Never give up

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Do the Right Thing

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In a previous blog I talked about having 20/20 vision, the ability to see the world through someone else’s glasses. It is a powerful tool to build relationships, both personal and business. However, having 20/20 vision isn’t very effective without the right actions. If you want good results then you have to do the right things.

Here are 8 right actions to guide you on the journey to success.

Make no excuses. We must take responsibility for our own life, its successes and its failures. Part of growing up and becoming a real adult is being responsible. It’s not your parents’ fault, it’s not the government’s fault and it’s not society’s fault. It’s your life, your fault and your job to make it better. Step up.

Become wise. Knowledge + Experience = Wisdom. Study hard. Learn in school. Learn from others. Sharpen your knowledge into wisdom by your actions. Get involved. Get experience. See what’s really happening. Don’t skip the details. The devil is in the details. It’s the pebble in the shoe that stops the climber, not the boulders ahead.

Make good decisions. If you want things to get better you must make better decisions. Are your decisions aligned with your beliefs?

Commit to a goal. Plan to achieve something. Set your sights on a target. Don’t give yourself an easy way out. Have lofty objectives.

It’s better to go hunting for tigers and find a rabbit, than to go hunting for rabbits and find a tiger.

Never give up. If you don’t give up you can’t fail. Persistence may be the single most important quality of achievement .

Have faith, not fear. Don’t be afraid to fail and don’t be afraid to succeed. You must believe to achieve.

Enjoy the trip. Don’t take life too seriously, it’s a short ride.

Steve Haberly

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Courage in the Face of Covid

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After watching Disney‘s Alice in Wonderland, I learned a new word to describe an old concept, muchness. The Mad Hatter said to Alice, “You’re not the same. When you were here before you were muchier, but it seems you’ve lost your muchness.” 

What an interesting thought, losing your muchness. What is muchness anyway? If you go back to the movie you will see what Alice had lost was her courage. Her courage to slay the dragon. 

In today’s environment, muchness might be the ability to achieve your most desired goals no matter what the odds of failure. But what about the dragon? There are no dragons today, right? Wrong.

When you’ve lost your job because of Covid, who do you think is at the other end of the phone line demanding you pay an overdue bill? The dragon. If you listen carefully you can hear the scales rattle as he leans forward in his chair to tell you they’re turning off your electricity.

If you’re a student doing school virtually, you know the dragon. When the lesson doesn’t make sense, but the class moves on anyway, you may think you’re all alone. You are not. The hot breath on the back of your neck is the dragon.

The dragon and I have dueled many times over the years, and I know the one thing that can stand up to the dragon’s flame is courage. Muchness. So the question we must answer is, how did we lose our muchness and how can we get it back?

Losing our courage can begin with destructive thinking. Destructive thinkers believe all problems are huge and probably permanent. The more they focus on the size of the dragon, the bigger the dragon becomes until their mortal size pales in comparison. We can easily be devoured by our own destructive thinking. 

A courage destroyer that goes hand in hand with destructive thinking is having the wrong mindset. Mindset can be divided into two categories: fixed and growth. People with a fixed mindset don’t try hard enough and therefore they give up too soon. This kind of dragon slayer retreats to what he believes is a safe place and then is devoured by the dragon. Someone with a growth mindset never gives up.  They think of the possibilities and then focus on a solution that will extinguish the dragon’s flame. I want tp be a dragon slayer, don’t you?
So how do we find our muchness? Alice gives us a hint when she says:

In my next blog I’ll talk about each of the things we can do to regain our muchness.  As you may have guessed, the sixth impossible thing Alice believes is that she can slay the dragon.

Steve Haberly

The Lady or the Tiger

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The Lady or the Tiger

In my last blog we see a man running. A closer look shows he is chasing a beautiful woman. Zoom in and we realize that the man is being chased by a tiger.

What are we really seeing? Is the man running from the tiger or is he chasing the lady? Is there a difference?Running is running, you must admit. So, is running to catch something better than running away from another thing? It might be even worse.

I read an article by Leonard Kim in which he says, “When you decide to chase something, what you decide to chase starts to run away.” So with that in mind, can the man ever catch the lady? And, if the man does catch the lady, will he be happy? 

What if it’s the chase that brings the rush and not the conquest? What if the conquest usually ends in disappointment? One of life’s rules is this: the fantasy of the conquest is almost always better than the conquest itself. Do we run because we believe we can, or run because we believe we must?

Let’s suppose that the man catches the lady and they stop to enjoy the bliss of the moment. As she falls in his arms, her kiss is everything he hoped it would be.

As they enjoy the fantasy fulfilled, they are eaten by the tiger.

The tiger did not stop to rest. The tiger that chases us never rests. Was catching the lady worth being devoured by the tiger? Most would say no. With that in mind, it would seem that we should face the tiger before we ever chase and catch the lady.

I’ve been lucky to achieve most of my life goals. I’ve been this way for as long as I can remember. I have a wonderful marriage, three talented and loving children and a great job. I work for a company that puts people ahead of profit. Within this corporation I’ve been able to build a company that has grown from $5 million in sales to nearly $300 million.

I’m not boasting, well maybe just a little, but I’ve been able to grab almost every brass ring as the carousel of life went around.

What’s your tiger? Maybe it will help you identify yours if I tell you mine. I am one of those individuals that never stops running. I really don’t know how to rest and relax. In many ways it is my strength but someday it will probably be my undoing.

We will talk about both the hows and the whys, but for now, let’s discuss the whys. Let me start out by telling you, in my case, the why was the tiger. My motivation to succeed was my fear of the pain that comes with failure. To be first, for fear of being last, and at times in my life, to be first, for fear of being second.

My personal life is not much different. Every day I feel I must accomplish something because I do not want the pain of accomplishing nothing. So I run. Not literally, but figuratively. I get up early every day and I look for projects. I need something to do and something to accomplish. If I do nothing, it makes me an easy target for the tiger, and the tiger never rests. Neither do I.

There are three ways to live in the jungle. The most common situation is we forever run from the tiger. Second, we can turn and fight the tiger, but the injuries we would suffer could be terrible or even fatal.

But there is a third option. We can turn and embrace the tiger.

We can discover what chases us and instead of fighting it or running from it, we can use it to our advantage. If we no longer fear the tiger, and use the tiger’s pace to quicken our own, we might indeed catch the lady.

So what’s the moral of the story? Only by facing our tiger, and using that fear to our advantage, will we ever be able to catch the lady.

Steve Haberly

Don’t miss my next blog, Catching the Lady