Author: Garth Beyer

There’s the community that is your audience or your customer base or your target. No doubt they help keep your passion or brand going.

But no community can keep you going as strongly as a community of practice.

A group of people like us who do things a certain way. Maybe it’s a group who takes huge financial risks to share their craft with others. Maybe it’s a group that gets together to code websites for nonprofits. Maybe it’s a group that creates a yarn pool to share with one another.

These group members don’t have a stake in your business, but they have an influence on your identity, your growth and development and your mastery.

Without a community of practice, we can’t fathom leveling up. We need them. And likewise, they need us.

Avoiding finding and involving ourselves in communities of practice hurt others as much as it hurts ourselves.

Today is a great day to join a club, enter a group and contribute to a tribe of people like you.

p.s. If there isn’t one. Create one. You’ll be amazed at how many others are searching, too.

Stay Positive & They’re Waiting

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To-do lists are incredible. And when you prioritize or order them with the hardest tasks first; they’re even more powerful.

Little are any of us told, though, that they are most effective when they don’t end.

When we finish a to-do list, our brain ignites and we give it the perfect excuse to either wait until something is pressing or worry about all that we should be doing. (Waiting and worrying is a shameful act, btw.)

Better each day to add to the list up to the equal amount of items you were able to cross off the list.

Two amazing things will happen.

You’ll build momentum more than you have before, ultimately making the starting of tasks easier and easier.

You’ll feel more fulfilled than you have before, seeing just how much you’re capable of accomplishing. After all, a growing list of 30 is no doubt going to make you feel better about your contribution than a small list of 5 that you toss and forget, only to start a new list of 5 a week from now.

So go ahead and keep the list running.

Stay Positive & Laundry Might Be Done, But There’s More Worth Doing

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In any case, we’re either the doctor or the patient, the owner or the customer, the creator or the amplifier.

And sometimes, the best way to change the culture of those leading is not to shout about the bad or complain the loudest; it’s to set out on our own mission to lead the good or amplify the good.

If it boggles your mind how a receptionist of a company can treat a caller (you!) so poorly, you have two options.

You can either amplify the good by seeking out companies with receptionists who treat you well and then sharing and talking about those companies.

Otherwise you can create your own company wherein you are the receptionist or you hire one who does treat people well.

Focus on the good or create the good are far better options than to put our energy on what we can’t stand.

Stay Positive & Focused On The Good

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Look for those moments when you long for 5 more minutes.

5 more minutes to make the work better. 5 more minutes to add some polish. 5 more minutes to prep or tweak or to cut.

Those 5 more minutes is momentum speaking up, urging you to carry on with the energy you’ve got.

It’s a shame when we let something like time stop our flow. Even more so when we’re actually longing for more than 5 minutes to do more work that’s meaningful.

They say if you’re going through hell, keep going. Same could be when you’re going through a period of passion.

Stay Positive & Embrace It

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You may be following a path, but you’re also paving one.

There’s no way you can take and fit into the exact steps of another as you pursue connecting with a community of your own. (Not if you wish to succeed, anyway.) You’re leaving your own footprints.

So, while you’re thinking about what’s next and how to keep moving forward, it’s important to consider those who will be after you.

Turns out there’s as much to learn and grow from leaping forward as there is helping others to do the same.

Started a podcast? How can you help others do the same? Opened a business? How can you help others do the same? Made team virtual meetings better? How can you teach your version of digital pictionary to others?

As ol’ Zig used to say, “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want.”

Stay Positive & You Help Yourself When You Help Others

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You might as well learn before you’re forced to.

You might as well try it before you’re forced to.

You might as well care more before you’re forced to.

Of course, you’re never really forced to.

You can give up, stand still, sell out and back pedal to a place you’re content with.

But that doesn’t sound fun at all, does it?

We can choose to level up today and every day.

Word on the street is today is the last day for the story skills workshop, organized by Seth Godin and taught by Bernadette Jiwa. It’s worth it if you want to control where you go from here.

Stay Positive & It’s Your Narrative

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There’s no shortage of surveys circulating the web from businesses and brands asking what their customers, fans and followers want them to do.

All the data in the world doesn’t make a hard decision easy. It doesn’t ensure that there won’t be a group of those who are frustrated with your decision (there always are). Most importantly to remember, doing what the “mass” suggests doesn’t mean you will succeed.

The hard decision comes down to what you want for your business and brand and how that entwines with the narrative the customers, fans and followers you want are creating.

Now’s the perfect time to draw a line in the sand.

Without one, no one knows where or with who to side.

Stay Positive & It’s On You (Always Has Been)

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