Decide to be happier

If your life was coming to an end next week, would you still choose to be upset about all these little things? Would we choose to suffer and worry about the distractions of life? Or would we seek the higher purpose in our lives to pull us forward?

As the saying goes, "You have a million problems today, but if you get sick tomorrow, you have only one problem."

Having a higher purpose in life will pull you through the bad days and the various barren stretches through your life. The barren stretches and difficult times happen to us all, the question is how we better deal with them and overcome them.

Are you annoyed in the morning, or happy that you've awakened yet another day? It's up to you to decide that.

I think it begins with choosing to be happy and content with where we are and finding a purpose higher than ourselves to work for in this life.

From that will stem longevity, consistency, and contentment.

Save some energy

It’s tempting to sprint right out of the gate. Work yourself too hard in the morning and you’re spent by lunchtime. Take it easy in the morning, but then empty the tank 12-2pm and you’re still down and out.

But a steady cadence from morning to evening means you get 4-5x the amount of work finished and you feel much better afterward as well.

In everything you do, make sure you actually get started but believe that you’ll maintain a good cadence throughout the day and don’t get overeager from the start line.

This way you can save your energy and start pretty strong, have a pretty strong day, and then finish pretty strong. Also, you’ll feel mentally and physically in shape to have the same pretty good day tomorrow, too.

Save some energy!

Insecurities

Using your internal fear as a reason not to do something shows great insecurity. Your internal fears are almost always a.) irrational and wild and b.) they’re built on how you judge yourself.

That’s important because we judge ourselves by what we know our intentions are. But other people judge us by the actions we do.

It’s important and freeing, to know that the people around you can’t judge your intentions (accurately) so worry more about the real, in-the-flesh actions that you should be doing.

No excuses! Rise up and do that thing.

Waiting for the problem to fix it

The wise man sees the problem coming and adjusts. When you can do this with your clients, you provide a valuable service that they’ll never even know about. They’ll just know that working with you is awesome. You don’t wait until after the project to fix the problem.

If you’re tempted to wait until a complaint happens or a problem arises you still have to fix the problem, but stress is now involved and you look less competent.

If you behave like there is no second chance to fix something, you’ll get it right far more often.

As the old saying goes, if you don’t think you have the time to do it right, what makes you think you’ll have the time to do it twice?

Anticipating problems that may arise, or anticipating what you’ll be asked to do next and being prepared and ready to deliver instantly will be unforgettable–even if the clients(or your boss) have no idea how you are always so well prepared.

Making it harder

They say to work smarter, not harder. But sometimes when you make things more difficult, it forces you to push harder and get more done. You have something you must overcome and you will overcome it. If you work too smart, all the time, you lose some of that killer edge that pushes you upward.

A plan and some pressure

As the saying goes, to achieve great things, you need two things: a plan and a shortage of time. I believe that was Leonard Bernstein who said that.

For my fellow procrastinators, I think you’ll understand perfectly well.

Without a plan, days can go by and you wonder what you should be doing and why you’re not doing anything. Without pressure, you’ll keep ignoring the plan until it’s too late.

Got to have them. A plan and some pressure. Great things will come of that.

Catastrophic failure? Or a very annoying setback?

Among the annoying things in life, unexpected setbacks are the most annoying. The kind of setbacks where you have no idea that it’s coming and then it just gets dropped on your desk and smacks you clean across the face.

Once the thing happens and the setback is setting you back, do you melt down and turn a setback into a catastrophic event, or acknowledge the setback and become comfortable with the fact that you simply have been delayed?

It’s a rhetorical question. I hope the answer that I think is correct is obvious.

Self-discipline or regret

There are a million cliches. Sore today, or sorry tomorrow. You get two choices: the pain of disciplined focused work now, or the pain of regret later. The pain of regret sinks deep within you and never leaves. The pain of discipline converts to euphoria when you achieve your goal.

For some reason, it’s so much easier to pretend like there is no satisfaction associated with that pain of self-discipline and that you’ll escape that pain of regret this time you procrastinate.

The choice is yours to make. Sore today, or sorry tomorrow.

Smelling the roses

They say to stop and smell the roses. Last week I was making some plans with somebody about meeting up early in the morning and I said the name of this town near me called Collegeville, but I had my directions pointed to a different town named Manayunk where I was going. But I kept telling this person that I was going to meet them Collegeville.

I, somehow, had conflated two towns that are nothing similar and even have names wildly different from each other.

The meeting got all fouled up and we had to reschedule because I was in a completely different place than the guy I was meeting with.

I was so focused on the meeting, that I didn’t take a moment to even think about the towns I was speaking about. If I had pulled up a map, or thought about the meeting place, I would have quickly corrected the issue, but I didn’t enjoy the process. I was locked in on the results.

When you don’t stroll through the process and enjoy it, you don’t smell the roses. And when you don’t smell the roses, you’re likely to make an error and probably not even know how it happened.

So, walk more deliberately and smell the roses.

Things rarely live up to the hype

Whether it’s the young, up-and-coming sports player, or the big business contracts that are going to come by massaging a new client, things very rarely deliver on the hype.

Maybe the issue is our expectations, but having that high expectation gives us something to get excited about and helps us do our best work.

So it’s useful to buy into the hype and throw your weight behind your project and your client, regardless of how much more you can get out of them.

Use the thought of riches and glory to motivate you to work harder, but be content with knowing you gave it your best effort and you worked your tail off.

With that, you can both get excited and passionate, but also be thrilled and content when something doesn’t deliver on the hype you expected. Of course, when something does deliver on the hype, you’ll enjoy it even more.

Devaluing your role (and stealing ideas)

We might think that because we’re not doing all of the heavy lifting, that we don’t have a valuable role to place in our life. But the ability to recognize a good idea is talent. Don’t worry about taking a good idea you see or hear and making what you can of it.

Knowing the right thing to take and build with takes talent and creativity.

Stress can be good

It can be good when you use it as a fire to keep you uncomfortable and to force yourself to keep growing and building and working with urgency.

Remember that when you’re subjected to stress. It’s a great motivator and can be the catalyst to boost you to the next level.

On the other hand, if you allow stress to crush you, destroy your confidence, and suck the life out of you, it’s the worst thing. But it’s only that bad because of your response to it.

When you feel stress, feel it. And then remind yourself that you can use that feeling of discomfort to absolutely smash whatever it is you’re after. Use stress, don’t let stress use you.

It’s not about tomorrow, it’s about today

Focusing on how massive the change in life could be in 90 days is what we do automatically. “I could lose 20 pounds in 90 days!”

The problem is, that keeps the goal *over here* way out away from actually having to do anything right now.

We want everything to change right now. We want to make up for lost time and do ten years of lost work in a day. We can’t do that. We have to know and believe and be convicted that we can’t do that. That time, energy, and growth potential is gone. Forget about it.

You’re not going to lose weight over 90 days if you don’t focus on doing weight-loss stuff for one day first.

Focus on what you do today. Right now. Not the next 24 days, focus on the next 24 hours.

Make tomorrow 1% better than today, but make today 1% better than yesterday first.

Don’t try to make it 2% better or 10% better. Make it 1% better.

Take the time to build something and achieve the goal you want to achieve. Stop chasing lost time. It only costs you more time and is one of the lynchpins of procrastination.

Focus on today and what you’ll do today. NOTHING ELSE.

Wanting to live, but being too afraid

We, humans, make some strange decisions.

We’re so afraid to ask the girl out that we don’t ask and never get to go out with her.

We’re so afraid of criticism that we hide our artwork, but then nobody gets to see it.

We’re so afraid of pain that we avoid pleasure.

We’re so afraid of looking bad that we don’t put ourselves out there and realize we come across pretty well.

We’re so afraid of getting hurt, we avoid anything except the banalest and dullest of pursuits.

We’re so afraid of death that we never try to live.

If only we could make ourselves believe that everything has a risk associated with it. Everything worthwhile has a possibility of a downside to us, but if we do enough worthwhile stuff, some might backfire, but most of it will go pretty well.

If we could only believe that, we’d all be much more willing to take risks and do great things.

Growing up, growing old, and all those sayings

There’s a famous saying out there that says something like, “the trick in life is to grow up without growing old.” Everyone has ideas about getting older and trying to stay younger and we’re all probably wrong.

So many people have gotten old and practically everybody does the same thing(s). Growing old seems easy until you have to do it.

My take on old age and the changes that come with it has more to do with ambition and passion. Do you lose your passion and ambition as you get older, or does losing your passion and ambition cause you to get older?

Much in the same way, do you grow older and stop exercising, or do you stop exercising and grow much older?

It’s hard to be sure because I have grown old yet. Maybe someday I’ll have a good answer (or a good excuse) depending on how my life twists and turns.

Be the tide that raises all boats

It’s a cliche, but cliches are good. When the tide comes in, it fills in all the gaps and it raises all the boats.

If what you do makes the people around you better, richer, more famous, happier, or anything else, who cares? Or, rather, what do you care?

We don’t live a life in which you shouldn’t do something go for yourself if it also happens to help others around you as well.

When you do that, you prove yourself to be a more invaluable piece of the puzzle than other people.

So if your work is good for you, but also pretty great for the people around you, you’re doing something right.

Raise up all the people around you and you’ll have more opportunities and more prosperity.

It’s also better in every regard to NOT be jealous or envious of your peers.

Short-term fixes and long term success

We all want success fast. How can I make a million dollars in a year? How can I lose weight in six weeks?

You can make a million dollars pretty easily if you’re willing to smuggle drugs. You can lose all the weight in six weeks by adopting weight loss drugs and unhealthy methods to drop weight fast.

You can also build a business surprisingly fast on the back of ripping people off and alienating all your friends in the process.

But isn’t this the balancing act we all need to walk? The ethical yet effective way to achieve what we want as quickly as possible.

Short-term fixes are usually pretty easy. But they rarely lead to long-term success. I firmly believe this applies in business, relationships, health, personal development, and everywhere else.