Learn – to be happy

We are happy when we feel we are making progress and getting better.

When we do something we are not good at, we feel incompetent, and we don’t like doing it. After a day of doing something we don’t like doing, we aren’t happy.

What if we got training and learned to be competent and master those things we must do each day at our jobs or otherwise? If we learned to do it well, we’d feel competent, and like it more. We’d learn to be happy doing a thing because we felt good about ourselves when we did it.

What do you not like doing? What do you feel clumsy at? What do you feel you don’t know enough about and don’t do well that you have to do each day or from time to time?

Get some training, tutoring or go to a seminar or classes. Or read a book on it or go to YouTube to learn. Become competent, and you’ll be happier.

Goals – Every Day

What are your main objectives and goals?  Keep them in front of you every day.  If you forget about them for a few days, and don’t take any action that will bring you closer to achieving them, you have wasted those days relative to your top goals.

Write your goals on a card and tape it to your bathroom mirror, where you will see them every morning and every night.  When they are in front of you, your mind will go to work, and you will find yourself in goal achieving activities.

Work toward your main goals – every day.

"It's 90% mental"

Most top performers agree – success in anything is 90% mental.  

Shouldn’t we spend a LOT of time training our minds then?

The Current State of You

Your self-image; who you think you are, is the current state of you. But it does not have to be the final state of you unless you make it so. Visualize a higher performing you. Think only about what you want in your life, and be careful not to think about what you don’t want.

Be the person you want to be in your mind – rehearse it over and over. Don’t think about the person you are now, and mistakes and problems – think about your ideal life, your best performance, and what you want.

It doesn’t matter what is real now. Think about what you want and who you want to be. Be that person in your mind first, over and over.

The Problem with Democracy

The problem with democracy is that it wasn’t designed for the ignorant.  People that don’t know what the important issues are and don’t know what they are talking about, or even worse believe something that is false, have a vote just as powerful as the most accurately informed and educated.

The politics of today are not to educate people on the facts, but to take advantage of the people’s ignorance by filling the gaps with falsehoods and fear and sending them to the voting booth.

Can we be good citizens of a democracy if we are ignorant?

The struggle makes it worth it

Imagine an activity where you can win very easily – like if you played Scrabble with first graders. When you win, does it have value and improve your self-esteem?  

Now imagine a challenge that is tough, takes a lot of what you’ve got, and goes on for months or years; imagine fighting that one. It’s maybe…like the struggle you have right now.

It’s the struggle that makes us, even if we don’t win.  

We get better and stronger by struggling.

Complete this sentence –

“My greatest strength is ____________________________”

Most of your creative work is crap

That’s ok.  That’s why it’s called creative work.  It’s like a half developed photograph, or a partially built sculpture.  Keep working on it.  Even stuff you thought was “finished,” isn’t.

It’s like an iceberg. All your not so good work is under that waterline – holding up the percentage of finished work you finally put out to the world.

Keep working!

Pleasing Everybody

That’s not going to happen.  There will be people who give unfair commentary because they want to build themselves up by tearing someone else down.  And people who aren’t face to face with you – on the internet or gossiping to each other have looser lips.  Ignore them.

“The trick is not caring what EVERYBODY thinks of you, and just caring about what the RIGHT people think of you.”  – Brian Michael Bendis

When we go away, we get to come back.

Living in the box of a small world – a triangle between home and work and the mall, is going to limit our world view and our inspiration.

Go away for a while every now and then.  Experience new places and new things. When we come back, we are different, and so is that triangle.