Tag: mindset

LEARN TO FAIL PROPERLY

How many times do you have to try something before learning it? Two times? Three times? Thomas Edison failed more than 1000 times before inventing the electric light bulb. Can you imagine sticking with something that long? I am not sure that I would. The point of all of this is that the amount of times that you do not succeed at something in life will always outnumber the times that you do succeed. In other words, you will fail a lot more than you succeed. Knowing this, you would think that failure would be a well-studied subject. On the contrary. Most people do not like to think about failure, much less study it.

If failure is something we are going to experience often in our life, should we not spend some time learning how to do it properly? Many of you might be asking how can you ‘fail properly’? Don’t you just fail or succeed? The average person does, yes. If we are looking to create an amazing life, it involves learning to put everything that occurs in our life to work for us. This includes failure. How can we do that? The first step is changing our mindset around failure. We must see it for what it is – a learning experience. Your muscles do not grow in the gym without encountering resistance. The same is true for you as a person. You only grow when you encounter resistance. In fact, the bigger the resistance, the bigger you must grow to overcome it. Just as the heavier weight in the gym requires more muscle growth. The photo above may seem cliche, but it is 100% true. Failure is a ‘first attempt at learning’. You do not learn much if you succeed at things the first time. It also would lead to a boring life eventually.

The second step to making failure work for us is learning to mine it. Yes, it is time to imagine ourselves as miners and see what we can get out of failure. The obvious may be the lessons and knowledge. If you have ever tried to put out a grease fire with water, you will soon learn, in spectacular fashion, that is the exact opposite thing you should do. It is a failure in the moment, but you will never put water on a grease fire again. You gained that knowledge. How about trusting someone with a secret only to discover they told everyone they know? Failed in that judge of character, but learned they cannot be trusted with confidential information. In addition, if there is something you want to get out, perhaps this was the person to tell. In each case you walked away with more knowledge than you went in with.

Another thing we gain from failure is resilience. If we always succeeded, how tough would we be when faced with a challenge? Not very. Failure teaches us perseverance, patience, and mental and emotional fortitude. These are lessons that you cannot learn with success. Therefore, failure is actually something we can be grateful for. It gives us a kind of strength that success never could. You owe it to yourself to learn how to fail properly. We are all going to do it in life. We should learn to do it in a way that will give us an amazing life!

WEEKEND PONDERING…

This quote from Epictetus really makes it simple. For those of you who do not know, Epictetus was a slave before becoming a philosopher. That is certainly an auspicious start of there ever was one.

Picturing who you want to be is something we should do daily. Keep focused on the individual we wish to see looking back at us in the mirror. Myself, I wish to be staring back at a best-selling author who is changing people’s lives for the better and leaving the world a better place.

Once we get clear on exactly who we wish to be, the next step is thinking about what it will take to get there. Even if we do not know the exact steps to get there, we can focus on the traits this person would have. A best-selling author would write every day. They would focus on developing their craft and vocabulary. This is why, for the last 1300 days, you have seen a blog from me.

This weekend take some time to get clear about the kind of person you wish to be. This is not only professional, but personal as well. Do you wish to be more positive? More disciplined? Then decide what you have to do to get there. It would help to write it down and check in with yourself every morning. Maybe while looking in that mirror? Before long the person starting back at you will be the person you want to be!

THE PAIN IS NOTHING COMPARED TO JOY 😊

Ah good ol’ Charlie Dickens! He has a good one here. Especially during the holidays. We see and connect with people we may otherwise not. In what seems like a flash, the holidays are over and everyone is lost in their life obligations. It is a bittersweet affair.

What Charlie reminds us of, is that reconnecting can be a joy that makes the  pain of parting a little bit easier to take. This is something I go through every morning. Leaving my hot lady and warm bed at 4am is quite a struggle. Soon, I hope to be a best-selling author and not have to deal with this. For the time being, leaving is required to pay the bills.

It seems the more fun we have, the harder it is to leave. Instead of focusing on how much I would love to stay home, I focus on how excited I am to return. In about a month we will be traveling to sunny Jamaica. I’m sure we won’t want to leave as we always make new friends and have a lot of fun. We must look forward to our next visit. Whenever that may be.

In your life, there will be parting that breaks the heart. Instead focus on the excitement of the next reunion. It will make life that much sweeter!

IT IS HUMP DAY. KEEP WORKING!

We work so hard on our goals. We work hard on our health. If we are smart, we work very hard on our relationships. Still, there is one thing that we often skip working on. The irony is that by working on improving this one thing, we will improve on everything else in our life.

That one thing is ourselves! When was the last time you sat down and thought of ways you could improve? Better yet, when was the last time you came up with a concrete plan to do so? With New Years right around the corner, let’s do more than come up with random wishes to improve our life. Let us come up with a measurable plan to do so. It will not only improve ourselves, it will improve our life!

THE BEST DIET FOR SUCCESS IS EATING ELEPHANT 🐘

Everyone is looking for the next fad diet. Whether that is for more energy, more muscle or less weight. Here is a diet for more success! That’s right. If you want to get ahead at work, in your health or even in your relationships – start eating elephants!

Of course we are not advocating eating actual elephants. I’m rather fond of the big guys. No, it is a reference, as you see in the first picture, to tackling a big problem. Many of us, myself included, will approach a big goal or challenge and become overwhelmed.

This could be getting in shape, getting out of debt, cleaning up your diet, or even cleaning up the house. We see eight million things we have to do and can’t imagine getting them all done. Instead, we should focus on getting one of them done. You couldn’t eat an entire meal at once, nor can you do much of anything all at once.

Our good friends in the wonderful country of Jamaica are struggling to repair the damage brought by hurricane Melissa. The damage can seem overwhelming. I can only imagine what they are facing. The story is the same. The way to build back is clearing one tree at a time. Helping one family at a time and taking one day at a time.

Even if all you are dealing with is a house that looks like it was hit by a hurricane, it is still one step at a time. You got this!

BE UNSTOPPABLE THIS MONDAY!

Do not let the fact that it is Monday stop, or even intimate you. Discover what is holding you back from reaching your goals. Make that your enemy. Remember to focus on what you can control. Placing the blame on outside people and circumstances only puts you under their control and makes you weak.

The truth is most of the time it is not a lack of resources that stop you, but a lack of resourcefulness. Use those people and circumstances for motivation, not for excuses. Do not let them stop you. Find what you can do inside of you to improve your situation and move closer to your goals. You’ve got this!

WHY “YOU’VE CHANGED” CAN BE A GREAT THING TO HEAR

Has anyone ever told you, “You have changed.” Usually, it is not a good thing. They are attempting to bring to our attention that a behavior or attitude that we used to have is changed. That makes most people uncomfortable. This holds true if our new behavior or mindset is contrary to the one they knew us to have. Perhaps you used to be the life of the party. You could drink a few beers, slam a few shots and would just take the next day off of work. Now, you drink water, are focused on your fitness and show up to work on time. If the person hung around with you before, it might make them uncomfortable to deal with the change. This is even more true if they have stayed the same.

Many people fear being left behind by friends who evolve. In some cases this fear is legitimate. If you are looking to change a behavior, it is quite helpful to no longer associate with individuals who engage in that behavior you are looking to leave behind. If you were formally close to that individual, it can be a little painful for that to happen. If you are the person worrying about being left behind, it can not only be painful, but scary as well. That is why they will tell you that you have changed with an attitude of making you feel as though you are not being authentic to yourself. Part of this is them transferring their fear and disappointment in their own progress on you.

A greater reason for people using the phrase, “You’ve changed.” is our inability to communicate our feelings. There really should be a class taught to us when we are young on how to properly say the often difficult things that we feel. Just yesterday I heard it said that “They tell you that you have changed because they do not know how to say you have grown.” That is something we must understand, growth takes change. If we stay the same we can stay stagnate. The picture above captures it beautifully. To become a butterfly, we cannot remain a caterpillar. Growth can be painful and many may accuse us of changing who we are, but just remember that is because they do not know how to tell us that we have grown.

ARE YOU SCOREBOARD WATCHING?

I heard something the other day that I really liked. I was listening to a motivational video and the person speaking, I think it was Eric Thomas, asked, “Are you scoreboard watching, or are you doing something to put points on the scoreboard?” We have all seen this in sports. You have players who look up at the scoreboard to see how the game is progressing. If the game is close, they might be far more focused. If they are behind and the game is drawing to a close, they will work harder. If the have a comfortable lead on that scoreboard, they might relax a little. If they are behind and there is little, if no, hope of catching up they might stop trying all together.

This is easy to see in the sports arena. It is also true in life. Many people are too busy looking at the scoreboard of life. This could be comparing themselves on social media, looking at how much money they have in the bank or just how far along they are on the goal they are pursuing. If they have a bill coming up and the bank account is a little low, they show up at work and are a great employee. If their friends on social media are all doing better than they are, maybe they feel like giving up and throwing in the towel. Maybe they look in the mirror and see they lost a few pounds so they indulge themselves in a cheat meal.

Then you see the opposite end of the spectrum. Those players who are giving it all in the game whether the game is close, they are far ahead or even when there is no hope to win at all. Coaches love these kind of players. Do you know who else loves this kind of mentality? The universe and world at large. When you do your best at work whether you have a bill to pay or not. When you stick to your health plan even after it appears it is working.

As an author, you need this mentality. It is exciting when you start writing a book. It is equally as exciting as you near publication. In between those two points are endless hours that you must labor intensely whether it seems to be working or not. It is the only way to succeed. The same is true about life in general. You must work hard no matter what life looks like. If you only work hard when motivation is there, you will achieve little or nothing. That may sound like an easy life, but it will actually make life quite difficult.

Ask yourself the tough question, “Am I scoreboard watching or am I doing something to put points on the scoreboard?” Does your behavior depend on outside circumstances beyond your control? If so, it is doubtful you will achieve any meaningful success in life.

DON’T MAKE LIFE ABOUT STUFF.

One of the great strategies I advocate in my second book is writing your own eulogy. It will help you focus on what you want to be remembered for and let you know if you are living a life to be on track for that. If you would like to know more about this exercise and why it could be beneficial to you, feel free to check out my book, Living the Dream, available on Amazon.

With all of the people who have done this exercise, NONE have written anything about material possessions. This is interesting as the group that have done this includes many people, from many different countries with different beliefs and cultures. Still, not a single one wanted their eulogy to include mention of their “stuff”.

The irony in all of this is that we spend our lives in pursuit of pleasure and all of the trappings that go with it. We realize what truly matters in the end, but fail to focus on it. That is part of what makes the human creature a never-ending source of amusement.

Do not make your life all about your stuff. One of my favorite quotes is from Denzel Washington who said, “You never see a U-Haul behind a hearse.” All of the time and effort we spend on stuff and we can’t take it with us. Focus on friends, family and creating memories. That’s what really matters.

HOW TO TURN ON THE LIGHT IN A WORLD OF DARKNESS

Last post we touched on how important it is to go from cursing the darkness, to being part of the light. This is one of the quickest ways in which we will bring about a global change that will make the world better for us all. After yesterday’s post, there were some questions in regard to the best ways to be a light in a world of darkness. There were a few that were mentioned, but today we are going to touch on a few more so that your week ahead will be filled with more light and less darkness.

We will start with what I believe is the biggest source of light you can own – an attitude of gratitude. Before we get started on why this is so, I must thank Eduardo from Italy who reminded me of the power of this light. Think of turning on a light in a dark room. The darkness is gone. Both light and darkness cannot exist in the same space at the same time. This is true in the physical realm, but what about the emotional and spiritual? Also the same. When we are a light emotionally and spiritually, at least for the moment we are being so, there can be no darkness. The best way to do this is to be grateful. When we are focused on what we have to be grateful for, really focused, we cannot be focused on what we are fearful of, angry about or whatever negative emotion threatens to derail us.

Let me assure you it can be very difficult to be grateful when the world is dark. This takes practice and the more you do it, the easier it will become. Why go through all of the effort? If you eventually are able to feel grateful, even when your world seems darkest, you will have unlocked the key to an amazing life. There is nothing more worth the effort. That is not to say it is easy to accomplish. Looking at the quote above, it gives us an idea of how to be grateful for the struggles. Let struggles teach you patience, and failure remind you that there is still room to grow. Again, this will not be easy but if you keep at it, the reward will be an amazing life.

There we have it. How to be the light. A few more suggestions I really like in the quote above. Be your own sunrise. I even like how that sounds. Speak words that heal. How powerful is that? Especially in a world filled with gossip and doom speaking! Act with purpose and think with kindness are two ways to fast track your life to be amazing. I look forward to all of you becoming more of a light with me. Let us all work a little harder to bring the light and curse the darkness a little less.