is to wipe the sweat off your brow.
Stay Positive & Get Back In There
Shall We Gamble Our Success On A Meeting
Bob Proctor says to consider the agenda of your meeting tomorrow the night before.
Sorry, Bob, I say skip the meeting completely and stay focused on what needs to be done.
Meetings have two arguable goals. The first goal is to put off good work being done. The second is to hold people accountable for doing good work after the meeting. My thought is, wouldn’t you want to hire people who don’t need anyone to hold them accountable, who are self-accountable, self-motivated?
Here’s an interesting thought. Want to know what employees to keep around next quarter? Go a month without having a meeting and see who still gets everything they need done.
The only meeting worth having is the meeting of celebration.
Stay Positive & More On Meetings (& More) (& More)
Enlighten Others
Being A Leader Is Fricken Hard
Allow me to be personal, blatant and a bit motivational.
If there’s one thing I work the most hard at, it’s being a leader. I subject myself to more trials and obstacles than many others my age because I have a dream of being a real leader. I start by biting off more than I can chew. I continue by making promises that keep me busy day in and day out. I manage all this by believing that I don’t have a choice but to manage it all. Today I’ve experienced the famous quote that you will likely recall from Spider-Man,
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
My superpower is leadership and with it comes a lot of responsibility. The beautiful thing about leadership is that 90 percent of the responsibility is pleasurable. (Part of me would argue this same ratio goes for any superpower. It’s what makes it super!) Most leaders enjoy stress, take pleasure in daily deadlines and play with the difficulty of leading 10, 50, 10,000 people. Leadership is fun, but there are times – like Peter Parker – I wish it wasn’t my superpower. When I’m coughing, aching and chasing my running nose all day, I don’t want to be a leader. When I miss the friends closest to me, I wish I could drop everything and go see them immediately.
There is, however, one thing that helps counter this sorrow. When someone thanks me for my leadership commitment, when someone reminds me that the group won’t function as well without me, that, like Peter Parker, people need me, well, the unfortunate 10 percent of the superpower disappears. Sick and weary, I lead a group today because someone reminded me my leadership was needed, that it did not go unnoticed. Without that someone, I would have let the group down.
So I’ve got a task for you. Go remind someone that their superpower is needed, that it doesn’t go unnoticed. There are people all around us who make sacrifices because their great power makes them responsible to do so. There are people who need the recognition. Let’s work on bringing the superhero out in everyone.
1 person, 1 message, 1 compliment or reminder of their superpower
Everyone’s got a superpower. Your compliment might just remind someone of what theirs is.
Stay Positive & Perhaps You’ll Rediscover Yours Along The Way Too
Enlighten Others
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Not knowing.
That’s the business we’re all in.
We don’t know if it will work, we don’t know if our long-term investment will pay off, we don’t know if our competitors will be around tomorrow, we don’t know if we will be around tomorrow.
No matter what analytical software we use, we don’t know if our campaign will stick, we don’t know if our video will go viral, we don’t know if the investors will like our pitch.
Not knowing is not a good enough excuse for not trying. If anything, it’s the only reason we need to try. In fact, all the good stuff comes from what we do to find out what we don’t know.
Doing what we know over and over again and expecting the same results is a death wish. There’s a point when repetition goes from helpful to annoying.
Stay Positive & There’s A Reason We Always Round Up
Enlighten Others
All Sorts Of Advice About Writing
Writing is hard.
Writing is easy.
You’re bound to get writer’s block.
Writer’s block doesn’t exist.
You need to write at least 2,000 words or a chapter a day.
As long as you get one sentence down, it’s a successful day.
Connections don’t matter at first, focus on content.
Content doesn’t sell, connections and personality do. Content comes last.
These are all pieces of advice I’ve gotten from successful writers and I’m sure they are also pieces of advice you’ve read online too. You know what? Believe in the one you believe in. They all work as long as you believe in them.
If you believe writing is hard, don’t take suggestions from someone who thinks it’s easy. If you don’t believe in writer’s block, how do you plan to apply the tricks to overcoming what you don’t think exists? It doesn’t make sense, confuses you and breaks your momentum.
There are a hundred different paths to follow to become a successful writer. You only need to take one. The one you believe the most in.
Stay Positive & Remember There’s No Shortcut*
*Not in doing what you believe in and not in doing what you don’t believe in. It’s more about which one you can enjoy more and be more passionate about.
Enlighten Others
Step Into Your Artist Pants
You’ve got to flip the switch on, you’ve got to bully yourself into it, you’ve got to step into your artist pants and walk with confidence. You can’t expect to do remarkable work if you don’t feel it, if you’re not in love with what you’re doing.
The most common thread in all the writers’ institute workshops this weekend is to do only what you will really love doing. If you don’t love the novel you’re writing, scrap it. If you don’t like a particular social media outlet, avoid it. If you don’t love what you need to sacrifice to go the route of traditional publishing, don’t try to traditionally publish.
Yes, you need to try each pair of pants on, but when you find the right ones, the artist pants, don’t exchange them for any other pair no matter who holds up a different pair and says “you need to wear these if you want success.”
Stay Positive & Stride With Passion
Enlighten Others
Being On The Edge Of Your Seat Matters, But Where That Seat Is Matters More
As a journalist and avid conference-goer, one of the best suggestions I can give is to take an edge seat wherever you go. You may be at a press conference and have to chase after someone who holds the real story. You may be in a workshop that is nothing like you expected and you want to leave to check out a different workshop. If you’re sitting in the middle, boxed in, you’re not very likely to get up and leave. You’ll miss the real story, the better experience, the things that make a writer’s belly flip or set it on fire.
Stay Positive & Always Be Ready To Chase After Something