success | The Caleb Barney Collection

Love, respect, and forgiveness

Remember to treat yourself and others with love, respect, and forgiveness every single day.

When you start with love, you will always want the best for yourself and for others. You’ll try to help them as much as you can. But help doesn’t mean giving them handouts and spoon feeding them. There needs to be a healthy balance between short-term help and long-term help. Always “helping” someone get what they want, for example, may not be helping them in the long run. Making sure nobody ever feels struggle is not helping them. It’s weakening them, giving them less ability to overcome adversity, and giving them less resolve. The best help is by teaching them how to get what they want, not having you go out and getting them whatever they want.

Next, you need to treat yourself and others with respect. The moment you start disrespecting others is the moment that you begin to lose credibility for yourself. Treat others how you would want to be treated. Don’t talk down to others, don’t berate them, but also don’t treat them with pity. If you see someone who needs your help, try to walk alongside them. You may think that the other person can’t do anything for you, but you never know how your actions can affect them, where they’ll end up, or what connections they might have as well. Don’t forget you must also respect yourself. That means setting boundaries with people or saying no sometimes. You need to respect yourself enough to not let yourself be walked all over by others.

Lastly, you need to practice forgiveness with yourself and others. You don’t have to forget how you made a mistake or how others might have wronged you. But you should forgive them. Everyone makes mistakes, yourself included. Try to learn from them and move on. Make sure you don’t hold grudges or else you will live a long, miserable life.

Three success factors

To achieve optimum success, one needs to have the ability, work ethic, and luck. One of these is in our control, while the other two are (mostly) not.

Take ability, for example. Some people are born with an innate ability or have the physical characteristics to be more prone to succeed in certain arenas. LeBron James was built to be a superstar athlete. No matter how much work ethic or luck I have, I don’t have the same natural gift/ability that he has. Not many people do. But there have been other athletes who were just as talented as LeBron and who haven’t achieved his level of success. This is because LeBron optimizes his natural ability by also having an incredible work ethic.

This leads to the next success factor, which is work ethic. Work ethic is the only thing we have complete control over. Every morning we wake up, we make the decision on how we want to use our day. When we’re at work, are we actually working or are we scrolling through social media or reading espn? Do we casually going through the day or do we have a plan? Set our intentions for each day. What is the one thing we need to do in each area of our lives (mental, physical, spiritual, relational, financial, and vocational) to get us closer to our goals? Are we living intentionally?

Lastly, the success factor with the biggest variation – luck. Some people seem to have great luck while others have “bad” luck. But while some of what we experience is “luck of the draw,” a lot of times there are little things we can do to better position ourselves. If we have a good attitude, and are a great team player, we generally will have more luck. If we share our goals with other people and are likable, other people will want to help us when they can. But they can’t help us unless they know what we’re aiming for. And they won’t help us if they don’t like us. So be kind to everyone, be generous, be curious, have a good work ethic, contribute to a positive culture, and be willing to be vulnerable. Take calculated risks (preferably asymmetric risks, where the cost is low, but the potential reward is high).

Being curious leads to better results

Ask more questions, but ask better questions too. You already know what you think you know. Your goal should be to understand what other people know (or think they know). What can you learn from them? But don’t pester them with annoying questions.

Be curious. The more curious you are, the faster you’ll learn and grow as a person. And, hey, some additional perks are you’ll probably have some great conversations and grow stronger friendships too.

Setting easy and hard goals

It’s only a partial truth when you hear the saying, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Because the alternative to that is that something could beat you down and wear you out, and if you don’t allow yourself to recover before the next defeat, you’re only going to see a decrease in performance. Too many harsh defeats in a row could decrease your confidence, and instead of making you stronger, it weakens your resolve.

Practice balancing between setting hard to achieve, but still realistic goals and getting some quick wins under your belt (to build momentum and confidence). When you do go for something and fail, prioritize learning from your mistakes and recovering from failures. Just make sure that A) you’re not aiming too low just to avoid the feeling of pain/loss; and B) you have regular stretch goals that are realistic, but definitely not guaranteed.

Practicing patience

The day you plant the seed is not the day you eat the fruit.

Most things in life that are worthwhile are either difficult to obtain, take effort, or take time to develop/grow. Some of the best things in life require all three. For example, having a strong relationship (whether between your spouse, best friend, or co-worker) takes time. You don’t have a deep relationship with them the first time you meet them. It takes effort on your part to listen, to show you care for them, etc. The longer you do this, the stronger your relationship grows.

The same can be said for physical success (building/shaping your body how you want it to look), mental (learning a new subject or language), financial (accumulating wealth), or at work (you have to start somewhere, and that place usually isn’t at the top). Most great things take time. We don’t plant the seed and eat the fruit the same day, just as we don’t do one workout and get a six pack the same day. The overnight success is the outlier.

Practice patience. Be patient with others, but be patient with yourself and your goals too. Don’t give up just because you’re not seeing results as quickly as you want. Eventually, if you are consistently working towards your goals, you can achieve great things. Just make sure you’re setting S.M.A.R.T. goals towards things that are actually meaningful to you. If you really want to achieve them, you’ll find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse.