cbarney.45 | The Caleb Barney Collection

Don’t withhold feedback

Telling the truth can be really, really hard sometimes. It can be uncomfortable because you want to make other people feel good (or, you at least don’t want to make them feel bad).

But if you withhold the truth, you are actually hurting them. How can they improve what they’re doing or how they’re acting if nobody confronts them about it? What if they don’t have the awareness to realize that anything is wrong in the first place? Make the difficult decision to tell them what they need to hear, even when it’s easier to tell them what they want to hear.

Count your blessings

“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.” – Eric Hoffer…how true this is. How quickly we forget about all the help that we have received along the way to where we are now. Never forget that life is a team sport. You would not be where you are today if not for your teammates – your family, friends, teachers, co-workers, and acquaintances.

A positive attitude

If you frame everything as a challenge to learn from, life will seem less overwhelming. If you frame a bad outcome like everything is going against you and the world has it out for you, it’s going to be a long life. Change your perspective and you will be much happier because everything is a learning opportunity – a chance foe you to get better.

Ask yourself…how will this obstacle help me grow and make me get better? What am I learning from this? Am I learning new things to avoid? Are there things that I should be doing better? Do I have blind spots that I was unaware of?

If you are able to remain positive, yet realistic, in the face of adversity, your mindset will set you up for greater success down the road. This is not saying you should be naive about what you’re facing, nor is it saying that things are always going to work out for the best, but whatever you focus on is going to be amplified. So if you focus on the positive, you’ll see the positive in things. If you focus on the negative, it will seem like everything is going wrong for you (even when you have a lot going in your favor).

Open your eyes…we all make mistakes

“Easy is to judge the mistakes of others. Difficult is to realize your own mistakes.”

It’s easy to judge others. “How could they believe/do/say that???” Yet it’s easy to justify what you have done. You can twist facts or tell partial truths, or maybe it seems like a full truth when really it’s just how you view things…

Regardless, we should work on being less judgmental and more understanding. How can we be more empathetic? How did that person come to that conclusion? How can we help them? Do they even want our help?

And then…what’s even harder…open your eyes to your own mistakes. Stop pointing fingers – blaming others or circumstances. What role did you play on how things turned out? Knowing what you know now, how would you act differently if you could go back and change things? Because guess what? It’s probably not the last time you’ll encounter a situation like that. It’s better to learn from your mistakes and change the future outcome instead of burying your head in the sand and acting like you didn’t make a mistake.

Start being excited about what could go right

Get excited!

Read, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos, talk to others, and actually start taking action.

Things can always go wrong (especially if you haven’t taken the time to properly prepare). But if you’ve mitigated your risk by doing everything you can ahead of time, you need to think about the opportunity cost of NOT taking action.

Most actions are reversible (or you can at least get back to a similar position if things don’t work out). So what’s the worst can that happen? You try, fail, and end up back where you’re at? Oh well. At least you’ll know you tried. And then you can use your experience to learn and try something else, should you decide to keep going after it.

If you never go for what excites you, you’ll always wonder “what if…” Why do that to yourself? Get excited about your potential and the opportunities that await and start taking action!