It’s easy to look at the latest overnight success and think – “Wow,
look at them, so happy, so successful, so free” – and think that
something must be wrong with you. Because even though you are
constantly trying to make something happen, you don’t feel successful or
energized, no instead you feel worn out with nothing left to give. If
this is the case for you, perhaps it’s not what you are doing to become
successful but rather what you are still focusing on to become
successful. Even the slightest tilts of lost focus is enough to shift
our context and frame of mind from where we should be headed to instead a
completely different one.
So what do those people DO to
get through these moments of lost focus? How do they zero in on the
task at hand to become a success?
Perhaps it’s not what they FOCUS on, but rather what they DON’T FOCUS on that makes the real difference.
The Clock Never Stops
A successful person
will never focus on the clock. This doesn’t mean they are late for
meetings or blissfully ignorant of their problems, rather it means when
they are knee deep in problem solving mode – they will keep working on
the problem until early in the morning or late into the night. The best
“pat on your back” you will ever give yourself is the moment you lift
your head up from your screen to come upstairs only to see that the day
has gone by and it is now dark outside.
The Critics that Surround Them
Sometimes
there is a lot of value in saving those rejection letters – but those
aren’t critics. Those are templated letters free of emotion and
critique of your work. The Critics I am talking about are the ones that
nitpick and rip apart your work – not for the sake of helping you – but
for the sake of critiquing it. If you are working on an unsolved
problem, pushing the envelope and doing what will require many, many
attempts and novel approaches – ignore the critics, disable their
platform. They aren’t there to help you, they are there to tear you
down and build themselves up. How do you differentiate criticism from
feedback? Someone giving feedback will want to hear your thoughts and
approaches on where you were trying to go and try to engage you in
dialogue, a critic will write a comment, never to be heard from again.
The Mistakes they Made
Would you take your 9
year old daughter aside and list out every mistake they made the day
before at school in the hopes they don’t make them again? Doubtful. So
why do we do this to ourselves? Successful people realize that making
a mistake is one step closer in the journey towards success – yes there
will be misfires along the way and failures here and there, but they
don’t dwell on them. They learn from them. Take your mistakes, take
your utter and complete failures and learn from them.
The Unknowns that will always be there
If
you want to solve a problem that no one has solved before there are
going to be unknowns. If you want to hire someone that you “think” is
going to be great for the team but won’t know until you try there are
going to be unknowns in their capabilities. If you want to do your
first deployment without running a full test, there are going to be
unknowns in success. If you want to make a difference, there will be
unknowns. Successful people choose to ignore the unknowns, forging
ahead, knowing one day they will get there and eventually figure it out.
They will get there, but not today, and that is the difference and the
unknowns are their blanket.
The Odds that are always stacked against them
Successful
people always know the odds. They have a mental tally running each and
every day on what good can and should come from what they are doing.
They don’t write this down into spreadsheets or databases – no this
information is stored near the fight or flight part of their brain,
sometimes referred to as the Lizard Brain
(by Seth Godin). In the end, they know the odds, and they choose to
move forward. Remember that, being successful is not about ignoring the
odds, it’s about knowing them, knowing how the probabilities and
forging ahead. It’s when we acknowledge the odds and turn to fight,
that we start to become successful.
What They Don’t Have
I have seen people
accomplish amazing things with nothing where others had everything.
Where some are hardwiring and building their own equipment, doing
backups to thumb drives because that is all they have and others are
bringing in family to complete the last large shipment to go out the
door by midnight. It is easy to get frustrated that you don’t have all
the perfect resources both technical and human to get the job done. But
it is a successful person who finds innovative solutions to these
problems that understand the value of that work, and feels the
satisfaction that once they have moved on from this obstacle can take on
more with less.
The Skills They Don’t Have
I don’t know how
to make cabinets, but I have a really great idea on making a new hinge
for a cabinet that could change the way the industry works. If only I
knew more about cabinets? Have you ever found yourself saying that to
yourself? If only I knew more? At this point you really have two
options – go learn more about it (and bide your time while learning) or
find someone that does and work with them on it. Successful people
don’t sweat the skills, because they aren’t trying to horde the skills,
if the team has the skills and the team delivers, than the team is
successful. Successful people differ in not having the mindset that all
skills must be owned by them and them alone.
The Battles they Lost
Successful people
remember the battles they should have done better at, should have
focused a little more on, and should have been a little more adept at.
But they don’t keep a tally, they don’t keep a win-tie-loss record,
they readjust and move forward. Successful people learn lessons from
the battles they have lost, but they don’t count the scars and wear them
on their sleeves.
The Excuses of Others
A successful person
can tell when someone is making an excuse for not getting something done
and a reason for not having accomplished their task. They are two very
different things and successful people know it. Did you get it done?
No (this is starting to sound like an excuse) – get it done. This
sounds harsh, rough, unfair right? Sometimes it needs to be – if your
success is based on wasting time on that excuse you’re pulling yourself
down in the process.
Stop focusing on the things in life that are holding you back from
success and start focusing on being the success that you know you need
to be.