Life Lesson

As the day wanes, our willpower to choose our own success does too.

We try to conserve energy by adopting what success looks like for those around us. We begin to second guess if we woke up with the right form of success in our minds. We start to change what success looks like for us based on the powers of influence that we’re surrounded by and the result is that we feel less fulfilled at the end of the day.

Your colleague puts more hours in and works hard at work, so you feel the need to put yours in too…even though you woke up thinking about how you’ll have dinner with your family tonight. That was success to you in the morning, but it shifted throughout the day.

If you can look forward, just a handful of hours from now, when you’re back in bed at the end of the day: What is it that you need to do to feel like you’ve succeeded today? Not your laundry list of to-dos, but the task that holds the greatest meaning to you. Write it down. Carry it with you. You’ll want to check it off tonight.

We often forget we have the choice of what success looks like for us 5 years from now, 5 weeks from now, 5 minutes from now. The choice is always ours, but we must choose.

 

Stay Positive & There’s No Reason To Let Others Shift What Success Is For You

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We live in a world of exponential growth. We know that tomorrow we will be able to build on what we did today. We know that by not touching money in our bank account, that the dividend makes itself larger each month. We know that smiling at someone in the morning can have a positive impact on the 50 other people they interact with throughout the day.

Sadly, there are business owners who ignore the fact we also live in a world of negative exponents.

Consider the gentleman who sells fudge at a small market, but doesn’t let anyone sample the fudge 1. even though all competitors do and 2. regardless of whether or not the customer guarantees him that she will purchase some fudge.

When a situation like this occurs, it’s not just one person who says they’ll never go to that food market again; It’s that person and their friends and their friends of friends and their friends of friends of friends.

Word of mouth travels fast, but at the end of the day complaints and negative word of mouth travel faster.

Sometimes what matters isn’t figuring out how to surprise and delight your customers; It’s figuring out how to prevent the moments that lead to an exponential decline in business.

You can’t please everyone, but you can do your best not to disappoint them.

 

Stay Positive & Find Your Soft Spots And Fix Them

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There are a few illegitimate reasons to dislike process.

Urgency: The problem you have now feels urgent, but what’s more important is a process that can help you solve the next 100 problems. The dividend on those far exceeds the dividend on solving the problem today, but being on different teams again with tomorrow’s problem.

Creativity: To many, process removes intuition. Interestingly, though, a moment of creativity can arrive at any time and, if it’s cunning enough, it will be applied. Even with process, no one says no to a remarkable idea (and if they do, you’re in the wrong place). After all, the process is meant to make creative ideas happen better and faster anyway. In fact, process is what will save your ass when intuition fails you.

It’s not broken: The current process may not be broken, so why talk about making process better? Because tomorrow’s problems won’t be the same as today’s and today you have dealt with different crap than you did yesterday. A process is really like a business plan for a certain type of service, and business plans are meant to be updated (made better) on a regular basis.

It’s for dummies: You have passion and an open mind and a determination to check a box, so you don’t need process, right? That’s for people who are not you. Being forward, I’m not sure I want to sell you out of this thought if you are thinking it in the first place. It’s less competition for those who know that process is what doubles efficiency when they’ve done everything they can think of.

 

Stay Positive & Love It Or Hate It, Find A Way To Bake It

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Good memory is less of a positive quality than we think.

Consider the barista who takes your order for a soy mocha frappe with extra chocolate chips and caramel drizzle and no whipped cream. What if she didn’t write it on the cup?

If it’s only you and her in the cafe, you may not worry much, but if there’s a long line…. well, this wouldn’t be the first time someone got your order wrong, and even in situations after they wrote the order down.

So you get nervous, anxious, concerned even. You watch her like a hawk as she makes your drink. Since she didn’t write the order down, you were left without peace of mind. You’re extra critical when you ought to be excited and filled with anticipation to receive your order.

When you discuss work, note-taking eases the mind of all those around you. It gives them confidence in you doing things right and shows you care enough to pay attention. It doesn’t matter if it’s all in your head and the work gets done perfectly. What matters is the emotions the customer, client or coworker has to go through before the actual work starts.

Remember the user experience, not just the end result.

 

Stay Positive & It Can Even Be A Stick Figure, But Take Notes

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Your competitors might be stupid, inactive, unproductive, disorganized and uncaring.

But taking this approach doesn’t help you because they still exist. Obviously their target doesn’t care enough to choose you instead. So there must be something else at work.

What if they were reliable (as shown through their guarantees) and discerning (as shown by the limited quantity of product they sell) and surprisingly creative (as shown through their packaging). Now we begin to see what qualities make them special… and we see that you’re trying to be reliable, discerning and surprisingly creative too.

The problem then is you’re no different from your competitor even if you are a bit smarter, a bit more active, a bit more productive, organized and caring. At each other’s core, you’re each trying to achieve the same brand status.

The key to boiling your competition down, isn’t to literally criticize them until they evaporate. It’s to think of them in the brightest light, almost as if you are the one running their company. What do they stand for?

Why would you then stand for the same thing?

It’s often unclear how similar you are to your competitors until you stop attacking them and start seeing them as they are: businesses that exist with a purpose and that have a core brand nature. Think deeply about what it is and you just may discover the real key to differentiating yourself.

 

Stay Positive & Gotta See The Tree Through The Forest

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I grew up being told not to go to someone with a problem and without a possible solution to it.

At minimum, this works better than going to someone with a problem and without a solution.

Better yet, is to go with questions. Questions about the problem. Questions about solutions.

Sometimes you may be able to think of the one greatest solution to the problem, but often it’s one mediocre solution, a solution that could be made better if you had asked the right questions and gotten others with a variety of experience involved.

There will always be someone better than you.

Why not seek them out, ask questions and arrive at a better solution?

 

Stay Positive & Or Is It An Ego Thing?

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Two minutes can save you hours.

Two minutes can save you dollars.

Two minutes can save the trust others have in you.

It often takes only two minutes to read the email again before you hit send. Two minutes to walk away and reenter a room with a clear mind. Two minutes to double-check your math. Two minutes to send an email expressing your appreciation for something a colleague did. Two minutes to breathe some life into your work. Two minutes to come up with a better word.

Two minutes here and there add up… but not as much as not using them subtracts from your growth, your impact and your chances of success.

 

Stay Positive & It’s Not A Waste, It’s An Investment

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