Tag / choose

by Nathan Coumbe

Successful people do ONE thing all the time

Successful people are normal. They have no superhuman abilities, no extreme discipline honed by years of meditation or special operations training. However, they do something the rest of us don’t always do:

They choose.

Successful people choose what is important to them; they choose to prioritize what is important throughout the day; and they choose to carry out those things regardless of feelings or external triggers.

You must plan to do the things that matter – the things that will get you where you want to go. These are the achievements, contributions, and attributes for which you want to be remembered at your funeral.

Before you can plan them, however, you must define them. How will you achieve what’s important if you don’t know what is important?

You won’t.

But even if you lay out what is important and plan your day accordingly, it will not matter unless you choose to carry out the items of importance. This is what separates successful people from the rest.

“The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do….They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.”

E.M. Gray – “The Common Denominator of Success”

Even if something is important, and you are aware of its importance, you will find times when you really don’t want to do it. You won’t want to exercise; you won’t want to read your kids to sleep after a long day at work. If you don’t, that’s fine. But you are making a choice based on feelings or circumstances, relinquishing control of your own life.

Every action you take or don’t is a choice. Choose to do the things that further your mission, rather than choosing to let other people, feelings, and circumstances choose for you.

Choose to be successful.

In summary

Define what really matters most to you.

Plan your days based around what is important.

And most importantly, choose to act regardless of how you feel, what other people do, or what is going on around you.

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by Nathan Coumbe

Courage

What is courage? It is the same thing as bravery?

Courage might be doing something even when you are terrified.

It might also be one’s readiness for action when a situation demands it.

Either way, courage is a choice. It is the act of deciding to act when the need arises.

Be courageous. Choose to act.

by Nathan Coumbe

Natural consequences

You are free to do anything you want. You are not free to choose the consequences.

Every choice we make has a natural consequence associated with it. 

You can choose to eat McDonald’s three times a day (I’ve done this), but you cannot choose the consequences of this decision (I gained 40 pounds in a year, added 8 inches to my waist, and felt miserable most days). 

You can choose to put your finger on a hot stove (why would you?), but you cannot choose whether or not you get burned. The natural consequence is a burned finger.

When you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other. – Stephen R. Covey

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by Nathan Coumbe

What is failure to you?

If you try something new, you might fail.

Why is that such a debilitating statement? Unless you are attempting to leap between two buildings or run past a speeding car on the interstate, our failures are rarely fatal.

Yet we are paralyzed by the thought of failing at a new side hustle, of being rejected when asking for a date, or of failing at the new hobby we have never before tried.

If being proactive means choosing how one respond’s to a situation, then we can fail proactively. You can look at failure as a reason to never again attempt something, or you can look at it as simply one way the new thing won’t work.

Thomas Edison tried 10,000 ways to make a lightbulb before he found the way that worked. He saw each failure, not as a discouragement to trying again, but as a stepping stone to success.

Choose to see failure as a learning experience and you will only ever improve the next time.

by Nathan Coumbe

What makes you uncomfortable?

Resiliency is a skill that can be developed through practice. The first step is choosing to practice. 

What makes you uncomfortable? The answer to that question will help determine where to start.

I hate asking people to make special accommodations for me: I always feel I am inconveniencing the other person (I rarely am), or that I am being a very annoying customer (if they think so, that’s their choice). So when my wife and I started to drastically reduce our waste production, I was uncomfortable with some of the suggestions she made. 

A story…

My favorite example took place at our local Mexican restaurant: they have delicious salsa that we would buy in large tubs to take home and use during the week. These tubs were made of styrofoam and had plastic lids. My wife suggested that I take one of our many empty glass jars and ask for salsa to be placed inside. I was so reluctant, so uncomfortably scared to simply ask. It felt dangerous, even though the worst thing that could happen was to receive no as an answer. No danger at all, but my mind made it feel dangerous.

After numerous arguments (I was scared, remember?), I grudgingly went to the restaurant and made the request. The host looked at me curiously, but he acquiesced and placed the salsa in our jar. He even went a step further and informed me that there were no preservatives in the salsa; it would only keep for a week or so. A wave of relief washed over me. 

But wait! 

The next week, when I went back for more salsa, there was a sign on the front counter. 

“$2.99 jars of salsa to go. Bring the jar back for a $0.99 refill.”

The host, who was also the manager, bought a stock of small glass jars and decided to sell them. He was actively encouraging people to reuse the jars while also proactively choosing to reduce the waste his restaurant produced. 

By choosing (i.e. being forced by my incredible wife) to do something that made me uncomfortable, my wife and I achieved one of our small waste reduction goals. But the most inspiring thing was the change it created in someone else. 

Seek out discomfort in all areas of your life. It makes you stronger mentally. Discomfort in the gym makes you stronger physically. 

Other people avoid discomfort, which means you will be doing things others won’t. The intersection of discomfort and action creates change the world desperately needs. 

Change makes things better. Seeking out discomfort makes things better. 

What makes you uncomfortable?

Go do that.

by Nathan Coumbe

Proactivity and resilience go hand in hand

Resilience is the ability to rebound from challenges, setbacks, and crises. When something happens, a resilient person is seemingly less affected by the event than a non-resilient person (not true). 

Is someone born resilient? Doubtful. 

Resiliency is a skill; it can be practiced and improved. It can be practiced by consciously choosing how to respond to a challenge, setback, or crisis. The effects of the event may indeed be negative: they might be seriously damaging to mind, body, or spirit. But that most fundamental human right, that of proactivity and the ability to choose, cannot be taken away by a negative event. 

Resiliency, therefore, is practicing proactive responses in the face of negative events. It can mitigate the long-term effects of a difficult situation.

Is it easy? Of course not.

Is it necessary? More than ever. It will make you stronger.

Choose how you respond; become more resilient.

by Nathan Coumbe

Cats and proactivity

I have a cat. His name is Jack. Captain Jack Sparrow, if you want the full name.

Jack is the most annoying cat in the world.

If you go into a different room, he will sit outside the door and scream at you. “MerEYOWWWWWWwwwwwwwwww” or something like that. Over and over again until you return to the room in which he is sitting or you let him inside with you.

He beats up his sisters without mercy.

He went through a phase at 3 years old where he peed on the floor in front of our couch if my wife didn’t come home by a certain hour.

He scratches the paint off doors; eats expensive cables like they are spaghetti noodles; chews up the beater on my bass drum pedal; and just this morning, we discovered he had destroyed a set of blinds.

He also loves my wife unconditionally and makes her very happy.

For the first few years we had Jack, I would get visibly angry with him when he misbehaved. He knew it, too, and he never liked me as much as my wife.

However, since I started my deep dive into being a more effective and proactive individual, however, I have noticed a change.

I came to the conclusion that while what he did was very frustrating, I was choosing to react in a very negative manner which upset me and made him unappy with me. I was choosing to yell, to stamp my feet in anger, to curse the day we adopted him. What good did it do?

When I implemented “be proactive” into my life, I began with Jack. I lived by the idea that there is a space between stimulus and response where I could choose how I would react.

Now, when Jack misbehaves, I put him in time out – not with anger or scare tactics, but by simply picking him up and putting him into his room.

I feel better, Jack feels better. Now, he crawls up and falls asleep on my chest when I’m trying to take a nap on the couch, purring all the while.

Here’s my point:

You get to decide how a certain stimulus affects you. You cannot choose the consequence of the stimulus; I could not choose whether or not the blinds got broken when Jack climbed behind them. That was a natural consequence. But there are also natural consequences to my response:

  • I did not begin my day with negative emotions and stress.
  • My wife does not begin her day with negative emotions and stress, and our relationship is improved.
  • Jack knows that he misbehaved, but he also won’t run away from me when I return later today. He will instead greet me at the door with screeching and purring.

Something else you should know – since I began reacting better to Jack’s antics, his behavior has changed. He is less destructive, less abusive to his sisters, and less whiny.

Or perhaps, I just don’t notice it as much because of how I choose to respond.

If being proactive works with cats, how well do you think it will work with your human relationships?