Don’t Do It
Seeking wisdom is a good thing as long as you don’t make it the most important thing. Reading, studying, and seeking wisdom will get you knowledge.
Knowledge = Smart and Smart = Success…right?
This notion is one reason our culture normalizes large amounts of debt in exchange for a degree. We all know super smart people who struggle to make it. Misapplied or latent knowledge will get you nowhere fast without a strategy.
A strategy worth consideration is finding people who already have what you are looking for and it’s usually not your professor. Mimicking the actions of top performers works better than reinventing the wheel. (I checked)
Emulating what successful people DO will get you a long way but there is a secret catch. A catch that will keep you from their level.
Because their level is achieved by what they DON’T DO.
Comfort
Too much comfort leads to atrophy. Atrophy leads to weakness, illness, and psychological malaise.
Avoiding discomfort makes sense as a human but prevents progress and paves the way to stagnation.
Growth takes effort, action, discomfort, and time. Short-term discomfort is a small price to pay for the upside. Unfortunately, the reward is invisible at first glance.
Comfort choices are a trap. They accrue and will always bite you but almost never in the short term. They go undetected until you get sick, divorced, fat, addicted, stressed, depressed, or broke.
Gradually, then all at once.
Pro Tip: God doesn’t command us to do what is naturally easy.
PS Ben Franklin wrote a funny piece about this. Enjoy 😊
Fail
Failure is a man-made state of mind. There is a secret part of failure that is completely controllable.
People who control this part are the ones who succeed. The ones who don’t remain stuck.
The secret?
We get to choose how we view failure.
Failure often gives us a front row seat to reality. Reality can be brutal and doesn’t care how you feel about it. The feeling of failure will stay as long as it’s welcome. It only becomes permanent if we allow it to.
If you’re growth oriented, failure gets our attention briefly and inspires action. It forces the break up of habits that aren’t working and opens the door for improved patterns.
Pro Tip: View failure as tuition not prison.
What Might Happen
It’s hard to be around constantly negative people…it’s also hard being around endlessly positive people.
Both can be annoying.
A negative person may call himself a “realist”
A positive person may call himself an “optimist”
The negative person often views the positive person as blissfully unaware. Some of the more troubled people are likely the ones who are overly optimistic. They are troubled because they know deep down inside their view isn’t real.
The positive person views the negative person as a wet blanket. Some of the more troubled people are fearful pessimists who claim to be realists.
A healthy outlook boils down to holding two questions in mind at the same time.
Am I concerned about what might happen?
Am I excited about what might happen?
True growth arrives when we have a healthy response and learn from what actually happens.
The push-pull of pessimism and optimism is a sweet spot worth pursuing.
Pro Tip: You don’t know what will happen…but God does.
The Price
There seems to always be a price to pay. The good news is, you can usually choose which price.
If you don’t exercise you’ll pay a price
If you exercise daily you’ll pay a price
If you love your spouse you’ll pay a price
If you don’t love your spouse you’ll pay a price
If you develop good habits you’ll pay a price
If you develop bad habits you’ll pay a price
The interesting dynamic is the long-term consequences of not paying short-term prices. There is an obvious trap nested in the path of least resistance.
Most of the resistance comes in the form of front-end prices. Why pay the price of stopping at two drinks, two cookies, or one more episode?
If you’re gonna pay a price…make the harder choice. Choose the price with the most immediate discomfort and you will land on higher ground.
Assert
Asserting yourself in a situation gets all sorts of reactions.
People often don’t like it for a couple of reasons.
Sometimes it’s because you lacked awareness of the situation. Maybe you had a weak moment and forced something that shouldn’t be forced.
Sometimes people get upset by your assertiveness because they don’t feel like they can be assertive. They don’t think they have the right to express themselves so why should you? They will often choose to accuse you of being aggressive or crazy.
Being a formidable character who isn’t afraid to express yourself carries some responsibility. You want to avoid causing a wake that drowns others but is one they can handle. Not much happens in the world without some confidence to kick the door down. People aren’t going to like it.
Being a jerk and being effective is a tightrope. Surround yourself with effective people who can show you the difference. Walking on eggshells will keep you stuck.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far” -T. Roosevelt
Blind Spots
Accountability is a key component of success and personal growth. Growing out of your blind spots requires a rare set of character qualities.
You have to know certain things, like:
You have blind spots
You can’t see your blind spots
Your blind spots are obvious to the ones who love you
Hearing about your blind spots feels threatening
You’ll naturally try to conceal your blind spots
Blind spots in most people are static because it’s easier to identify the blind spots in others. The nail in that coffin doesn’t end well.
The blind spots become dynamic with accountability. When someone holds you accountable they are saving you from yourself. Whatever you keep doing is self-sabotage and they are trying to stop you.
It’s often when love feels like judgmentalism.
The next time accountability comes your way and it stings a little…pay attention.
Stay humble, mi amigo!
Good Guilt
Guilt is the rumble strip for your day to day life. The Christian might call the rumble strip the spirit of God. A toddler naturally hides his wrong doings because what is right is hardwired in all of us. When what is “good” doesn’t match what we decided to do there is a tinge of guilt to remind us.
The world turns dark when we ignore the guilt and rationalize the action. Over time the guilt fades away and it starts to feel okay. Especially when you start spending time with people who have also muted their guilt. It almost disappears altogether and becomes the “right” thing to do.
The next natural occurrence is the feeling of judgment. Judgment from others who have not rationalized their wrong doings. When you watch someone else stay away from the rumble strips the guilt you thought you eliminated comes right back. The best thing to do in this case is to stay away from those type of people because they are “judgmental.”
But are they?
Humans are a mess but it’s worth taking a closer look at the feeling of being judged. What’s the source of that judgment?
Oftentimes it’s your conscience fighting for what is right and not condemnation from someone else.
If you don’t think there is absolute truth…the rumble strips will politely leave you to your ways and you will be miserable.
Loco
Most of the time we try to avoid looking crazy. Holding back our ideas in fear of looking dumb or incompetent puts the best stuff on ice.
Normal people evict these crazy ideas and move on to more acceptable or common modes of thinking.
If you’re a little loco, you don’t have to advertise it. Simply writing it down without letting it slip away is the key. Create a container to revisit, massage, and even play out the irreversible consequences of taking action.
You can’t be normal and phenomenal at the same time.
If people think you’re loco…you might be on the right track.
Seeing
We have a weakness. An unavoidable natural bend that is difficult to extinguish.
It causes great pain and anguish. It causes unhappiness and even sickness.
It’s how we see.
(Seeing what is right before us with the eyes of the past.)
The long list of caveats, judgments, and doubts rob us of the present reality. I tend to roll my eyes at the notion of “practicing the power of presence” as a woo woo platitude.
I’m changing my mind.
Equality
The mantra of our culture has been to make everyone the same. One man is not better than the other. We are all equal right? Those who want power (the nefarious type) strive to ensure that no one stands out as superior. If a person is superior, their money, land, ability to speak should be debased, confiscated and silenced.
After all, it’s not fair.
All men are not created equal. We all start with 99.9% of the same DNA but there is a huge delta between how we react to our pre-installed Divine blessings. What are you doing with your gifts? Are you allowing God’s power to flow or are you letting the plaque of equality constrict your rarity?
Hierarchy is correct and corrupt on the human level. Power is tyrannical and saintly. So what is the cause of a good thing gone bad?
Envy.
Don’t be afraid to be a lion among sheep.
Improvements
Making a significant improvement can be an uphill battle. The hopeful outcome of making something better is usually only half the story. If you spend any time at all looking back at a recent adjustment in your life or business you’ll usually see the desired outcome pretty quickly.
As time burns on things get interesting. The lead domino of a meaningful upgrade leads to so many unexpected ancillary improvements. Improvements you likely didn’t know were possible.
Spend some time doing a mental case study of your last upgrade. Take a look at the momentum that was created.
Notice the butterfly effect and leverage that to attack the steep climb to your next enhancement.
A bold and thoughtful improvement will be surrounded by unexpected but correlated velocity.
Decisions
Some people make snap decisions, others weigh all the options, turn over every rock and don’t make a decision (which is a decision.)
It’s been suggested by the science dudes that we make around 35,000 decisions every day. It’s the important ones that can snag us. They snag us because the consequences are more meaningful.
There is a deep correlation between the quality of our lives and the decisions we make. The key is learning from the bad ones. Copy what the Seals do…after every mission they engage in an after action review.
When things go haywire with your health, money, or relationships it’s likely tied to one of your decisions.
Learn to own them and course correct when needed.
Thank You Mr. Perfectionist
Perfectionists can be annoying. Always commenting on how things aren’t right…pointing out things that are out of place. Constantly correcting their environment. Nitpicky fixers who lose sleep over things that just aren’t right.
But Wait…
Without them the world would be a total mess. If they were erradicated everything would implode. Planes would fall out of the sky.
They are largely misunderstood. You might think they wake up in the morning ready to find mistakes, search for the crooked picture, the misspelling, the missing data. On a mission to correct you or throw a wet blanket on your idea.
It’s not true…and that’s why you might be annoyed.
Dear Mr. Perfectionist,
My guess is, mistakes assault you…you don’t have to find them, they find you.
Am I right?
Assumicide
In the marketing world, attribution is something that must be tracked closely. Dedicating ad spend and blindly hoping it converts is a quick way to burn cash. Knowing where the sales are coming from is a matter of analyzing data.
Living in the business environment makes it easy to assume it will also work in relationships. Studying data (outcomes) is a long way from the reality of someone’s motives. Trying to get into someone else’s head to figure out why they did or didn’t do something is a fundamental attribution error.
Coming to conclusions with your guesses is assumicide.
Pro Tip: If you think someone is being malicious or careless, ask them directly. Say something like “I get the impression you were late to the meeting because you don’t see it as important…is that true?” \
Saying nothing and resenting them is chickenshit.
Work Life Balance?
If balance is the goal not much will get done. Balance should be viewed as a reprieve instead of a destination.
If the expectation is homeostasis you’ll find yourself largely unhappy. Unhappy because you’re not in control of what happens to you. You become a perpetual victim of your circumstances.
What about what you can control? Grinding out a big project puts you out of balance. Sometimes it’s a season and sometimes just a few days. Enjoying the hustle is healthier than wishing for balance
The pursuit of balance is a limiting belief.
Balance will come…but if you search too hard you’ll end up finding laziness.
Corruption
It always gets uncovered…it's just a matter of time. Sometimes seconds, sometimes decades.
Corruption in the physical world is pretty easy to negotiate. Nobody wants to get into an airplane with a corrupt design. Nobody is going to drink water from a corrupt source.
Corruption in the spiritual world isn’t as obvious. Diversions from reality or truth can poison a society. It can put us on lockdown, it can keep us from speaking what’s on our mind, it can keep us from seeing reality.
Taking the high road often hurts in the short run and if you get gut punched long enough it becomes easy to rationalize a corrupt reaction.
Sometimes the corrupt reaction is silence.
Guard yourself against corruption and pursue the truth…even if it’s inconvenient.
A 2,000 year old pro tip? “The Truth will set you free.”
No Help
Some people want to be helped without asking. If you miss an obvious way to help them you’re gonna get the cold shoulder.
If they saw an opportunity to help, they would be first in line to dive in. They pretty much help wherever they go. Give, give, give. They are selfless people…
Not so fast.
If deep down inside you expect reciprocation…you’re not helping.
Keeping tabs leads straight to resentment, I checked.
Apology
Saying sorry is harder for some than others. Knowing logically that you are not perfect is the easy part. The hard part is owning it face to face.
Sometimes it’s a misunderstanding. Maybe your intention was positive but it was hurtful to the other person despite your motive. Within the scope of apology, the motive doesn’t really matter much.
A simple “sorry” with no explanation is the starting point. Allow it to sink in on the other side. Allow them to metabolize it without a bunch of nervous chatter. An explanation, rationalization, or excuse dulls the ownership and undermines the apology. At that point you’re making it about you instead of them.
Yesterday, I received an eye to eye apology with nothing extra. It took courage and we knew it. It drew me closer to the other person.
It reminded me to do the same.
Parting Thought: If you use “but” within a half mile of your apology…It’s not an apology.
Shark Bit
We often get stuck because we are afraid of doing it wrong. When making a decision if you wait for all the information things get really slow. Most of the time deciding to wait for all the information is a decision to not take action.
The best solution for this slow road is to shift your focus away from the lack of information to probability.
Probability is the key to decision making. Let’s assume you want to go swimming in the ocean but you’re afraid of sharks. You sit on the beach watching everyone enjoy a good swim while you worry about the sharks that could attack you. You’re sweating while the sun beats you down. You’re miserable because you are ignoring probability.
Many people fail to grow their business because they are fixated on what might go wrong. They are paralyzed by the sharks that “probably” won’t be there.
They know what they want but allow their emotions to cloud the reality of probability. It’s precisely why the house always wins in Vegas. They don’t build those beautiful casinos on your winnings.
BTW: The probability of being bitten by a shark is about 1 in 11.5 million, while the probability of being killed by a shark is about 1 in 264 million…
The probability of dying of cancer is about 1 in 5.
Time to swim in the ocean.