solutions | The Caleb Barney Collection

Stay away from negative people

However good or bad life is, a lot of it depends on your mindset.

Negative people? They have a problem for every solution.

Positive people find solutions to every problem.

How is it that someone working the same profession as someone else finds working 40 hours to be miserable and is always complaining, while the other person is putting in 55 hours and you don’t hear a peep from them?

How is it that one person gets up early if they want time to themselves or to work on a task, but another person sleeps in and complains there’s not enough time in the day?

I could go on and on with examples. But the point is that life is what it is. The circumstances are similar for all of us, but it’s how we view the circumstances (how we interpret them) that makes a difference. Do you want to be a positive person or a negative person? And do you want to hang out with positive people or negative people? Find solutions. Be the solution. And stomp out the problems.

Four things to avoid when trying to improve…

1. Avoid getting locked into bad habits. You usually have an idea of if you shouldn’t be doing something, so don’t do it.

2. Avoid resisting change. Change not for change’s sake, but to progress. Always strive for a better way to do something – doing it more effectively, more efficiently, or finding something to replace it. (Do you need to be doing that activity at all? Does anyone?)

3. Avoid seeking comfort in repetition. Just because it’s comfortable doesn’t make it right. The greatest times of accomplishment are often preceded by the greatest challenges/struggles which push us outside our comfort zone. We must embrace challenge.

4. Avoid applying old solutions to new problems. Your core values should stay the same. Your goal(s) might stay the same. But your tactics on how to complete the goal could (and probably should) change somewhat regularly, depending on if the tactics are producing the results you want. Just because a specific solution worked for something else doesn’t mean it will work for this new problem.

Random thoughts on mindset, boredom, taking action, and failure…

Embrace challenge. Work on mindset. Your situation becomes as good or as bad as you tell yourself. Manage your emotions/beliefs.

Be ok with boredom. Notice what you’re thinking of. Use this to your advantage. Be creative. Don’t have too much structure. Be flexible. “Be like water.”

Take action. Learning/acquiring new information is good, but doesn’t do much for you if you don’t act on what you learned.

Live to fight another day. Don’t give up. Be persistent. Things may not have gone your way this time, but if you keep chipping away at success (steadily/consistently), you will get there.

“Failure” is final. You don’t fail unless you quit. Use the experience from disappointment to learn from and gain in the future.

Patience with teaching

It takes strength to be gentle. Anyone can be rude, but it takes self-control, strength, and discipline to be patient and caring.

For example, do you get easily annoyed (and show it) when others aren’t understanding what you’re explaining? Be gentle with them. Try to explain it in another way. Whether that means using a different example (verbally) or using a different teaching method (they may learn better by reading or doing instead of listening), if you really want them to understand what you’re talking about, you need to adapt your teaching style to how they learn best. Regardless of whether your other methods work, at the very minimum you’ll become a better teacher by learning how to use different teaching methods.

Lastly, if you really want someone to learn something, you can be firm with them, but don’t be rude or make disparaging remarks. While that may motivate some people, it will make even more people “shut down.” Then, not only do you lose your chance at a teachable moment, but you also hurt their self-esteem and lose their respect (if only temporarily) in the process.

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.