Author: cbarney.45

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” – Charles Swindoll

When things don’t go your way, do you see this as an obstacle or an opportunity? Default your reactions to be positive. If you have a positive mental attitude, you will see this as an opportunity to grow and improve. If you see this as an obstacle, you will complain that life isn’t fair. You won’t take action. You won’t learn from the situation despite things like this “always happening to you.” Change your attitude…life is happening for you, not to you.

Make sure to see challenges for what they are. Challenges are an opportunity to get better. Nothing in life will go perfectly, or if it does, just know that it doesn’t last forever. We can’t change what happens to us – we have no control over that. But we do have control over how we respond to difficulties.

French philosopher Jean de la Bruyere said, “out of difficulties grow miracles.” We should take that to heart next time we encounter a less than ideal situation and try to turn that difficulty into a miracle.

Planning and preparing are never-ending. They’re not things that you can check off your To Do list and never have to return to them. All plans need fine-tuning. Some plans need to be scrapped and re-written. It is up to you to determine when you have time to let a plan run its course or when it’s time to change the plan.

Did you do everything necessary to give your plan a real chance of succeeding? If not, what can you do today to increase its chances of success? If you have done everything in your power to make the plan succeed, how do you pivot to a new and improved plan?

There is a difference between being a good person and a nice person. This doesn’t mean that you can’t display both attributes, but make sure that you always prioritize being good over being nice.

A good person is willing to tell others the “hard truths.” They are willing to say no to something that they know the other person wants if they feel that it is not in that person’s best interests. A good person does not indulge in an action (or inaction) that may cause harm to another individual.

A nice person is polite and can be described as a “people pleaser.” A nice person might hold back telling someone information that, while hurtful, may help them in the long run. A nice person may omit truths or tell stretched versions of the truth (“white lies”) to spare someone from temporary pain. A nice person wants to avoid conflict, even if that conflict is necessary.

An example of being good versus being nice is that a good person will cut their friends off from drinking too much, whereas a nice person will “give a drunk a drink” because they don’t want to tell them no.

Again, you can be and should try to be both a good person AND a nice person in most situations. But when you are in a position where you have to choose between being good or being nice, always choose to be good. It may rub people the wrong way, but it is for their own benefit that you say or do what is right, not just tell them what they want to hear.

“Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” – William Feathers

You’re going to hit some bumps on the road, but if you keep going, you’ll eventually get to your destination. Part of success is about perseverance – about “hanging on after others have let go.”

But you can’t just “hang on” and expect to become successful. You need to work on minimizing mistakes or making vast improvements.

If you make mistakes, it is better to make them quickly so you can learn from them and move on.

This is why reading/researching is so important. Instead of having to learn everything by experiencing, which can take a long time and cost a lot of money, your success is capped by your willingness/ability to learn from what others have already done. You don’t have to make the same mistakes that others have made. In addition to helping to minimize your mistakes, reading/researching can also help you improve your performance. It’s a shortcut to success.

So what do you need to do to achieve success?

1) Be willing to do what others won’t today so that tomorrow you can accomplish what others can’t. Most people shy away from hard work and long hours. You should run toward this.

2) Forgive yourself. You will make a lot of mistakes on the way to success. Be sure to learn from those mistakes and try not to repeat them.

3) Forgive others. Other people will make a lot of mistakes and it may feel like they are a road block to your path to success. Remember, nobody is perfect, everyone has to start somewhere, and at one point, you were the rookie making those same mistakes.

4) Hold on. Be willing to hold on long after everyone else has let go. If this is truly the right goal for you and it has meaning to you, don’t give up. You can achieve a lot in life just by sticking with something when others have given up.

Beware of dopamine hits where you feel good because someone has acknowledged you for fixing something for them. Your goal should be to teach them so that they don’t need your help anymore. It may feel good to be needed, but if that is your main goal, you are holding whoever you’re trying to “help” back from reaching their potential.

You can become addicted to always trying to earn that acknowledgment from others – essentially becoming a slave to a feeling. Eventually, if you’re not careful, you will base your self worth on gaining acknowledgement from others.