Do not ever settle for second best in yourself or your work. Our lack of ambition can be a life experience killer and keep us from truly seeing the best version of ourselves. We need to be obsessed with our ambitions. Until you do that you’re going to leave great powers, passion, and limitless rewards on the table.
We’ve all hit that ceiling in life and work where we just are depleted. When we hit this burn out ceiling we have two very simple choices in front of us: you can take some time off or become obsessed. If you’re average, you’re going to hit the button for break time. And, you know what, that’s okay. But like a runner hitting the wall, I tend to choose the later, and just get straight obsessed. Doing this I find energy, instead of depleting it. Doesn’t sound right, but it’s been proven true over and over again. If you’re feeling exhausted, check in with yourself before you go any further and validate your purpose. It might be you’ve just gotten off track.
Take a look back at your career or life and a goal you just smashed. You didn’t just hit one goal and call it quits. I’m sure there are many goals you hit after that first big one and found a whole series of goals, each more challenging than the others. That is a great example of having passionate obsession. This purpose made you feel great in every part of your being and made you jazzed to get out of bed each morning. What’s the one thing that just gets you out of bed about your work? It’s there. If you don’t want to be miserable, you need to give yourself a grand purpose every day. Don’t settle. Settling is where motivation goes to die.
We aim to low. Aim high and the details will take care of themselves. You aren’t clairvoyant, so stop trying to be one and let fear get the best of you. Make yourself some incredible promises that will make you rise to the challenge. Don’t cast shallow and expect to land big fish. It is a great business practice to aim for the Milky Way galaxy because by doing so you know you will at least get the moon.
Fear is okay. Give it a great big long embrace. Let yourself feel afraid. It’s your indication that you are pushing yourself and it will move you forward. If you don’t feel fear from time to time, you’re way to comfortable. This should be avoided because it means you’re not growing. My best growth spurts always preceded with some wicked fear and uncertainty about what I was jumping into. You feel stagnant? Better learn how to swim to a bigger pond. Branching out into a field totally unknown is a great hop in that direction you can take.
Haters, they will come in droves. The more you have following you and trolling, means you’re on the right path. Haters cannot stand successful people.
There’s no such thing as bad publicity. – Very old saying from someone.
Haters can totally be used for great free publicity. Think about it this way, would you pick on an insignificant business? No one does that. Only those who are important and making some inroads are the targets. Here’s the other added benefit of haters, they make us much more resilient. They help us get a thicker skin for next. They can fuel your passion to prove them wrong. Use them wisely.
To tie everything together, embrace the suck. Being exceptional in your work and life means you have to embrace a growth mindset. You need to set very high expectations that may even seem at the moment impossible. Make friends with trolls and haters, they can do a lot of work for you.
Have a great rest of the week as you head into Friday. I’ll check in again with a video this weekend for your off time. First, earn your Friday and weekend off!
✌🏻 Shawn
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