Posted by Grant on September 5, 2008 – 5:50 am
You may have noticed that today is Friday. How do you feel about that?
Are you overly excited, counting down the hours until you are set free for the weekend? Are you anxious, exhausted, and ready to leave by lunch time?
So many people live with the mentality of “Thank God it’s Friday….Oh God, it’s Monday.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…life is too short to do something you hate. We all have to make a living and earn a paycheck, so wouldn’t you prefer to do something you love?
Can you imagine what it would be like to wake up on Monday morning and be excited to go to work? (Let me know when you stop laughing at that idea!)
Don’t laugh too hard…I do it every week. While I love the weekend and just spending time with my family, I also know that Monday is coming and I get to go back and do something I’m passionate about.
And you can to.
Posted by Grant on September 4, 2008 – 6:46 am
As you may have seen this week, Don LaFontaine passed away. Some of you may know exactly who that is and others may not have a clue who I’m talking about. Although Don was his real name, he was more commonly known as “The Movie Trailer Voice Guy.” We all know that voice and have heard it in probably hundreds of movie trailers. So part of his legacy will be “that guy with the cool movie voice!”
While it’s important to consider how you want to be remembered someday, it is also important to consider how you want to be known today.
He was “The Movie Trailer Voice Guy,” but who are you? What do people say about you?
I’m not encouraging you to be obsessed or consumed by what others think of you or say about you, as if your entire identity is resting upon the opinions of others.
What I am encouraging you to do is consider what you want to be known for. When people talk about you, how do they fill in this sentence…
“Oh yeah, that’s the ___________________ guy/girl.”
Posted by Grant on September 3, 2008 – 11:46 am
As you may know, I’m a diehard St. Louis Cardinals fan. Although we have struggled the last few weeks, I’m with them through thick and thin. I read a good quote the other day that ties into baseball…
“In life, no one cares how many times you strike out; all that matters is your home runs. And you get to bat as many times as you like! Anyone can be a home-run king if they just take enough at bats! When have you gotten so worried about making a mistake that you stopped swinging for the fences?”
Great question!
Do you ever get so scared of failing that you don’t even try anymore?
Posted by Grant on September 2, 2008 – 6:46 am
I recently read that after Michelangelo had created his famous sculpture, David, he said this:
David was inside the stone – I just needed to chip away all the pieces that weren’t David.”
WOW!
Is it possible that what you’re looking for is already inside you? Could it be that you’re looking everywhere else to determine who you are when really that identity is already inside you?
Posted by Grant on August 30, 2008 – 6:36 pm
I’ve been reading a fascinating book called, The Starfish and The Spider, which is about the power of leaderless organizations.
Take for example Wikipedia or Craigslist. These are two great organizations that are essentially run and directed by the users themselves. People who have bought and sold things on Craigslist get a sense of the community that is created there, and part of the appeal is that the company hasn’t sold out to advertisers but maintains a simple look and feel and allows the users to direct the flow of the site. Wikipedia is basically an online encyclopedia that is written by and enforced by the users of this online community. People police themselves and are free to edit and add to any entry as they see necessary.
The book examines why these systems work and they pointed out a simple principle that is so true:
Everyone wants to contribute, and everyone has something to contribute somewhere.
What a great thought! I paused after I read that and began to consider those ideas for myself. What do I have to contribute and where am I going to make that contribution? And the same question is true for you…
What are you contributing?
Posted by Grant on August 26, 2008 – 6:32 am
We’re all busy. We all have a lot going on in life. We all live at a very fast pace.
But regardless of how busy you are, we also all have a capacity.
There is only so much that you can do.
If you took a glass and filled it to edge, that represents how most of us live life. No room for margin or error. We live at capacity.
We continue to say ‘yes’ to things that really we can’t handle, because we’re already at capacity.
Here’s a simple idea: If your glass is full, then you can’t add anything to it, until something is first removed from it.
You must say ‘no’ before you can say ‘yes’.
Are you living life at capacity?
Posted by Grant on August 18, 2008 – 2:30 pm
At a lot of events I speak at, the participants fill out some type of evaluation form regarding what they thought of my talk. Usually I don’t get to see these, but today in the mail, I received a stack of these forms from a recent event I did. As I read through them, I would say that 98% of them were overwhelmingly positive, but then there was maybe 2% that thought my talk should have been more humorous, less humorous; more stories, less stories; more motivational, less motivational.
As I read through these and saw some of the contrasting statements, I wondered if everyone was even hearing the same talk! Why would one person say I was too funny, someone else said I wasn’t funny enough, and others say it was perfect? Go figure! But I guess I was reminded of two simple lessons.
- You can’t please everyone all the time. You’re always going to let someone down no matter what you do. You will never have a 100% approval rating.
- If you have a 100% approval rating, you’re doing something wrong. Yes, you read that correctly. If you’re doing a great job at what you do, you will always rub someone the wrong way. While I enjoy hearing how much students or leaders enjoyed a talk I gave, I also like to see those that disagreed and disapproved of some part of it. To me, that means I’m doing something right.
Posted by Grant on August 13, 2008 – 9:44 pm
Tonight my wife and I had a really relaxing and enjoyable date night. We try to have a date night without the kids at least once each week. But one thing we noticed is that it is easy to get into a routine with our date night.
We go to the same restaurants or the same stores or go through the same boring routine, which makes for a lousy date night. It’s a routine that becomes stale and dull.
So tonight we mixed things up. We went to a restaurant we had never been to. We went around and went clothes shopping together, which we never do. We were spontaneous and worked to break the routine. And at the end of the night, we both acknowledged, it was a great date night.
What is it in your world that has become dull, dry, and boring that you need to break the routine?
Posted by Grant on August 12, 2008 – 8:02 pm
I wonder if some of the athletes in the Olympics are beginning to ask themselves this question. Think about it. These are individuals who have been training nonstop for the past few years all for this one moment. But just as quickly as it all began, it will soon be over. And you have to ask…
What’s Next?
This is the question I’ve been asking a lot lately. For the past six months or so, much of my professional world has been consumed by writing and publishing my book, Reality Check. But now that this process is essentially coming to an end, I’m beginning to look for the next mountain to climb. Between my A.D.D. mind and my entrepreneur drive, it’s tough to sit still for too long. So I’m really beginning to think through…
What’s Next?
You should be asking yourself the same question. It’s easy to want to live in the moment or linger in the past, but today’s moment will soon be tomorrow’s history (wow, that was deep!). So what’s the next mountain you’re going to climb? What’s the next challenge you’re going to take on? What’s the next adventure you’re going to pursue?
If you have some ideas, let me know!
Posted by Grant on August 9, 2008 – 8:13 pm
I’ve never really been a diehard Olympic fan, but I figured I would record the Opening Ceremonies and check it out. And in the words of the late Chris Farley from Tommy Boy:
I’ve seen a lot of things, but that….was….awesome!
The Opening Ceremonies was truly like watching a show unlike I’ve ever seen. I guess the difference between this “show” and others was that they have been planning this night literally for years; there were 15,000 cast members involved; the use of technology was mind-blowing; and the sheer magnitude of the entire ceremony was astonishing.
There was amazing attention to detail and the elements of the ceremony were performed with such precision and grace. It truly was incredible to watch.
What if you did your job/homework/tasks/responsibilities with the same approach of the opening ceremonies? Not necessarily to the grand scale of it all, but rather, think about this: these people put in countless hours of preparation in order to perform this “show” once. That’s it. It wasn’t like they were prepping for a Broadway show they would perform multiple times every day to a new audience. They had one shot at this. Plus there was the added pressure that the entire freakin’ world was watching.
So again, I come back to that idea…
What if you did your _______ as if the world was watching and you had one shot to get it right?
Now that’s excellence.
