Kaizen | The Caleb Barney Collection

The key to greatness

To be great, you have to be consistent. You have to be disciplined. You may have natural talent/ability, but without nurturing it and growing it through consistent effort, you will never achieve true greatness.

Do you think LeBron James or Michael Jordan were born with gifts that you and I don’t have? Yes. That’s how the world works. Everyone is different. But they also worked tirelessly for years on end, spent millions of dollars investing in their bodies to help strengthen them, honed their craft with hours in the gym, etc. They had natural ability, but so do a lot of other guys in the NBA. It was their consistent, focused effort over many years that helped them become the greatest of all time.

While it is easy to think of sports as the best analogy here, it applies to everything we do in life. Want to be better at your job? What actions are you taking daily to train to become the best? Do you role play scenarios with other team members? Do you take continuing education classes? Do you read about specific subjects to help you or watch “how to” videos?

You don’t improve the most by going to a weeklong seminar once per year and then not doing anything else until next year’s seminar. You improve the most by taking small, focused actions every single day, always building upon the previous day.

What actions are you willing to take to achieve greatness – not today, and not tomorrow, but five, ten, or twenty years from now? Are you able to look at the big picture and base your decisions on that instead of what feels good today? Do you have the discipline to repeat the monotonous actions (slightly/slowly improving over time)? If you want to be mediocre, that’s fine. You can live a good life coasting through it. But if you want to achieve greatness, you have to endure many unheroic days to reach some heroic decades in the future…

Jealousy, privilege, and comparison

Before you make a jealous statement, “they’re so lucky that ____” or “it must be easy because of ____”, truly think to yourself the amount of work that that individual put in to get to where they are. There really are not many “overnight successes.”

And for those who inherited wealth or were put in a better position to start than you? Consider yourself the lucky one. You have gone through trials and tribulations that they have not, and it has forged you into the person you are today.

There will always be someone better off than you just like there will always be others worse off than you, yet you don’t consider yourself privileged. Take a step back and look in the mirror. If you’re reading this on a computer, how “lucky” are you? If you live in the United States, how lucky are you? If you have your eyesight and can hear, how lucky are you? Do you have four limbs? How lucky are you? People tend to downplay the “luck” that played a role in how they got to where they are today, yet they emphasize it in others’ success.

“I’m a self-made person” you say. But, in reality, everyone has had help along the way. Some have had more help than others. But you’ve had more help than plenty of others as well. Remember that.

Finally, stop comparing yourself to others. It doesn’t matter where they are or where they’re going. You can’t control that. But you can influence the direction of your life by the decisions you make each and every day. Work to get 1% better every single day and you’ll be amazed by the results in 1 year, 10 years, and beyond.

Making an honest attempt

If I try, I have a chance. If I don’t try, I have no chance. There is no harm in trying and failing. At least you’re still setting yourself up to possibly succeed. But if you don’t try for fear of failing, you guarantee that you will not achieve your goal.

Be ok with taking chances and always strive to do your best. You should give your greatest effort in everything you do. If you are taking the time to do something, you might as well do it properly. Not only that, but how you do anything is how you do everything. Don’t fall into the habit of going through the motions and not giving it your all, otherwise that will become your new norm.

If you take chances and give 100% of your effort, you can rest easy at night. You can go to bed knowing that you gave it your all and not have any regrets. Again, the only you can control is your effort. If things don’t work out as planned, let it be because of forces outside of your control, not because you didn’t do something.

Competing and confidence

Be confident in your ability to compete. You don’t have to win every time. You won’t win every time. But you can always compete…Try your hardest, have a good attitude whether you win or lose, and make sure you learn from your experiences.

If you don’t like losing, keep practicing. Keep competing. Be a student of the game. What worked well before and what didn’t work? How can you implement what worked and reduce what didn’t to get more consistent results? Become an expert in whatever it is you’re trying to do. With competence comes confidence.

3 yards at a time

I was listening to a podcast the other day when I heard the host make a football analogy for business success. He said, “if you just focus on getting 3 yards at a time, and you keep doing that every single play, you’re going to win the game. But if you keep dropping back to throw a Hail Mary every play, you might get it sometimes, but you’re going to fail a lot more often than not. That is how you’re going to lose the game.” And it got me thinking about how this applies to business, health, and every area of life.

We’ve all seen the people who swing for the fences because of some get rich quick scheme but lose their shirts. Or the people who are very intense with a fad diet, but yo-yo and go from being very strict to not adhering to their diet at all.

Focus on winning just a little bit each day. Start out with your mornings. Try to win your morning today. After that, try to win the afternoon. With your momentum being built, next thing you know, you’ll find that you’ve won the day. And once you string together enough days where you’ve won, you will set yourself up for enormous success.