Your number one responsibility is to be able to put food on the table and keep the lights on for your family. After that, then you need to focus on doing something that you love. You don’t even have to love it at all the time. But as long as you like it enough and it pays the bills, stick with it. If you are miserable, find something else, but remember your responsibility to your family. Making sure you’re setting them up for success (more than just surviving, but thriving) should be your top priority.
Category: parenting
Everything is difficult. Choose your path.
Everything in life is difficult in its own way.
If you’re broke and hate your job, that’s difficult. But it’s also difficult to be successful professionally. It will take a lot of hard work, long hours, and sacrifices to get what you want. And along the way, you have to choose how hard you want to work at the other areas of your life.
If you put all of your energy into your work, but no energy into eating right or working out, your health will suffer.
If you don’t pay attention to your dating life, family time, or hanging out with friends, your relationships will suffer.
Sure, it’s easier to be mediocre at everything or to “not care” and be bad at certain things, but those choices bring different kinds of hardship with them.
You get to choose your actions. And by doing that, you get to choose which difficulties you’re going to experience. Choose wisely.
Courage over comfort
Choose courage over comfort. Just be aware that, as Brene Brown points out in her book Dare to Lead, ”if you choose courage, you will absolutely know failure, disappointment, setback, even heartbreak.”
Courage is tough. It is not for the faint of heart. But, in the long run, the more you choose to be courageous and stay true to yourself, the less regrets you’ll have in life.
Consistency and predictability
Good leaders (including good parents) should be consistent and predictable with their actions and responses. What kid/employee would want to “walk around on eggshells” everyday, not knowing if their actions are going to make their parent/boss go berserk?
Aim to be consistent in what you say and how you act. Reward the same actions on a day-to-day basis, and punish the same actions on a day-to-day basis. Don’t be so temperamental. Those around you should know, “if I do X, my boss will be pleased with me. But if I do Y, they will not be happy.”
If we set clear expectations from the beginning, and follow through by rewarding/punishing accordingly, everyone will know the rules of the game and understand how they can win.
Four keys to success (inspired by a recent BiggerPockets podcast episode)
1. Decisiveness – clearly define what it is you want. Then ask yourself, will whatever action you’re about to take bring you closer to that goal? If yes, do it. If no, don’t do it. Not sure? Give yourself a set period to decide then take action.
2. Build momentum. Does an airplane start the engine then it’s up in the air flying? No. It has to build up speed to take flight. Once in the air, it’s easy to maintain. Determine what is the most important next action step, then do it (preferably, it should be easy to implement so you can “check it off the list” and build momentum). When you do that, figure out the most important next step and do that. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
3. Measure what matters. Keep track of the most important numbers. What are the lead measures and lag measures you need to hit to achieve your goals? Budget your time, actions, money, etc.
4. Become an expert. What did I do yesterday? How could I have done it better? What did I do that I should stop doing? What do I need to learn to be considered an “expert” in my field.