Colorblind and Capable

Colorblind and Capable

I met a man whose son, Ken, tried to join the Army and during the entry tests, discovered he was completely colorblind. Traffic lights have worked for him because the red is always at the top and the green at the bottom. He has operated with great awareness of the differences between shades of grey in the world. With similar compensating logic, he had successfully negotiated all color challenges for 27 years without ever seeing vivid colors—never knowing he was colorblind!

There are things you cannot do well as others, or even do at all. Do not let them prevent you from striving for excellence.

When you compare yourself to others and feel inadequate, it is extremely likely that you can only see their strengths but not their weaknesses. All of us, flawed humans, are given power to be great in some thing or other.

QUESTION:

We have been taught to define ourselves by our weaknesses and inabilities, but let’s right that wrong: Tell me—what is uniquely good and strong about you?

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#1 of 7 Reasons you Succeed or Fail

#1 of 7 Reasons you Succeed or Fail

#1 of 7—Finish to Win the Game of Life

The #1 greatest travesty for one competing in a race is to give up, stop prematurely and fail to finish!  The athletic race, the business race or any other, occasionally requires you to give up, adopt an exit strategy and start over. However, in the human race, you are running the race of your life and there is no restart.

How do you quit the Game of Life? Here are the two most powerful, most fatal ways:
#2) Fall down on the tracks and refuse to get up and go again. Then, hopes, dreams and aspirations are replaced by pessimism, desperation and finally, apathy. You become the walking dead.
#1) Exit the game and turn to suicide. Then, you wound every other runner in the human race and virtually destroy those who run with you—family, friends and associates.

Here is great hope: Athletic races are zero-sum games of scarcity in which the runners who win, cause the others to lose; however, the race of life is an abundance game in which everyone can win.  We do not compete against each other; when we help each other, it eventually moves us ahead. In this Game of Life, you have only two competitors—yourself and time.

What are you doing today so that tomorrow you will be better and greater than you were yesterday? Examine yourself to see if you are stuck with the same old you from the past, when all the world around you is changing and life beckons you to transform, excel and expand.

Time will not stop for you. To stop is to go down and backward—another way of failing to finish. Sure, be persistent, get up when you fall and don’t quit, but more than that, strive to do more, achieve more and become more. Fight the good fight, finish your course and keep the faith!

QUESTIONS:

  • But is winning everything—and isn’t that a product of western capitalist meritocracy?
  • In business, how does one know when to take an exist strategy and restart?

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#2 of 7 Reasons you Succeed or Fail

#2 of 7 Reasons you Succeed or Fail

#2 of 7—Destination to Win the Game of Life

Of the seven requirements for you to win in the Game of Life, our previous conversation addressed believing as #3. Here is #2.

To run a race, you may practice like a maniac and run like the wind, but you cannot be said to win if you do not know the finish line. Without a destination or outcome, how can you possibly succeed? Success does not come upon you by accident or luck, but rather, it demands a deliberate drive toward a defined outcome. When you do not know where you are going, you do not even know when you are lost.

Too many would-be-winners complain about how tough it is to find success, when in fact, they refuse to choose a specific outcome and work toward it relentlessly. This is even more true for the highly talented who see themselves as skilled in many areas and find it difficult to choose just one. Target a destination, run at it with all your heart, fall, rise again and move forward to the finish. Upon proving you can win one race, you qualify now to pursue another.

Do you have clear, singular and concise answers to these questions? 1) Where are you going? 2) What do you want?

For #1, check back next week. 😊

QUESTIONS:

  • How DO you choose when you have several talents and interests?
  • In this day of multi-tasking, what’s wrong with pursuing two life outcomes at the same time?

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#3 of 7 Reasons you Succeed or Fail

#3 of 7 Reasons you Succeed or Fail

#3 of 7—Believing to Win the Game of Life

Of the seven requirements for you to win in the Game of Life, our previous conversation addressed preparation as #4. Here is #3.

Running a 100 meters or any other race, it is virtually impossible to win unless you believe you can; in fact, you must know you will! Just a shadow of doubt will cost the most skilled runner that fraction of a second that separates winners from losers.

Your life’s journey is no different. The way you think—what you believe—predetermines your fate and fortunes in life. Your belief system is composed of your thoughts about life, your general philosophy, attitudes, imagination, values, morals and even taboos.

If those processes and mental states are characterized by fear, anger, regret and cynicism, your life will definitely become a reflection of the bad and undesirable. If your mental processes and basic assumptions are optimistic, forgiving, confident, enthusiastic, visionary, considerate of others and driven to impart value, your life will bubble with hope, joy, productivity and wellbeing—both financial and emotional.

You have been given power to get more done than those bigger, more educated and more experienced than you. Believe it. Make it so. Do not choose to be limited by naysayers, your upbringing, past problems or present circumstances. No excuses. Go for greatness.

For #2, check back next week. 😊

QUESTIONS:

  • How does one actually change one’s belief system? It is so embedded as part of who one is.
  • Isn’t thinking over-rated? What good is dreaming if we don’t take action and get things done?

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#4 of 7 Reasons you Succeed or Fail

#4 of 7 Reasons you Succeed or Fail

#4 of 7—Preparation for the Game of Life

To avoid failing repeatedly in the Game of Life, you must practice these seven requirements. Our previous conversation addressed shedding the baggage as #5; here is #4.

You must prepare and practice. However, you may not expect what you are about to read. The vast majority of people in the world—over 90%— fail to achieve their dreams or highest purpose before they die, but NOT because of lack of preparation or ability. Rather, they do not start!

It is important to prepare for success. Wouldn’t it be foolish to interview for a job in organic chemistry if you hadn’t even studied Chemistry 101? That situation, however, is not the typical case. Fear, procrastination and self-doubt tend to under-state the degree to which we are actually prepared and capable. There is something odd about success. It requires the obvious basics of preparation, but you absolutely cannot be 100% prepared—the world changes too fast. Start, be prepared to fail often and open your mind to learn. Success demands on-the-job preparation.

Have you been hiding from the starting blocks to the greatest race of your life? What is it, and when will you be adequately prepared? Name one self-made successful person and I’ll show you someone who made mistakes, acted before all the research and planning was complete and persisted until he figured out the way.

For #3, check back next week. 😊

QUESTIONS:

  • How does one know when the basic preparation is complete?
  • Aren’t lack of planning and experience responsible for the high failure rate in business?

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