Life Lesson

Every interview I’ve watched with celebrity comedians and entrepreneurs and actresses; Every conversation I’ve had with role models and freelancers and people who have been in a trade for 20+ years–they all express that they have fears each time they get up to do their work.

As someone who is in the process of opening up a craft beer bar, there’s no shortage of fears. Here’s the list I’ve kept so far:

• Fuck this is scary.
• What if people hate what it stands for.
• No one reads it.
• Everyone reads it.
• If I ruin the business before it starts. 
• I’m hiding again.
• I put myself out there. It was exhausting. 
• I don’t know a fucking thing.
• I’m not gonna have enough money. It’s not the right time. The wrong people will show up.
• Other bars have huge groups backing them.
• I’m going to ruin my relationships. 
• There’s no way I’m going to be able to handle everything.
• I’m in way over my head. The fear is crippling. 
• It’s the wrong fucking name.

I wish I could tell you I was joking about having felt these things at one point or another.

But I’m not.

The real joke is telling ourselves we don’t feel these things or that it’s wrong when we do or that no one else feels them and we shouldn’t.

The real joke is when people let their list of fears stop them from making an impact.

It’s a problem when we treat every day like it’s April 1st.

Stay Positive & Today Is A Great Day To Stop Hiding

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Busy doesn’t belong in that two-hour window within your calendar for Thursday.

It doesn’t belong in the final-stretch of a project.

Busy ought not to replace the time you had planned for meaningful work.

It doesn’t need to be put in front of you at night or the early morning.

The only place to put the busy is behind you.

You have more important work to be doing, change to be seeking, impact worth making.

Stay Positive & We Don’t Need More Busy

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Everyone has a breaking point.

And, at some time, we’ll all reach it in the work we do, the people we connect with, and the hobbies we participate in.

The difference maker, of course, is whether or not we recognize the why of what we do and who we do it with, and if it’s significant enough to keep moving forward beyond the breaking point.

Most of us have so much more in us to use than we think, especially once we recognize why it is there in the first place.

Stay Positive & Put The Breaking Point In The Rear View

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The words we use can make or break a brand.

They can carry a relationship and they can tumble a partnership.

They can make you a friend or an enemy.

They can build trust with customers or lose it.

The words we use can ignite emotion or promote apathy.

Most importantly, though, the words we use should not be the words we use. For them to have a meaningful impact, the words need to be the ones our target uses.

It doesn’t start with speaking and seeing what resonates. It starts with listening and reciprocating messages in a way that they know you have heard them.

You can write about how you have made a jar that’s easy-to-open, but saying you have a jar that allows you to keep your independence and only ask for help for more important things is a lot different “easy-to-open.”

Stay Positive & The Right Words Require Insight

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It’s insanely easy to pull one over on someone.

To discreetly up sell or lock someone in to a subscription or focus their attention on the benefits and not the consequences.

But more and more people are becoming aware of having one pulled over them. They’ve had it done too many times already.

It makes you feel like an idiot, like you’re not good enough for a business, like you’re not cared for.

Better to be a brand that gives one over (and to purchase from brands that do). For us to tip the scale, we have to put our attention on giving so much that there’s not a doubt in a consumer’s mindset that they’re secretly being swindled.

Telling others, “Because I see you. Because I know what it’s like to buy from a brand that doesn’t care,” goes a long way in earning their loyalty.

And sticking to that promise goes even longer.

Stay Positive & Place Your Loyalty In Those Who Give

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It’s pretty easy to make a to-do list and to run with it.

Almost as easy is to make a to-do list that, beside each task, you list the motivation for it or the feeling you’ll have when it’s complete or the reason it’s on the list in the first place.

Two types of easy lists, but one with so much more power and invited motivation to complete it.

Stay Positive & Which List Have You Been Making?

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If you reflect on the times you’ve lost it, you’ll quickly realize they were all moments when the workload lightened, your schedule was more free and you had time for things.

That time is a trickster, though, because if you have time for things then you also have time to not do anything–you have time to waste.

In a world where time is relative, we need deadlines more than ever. Ones assigned for us and ones we assign ourselves to keep the motivation alive.

The best way to avoid losing your motivation is to keep needing it.

Stay Positive & What’s Next On Your List?

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