Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
No matter how you design a list, how you order it, how you take the time to include all that should be on it; that list will never compete with the list that has all its items checked off.
That is the best list.
Stay Positive & Get Going
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It only takes one question to better connect with your boss, your friend, your significant other, a stranger, your mom, a client…
And it’s a question for you, not them.
What is the other person feeling?
Answer that instead of reacting in the moment or acting on habit or selfish motives, and you’ll see just how strong of a relationship you can make with someone in only a few moments.
Stay Positive & Connection = Caring
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There will be moments that feel like bad timing.
Either you were too late or feel like you showed up too early. You feel like it’s your fault, that you’ve done wrong, that you ought to be smart enough to know when to do something and when not to.
You need to recognize that there is no such thing as bad timing.
When you feel too early for something, you’re then more prepared for when the right time arrives.
When you feel too late for something, it challenges you to level up, think smarter and try something different.
The only timing that matters is now and what you’re going to do with that.
Stay Positive & Shake It Off
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There’s one component that’s stopping you from levelling up: time.
The moment when you’re faced with making a decision, you have roughly 30 seconds before you begin talking yourself out of it or, in other words, fearing an outcome.
Time to fear is what air is to humans. It’s essential to live and we sure like a lot of it.
Remove time from the equation and you’ll succeed.
Remove the time variable, and you’ll begin to forget just how powerful fear can be.
Stay Positive & Fear Is Only As Powerful As You Let It Be
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To be the smartest marketer, business owner, cook, artist, musician, writer, hackysack player, dancer…you can’t silo yourself into knowledge of only that industry.
So often people and brands find the most successful step forward…by reading about other industries, educating themselves on what other artists and brands are doing.
There are general principles of success that often go unnoticed when we silo ourselves within an industry.
Look out. See what you can gleam from logistics companies, from mixologists, from street performers.
Stay Positive & There Are Lessons Everywhere
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It’s obvious that to be a writer, you must write. How you become a great writer, though, depends on how you practice your writing.
There are styles of writing to practice, words to learn, analogies to make that you’ll never learn simply freewriting or putting to ink whatever comes to your mind in a blog post. (Sure, those help, but in conjunction with what I’m about to suggest.)
The trick to becoming a great writer is to practice writing the same way one would practice an instrument.
Learn the chords, the tabs, the keys…or letters, words and word pairings.
Then begin practicing a song…or practice writing your favorite novel.
By writing the way other famous writers wrote, you can better pick up their style, how the words hit the paper, how they flow. The same way you understand music by playing your favorite songs.
It seems, crazy, but why?
No one became an expert musician simply by listening to music. Do you believe you can become an expert writer simply by reading?
Stay Positive & Great Practice Makes Greatness
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People who have answers, get admired.
People who have the right answers, get respected.
People who have the right answers that tell a story, get loyalty.
There’s two routes you can get there. You can go the long route of trial and error. Show up to enough meetings and answer enough questions, then you’ll eventually get there–that is, if you don’t get exhausted by the learning process and tired of not delivering the answer you wanted in front of those asking. It can get harrowing.
The better option, I believe, is to go through the emotional labor of anticipating questions, spending the time to write out difficult questions and figure out how to answer them, role-playing if you need to.
You won’t be able to anticipate every question, nor will you have an answer for everyone, but you will have at least thought long and hard enough to get to the level of being admired.
Stay Positive & The Best Stories Are Told By Design, Not By Accident
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