Category: winning beliefs

Asking

Why oh why, does it seem
that the more I ask for, the more I receive?

Sounds common sense, this correlation isn’t hard to find
if so, then why oh why, don’t we ask for more all the time?

Asking for more doesn’t cost, it’s just words, yet its potential is priceless
Putting your foot down, knowing your worth, a most powerful of devices

To try or not try

If you try an approach you’ve never tried before and it turns out to be the wrong move, then you learned your lesson.

If you don’t try something new today then tomorrow when you face the same situation you still won’t know whether the new approach works or not.

So then the answer is simple. Try it today so tomorrow you don’t have to debate the approach.

The fun

Find the seed of fun in any activity, my friends. Fun is the big flashing arrow pointing you towards something you’re likely to excel at. When you’re good at something, no matter what it is, you’ll usually enjoy it.

The fun indicates where your strengths are.

Any activity can be turned into something fun, but any fun activity can also be made to be a chore if you don’t protect its experimental integrity.

Keep it fun and allow room for mistakes.

Cultivate that little grain of fun and who knows what harvests of greatness await you.

Elevating your standards

I started getting all these awesome things once I didn’t want them anymore, once I was aiming for way bigger and better.

Elevating my standards forced me to elevate my own expectations of the work I do, and in turn it made me better, which made me expect even better things to happen.

When you expect you get given. Let me rephrase. You’re not given anything. You EARN them by the sheer force of expecting that they belong to you.

Carnegie Hall

“How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” Someone asked.

“Practice.”

How do you build a successful business? Practice.

How do you lead your team to its highest quarter in sales? Practice.

How do you get better at practice? Practice.

Practice is putting in sweat when the stakes are low so that you shed the least blood when the stakes are high. That sounds like a fair trade, no?

Picking yourself

Growing up basketball was my life. I played anywhere from 3 to 6 hours every day, and the other hours of the day were spent thinking about playing.

I mention it to illustrate one of the worst feelings ever: being in the playground and being chosen last. Or not even being chosen on a team at all.

It’s good to be valued, and it’s good to be liked. It makes us feel good. But eventually I got fed up with waiting to be picked so I practiced free throws and ensured I would earn the captain spot by making the first shot.

I stopped waiting to be picked and I picked myself first. Mr. Godin would agree.

However as life progressed I seem to have forgotten this lesson. Why do I wait to be offered a dream job? Why do I wait for validation from others to realize that my work is good and serves a purpose?

Somewhere along this 15 year journey between 13 and 28 I forgot that if you don’t pick yourself no one else will. If you do luck out and get chosen then you’re beholden to the picker for your esteem. Side dish of crapola.

When you become the picker you’re determining your worth. You appointed yourself captain of the team and are accepting the challenge of living up to this standard. And your standards are the only ones that really matter.

You bet on yourself and if you lose you only have one person to answer to. Numero uno. I can live with that.