Should really isn’t that effective of a word to use with others. Telling someone they should do something or shouldn’t removes the agency of the choice. It steals some of the passion and turns it into a task that you put on their agenda rather than an objective they put on their own.
But, and it’s a big but. Should works when it’s used on yourself.
When shit hits the fan – what should you do? When you’ve got momentum on your side – what should you do? When you’re not sure what to do next – what should you do?
“I should …” is one step closer to “I did” – and there’s magic in that leap.
There are a number of things that are fun to do again and again.
And then there are a number of things that aren’t.
When was the last time you went through your onboarding process to see what you may be unknowingly asking a potential employee to fill out more than once?
When was the last time you signed up for your own newsletter, made a purchase and set out to make a second or third purchase to see what information you had to give more than once?
In real life, it feels pretty dumb to say hi to someone you already said hi to, but that’s because you know you’re doing it.
In the digital world, it’s a lot easier to say hi two, three or four times and not know you’re doing it. But you know who does? The person you’re supposed to be wooing. And to them, the repetition feels like you don’t care.
There’s no better time to sweep your systems than now. Show you care.
Right now, most have come to agreement that success can mean many different things to different people. It’s a generic term, specific only to the person using it.
Perfection, on the other hand, is still being treated like success was a number of years ago.
Perfection is oft thought of as polished, 100%, everything about it is right.
But that’s not the reality of the perfect world we live in.
Rather, something is perfect if that something works as intended.
A perfect message resonates, but that same message might have an odd color crop on it. It’s a blemish, but it doesn’t make the message imperfect. Why? Because the message resonates. It’s working as intended.
And how you intend for something to make an impact might be different than how someone else intends for that same thing to make an impact. Perfect, then, is a generic term, defined by the person using it.
Go ahead and be a perfectionist. We need more things that work as intended.
Stay Positive & You May Not Need As Much Polish As You Think
It might be fair to say we often treat others better than we treat ourselves.
Be that true, it would then be fair to question how poorly we handle the conversations in our head if we meet every conversation with another as a confrontation in the real world.
If we let the outside critic fill us with frustration… If we let the real world disagreements boil our words until each is accompanied with an expletive… If we let our competitors’ triumphs egg us to move the line in our moral standards…
Then how bad are we treating ourselves?
You know– the critic inside your head, the disagreement with what your brain and heart are saying or the competition with yourself to be better than you were yesterday but not as great as you will be tomorrow?
Stay Positive & Time To Treat Yourself Better (So You Can Treat Others Better)