Your ABC's to Be 'POSITVE' in 2017!

Dear friends,

The start of a new year is a wonderful time to review your goals and objectives and keep working on your vision.

We all have challenges; but we have to think of new ideas and new approaches to solve them and take care of the many pressing issues we have today. In some parts of the world these challenges can be harder or stronger, but they should not take us away from our goals. 

They must be seen as mere obstacles (not simple ones though) that we must get through and solve in case of problems in order to continue.

So at the start of a new year decide on your ABC's:

- Act, 

- Be Positive

- Continue

As simple as it sounds; just do it. In other words, as we said in the title of a book I co-wrote: “Dare to Succeed”. I truly believe that: “Our own positive attitude and personal motivation are the key driving forces for everything we do.”

This is why I invite YOU to start improving your attitude and learn how to be motivated and be positive; then you can do wonders in your lives and help as many people you want. 

And to do it better, start with one very simple rule: SMILE 😄

To a wonderful and successful 2017: START TODAY!

Luis Vicente

# # # BE POSITIVE, BE MOTIVATED, BE INSPIRED # # #

# # # THINK POSITIVE, AND DO IT OFTEN! # # #

Developing Olympic Athletes in your Organization

The Olympics represent the highest level sports athletes from all countries can achieve. The large number of events, the variety of disciplines, the effort required and the complex preparation that athletes have carried out is embodied the opening day of this magnificent event. 

And behind every athlete there is a team in different areas that targets new goals, together, and works towards winning an Olympic medal.

In many of these sport disciplines we will see athletes competing individually; at the same time, we will see competition where only the best teams reach the final. Is your team ready to win an Olympic medal?

Olympic athletes not only have a great determination; they also have great persistence, willpower, define their vision and have decided to develop their skills to the maximum level in order to achieve their true potential. These are just some of the ideas that define a great athlete. And our job within our companies is to create new real 'Corporate Athletes'.

“The battles that count aren't the ones for gold medals.

The struggles within yourself - the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us – that's where it's at. 

- Jesse Owens, Olympic Medalist

Successful athletes have some characteristics, including: they train until they cannot train anymore, think positive and understand adversity as they arrive to success. When Olympic winners are asked about their mood, physical preparation and the journey to the top, they define their experience in a different way. Leaders are formed with character, discipline, example and inspiration. These Olympian winners are mostly leaders in their specialties.

Among the qualities that define an Olympic winner I can suggest five traits that characterize them:

1. They are resilient, as they have improved for their failures and mistakes and know that there is something to learn from everything;
2. They Understand teamwork, because they know they have a large number of people with them  all the time;
3. They have a great interest in what they do, and know that everything involves planning, time, dedication and patience;
4.  They have a great passion, since the intensity of competition makes them becoming stronger, with much fortitude and giving 200% of what they can give;
5.  They are happy, because the attitude should be positive and we all know joy is contagious.

The experience of an Olympic athlete leads them to create positive habits, set increasingly demanding goals, define their own levels of productivity, achieve peak performance and develop great competitive abilities. All this is summarized in the qualities of an Olympic athlete:

• They have strong personal motivation;
• They continuously increase the level of their mental energy;
• They focus on achieving peak performance.

In doing so they focus on what they really want to achieve.

As we watch the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio 2016, we will understand that not only the effort and dedication are important for success, whether a medal in the race of 100 meters or in the 200 meters swimming backstroke or in beach volleyball; also a large number of complex strategies – which are the basis of our goals - will also be required. It is the continuous development of skills with great determination that makes a true Olympic athlete and legend; and if we bring this concept to our companies, the same skill and leadership development programs will create our corporate athletes as our companies embarks in a transforming 'continuous learning' process.

Our corporate teams are made up of individual athletes (our co-workers) and they are the ones who become corporate athletes. And these athletes, in each of our organizations, are those who share our vision, set challenging goals, increase productivity, work in teams and in many ways are always looking for ways that allow them to peak performance.

How do we know if our team is ready to win a medal at the Corporate Olympic reality we play every day? Look for these traits in your team members and develop a program to have a winning team: develop the leaders of your organization by creating excellent corporate Olympians; and begin to design and from your winning strategy for 2017!

Luis Vicente Garcia

An incredible afternoon on life and opportunities with Joan Detz

I saw Joan Detz @joandetz speak at a financial professional convention in DC two years ago. Is she a financial expert, a numbers specialist or a metrics expert? No; she is an incredible lady who has devoted her life to training and coaching people for all corners of the world and trades in different fields on the art of #PublicSpeaking. And after seeing how she did it and what she accomplished I needed to meet her, but I could not do it at the convention.

But wait; I am a simple guy living in a foreign country who happened to be in DC at that time. How will I meet her? Come possibilities: I contacted her with the advancement of technology. So after getting in touch I sent her some of my work (I am sure she needed to find out who this crazy person form Venezuela was). So back in late 2014 we started exchanging emails, got on a phone conversation and as they say, it was the start of a beautiful friendship; and indeed it has continued to be.

Fast forward two years, I have had incredible phone conversations with Joan, I have interviewed her on my internet radio show on two incredible subjects, public speaking tips and social media tools and how you can boost your life and careers using them and both are on the top list of my all time shows. And best of all, I was able to visit with Joan last week in New York to what I call a wonderful afternoon. We had lunch, we went to the New York Public Library, we saw old maps, and we strolled down Bryant Park. But best of all, we had an amazing but very short five-hour conversation; and it was incredible.

What do you speak with such an experienced, traveled and fabulous person? We talked about life’s journeys, we talked about the change in technology, age, knowledge, wisdom, politics, and life again and we talked about dreams, those fuzzy things you can actually convert into reality. We talked about peace and quiet, life on the countryside and on the complicated city life; and we talked about how we take things for granted, yes we all do. It was a deep thoughtful powerful conversation.

And this is what friendship is all about. It is a different kind of friendship, a beautiful one. It is not your friends form high school or college whom after a while you stopped seeing; it is the new friends you met along the path you cross, that you allow into your life, and what an incredible idea is it to invite new friends into your life. And we choose those friends, people who like us want better, look for nature’s beauty, who engage on interesting conversations which are very meaningful, important, thoughtful, wonderful and all together transformational.

This and more was my NY afternoon with Joan Detz. What an honor, what a pleasure. I flew in from Venezuela; she took a train ride from Pennsylvania. Was it worth it? Indeed and it was too short of a conversation on life’s journeys, on health, opportunities and future, with passion and vision and ideas and thoughts and dreams and why not, a touch of reality here and there. And what a wonderful friendship it has become. 

Joan, keep inspiring people, keep being a wonderful friend.

Luis Vicente

‘Performing at Your Best: Mindset Evolution’: Celebrating Show #50

"Success is waking up in the morning and bounding out of bed because there's something out there that you love to do, that you believe in, that you're good at - something that's bigger than you are, and you can hardly wait to get at it again."
-- Whit Hobbs

With this beautiful quote I received this morning from a dear friend, I wake up to what will be an amazing day (as most are and should be). Today we are celebrating an incredible day as my radio show Performing at Your Best: Mindset Evolution with Luis Vicente Garcia on VoiceAmerica Business is reaching its first big milestone: I will be LIVE at 6 pm EDT this afternoon to celebrate our show #50.

It has been an incredible journey as I had never been a radio host before and one that I have truly enjoyed; particularly learning about new subjects on performance and mindset, and learning how to interview amazing people - my guests - who have been an integral part of our success. We are now listened to in 6 continents and over 70 countries, which shows all of us that our messages are needed and welcome and as such I would like to give a huge thanks to all of my listeners who week after week join us live or on demand to find out new ideas and insights that will allow them to grow and learn.

http://www.voiceamerica.com/show/2462/performing-at-your-best-mindset-evolution-with-luis-vicente-garcia

So to all of you, my incredible guests, the listeners all over the world and to the amazing VA Team, my most sincere thanks of appreciation for having shared with me and our audience your incredible thoughts, ideas, tips, suggestions and most of all your knowledge, which has been and will be the source of their new ideas, rides and journeys.

To all of you, my dear friends, my most sincere thanks and appreciation as I invite you to join us in this wonderful month of mindset and performance celebration.

Luis Vicente  

5-Keys to Better Engagement

As we know ENGAGEMENT is a critical component for today's success. Whether for business or your personal lives, you need to understand the importance of engagement.

Today we live in a very fast paced and changing market and workplace. And employees play a critical and very important role on the success of our companies. An important question here would be: do you know the level of engagement of your employees and team members?

I had the opportunity to interview Hans Trupp on my radio show 'Performing at Your Best: Mindset Evolution with Luis Vicente Garcia' on the VoiceAmerica Business Channel. On commenting about the meaning of engaged employees, we talked about the business where the level of involvement and enthusiasm of  all employees generates commitment for growth and innovation, alongside productivity and performance. So having an engaged employee is everybody's responsibility today.

Hans shared his 5-Keys to Better Engagement in 2016. Read them and really work with the tools and action items listed so you increase the level of engagement in your company:

1. Attitude
In learning how to improve self confidence, one must understand how the law of attraction works. If you think dis-empowering thoughts and are mixing these with feelings of fear, apprehension and disappointment, you are not getting what you want. Instead use the Law of Attraction in a powerful, positive and conscious way.
ACTION: Write down positive words and affirmative affirmations. Make them part of your thinking routine, and eliminate and replace the non supportive thoughts every time you are aware of them.

2. Communication
Since each person has a preferred style of communication, once you think about it and determine their style, you can communicate effectively by adapting your style to meet the needs of their style.
Remember first rule of maximum communication: the success of the communication is the responsibility of the communicator.
ACTION: Build awareness of your own behavioral style. Practice reading other peoples style. Craft your important messages to different behavioral styles.

3. Clarity
Lack of clarity is probably more responsible for frustration and underachievement than any other single factor. That’s why we say that "Success is goals, and all else is commentary." People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine. This is true everywhere and under all circumstances.
ACTION: The more you write and rewrite your goals and the more you think about them, the clearer you will become about them.

4. Efficiency
The reason nothing you have tried has improved your time management is because, until now, no one has told you the truth: The key to time management is to stop wasting it.
ACTION: Take 30 minutes to remember your long term vision, to recheck your medium term strategic plan and to identify the key action items that will get you there. focus on just your real priorities.

5. Training
Understand the individual in a team rather than see the team as a collective them, allow individuals in a team to shine in the awareness of their individual impact and then feed their dreams and starve their fears. Seek out training that links personal goals to effort in the workplace. Find training methodologies that leverage adult learning styles. Building accountability systems for sustained behavioral change.
ACTION: Get clear about your training goals. Link the training goals to measurable indicators.
Commit to a training program to accelerate goal achievement.

Commit yourself to these challenges or action items and start improving the level of engagement in your companies and your success, which will come as a result of implementing these changes.

If you want to hear our interview Click HERE!

And if you want to contact Hans Trupp, you can write him directly at htrupp@focalpointcoaching.com

Increase the level of engagement on your company and see the performance of your teams improved in very interesting ways.

Luis Vicente Garcia