Don't be nasty

“There is no situation in which it is smart to be nasty” – Millicent Fenwick

Despite what you see on TV and social media, being rude, insulting and cutting people down is not good for you, your reputation, and your career.  

Heck, it’s not even good for you – you become a defensive, offensive, hard, unhappy human.

Don’t be nasty.  State it when you disagree, but do it nicely.

Do you like yourself?

If not, you better work on that.

Do what you are doing in a way that makes you proud of yourself.

Be true to you and live your values. 

Slow down.

Be kind and smile at others.

Stop doing things you hate.

If you don’t like you, it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

Be a you that you like.

You will never outperform your own beliefs

You will never outperform your own beliefs; about yourself, about what is possible, about what you can and can not do.

What do you believe about you?

Before you compete with anyone else…

We will never be better than everyone at everything.  You’ll never have the most _________ .  Don’t attach your happiness or satisfaction to that.

Instead, compete with yesterday’s version of you.  

We are here to be the best we can be.

And that’s a lot better than we are now, and a lot better than we think we can be.

Beat your yesterday.  That’s what counts.

Are other people better than you?

Better at some activity or skill in this area or that?  Yes of course.

More worthy?  No

More disciplined/hard working/ambitious/successful?  That’s up to you.

Do you get that?

Choose

If you don’t choose in your own life, you will be pulled along by others’ choices.

Make your choices, or they will be made for you.

Talent……into Ability

“Everybody has talent.  Turning them into abilities takes hard work” – Michael Jordan

Do the work.  

When nobody is looking, or even caring, do the work you are meant to do.

Do it for you.  

Be great for you.

Feel yourself getting better, doing it smoother and easier and getting better results.

Do the work and do it well.

It’s what makes you better when you care about being the best you can be.

"We've got time"

“If you think you have all the time in the world, it will take all the time in the world.” – Jen Sincero

When you lengthen the time frame, things slow down.

When you shorten the time frame, progress speeds up.

Funny how that happens.

What do you need/want to get done?

By when?

The Sin of Send

Angry?

Stay away from the keyboard.

Wait.

Too many options?

When I was 12 growing up on the east side of Bridgeport, once in a while on a hot summer evening my brother and I would walk 10 blocks to Dairy Queen on East Main Street.  We didn’t have enough money for a sundae with fudge and nuts or a sundae in a mini New York Yankees batting helmet.  Small cone.  Vanilla or chocolate – that was the decision.  It was an easy decision for me.  I preferred vanilla.

Today, there are 50 flavors of ice cream.  Things have become cheap, and even if you don’t have a lot of money, there are a bazillion options.  You can spend oodles of time scrolling online to try to make the best decision, and just when you think you’ve decided, other options reveal themselves.

In one way, it’s a blessing.  We should be grateful we can spend so much time deciding on the style of our 12th pair of shoes, rather than how we are going to afford to pay the rent or feed our family (though some still do).  What a wonderful world we get to live in.

But are all these options with products, people to be in relationships with, what to eat, what to do on Saturday night, what to drive, what to watch – is all this affecting our ability to focus our brainpower on one thing?  Is it hurting our ability to go deep?  Is it hurting our desire to commit to one thing for long?

Social, consumerism, and all the rest – each of us deals with all of it differently.

Has the explosion of information and choices, unmanaged by us, made life too complicated?

Is inner peace more difficult with all this if we leave ourselves wide open each day to all of this?