The BOWA Blog

Affect Your World

by Bert Oliva

Yesterday was my first event launching our 2015 Belizean Tour. We are speaking to the youth and adults of the country to empower them and give them tools to get to the next steps of their lives. When we were leaving the hotel in the morning, a person stopped me and told me we were being too loud and had a really negative vibe. Instead of getting into the elevator with him, I chose to wait a moment and take the next one. That pause enabled me to run into my friend’s son, whom I got to have an amazing conversation with that left both of us motivated.

We then got to the auditorium early, but still just about everything that could go wrong went wrong. Our sound for our videos wouldn’t work, our projector stopped working, our PowerPoint kept crashing…it was stressful to say the least, and I had every excuse to just get frustrated and let circumstances affect my energy and mood. However, instead, I consciously chose to just stay positive and go with the flow.

And you know what? Despite all of the delays and problems, the workshop was a complete success. It was fun! We laughed, we danced, we connected. It was a great way to launch this year’s tour. And all of that could have been different had I allowed myself to get frustrated and upset.

That’s one of the biggest messages of this tour and biggest messages for life, at least for me. Instead of allowing the world and circumstances to affect you, choose to consciously affect your world instead. By taking a moment that morning, I got to have a beautiful conversation. That reminder of that lesson of choosing my actions, stayed with me throughout the day when everything that could go wrong went wrong at the first presentation and helped me remember to keep choosing to stay positive.

So today, pause before you react. Choose your actions. See the positive in everything that you do, and enjoy the ride.

Live Life,
Bert Oliva

Quote This:
“The possibilities are numerous once we decide to act and not react.” –George Bernard Shaw

Are You Right-Handed?

by Bert Oliva

So I find myself in the hospital right now. I have an infection that we thankfully found early enough and from which I will make a full recovery. The frustrating thing is the timing of the whole thing. In less than a week my team and I will be in Belize starting a tour to visit most of the country and empower thousands of children and adults there. Needless to say, there’s a lot of prep work that we were right in the middle of when this medical crisis hit.

At first, I was in so much pain that I could barely see straight. Though once the antibiotics began to kick in, I found myself feeling stir crazy and annoyed with the situation. I should be at the office finalizing PowerPoints. I should be going over camera shot lists with the film crew. I should…

Thankfully, my team, especially Alexa, my right-hand person, stepped up. Alexa brought the PowerPoints to the hospital and helped me finalize them during my better moments. She also coordinated with the rest of the team to make sure everything else stayed on schedule and no one dropped the ball. And she even made sure my family was taken care while I was out as well.

This experience made me realize how important it is to have people in your life you can count on. People who will step in and step up when you’re unable to do so. It also made me realize just how important it is for each of us to be that person for our loved ones in their times of need as well.

Remember, you get what you give. Go out and be that right-hand person to someone else today. Do it with a smile and with no expectation of something in return, not even acknowledgement. The gift should just be the deep contentment that comes from helping out a fellow human being.

Live Life,
Bert Oliva

Quote This:

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” ― John Bunyan

Starting Off Right

by Bert Oliva

Do you hate Mondays? Are there times when you even find yourself dreading Sunday night because you know Monday is that much closer?

Someone told me recently that “Everyone hates Mondays.” Why? There’s something intrinsically wrong with that statement. Mondays are the beginning of your workweek. They are a time for excitement, not dread. They are the start of your next great deal, the next big achievement, the next new project…

We’re all human. There are times when many of just don’t want to get out of bed on a Monday morning. However, when you examine your feelings on those mornings, you will usually find that you’ve been procrastinating something or struggling with a project. Once you understand where those feelings are coming from, you can make of plan of action—give yourself a pep talk and make a commitment that you are going to call that person you’ve been avoiding as soon as you get into the office, or you’re going to ask your team for help on the project, etc.

Don’t allow yourself to bring your “Case of the Mondays” to your office, your coworkers, or anyone else. Change your state quickly and psych yourself up for all the good things you are going to attract into your life this week.

Why is this important? Because, with anything, how you start is how you end it. The only way you will truly have a strong finish to your week is by having a strong beginning. When you start your week excited and pumped with goals in mind, you infuse everything you do, the people you interact with, and even your environment with positive energy. That positive energy feeds off itself and snowballs into an awesome week for everyone.

However, negative energy can do the same thing, and those people who aren’t as strong are more susceptible to it. That’s why it’s vital to bring positivity and excitement to your environment, especially on Mondays, when others might be feeling down.

Change your view of Mondays and you’ll be amazed at how your results change.

Live Life,
Bert Oliva

Quote This:

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.” ―Plato

How Fresh Are You?

by Bert Oliva

Last week, I had one of those interesting couple of hours where two completely unrelated instances became completely intertwined and interconnected. On those rare occasions, I often learn something or get confirmation for something I already knew, and this occasion was no different.

Right now in my Miami office, it’s mosquito season. Every evening around 5pm they come out in droves and attack almost every open piece of skin from your wrists to your ankles and everything in between. Mosquitos are just a fact of life in South Florida, for years we’ve just allowed them to dictate when we can enjoy our backyard and when we can’t. However, this year we asked a city mosquito inspector to come out and check our problem to see if there was anything that could be done.

The inspector informed us that yes, mosquitos are a fact of life, but the biggest culprit for bringing them into your area is leaving pools of stagnate water, such as buckets that collect rain water or fountains that are not running. He said mosquitos thrive on that kind of water. Thankfully, we didn’t have anything like that in our area, but it was good knowledge to learn.

Then, right after the inspector left, we had our weekly Friday staff meeting. We went through each department’s list of to-do’s and to see where everyone was. Unfortunately, there were quite a few projects that hadn’t moved at all. I realized that our departments, and a couple people in particular, were in stagnation themselves. They’ve allowed their projects to linger like the buckets of water, to the point now where their projects are so overgrown with negative feelings (like mosquitos and their eggs), that they don’t even know where to start to get the projects on the right track again.

My question to them and my question to you now is, why do you allow things to linger? Why don’t you just get things done when you have to? If you start working on things when they first come onto your plate, they are still fun and not overwhelming or full of negative feelings. They are just exciting new projects.

In all honesty, there are projects I don’t like to do either, but they must get done. When I say I’m going to do something and it gets put on my list, that’s it, it will get done. There are no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. And my team knows this.

Start working on creating your own drive and plan for yourself. Do not allow things to linger on your list more than a couple days without any movement. Keep your list fresh. Otherwise you are just in stagnation.

Live Life,
Bert Oliva

Quote This:

“What is the difference between a living thing and a dead thing? In the medical world, a clinical definition of death is a body that does not change. Change is life. Stagnation is death. If you don’t change, you die. It’s that simple. It’s that scary.” ― Leonard Sweet

What Makes You Original?

by Bert Oliva

I have an empowerment community on Glide, a video texting app. Each day I ask a question of the day. Yesterday’s question was, “What makes you original?” Each member of the group had a very different reaction to the question and subsequently a very different answer. Some were very quick to answer and knew exactly what made them original. Others took their time and answered with still a question in their voice. Still others ignored the question entirely.

I found the reactions to the question even more interesting than the answers. So often we take so much time worrying about others, thinking about others, doing for others, that we don’t take the time to contemplate ourselves, our goals, our desires, etc. We run, run, run, till finally we collapse out of exhaustion and then numb our minds by watching TV and never take even a millisecond for ourselves.

You are important. You matter. And I can almost guarantee that you are not taking the time you need for yourself. And even if you are taking the time, you may not be spending it in a productive self-growth kind of way. Television and movies are great distractions, but in my opinion they should be the exception, not the norm. Try spending some more time journaling, reading, walking, thinking, etc. You have amazing talents and amazing gifts within you that the world deserves and needs to see. Don’t rob all of us from experiencing the true you.

So, this week, I challenge you. I challenge you to carve out some time for yourself each and every day. It doesn’t have to be a long time. Perhaps just 2 or 3 minutes. Take this time for you. Get a journal and write a little. Have a short conversation with yourself. Ask yourself how you are? What are you up to? Are you happy? Get to know yourself again. I promise you, you will be surprised at the answers that come to you. It is possible that not all the answers will be pleasant, but you will have clarity. And clarity is power. You will know exactly where you stand with yourself and what you have to work on.

Remember, you are the most important person in your life. Until you know yourself and love yourself, you can never truly know or love another.

Live Life,
Bert Oliva

For more information on the BOWA Glide Community, download the Glide app from the Apple App Store or the Android Play Store and search for the Glide ID BertOliva and LFPALXR.

Are You A Doer or A Talker?

by Bert Oliva

Are you a doer or a talker? When you have something that has to be done, do you get right to it, or do you procrastinate it? It is human nature to procrastinate items now and then, but to some people procrastination can be a way of life, and a devastating one at that.

I have a coaching student whose defense mechanism has always been procrastination. For years, this pattern of behavior has been brought to her attention by everyone around her, but until recently she didn’t see it as anything but a “bad habit.” She justified it with blanket statements such as “I work better under pressure,” “I’ve been so stressed lately that I need to just rest first,” “I’ll get right on it first thing tomorrow.”

The problem is that these statements are only justifications of behavior that has been keeping her from achieving success her entire life. She continuously sabotages herself by putting obstacles in her own path. She constantly makes decisions consciously and subconsciously to keep her from doing what she has to achieve.

She squanders her resources. The cost of which is her physical, mental, and emotional health. Procrastinators have higher levels of stress, are more likely to get cold and stomach infections, have strained relationships due to the resentment of others who have to pick up their slack, and are more likely to suffer from insomnia.

According to research, there are three types of procrastinators. Avoiders who have a fear of success and prefer to have the excuse that they just didn’t try rather than they didn’t have the ability to succeed. Decisional Procrastinators choose not to make decisions on their own because then they are not responsible for the outcome. Arousal Procrastinators actually enjoy the last minute rush of working on things under pressure. Many times people are a combination of these three.

However, regardless of the type of procrastinator a person is, procrastination’s underlying foundation is the inability to manage emotions and a lack of impulse control. My coaching student focuses on feeling good now. Rewarding herself now. Ultimately, for this coaching student, her procrastination is really not laziness, but her underlying need for control in her life. She unconsciously is trying to do things “on her own terms,” but doesn’t seem to understand that with procrastination we always feel less in control in the end than when we started. This “conditioned rebellion” has now caused her to become used to the feeling of reluctance and dread when she has to do something.

As you can see, procrastination is truly a vicious cycle. And anyone can let it get out of control. So, how do you break the habit? Mark Tyrrell wrote an excellent article entitled “How to Stop Procrastinating” that sums up great steps to become a recovered procrastinator:

1. Stop Leaking Energy: Stop wasting time talking about what you’re going to do or need to do. This is just empty talk. Instead, use the energy you normally would to speak about a task and actually go and do it. Then surprise the people you normally speak to about your “should have, would have, could have’s” by telling them what you actually did.
2. Stop Waiting to Feel Like It: You have conditioned yourself to not feel like it. You are not going to just feel like it. You have to recondition yourself by building willpower and discipline, which are like muscles that you can build upon. Ignore all of your normal distractions and emotions, see them as irrelevant obstacles your mind is creating for yourself, and just get to work.
3. Be Honest With Yourself: Stop justifying and making excuses for why things haven’t been done. Own up to it. Admit that it’s due to procrastination.
4. Stay Away From Displacement Activities: Don’t do anything instead of getting your work done. Rewarding yourself before you accomplish things usually isn’t even enjoyable because at least part of yourself is focused on what you should be doing. Instead, focus on how you will feel later if you do not accomplish what you have to now. Though this sounds like a negative visualization, it will cause you to relieve the discomfort by doing your tasks now.
5. Say No: Set boundaries for yourself. Don’t allow those around you to coax you into displacement activities with comments of “You can do that later,” etc. Remember, activities should be rewards, not displacement activities. Decide when you’re working and tell yourself and others. Be strict with yourself and protect this time as sacred work time.
6. Visualize: Visualize working on your task and finishing it. Start telling yourself that you are a person who completes their goals in a timely manner. Remember, what we think and believe becomes our reality.
7. Declare It: Commit to completing your task by a certain time in front of people who will hold you accountable. Write it down and sign it. This very act will help you stay more committed to your goal because you don’t want to be seen as a failure in front of others.

Though procrastination can be one of easiest ways to keep yourself from succeeding, it is not insurmountable once you realize you have a problem with it. If you are even slightly flirting with the problem of procrastination, I urge you to take action now to rectify it, so that 30 years from now you are not sitting with “I could have’s…” but instead “I did’s…” You will be so glad you did. I guarantee it.

Live Life,

Bert Oliva

You’re Entitled To…

by Bert Oliva

Have you noticed lately that more and more people seem entitled? Those people that feel they deserve something just because. Those people that act like the world owes them something because they’re in it. Those people who don’t feel they have to work hard to get what they want.

Let’s set the record straight. To quote the fictitious character Frank Underwood from the TV show House of Cards, “You are entitled to nothing.” None of us are. Though we have been given the beautiful gift of life, there is nothing that we are just flat-out entitled to have someone hand us on a silver platter. To achieve anything, we each must work hard and earn it.

I had a conversation with one of my children the other evening. They have not been putting forth their best effort in school lately. Though they did tell me their goal of going to college was still firmly in place. I informed them that college is not a right, but a privilege. They are not simply entitled to go, they must earn it by putting in their best efforts in school now. I told them that unless they showed me their dedication to their goal now, I will not be spending my time, effort, and money to get them into the college of their dreams. A harsh statement, but it opened their eyes

We do a disservice to ourselves and our loved ones when we constantly try to make life as easy as possible. When we have someone remove the obstacles from or paths or remove them for someone else, we rob the person from a learning experience—an experience that teaches humility, gratitude, resourcefulness, self-confidence, and so much more. When we hand things to people on a silver platter, we create the perfect environment for entitlement to take root.

So, whenever possible, take the learning route. Allow yourself to work toward your own goals, instead of just having them handed to you. When you achieve goals via your own hard work, the accomplishment is much more satisfying. Trust me.

Live Life,
Bert Oliva