Category: Self-Improvement

I was always jealous of the people who could study for the test. The people who didn’t always know the material but could still get a 100% on an exam by studying the night before. Or the 1600 SAT takers who memorized only the required information. I was never that student. I couldn’t sit down and study the necessary material because everything fascinated me.

Once, I was supposed to be studying all the bones in the human body, instead, I learned everything about how the arm works. I had gotten fixated on how to figure out why we have an ulna and a radius that I forgot to study the rest of the bones. I failed my test. But I learned how to learn. 

Luckily, the real world is far different than the classroom.

For me, learning is a way to explore questions. I set out with a hypothesis, some grand vision in my mind, and I work my ass off to figure out a solution. Every step I have taken in my career has that objective in mind. I am always looking to explore ideas that I’ve developed throughout my life. Much like studying the human arm, I get fixated on a certain objective and won’t stop until I arrive at a satisfactory answer. Although this might keep me from seeing the whole picture, like the entire anatomy of the human body, the specialization creates new skills. Eventually, those skills combine into a well-rounded skillset.

Learning how you learn is far more important than learning for a test. Anyone can memorize formulas or definitions. Not everyone can take lessons learned from mutliple perspectives and apply them to make a whole. Learning the way you learn is your competitive advantage.

When you run a business it’s pretty difficult to track how each decision is affecting your trajectory. Yes, there are tools to help you calculate this like key performance indicators (KPIs) and number of leads, but it’s still difficult to tell why consumers are buying. It take years or decades to determine the perfect formula for building a business. And, on top of that, the formula is continually changing.

Likewise, making decisions in your life, and tracking the outcomes of events, is extremely difficult. You never know what’s behind door number two if you’re only walking through the first door you see. You also can’t backtrack from one choice to another. From small things like skipping breakfast to big things like changing careers, there’s no taking back an action. And there’s no way of knowing what might’ve happened.

The only way I know how to continue is by listening to myself. My internal compass, answering questions going on in my head, is the only guiding light I have found. Knowing the human brain, this probably isn’t the best compass but it’s the only one I’ve got. I try to find out as much information as I can and do research of what success looks like. I try to picture myself in a certain situation and imagine what the outcome will look like. But, I never quite know what’s behind door number two. It might be a terrible choice. It might be the best choice I’ve ever made. 

The only way to find out is to keep moving forward. To keep living with my decisions and making the most of it.

About seven months ago I had an awakening. I decided to take life by the horns and try to create the world I wanted to live in. By doing so, I met a ton of influential people that I am still influenced by today. Each person I’ve come in contact with, who are doing big things, have made massive strides in the past seven months. They have captured exponential growth.

It’s amazing to look at my Facebook feed and see how far these people have come. Months ago they were talking dreams and today they’re living them out. Not only is exponential growth affecting the amount of processing power that can be added to microchips, it’s also infultrating our ability to get stuff done. 

By combining the “dreamer” mentality with a technology that’s advancing at light speed, people are able to become successes within a year. It doesn’t take thirty years of putting in your time to rise to power anymore. Instead, power comes from infatuation with a problem and trying to solve it. Exponential growth is at your finger tips, you only need to reach out and grab it.

In grade school, we are always taught to study for the test. To do whatever it takes to get an A. We might need to pull an all-nighter to get the essay completed or spend hours upon hours memorizing definitions.
All of this was done for an external scorecard (report card). However, as soon as you exit school and enter the “real world” there no longer is a report card. Nobody is going to tell you what you have to do to get an A. 

Most of the time you’ll have no clue if you’re doing A work or C work (you’ll know if you’re doing F work…).

The only thing that matters, and the only thing that’ll propel you forward, is creating an internal scorecard. This scorecard grades yourself on specific categories: Follow-through, attitude, attention to detail, happiness and communication.

If you rate yourself on those five categories and judge each interaction or decision based on how the action affects your scorecard, you can quickly internalize where you’re going and figure out what matters.

The problem is, we often look for external reinforcement. We want people to see us, respect us, praise us. But that’s not what matters. What matters is knowing what you’re doing and how it’s affecting you. 

Your internal scorecard is greater than any report card you’ve ever received.

I have been trying hard the past couple of weeks to challenge myself to tackle new projects and try new things. Every day, I set a few goals I will try to tackle, each goal incrementally a little harder.

In life, you have basic requirements that you must fulfill. Work (unless you’re wealthy enough not to earn money), eat and sleep. After those things have been completed (about 10-18 hours of your day) you have plenty of time to try new things. This can be anything you want it to be. The goal is to make sure the new thing is a challenge and you are unlocking a new skill. Although no skill is developed in a day, continuing to practice this idea creates a snowball effect of development. Eventually, when you look back, you’ll see the challenges you completed piled on top of each other and shake your head at the old you.

Challenging yourself every day doesn’t have to be hard. Make it something simple at first and watch the challenges get easier even when they’re incrementally getting harder.

Ray LaMontagne.

I think I’ve blogged about this before. But there’s a great excerpt in The Talent Code by Daniel Coyne about how Ray LaMontagne became the musician he is today. Here it is:

Another example is Ray LaMontagne, a shoe-factory worker from Lewiston, Maine, who at age twenty-two had an epiphany that he should become a singer-songwriter. LaMontagne had little musical experience and less money, so he took a simple approach to learning: he bought dozens of used albums by Stephen Stills, Otis Redding, Al Green, Etta James, and Ray Charles, and holed up in his apartment. For two years. Every day he spent hours training himself by singing along to the records. LaMontagne’s friends assumed he had left town; his neighbors assumed he was either insane or had locked himself inside a musical time capsule—which, in a sense, he had. “I would sing and sing, and hurt and hurt, because I knew I wasn’t doing it right,” LaMontagne said. “It took a long time, but I finally learned to sing from the gut.” Eight years after he started, LaMontagne’s first album sold nearly half a million copies. The main reason was his soulful voice, which Rolling Stone said sounded like church, and which other listeners mistook for that of Otis Redding and Al Green. LaMontagne’s voice was a gift, it was agreed. But the real gift, perhaps, was the practice strategy he used to build that voice.

Not only am I huge fan of the singers he emulates (yes, I spend weekends listening to Bill Withers, Al Green and Otis Redding) but I also love the fact he is self trained. The amount of tenacity it took him to practice for two years, getting his vocals perfect, and performing in front of the few who rolled into a must bar is truly outstanding.

I look at LaMontagne as a role model of who I can become. At age twenty two he had the presence to change his path and become a world famous artist. If I can put two solid years of practice, and another eight years of hard work, I know the results will follow.

Ray LaMontagne is my favorite artist because he gives me hope I can become what he has become. Maybe it’s the Maine connection (I was born and raised in Maine) or maybe it’s the gritty voice that draws me to him but at the end of the day, listening to LaMontagne always leaves me believing I can become the person I want to become.

There’s a concept I’ve been kicking around in my head for a few months that involves building the person you want to become through a mechanism similar to bricklaying. Simon Sinek, and others before him, talk about two different construction workers. One person is in it to be paid and quickly gets bored of laying brick after brick after brick. The other comes alive because he can see the beautiful building that the bricks will become and he is always moving forward.

Each day, I aim to move forward, and by doing so, my actions start building my own cathedral. Instead of lamenting about life circumstances, or giving into resistance, I practice to become better every day. I tally my wins. I count my blessings. And I make sure the bricks I lay today are moving in a forward direction.

I don’t have to look back at the bricks I’ve already laid, or the bricks I’m going to lay in the future, because I know that each day that I lay bricks with a sense of dignity and a sense urgency, is a day I’m building up. I am becoming the person I want to become, brick by brick, even if I don’t always see the results.

My mood has changed from construction worker one to construction worker two. I now see the cathedral, or house, I’m turning these bricks into. I know I have a long way to go but I also know everyday I inch a bit closer. That’s what keeps me going and it’s what keeps me from looking too far into the future. I cannot accomplish anything in all of my tomorrows, I can only accomplish things during my today.

Moving forward is building up.