Mike Robbins

Infusing Life and Business with Authenticity and Appreciation

success

Appreciating People: Focus on Who They Are

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Would you like to be more effective at appreciating people around you?

Think about someone who’s shown you an act of kindness. What did they do or say that made you feel appreciated?

It can be as simple as a smile or a thank you, or, more significantly, lending a hand on a project or offering a shoulder to cry on.

No matter how big or small the act of appreciation is, we usually don’t forget the gesture and the impact.

I’ve been researching, writing, and speaking about appreciation for almost twenty-five years.  One of the most important things I have learned is the distinction between recognition and appreciation.

The Power of Appreciation: Recognition vs. Appreciation

Recognition refers to the way we reward the actions of those around us. It’s important, since most of us like to be recognized, especially at work. We often get upset when we don’t get recognized, especially when we think we deserve it.

As important as recognition is, it’s also limited for a few reasons. First, recognition is always based on past actions, so it’s pretty limited in terms of anticipating the future. Plus, people can react to recognition in different ways, meaning that it can motivate them in different ways, too.

Perhaps the biggest issue with recognition is the fact that it focuses more on outcomes than people.

On the other hand, appreciation is about recognizing the inherent value of people.  It’s about who people are, and less about what they have done or are doing. For example, a performance award is a type of recognition that’s based on a result which has to be earned.  While there is nothing wrong with this, it’s inherently conditional.

Appreciation is not based on an outcome—you can tell someone that you’re grateful for them, let them know why you care about them, or acknowledge the value they bring, regardless of their performance.

If we want to ensure that the people around us feel cared about, we must acknowledge who they are as human beings rather than focusing solely on their accomplishments. In fact, sometimes, the most important time to appreciate someone is after they’ve failed or made a mistake. While we can’t always recognize the outcome, we can almost always acknowledge the effort and courage that it often takes to act.

Becoming a master at the art of appreciating others is about simultaneously recognizing the great things that people do, as well as proactively acknowledging them for who they are, the valuable qualities they have, and how they positively impact us and others by being who they are.

Appreciation in Action

Think of three people in your life who you interact with on a regular basis. What do you appreciate about each of them? Remember that it’s not about what they’ve done or accomplished, but who they are as people. It could be their attitude, commitment, friendship, humor, honesty, passion, wisdom, humility, kindness, joy, curiosity or many other qualities. As you think about each of these people, reflect on the ways they have positively impacted you and those around you.

Once you’ve had a chance to think about what you appreciate about these important people – reach out to them by phone or text to let them know.  While it might feel a bit vulnerable for you and/or for them, if you share your appreciation with them genuinely, not only will it most likely touch and inspire them, it may also have a positive impact on you, your relationship with them, and any group or team you might be a part of with them.  Have fun with it and be as generous, authentic, and courageous as possible.

Do you have thoughts on appreciation?  Share them in the comments below. And if you enjoyed this blog post, here are three more to check out:

Apologize Authentically
Resolving Conflict
Expand your Capacity for Trust

 

It’s How We Play the Game That Matters

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In today’s competitive culture, it’s easy to lose touch with what really matters. But we should keep in mind that the way we go about something can be just as meaningful as the results we produce.

Some time ago, I came across an incredibly inspiring video that brought me to tears. This timeless story involves a remarkable example of sportsmanship that took place on a college softball field. The video is listed below for you to check out – you don’t want to miss it:

This video is one of the best examples of doing the right thing that I’ve seen. As I watched it, I was reminded of the fact that life is about much more than winning and losing. Rather, it’s about reaching out and supporting one another as human beings.

Sometimes, it’s easy for us to forget this in our pursuit of success and results.  This video is a great reminder that it’s not really about who wins or who loses. Instead, it’s how we play the game that truly matters.

Here are some examples of what we can do to make sure we’re playing the game the right way, focusing on what matters most, and keeping things in perspective.

Play Fair

Fairness is all about respecting the rules—even when you’re not the one who comes out on top.

The rules apply to everyone. When we follow the rules, we make sure that we’re able to make the best decisions we can. Doing this makes it more likely for people to get treated as fairly as possible.

Fairness and honesty go hand-in-hand. If you make a mistake, don’t be afraid to own up to it. Accepting the consequences of our own actions sets a strong example for the people around us, as it shows that no one is truly above the law.

Treat People with Respect

Respect is about taking the thoughts and feelings of the people around us into consideration. We’re all deserving of the same courtesy and concern as anyone else.

That’s true even for the people we don’t really like. Over the course of our lives, we’ll come into contact with all sorts of people who fall into this category, from tough bosses to difficult family members. Remember that they deserve the same respect as anyone else, and treat them with the same level of kindness.

Work as a Team

Our teammates are our greatest assets. After all, when we work together, there’s no limit to what we’ll be able to achieve.

People come with all sorts of different strengths, which can be useful in all sorts of different situations. In order to support the people on our team, we can talk to them about what we can do to help them on their path to success. What do they need to succeed? How can we support them along the way?

Cheer for their wins, and console them when they make mistakes. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it also sets a precedent for how everyone on the team treats and supports one another.

Keep a Positive Attitude

Being on a team isn’t always easy. At times, our teammates will fail. At other times, they’ll make mistakes. We’re likely to make mistakes along the way, too—after all, that’s part of what it means to be a human being.

In these challenging moments, it’s easy to get down on ourselves and others. We may feel overwhelmed with feelings of anger, sadness, fear, and disappointment. We can acknowledge these emotions and any difficulties we encounter, and still choose to operate with an authentically positive attitude. It’s a choice and is always up to us.

Learn How to Lose

The path to success is often paved with all sorts of failures. Failure isn’t the opposite of success, it’s part of it.

At the end of the day, losing is all about perspective.  What matters most is how we handle the losses and what we learn from them.

We can’t control the outcomes, but we can choose how we play the game…which is actually as important as how things turn out in the end anyway.

What are your thoughts on how we play the game of life? Share your ideas and insights in the comment section below. 

If you liked this article, here are three more you might want to check out.

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Living on purpose
What we can change

 

It’s Okay for Things to Go Well

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When things go well for you, do you tend to have mixed feelings about it? Do you find yourself feeling uneasy or uncomfortable?

While I do love it when things go well, I also tend to have some mixed emotions about it. It can be a little tricky for me to fully embrace and experience things going well, especially these days given everything we have all been through in recent years.

Why do we do this?

Why We Struggle to Embrace When Things Go Well

1. We think it’s too good to be true.

Have you heard that voice in your head before? The one that says, “It’s too good to be true, it won’t last, or you’ll mess it up.”

Many of us experience this thought when things go well. And while it’s common for us to think this, it’s simply not true. We all deserve things to go well for us.

2. We worry that people will judge us

When things go well, many of us worry that people won’t like us, that they’ll judge us, or that they will get jealous, thus pulling away or withholding their love, appreciation, and approval.  We might also find ourselves worrying that if things go too well, we won’t be able to relate to, connect with, or be accepted by some of the most important people and groups in our world.

3. Much of our learning, growth, and evolution in life has come through our own pain and suffering 

Even though it’s true that we can grow more effectively and elegantly through joy, peace, and love – we may find ourselves worrying that if things get too good, we’ll get lazy, stop actively learning, or somehow abandon our journey of personal growth and commitment.

4. We tend to feel guilty for our success

We sometimes have feelings of guilt for our success or good fortune – especially given that so many people in the world are suffering, in pain, or dealing with both small and big challenges.  That same voice in our head can say to us, “It’s not fair that things are going well for you, look at all those people who are having a hard time.”

These and other limiting thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs can get in our way. They can keep us in struggle and limit our experiences of joy and fulfillment.  It’s almost as if sometimes we’re more comfortable suffering than thriving.

Your version of this may look a little different than mine, but lots of people I know and work with, even those who have created a lot of outward success in their lives, seem to struggle to one degree or another allowing things to go really well and doing so with real peace, gratitude, and joy.

How to Practice and Expand Your Capacity for Things Going Well

What if we did allow things to go well and did so more graciously, intentionally, and consciously?  Of course life has its inevitable ups and downs, ebbs and flows, and expansions and contractions – but what if we stopped sabotaging ourselves, our success, and our fulfillment just as we began to experience it or because it got too good for us to handle?

Here are some things to focus on, think about, and practice to expand your capacity for things going well in your life:

Remember that it’s okay to shine. 

The more permission we give to ourselves (and those around us) to shine our light, the more we realize that it’s safe.  As Marianne Williamson says in her famous quote from her book A Return to Love, “…there’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.”

Remind yourself that life’s not a competition.  

This is a big one for me – as a former pro baseball player, I have a tendency to look at everything in life as a competition, even though it rarely is.

Competition is about our negative ego (thinking we are either “better than” or “less than”).  When we remember that life is not a competition, we can focus on our own unique experience and do so in a way that is real, not simply in reference to those around us – positively or negatively.

Take care of yourself.

I’ve heard it said so many times that happiness is an inside job, which is true.  Often, things become cliche because they are overused, but they are overused because of their universal truth.

The more effectively we care for ourselves and recognize that our fulfillment in life hinges on how we feel about and relate to ourselves—rather than on others’ opinions or our external achievements—the more likely we are to experience genuine joy and success.

Whether we face challenging circumstances or positive situations, allowing ourselves to embrace and enjoy when things go well is a bold and beautiful step. This not only enhances our own quality of life but also positively impacts everyone we interact with.

How do you feel about things going well in your life?  What can you do to remind yourself and others that it’s okay for things to go well and for you to be happy? Share your thoughts, ideas, insights, actions, and more in the comments below.

Liked this post? Here are three more!

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How to Balance Foundation and Vision

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Having both a strong foundation and a strong vision is essential for growth—whether it’s for a team, relationship, business, or anything else.

In order to thrive, we need both of these things, but finding a balance between the two can be challenging, especially these days.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day activities of work, parenting, and life…and in the process lose sight of why we’re doing what we’re doing and where we’re heading. And, yet, at the same time, if we put too much attention on our big vision, we can easily lose sight of the necessary actions we need to take on a regular basis to maintain stability, consistency, and success.

The Important Balance of Foundation and Vision

Taking care of the basics

To take care of ourselves, our core, and our foundation, we have to take care of the basics. If we do that, it can create the foundation that leads to something great.

For example, if we’re not eating well, sleeping well, or managing ourselves physically, it’s hard to maintain a healthy mental and emotional mindset, which then makes it hard for us to succeed.

However, when we solely focus on the day-to-day foundation and maintenance of work and life, we can often feel monotonous and stagnant. Doing this often doesn’t leave us feeling inspired or excited.

When we balance these important basics with innovation, dreams, goals and creativity, that’s where the magic happens.

I’m grateful to do work that I love and am passionate about. I also feel fortunate to have a loving family, as well as so many blessings and privileges. Even with all of this, I still find myself getting stuck in the day-to-day maintenance of my life and business much more than I’d like to admit…especially during this uncertain time of the pandemic.

I see this a lot with businesses I’ve partnered with over the past two decades. If a company focuses on their core and isn’t innovating, changing, growing, and evolving, how will it learn to adapt to change and challenges so that it doesn’t fail?

Innovation, change and disruption can be scary, but they are essential to embrace. This is often easier in the early stages, but when we start to have a little success, we can become even more risk-averse, having understandable fears of screwing up.

What Inspires Us?

When we’re doing the necessary things to maintain our lives or business, we also have to think about what inspires us. In addition to working on the foundation, it’s important to be willing to think big enough—to have a vision and a dream about what we want to create.

What inspires you personally? What excites you and the people around you?

I love doing what I’m doing, but at the same time, there are moments when I don’t want to do some things. There are parts of the job that aren’t my favorite.

I also love being married and being a dad, but there are moments when I find it incredibly challenging…not sure if I’m up for the challenge.

We all have these moments, especially these days. This is why it’s so important for us to have a strong vision – a north star we can look to when things get hard, or we bump into the inevitable walls.

While it’s essential to focus on our foundation and do the necessary things to have some semblance of order integrity in our lives, that’s not what life is all about.

So how do we balance our foundation and our vision? How can we ensure that we take care of ourselves and focus on the core, but at the same time not let that take over?

It’s important to carve out time for innovation, creativity, and dreaming.

We have to have enough groundedness to focus on the day-to-day while at the same time being able to think big.

Having a foot in both of those worlds—in the now and the future—is essential. In business, we need people on our team who can stay grounded and remind us of the realities of business (the budget, strategy, financials, etc.). We also need people who are innovative and creative.

As Mother Teresa famously said, “Not all of us can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love.”

There are, of course, lots of paradoxes in the balance of foundation and vision. Maintaining our core while having enough space and trust to aspire is what life is all about. And, when we’re able to do this effectively, it can propel us and those around us to new levels of success and fulfillment.

I have written five books about the importance of trust, authenticity, appreciation and more. In addition, I deliver keynotes and seminars (both in-person and virtually) to empower people, leaders and teams to grow, connect and perform their best. Finally, as an expert in teamwork, leadership and emotional intelligence, I teach techniques that allow people and organizations to be more authentic and effective. Contact me to book a call or learn more about how I can help you and your team achieve your goals today. You can also listen to my podcast here.

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Are You Jealous of Other People’s Success?

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How do you feel when you see or hear about the success of others? If you’re anything like me, you probably have some mixed emotions, especially if you’re going through struggles and challenges in your life.

I often find myself excited and inspired by the success of others, especially the people closest to me. However, at the same time, I sometimes notice it can bring up feelings of jealousy, insecurity, and inferiority. Especially when someone accomplishes or experiences something I want myself. Sometimes these feelings come up when I worry I can’t or won’t find that same success.

Have you ever wondered why you get jealous of other people’s success?

Recently I’ve taken a deeper and more honest look at myself in this regard. I’ve always been a competitive person. I often found myself directly or indirectly competing in a pretty intense way with those around me.

Although I’ve outgrown certain aspects of my childhood and adolescent comparison tendencies, I still find myself jealous of other people’s success, as if we’re competing against one another or that their success takes something away from me, which it doesn’t.

Feeling jealous of other people’s success is both understandable and potentially damaging.

Why Are You Jealous of Other People’s Success?

While our cultural obsession with comparison and competition isn’t something new, it seems to have intensified in the past decade or so, with the explosion of social media and how we share photos, highlights, achievements, adventures, milestones and more with one another in such a public and prominent way.

I enjoy being able to celebrate the exciting stuff happening in other people’s lives and share some of my own on social media.

At the same time, it can be a bit of a double-edged sword, depending on how I’m feeling about myself, my work, my body and appearance, my relationships, my future, my family, or anything else. I can easily get triggered by other people’s success and end up feeling bad about myself and my life.

On the flip side, I’ve noticed that I have a tendency, especially with certain people, to brag about my success or even to feel a sense of superiority.

This is even harder to admit and confront.

Feeling both superior and inferior are detrimental to our growth, success and ultimately our sense of peace.

So how do we stop comparing ourselves to others?

How to Stop the Comparison Game

The success of others has nothing to do with us, and our success has nothing to do with anyone else. It’s as simple as that.

The only way to stop the comparison game is to stop comparing yourself to others. We are all facing our battles and challenges in life, and success looks different for everyone.

Life is short—so why waste so much of your precious time competing with the people around you and focusing on how you measure up to them?

I’ve had glimpses of this freedom from comparison in my life at various times, although, not as often as I’d like.

Ready to step into your authentic power? Here are a few things to think about and practice, to stop being jealous of other people’s success:

1) It’s okay to feel jealous

Jealousy isn’t bad, it’s just an emotion and is part of the human experience.

Like with most “negative” emotions, the biggest issue with jealousy is our denial of it. When we pretend we don’t feel jealous, it can harm us in many ways.

The more we deny our feelings of jealousy, the more they end up running us.

When you notice yourself feeling jealous, admit it, feel it, and express it in some healthy and authentic way. Try writing it in your journal, sharing it with a close friend, reflecting on it in meditation or prayer.

Your ability to honestly notice, feel and express your jealousy (or any emotion) is what gives you the power to move through it and transform its potentially negative impact into a positive experience.

2) Look for a deeper message

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why you feel jealous of other people’s success? When we get threatened by the success of others, there is usually a deeper message coming through that experience.

What if we looked beyond our reaction and beneath our judgment…and asked ourselves some questions like:

  • “What is it about this person’s success that has me feeling threatened?”
  • “How can I learn from what I see in them or in what they’ve accomplished?”
  • “What can I do to let go of my inferior (or superior) reaction to this, and more deeply trust and believe in myself and my process?”

Asking deeper questions like this and looking for the underlying messages in our reactions to the success of others can lead us down a more authentic path of growth, discovery and fulfillment.

3) Celebrate their success

It’s essential to be careful about how harshly you judge other people and their paths to success. The more judgmental you are about them and how they create their success, the more difficult you’ll make it for you to create the success you want, out of your fear of being judged.

Judging the success of others is a smokescreen. It masks our own inability to deal with feelings of jealousy, insecurity, or inferiority. What if, instead of doing that (or anything else in a similarly negative, critical, or arrogant way), we celebrated their success and rejoiced in it?

When you see someone succeed, celebrate for them (knowing how exciting it can be when something good happens).

4) Operate from a Place of Abundance

Being so close to people who are creating success in their lives (maybe even the same success we want) can be quite positive, inspiring, and motivating. I know this can be more challenging with certain things or certain people.

However, at the deepest level, when we live from a place of abundance (with the faith that there is more than enough to go around), we free ourselves from the constant stress, worry, fear and pressure associated with living from a place of scarcity.

Like most things in life, this is a choice.

What are some ways you deal with and release your jealousy of other people’s success?

Share your thoughts, action ideas, insights and more here on my blog below.

I have written five books about the importance of trust, authenticity, appreciation and more. In addition, I deliver keynotes and seminars (both in-person and virtually) to empower people, leaders, and teams to grow, connect, and perform their best. Finally, as an expert in teamwork, leadership, and emotional intelligence, I teach techniques that allow people and organizations to be more authentic and effective. Find out more about how I can help you and your team achieve your goals today. You can also listen to my podcast here.

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This article was published on May 15, 2013, and updated for 2021.