Life Lesson

Let’s imagine for a moment that there truly is no such thing as being too prepared.

If that’s the case, what would you do to prepare for your next gig, showing, work time?

Or let’s imagine there’s no ceiling to a job title or your salary.

If that’s the case, what would you do to rise up and deserve the title and pay bump?

Or let’s imagine you had all the time in the world to read up on an industry and connect with people and send every email you’ve been thinking you should send.

If that’s the case, in what order would you go about it?

Turns out the quickest way to remove a ceiling is to act (literally, act) as if there isn’t one.

Things get more achievable once we stop telling ourselves why they’re not.

Stay Positive & Time To Prepare, Take Ownership And Send That Email, Huh?

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There’s a line of people waiting to be convinced of your idea, waiting for their calendars to free up so they can visit your establishment, waiting for their paycheck to give you a call to schedule your service.

Those in the line can’t act yet, but it doesn’t mean they’re not there.

Unless, of course, you treat them like they’re not. Unless, of course, you don’t communicate with them. Unless, of course, you don’t nurture that relationship with the same care as you do those who are no longer waiting in line, but there.

Stay Positive & Give The Line The Attention It Deserves

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When you’re on a mission, there’s no doubt you’ll have to pull a lever.

(A lot of levers if you do it, right.)

But too often we forget that pulling one messes with others.

We might get an instant reward for pulling one, but we have to be mindful of what happens all around us … and in the future.

Maybe pulling this one means you can never pull that one or pulling this one down flipped all the others up and now you have a problem 10x the size you had a moment ago.

Things don’t just have an equal opposite reaction, they often have a non-comparable, unexpected and not-in-your-favor opposite reaction.

Unless … unless you think it through and pull the right lever or have a team to help you pull the right levers at the right time.

Stay Positive & There Are Levers All Around You

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Having foresight around tomorrow is as important as having foresight around fifty years from now.

What happens if what you’re working on is a success and continues to be? Where do you plan to take it?

There’s a mixed use facility that’s wanting to make a massive addition to it’s grounds in the neighborhood. The largest block that’s in their way? Their original master plan didn’t nod to eventually having such an addition–it was never part of the plan, and now that’s being held against them.

Yes, it’s far more important to ensure your idea will succeed tomorrow than fifty years from now, but that’s no excuse not to imagine it up, get it in writing and help future you out.

Stay Positive & Plan For The Worst (And The Best)

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Being prepared isn’t an internal state.

We can’t will ourselves prepared or think it.

We can only act ourselves into a state of prepared.

We can be prepared for a speech by giving it, prepared for the work by doing it, and prepared to face the next adversity by having faced one yesterday.

Preparation is an actionable state.

It requires forward movement, leaps and, yeah, the feeling of risk.

Stay Positive & Prepared

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If we could measure consistency, we’d find it helping in the long run.

Consistency in some scenarios seems like a given: You want your food experience to be consistent and you want to wake up to someone who loves you the same as they did yesterday.

Consistency in other scenarios gets thrown out the window pretty quickly: You want your logo to be different after eight months and you begin only working out in the mornings that you happen to wake up early on.

Those sporadic workouts and logo changes might feel like they’re powerful, but they’re not. They’re shiny, but not moving.

What matters is that we treat areas outside of where we dine and who we date with the same care and intention around consistency.

Stay Positive & If Anything, How Can We Add More Consistency?

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Your way might not be right, but at least it’s yours.

Whether it succeeds or fails, it’s on you and you can grow from it.

You boldly chose yourself when you did it your way instead of waiting to be picked.

There are a thousand others ways than the high way that are not your way, but your way is the only way it can be yours.

If you think about it, all the others ways are taken by someone else. That’s their way. What makes this way special is that it’s yours.

Stay Positive & Here’s To Your Way

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