Don’t let it paralyze you.
If you failed to do something through inaction, hesitation, or indecision, remember the feeling of regret it left in your gut.
Not to punish yourself or
Another opportunity of some kind will come your way, and you’ll feel hesitant or indecisive again. But if you remember the regret you felt the last time, you’ll realize how much better you’ll feel this time if you act.
Use it to make better decisions in the future.
Thanks to our school systems, our parents, and our bosses, we tend to default to a “100” mindset. We look at everything we should or have done from this framing: “how far from 100 am I?”
How far from perfect is my effort or my attempt?
It’s incredibly unhealthy and unhelpful for making progress or creating change.
So you didn’t attend the protests yesterday? What have you done instead?
Maybe you’ve written tons of letters, made dozens of phone calls to your representatives, and encouraged others to do the same. That’s more than most, so you can comfortably give yourself at least a 75/100.
You didn’t eat perfectly cooked meals that align with your macros to the thousandth decimal place or get in your intensive, tactical workout to help you look like Thor?
Who cares? Did you eat some vegetables? Did you go for a walk or do yoga? You did a lot more than nothing.
Instead of looking at everything starting from 100, why not consider how far away you are from 0?
It’s not just incrementally better, it’s infinitely better!
Doing something, however small or seemingly insignificant, is uncalculably better than doing nothing at all.
It’s how most of us spend our lives.
We make a decision, half-heartedly commit to it, and spend the entire time looking over our shoulder.
“Did I commit to the right career path?”
“What about that thing over there?”
“Maybe I made the wrong choice…”
It’s like driving while only looking in the rear-view mirror. You drive ridiculously slowly and will more than likely crash. And you never get anywhere.
Better to stare out the windshield and speed down the interstate. You can always take one of the exits if you find out you’re going to the wrong destination.
Just don’t assume you started wrong.
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Why do we worry about running out of ideas?
Our minds are idea-making machines; we couldn’t stop them from ideation if we tried.
So why aren’t we creating something new and publishing it every day? Why do we fail to write a blog post? Or take a photo and post it?
We do not suffer from a lack of ideas: we worry the ideas we do have aren’t good enough to show anyone else.
Here’s the secret: they probably aren’t. Most of the ideas you think up aren’t great. They might not change the lives of thousands of people.
But there’s a chance one might change one person. And that small chance is reason enough to put your ideas out into the world.
“I never think of what I have said before. My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me. The result has been that I have grown from truth to truth.”
—Mahatma Gandhi
Consistency is only beneficial as long as the truth to which we are holding remains true.
Changing our minds seems to be a sign of weakness, meekness, and shame in our culture. But is it not a sign of wisdom and growth when we take a new stance upon learning new information?
When we hold to something because “that’s the way we’ve always done it,” even when a new truth is staring us in the face, our culture, relationships, and society stagnate.
There is nothing wrong with changing your mind as you learn new information.
Be wise and grow.
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Proverbs 14:23 is one of my favorite verses in the Bible:
“Work brings profit,
but mere talk brings poverty.”
–Proverbs 14:23
Talking about your ideas – the job you want, the business you feel like starting, the person you are thinking of asking out – does absolutely nothing for you.
Action – taking steps towards a goal – is the only thing that brings reward. Waiting for some outside force – a company to find and employ you or a government to protect you – won’t get you anywhere.
Mere talk is impoverishing.
Work and take action today.
“One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he could do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.”
–Henry Ford
In what areas do you doubt yourself?
What is the resistance telling you right now you cannot do?
Write it down; call it what it is. “Notice and name” as the folks over at Precision Nutrition like to say.
Don’t judge yourself; don’t feel guilty. Just say what it is. Then start asking why.
Why are you afraid?
You might find the answer surprising…you might also find that you have no answer and, perhaps, no reason to fear.
What one thing could you do right now to move away from the fear? What change do you desperately want to make but are too afraid to take the first step?
You can do it.
That book you read, the TED talk you listened to, or that seminar you attended–it’s only half of the equation. The materials you absorb will not, in themselves, change you for the better (if that is what you seek).
Change is a skill, which means it is something that must be practiced consistently until whatever you seek to change becomes a habit.
The materials available to you are great: in my opinion, they are vital to get you out of whatever rut you currently find yourself. We all need another voice, a voice we trust, reminding us of what better is.
But it’s up to you to change. It requires taking action.
What will you do to change today?
Uncle Ben said it best: “with great power comes great responsibility.” This should be the phrase by which every leader and marketer lives.
Marketing and leadership are two fields primarily focused on influence. Leaders focus their efforts on influencing what work gets done and on what companies place emphasis; marketers focus on what products get made, what gets purchased, and what changes are made in our culture.
With great influence also comes great responsibility. Leaders and marketers have in their hands the power to persuade others towards things that are either helpful or harmful.
Who gets to decide which is which? Technically, it’s the follower, the consumer, or the customer. But we are all human–we know before a customer tells us whether or not our product or idea will harm her.
If you lead others, if you sell, or if you persuade, please take your responsibility–the power you have over other people–seriously.
Don’t take advantage.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created rapid change in all areas of work. For those employees who showed up to an office location day after day, the lines between work and home have been blurred completely: work is now being done at home. School is now being done at home. And the amazing thing is that companies (and many schools) are realizing it works. Not only does it work, but it might also be better.
The Internet has made all this possible. Without it, this pandemic would have ground the world to a screeching halt rather than a frustrating slow-down. I believe that the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the final straws in breaking the world out of the Industrial Age mindset and unleashing human potential by fully adopting the Knowledge Worker/Information Age mindset.
These changes – the ability to work from home; meetings that are now (and should have always been) emails; genuine collaboration (because it’s the only way to get things done now); dictating results and trusting employees with the methods – will last long after this crisis is over. Companies will realize that their people are more productive than ever when given freedom and flexibility. More importantly, those that feel like their companies cared about them as people during the crisis will come out the other side more loyal and productive than ever before.
Those companies that are trapped in the Industrial Age – where people are things and less important than the machines they operate and the numbers they generate – will fail. Command-and-control, micromanagement, treating people as things – none of this works anymore. The failures may not happen immediately, but it will happen. Employees who feel their companies have failed to treat them with dignity and care, who have felt their health and wellbeing was seen as unimportant, will leave.
The coronavirus is terrible: people are dying; people are losing their income and their livelihood. But as with all great challenges in history, forward thinking, adaptable, flexible, and generous individuals, groups, and companies will learn from it, survive, and thrive in the new world.
Say goodbye to the last vestiges of the old world. I hope you are working for and with people who care.
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