Somedays will be more challenging than the rest; mistakes will be made, and you might even lose sight of the big picture. Your goals might seem out of reach at the moment, but you have to take it a day, hour, mile, rep, lap, session, and keep showing up daily. It will get tough at some point, which is a sign that you are stretching yourself and moving out of your comfort zone. Giving up will seem like a viable option, but give all you’ve got, and you will eventually crack it. Good, better, best, never let it rest until good is better and better is best; make sure you are doing your best at any given moment, put in the effort and always remember “The best is yet to come,” and you can constantly better your best.
“Though you cannot go back and make a brand-new start by You can start now, and make a brand-new end.“
Every day is an opportunity to start over again with new vigour, making thousands of tiny choices that can lead to sustainable excellence and greatness. We are all given 24 hours, 1,440 minutes and 86,400 seconds to begin afresh, realign our priorities and live our values to the best of our abilities. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift that is why it is called the present. Today is the tomorrow you looked forward to yesterday, seize the day and make today count. Excellence is ultimately achieved by making every single day a masterpiece by showing up daily and doing your very best. Embrace the gift of starting over daily and taking baby steps toward achieving your goals.
People who are suffering from trauma don’t need advice. They need comfort and support. So say, “I’m sorry” or “This must really be hard for you” or “Can I bring you a pot roast?” Don’t say, “You should hear what happened to me” or “Here’s what I would do if I were you.” And don’t say, “This is really bringing me down.”
The Ring Theory is a concept developed by clinical psychologist Susan Silk and her friend arbitrator Barry Goldman. They suggest an approach that helps with not saying the wrong things when trying to support someone dealing with a crisis or in a stressful situation. They site a perfect example of such an unintended insensitive remark in their article:
When Susan had breast cancer, we heard a lot of lame remarks, but our favorite came from one of Susan’s colleagues. She wanted, she needed, to visit Susan after the surgery, but Susan didn’t feel like having visitors, and she said so. Her colleague’s response? “This isn’t just about you.”
In her speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, former First Lady Michelle Obama famously said:
“When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is: ‘When they go low, we go high’.”
Going High is about being strategic. If your aim is to change, you’ve got to consider if your approach is going to allow change to happen. It means you are thinking of a broader point outside of your own anger, hurt or pain. This is passion matured into purpose. One has to mature one’s passion,
‘There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.’ – Elbert Hubbard
If you don’t want to be criticized, say nothing, do nothing and be nothing. The moment you say something, do something and stand for something, you become a target for people’s opinions, comments and criticism. Some of this external input would be warranted, most would not be helpful, while some would be subjective. The key to navigating the opinions of others or the Fear of others’ opinions (FOPO) is to know your truth, trust your judgment, learn from well-intentioned criticisms and stay off the comment section. Never explain, those that need it don’t matter and those that matter don’t need. Everyone has the right to their opinion but not to the facts. The fact is that we are beings having a human experience, and that entails making errors, mistakes, and shortcomings.
“The master,” an old martial arts saying goes, “is the one who stays on the mat five minutes longer every day than anybody else.”
Stay on the Mat is a metaphor for deliberate practice, the pursuit of sustained excellence, commitment to training and pushing through the roller coaster on the path to mastery. It is often said that we get rewarded publicly for what we diligently practice in the dark. We stay on the mat practicing, honing the skillsets that the marketplace always rewards. We play the way we train; if you cannot practice it in the dark, it will be hard to perform when the lights are on. One of the hallmarks of the highly successful people in the world is their obsession with deliberate practice, commitment to the game and persistence in the face of obstacles. As boxing heavyweight champion of the world, Joe Frazier once noted:
“You can map out a fight plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the way you planned, and you’re down to your reflexes – that means your [preparation:]. That’s where your roadwork shows. If you cheated on that in the dark of the morning, well, you’re going to get found out now, under the bright lights.”
In The Book of Boundaries: Set the Limits That Will Set You Free, Melissa Urban, co-founder of the wellness program Whole30, shares strategies for setting boundaries, prioritizing personal needs, and nurturing long-lasting relationships. The book also includes 130+ scripts for setting boundaries which leads to better mental health, increased energy, improved productivity, and more fulfilling relationships.
In Steven B. Sample‘s book The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, he observed that “the average person suffers from three delusions; we believe we are good drivers, good listeners, and think we have a good sense of humour.” We think we are good listeners, but we are always waiting to respond instead of deliberately listening. Listening is one of the most challenging skills that I am always battling to harness. I love sharing my thoughts on subject matters, especially the ones I am passionate about. I am learning to think and take a breath before speaking nowadays and ask myself, “Is it worth it?”. It’s tough to master the skill but I believe with time, I will master my listening skill.
Grief is the anguish experienced after a significant loss, usually the death of a beloved person. Grief often includes physiological distress, separation anxiety, confusion, yearning, obsessive dwelling on the past, and apprehension about the future. Grief may also take the form of regret for something lost, remorse for something done, or sorrow for a mishap to oneself. 1 Grief is a universal human experience that we all must experience at some point. We grieve for different reasons, such as the loss of a loved one, job loss, ill health, divorce, heartbreak, disappointment, etc. Going through grief can be extremely tough with the emotional rollercoaster of pain, sadness, anger, regret, loneliness, dejection and sometimes relief. American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson once quipped, “ When it is darkest, we can see the stars.
Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim. – Vicki Harrison
Success is never guaranteed, but struggle is guaranteed on your path to success. Overnight success usually takes a lot of practice and time. The relentless pursuit of sustained excellence is an uphill journey that takes an average of 10,000 hours. As the saying goes, we get rewarded publicly for what we diligently practice in private. There will be plateaus, valleys of distress, peaks, valleys, and rollercoasters of ups and downs. If you are not feeling a bit of pain, struggle, discomfort and stretching while trying to achieve your goals, you are probably not aiming high enough. The beginning of any goal is usually exciting, the middle is messy, and the journey is rewarding.
“ If our life is a good one, a life of mastery, most of it will be spent on the plateau. If not, a large part of it may well be spent in restless, distracted, ultimately self-destructive attempts to escape the plateau.”
I have been trying to speak French since 2010, and I have tried almost everything. I started out attending a formal school of French Language learning (Nigerian French Language Village) for nine months, immersion in a neighbouring francophone country immediately afterwards (Benin Republic) for six months, and have been listening to French music and podcasts and watching French movies ever since. It’s been a rollercoaster of ups and downs, rapid progress, followed by frustration when I have to speak and I can’t find the words. Thirteen-plus years in, I don’t speak impeccable French yet, but I am not where I used to be. I have had to embrace the plateaus and keep putting in the effort required to speak French like a native. I have had to be patient, persistent, endure, and embrace the struggle. As American Writer Hal Borland once said, “Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.”
“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.” – Hal Borland
The things that are easy to do are also easy not to do.
Author Jim Rohn often said “Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure.” How you do one is thing is mostly how you do everything. Most things that make a considerable effect in our long term growth are usually easy but they are often not easy to do. It is easy to reduce your screen time but it is not easy to feel left out due to the fear of missing out. It is easy to read a book but the challenge is staying consistent and finishing the book. It is easy to go to the gym but the hard part is staying consistent with the practice.
“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day; while failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. It is the accumulative weight of our disciplines and our judgments that leads us to either fortune or failure.” – Jim Rohn
Life is often a rollercoaster of ups and downs, peaks and valleys, sweet and bitter, good and bad. It can be extremely tough to navigate the vicissitudes of life, the rollercoaster is never ending; if it is not this then it is that. You are either living in a storm, going through a storm, or entering a new storm. Whatever goes wrong, always goes wrong (Murphy’s Law). Whatever you are going through right now is a moment in time; it will eventually pass. Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) once quipped “When something bad happens you have three choices. You can either let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.” Every situation, circumstance, trial and tribulation is a moment in time. You made a mistake but you are not a mistake, you failed but you are not a failure. You are just experiencing the bittersweet experience of being human.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”- Viktor E. Frankl
Whatever you are going through right now—grief, job loss, loss of a loved one, heartbreak, divorce, financial insolvency, rejection, business failure, anxiety, or worry—these are all moments in time. You can either learn the lessons or let them lessen you. You can get the message in the mess or stay stuck in the mess. It is tough dealing with these situations, but it is part of being human. The pain can be debilitating, the path to the top is an uphill battle, and it will be tough before it gets better.
In his late 40s, American writer George Leonard took up the practice of aikido (modern Japanese martial art) and he went on to earn a a fifth-degree black belt. In Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment, Leonard draws up his expertise in aikido and Zen philosophy to describe the process of mastery. He identified the five keys to mastery as instruction, practice, surrender, intentionality and the edge.
“If there is any sure route to success and fulfillment in life, it is to be found in the long-term, essentially goalless process of mastery.”
The book is based on Leonard’s 1987 Esquire Ultimate Fitness special, MASTERY: TAKING IT HOME – Its principles can be applied to anything in life that involves learning—even love. The subject of the special was mastery “the mysterious process during which what is at first difficult becomes progressively easier and more pleasurable through practice.” The purpose of the feature was to describe the path that best led to mastery, not just in sports but in all of life, and to warn against the prevailing bottom-line mentality that puts quick, easy results ahead of long-term dedication to the journey itself.”
Mastery: Tthe mysterious process during which what is at first difficult becomes progressively easier and more pleasurable through practice.
Self-disclosure is a process of communication by which one person reveals information about themselves to another. The information can be descriptive or evaluative, and can include thoughts, feelings, aspirations, goals, failures, successes, fears, and dreams, as well as one’s likes, dislikes, and favorites. 1. One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personalistic self-disclosure (Arthur Aron et al 1987). 2 There is a very thin line with the appropriate self-disclosure needed at the beginning of nurturing an intimate relationship and oversharing.
I am very passionate about most things I am engaged in, which always gives me joy to want to share. I always want to share what I am learning, strategies that are working for me, like my fitness regimen, meditation practice, self-discipline identity, books I am reading and goals I am trying to achieve. After reading up and connecting some dots from personal experience, I have concluded that I need to reduce this tendency to overshare or become vulnerable with people who have not earned that trust or reciprocated that vulnerability. When I share some of these so-called insights of mine or goals achieved, like running multiple marathons a year or reading 100 books a year, I usually feel that my intentions are not understood. I am beginning to feel that most people might feel I am bragging or think I am claiming moral righteousness when I say I don’t use social media anymore.
