Getting Past Excuses
If I started over, knowing what I know today, I would …
Aim higher and start sooner.
Mark Hopkins
Excuses:
Mark went on to say, “Life’s curveballs and my conservative nature provide daily excuses for not doing what I am capable of. But my experience has shown me that anyone can hit what they aim for, or very close to it.”
Mark’s comment reminded me of a quote attributed to Michelangelo, “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”
Defeat excuses:
- Develop deep experience. Experience provides perspective for aiming high. Mark said, “I’d get my Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours and go make a dream come true.” Gladwell says the key to success is practicing something for 10,000 hours.
- Follow your drive. “In order to bring my ‘A’ game I need to be working on something I am passionate about.”
- Build the team. “I would need an amazing team that was built on the kind of trust that only comes from knowing that we care about each other.”
- Connect with mentors. “I would need a mentor who can take the pie-in-the-sky vision that I am hesitant to even say out loud and, through experience and personal example, lead me to the point where I can see my team making it happen.”
Failures:
- Don’t stick with one thing long enough.
- Follow expediency rather than passion.
- Focus exclusively on themselves.
- Think they know more than others.
Get real:
In my opinion, building the team and find mentors are the most neglected components of the road to success.
Why do people fall below their potential?
What makes aiming high more than pie-in-the-sky?
I haven’t read Mark’s book, Shortcut to Prosperity, but the table of contents goes well beyond pie-in-the-sky thinking.
I think people fail because of the following reasons:
1. Talent – they may be in an area they shouldn’t be in. They can adjust, and succeed in a new area.
2. Resources – they don’t have some of the basic items outside of talent that it takes to succeed.
a. Some time
b. Some connections
c. Some money
I think you can get the resources and strengthen any talent.
You have helped me a ton Dan. My site has jumped up 74,000 spots in Alexa in a week. I’m convinced there is a lot that goes into that, and you are part of it.
Thanks for being a mentor.
If anyone wants an hour with you, there are still 4 days left in the contest to win it: http://toddliles.com/win-dan-rockwell
Todd, so great to hear of your growing success. I am curious, what do you think you are doing differently on your site that is making a difference? What is some of the best advice you have received from Dan?
Thank you Todd.
Getting the right people doing the right things is one of leadership’s great opportunities and challenges…great call.
Thanks so much for your kind words and congratulations on your growing success.
Cheers,
Dan
Good morning Dan, first of all really happy for you and Todd! Congrats to you both, bet you both feel great and it is inspiring to see other people succeeding. Great way to start out my day with your successes.
Now my counterpoint!!! LOL your questions are GREAT! I know counterpoint, but it is not the quality of the questions I am counterpointing but the lack of my ablity to come up with a quality response! Rats!
That is great in the end cause it stirs me once again to think.
Dan you know I can get longwinded but not today.
People fail to live up to their potential…..whatever we were working for our minds is more painful to continue than switching our focus to something else we perceive is going to give us more pleasure.Then we do the same thing with that. The dance goes on and on and on and around and around we go! Amazing we wonderful human beings ever get anything done, ever! hehe We get sidetracked with LIFE.
Another thought, potential according to who?
Aiming sky high without being ridiculous? A plan.With a plan, “are you saying I have a chance?” (Jim Carrey, Dumb and Dumber). Yes that is what I am proposing as an answer to the question. A plan.
Good Day!
Scott
Great seeing you again Scott. Thanks for consistently contributing.
LOVE your “A Plan” insight. Powerful and simple, even if it isn’t easy to do.
Cheers
I think some folks (sometimes myself) don’t reach their potential because they are afraid of what might happen if they do, and/or are afraid of the longer fall from higher up. It is easy to give in to distractions and detours if you are ultimately unsure you want to reach your destination. It seems dumb, but sometimes it is hard to open yourself to success as much as it is to open yourself to failure.
KaPow!! Thank you Katie.
Very useful comment. In one sense, failure is easier than success.
The larger the audience for Leadership Freak the greater the potential for failure and the more opportunities to screw up.
Someone asked me if I was nervous when I hit the publish button on my daily posts. Sometimes yes and sometimes no. However, accepting who I am and simply sharing what I have for the day helps.
Cheers
Dan,
First off I’ve been thinking that you could never reach your full potential since you aren’t aware what that is. What you can do is to keep pushing the boundaries of what you THINK you’re able to create.
Now with regard to the pushing of boundaries – sometimes this is the painful part, the part we fear however I think we use fear and pain as a surface excuse – “I think what’s keeping me back is that I’m afraid of success” “I’m an introvert and it’s difficult sharing my ideas” etc.
I think we have to have a different conversation with our pain and fear. First confront what we’re feeling by writing it down. Don’t keep it in your head because you won’t do anything about it. Next ask yourself what is this anxiety/fear/worry/pain telling you? Maybe you need to get clearer, organize your thoughts, do your research. You will get clues to your “next” steps and then you should take them. It’s a process not one big gigantic start to finish project that we make it out to be.
Thanks for making me think…AGAIN! lol
Giselle
Thank you Giselle, It sounds like you speak from experience. The clarity of your comment makes it useful.
I’ll add this for facing fears, have a coach. I love to say, Have a coach – be a coach. My coach, Bob Hancox helps me push boundaries.
Best
Another fantastic (and true) post, Dan!
Thanks for sharing a good word, Paula. Encouragement feels good.
Dear Dan,
A wonderful thought-provoking post! I fully agree with Marks Hopkins that building the team and finding mentor are the two neglected components of the road to success. The true visionery leaders really depend on professional managers for execution of plans who in turn ensure this by creating good teams of deliverables. The role of mentors comes when leaders face difficult/unforeseen business situations, bureaucrats, ethical issues etc.
There are three other critical factors which hinder the pace of success. ‘Copying and not innovating’, ‘not risking by taking bold decisions ahead of time’ and ‘not investing in people’ are sure shots of failure. These also can be termed as ‘aiming high more than pie-in-the-sky’.
Thank you Dr. Asher. I love the three ideas you add for why we don’t move forward and reach our best success.
I’m particularly found of don’t copy, innovate. We can learn from others but we also need to know our own heart. If we don’t we mindlessly follow. Powerful.
We spend to much time, energy on the negatives, and why we can’t accomplish this or that. We prefer to be victims. It’s much easier to be a victim to actually live up to our potential. There is a lack of accountability to ourselves and others.
It;s about choices and perceived alternatives, in my opinion. Too many of us get too close to the wagon too often and fail to step back and see different alternatives.
Having different possible alternatives for change is a key, in my opinion. Requisite variety. If you think that all you have is that hammer, you may use it in different ways but you will still have only a hammer. I think that we can also see that there are different tools in our toolkits and that many of those tools can be applied in different ways.
Teamwork offers an anchor point to excuses, for example. Lots of us choose not to fully participate in teams because of “others.” We either think that we will contribute too much relative to the choices of others or that no one will listen to our ideas because they failed to do so in the past.
Thus, we make excuses for opting out before we even start.
Engagement is the same way. Lots of people take the wait and see position and if lots of them do it, then lots of them don’t actually involve and engage. I do a thing called Dis-Un-Engagement because so many people in so many workplaces are NOT engaged — by helping them remove the factors PERCEIVED to be un-engaging, we eliminate the excuses for non-engaging.
Excuses are just part of the wallowing in the mud. As long as the temperature is okay, no problem with mud bathing. Let that mud start to harden, though, and it causes real problems for choice and improvement.
Be a Mud Manager. HELP people see their excuses as not really being roadblocks. Or not — that is also a choice (and an excuse).
But the research that Gladwell is referencing re the 10,000 hour rule does not quite say what he says it does…
http://allaboutwork.org/2012/11/21/malcolm-gladwells-10000-hour-rule-doesnt-add-up/