Tag: work

Categories
motivation

Failure is an Option if You Want Success

cartoon of a girl and a monster. The monster is eating someone. A girl says, "You see Roger? This is why I don't like facing my fears."

The fear of failure grips us all. Who wants to look foolish? All of us would like to nail a challenge the first time. We all would like to appear perfect, flawless and successful.

The problem is that none of us know what will be successful from one moment to the next. What worked last year doesn’t this year. What doesn’t work now may be a viral success in the future.

We can create, but we can’t guarantee our creations will be a success. Hollywood is a great example. How many movies miss the mark? Yet nobody working on a movie wants it to be a bomb. How many movies were failures when they first came out, only to become cult classics?

Failure is an option if you want to create anything, try anything new or make a difference. Success doesn’t come from doing everything successfully. Success comes from showing up and doing the work consistently.

Categories
motivation

The Average Success

Boy stands on top of a box that says, "average." A girl says, "Are you going to keep standing here until everyone says you're above average?"
© 2019 Kevin Spear

Is success only reserved for the rich and geniuses? If success has alluded you, is there any hope? 

The average man who wins what we call success is not a genius. He is a man who has merely the ordinary qualities… who has developed those ordinary qualities to a more than ordinary degree.

Theodore Roosevelt

It is true some people are naturally gifted and can do things the rest of us only dream of. But there are naturally gifted people that will remain in obscurity. All of us have heard the story of a gifted athlete that couldn’t control himself and lost the contract. Each hometown has the story of their talented hero that could never get their act together.

Don’t worry about some who have talents you can only dream of. Develop what you have and use it to your fullest.

  • Be a lifelong learner
  • Learn something new every day
  • Develop goals and work towards them
    • This allows you to define what success looks like to you
  • Do something uncomfortable that makes you grow

Keep plugging away. If success has alluded you until now, you have today to develop your ordinary qualities.

Categories
motivation productivity

Working Hard or Hardly Working

I used to believe that hard work was the only thing that makes a person or business prosper. While I believe it is still key, I have observed that hard work is only part of the formula.

Hard work can only get a person so far if they are not kind and empathetic towards coworkers and clients. A person can do superior work, but nobody wants to do business with them because they are a bear to be around. Our emotional intelligence, or EQ, is as important as our IQ.

Hard work doesn’t mean much if a person is working hard at the wrong things. Anyone can work hard at digging a hole, but is the hole good for anything? Does it have a purpose? Is the action in line with the company’s goals?

Hard, good work is essential. It is the fuel that powers creation. It creates value. But hard work without vital relationships and purposeful focus is like the Myth of Sisyphus. A person can roll that boulder up a hill, only to see it roll down and repeat the action.

Categories
Business teaching

Teaching in Order to Learn

It amazes me whenever it happens. Whenever I teach, I learn just as much as the students. I have seen it when I lead kids in large group on a Sunday morning. And I have seen it in the workplace as well. 

For the last two weeks at work, I’ve had the opportunity to teach a person my duties. I’ve been in my role for under ten months and there are many things about my job that are still new to me. The person who taught me retired in late June. Since then, I have been applying what she taught me. Now I have the chance to do the same for another person.

As I have shown her the systems, the exceptions and the why behind the way we do things, I have been energized. Sure, I am not using the same words, and every experience is different. In fact, that is part of the teaching/learning process that thrills me. I can paraphrase what I was taught and see the results in a whole new way.

We have this tendency to believe once we are done with our formal schooling, we are done with education. This fallacy keeps us from growing. I have found it is much better to keep learning. And one of the best ways to learn is to teach others what we do.

Blogging is one way we can do that. And that is why I am going continue writing about my experiences and the lessons I’ve learned through being a writer, illustrator, and a graphics manager.

Categories
Book Review growth

Genius and goal setting

Quote: "Genius is the ability to clearly visualize the objective." Dan Miller

I am reading, 48 Days to the Work You Love. The above quote was in his chapter on change. It reminded me of Albert Einstein’s quotes on the importance of imagination. 

It takes a massive amount of imagination and faith to visualize the future. With imagination, we can see what has yet to be developed. With faith, we can pursue something others can not.

When President Kennedy said the United States would put a man on the moon by the end of the nineteen-sixties, it was technically impossible. Yet it was a vision the country embraced and did. It took courage, faith and a little vision casting.

Dan Miller’s quote just change my definition of genius.