If You Can’t Be Unconditionally Happy For Someone

Concern Yourself With Yourself

There are a lot of potential strings attached to being happy for someone.

You may also be envious, jealous, upset, and angry with them at the same time.

Maybe they have something you want.

Maybe they’ve done something you’ve always dreamed of doing.

If you can’t be unconditionally happy for someone, don’t be anything. Don’t pay any mind to it. Give it the cold shoulder.

I won’t argue that you can’t be happy and jealous at the same time, but I will argue you can’t be as passionate, driven, and energized about your goal if you’re jealous someone else has already met it.

 

Stay Positive & Focus On You, You’ll Be Better Off For It

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Levelling Up

Levelling Up

Levelling up is a feeling

Success is a feeling.

Going pro is a feeling.

Change is a feeling.

Impact is a feeling.

The list you’re making, the thoughts you’re having about this new year, the discussions you’re having about focusing more on your passion and less on your work, be sure that every action step you take makes you feel fulfilled.

You’re fully capable of making people feel good, smart, clever, safe, true to themselves, creative, and in control.

When you focus on the feeling you want to invoke, the way you form the message kind-of sorts itself out.

Focus on the feeling and the right words will come, the right design will come, the right opportunities will come.

The caveat: to invoke feeling, you have to get uncomfortable, you have to build momentum, you have to connect with people you’ve never connected with before, you have to take action.

There’s so much this new year has going for me and for you. Will you cash out on all you can?

 

Stay Positive & Will You Cash Out On All You Can?

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Fulfilled

Fulfilled

Knowing what you like and dislike is helpful in discovering your passion, but it doesn’t make you feel fulfilled at the end of the day.

I’ve explained it like this. Discovering what you’re passionate about is easy because, by default, no one wants to do what they don’t like to do. By writing down all the things you like to do, you’ll quickly find a pattern, which is your passion.

However, not everything you like to do will make you feel fulfilled.

The passion you have needs direction.

What are you passionate about? isn’t question enough. Better to complete this sentence:

I feel fulfilled when I….

 

Stay Positive & Passion Is The Fuel For Fulfillment

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Mediocrity Setback

The winning businesses fight mediocrity on a daily basis.

When a champion owner wakes up and you ask them what they’re going to do today and they answer “be/do/make something remarkable” – well, I can’t think of a better answer myself. I would put my money on him or her, at least for that day.

I say that because tomorrow they may not feel inclined to stand up and stand out. It only takes one instance of mediocrity to lose a chunk of their followers, to make their employees feel cheated, to make themselves feel weak. And that’s such a downward spiral.

To run a winning business you’ve gotta fight mediocrity…

and to fight mediocrity you’ve gotta care.

 

Stay Positive & Care More Than Your Competitors

Books Read In 2015

Do The Reading

Must-reads start with an *

  • Growth hacker marketing by Ryan Holiday – 83 pages
  • *What to do when it’s your turn by Seth Godin – 187 pages
  • The greatest salesman in the world by Og Mandino – 111 pages
  • *The E Myth by Michael E. Gerber – 266 pages
  • Selected poems by W.B. Yeats – 133 pages
  • Whatcha gonna do with that duck? by Seth Godin – 457 pages
  • Here comes everybody by Clay Shirky – 321 pages
  • Selected poems by Lord Alfred Tennyson – 119 pages
  • A man without a country by Kurt Vonnegut – 143 pages
  • *Iconoclast by Gregory Berns – 200 pages
  • *Contagious by Jonah Berger – 210 pages
  • Love in a time of cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez – 551 pages
  • *A beautiful constraint by Adam Morgan and mark Barden – 233
  • Absolute value by it Amaretto Simonson and Emanuel Rosen – 191 pages
  • Rich dad poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki – 183 pages
  • *The new one minute manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson – 97 pages
  • Start with why by Simon Sinek – 225 pages
  • *Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson – 271 pages

 

Stay Positive & Did You Do The Reading?

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Giving Advice

When To Stop Giving Advice

There’s a lot I can give advice on that you may be of interest to you.

Starting a business

Crafting a touch point plan

Developing a strategy

Traveling to a foreign country

Thinking differently

Writing more than you thought you could

Buying your first house

What business books to read

How to balance love life and work life

How to keep lean

I can give advice on these things because I’m living them. They’re in my short-term memory. They’re experiences from yesterday, from today and from tomorrow. Many of them are recent successes.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of advice that I can’t give anymore because it’s old.

I started a blog four years ago. Things were so different then.

I ran an arcade business, painted houses, wrote a book, got buff. As more time passes, the less of what I know stands true. There have been so many improvements in every industry, so much new tech and product, and – to my dissatisfaction – everything I have done has all since been made easier to do.

Advice is like fruit, it’s best when it’s fresh. The next time you’re being given advice on something, ask that person when the last time they did what they’re advising on. Then you’ll know how much weight it ought to carry.

And while I’m putting down advice, I’m not putting down storytelling or personality or connection. By all means, learn from and connect with people who have done remarkable things because at the end of the day, any work worth doing is still going to throw fear and hard work and critics at you.

 

Stay Positive & Stand Up For What Works Now, Not 19 Years Ago

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Spinning Wheels

Spinning Wheels

No one cares how hard you work if all you’re doing is spinning wheels.

Stop creating content for the sake of creating content and start creating meaning.

If what you create has at least 1 of 4 of these requirements, ship it. If it doesn’t, redo it.

  • Meaning is a function of what people believe before they find you.
  • Meaning is when something has a ton of value for only some people.
  • Meaning requires action, participation, interaction and connection.
  • Meaning produces results, it helps someone, it involves giving.

 

Stay Positive & Content Isn’t Everything, Meaningful Content Is

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