holds on despite the strong winds who are trying their hardest to dislodge him, and the steady rain falling around him.  He devotes himself to living in the now, entertaining us with his joyful little tune and modeling the path I want to follow.

1) Recognize the high price you are paying for negative and toxic thoughts. As I mentioned above, research continues to prove that we pay an enormous price for stress-inducing negative thoughts.  There have been hundreds of studies conducted showing that stress contributes to a significant percent of  major illnesses.

According to Healthy People 2000, a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services cited these statistics:

• 70-80% of all visits to the doctor are for stress-related and stress-induced illnesses
• Stress contributes to 50% of all illness in the United States
• The cost of job stress in the U.S. is estimated at $200 billion annually, including costs of absenteeism, lost productivity, and insurance claims

2) Understand where negative thoughts come from.  In his fascinating book, Virus of the Mind, Richard Brodie tells us that toxic thoughts are contagious.   These negative thoughts, or mind viruses as he calls them, are spread from one mind to another through the spoken word.  Think about some of the negative and limiting beliefs you hold to be true.  Examples: “I’m not smart enough”, “talented enough”, or  “I’m too old”, “too young”,  “too fat”, “too thin”, etc.  We pick these thoughts up from the time we’re very young, from our parents, teachers, and other adults who mean well, but instill limiting beliefs in us.  We pick up other negative beliefs from classmates, siblings, coworkers, from angry confrontations:  “you’re a loser like your father”  “you’re a slob”, “you never do anything right”.  Sound familiar?  And then there’s the media:  “real estate values are on the decline”, “unemployment continues to rise”, “is the food you’re eating making you sick”?  We take all this in and  we conclude that these negative and limiting beliefs must be true because we were told so by reliable sources.  Once these thoughts are played back to us from our own minds and in our own voices, we never even consider that these thoughts could be downright lies!!

3) Write down your negative thoughts and throw them away! Keep going until you’ve stripped them all off!  In my workshops, we make a great game of this and we call it the Skinny Dippin Exercise.  Now you may be thinking that this sounds like fun, but what happens when they come right back?  Well, first you need to recognize that it is more than likely that they will come back.  Research shows that we think 30 to 60 thousand thoughts per day and that 80% are negative.  You’ve  built up these negative beliefs  over a lifetime, you won’t rid yourself of them overnight, so it’s important to be gentle with yourself and not give yourself something else to feel guilty about.  Keep writing them down and throwing them off.  Think of it as mental hygiene.  You practice personal hygiene, like bathing and brushing your teeth everyday, don’t you?

4) Challenge Your Thoughts.  Take some time to uncover the negative thoughts that are causing you the most pain or are holding you back from accomplishing your dreams.  One by one, ask yourself if the thought is even true.  Can you really be certain that it is true?  If you’re not absolutely sure, then the chances are that the thought could be true or not true.  Next ask yourself if the turnaround thought could be true.  For instance, “I’m not smart enough” becomes “I’m know enough to get started on my project, and I can learn anything else I need to know”.  Now ask yourself which thought moves you toward your goal and which thought holds you back.  If either thought is likely to be true, why not think the thought that is going to help you reach your goal?

5) Replace the Negative Thoughts with Positive Thoughts. Start building a library of motivational materials and biographies of successful people.  Study their methods, because as my mentor Jack Canfield,  likes to say, “success leaves clues”.  You’ll find that super successful individuals like Walt Disney, Napoleon Hill, Wayne Dyer, Jack Canfield, Dale Carnegie and Zig Ziglar all overcame obstacles similar to the ones you face and still managed to achieve their dreams.  They did it with no more talent than anyone else.  They did it by replacing their negative and limiting beliefs with powerful and positive thoughts. You can too, if you think you can!