This thought came to me as I was reading Love + Work by Marcus Buckingham, where he states:

“… to live happily and fully, you have to express your loves… You’ve got to get them out somewhere, somehow. Turn them from loves into actions; from passions into contributions and when you do, your life feels coherent and authentic and you know, you just know, every fiber of your being that you’re on your path. The inverse is also true, though… if you’re prevented from doing it (what you love) then your life starts to feel wrong. During the moments when you start thinking about doing something different because you’re frustrated, angry, concerned, think about what is happening in your current job and what you’re prevented from doing.” 

For any given job or career, there are times when we feel energized and there are times when we feel like quitting (even though we are in the same job). Often, our immediate response to unhappiness at work is to think about our exit plan. Before going there, take a moment to think about what your organization may be inadvertently stopping you from doing that means a lot to you. That insight may help you find a path forward either in your current role or when you look for your next opportunity. 

If you’re not sure what you love, take the free Gift of Standout Assessment. 

Don’t deny what you love and what you’re meant to do because it may just eat you up from the inside.

Inspired by Love + Work by Marcus Buckingham

Photo by whoislimos

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Walmart’s phenomenal growth wasn’t because of some secret sauce or tremendous luck, but rather it stems from a consistent application of hard work, continuous improvement, grit, client service, and strong financial management.

If you’re interested in building a sustainable business or career, apply Sam Walton’s 10 rules for success:

1. Commit to your business

Find something you’re passionate about and stick to it. If you’re a top performer, you’ll have many options and it’s easy to be enticed by the different opportunities that come your way. Resist the bright shiny objects in your career path and commit to your life’s work.

If you’re not sure what that work might be or what you’re passionate about, sign up for my free Know What You Want course. It’ll get you moving in the right direction.

Once you commit, be biased towards taking action and expect to win. When you are optimistic about your chances to succeed, it makes it easier for you to be resourceful and to persist until you win.

2. Partner with your team

To succeed, it’s paramount for your employees, peers, and stakeholders to be invested in you and your company or project. To get their buy-in, find ways to share credit and profits with your team so they feel better off when you and the firm are doing well. People follow leaders who will leave them better off.

Walton echoes British entrepreneur Richard Branson, “If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

3. Challenge your team

To build a world-class firm or career, set high goals and expectations for yourself and those around you. Encourage competition and find ways to keep the score to build accountability. Value hard work, innovation, and integrity and build teams that exude similar values.

As you institutionalize best practices, don’t be too predictable. Always keep things moving forward so your people and firm stay fresh. To hold people accountable, identify measurable performance indicators that connect to the value added to the firm.

4. Communicate openly and thoroughly to your team

Proactively empower your team by being transparent and sharing important information about the business. The more your people know the more they will understand how to focus their energy on the right things. Sam Walton believed the value for empowering your employees far outweigh the risk of competitors gaining access to the inner workings of your business.

Communicate often through staff meetings and written updates. Use these touch points to share information in a timely manner, provide a sounding board to your people, and boost your team’s morale.

5. Appreciate everything your people do for you and the business

It never hurts to be thankful.

To effectively show gratitude, be observant and notice when those around you are doing the right things. Then depending on the person, show appreciation either publicly or privately to recognize their specific actions. Specificity shows people you’re paying attention, which also shows that you care.

6. Celebrate your successes (and failures)

When you reach the top of the mountain you’ve decided to climb, take time to soak it in and celebrate. Reflect on what you did right and what you could do better. Thank all the people who helped you achieve your success and share credit with the people involved.

When you fail, take responsibility but don’t take yourself too seriously. Find humor in the situation and have fun. If you’re in a business you’re passionate about (see #1), know that any setback is only a small part of your overall journey. As long as you learn from your failures, each one will be a building block for your future success.

7. Listen to everyone

To be successful, find ways to listen to everything that’s going around you – in your department, company, and industry. Build trust with people around you so they open up to you and feel safe to share what they see is happening. If you have employees who report to you, push power down and pull info and ideas up. When you hear great ideas, share them with others in the firm.

Throughout his career, Sam would often visit his competitors to learn from their best practices and implement them in his stores. Sam’s Club was a direct result of listening to his competitors. Don’t be afraid to build on what others are doing. Everyone has a lesson to teach you.

8. Exceed your clients’ expectations

Give the people you serve what they want and a little more. This means constantly updating your understanding of what matters to your clients. Show that you appreciate them. When you make a mistake, apologize, and don’t make excuses. Just fix the issue and make good on your mistake.

Your business and career grow because your clients support you. Keep looking for ways to serve your customers better than anyone else. What else can you do to guarantee your client’s satisfaction?

9. Control your expenses better than your competition

If you want to succeed in business and in life, manage your finances and operations effectively. Whether it’s your company, department, or project, the ability to understand the drivers of your business and create sustainable profits is what will boost your value to the company.

If you’re not sure how to read financial statements or manage a P&L, take a class or consider an MBA. If you don’t, you won’t be able to compete and competition is unavoidable. To win, be passionate about competing and compete to win.

10. Swim upstream

When you feel strongly about a trend or idea, stick to your convictions even if it means going against the crowd. Leaders lead by changing and improving the status quo. Anytime you’re leading change, there will be dissuaders.

Keep an open mind and don’t be afraid to change your mind if you realize you’re wrong.

If you’re passionate about being successful, take inventory on how you’re doing on these 10 tips. If you found these ideas useful, consider tips from these other top CEOs – Ken Chenault (American Express), Alex Gorsky (Johnson and Johnson), and Mary Barra (General Motors).

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For many of us, work makes up a big part of our waking hours. One of the most common pitfalls is getting stuck in the wrong job especially when the compensation and benefits are comfortable and the job is easy for you to do.

Then something happens.

Something that triggers you to reconsider whether your current job is the right one for you. Maybe your leadership team was inflexible with one of your requests, or you hear that one of your peers is rising much faster in their career than you are or you just have a boss that is overbearing. Whatever the reason, it’s helpful to periodically assess whether you are in the right role. This is particularly true if it’s a role you’ve been in for a long time.

In Dan Pink’s book, When, he outlines 5 questions you should consider if you’re not sure whether you should stay in your current job. If you answer “no” to a few of these questions, an exit might be exactly what you need.

• Would you choose to stay in this job during your next work anniversary?
  • Another question you might ask is: knowing what you know now, would you have taken the job that you currently have?

• Is your current job both demanding and in your control?
  • Do you feel challenged and are you offered autonomy over how you achieve your goals?

• Does your boss allow you to do your best work?
  • Do they encourage and support you? Are they willing to take responsibility or do you find ways to take credit and shift blame?

• Are you within a 3-5 year window to get a salary boost or promotion?
  • If not, you have a higher likelihood of a bigger title or salary by leaving.

• Does your daily work align with your long-term goals?
  • Where do you want to go professionally and does your current role give you the skills, exposure, and experiences to get you there?

Again, if you have at least 2-3 no’s, start exploring your options because your job is probably not working out. If you want more certainty around whether you should quit your job, see if these warning signs exist. If you have no idea what you want to do next in your career, take this course.

Inspired by Dan Pink’s When.

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Beyond workaholics, this phrase puts off more people than it excites. When people think of the grind, they envision their routine commute and their brainless, repetitive tasks. Not exactly a motivating image.

Yet, the grind is needed for success.

Most of your working life will consist of the grind with achievements peppered throughout. Your career is similar to a watch that keeps running and only gets recognized when you’re looking for the time or when your alarm goes off. It’s not glorious but it’s the way things work. You can’t shortcut the time it takes to get great at something.

With that said, surviving the grind isn’t as bad as you think as long as you choose something you want to do. A nostalgic example that comes to mind for me is Super Mario Brothers (the original version on the Nintendo Entertainment System). Like most young children, I had a short attention span. Yet I would spend countless hours repeating the same exact stages over and over again because I wanted to “beat” the game and impress my friends. That was the grind.

What allowed me to keep going with this seemingly mundane task was making progress in the game. As long as I was moving ahead, the grind was paying off.

If you begin to question your daily grind, there is a good chance that you’re not seeing improvement or progress anymore. This should alarm you because you’re probably on the cusp of burning out or you’ve already disengaged from work. Neither one of these outcomes will bring you long-term success.

To succeed professionally, find meaningful work that will help you grow. How willing you are to embrace the grind will help you determine if you’re on the right track. Below is an excellent reminder from Paul Graham’s fantastic article on the shortness of life:

“Relentlessly prune bullshit, don’t wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have. That’s what you do when life is short.”

– Paul Graham

Photo by Joe Madonna

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I wish I could say no to everything that didn’t move me closer to my goals but it’s just not easy for me. I have a hard time saying no. I fear missing out on a life-changing opportunity or disappointing the people who come to me for help.

As I balance work, two young kids at home, and an Executive MBA, I find that I’m forced to prioritize and make trade-offs. One mindset shift that has helped me better manage requests is to view my time as a valuable currency that can be invested in activities.

Every request is a pitch for my time and as with all investment decisions, it’s important to do my due diligence. A few questions I find helpful to:

• Ask the person making the request:
  • Why did you come to me with this request?
  • What exactly do you need from me? By when?
  • Who else have you asked?
  • If the other person is my boss, I might ask:
    • How would you like me to prioritize this task?
    • What other projects should I delay or stop doing? 

• Ask myself:
  • Will this activity give me the most return towards one of my key goals or enhance a relationship I want to build?
  • What will I give up if I take this on? What are the opportunity costs? 
  • How else can I help this person without investing too much of my time?

Running through this checklist of questions allows me to slow down the decision process and hear the other person’s reasons for his or her request. If it’s a thoughtless request, it’ll be much easier to say no. If it’s an interesting or worthwhile ask, then I won’t feel guilty taking it on.

Managing my time as investable currency has helped me say no more easily and live life by design and not by default. Hopefully, if you have a hard time saying no, these questions can help you better manage the countless requests that come your way.

Inspired by Bill Jensen and The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier

Photo by XoMEoX

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Don’t waste your time looking for a shortcut – you’re only prolonging the time it takes to succeed. Whatever you want to do or achieve, get started now and build the success you want.

“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going”

– Beverly Sills

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You thrive on feedback. That’s how you got to where you are today. You actively seek out advice and insights from your mentors, great books and life experiences.

Since you’re open-minded and motivated to succeed in the shortest time possible, you experiment with all the different winning strategies that you come across. Some working well and others not so much and you keep searching for the holy grail to sustainable excellence.

There is a risk to your openness. By taking on so many suggestions, it’s easy to lose touch with who you really are.

This happens to me from time to time. I speak with a senior executive who inspires me to be one way. I read a book that motivates me to try another way. I run into an old friend who has completely revamped her life and swears by a third way.

And I try all of these ways and they all have their merits. But when I stop to reflect on who I’ve become, sometimes it’s not so clear who I am. In these times, I pull out a quote from Aristotle to help me sort through this uncertainty:

“We are what we repeatedly do.”

To remember the type of person I am, I just need to look at my actions. Our actions directly represent our decisions, which are driven by our beliefs and values.

If you do kind things consistently, you are a kind person. If you exceed your manager’s expectations all the time, you’re a high performer. It doesn’t matter what you say you are, what matters is what you do. I can talk about how much I want to focus on family and be a great father but if I constantly come home late from work and spend very little time with my son, I’m not a great father.

The bright and empowering side of this realization is that I don’t need to sort out how I see myself. I just have to consistently act in a way that reflects who I want to be. If I want to be authentic, I can share my true views and vulnerabilities. If I want to be a writer, I’ll write 1000 words a day. If I want to be bold, I might cold call a CEO to get an interview.

For those of you who plan to make a drastic change around people who know you, understand that it’s hard for people to see past the “old” you. If you’re in this situation. you might want to read this article on upgrading your identity.

If you’re not sure what actions to take, observe those who you want to be more like and mimic their behaviors. You decide who you are by controlling what you do.

Just focus on changing your actions.

Ask yourself:

1. What type of person do I want to be?
2. What actions would this person take?
3. When can I apply these actions?

You can also use the inverse method:

1. Who do I want to make sure I never become?
2. What actions would this person take?
3. When might I be susceptible to these actions?

Photo by Md saad andalib

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With an ever-growing to-do list, your commitment to complete your tasks can make you prone to “shoulding” on yourself.

“Shoulding” is the act of turning what you want to do into what you “should” do. This nuanced change in both language and outlook can hurt your ability to complete your to-do’s. When you use “should”, you are essentially changing your desires into obligations. There is nothing more demotivating than obligations.

A good sign that you’re “shoulding” yourself is if your task list keeps growing and you find it hard to get started. When this happens, remind yourself of WHY you are doing these tasks and how they tie into your ultimate goals. When you’re in execution mode, it’s easy to keep crossing tasks off your list but forget why you’re doing what you’re doing.

If upon closer inspection, the tasks you’ve set up for yourself no longer help you get to where you want to go, remove the task from your list.

Remember:

Shoulds decrease motivation. Wants increase motivation.

What is on your to-do list that is making you feel guilty for not completing it? This is a good sign that you’ve changed your WANT into a SHOULD.

Inspired by Jack Canfield’s The Success Principles.

Photo by Dennis Hamilton

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As a high-performer, you’ll have more opportunities than you know what to do with. As you continue to grow in your career, you’ll have to make tough sacrifices. When you give things up all the time, it’s easy to begin feeling guilty, resentful or depressed because sacrificing often focuses you on what you’re losing.

If you feel that you’re giving up too much but find it necessary to continue doing so, consider reframing sacrificing as investing instead. This simple shift helps you to focus your attention on what you gain as opposed to what you lose.

This can be used for personal sacrifices as well.  For example:

When my son was born, I went from playing basketball weekly to stopping completely. I initially saw this as a sacrifice I would gladly make for my son but then it seemed like my life was shrinking. This made it easy to blame my son any time I wanted to play but couldn’t.

What changed my perspective was reframing the act of giving up basketball into investing in being a better father. No longer was I being punished but rather I’ve made the conscious choice to invest my time and energy to reach my aspirations. This allowed me to take back the power that I was giving up when I thought I was sacrificing and the negative feelings dissipated.

Remember: When you can, think invest rather than sacrifice.

Photo by Quinn Dombrowski

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Here are the elements you may want to consider to do work that you love.

1. Set your own goals …

… not ones determined by biological needs or social convention. Don’t let others tell you what’s important. When you are the one to decide, you give meaning and sense for every action you take whether that action is inherently enjoyable or not.  This will give you staying power. When you know your actions are not random, it helps you overcome the naysayers.

2. Identify and work on skills needed to meet goals

Once you’ve set your goals, think about and list the skills you’ll need to achieve them and work on honing those skills. Talk to those who have gone before you, take courses and read books and articles. When you work on your skills, remember to practice deliberately daily and the earlier you get started the faster you’ll get there.

3. Get feedback on how you’re doing

To stay motivated when learning new skills, get accurate feedback on how you’re doing. One way is to set measurable metrics for success and monitor your results. Another is to work with someone who has already mastered the skills you’re learning and get their perspective and guidance for how you’re doing.

4. Engage in activities to achieve your goal

When you’ve filled the skill gaps, use your skills to complete the tasks that will bring your goal to life. When you surf the sweet spot between the boredom of an easy task and anxiety of an overly difficult one, you’ll need to fully concentrate.

5. Savor the immediate experience

This concentration on the present moment will help you enter the enjoyable “flow” state where time begins to melt away and you crowd out self consciousness. Once you’re in flow, the enjoyment comes on its own – there is no need to do anything else.

If you ever flow out of flow, ask yourself the following:

• Are you working on a goal that YOU chose?
• Are you clear on the skills you need to achieve your goal?
• Do you have the skills you need?  If not, what are you doing now to learn them?
• When taking action towards your goal, are the activities challenging your highest skill level? If it’s too hard, you’ll get despondent. If it’s too little, you’ll feel stagnant and bored.

The more obstacles you overcome to achieve your goals, the more valuable the goals become to you. Choose a worthwhile goal and invest the effort to attain it.

Inspired by Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Photo by Jules Minus

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