Understand These 3 Concepts And Move On From Anything
Sometimes you just take a beating.
It’s not always because of anything you can control—it’s just part of operating in a world with other sentient beings and physical forces.
Pretending it didn’t hurt or avoiding the process of understanding where the pain comes from just makes it worse later on.
What’s difficult is spending your whole life converting the operations around you into processes you can control, being successful at it, and then facing something painful and uncontrollable.
Learning to let things go and move on is just one of those things that takes a lifetime to which to adjust.
Sure there are some skills we can master while we’re here, but there’s really no end point.
The only "point of arrival" is the end of life, really.
- You can get in shape, but you can’t ever finish eating healthily.
- You can work nights to pay for college, but you can’t ever spend enough on your kid’s education.
- You can become a race car driver, but you can still get rear-ended at a stop sign.
The goal then, shouldn’t just be to take control of everything, but to understand what we can and can’t achieve—and then spend our resources moving toward those achievable goals.
In the meantime, while we’re moving, it’s good to remember that we sometimes take a beating regardless of how reasonable the goal is.
In fact, we might get beat up just sitting at home where we thought it was safe.
So, it’s not useful to drop out when it hurts. Pain just doesn’t have a good enough correlation with circumstance to be the only factor in our decision.
It also helps, while we’re moving, to remember that adjusting to pain isn’t like flipping a light switch. It takes time and the amount of time it takes varies based on circumstance, personal experience, and predisposition.
Some lessons to take away from this:
- Pain feels like an indication that we should change direction or hide but that’s not always the case.
- Staying at home or avoiding risk can still lead to pain, so you might as well work hard to achieve what you want.
- Being at peace with an imperfect world doesn’t mean you are eternally and outwardly happy, it just means you accept the often unfair pains of life.
2 Minute Action
Reach out to someone who is in pain and let them know you’re on their team.
Take a risk (it can be a small one) that you have been considering or avoiding.
Execute a small and possibly random act of kindness.
I promise you don’t need more than 2 minutes to do any of these.
That part is all in your head.
Today is up to you and you can completely transform your outlook and chances of success in 2 minutes or less.
The Most Common Excuses People Make (And How To Get Past a Them)
It helps if you know what to do.
It helps if you know when to do it.
It also helps if you have the skills, abilities, and resources to do it.
Of course, the reality is that you need none of these things to start.
Here is a list of common excuses that many of us constantly use to delay action:
“I don’t have a team.”
“I don’t have the time.”
“I don’t have the capital.”
“I don’t have the expertise.”
“I don’t have the motivation.”
“I don’t know if now is the best time.”
If you’ve ever said these to yourself, now is a good time to look hard and long at those statements.
Fight back.
Make each excuse prove itself why it’s true—because the real truth is that you can figure it out how to get past it.
You don’t have to be a genius and you don’t have to billionaire and you don’t have to be an expert with 20 years of field experience to start.
You just have to prioritize your work, be deliberate about how you spend your time, live within your means, and keep rebounding after you mess up.
That’s it.
Instead of designing your logo and buying the domain for your website, call potential clients.
Instead of browsing Banana Republic’s last sales email, set up a Gmail filter to hide emails like those and go talk to a customer.
Instead of raising money and giving away all your equity, put together a PowerPoint that looks like what the software will look like and get your first customer. (Customers pat you today and you never have to pay them back. Investors will own your business and decisions until you buy them out.)
2 Minute Action
Write a Facebook or LinkedIn post asking your network if they know any experts you’d like to talk to.
Look at your calendar and cut out a little time on one or two days of your week to work on this project. You may have to give up social or TV time.
Define the 3 features of your MVP “minimum viable product.” This is the bare minimum you need to make a sale or get a user. This is derived from Eric Ries’ “Lean Startup.”
Send an email asking your students, clients, patients or customers for feedback.
3 Characteristics Of Rock Star Teammates
Stop hiring for specific skills.Hiring this way almost always overlooks the three most important traits of a strong candidate.There are 3 things that good managers hire for.Of course, sometimes, you really do need a highly trained skill set. There's just no amount of positivity that will substitute for an expertly-trained brain surgeon--but unless you need a super specific, high-stakes skill like this, you're much, much better off starting at these 3 traits:
Aptitude
Do they have the ability to learn and execute the skills they need to be successful?
Attitude
Do they make others around them feel confident, capable, and like excellence is possible? No one can sustain this all the time under all circumstances, that's just faking it. We're just looking at most of the time. What's their common thought habit?
Cultural fit
Culture is not the ping-pong table, the nerf guns, nor the Keurig. Culture is how you treat others when it's hard, when you're tired, and when you're frustrated. Cultural fit on a high-performance team is "do you believe what we believe?" "Do you have similar values as shown by your actions?"Finding these three traits will lead to capturing the right people. Training, mentoring, and supporting them are the things that will keep them with you.
2 Minute Action
Quickly list a few traits of your high-performers.What are the characteristics that make them successful? Pick 3-5.Now rank your other teammates on a 10 point scale for each of these 3-5 characteristics.If anyone is below a 6, you should schedule time to identify/discuss and solve this.Reviews do NOT need to be annual. Make it happen, today.