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 VoiceMails

I just redid my voicemail. I just realized how boring they are by calling my representatives and leaving messages. Also in The Little Red Book Of Selling, I remember Jeffrey Gittomer going on a rant about voicemails. And he is right.

What is the point of a voicemail that says "I cannot come to the phone right now but leave a message." I mean obviously you cannot come to the phone right now... either that or you are ignoring me. I called to talk to you, not to hear why you cannot answer.

Be creative with voicemail. The purpose of this blog is to promote being REMARKABLE and your voicemail can provide that!

Mine is:

"Hello, this is Tim Fenning, I am too busy swing dancing to answer the phone but leave your credit card information and I will be happy to put your order for a Cutco Kitchen through when I am done dancing."

Is yours off the wall?

On My Current Growth

Since I am currently running an office, I am learning SO much about myself. I am only beginning to really grab a footing on the basic operations of the business and really setting my office up for success. Most importantly, I am discovering things about myself that I didn't realize I truly had before. I can be very tough on somebody if I have to be, for example. Also, I am realizing key weaknesses. Not just weaknesses that somebody else can really make up for me. I mean weaknesses in my core character. I am developing these every day. I am trying to gain more integrity and honesty on a daily basis. 

It isn't until you leave your comfort zone until you truly learn about yourself. That is where you can truly grow into a better person. I am extremely excited because I know at the end of this year, I will have grown more than I ever had in previous years. And the goal is to grow more and more every single year.

Side Note: I am so thankful to all those who message me about my blog and thanking me for it. It really inspires me to keep going!

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 The Journey

It is proven by positive psychology that achieving a goal provides life satisfaction for an individual. However, it is not the actual success providing the satisfaction. It is the journey of getting there. We are happiest when we are pushing for a goal and stretching our comfort zone to get there. Many people lose sight of this. They settle for mediocrity because they write off a goal before they even start. Yes, a goal creates a struggle to get there (if it doesn't, you're goal is not big enough)... and with any struggle comes frustration and disappointment but overcoming these obstacles and not giving up on something we dream of really makes us feel special. It makes us feel like we have a purpose (other than filing papers).

I encourage you to go for it. What have you been dreaming of?

My friend, Conor Spellane, has been dreaming of becoming a guitarist all his life and he is a phenomenal one at that. He wants to do it for a living. He started a band called Panic In Eden and they are just great. The best part is they are beginning to make some headway in LA! I am not saying they are big yet. They are not close yet. But I am sure Conor is truly feeling a wellbeing in his life despite the struggles and frustrations that come with being a rising musician.

Shoot for your dreams. A college degree is nice but do not just follow the rules of society. Do not just get a job that you hate so you can continue hating your job. Break the status quo. Do what you were designed to do! Do what you dream to do! Do it with passion! You can truly become remarkable. Just be yourself. Shoot for your own goals to find true wellbeing. It is about the journey of getting there.

Do you want a journey to a cubicle or a journey to your life's ambitions?

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."

-----

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 Culture

I want to briefly go over the steps I follow to building a culture in my office. This can be applied in other situations such as raising a family, teaching a class, etc.

Step 1:
Define who you are in 7-10 words.
I am the perfect blend of weirdness and intellectualism.

Step 2:
Define your culture by replacing "I am"with "It is" in the previous sentence.
It is the perfect blend of weirdness and intellectualism.

Your culture should be who you are. Do not try to establish somebody else's culture because it probably will not match your personality. Make sure your culture is authentic for you!

Now to build the culture, you need to determine how you will portray this. I have a room dedicated to being remarkable and different in the heart of my office. It will be filled with intellectual things such as self-help books and leadership quotes, accompanied with Dr. Seuss books and cat memes.

Now that you have your why (I believe in the perfect blend of weirdness and intellectualism) and your what (manager, teacher, mother, etc.), you need your how to connect the two. How will you portray why you live through what you do? This answer is the answer to unlocking your culture.

On Strengths

I highly recommend you read a book call StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. It is a great read but most importantly, you can take a strengths test online and it will give you an entire report on how to use your  strengths to the fullest extent.

We need to focus on utilizing our strengths and improving our strengths, rather than improving our weaknesses. When we focus on just improving our weaknesses, our strengths remain mediocre and our weaknesses become mediocre (maybe) and all we get is one giant mediocre person. When we focus our intensity into improving our strengths, we develop certain traits to a point that others admire. We excel in some things and do not do well in others. The key is finding other people to surround you that truly excel in those traits in which we are weak.

For example, Walt Disney was extremely creative and visionary. Roy Disney was organized with a businessman mindset. Together, they made Disney the greatest motion picture company in the world, a company that represents true happiness, and a company that has impacted most of our lives while growing up. But these grand accomplishments could not happen with only one of them at the helm. Walt needed Roy and Roy needed Walt. They were strong in different areas and it cumulated into greatness.

Find your strengths and develop them. Hone in your talents to the point where they become truly REMARKABLE! Find others to cover up your weaknesses. That is team work. Nobody can do great things alone. Even Jesus needed 12 others.

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 Shortcuts

It is rare that shortcuts are a good idea. Shortcuts are usually taken with the mentality of, this will get me to my end destination quicker. However, nobody ever picked up a guitar and started playing Stairway To Heaven. Usually they start with something like Smoke On The Water. You need to learn each step as you go along. Even if you tried to learn Stairway To Heaven and that is all you did until you mastered it, you still have not learned the fundamentals like chords, proper finger technique, or scales. After learning Stairway, you will fall because you do not yet know how to create songs. You do not know how to learn songs. And you probably do not even play Stairway To Heaven correctly.

Apply this to other aspects of life. Creating a business: if you try to grow too fast, you will fall since you do not have the people in the organization capable of holding up your company. Being a student: If you do not study throughout the year, your grades will hurt at the end.

Always remember, if a path feels like it will be hard, but it is the correct way of doing it, then do it every time. It is easier in the long run.

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 Lending A Hand

There is nothing more powerful than something as small as helping another person in some small way. Little things really add up to big things and people forget this in their every day lives. There are so many opportunities to help other people every day and don't forget it! Keep an eye out every day and if an opportunity presents itself just lend a hand! It is so simple. Just give somebody else a small piece of your time!

On Emotions

During my reading binge over the past few years, I started to realize the subtle message they delivered about emotions, but it really hammered home when I read about Yoga philosophies. First, I want to establish that we choose our emotions. Nobody makes us angry, sad, happy, etc. It is your CHOICE to be angry, sad, happy, etc. 

When I was reading about yoga, one of the things that struck me most about the emotional aspect is the control of your emotions. This arose while I read the Samurai Code as well. You have to control your emotions to drive you to better results. You must be angry when you are supposed to be, sad when you are supposed to be, along with happy when you are supposed to be.

This is an important distinction. It is human nature to let your results drive your emotions. When things go wrong, our emotions go wrong. This will send us in a downward spiral. Also if things go right, we become content... and then things go wrong. 

Also, this means suppressing one's emotions is ineffective as well. You still let results drive your emotions but just because you don't tell anybody about it, does not mean you are not in an emotionally fragile state.

So use emotions to drive results! For example, Jesus used anger in the temple to show it was a place of respect and worship. Gandhi used sorrow to try to unite Hindus and Muslims in a newly free nation. Steve Jobs used excitement to realize his visionary products.

Similarly, you must grieve when you need to grieve and be joyous when you need to be joyous. Just remember, you need to use these emotions to drive results. Choose what emotion you want and utilize it to become 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 Life Changes

Many times people find themselves in a position where their life will change drastically. Right now many people, including myself, are graduating from college. This is a pivotal time but when you form your life, you have to remember a few fundamentals that apply to every change and you can become successful in whatever you do.

First, whatever you do in your free time defines who you will become. Do not waste time doing nothing or watching too much television. Spend your free time active and doing things. Life will become far more enjoyable and if you do something consistently, like play in your room with physics like Einstein or start a new business or read personal growth books or write poetry or read this blog, you can become a master of that task over time. Do you want to master watching tv or writing poetry?

Second, embrace change. Without change, nothing gets better. You need life to change to move somewhere in life. Always remember to embrace change, even if it is bad, because every change is an opportunity to do something great!

And finally, have a plan. If life is changing, make a plan to handle that change. Many times a plan does not work for the little details but making one helps you achieve the final destination since you already know how to get there.

Good luck in life people! Be REMARKABLE!

On Motivation

There are many differences between highly productive people and not so productive people and motivation is one of the key differences. Most people believe to do something, you need to be motivated to do it. "I will go to the gym when I feel like it." I don't care who you are, if you are sitting on the couch watching tv, nothing about that will motivate you to go to the gym. They key to motivation is to start doing it and THEN motivation comes to you. If you get your gym bag go to your car and start driving, are you likely to go to the gym? Yes!

You need to act your way into feeling! (This comes from John C. Maxwell somewhere). Think about what you need to do to make your business go, to get good grades, to work, get in shape, etc. Most likely you can envision where you want to be, but to get there, you need to do "annoying" daily tasks. Do not wait for motivation to make you do these acts. Just do it (Nike). 

"Being a professional is doing the things you love on the days you don't feel like doing them."

-Julius Erving

The key to being REMARKABLE is doing the little things. They always add up.

On Life Balance

Balance in life is dependent on your own happiness levels. If you love work and life then balancing it is not a trick of time, it is a trick of optimal life satisfaction. For self-employed people, entrepreneurs, and students, it is extremely important to learn balance. Much of balance comes from energy management. You need to put the same amount of energy into your family life, your social life, and your work life. If you keep your energy levels up high, people will not blame you for spending time at work. You need to show your family and friends that you love them by giving them your full attention whenever you are with them. Make sure you schedule important things for all circles in your life and attend them.

Time is a factor as well. You need to spend time with each circle to optimize your satisfaction levels. Maybe some weeks, you spend more time working than others. That is natural for anything other than a 9-5 job. I suggest each week you sit down and work out your schedule. You start by plugging in all of the most important things. Then you list how many hours you want to spend with each circle. Then you fill out your schedule accordingly. However, the amount of time you spend in each circle will not mean much if you do not bring your full attention during that time! ENERGY IS KEY!

Without energy, how can you be REMARKABLE?

On Studying

I am currently studying hard for a math exam tomorrow that is the final and biggest exam in my career at PSU. To study, you need to get in the zone. I play light music on my headphones, something like Norah Jones, and just go to town! GET AWAY FROM COMPUTERS!!!!!! (I am leaving this computer ridden building in a minute.) 

I believe you can learn all the information in a very quick time. The key to taking an exam is getting enough sleep the night before because you learn in your sleep. Do not study within an hour before the exam and do whatever you can to relax and be confident. That is half the battle. I have been at my best when I go into an exam telling myself that I know everything (whether I do or do not.) I utilized this system to its fullest potential when I hit Dean's List this time last year.

Happy Studying and Good Luck!!

On Crunch Time

During a time period in which you have to really push yourself to get results, it is important to step up to the challenge and face it head on. I have to admit, I have not done this during many opportunities to do so, but it unleashes your full potential and pushes you through a period of rapid growth. Once you realize you are capable of doing more than you give yourself credit for, you begin to truly excel at a higher level.

We see this many times in sports where a player breaks out during the playoffs and elevates their performance to another level. What typically happens is this performance allows them to raise themselves to a higher level in the following season because they have unlocked a new potential for themselves.

Accept crunch times or push weeks as a growth period and you can grow faster than most people around you. Challenge yourself to become truly REMARKABLE!