Failure & Courage

- by Matt Leedham

I recently read an ancient proverb that got me thinking about my own fears and anxieties.

“Fear and courage are brothers.”

How true! I would also go so far as to add failure to the equation – surely failure, fear, and courage are all siblings (of a very dysfunctional family).

In a recent post (“Congratulations, You Failed!”), I addressed failure's relationship with success. It would appear that a common trait among the world’s most famous achievers is the ability to fail and keep trying. In fact, the real key to achievement seems to be failing so many times that the average person would give up. But it is at this point that the achiever distinguishes themselves from the average person. It is at this point that the achiever perseveres. He or she learns from the failure one more time…getting just a little closer to success.

But let’s back up for a second and revisit the average person again. I have found, both through personal experience and working with friends and colleagues, that fear of failure is often more of an issue than failure itself. I’m sure you’ve all heard the famous quote made by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 during his inaugural address: “…the only thing we have to fear is, fear itself.” What most people don’t know is that he goes on to say that fear “paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

How true! It is the fear of failure that halts most of our personal progress, achievement, and happiness. If we could all just get comfortable with failure and the fear that comes with the potential of failure, we will have moved mountains in our lives.

So, what it is that allows the great achievers to persevere and the average person to overcome that fear of failure? In one word: courage.

I challenge you to be courageous today. No, that doesn’t mean you need to charge off into the battlefield with reckless abandon like Mel Gibson in Braveheart. Be courageous in your own little way. Look within yourself and identify the fear that sits behind your doubt. What is it about? How can you face that fear today? In what small way can you take one step forward?

“Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I'll try

again tomorrow.” - Mary Anne Radmacher

Believe it. Achieve it

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10,000 Hours of Work to Succeed, 10,000 Hours of Work...

- by Jaime Willis

One of the main premises of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, “Outliers,” is that success has much less to do with our innate skills and abilities and much more to do with hard work and practice. Gladwell goes so far as to quantify the amount of hard work required to be successful: 10,000 hours.

“The emerging picture from [research on expertise and talent] is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything.” Daniel Levitin, quoted on page 40 of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

Gladwell illustrates this principle with a 1990’s study by psychologist K. Anders Ericsson. Ericsson asked two colleagues at Berlin’s elite Academy of Music to divide the school’s violinists into three groups – the students with the potential to become world-class soloists, students who were deemed to be just “good,” and finally students who would likely never play professionally. Ericsson then asked all three groups the same question: over the course of your entire career, how many hours have you practiced? By the age of twenty, the students in the elite group had each totaled ten-thousand hours of practice. The good students had totaled about eight-thousand hours, while the poorest students had practiced just over four-thousand hours.

Think about the level of perseverance and determination that the world-class experts displayed to get ten thousand hours of practice time in. The violinists in the elite group began at age 5 (as did most students in the other two groups) practicing two or three hours per week. But by age nine, they were practicing six hours each week, eight hours a week by age twelve, sixteen hours a week by age fourteen and so on.

For a middle or high school student to spend one to two work days a week on their violin practice means they had to be dedicated. I’m sure that if we interviewed those students today, they would tell us the all the stuff they missed out on because they were focused on playing violin.

What is also interesting to note is that the study found no “naturals;” students who were elite violinists without putting in the ten thousand hours of practice.

What lessons can we learn from this?

1. There is literally NO substitute for hard work. If you want to succeed, you’d better get started logging in the time now.

2. Getting to 10,000 hours (over 3.5 years of 8-hour work days) requires determination and perseverance. You need to set your mind on the goal and attend to it with a laser-like focus. In a race 10,000 hours long, there are bound to be obstacles and challenges, set-backs and disappointments. Don’t let these be more than a temporary stumbling block in your path to success.

3. There is no doubt in my mind that world-class experts on any subject—folks who have put in the 10,000 hours of work to become successful—had help. The elite violinists likely had supportive parents, music tutors, band directors, teachers, mentors, and others all helping them along the way. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to run a marathon if no one was allowed to cheer on the runners? In your success marathon, you must build your support group – a mentor, a coach, teachers and tutors, cheerleaders—whoever you need to have the resources and assistance to make it to the finish line.

I’ll leave you with Albert Einstein’s insight on the issue: “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

Believe it! Achieve It!

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Congratulations, You Failed!

- by Matt Leedham

I decided I wanted to write on this topic the other night, lying fully awake in my bed. I think it was my way of getting back in the saddle. Addressing failure head on to see what comes of it. Maybe I needed a little help to realize that “failure is an event, not a person.” (Chuck Gallozzi).

Then I remembered hearing that interesting story

about Thomas Edison. The light bulb had been invented but was not commercially viable because it lacked the proper filament that would sustain electric light for long periods of time. This was Edison’s greatest contribution – discovering the right solution that would bring electric light to the masses. It is reported by both Edison and other sources that his experiments failed more than 10,000 times. He is quoted as saying, “I haven’t failed 10,000 times. I haven’t even failed once. I have successfully discovered 10,000 ways that will not work.” His point being, of course, that by eliminating the wrong ways to do something only brings you one step closer to figuring out the right way.

Thomas J. Watson, Founder of IBM seems to agree with Edison: “Would you like me to give you a formula for…success? It’s quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure.” Watson goes on to say, “You’re thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all…you can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it. So, go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember, that’s where you’ll find success. On the far side.”

The far side, indeed.

It can feel that way sometimes, can’t it? The far side. For many of us, failure is a tough pill to swallow. Sometimes even the fear of failure is enough to crush your spirit.

“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.” - William Shakespeare.

How do you overcome that feeling so that you can learn from the failure and try again? Courage and perspective.

Courage will be addressed in Part 2 of this post on failure. And I hope this post is putting things in perspective for you.

History’s best achievers, not only of great feats but of personal happiness, have failed massively. If you can learn from your experiences, you will be one step closer, my friends.

Be relentless and keep things in perspective.

PS…if you have time, watch this 8 minute video produced by Honda. As you may know, Honda is one of the most respected automotive companies in the world. In the racing community, their engines are top of the line. Think they haven’t failed miserably? Think again.

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Please feel free to comment on our posts, email us and ask questions, or forward blog posts on to your friends. We'd love to hear from you! Thanks for reading.

Today's Going to Be a GREAT Day!

- by Jaime Willis

In the ten plus years I’ve coached students to do better on standardized tests, there is one sentence that almost all of my students utter that makes me STABBY.

“I’m bad at test taking.”

Firstly, test-taking ability is not genetic, but people certainly act that way. As if their test-taking ability was as immutable as the size of their feet or the number of freckles on their face. This way, they don’t have to take responsibility for the outcome on their exams—it isn’t them, it’s that they lack the ‘test-taking gene.’ Right? No! The ability to do well on tests is a skill that anyone can learn and excel at, given time, attention, and a fair amount of practice.

What that pronouncement says to me is nothing more than, “I give up.” Even worse than that, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more negative you are about your own abilities, the more likely that you follow that path to failure.

One of the things Matt and I feel very strongly about is the need to PRIME yourself to be successful. This doesn’t mean that you have to shout from the rooftops about how amazing you are all the time (that would be really obnoxious!), but you do need to reframe your thinking to focus on the positives and success instead of on the negatives and possible failure.

Priming yourself to succeed is a very deliberate, conscious act.

It is waking up every morning and deliberately being happy about the day, whether you feel that way at first or not. (I personally like to walk to work to “All I Do is Win” by DJ Khaled).
It is focusing on the positives, not the negatives. “I’m working on getting better at remembering people’s names, “ not, “I’m so forgetful.”

“I am so happy that I’m working hard on becoming healthy” instead of “I can’t believe how fat I let myself get.”

I challenge you to reframe one of your goals so you are completely focused on the positive and see if your results improve!

Believe it. Achieve It.

Momentum & Inertia

- by Matt Leedham

As a child, I can remember riding my little BMX bicycle with pads on the handle bar and cross bar. I would run out of the house, pick it up off the driveway and go shooting off into the neighborhood to join my friends. My favorite part was getting started. I’d put the right pedal as high as it would go on its rotation and stand straight up on it so that I was well above the bike. My weight would push the pedal down quickly, and I would get my first jolt of movement.

Once I got moving though, it seemed much easier to increase my speed or just let my bike carry me down the road without much effort at all. Why is that?

The law of inertia states that objects at rest tend to stay at rest, and objects in motion tend to stay in motion – that’s why it takes a little extra effort to get started. But once momentum sets it, you’re on your way!

What’s true for bicycles, cars, trains, and planes is also true for motivation, confidence, achievement, and happiness.

“Momentum fuels motivation. It keeps you going” writes Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, founders of 37 Signals. They’re referring to employee motivation in their book Rework. But the same is true for personal goal setting and achievement.

The key to momentum and overcoming the law of inertia (while at rest) in our personal lives is small wins.

Small wins help you see your progress and fuel the fire to keep going. When setting big, aggressive personal goals, break them down into bite-size chunks by creating:

1. Achievable wins along the way that serve as signposts and milestones indicating your progression toward success,

2. Regular “pulse checks” with yourself to know that you are progressing as planned or need to tweak your path, and

3. A very specific action plan that you can work on today, checking things off as you go.

And there is one more step that is absolutely critical to keep the momentum going. You must celebrate the small wins!

Tell your friends and family, treat yourself to something you enjoy, or just pat yourself of the back and be proud that you are making progress!

The Importance of Core Values

- by Matt Leedham

Most people look at me sideways when I mention personal values or core values. I’m sure it’s because they either think of the lame corporate values that executives try to push down on their employees, or they think of moral or religious values. Let me spare you all of the spiritual, religious, corporate, or new-age mumbo jumbo and get right to the point – core values have an extremely practical application when it comes to goal setting and goal execution.

Simply put, your personal core values serve as a decision filter for the 10,000+ decisions you make each day. Decisions are conscious choices with real consequences that will either help us achieve our goals, or lead us astray. Unknowingly, most of us make decisions with little to no regard for our personal values. And some decisions carry weight, making it absolutely critical that we have our core values in order before we charge off into another day of a thousand questions.

What are values? How do you come up with your core values?
Start by thinking about someone you admire – either a family member, a friend, or someone you’ve read about in the news or history books. What qualities did they have that made them special? Was it unrelenting integrity? Generosity? Did they put their family first? Were they adventuresome? Why are you drawn to them? Core values can then be determined by the qualities it takes to put those things first in your life. In other words, if presented with two choices, you would choose this value over something else.

Let’s look at an example of how these values might act as your decision filter.
After the birth of your first child last month, you’ve recently put some time into reflecting on your core values, and you review them regularly. Your core values, as you’ve ranked them, are 1) Family First, 2) Service to Others, and 3) Explore the world.

Your best friend calls to tell you that there’s an airfare sale to Las Vegas this weekend and that the two of you should go live it up while prices are cheap. You’ve never been to Vegas and it sure sounds like fun!

What do you do?

Does going to Vegas on the spur of the moment fit your core values? It’s a new city, and would meet your criteria for value #3. But clearly, leaving your spouse behind with a newborn violates your most important core value.

Image Courtesy of Destination360

What makes it so clear is defining your values prior to the tough decisions. If you haven’t taken the time to think about and write down your values, these decisions become murky and all of sudden you find yourself at the craps table in Mandalay Bay.

Living your personal values takes discipline, but if practiced over time, you will find yourself “living from the core” and grounded in making the right choices in your life.

Next question to ask – how will your core values impact what you choose as your life goals this year?

Aligning your core values and personal goals will dramatically increase your likelihood for success and happiness.

Goal Survivor

- by Jaime Willis

Good Morning Achievers! I'm posting this from gorgeous Italy where I am visiting my best friend who moved here earlier this year. If you follow our twitter feed or facebook page, you'll know I'm making goals happen this week. I enjoyed a quick visit to Madrid, checking another city off of my goal list, and we are leaving tomorrow for Greece, so I'll be able to check yet another city off my list before the week is out. Anyway, on to my regular posting...

Recently, I participated in a professional development day at work. One of the teamwork exercises we were tasked with is probably familiar to many of you--we were asked to prioritize a short inventory of things that would aid us in surviving after a winter plane crash in the Canadian Arctic.* After ranking the items on our own, we were given a short period of time to work as a team to create a team ranking of the same 15 items. Finally, the facilitator would give us the rankings assigned to the items by survivalist experts and we could compare both our individual and team scores to those of the experts.

*If you are interested in doing this activity first on your own, feel free to click on this link and scroll down to the "Problem Solving" section of that page.

As soon as we were able to begin our individual rankings, I began by creating my survival goal and then ranked the items as they impacted my ability to reach that goal. I figured that my best chance for survival was to be alive when the rescuers showed up, so I prioritized the items in favor of making camp -- having sufficient heat and shelter to combat hypothermia, having access to clean water and the ability to find/cook food, and finally the ability to signal to rescuers. Once I decided to make camp and prioritized the greatest risks of death, I was ready to rank my items.

When our team began talking through the rankings, I shared my strategy and encouraged the group to agree on a survival goal and then prioritize items from there. Although several members of my group initially agreed, many members were really focused on ensuring that their personal top items received top ranking in the team activity. Which is why, at the end of our discussion, snowshoes and rope were ranked higher than anything else on the list.

Unsurprisingly, our team did not fair well against the survival experts. What was surprising was that our team's score was still better than all but three (including mine--yay!) of our teams individual ranking scores. I think survival was truly won or lost not by the items themselves, but by the defined goal or lack thereof by the players.

How can you expect to succeed when you haven't properly defined what success looks like? You can define your success by following a few simple steps:

1) Define your core values and know your skill-set. In the above exercise, it was amazing how many of my colleagues flippantly stated that they would "probably die" if they were really attempting to survive a plane crash. Not me. "Choose Life" is a very strong core value of mine and I strategized accordingly. At the same time, however, I knew that hiking and orienteering are not my strong suit, so I quickly discarded the option of hiking out and opted to create a camp while waiting for rescue.

2) Define your goal and figure out what is required to make that goal happen. For me, the defined goal was to "survive the plane crash until rescued by eliminating as many high risks of death as possible." I knew that being cold and wet would likely kill me first, so heat/shelter was my top priority. After that, a clean water supply was critical to avoiding deadly dehydration. Then, access to some form of food would allow me to survive the weeks and even months until rescue was possible. Lastly, in the event that rescue arrived, I figured that having ways to signal my precise location would aid rescuers.

3) Choose tasks and resources that fit your goal requirements. If I were given additional time on the above activity, I would have begun outlining my own order of operations with the resources I'd chosen. First, I'd build a fire and get dry & warm. Then, I'd build a shelter to ensure that I could stay dry and warm long-term. Only after those two tasks were complete would I worry about water and food, and eventually signally for help.

I hope you can use this information to begin road-mapping your own goal survival today!

Don't Let Your Feelings Get in the Way

- by Matt Leedham

“It’s not how you feel, it’s what you plan to do.” - Warren Rustand

I’m not going to harp on this one because it speaks for itself. Think about it.

“I don’t feel like going to the gym.”
“I don’t feel like getting up early to work on that business plan.”
“I don’t feel like going over to the in-laws this Sunday.”

If we all operated based on how we felt, guess where we’d be. Nowhere. It’s not how you feel, it’s what you plan to do. Each of us makes a conscious decision to tackle a goal or not based feelings, our gut emotions, desires, ambitions, etc. However, once the decision is made, feelings need to go out the window. Especially if you care about achieving the goal.

I’ve run two marathons in the last 5 years. The first one was the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, DC. I “hit the wall” at mile 17 and limped my way to the finish line 9 miles later in 4 hours and 34 minutes. That was a very disappointing time for me – my goal was 4 hours. Why didn’t I achieve the goal?

Because I didn’t feel like pushing through the pain to achieve my goal. I stopped. I drank water. I stretched. I walked. I stopped again. And for the next few years, I regretted that I let my feelings get in the way of my goal.

This past February, I ran a marathon in Austin, TX. I crossed the finish line in 3 hours and 42 minutes. Why did I not only achieve my goal, but crush it?

Well, I certainly didn’t feel any different (or look in any less agony - see picture). I definitely wanted to stop, stretch, drink water, and give up. But this time, I would not let myself stop moving. I didn’t care that my pace was a 7:50 minute mile on miles 1-19, and then slowly decreased to 9:10 on miles 20-24. I told myself, “just keep moving.” And before I knew it, I was circling the Texas State Capitol building and sprinting down North Congress Avenue looking at that big, red, digital race clock…well under 4 hours.

I worked on that goal for 4 months through the harshest DC winter in decades. It was what I planned to do. I’ll be damned if I was going to let my feelings get in the way.

Don’t just dream it, achieve it!