Hire yourself today for the critical role of

Director of Success and Happiness for your life.

Success and happiness are so often a choice.

It is easy for each of us to get stuck and end up with neither.

Or we adopt a belief system that defers responsibility and ownership to others.

When I chose to hire myself there was a shift.

Utter failure is impossible.

When things don’t go according to plan, I start with taking responsibility.
And begin with these questions:

• What could I have done differently?
• What did work?
• What didn’t?
• What other factors were at play?
  -Internal factors like fear?
  -Or external factors like other people, market timing, team members, pricing, etc?
• What did I learn from it?

I have heard it said that “failure is only determined by our interpretation”.

In essence, “So what if your project or decision or employee that you hired didn’t work out?”

If we learn from our mistakes then it is not a failure at all.

If we pull out our score card and write down another hash mark in the column of “see I did it again”, well we lose.

Seth Godin once wrote about being a New York Times bestselling author of five books.  And he went on to say that he had written a hundred books.

I am sure he had a few low days along that road.

However, his end conclusion was that he practiced 95 times to smash it five times.

Do you see the distinction?  What a relief huh?

We only need 51% of the vote.

There will always be someone who tells us why we are going to fail, yes always.  Ignore the minority, embrace the majority.

I used to labor and still do some days, over why so-and-so is so difficult to work with.

• Why are they so impossible?
• Why can’t they even say good morning?
• Why won’t they support our initiative?

I can’t fathom the countless calories I consumed to fuel my attempts at answering these questions.  And then one day I realized.

Those people are just plain miserable and it has nothing to do with me or what I do or don’t do.

Waalaa, Presto, Alakazam.  The spell I was under was broken.

Miserable, toxic people are that way whether they are at work or at a stop light behind you giving you the bird.

Once I released myself from the self-imposed obligation of attempting to assuage these people, I was free.  I finally accepted that these people will never be advocates.

I stopped waiting for permission.

I know this sounds simple.  Maybe so simple that I am the only guy who couldn’t get this one?

And yet, I spent a lot of years squatting on some of my best ideas, passion and innovation because there was not an invitation or permission provided.

I believed that if I was performing well my team or peers would offer a resounding “great job-keep going”.

I operated in a stalemate situation.

One foot in “I am going to give this a try” and one foot in “I hope they like it”.

Leadership requires us to dare to do what we know to be right regardless of the permission granted or feedback provided.

Hesitancy made me a very ineffective leader.

I picture one of those high-wire ropes courses at summer camp.  And at the end of the obstacles there is the Pole Jump.

You stand on top of that telephone pole, 50 feet off the ground and you have to leap to grab the metal bar eight feet out in front of you.

Every time someone stood up and gave it everything they had, they made it.  And every time a kid would half-heatedly jump, he missed every time.

The same goes for that cool project, that new idea, product, service, speech, music, adventure….don’t hesitate just jump and go for it.

How about you?  

What would change today if you hired yourself for this role?  

*Disclaimer: Seth Godin reference -I believe was from his book Tribes.  I was not able to find the exact quote.  Thanks in advance for following the analogy even if my exact facts are in error.