What To Do When Your Best Isn't Good Enough

How To Be Successful In A World That Judges Your Outcomes

Get The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People Below!

In a recent post I discussed the book The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

It got me thinking about what if you try your best but it's not good enough?

Well, it could be a problem of perception.

The Genius of 90%

Have you ever watched a movie that was great up until the ending?

The recent Mad Max comes to mind.

In it, the movie starts at the warlord Immortan Joe's fortress The Citadel, a cruel fortress that Immortan Joe has used to imprison survivors of the apocalypse. To control the survivors, Immortan Joe pumps water from the cliffs of The Citadel with much fanfare.

After his top warrior Imperator Furiosa helps 5 of the warlords'  herom escape, the warlord leads a war party across the wasteland to catch them with stunning cinematography and action.

It's one long car chase across the desert of Australia that thuds at the end.

Why?

For one, warlord Immortan Joe is killed about 80% into the movie.

Two, Mad Max and Furiosa return to the Citadel and the enslaved survivors know that they are now free. The water lines are opened once again to the cheering of the survivors as Mad Max disappears into the crowd.

Roll credits.

It just ends, there's no denouement.  It all ends too quickly and feels like the producer was limited by time, money, plot holes or all of the above. There's nothing that wraps the movie in a tidy way or reveals the futures of these survivors.

Judged by the ending, Mad Max: Fury Road sucks.  So why then is it so popular?

Because 90% of it is entertaining and visually stunning.

The End Justifies The Means - Or Not

So how do you define success then?  Mad Max: Fury Road is an awesome fete of cinema. Even with a quickly wrapped ending that falls flat.

We've all gone through it.  We've worked our tails off to prepare for success at something important only to fail.

You've spent hours developing an idea, going through all the necessary edits and cuts only to find out that in the end, it just wasn't good enough.

Sitting in your room at night spending hours writing a song that you're sure is the best thing you could do.

You wrote it specifically for one person in mind, that special someone.


They'll swoon with your melodies; their dreams are replays of your metaphors in their imagination.



You tell them it's unfinished but that they are the inspiration for it.

In your mind, you imagine how they'll act when you play it for them.

They'll fall in love with you (all over again).

And then you play it for them.

And their reaction is underwhelming.

"Um, that was good," they say.

"Can you play Taylor Swift?  Led Zeppelin?" they ask afterwards.

How do you react?

Are you the type of person that throws your hands up to the sky as if to say "what else can I do?"

Are you the type that allows the disappointment to consume you and paralyze you from ever taking a risk that success requires, from doing that task again?

Are you crestfallen?

Maybe.  Nobody would blame you for feeling that way.

But by spending the time to learn the chords and melodies, as well as memorize the lyrics, you're already a success.

By putting yourself out there, you're already a success.

The process has taught you things that are invaluable to how the song is received.

What if you're on a team, and you dream of winning a game, a championship, and you lose the final game you play.

Is the season a failure in your mind?

All those hours you've spent training and learning from your teammates and coaches.

All the time you've sacrificed for the team when you could have been with friends and family doing other things, is that wasted?

Yes and no.

It's true that the experience is wasted if you judge the outcome of the season as the only metric of success.

And most of the time the pressure felt immediately after the big loss is one of perception.  It's how we imagine our success is perceived by others. Friends, family, boyfriends, girlfriends, players from other teams - these are who we imagine we're being judged by.

But why do we allow the perception of others to dictate our concepts of success?

Why is it that the people who didn't engage in all the hours of dedication, of learning, sculpting and rehearsing are the ones we shy away from after we fall short of our goals?

Look, we all set goals.  Some we meet and with many we fall short.  Why let other people, especially ones not invested in the process, in the hours of work you dedicated to determine your opinion of your success.

Is it something you're taught?

The Failure Of Your Education

How Your Success Is Pre-Determined By Your Approach To Learning

In school, the emphasis is often on studying for the tests.

Preparing on material that you'll be tested on rather than the comprehension of the material.

Studying and the last-minute cramming of all that material just before an exam is a short-term solution.  It's like a crash diet before a day at the beach.  It may help you fit into a new bathing suit but won't make a major difference in the long run.

We too often focus on the outcomes of what we do and not on how we prepare.  In school we focus on our grade on the exam versus the long term benefits of comprehension.  It's the opinion of others that matters, by way of our grade on the exam, rather than what we've gained in understanding.

While grades are an obviously important metric for reflection, for us to gain insight on how well we grasp the material, it shouldn't be the primary point.

The point of education should be in comprehension.

Instead, it should focus on the understanding of the material.

This is how real gains are made in knowledge, not in the rote memorization of dates and facts, but in the analysis of the information.

And when doing something of value we should have the same goal in mind.

In The Eye Of The Beholder A Rose Is Still A Rose

A painter shouldn't be judged by how well they recreate a lifelike image.

But they should be judged on the nuance of their respective skills.  How well do they mix textures, lighting and shades?  How is their grasp and analysis of the subject?

If we judged painters, writers, musicians and other creatives as we do athletes and students, we'd have a much less beautiful world.

So we shouldn't let others determine that the outcome justifies the means.

How we do something and what we learn along the way is 1000 times more valuable to our well-being than the outcome of one game or how one song is received.

So when you do your best, but it's not good enough, ask yourself how you're evaluating what's "good enough."

Success shouldn't be defined by other peoples judgments of your outcomes.  If you do your best and you fall short, it's still a success.

Trust yourself and trust your process.

If you'd like to get a copy of The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, click the picture below and get your copy from Amazon today.

5 Common Sense Ways To Improve Your Health And Increase Your Productivity That You Can Start Today

5 Simple Things You Can Do To Improve Your Life Today

There are countless things you can do to improve your life.  From getting more sleep, to eating better, to changing jobs and lowering debt.

Improving your life will make you happier, healthier and more productive.

If those are things that interest you, keep reading.

5 Common Sense Things You Can Do To Improve Your Well Being Today

1) Get More Sleep:

According to the National Institute of Health, the average American adult gets less than 7 hours of sleep a night.  The cause for this is numerous, from an imbalance of work/life to heavy meals at dinner time, caffeine after 4 pm, family demands, but for most it's simply entertainment, television and social media.

The recommended daily amount for a fully grown adult is in the window of 7-9 hours per night for optimal rest and recovery.

Some of the major benefits of sleeping properly are:

• Improved Memory
• Sharpened Attention and Focus
• Improved Overall Health and Wellbeing
• Increase Creativity and Productivity
• Fight Infection and Inflammation
• Lower Stress Levels

CLICK HERE FOR NATIONAL SLEEP FOUNDATION SLEEP RECOMMENDATIONS

So ask yourself, how important is that next episode of The Bachelorette or South Park?


2) Exercise Daily:

Along with sleeping more, there's a correlation with exercise and improved health. That's a no-brainer.  But exercise, any exercise can help reduce overall stress levels as well as burn off excess calories.  A bonus is that daily exercise helps regulate a normal sleep pattern.

It doesn't have to be a major undertaking.  It's better to do some form of interval or variable training in the beginning.  In other words, start slowly and build your endurance and strength over time. For example, run for a couple minutes, and then intersperse that with a long walk, then another short run, and repeat.

3) Eat Healthier and Drink More Water:

Our bodies are made of over 70% water, so replenishing our most important element is also a no-brainer.  But with our busy, go-go culture we're constantly consuming more calories than necessary.

The positive effects of water can help in the body's ability to regenerate and heal itself; adds in sleep balance; decreases stress levels; can aid in digestion and caloric intake, as well as make you look and feel younger.

From processed foods with added salt, additives and preservatives to sugary drinks like sodas and caffeine or other stimulants, we are constantly depleting our water reserves.

The recommended daily dose is 8 glasses of 8 oz. of water a day.  That works out to a half gallon of water per day for the average adult, but should possibly be increased depending on your diet and activity levels.


4) Organize Your Tasks:



Knowing what tasks are important and the order in which they should be undertaken is one of the most efficient tactics we can undertake.  For example, if you have a deadline for two different projects, knowing which one to start with and which one to finish can be of utmost importance.

In The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People, Forbes magazine points out that one of the key takeaways is to think things through, focus on doing the right things first in the proper order then focus on less important tasks.  

Read More About The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People By Getting The Book From Amazon. 


5) Take Time To Relax:

If you were to go run like Forrest Gump in the iconic image from the movie, you'd die of exhaustion before you ever got where it was you were trying to go.  Even if as Forrest said, "...so I went running," you would still need a time period to recover.

We know we can't workout for ever, that much is obvious.  We know we need to rest and recuperate.  So why do we refuse to take some time for ourselves to just relax and let our thoughts come to us as they will?

Taking time to relax in most societies outside the U.S. is actually mandated by terms of employment. Where as most employers offer 2 weeks or less of paid vacation, check out some of the leaders in time off:

• Australia offers 28 days of paid vacation per average
• Belgians typically have 30 days paid vacation
• Italy and France typically offer 31 days of paid time off
• Spain, Portugal and Germany offer 34-35 days of paid vacation time

Time off will help you recharge, recuperate and reenergize your self, your body and your mind.

My Kindle Publishing Journey Updates

 Announcing Another Short Story 

It's Not The Things We Say

When I started my Kindle Publishing journey, I released a short story titled The Ballad of John Walker: A Short Story and there was a decent amount of steam behind it.

Many of you picked it up, some even left reviews!

And amazon reviews are the gold standard for Amazon.  It acts as social proof and validation, and Amazon's algorithm rewards items and books with higher number of reviews.

Click Here To Write A Review

I discussed all the nuances, lessons learned and strategic decisions I made on a post earlier titled "The 3 Things I Learned Releasing 3 Stories In 3 Months." You can read it by clicking on the title above.

After I released The Ballad of John Walker: A Short Story, I quietly published a collection of 3 short stories under the title Mayonnaise and Other Stories: A Mostly Made-Up Account Of Life In The World Today.

Priced at $1.99 for 3 stories, the downloads have been alright but not as good as The Ballad of John Walker.  Reviews are less for Mayonnaise than for Ballad, but hopefully that will right itself in time.

Announcing A New Title - It's Not The Things We Say

What happens when you reach a point in a relationship when you just don't know how to talk to each other?

Tack on a tragedy and how do you overcome that schism?

That's the question I examined in the short story It's Not The Things We Say.



 It's on Amazon's Kindle Publishing platform and you can download it for $0.99 right now by clicking THIS LINK.

5 Tips To Make A Change For A Better You

Small Behavioral Changes That Will Help You Become A Better You

This post is about behavioral modification and habit forming.

We need to define habits and behavioral modification as making subtle changes in our unconscious actions (habits) and learning new behavior through regular conscious activity until it becomes automatic behavior (new habits).

So, how does this apply to you and my writing and Kindle Publishing journey?

It's about ways to overcome challenges that seem too grandiose and too large to otherwise accomplish.

It's about making major changes in how we create and reinforce actions, good and bad, and how we can make small changes for major accomplishments.

It's about learning new tactics, taking shorter decisive actions to achieve greater mastery and improved productivity.

As I've written previously, practice makes permanent.

The trick is about taking small detailed steps that you can build upon.

Slow And Steady Wins The Race

In a popular, well known book by Jim Collins called "Good To Great," he writes a story about two groups of people that are attempting the overcome the same challenge in two distinctly different ways.

What both groups were were attempting to be the first to reach the South Pole during a time when luxury was low and the risk was great.


Get It From Amazon - Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't

One group led by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott would "batch" their efforts.  They would hike as far as they could and for as long as they could maintain it, weather permitting.  Trudging upward of 40+ miles a day on nicer days, they'd hunker down and rest on days where the weather was too large a challenge to overcome.

The other group of four hikers led by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen set out on their itinerary with a more manageable, reasonable goal.  The second group chose to hike 20 miles a day, the weather being accommodating or not.

The winner was Amundsen's second group, who beat the British by a full 5 weeks!

So what does that mean for us to improve our productivity?

It's proof that taking large tasks and breaking them into smaller, more manageable tasks is a great productivity tip.

Another example of this tactic is in Major League Baseball (MLB).

 In a recent study, MLB points out that starting pitchers that go the full game, called a complete game in the parlance, is down in recent years.

In fact, in the MLB study, they claim that of all the 2,700+ games or so, only 60 complete games were recorded. That equals only one complete game for every 45.6+ starts.

Of course, there are factors that come into play with these statistics, such as highly specialized relievers or games being broken up by the offensive team in the late innings for examples.

It also means that it's much, much harder to do something of quality over long periods of time.

Sustainability is one of the keys then.

Most MLB pitchers work about 5 innings or have a total pitch count before they're substituted for, with another 4-5 days off before their next start. Simply put, shorter durations of pitching with longer recovery as a tactic is supported by the previous data.

To Make A Change Requires A Conscious Choice

So what do the Antarctic expeditions and Major League Baseball analogies have to teach us about behavioral changes and improve our productivity?

They teach us that having short, obtainable goals can get us further than running to our limits of endurance or trying to do things only when conditions are near perfect.

So how do we make the incremental changes to have monumental gains?

In a recent blog post on the Psychology Today website, they discuss the problems of changing habits and how to make long-term behavioral changes more effective.

The slant of the article was that there are some concrete steps that have to be taken to make positive changes in our behaviors, and that without these steps, behavioral modification - habit formation - can be extremely difficult.

5 Tips To Make A Change For The Better

1. Decide To Make A Change:  

To make a substantial change, you need to make a clear decision that there is something that needs to change.  It could be something life altering such as eating healthier and beginning an exercise routine, or something minor like waking up 15 minutes earlier every day.  The point is that there needs to be something that you recognize as a problem and one that you want to correct.

The next step after deciding you want to make a change is the hardest.  Believe that change is possible.  If your habit is being late for everything, and you believe that you're destined to be tardy to things, you'll never make that change.  So the struggle is to decide that the bad habit is something that needs to be changed, and you need to change your thinking about tackling that problem.

2. Think About Why The Problem Exists: 

If you're chronically tardy, why is that?  Is it you're easily distracted and lose track of time, traffic is poor in your area, or something else?  It could also be a subtle issue of control - controlling the times of other people's involvement with you, placing a subconscious hierarchy that places yourself over others.  Perhaps it's a subtle grab for attention.  Take a hard look at why tardiness is a chronic condition. If it's attention, think about ways to get that attention in other, more positive ways.

3. Inning by Inning or Step By Step: 

Just as it's difficult to win a baseball game from first pitch to final out, making a behavioral change requires a lot of small, adjustable steps to make it permanent. The focus at this point should be to set goals that are closer to where we're starting off rather than where we plan on ending up.  For example, the article discusses a scenario where if the problem is being tardy by 30 minutes, try to set a more obtainable goal of only being late by 10 or 15 minutes.

By establishing shorter goals, you'll see quick victories and that sense of achievement will build momentum toward the next goal. Master one small step then add on a new step, like climbing a set of stairs. It's the process of meeting small goals on a step by step basis that helps you reach your destination much easier, and much more permanent.

The reason for this is that we are hard-wired in our brains to make regular actions into habits over time.  By making small improvements, we're building the neural pathways that help establish a new routine and that routine is what we're doing to establish new habits.

In other words, think about habit formation as a baseball team.  Win the game with a majority of pitchers in each inning rather than relying on one pitcher to carry the team to the final out.

4. Accept Slip-Ups:  

The mistake that most people make when changing their behavior and habits is that they approach it from an absolutist approach.  Absolutism is the "all-or-none", black or white approach.  The problem with this is that there isn't room for mistakes and slip-ups, which is part of the process of behavioral modification.

One of the biggest mistakes dieters make is focusing on the short-term benefits and goals of changing their eating habits rather than the long-term benefits.  We choose to lose 5 extra pounds and are really good for a few days.

But then we slip up.  And then we beat ourselves up about the mess up.

The absolute approach is one of the problems.

Knowledge is experiential.  We learn by doing, but more important, we learn by making mistakes through trial and error.  Making a change in our habits is a process of learning new behavior through regular conscious activity until it becomes automatic behavior.

Diets that stick are ones that follow the guidelines outlined above. Steps that successful dieters take are deciding to make a change, examining why they've adopted the negative behaviors, to creating a process of smaller victories over large changes.

One other thing that helps lifestyle diets make the biggest change is the ability to understand that mistakes are going to happen.  You're changing a habit, which takes time and concentrated effort, and so mistakes are inevitable.

So the best advice is to plan for those slip-ups.

We can convince ourselves that it's ok to have a "cheat day" once a week.  Over time that cheat day isn't so important, and we can eventually limit those days to twice a month and then to never after we achieve new habits.

5. Make Your Habit Accountable: 

After we realize that there’s a need for change, and we decide to take action, the next step is to make our goals accountable.

There are two ways to make your goals and habits accountable within the guidelines we’ve discussed already.

The first is to make a small table or calendar to chart your progress.  For example, as a writer there’s a number of directions each character could go within the plot of the story arc.

If you write each one out, we end up with pages of unnecessary deviations from the central point and waste a bunch of time.

Perhaps it’s the thought of writing the book in your mind that’s limiting you.  By taking small, decisive steps each and every day, the word count stacks up over time.

A good example is to take a calendar and put a large “X” for every day you write.   Jerry Seinfeld spoke about this as his way of holding himself accountable for his creative work.

What it requires is marking a calendar with an “X” every day you write to a word count or duration of time eventually the calendar becomes blotted by all the marks.

It becomes a tool to hold you accountable, one with its own momentum, a chain of action that you can see and reflect upon. In his discussion of his creative technique, Jerry Seinfeld said, “don’t break the chain.”

The second way to hold yourself accountable is to set your goals and tell others about it.  Ask friends and family to give you subtle reminders any time that they see you slipping up or not making headway in your process.

Be careful about this, however.

Asking friends and family to help you can also become annoying if you only tell them the overall goal.  The further you are from where you want to be the more it will appear to them that you may not be working hard enough.

So give them small goals to help oversee with your behaviors rather than the final destination of your goal.

This is an example why business coaching is such a lucrative profession.  Business coaches work with individuals, typically entrepreneurs, to hold them to small goals for their business and professional growth.

The coaches may have an idea of the overall goal for the business growth, but they focus on more manageable steps that the individual can accomplish.  This helps the entrepreneur stay on task and keep clear metrics in mind.

In Conclusion

We all want to improve at something.  From losing weight, playing a piece of music, to writing and business productivity, setting small manageable goals will help create regular actions that will develop into new habits.

And by taking decisive actions with the help of professionals and friends, we're apt to follow through with our plans, making our goals much more realistic.

It's by deciding what we want to change and the small steps we need to take that the impossible becomes possible.  It's true in sports and business, it's true in writing and other creative endeavors, and it's true with health and fitness.

So decide what you want to change and get started now.

JUST GET THE DAMNED THING STARTED

You Never Know Enough

Why Waiting For Permission Is The Greatest Mistake You'll Make

In the past, I've written about my self-publishing journey through Kindle Publishing as well as tips on how to manage your time more effectively, conquer your fears and improve your productivity.

None of those tips matter if you don't take action.

The biggest hurdle for anything is often the first one.

If you're like me, you're always thinking about new places to go visit, new adventures, always sketching out new ideas for stories or making plans for new career paths.


In other words you have interest in doing something out of the norm and out of your comfort zone.

Perhaps you want to start a creative project like taking up guitar or painting.

Maybe you want to leave your job to start a new business, or perhaps you don't enjoy your classes and want to find a new degree emphasis to focus upon.

But you never get started.

Why?

We're convinced from everything in our lives that we need permission to do something.

This has been called the permission mindset. (Read about the limitations of this HERE)

In school we seek permission to leave our seat, to get up and go to the bathroom.

As kids and teenagers, we seek permission from our parents to go to a movie, or stay overnight at a friends house.

We ask permission before we begin to study a certain subject in school. The idea being that we need our parents and other agencies to help foster us during our curriculum, with the trade-off that we will have stable job prospects and eventually (hopefully) pay them back.

We seek permission from our bosses and HR to take time off from work outside of the normal work schedule.

We ask permission to marry someone, and ask them permission to consider a career choice when our trajectories veer off our calculations.

In addition, we seek permission of the worst kind.

Permission from knowledge.

And that's the worst, most debilitating type of permission to wait for.

What's Permission From Knowledge? 

Simply put, we have been conditioned to seek permission from a source other than ourselves.  

But wait, isn't knowledge a good thing? 

Yes.  And no.  

When there's nobody to turn to, we seek information before acting.  We study up on the latest trends and modes of doing that thing we don't know enough about before we try to act.  

Thing is, there's always going to be something more to learn. 

Always something more to learn, something more you can improve upon.  

But that's it's own Sisyphean task.  It can never be accomplished.

You "push" the boulder up the hill, only to find it rolls down the other side.  Every time. 

It's both a coping mechanism and a stalling technique. 

We cope with our fear of not knowing by trying to learn more about a subject. 

In effect we stall all our actions as we chase down the rabbit hole of information.  

We're seeking permission from the knowledge that we gain in order to begin. 

But what really is happening? 

We are paralyzed by our inaction.  We are more content analyzing then acting.  

It's the Paralysis By Analysis effect. 

Look Before You Leap, But Dammit, Jump!

Just get going!

As I said earlier, the biggest challenge is often just getting started. 

It's also been said many times over that knowledge is experiential.  

We learn more by doing than observing and what separates those who do and those who don't is that the ones who act are more successful.

They don't wait for permission to act. 

Sometimes that learning process is messy.  You get on your bike, ride down the block a little too fast and fall, skinning your knee.  

But for sure, the next time you'll avoid the same mistakes.

The only way to know is by getting back on the bike and riding down the street again. 

And breaking the cycle that the permission mindset holds on us can be extremely difficult and limiting.  

I read about Kindle Publishing before I started working on self-publishing.

I don't know everything about it, nor do I understand how to market my stuff very well.

But I'm learning a ton as I stumble along, hopefully better and smarter today than I was yesterday. 

Whether you have a fitness goal, or a job prospect, the time to act is now. 

Get off the couch and get running.  

Spend a little time polishing up your resume and send it out.  

Call a potential new client.  

Whatever your desire is, get off your ass and get it done.  

You should know what you're getting into, that much is for sure.  

But it shouldn't hold you back.  

You don't need permission to get started. 

Just get going.