Embrace The Suck:How To Hate What You Do And Love It

After being called an SOB when I wasn’t looking (especially after taking a week off from the blog), I figure I’d better get back on the ball and post. Today’s words are dedicated to all those who have had a tough week to deal with, but who did what needed to be done anyway.

When I wrote about how to stay motivated to take action when your week goes all to hell, one of the strategies I gave for pushing past the resistance to keep going was this:

Give yourself permission to hate the work you’re doing. Popular self-help wisdom says that you should be happy and upbeat all the time, and if you can’t get excited by everything, you’re doing something wrong (and you should feel guilty for it!).  But life says that ain’t so.  Some tasks suck, but they simply need to be done, and it’s okay not to like them.  I don’t like changing my youngest kid’s diaper, but cleaning up the crap is part of the parenting package.  I don’t have to pretend to like it – I just have to do it.  So don’t pressure yourself to get happy about crap work – admit it’s crap, but do it anyway.

Apparently I’m not the first one to come up with this concept – they’ve been using it in the military for years via a phrase which sounds much better than what I just wrote: “Embrace The Suck.”

When A Job That Sucks Is A Job Well Done

Face it, sometimes you’re going to have to do things that are hard, unenjoyable and unbelievably irritating (things that truly suck), and you have two choices:

• Get frustrated, drained, and pissed off because you have to deal with the suck, or
• Embrace the suck, and do it anyway, because you are an a$$-kicker like no other.

I’m reminded of an old United States Marines Corps recruiting poster I saw that said something like, “We’d promise you sleep deprivation, mental torment and muscles so sore you’ll puke … but we don’t like to sugar-coat things.”  That phrase has always stuck with me because it actually makes hard work a bragging point for Marines, saying We pride ourselves on doing the things most people are too wimpy to do – because that’s our job, damn it. However you feel about the military (and let’s not go into it in the comments, please), this is an important distiction.

When you decide that having the strength to follow through on unpleasant tasks is part of what defines you as an a$$-kicker, it changes your perspective. You exchange some that feeling of being drained with a feeling of being proud of yourself.  You tell yourself, “This task sucks, but I’m going to do it well because it proves that I rock.”  And then you truly do “embrace the suck,”and do the dirty work with a good attitude.

You may not like the work any more than you did before, but you’ll sure as hell like yourself more for doing it without moaning and complaining.  And a job that sucks becomes a job well done.

Suck It Up Today, And Be Proud Of It

Today (Friday) is a perfect day to “embrace the suck,” because most people will be moaning “Oh, I’m so glad it’s the weekend and I can finally stop working” (or, for the 7-day-a-week-ers, “Oh, man, don’t I ever get a day off?”).  Don’t complain.  You are stronger than that, damn it.  Embrace the suck, do it anyway, and bask in the fact that you are, as I said, an a$$-kicker like no other.

(P.S. – That’s not to say you need to resign yourself to a situation that sucks.  If you need to change things, find a way to do it.  But until then, use this lesson to keep yourself in a position of strength ’till the change comes round.)

Want to share your thoughts in the comments below or subscribe to this blog? I dig both.

Rock Your Weekend: 60 Minutes That Really Matter

Life goes by fast.  And based on the huge response to the recent articles about doing what matters (and doing it before it’s too late), it’s clear that the pace of life can easily run you ragged.  And when I announced my weekend challenge on Twitter a few weeks ago, I received no shortage of responses.

So now I’m bringing the challenge to all my readers here.

How To Rock Your Weekend In Just 60 Minutes

You have 48 beautiful hours awaiting you (72 if you’re taking a Memorial Day weekend in the States), and here’s what I’m challenging you to do:

• Spend 30 minutes each day of your weekend doing something you’ve been putting off (but that would really add value to your life and make you happier).

That’s it.  But when I say “something you’re putting off,” I’m not talking chores, or around-the-house projects, or things that you feel that you have to do.  I’m talking about the things that add meaning to your life that have fallen on the back burner because you’re so damned busy.

Maybe it’s picking up that guitar for a few minutes and dusting it off.  Maybe it’s wrestling with your kids or enjoying some quality Lego time.  Maybe it’s reading a book, or soaking in the tub, or taking a walk in the woods.  Whatever it is, make it something that’s meaningful.  Something that takes you away from the stress of your week, lets you live a little bit, and lets you enter the next week without feeling like life’s getting away from you. Don’t wait until life slows down to enjoy it.  Enjoy it now.

The Benefits of Rocking Your Weekend

Rocking your weekend with this 2x 30-minute a day challenge has it’s benefits.

• You’ll feel hella good at finally doing something enjoyable you’ve been putting off.
• You’ll start to see that it’s not so hard after all to fit in time for yourself and others.
• You’ll feel the urge to make this a habit.

Imagine that – breaking away from the feeling that life’s too busy and realizing that getting balanced even when you’re busy isn’t an impossible task.  It’s within your grasp if you’re willing to be patient.

How To Rock Your Weekend Right Now

Thinking “I should do this” isn’t enough – you need to take a little bit of action before Friday is over to prime the pump for some weekend follow-through.  So here’s what I suggest you do to max out your chances of making this a weekend that truly rocks:

• Leave a comment below telling us what you’re going to do with your 2 30-minute blocks this weekend (subscribe to comments b/c I’ll be following up on Tuesday!)
• Spread the word via some link love, tweets, or Stumbles
• Follow me on Twitter & I’ll give you a weekend shout-out to kick you in gear

Looking forward to seeing how this weekend’s challenge goes & how you make this upcoming weekend one to remember.  You only live once, so don’t blow it!  See you in the comments -

Dave

Rock Your Day all through the week – Subscribe to this blog today.

Interview with International Man of Mystery Lodewijk van den Broek

Lodewijk van den Broek is one smooth fella - I’m talking Lando Calrissian smooth.  Why so?  Because he sent me his interview answers already formatted in HTML.  I love it when people save me work.  If I’m ever dropping by my last remaining family members up in the Arctic Circle-area of Sweden, I’ll be certain to take a long detour to your town to say hello.

Dave: Hey Lode, how about an introduction first?

Lode: Yeah, you can call me Lode, since my full name (Lodewijk van den Broek) usually is way too complicated to pronounce for non-Dutchies. So now you know where I come from too.

I’m a thirty-something guy, happily married and a proud dad of a little boy. Furthermore my sign is Aries, my Chinese sign is Dragon (so now you can figure out my real age…), my type is INFP and my enneatype is a seven. That should be a good start to get an idea on who I am.

Oh…and I work too. I have a parttime day-job as an IT project manager, I blog (currently only on How to be an Original, but I’m launching WordpressDIY soon), I’m a DIY guy, and a soon-to-be entrepreneur (in my heart I already am).

I also have a wealth of other interests, often more than I can find the time for. I would love to do more photography, start playing the piano again, start training martial arts again, ride my motorcycle again.

Why do you love what you do?

Because what I love to do is aligned with who I am and what I want. I think that discovering who you are and what you truly want is essential in getting a fulfilling and enjoyable life. It doesn’t finish there of course, because you still have to work hard and give your best to get what you want. This is the central theme of my blog by the way.

It doesn’t mean that I love everything I currently do. I’m working on aligning my activities with my values and mission, but it’s not an easy process and it requires quite a lot of attention and energy. But the return on that investment is great, in terms of fulfillment and energy that is.

What is one of the major turning points that brought you biggest successes?

Well that depends on what you define as success I guess. Major turning points in my life have been moments of profound insight, that made me see things in an entirely different perspective.

One of those moments was just before I graduated from university, and decided to apply for a job as a management trainee at a company that would turn me inside out, four times over in two years. I knew it beforehand, and I had doubts whether I was going to like it but I felt I needed it. Turned out I indeed needed it, but that I also found out that personal development is something I can get very passionate about.

Another turning point was a 3.5 day (non-stop) course I did on Stephen Covey’s 7 habits. The guy who does this course makes you experience the habits, one by one, discovering them for yourself. One of the moments that made a great impression was during habit 2 ‘Begin with the end in mind‘. To experience this Covey suggest you write your own eulogy. But this guy let us do a guided meditation, where we (unknowingly at first) were visiting our own funeral… and listen to the speeches of the people there. What do they say, what do you want them to say? The lessons of that experience are something I feel to this day.

What do you know now that you wish you had known when you started out?

That starting is the most important thing to do. If you want to do something, decide to do it and take the first step now. By simply starting you enroll yourself in the best school: Reality.

I’ve been thinking about starting for myself for a long time, but didn’t take any step towards getting it realized. Until one day (my birthday one year ago) I simply decided to start my blog and use that as a basis to grow my ventures from. I’m hardly as successful as I like to be, but at least I’m already a lot closer to my goals than I was a year ago. There are many more lessons to learn and challenges to take on.

What are some ways you help keep a work-life balance?

Ouch, this is one I’m struggling with a lot. The balance tips in favor of work that’s for sure. Apart from my day job and my blog(s), I have a big renovation project on my hands.

I have always had a tendency to take on one or two projects too many. But I’ve always been able to handle this pretty well, until we became a family. The dynamics of our life changed entirely, to an extent I couldn’t have imagined beforehand. Having one or two projects too many becomes a problem then, so now I’m actively working on reducing the projects on hand by finishing them and not starting new ones (well no major ones anyway).

I also have one day a week, on which I work from home for my day job. I have freedom to schedule my time that day, so I get to spend quite some quality time with my son. And recently my wife and I set the first steps to get back into a social rhythm as partners as well. Going out and enjoying ourselves, deliberately taking time as a couple.

I love being a dad, but the impact was far greater than I expected. I was warned, but I guess some things are only learned by experience.

What leverage do you plan to use to grow your business over the coming year?

To grow my non-existent business to an existing one you mean? Well, on two things: Network and Value.

For launching new ventures, like a blog or a business, a network is essential in my opinion. A year of blogging has given me a nice network of likeminded people, and I also have an offline network of people willing to help me launch an offline business. After the launch, delivering value is the only way to convince people to do (or continue to do) business with you.

I do have to make choices about what I’m going to do as a business. I have quite some ideas, and need to make decisions.

What blog posts are you most proud of?

It’s not so much blog posts I’m proud of, but the habits I have changed and adopted the past year. I’m proud of adopting the habit of having a weekly review cycle. I’m proud of my Early Bird challenge, in which I changed my sleeping rhythm to match it better to the rhythm of my family. And I’m proud of the mistakes I made (and associated lessons learned) when applying the goal setting techniques.

What blogs do you read to get the edge in your business?

My reading habits are a bit variable I guess. Some weeks I hardly read a thing, other weeks I focus on the blogging blogs (Problogger, DoshDosh, Daily Blog Tips), then I dive into entrepreneurial and freelancing blogs (Self Made Chick, Freelance Folder, Shane & Peter, Men with Pens), I head over to productivity and personal development blogs (Zen Habits, Steve Pavlina and many others), and back down to earth diving into blogs about WordPress (like Lorelle’s).

Of course I check in at Liz Strauss’ place, Brian’s place, Guy Kawasaki’s blog. I’m leaving some out. Oh and I like Presentation Zen too, but you need time to visit that one. Great lessons on presentations and speeches, with a lot of videos that go with it.

Give A Shout Out To Lode For Giving Us His Time

Leave a comment below to let Lode know what you thought of this interview and the articles he shared with us. Then don’t forget to subscribe to his feed to keep the good stuff coming.

How To Kick That Habit’s Ass (When It’s Been Beating Yours)

“I get knocked down / But I get up again / You’re never gonna keep me down” – Chumbawumba

Sure, we’ve all heard motivational quotes that tell us how success is just picking yourself up one more time than you fall down, but in reality, when you fail at beating a bad habit that’s plagued you for years, you don’t just “fall down.”  You get knocked down, punched out, kicked to the curb, beaten to a pulp … hell, pardon my French, but you get your frigging ass kicked emotionally and psychologically, big time.  Rocky’s Clubber Lang is standing over your bloody, TKO’d body, saying “I pity the fool, and I will destroy any man who tries to take what I got!”

Ok, maybe it’s not that dramatic, but playing the sumbissive role to a dominating bad habit sucks.  Agreed?  We all want to be Rocky, but you gotta remember he didn’t win in the first movie – he coughed up blood and nursed a couple of broken ribs and some brutal bruising.  Clubber Lang even kicked his ass in the beginning of Rocky III – but the Italian Stallion came back. And no matter how many title bouts you have lost against your own bad habit, you’re going to learn how to win in the end, black eyes and all.  I’ll tell you how, after the opening act.

It All Starts With Declaring One Word: War.

Rocky didn’t go the distance by saying, “Gee, it sure would be nice to win,” or “Wow, I’ve got a great goal, check it out! (yippee!)”  No, Rocky did what everyone does when they tackle something that requires a hell of a lot more guts and power than they’re currently packing – they declare war and commit themselves fully to it.  They don’t hold back.  They decide they are going to do whatever it takes, that they will expend every resource possible, that they will crush every excuse … and in the end, they win.  They may go through hell, they may fail a lot along the way, but they come out champions.

Holy Crap, Dave, Do I Have To Have All This Drama?

No.  In fact, you’ve probably done this many times before when wanting to overcome a bad habit, and there was no drama involved.  Let me give you an example that most of you can relate to (and if you can’t, you’ll be able to conjure up some experience that’s close enough): Waking up really, really early to catch a plane.  Let’s say you had to wake up at 3am, and you know that ain’t easy.  But because you only had one shot, you decided you were going to do whatever it took to make it happen.

• Maybe you said “Crap, it’s hard to get up early,” and so you decided to go to bed a few hours early.
• Then you said, “Ugh, I hate running late because I forgot something,” and so you packed ahead of time.
• Then you said, “Hey, what if my alarm clock doesn’t go off?” and so you check your alarm three times to make sure it works.
• Then you said, “Uh-oh, what if I sleep through that alarm?” and so you set a second alarm to cover your back.
• Then you said, “Hell, I sleep through double alarms all the time,” and so you arranged a wake up call from a real live person.

Do You See The Pattern Here?  You Planned Ahead.

When you really, really had to wake up early – even if was against your nature – you did it by thinking through the obstacles that you might encounter and coming up with strategies to make all of them non-issues.  You decided you simply had to get up at 3am, and that nothing was going to be a permissible excuse.  You asked “What could get in my way?” and then followed that up with a “How can I plan around that?”

Notice how this differs from a lot of typical goal setting:

• You decide “Hell yeah, I’m doing X!”
• You discover that X is actually very hard to do and that things keep getting in the way (or screwing you up).
• You decide “Hell, this just isn’t working out.  Maybe I should rethink doing X.  I don’t have the willpower to make this work.”

No, No, NO, NO, NO.  Don’t let this happen.  Don’t confuse lack of progress in overcoming a habit with the actual difficulty of doing it. If you’re not making progress, it’s likely that it’s because you aren’t deciding up front to anticipate obstacles and so you’re not planning your way around it.  You’re banking on willpower alone to carry you through, and you’re seeing how far it gets you.

How To Get The Upper Hand Over Your Bad Habits

People want the easy answer on this one, but there’s no easy answer.  It takes work.  But the good news is that it’s completely do-able.  Here’s what you need to know to get started.

First, accept the fact that this isn’t necessarily going to be easy, and that there will be a lot of forces working against you. Forces like your own internal resistance, the resistance of others, the inevitabilty of crap happening to you when you least expect it … prep yourself for this reality ahead of time.  That way when things go all to hell, you won’t be feeling small and powerless – you’ll be saying “Hey, this is just the way it goes – the challenges are no surprise.”

This is the first critical step – if you don’t do that, you’re always going to be struggling with the emotional overwhelm that comes when you think something should be easier than it is.  Remember, this is war.  You have enemies – internal, external, and neutral – that will make things harder than they need to be.  Accept it, so you can fight against it.

Next, anticipate – on paper – all the things that might hinder your ability to overcome this bad habit and plan around them. Revisit the struggles you have had in the past because of self doubt, or lack of willpower, or simply lack of planning ahead.  Think about the resistance you got from other people, and how that drained you emotionally – and begin planning around that as well.  Look back at all the random, neutral things that happened that threw your grand plans out the window – things like emergencies, diversions and urgencies – and prepare yourself to roll with the punches.

This is equally critical – if you don’t do this, you don’t know your enemy.  He/She/You will underimine all that you are working towards, and it will be tragic because it would have been completely preventable if you’d just done this step.  If the habit change is important to you, you will find a way to make time for this.

Finally, build your battle plan and keep it in front of you every damned day until you’ve killed this habit for good. The personal behaviors which allow this bad habit to thrive aren’t going to loosen your grip on you “just because.”  They will fight you every step of the way.  So will other people, and so will life in general.  That’s just the way it goes.  But if you keep your plan in front of you each day, if you remind yourself to work it each and every day, then you’re golden.  You’re taking it seriously, and you will make progress.

This is where the rubber meets the road.  If you don’t focus yourself on the tactics you need to use to overcome this habit as often as necessary, you will forget about it and revert to your old behaviors.  War is hell.  You’ve got to fight like hell.  Like Clubber Lang, you’ve got to attack that habit and “kill it to death.”

And That’s It.  So Go Do It.  Now.

No need to sum this up.  You want to kill a bad habit bad enough, you’ve got to go in with all guns blazing.  Not half-assed, not half-hearted, not half-way … you’ve got to slam it until there ain’t nothing left to be slammed.

The good news?  You can do it.  In fact, I’m going to use this exact strategy to squash a bad habit which has come back full force this week because … why?  Because I beat it ‘most of the way’ and then took my eyes off of it. Never again.  This time I declare war on this bully of a habit and go fifteen rounds until it’s nothing but burger.

And I pity the fool who tries to stop me.

Want to share your thoughts in the comments below or subscribe to this blog? I dig both.

Why You May Be Just Spinning Your Wheels After All

“Big wheel keep on turning” – CCR

People have goals for one primary reason: Because they want what they think is waiting on the other side.  It could be money, or power, or recognition, or simply the satisfaction of a job well done.  You pursue your goals because you want what’s on the other side.  But are the things you’re doing every day really driving you closer to that “other side?”  Or are you just spinning your wheels, operating under the illusion that you’re getting somewhere (when really, you aren’t)?  I’ve got 3 questions that will either make you smile or make you squirm  (after the opening act, of course).

When The Journey Isn’t Getting You Anywhere

When you set your goals, you have an idea of how you’re going to get there, but that idea alone may not be accurate.  For example, too many people devote their focus to climbing the corporate ladder so that they can have the money to enjoy their life, but find that they are only making their lives more complicated and stressful in the end.  It’s easy to do this, because society conditions us to believe we have to do X to get Y, and we take it at face value, doing X like crazy without asking if it’s really the best way to get to Y.  Time goes by, we’re not where we want to be, and we ask, “What the hell happened?  I was doing X, damn it!  Where’s my Y?”  Clay Collins gets this.

Do you? Riddle me these three questions, and let’s find out.

#1 – What Result Am I Really After?

When you take on a goal, are you crystal clear on what you’re really after, or are you settling for something so vague that it hinders you?  Vagueness can absolutely kill you, because it creates fertile ground for being sloppy.  For example, when I started my first blog, my goal was to build a “high-traffic blog that made me lots of money.”  Stupid goal.  Why?  Because it’s too damn vague.  It opened the door to spend a lot of hours doing the same things over and over again.   And it wasn’t really what I wanted, because I was focusing on the vehicle, not the result.

Once I got clearer on my real result – building a media property that would allow me to increase the amount of money I was making while not working as many hours, it all changed.  Instead of just “make more money” it became “make more money without increasing my hours.”  Having the other half of that phrase made the difference.  I became more discerning about how I spent my time, more precise with my strategies, and within 30 days of getting very, very focused I built an income stream that’s not sucking my time away anymore.

That’s the key here – it’s not enough to say what you want – you’ve got to understand why you want it.

• You want to make money as a freelance writer?   Or do you want to work from home writing so you can spend an extra 10 hours a week with your kids?

• Do you want to blog?  Or do you want to build a platform to communicate your ideas while selling your products and creating passive income?

• Do you want to start going to the gym?  Or do you want to boost your metabolism and increase your strength so you have the energy to enjoy your life? That second half makes the difference.

Ask yourself what you’re really after.  And ask in a way that’s measurable, so you’re not slaving away at it waiting to see results “someday.”

#2 – How long will it take me with my present course?

This is definitely a squirm-inducing question.  If you keep doing what you’re doing now, at the pace you’re doing it, with the intensity you’re doing it, how long will it really take to get where you want to be?  If you answer “I don’t know,” that’s a big red flag.

You might not like asking this question because it forces you to really look at the results you’re getting with your current efforts.  Are you just spinning your wheels, or are you actually making progress? Are you getting by, or getting ahead?  You don’t have to have a detailed answer here – and quite often, you can’t, because the future is uncertain – but you should be able to get a ballpark figure.

This is a tough question, but it can truly save your ass.  Maybe your present course isn’t the right one.  Maybe you need a dramatic shift in strategy.  Maybe you have no idea what the hell to do, and this question makes you freeze up.  But you need to know, and you need to know now.

I measure everything on this blog – subscribers, traffic sources, sales, everything – because I want to know how long it’s going to take me to get to where I want to be.  When it’s not moving fast enough, I get pissed and get determined to speed it up (again, without tacking on lots of extra hours).

Are you measuring your progress towards your goals?  Or are you just hoping it magically gets better?

#3 – Am I enjoying part of this goal right now?

Remember, you don’t have to have it all to have it now. If you’re trying to make more money so you can retire in style, then take a mini-retirement week off every now and then.  If you’re busting your ass so you can give your family what they want, make sure you’re stepping back and being there for them now. You don’t have to wait ’till you have the money to take them to Disneyland, just go to the damn park this weekend. You get the point.

Screw “one day.” What about now? Don’t make your goals far off things you have to wait for – find ways to enjoy a bit of the result in the here and now. It will keep you motivated, but more importantly, it will keep you from missing out on the important stuff of life.

And that’s it for today.  Ask these three questions, and kick your own ass until you get the answers you need to.  Your life is worth it – live it now, not later.

Want to share your thoughts in the comments below or subscribe to this blog? I dig both.

Tag, I’m It? 8 Things About Me That The Tabloids Never Told You

Sandie Law over at Geeked Off! tagged me for a meme, so I’d better deliver.  I’ve never been tagged before, but how can you say no to a mom who calls her kid MonkeyBoy? Fantastic!

The meme is 8 random facts about me … here’s some weekend reading for you.

8 Random Things About Me That Won’t Make You More Productive

1. I can’t sleep 8 hours a day. I’ve tried it.  I feel unbelievably groggy if I sleep more than 7, so I stick to 5-6 a night.  Don’t know why, that’s just how I’m wired.  I know a guy who functions on 3 hours a night, and he’s a sharp guy just with a weird biochemistry.  A single beer makes him sick as a dog, so I guess that’s the price he pays.
2. I skipped typing class in high school. Came up with an excuse to avoid it every semester.  My argument?  “I’m going to be an architect, why do I need to learn how to use a computer (save for drawing)?”
3. I got into the IT field out of spite. In 1994 I plunked down $1,800 of my mall-job money for a 486 DX/66 computer (a good piece of iron in those days).  It was going to be my architectural computer, so I went all out.  The fly-by-night that sold it to me went out of business just after shipping it, and my PC was a lemon.  I was so pissed at being ripped off that I started learning about computers so it would never happen again … and I never looked back.
4. I was a professional co-op. I had to pay my own way in college, so I had more minimum wage jobs.  Then I discovered the co-op program – school one semester, work another, rotate 3 times.  After the first rotation it hit me – I could borrow money, work minimum wage, and take classes I didn’t like & wouldn’t use … or, I could co-op and make $12 an hour doing cutting-edge internet stuff back when it all was taking off.  After 6 semesters in co-op, they caught wind I wasn’t doing the “co-” part of it – going to school – and I got the boot.   (I came back as a contractor 6 months later at a 50% pay raise, so I had the last laugh)
5. I speak seven languages fluently. This is actually a complete lie, but I’m having a hard time coming up with random facts.  I can fly, too.  Really.
6. I grew up in a mob neighborhood. A few years ago, I ran into an Italian guy who lived in my neighborhood 40 years before I was born.  We traded nostalgic stories until I asked him, “Sal, how come I’m afraid to let my kid here in North Carolina ride his bike out of my sight but when I was a kid in BROOKLYN, my mom would let me ride all over the neighborhood, with no supervision, and just tell me ‘Be home for dinner, go wherever you want”?  Sal looked at me and said, “You dummy, the place was half mob!  Nobody was gonna mess with anybody’s kid!”
7. I have an amazingly cool sister. This much is true.  Check her out. (But if you check her out too closely, I’ll break your legs.)  Oh, and she has yoga videos on YouTube too.  Inspiring.
8. I apologized to my teachers. I was a pain in the ass in grade school – my sister was 2 years older than me, so I’d read all her schoolbooks and by the time I was in school I was ahead of the game, bored, and one hell of a class clown/troublemaker.  When I was 19 (and living in North Carolina) I took a trip back into Brooklyn, signed into PS 194 and apologized to every one of my teachers I could find.  Mrs. Glatter said “Oh, David, you weren’t that bad.  You just never did your homework!”

That’s it.  I’d tag people, but I need to get to bed.  Hope you enjoyed the show

Why Failure Costs Nothing And Success Can Steal Everything

“When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose” – Bob Dylan, Like a Rolling Stone

There’s an old saying, “What would you do if you knew that you could not fail?”  If you’ve heard that quote before, it has undoubtedly provided a bit of inspiration at times by sparking the belief that you can do anything and achieve anything – and nothing is going to stop you.  This phrase allows you to dream big, plan big, and (potentially) take big steps towards your goal.

But there’s a big part of us that calls bullshit on this quote, because in this little thing we like to call “reality,” we do fail.  A lot. And most of the time, failure scares the holy hell out of us.  But it didn’t used to.  Here’s the scoop.

When You Were Little, You Ate Failure For Breakfast

You were too young to remember, but at one time you didn’t give a rat’s ass about failure.  You tried to walk and fell flat on your face?  You may have cried, but you kept at it, because you wanted to walk/run/jump/rock/etc.. You tried to learn to talk, but all that came out was stutters, lisps and nonsense – and you knew it – but you kept at it.  You tried to ride a bike, you fell over constantly, and you decided you’d never learn.  But then someone bigger than you told you to suck it up and voila, you got the hang of it.

When you’re a kid, failure can infuriate you, but you manage to push past it.  You see everyone around you walking, talking, and riding their bikes and figure, “Hell, I guess everyone can do this.”  And you hammer at it and don’t quit.  It’s like being naive, only in a useful way.

The bottom line is yes, failure pissed you off, but you didn’t cop out.  You kept at it because the eventual success was worth all the failures along the way. You remembered that everyone was doing these things, and so you knew on some level that eventually you’d get there, and that your skinned knees would heal.  You were a blank slate, with nothing to lose, so you didn’t feel like you were risking anything except for some short term pain.  And that’s why you racked up win after win.

Success. It was sweet.  The training wheels came off, and you had a lot to be proud of.

But Then It All Went Wrong

Somewhere along the line you fell off your bike or you stuttered, or tripped in front of a group of people, and they laughed at you.  Suddenly you felt less-than-successful, and that sudden status drop scared you.  Or maybe it happened to someone else, and you started asking yourself “What if it happened to me?”  Gradually, you started backing off, stopped taking risks, held yourself back, all because you didn’t want to risk the sting of the F Word:  Failure.

It’s not that you became a wuss.  You just looked around and saw that society showers limitless rewards on perfect beautiful people and crushes anything less than that under its merciless heels.  So woe to you if you show weakness, frailty, or anything less than what magazine covers and television shows taught you that you were supposed to look like and act like.  Nevermind that you know full well that reality is different than that – enough people go along with the fairy tale that the pressure to not screw up seems all too real.

The Irony Of It All

Unexpectedly, your success became a liability.  You became afraid of losing what you had, risking what you’d worked hard for, “looking stupid,” and you limited yourself.  You told yourself not to go for it, not to push yourself, not to position yourself where you might fall flat. You took the “acceptable risks,” and you played it safe.  Sure, you might have continued to eat failure for breakfast in your professional life, but on personal levels you still held back. We all do it, myself included, so we can be honest here.

In reality, we always, always, always fail our way to success.   We try things, see if they work or not, and adjust how we’re doing things until they work out, whether it’s building a business or raising kids.  But somewhere along the line, the resource that earn us our success – the ability to take risks – becomes something we’re afraid of tapping into again.  And so we hold back, hoping that we don’t jeopardize our success, and we miss the chance to grow further.  We cling to our current “success” in one area or another, at the expense of truly getting more of something that really matters.

How To Start Successfully Failing Again

To tap back into the power we had as little kids, we have to do three things:

• First, step back and ask yourself, what’s the real risk of failure?  What’s the worst-case scenario? That you might look stupid?  (Who cares?)  That you might lose money?  (You can replace it.)  That someone might reject you?  (If you don’t approach them, what’s the difference?).  Consider that for most things, the worst-case scenario generally isn’t fatal.  You can move on. People have hit that worst-case scenario and survived (and often times, thrived).

• Second, look around you for people who are already successful doing what you want to do, whether it’s working for yourself, opening up to someone emotionally, conquering a long-time fear – whatever it is you’re nervous about tackling.  Look closely at their history and notice that they screwed up plenty of times and had more than their share of failures – and that the secret of their success was that they kept at it. Don’t put them on a pedestal of ‘natural talent’ or ‘luck’ – they worked for it, and so can you.

• Third, view your actions moving forward as learning experiences, not as pass/fail tests that reflect your worth as a person.  Don’t sweat getting it perfect the first time, or even close to the first time.  Take a chance.  See what happens.  Adjust your strategy.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  And suck it up – you’ll get to where you want to be eventually.

A Better Way To Look At That Quote

Forget “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?”  Instead, ask yourself, “What could I do if I didn’t give up trying, damnit?”  Because that’s the secret.  People don’t fail.  They stop trying.  They call it quits.  But that’s not you.  You’re better than that.  Fail ’till it doesn’t hurt anymore, until you fully acknowledge it as part of the learning process.

I’d like to thank some of the people who have challenged me to fail early and fail often by laying the smackdown on me anytime I started feeling sorry for myself (whether in person or via blog posts) – most notably James & Harry, Naomi Dunford, and Christine O’Kelly.  And most of all, I thank my wife, who has shown me more courage and determination than I can even put into words, and who challenges me constantly to stop using fear as an excuse to take action.

So now it’s your turn – ask yourself what you’re going to fail forward in – and use the steps above to start moving along.  You’ll thank yourself for it.

Want to share your thoughts in the comments below or subscribe to this blog? I dig both.

How To Stop Regretting The Past And Start Building Your Future

If I could save time in a bottle / The first thing that I’d like to do …” – Jim Croce

This has certainly been a challenging and thought-provoking action-provoking series of posts at Rock Your Day.  I hope all my regular readers are feeling a little more balanced than this time last week.  But the ride’s not over yet – today we’re going to talk about how to take your regrets - those things that have been gnawing at your conscience and keeping you up at night – and turn them around so you can pack more of what matters into your life before it’s too late.

Why We Avoid Thinking About Our Regrets (And Why We Shouldn’t)

As human beings we tend to avoid pain whenever we can, and thinking back to missed opportunities and bad choices is a pain most of us simply don’t want to deal with.  When phrases like “too late,” “if only,” and “the best years of my life,” start rattling around in our minds, we tend to try to find something else to think about (or worse – we don’t – and we end up locked into a period of depression).

And that’s natural.  When we regret things, we acknowledge that we’ve screwed up, that we’ve either damaged something beyond repair or missed an opportunity that will never come again.  Maybe it’s a career choice.  Maybe it’s our approach to being there for other people in our lives.  Maybe it’s a lifestyle choice that leaves us tipping the scales or tempting fate.  Whatever it is, it hurts, and it hurts a lot.

And so we feel like crap, and many times we try to find something to numb the agony, like food, or TV, or web surfing – or tragically, by hating ourselves for our choices and feeling paralyzed by the pain. But coping by distracting yourself isn’t coping at all – and in fact will only open the door to more choices that will give birth to more regret.

But we shouldn’t let regret weigh us down and sap our energy, because regret isn’t supposed to do that at all.  Regret isn’t supposed to be a psychological punishment or purgatory for our past transgressions – it’s supposed to be an indicator that something about your habits and behaviors must change, right now, damn it.  Instead of feeling that our brain is beating us up and sending us on another guilt trip, we need to realize that it’s actually trying to help us by slapping us hard in the face and shouting “snap out of it and get your a$$ in gear!” And that’s a message that’s just too important to ignore.

How To Turn Paralyzing Regret Into Energizing Action

There’s no magic formula or easy way out of regret – the pain and emotion is very real and very powerful.  But you can chip away at it, bit by bit, by shifting how you react to it and how you talk to yourself when you are experiencing it.  Here’s a simple 7-step process that will get you on the road to transforming paralysis into power.

• First, prepare yourself by deciding that you will now look at regret as the voice of an inner friend of sorts rather than an adversary, as someone who is trying to make you realize that you can do more and have more of what truly matters in your life.  Tell yourself it’s all right to hear the voice of regret, because it’s really there to help you (although it’s help of the ‘toughlove’ variety).

• Then, take control by confronting your regrets head on.  Don’t wait for something to trigger a memory, catch you by surprise and depress you when you guard is down.  Take the initiative and ask yourself “What do I regret about my personal choices and behaviors over the last 5/10/etc. years?”  And then listen.  Really listen.

• Next, focus on one of those regrets and ask it/(yourself), “Ok, I’m listening.  What are you trying to tell me about how I should live my life differently?”  Then listen.  Take your time.  Discover what it is you know you should be doing and what behaviors you need to change (or attitudes you need to move past) in order to get more of what matters in the future.  Get clear on what needs to change.

• Then, ask yourself “What will I lose if I don’t do this?”  Look ahead another 5/10/etc. years and see what will happen if your present behaviors continue.  Taste the flavor of potential regret and let the reality of the situation sink in: this will be your future if you do not change.

• Next, decide that you will not settle for that fate and that you will take control, no matter how hard you have to push yourself.  Grit your teeth.  Put your foot down.  Draw the line.  Get frustrated enough that finally, damn it, you’re going to make the necessary changes, even if it hurts

• Now, come up with a simple sentence you can repeat in your head to remind yourself what your new standard is (For example: “I refuse to let work force my family time onto the back burner.  I put family first, and schedule work in around it.”).  Since you have to break an existing habit, you need something consistent you can repeat over and over again so that you can snap yourself out of it when you’re lapsing into your old behaviors.  This is the most critical step; if you have trouble breaking a habit, 99% of the time it’s because you’re not doing this step, and you let the urgencies of life sidetrack you.

• Finally, ask yourself “What do I need to focus on to make this change easy?”  This will be a change in perspective for most people because we believe that habit change is hard.  It’s not necessarily hard (read: difficult) as much as it is hard work (read: putting in effort every day).  But there are things you can do to make it easier.  Enlist someone’s help.  Get a coach or a friend to hold you accountable.  Find ways to make the process less painful (too much to go into now, but I may write on this later).  The point is, if you ask yourself “How do I make this easy?”, and you keep asking yourself that, you’ll come up with answers you can use.

The Big Question:  What Should You Change?

Your regrets are little messengers telling you something.  They’re putting pressure on you to do something different now, before it’s too late.  What are your regrets telling you?  As you go into your week, mull over these areas where we tend to have the most regrets:

• Family – What did you miss out on growing up?  Are you leaving the same legacy for your family, or pushing for something greater?

• Career – Is the cost of what you’re pursuing worth it?  Are your fears holding you back from taking bold steps?  Are you going through the motions or training yourself for a better tomorrow?

• Self-image – are you beating yourself up for something that happened a long time ago?  Are you holding on to limiting beliefs that keep you from pursuing opportunities to show what you secretly believe you’re really made of?

I’m sure there could be a hundred bullet points here, but the important thing is to listen to that internal voice that’s nagging at you to change something now, befor it’s too late.  Don’t let regret for past action/inaction hold you back from doing something today that will make life better for you and those who you care about.  You can’t store time in a bottle.  But what you can do is drink today deeply, down to the last drop.  Don’t waste a sip.

How To Start Getting Balanced When You’re Too Damned Busy

“Give a little bit / Give a little bit of your time to me” – Supertramp, Give a Little Bit

It’s been a gritty, no-hold-barred set of posts on Rock Your Day lately.  I’ve asked you whether you’ll regret where your goals take you, and made you come to terms with the reality that you won’t get a second chance to make up for lost time.  The time to balance your life is now, not some magical time later that you’ve been telling yourself is just around the corner for months/years/ohmygodhasitbeenthatlong.

But the challenge most of us face is that we feel like we’re already too damned busy to get balanced.  What are we supposed to do?  Don’t worry – I’ll give you the goods after the opening act.

Getting Balanced Happens One Step At A Time

The trick to getting balanced is to take the pressure off.  We tend to resist taking action to balance our life because the idea of getting balanced seems overwhelming, like climbing Mt. Everest in one hella-big jump.  Even the phrase “getting balanced” carries the connotation that we’ve arrived, that everything is in order, and fundamentally we know that life just ain’t so.  So why even bother to try conquering the mountain in one jump?

The simple answer is this: don’t try.  Don’t saddle yourself with the tension that comes when you try to set too many goals at once, when you try to mold yourself into the perfect Superman/woman we know no one can never be (yet somehow still tell ourselves is a reasonable goal).  Instead, focus on today.  Right now.  Specifically, a slice of time from 5 to 15 minutes.

You may not have time to balance your life today, but you cannot tell me that you can’t carve out 5 minutes to work on something.  You can try, but you know that you’d just be bull$hitting yourself. I say that from a position of authority, because I’ve been doing it myself, telling myself that I’ll “get around” to a few things I’ve been slacking on but have resisted because I have so much on my plate.  So for a moment I’ll have to stop kicking Brett’s a$$ and start kicking my own again.

15 Minutes = 3 Areas Of Increasing Balance

Here’s an example of what I mean by taking balance one step at a time.  On a physical level, I know I need to get back into yoga (or my sister won’t stop bugging me). On an emotional level, I know I need to get back into focusing on gratitude daily.  And on a spiritual level, I know that I’m not spending the time that I used to looking inward and asking the tough questions.

So here’s what I’m going to do over the next 7 days – I’m going to carve out 5 minutes for each of these things – no damned excuses allowed – everyday for the next week.  Sure, 5 minutes of yoga a day doesn’t sound like much, but think about it – I can develop a mini-routine of a few nice stretches.  5 minutes of journaling what I’m grateful for?  I know that will make a difference.  And 5 minutes of introspection?  It won’t necessarily change my life, but it will make me more conscious of what I’m doing and thinking … and that’s where momentum gets built.

5 minutes seems like too small a slice to be worthwhile, but from experience I know it’s incredibly worthwhile, for two reasons.

• First, it’s like tracking what you spend or what you eat – the very act of awareness begins to change your attitudes and habits automatically.

• Second, once you taste a little bit of balance, you crave more.  You start getting more motivated to find more time, and 5 minutes turns to 10, then 20 … and an upward spiral begins.

It’s easy – so easy that you’ll be tempted to not try it yourself.  But I challenge you not to shrug this off.

Dave’s 7-Day Challenge To You (Don’t Pass It Up!)

I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I didn’t try to kick your a$$ a bit too.  You know the 3 things I’ll be spending 5 minutes each on for the next 7 days … what are yours?  Tell me in the comments area below.  Don’t be shy or make excuses – just pick 3 areas of your life that you want to get more balanced and “give a little bit of your time” to it.

You have 15 minutes.  You know you do.  Use it to change your life.  (Oh, and if you haven’t done it, take 15 seconds to subscribe to this blog for more adventures in a$$-kickery)

Wake Up, Damn It! You Won’t Get A Second Chance

“When you comin’ home dad? / I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then, son / You know we’ll have a good time then.” – Harry Chapin, Cats In The Cradle

With the response to Friday’s blog post / music video being so strong, I know I’ve hit a nerve.  I’m not the only one who has struggled with balancing family, relationship and personal goals while building a business.  It’s not easy.  The constant demands of business building and our social conditioning make it far too easy to neglect what’s truly important while we focus on “success” in the professional arena – and we can lose balance.   But it doesn’t have to be.  (More after this heart-wrenching, must watch video.)

The True Cost Of Doing Business

While driving to the store yesterday I had a chance to talk to my oldest son about an economic term called “opportunity cost,” the technical way of referring to the sacrifice you make whenever you spend your time/resources on something.  For example, if you spend 4 hours today redesigning your blog, you sacrifice 4 hours of writing additional posts.  Or, if you spend three hours visiting yard sales (as we were doing at the time), you sacrifice 3 hours you could be having a yard sale.

It’s like the old expression goes, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”  Somebody’s got to pay for everything, whether in terms of actual payment (money) or some other sacrifice (resources get allocated elsewhere).  Harry Chapin sings about this in the video above, when noting that “planes to catch / and bills to pay” forced him to pay a high opportunity cost in terms of his son (“He learned to walk while I was away”).

For a freelancer or entrepreneur, the opportunity costs we pay every day can be significant.  The fact that one hour is billable and urgent can easily overshadow a non-billable event (like playing with our kids, spending time with our spouse, or hitting the damn gym already) that we can say we’ll “catch up on later.”  If this has been an emotionally neutral article for you so far, you probably haven’t been paying too high an opportunity cost lately.  But if you’ve been feeling the knife twisting (or avoiding watching the video because it tears you up), then it’s likely you’re paying more than you expected to to build your business.

How To Manage Your Opportunity Costs & Keep Balanced

The tricky thing about opportunity costs is that psychologically we tend to view them as mutually exclusive to one another.  We think that one activity necessarily has to require we sacrifice the other.  We’ll go to the gym when work calms down.  We’ll spruce up our web site when we get more money.  We’ll take that vacation with the family when we get ahead a little.  But when we’re always putting one thing off to have another, we run the risk of losing oportunities that may never come again (such as time with the family or better health right now).

In the 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferris brings up the concept of “mini-retirements” as a way to enjoy your life right now.  Instead of waiting decades until you can finally retire and relax and travel the world, why not rearrange things so that you can do so in the present, every so often, for a few days at a time.  You’ll get to taste a future goal now and add more enjoyment to your life.  This idea isn’t limited to retirements – you can apply it almost everywhere – and it’s a key factor in creating a balanced life.  I’m calling it the 80/20 Rule of Balance:

Devoting even a small amount of consistent focus to a goal can yield big results.

In other words, you don’t have to wait until you have 100% of the time/resources you think you need to start getting results – you can have them now.  For example, I used to think that once I “made it” and started making a lot more money I’d finally have the flexibility to spend more time with my family.  And so I’d put things off until “later” and leave a void in that area.

But now I realize that he 80/20 rule applies here.  For example, yesterday, our family had an enormous amount of work to do in terms of cleaning up the house / tackling maintenance projects.  The little ones wanted to go to the park, to go for bike rides, to play Lego for hours … but we didn’t have the time.  In the past, I would have said, “there’s too much work to do … if we can get it all done, then we’ll have time to play.”

But yesterday I applied the 80/20 Rule of Balance and did this – every so often throughout the day I’d stop working and spend 15-30 minutes playing with the kids.  It was rushed, I didn’t have the time I thought I needed to really “make it count,” but it didn’t matter.  The kids were very happy.  They didn’t need much – just a little time made a big difference.  And I made some badass Lego spaceships.  Really badass.

Did I get everything done around the house?  No, but I got some stuff done.  Did I spend as much time as I wanted to with the kids?  No, but I spent some time making memories.  I didn’t neglect either priority, and I created more balance because of it.  Emotionally I feel like even though I spent only 10% of the time I wanted to with the kids, I created 50% of the result they wanted. More importantly, I created enough of the result they wanted for them to feel connected.

So that’s your lesson – you don’t have to wait until you can give 100% of your focus to finally tackle another priority area in your life.  Give it some attention now – even if it’s a little bit, and it’s like watering a plant.  It keeps it alive.  And you’ll find that it also creates the hunger inside you to get more disciplined so that you can spend even more time on it later.

I’ll leave you with this thought.  I never got to know my father.  He worked 3 jobs to provide for us and I barely ever saw him, (my family basically fell apart when I was 9).  I feel a sadness and a void that can’t be filled because the window of opportunity has passed.  But I know he loved me, because he tapped into the 80/20 Rule of Balance.

Though I have very, very few memories of him at all, the strongest memory is how every once in a while when I was young (7 or 8), he would wake me up at 3am in between two of his jobs and take me out for ice cream for a half-hour or so.  This tiny sliver of time didn’t close the gap between us, but it let me know I was loved, and it’s a strong memory even decades later. Perhaps if fate had played out differently, the gap may have even closed over time.

The message I want you to take from this – begin closing that balance gap now, not later.  If you have no time to spend with your family, find a way to carve a slice now.  If you have no time to take care of your health, find one small step you can take this week.  Do something now, and get things going.  It doesn’t take much to start getting significant value, so don’t miss this window of opportunity.  It will never come again.

You won’t get a second chance to balance your life.  You have to start right now.  Wake up, and fight for it, and take whatever bit of ground you can today.  You can’t count on the perfect opportunity to start balancing your life – you have to take the present opportunity and squeeze something out of it.

Want to share your thoughts in the comments below or subscribe to this blog? I dig both.

Next Page »