Leadership guru, John C. Maxwell, tells the story of Charlie Chaplin in his book Success 101. Chaplin was born in poverty in the United Kingdom. His mother was institutionalized when he was very young, so he found himself on the street. After living in workhouses and orphanages, he began performing to support himself. He started working in Hollywood for $150 a week, and during his first year, he made 35 films working as an actor, writer, and director. “Everyone recognized his talent immediately, and his popularity grew. A year later, he earned $1,250 a week. Then… he signed the entertainment’s industry’s first $1 million contract.”
Maxwell states that Chaplin was successful because, “he had great talent and incredible drive. But those traits were fueled by teachability. He continually strived to grow, learn and perfect his craft. […] If Chaplin had replaced his teachability with arrogant self-satisfaction when he became successful, his name would be right up there along with Ford Sterling or Ben Turpin, stars of silent films who are all but forgotten today.”
Why is this story important? Because it exemplifies the two roads that people can take when they attain success: rest in their laurels or continue to grow. “Successful people face the danger of contentment with the status quo. After all, if a successful person already possesses influence and has achieved a level of respect, why should he [or she] keep growing?” The answer is simple. In Maxwell’s words:
Your growth determines who you are. Who you are determines who you attract. Who you attract determines the success of your [life and] organization.
We must continually grow and strive to be the best we can be. The only way we can do this is by cultivating and maintaining a teachable attitude. For this, Maxwell gives us five guidelines.
1. Cure your destination disease. “Ironically, lack of teachability is often rooted in achievement.” When people reach a specific goal (a degree, position, award, financial target, etc.), sometimes they become complacent and believe they no longer have to grow, but “the day they stop growing, is the day they forfeit their potential—and the potential of the organization.”
2. Overcome your success. “Another irony of teachability is that success often hinders it. Effective people know that what got them there doesn’t keep them there. If you have been successful in the past, beware. And consider this: if what you did yesterday still looks big to you, you haven’t done much today.”
3. Swear off shortcuts. Maxwell recalls a friend of his saying: The longest distance between two points is a shortcut. And he adds, “That’s really true. For everything of value in life, you pay a price. As you desire to grow in a particular are, figure out what it will really take, including the price, and then determine to pay it.”
4. Trade in your pride. “Teachability requires us to admit we don’t know everything, and that can make us look bad. In addition, if we keep learning, we must also keep making mistakes. […] Emerson wrote, ‘For everything you gain, you lose something.’ To gain growth, give up your pride.”
5. Never pay twice for the same mistake. “Teddy Roosevelt asserted, ‘He who makes no mistakes makes no progress.’ That’s true. But the person who keeps making the same mistakes also makes no progress.” Being teachable means that we will make mistakes, and while that is no fun, they bring valuable lessons. About mistakes, Maxwell says the following, “Forget them, but always remember what they taught you. If you don’t, you will pay for them more than once.”
“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” — John Wooden
And after reading all this, the natural question that ensues is: How to improve teachability to never stop growing? If this same question popped up in your head, come back tomorrow to read Maxwell’s three actions to improve teachability.
TODAY: When was the last time you did something for the first time? Ponder this question. Decide to do something that you’ve never done before and in an area where you know nothing about.
FUTURE: Make a point of learning the things of which you know nothing. You can take a class, a course, or simply buy a magazine devoted to a topic completely out of your area of expertise. Not only will you learn new things, but you will also start getting new ideas for your current life and work. How fun is that?! 🙂
Know someone who has a story of teachability and would be interested in sharing it? Please share this post with that person: email, Facebook or Twitter. Thanks!
In yesterday’s post, we read about Dave Kerpen’s incredible story of determination. I received many great emails about this, and while most of you were in awe and somewhat encouraged by the story, there was still a little shadow of a doubt lingering as to whether such persistence would be perceived as rude.
I don’t think so. As long as you do it in a charming and polite way, always emphasizing that you are looking to add value to the person and his/her business, I think you will be fine. Just as Kerpen was.
Want further proof? Let’s take a look at what one of my favorite entrepreneurs says about persistence.
Derek Sivers is an entrepreneurial guru that I greatly admire and respect. You can read the ideas that I’ve highlighted from his book, Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur, in these posts: 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (don’t miss post #5 for a good laugh from a very creative approach to customer service).
Since Sivers is a genius who has the gift of brevity and conciseness, here’s his entire piece, verbatim, on why persistence is polite:
As teenagers, we learned the hard way that if you contact someone and they don’t reply, they’re just not into you. If you keep trying, you must be a total loser.
But in the business world, it’s the opposite. If you don’t keep trying, you’re a loser!
If someone doesn’t get back to you, it probably wasn’t intentional. Everyone is busy, and their situation has nothing to do with you.
Imagine two different scenarios:
1. Someone doesn’t reply, so you get upset and decide they’re evil and clearly meant to insult you. You resent them for life, and speak poorly of them forever.
2. Someone doesn’t reply, so you assume they must be swamped in work. You wait a week, and contact them again. If still no reply, you feel sympathy that they must be really overwhelmed. You wait a week, and try again. If still no reply, you try to reach them a different way.
Now, which one was rude, and which one was polite?
There you have it. It’s simply a mind shift.
Need more? Here’s Sivers in a quick video interview (3:36 min) talking about a story of persistence and politeness. (Note: at the 1:58 min mark approx. there is one phrase—lasting 2 seconds—with strong language.)
Give yourself the gift of being persistent beyond what you ever imagine you could be. You never know what wonderful opportunities will present themselves based on your polite and charming persistence. Try out polite persistence as an experiment. Think of something that you really want but has been very hard to achieve. Once you know what this is, then determine the frequency of your persistence. Will it be daily, weekly, monthly? A combination?
If you’re still not comfortable with this, take a look at this example from Ari Meisel, in his book Less Doing More Living. He tells the following story of how he automated persistence and finally got the info he wanted. See if there’s something that you can do along these lines.
In a building where I teach, Verizon FiOS [Internet] service was supposed to be available. For three years, the Verizon website said it was available, but it wasn’t. There’s an email address that you can write to check on when FiOS will be available at a location, so I wrote to them and set up a [daily, automatic email] until they replied. Finally, after sixty-four days, someone wrote back. “Please stop your annoying reminder service. We don’t know when service will be available in your building.” I responded, “Why didn’t you tell me that sixty-three days ago?”
As you can see, all sorts of experiments can be set up to start training your persistence “muscle” if you think it needs strengthening. I’ll close this post with a great quote and with an invitation to continue to send me emails to let me know your thoughts about this or any other post.
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” – Calvin Coolidge
Have a story of persistence you’d like to share? Send it my way and I’ll make a compilation and publish them in a future post!
ACTION
TODAY: Figure out what your experiment in persistence will be about. Then think about what you have that no one else does. What is your equivalent of Dave Kerpen’s Radio Disney that you can leverage to your advantage over everybody else? Use this when being persistent as it will differentiate you and open many doors.
FUTURE: Try out your experiment. Set your schedule for persistence and stick to it. Remember that this is something that you really want, no matter how small or insignificant (like Meisel, he really wanted to know about the internet service in his building). Then get to work. Only by trying out persistence in little steps will you strengthen and grow it to where you will feel more comfortable shooting for bigger goals each time.
Know someone who could benefit from seeing persistence from a different angle, such as the polite one? Please share this post with them! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
It’s our choice. We can focus on finding a solution or an alternative to the initial plan, or focus on our bad luck, moan, and complain.
Totally our choice, but sometimes it’s not all that easy. In No Limits, leadership guru John C. Maxwell says, “You can’t moan and lead at the same time.” And the same goes for success, “You can’t complain and get ahead at the same time. Moaning about your troubles and moving in the right direction rarely happen together.”
One way of moving forward and avoid feeling sorry for yourself is to personalize the way you see and face adversity and annoyances. Make your point of view about this as unique as you are.
What exactly does this mean?
Maxwell tells the story of how PGA pro golfer Richard Lee handles adversity on the course. When prompted by Maxwell to share the best advice he had ever received, Lee answered, “Welcome the ball.”
Intrigued, Maxwell asked him to explain. “I play golf for a living,” Lee said. “Every shot is important to me. Any shot can either make me or break me in a tournament. Early in my career, my mother-in-law could see how, when I had a bad shot, I would get really disappointed and my negative emotions would start to fill my mind and hurt my play. One day she said to me: ‘Richard, you will always have days when you make bad shots, every golfer does. As you walk toward your ball you will have a decision to make: will I dread seeing the lie of my ball and begin filling my mind with negative thoughts and my body with negative emotions? Or will I welcome the ball and be glad I am a golfer, and realize that I have an opportunity to make a great recovery shot? If you always welcome the ball, regardless of your lie, you will more often make good recovery shots.’ ”
And ever since, wherever Lee’s ball lies, he walks up to it and welcomes the ball, thus making a great difference in his game.
This is a fantastic way of thinking about adversity in terms of making a recovery shot.
How can you personalize the way you see adversity in a way that resonates with you? How can you turn it into something that you welcome and look towards a recovery shot afterward?
“Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records.” – William Arthur Ward
ACTION
TODAY: Take some time to ponder whether you welcome the ball or you get all bent out of shape about annoyances when they happen. How can you welcome the ball?
FUTURE: Murphy’s Law says that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” We’ve all lived through it. O’Toole said that Murphy was an optimist… and O’Malley’s law crowns them all: “If it can’t possibly go wrong, it will.” This is not meant to be pessimistic but to share a bit of Irish popular humor to give you a good laugh. 😉 The reason why I bring this up is because, in a future, when faced with a challenge, you can ask yourself, “What’s the worse that can happen?” and then move forward. If the outcome is as bad as what you thought, you can deal with it as you had anticipated; if it’s not as bad, then all the better!
Know someone who needs to snap out of a funk? Please share this post! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
Today’s post is a short but profound exercise that comes from the fantabulous book No Limits by John C. Maxwell, leadership guru. (The book is really fantastic AND fabulous, so why not combine that into one word?)
Every day think of ways to add value to people. “Spend 5 minutes every evening thinking about who you will see the next day and ask yourself, what can I say to them, give to them, or do for them that will make our time together be memorable, be unexpected and add value to them?”
That’s it. Easy. Simple. Profound. Life-changing for you and for those to whose lives you will add value. Maxwell says, “This exercise will set you apart from 99 percent of all the other people in the world, and if you do this every evening and then revisit the ideas you come up with the next morning to potentially improve them, you’ll be amazed by the difference you can make for other people.”
The value that you add doesn’t have to be in the form of grandiose, elaborate deeds, unless you want to, of course. The author cites the example of having dinner with a couple of friends who were married, and coming up with three ways to add value to them.
First, since he (the friend) had been the publisher of several of Maxwell’s books over many years, the author thought of telling him how much he appreciated helping him grow as an author. Maxwell specifically thanked him for coming up with the title of one of his famous books (Talent is Never Enough)—to show that he remembered and that he was grateful.
Second, Maxwell added how much he admired the couple for their eagerness to learn in every situation, and especially at Maxwell’s conferences (where they would always take a seat in the front row of and take copious notes), despite them being already very successful.
And third, he asked his friend if they could still do another project together: Maxwell wanted his friend to know that he valued enormously his ability to contribute to his life and success, especially because his friend was 82 years old at the time.
In Dr. Kathryn Scanland’s blog, she recall’s Maxwell telling the story of asking his 9-year-old grandson how he was going to be intentional about adding value the next day to the people around him. The boy said he would open as many doors as possible with a smile. At the end of the day, the boy had opened a total of 42 doors, all with a beautiful smile!
So there you have it. Take a look at your calendar every evening and determine what you will be doing the next day and with whom you’ll be meeting. What are the ways in which you can add value?
“It only takes five minutes, but the opportunities to make a difference are endless.” – John C. Maxwell
ACTION
TODAY: Take five minutes to look at your calendar for the rest of the day and determine how you will add value to the people with whom you will meet.
FUTURE: Create the habit of looking at your calendar the evening before and taking 5 minutes to figure out how you will create value for others. Set that as an intention for your meetings the next day. Then give it another 5 minutes the next morning to revisit the ideas and improve them. You will have a beautiful impact on the lives of others, and your life will be all the better for it.
Please add value to someone’s life today by sharing this post! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
In yesterday’s post, the closing quote by author James Altucher was, “Rejection and the fear of rejection is the biggest impediment we face to choosing ourselves.” It reminded me of the importance of dancing with fear and picking ourselves, because no one else will.
We seem to spend an inordinate amount of time waiting to be picked, but the moment we pick ourselves is when we start creating, achieving, and moving forward. Because of this, I wanted to share with you a wonderful passage from the book The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin. Here it is, verbatim:
* * *
Pick Yourself
Pick Yourself by Hugh MacLeod @gapingvoid (click to enlarge)
Authority?
You want the authority to create, to be noticed, and to make a difference? You’re waiting for permission to stand up and speak up and ship?
Sorry, there’s no authority left.
Oprah has left the building. She can’t choose you to be on her show because her show is gone.
YouTube wants you to have your own show now, but they’re not going to call you.
Dick Clark has left the building. He’s not going to be able to get you a record deal or a TV gig because he and his show are long gone. iTunes and a hundred other outlets want you to have your own gig, but they’re not going to call you, either.
Neither is Rodney Dangerfield or the head of programming at Comedy Central. Louis C. K. has famously proven that he doesn’t need the tyranny of the booker—he booked himself. Marc Maron didn’t wait to be cast on Saturday Night Live—he started his own podcast and earned a million listeners.
Our cultural instinct is to wait to get picked. To seek out the permission, authority, and safety that come from a publisher or a talk-show host or even a blogger who says “I pick you.”
Once you reject that impulse and realize that no one is going to select you—that Prince Charming has chosen another house in his search for Cinderella—then you can actually get to work.
The myth that the CEO is going to discover you and nurture you and ask you to join her for lunch is just that, a Hollywood myth.
Once you understand that there are problems waiting to be solved, once you realize that you have all the tools and all the permission you need, then opportunities to contribute abound. The opportunity is not to have your résumé picked from the pile but to lead.
When we take responsibility and eagerly give credit, doors open. When we grab a microphone and speak up, we’re a step closer to doing the work we’re able to do.
Most of all, when we buckle down, confront the lizard brain, and ship our best work, we’re becoming the artists we’re capable of becoming.
No one is going to pick you. Pick yourself.
* * *
Click to enlarge.
Beautifully said. And so true. I am lucky to have one of the printouts of this passage that Seth Godin gave me. It’s a treasure that hangs on the wall of my office. It inspires me every day and motivates me to pick myself, and I want to share it with you in hopes that it will do the same for you. Click on the image on the left to enlarge and print.
What about the lizard at the end?? That’s a reminder of quieting and ignoring your lizard brain as you pick yourself and move in the direction of your dreams. Unless you are in true danger, think of your lizard brain the same way you would of a worrywart aunt: thank her for sharing her (doom and gloom) point of view, and don’t pay attention to it.
“How much responsibility are you willing to take before it’s given to you? – Seth Godin
ACTION
TODAY: Pick yourself! The world needs your gifts. And you’ve been wanting to share them for a long time… Start today.
FUTURE: Create the habit of picking yourself. It’s not a one-and-done thing, it’s a recurrent mindset and attitude to be developed. For those of us who struggle thinking that picking ourselves is arrogant or presumptuous, let me turn it around in the same way it helped me: it’s not selfishness, it’sresponsibility, because it’s what will enable you to help yourself and others achieve goals and dreams.
Love this post as much as I do? Please help me spread the love by sharing it with other people so that they can pick themselves! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
Each one of us has a different definition of success, yet we will all likely agree that no matter what our definition is, the pursuit and attainment of that success will bring us happiness. In his book No Excuses!, business guru Brian Tracy cites Aristotle as saying that the great question each of us must answer is, “How shall we live in order to be happy?”
He goes on to say, “Your ability to ask and answer that question correctly for yourself—and then to follow where your answer leads you—will largely determine whether you achieve your own happiness, and how soon.”
And to get there as soon as possible, we can start by defining what success looks like for each of us. Tracy suggests asking the following questions and answering them as if you could wave a magic wand and make your life perfect in every way.
If your business, work, and career were ideal in every way, what would they look like?
What would you be doing? What sort of company would you work for? What position would you have? How much money would you earn? What kind of people would you work with? And, especially, what would you need to do more or less of to create your perfect career?
If your family life were perfect in every way, what would it look like?
Where would you live, and how would you be living? What kind of a lifestyle would you have? What sort of things would you want to have and do with the members of your family? If you had no limitations and you could wave a magic wand, in what ways would you change your family life today?
If your health were perfect, how would you describe it?
How would you feel? How much would you weigh? How would your levels of health and fitness be different from what they are today? Most of all, what steps could you take immediately to begin moving toward your ideal levels of health and energy?
If your financial situation were ideal, how much would you have in the bank?
How much would you be earning each month and each year from your investments? If you had enough money that you never had to worry about finances again, how much would that be? What steps could you take, starting today, to create your ideal financial life?
Why aren’t you already as successful as you would like to be, and what one discipline would help you the most to achieve all your goals?
What one skill could you develop that would help you to realize more of your goals?
If you could wave a magic wand and be completely disciplined in one area, which one discipline would have the greatest positive impact on your life?
As you begin to lay out your vision of success, pay attention to the very last question in each category (the things that you should be doing more or less of) and the very last three questions.
Self-discipline is the key to achieve what you want; however, it’s very important to lay out a plan first, so that you can then follow it with your self-discipline. For this, Tracy focuses on the Law of Cause and Effect, or sowing and reaping: “This law says that if you want to achieve success in any area, you must determine how success is achieved in that area and then practice those skills and activities repeatedly until you achieve the same results.”
Success guru Kop Kopmeyer aptly says that you must “learn from the experts [because] you will never live long enough to learn it all for yourself.” Remember that success leaves clues!
ACTION
TODAY: Set aside some time to answer the questions above and figure out what your ideal and successful life looks like. As you answer, a clear path will emerge and you will see what you need to do more or less of to head into the direction of your dreams.
FUTURE: Once you know what success looks like for you and what direction you need to go into, figure out who are the foremost, trusted experts in those fields, so that you can learn from them and follow in your footsteps.
Please share this post with someone who could benefit from answering all these questions to define their success, thanks! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
TODAY’S IDEA: 5 Guidelines for a teachable attitude
