Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
It’s improbable to find pleasure long-term in situations that don’t change.
At some point, boredom hits or a drive to find something better encroaches.
So the best step forward is to find new ways to improve or alter the current situation; to not just find the good but create more of the great in the situation.
Better doesn’t have to be vastly different.
Stay Positive & Nuances Are Everything
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Facing a problem? Write about it.
Need a creative spark to ideation? Start writing.
Struggling with a decision? Write.
There’s no other activity that produces as strong of results as writing.
The key, however, is writing as exploration, not seeking a destination.
Stay Positive & Write Now
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Leap.
Four letters combined to result in a lot of power.
It’s all we need to do to shake things up. It’s all we need to do to succeed. All we need to do to make the change we seek to make.
The real beauty in leaping is that you don’t need a special day to do it.
Stay Positive & We’re Waiting
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A great test to see if you’re contributing the right kind of work is to ask the question if they would miss it if it/you were gone.
The next great test is to make sure the work can still carry on without you.
It’s one thing to be needed in a certain way.
It’s another to be needed for anything to get done.
Stay Positive & More Of The First, Please
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Let’s just imagine you owned a coffee shop for a moment. No doubt there are some people who would enter that you would go above and beyond for.
Or maybe you manage an email list.
Or maybe you’re at a firm with a handful of clients.
Now imagine if your “above and beyond” situation became the norm, the status quo, the expectation.
Two things would happen. The first is you’d blow the competition out of the water and two, you’d need to find even more ways to treat different people differently.
Both are possible.
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On a similar note, there was a seminar on the college campus that I went to when I was younger. The speaker told everyone to stand up and reach as high as they could; to really stretch and get our arms, hands and fingers pointed as high as we could. We did. Then we were all asked to reach a tiny bit higher – and we did. Then he said something along the lines of this. “You guys rock more than you know. At first you thought you were reaching as high as you could, that was what was asked of you. But you were still able to reach higher. We hold back on ourselves. We can do more and be better if we ask it of ourselves.”
That experience has stuck with me to this day and it doesn’t just apply to how we hold back on ourselves, it’s also how we hold back on others. We can give more than we think we can.
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Stay Positive & Go Above And Beyond (Then Go Above And Beyond More)
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Reality is that those who maintain the basics are the ones to excel further than those who try to stray away.
The basics of putting things back where you found them, the basics of common sense etiquette, the basics of leaving a place/conversation/work better than how you found it, the basics of listening more than talking.
You can go above and beyond, but what people remember and care most about is that you’ve got the basics down, consistently and with care.
Stay Positive & Take Time For The 101
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You can do two, three, four things at once.
You can be in a meeting and do unrelated work at the same time.
You can drive an Uber and take a call with a friend.
You can draft a blog post, listen to your kid and eat at the same time.
We can but it doesn’t mean we should. Efficiencies drop. Focus ebbs and flows. And, more often than not, we leave someone else short – and that’s not cool.
Respond “not attending” to the meeting. Set aside time for your call. Listen first, blog and eat later.
Stay Positive & Prioritize
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