On My Failure

I have failed. My office has closed due to a combination of being kicked out by the landlord and never truly getting off the ground to launch myself out of financial ruin. As for me, I am retraining to open again next year whilst selling in the meantime.

I have taken a few days to make my transition. A few days of vegging out and resting. I must admit, taking this failure was hard on me. I am going to the shore for a few days and when I come back, I will be in full gear once again. Finally focused on selling and retraining. The one thing that made failing extremely hard was the relentless actions people have taken to make sure I realized I did not fail and I am not to blame. I don't like that. It made this much harder than it needed to be. I like to get straight to the point and admit my failure because that is the first step to leading a successful rebound. There is no point in blaming other people, factors, things, etc. It all comes down to you and how prepared you were to take on the challenges. When it really comes down to it: I was inadequately prepared for the situation I stepped into.

I want to share these thoughts because failure is necessary to learn. I learned a ton about myself from my failure. I learned my strengths and how I need to develop them more. This should be the approach we take for failing. We should not blame outside factors because you can step around those factors. That is all part of finding a way. Everybody who endeavors on a risky endeavor has outside factors tearing them at the seams. However, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs found ways around them, along with all other self-made millionaires.

When it comes down to it, will you accept the blame of your defeats or do you only want the credits for your victories?

On Mental Strength

Whenever one approaches an endeavor, they must develop the mental strength to overcome the inevitable obstacles and things that go wrong. When overwhelmed with the tremors of adversity, you must remain calm. When thrown into the thrones of success, you must remain humble. These are basic aspects of leadership and how to truly succeed.

When adversity strikes, as we all know it will, if you react through panic then you will never regain your feet. The worst thing you can do is run away from the bear or swim away from the shark. Adversity can sense panic and that is when it clenches its jaws. You must stand your ground with the calmness and certainty that you will pull through, even when staring into the eyes of a tiger in the wide open meadow. You must make yourself bigger. You must make yourself grow. Push yourself past your natural limits and make some noise! Let the world know you are here and you are ready to conquer it. Even if you may think it as improbable as traveling the speed of light. Our mission is not merely to survive, but it is to thrive.

And finally, when success comes in tidal waves, we need not stand on top to show the world how we overcame the mighty wave... or we will fall and fall hard. Remember to be humble. There is nothing wrong with celebrating successes. The thrill is too good not to celebrate. However, it is another to attribute that success wholly to yourself. Nobody succeeds alone. Remember all those that helped you and even attribute your success to them. Then you will not merely attain a quick rise and hard fall story, but you will have your house built on a rock, ready to hold you up through the harshest waves.

How REMARKABLE do you want to be? How far do you want to push yourself to attain that? How much will you grow? How much mental strength will you attain? Will you build your house on sand or a rock? Will you panic or will you strike?

On A Powerful Sentence

I recently lost some motivation and struggled to get up in the morning for a job that I know I love to do. However, everybody has days where they feel like quitting. Everybody has days where they feel like they are not making progress. Finding an office was one of the most frustrating times in my life.

However, I have since turned it around this week. The way I turned it around was really rooted from my demotivation and asking "why?" Why wasn't everything working properly? Why aren't people coming into training? Why have a couple of my reps gone missing? It came down to the question, "Am I helping others?" My answer was no. I thought I was not truly helping anybody. I even felt like I lost the respect of my friends and family. And I spent hours searching for the answers at night with no ability to fall asleep.

Finally, it came down to this: "If I were to die tonight, what would people remember me for tomorrow?" This is pretty powerful. It induced me into extremely deep feelings as far as who I truly felt I could become and how I should get there, and get there as soon as possible. I started reading again after this question, writing, and continuing this blog now.

I began to tell people my thoughts about life again and what I feel motivates people. I am giving speeches to nobody as I walk around alone at times just envisioning myself preaching to a full arena. Now I realize the sentence that truly motivates me when I feel down.

"Live life as if every day is your last day and influencing people is your purpose."

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I laid out my thought process behind this sentence in the hopes that maybe one of you can utilize that process and find your purpose and incite action today.

Make a sentence:

"Live life as if every day is your last day and __________________________ is your purpose."
Read it out loud WITH PASSION every morning.

On NEFAW

NEFAW means No Excuses, Find A Way. This is an extremely powerful mindset to live by on a daily basis. It means no matter what happens during your day, you will find a way to accomplish what you have set out to do. 

This week I have really begun to embrace this. I have been struggling to sign a lease for my office because the owners are taking their time (oddly). However, I anticipated this to be finished last week so I already scheduled group interviews this week. Last night with 15 people present, I walked to Independence Hall and conducted the interview on the lawn put front. I laid out blankets for the recruiting class to sit on as I stood with my PowerPoint on my laptop. Basically, I found a way to run the interview instead of rescheduling them and possibly losing some high quality recruits.

If you live by this principle, you will be truly amazed by how much you can accomplish in your life. It leads you on a path to being truly REMARKABLE!

On Reading

Reading is one of the most important foundations of personal growth. I read books frequently myself, not only self-help, but also things like autobiographies of influential leaders, books about top companies, positive psychology, philosophy, leadership, etc.

While reading, take notes on the books. This creates a learning environment to allow yourself to truly make strides in your personal growth. As you read further, you begin to see patterns between books that show what habits you need to establish to master yourself. 

I further suggest to pick your favorite books and read them with a highlighter and a notebook and go through rereading it several times. Rereading will allow you to hone in on your knowledge and truly refine your skills, while making it easier to establish habits under the constant knowledge that you should.

Reading allows us to realize how REMARKABLE we can truly become and force us to pursue better habits at all times.

On Writing

Apologies to Stephen King for stealing the title of his awesome book "On Writing." If you like to write, read that book!

I write frequently (obviously per this blog). I honestly believe writing down your thoughts is extremely helpful when trying to think through a decision. Whenever I decide on something, I tend to write about it until all my thoughts are on paper. Furthermore, I go back and edit what I wrote. This refines the thoughts I previously wrote down and clearly translates them into something I can effectively explain and communicate. There are not many ways to effectively organize your thoughts and writing is the easiest, most effective method of doing so.

I highly recommend you write on a daily basis, every morning. It can help you sort through your life and whatever important decisions which currently engulf your mind. Write your way into being REMARKABLE.

Also, a good recommendation is to write down 5 things you want to accomplish during the day (Focus Five) and 3 things you are grateful for that happened to you in the past 24 hours (Tetris Effect). These two methods will likely get their own blog posts sometime in the future as well since they are heavy parts of my life.

Writing is good. Writing is powerful. Writing is efficiency. Writing is thinking. Writing is wellbeing. Writing is REMARKABLE.

On Advice

I want to steal one out of Newton's book of physics and say "For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction." This is true when giving advice. For every negative advice, there is an equal but opposite positive advice. A negative advice is something that uses words like "don't" or "can't." Something positive does not have the word not anywhere in it.

The reason I am starting with establishing this basic rule is because negative forms of advice are not effective and may actually be counterproductive. What people tend to focus on is what tends to happen. So when we say "Don't drink and drive," it may be possible that just saying drink and drive in there will produce more drunk drivers. Rather, we should say the equal but opposite positive form "Ride Sober." This has a much more positive connotation to it and people are more likely to follow it's advice.

If you think about it for everything, you can always find the equal, but opposite form of advice.

"Anti-war" becomes "Pro-peace"
"No sexual harassment" becomes "respect others' space"
"No littering" becomes "Recycle/Throw your trash in the trash can"

These are just things that are present in culture. We focus on "no war" and "no sexual harassment," yet we live in a time where these have become more present and are becoming more present over the years.  We need a peace campaign or a respect campaign.

This applies in personal applications as well.
"Don't raise your voice" becomes "Let's calm down and talk"
"Don't buy Pepsi" becomes "Buy Coke" (Coke is better)
"Don't lie to me" becomes "Be honest with me"
"Don't leave dirty dishes in the sink" becomes "Put the dishes in the dishwasher"

It is best to sit and think for a second about how you can spin it in a positive direction and use that form of advice. It is proven that people are more likely to do what you focus on (whether you tell them to do it or not). So focus on the opposite of what you don't want them to do. They are more likely to follow your advice.

On Truth

"The truth is like a lion. You don't have to defend it. Just let it loose and it will defend itself."
-St. Augustine.

Honesty and Integrity are possibly the two strongest characteristics one can have. Not just honesty and integrity with others, but also with yourself. These traits can be the most powerful forces when driving yourself through life. Others will trust you whole heartedly.

I also honestly believe that lying severely damages relationships. It may be nothing at first but lies can build up and cripple a relationship, even if the other person doesn't know you ever lied. You know. And subconsciously, that will damage you and your relationships.

Top CEO's unanimously voted on honesty as the number one trait needed to rise in the rankings of a company. Honesty builds influence with others and allows you to truly lead.