Tag: commitment

Be Better

Tis the season for resolutions.

As the holidays wind down and the calendar resets, many are planning on reinventing themselves. On pursuing ambitious goals and improving their self-worth.

Count me out.

For years, I’ve railed against New Year’s Resolutions. I’ve never understood why we let something as arbitrary as a calendar change affect our actions. Why we let the ticking of a clock serve as our compass, instead of following our heart.

We are not robots. Yet we seek to reprogram ourselves every time the days get short, and the guilt of holiday indulgence sets in.

So, we commit ourselves to crazy goals. Commitments we’ll break within three weeks.

There’s a better approach. One that can yield better and more consistent results. And all it takes is commitment to two words:

Be Better.

It’s ridiculously simple, yet amazingly complex.

You see, by committing ourselves to these words, we hold ourselves accountable. We require ourselves to show up each and every day with a singular mission: Improve on yesterday.

How we go about doing that is our business. But we will ultimately find ourselves making incremental improvements each day.

Why? Because that’s the only path forward.

We might be enthralled by the quick fix, the growth hack, the express elevator. After all, society and technology have hard-wired us to believe that we can have whatever we want in an instant.

But it’s all an illusion.

When it comes to self-improvement, slow and steady is the only way. For this is a continuous process. One that can be painfully monotonous, yet effective.

Living into this process can yield success. But that takes a mindset shift.

It takes us abandoning our illusion of grandeur in favor of the 10 feet in front of us. Something that we’re naturally loathe to do.

Simon Sinek once said of Millennials, “It’s as if they’re standing at the foot of a mountain, and they have this abstract concept called impact that they want to have in the world, which is the summit. What they don’t see is the mountain.”

It’s not just Millennials with this selective blindness. We all have it to some degree. It’s why we have resolutions in the first place. And it’s why we let the calendar dictate our lives.

If we really want to break the chain, — to realize true self-improvement — we must open our eyes.

We must focus on the journey more than the destination. We must accept the challenge of taking a million baby steps, rather than a moon leap. We must embrace a process that, by definition, will never be complete.

We must live into two powerful words, day in, day out.

Be better.

Will you?

The Power of Being Present

Growing up, I watched a fair amount of college football games on fall Saturdays. Each season, my beloved Miami Hurricanes would face off against the Virginia Tech Hokies, and the broadcasters would invariably talk about The Lunch Pail — a symbol the vaunted Hokie defense rallied around time and again.

The Lunch Pail was nothing flashy — a small hard-case container painted in the signature maroon and orange colors of Virginia Tech. But that was the point. It was there, every day — a tangible symbol of persistence. Likewise, the Hokies would always be a tough opponent — what they lacked in world-class athleticism, they made up for with pure effort and heart.

While I consistently pulled for my eventual alma mater in these matchups, I gained a great deal of respect for the Virginia Tech Hokies over the years, and learned a lot about the blue collar work ethic in the process. Funny as it sounds, watching football games on ABC on weekends gave me valuable insight I couldn’t get in the classroom.

Skills are important, but so is the fortitude to be present. The will to persistently devote your time and effort to something you believe in.

Along the winding road to adulthood, my vocation, home address and interests have all changed — multiple times. But one thing has stayed consistent — my devotion to all that I pursue. This persistence has allowed me to thrive in my various career positions over the years, and to build a life.

It didn’t take magic or luck for me to get where I am now; it took the proverbial blood, sweat and tears.

That said, sometimes, I feel as if I’m a relic from the past.

Lifehacking has become a central part of Millennial culture these days — a societal quest to cut the chaff and make everything from cooking dinner to completing your job responsibilities faster and more efficient. The corporate world has embraced this mantra with open arms (ostensibly for the promise of leaner payrolls and overhead), with one search marketing superagency even adopting the mantra “Work Smarter, Not Harder.”

In a matter of years, we’ve developed an extreme allergy to the grind.

Look, I get it. If only 20 percent of our work time is productive, it makes sense to focus on our money moments. If we can cut tedium and monotony out of our personal lives, we’ll enjoy ourselves that much more.

But at what point does cutting the chaff turn into cutting corners?

Wholesome success can’t be achieved in the time it takes to order a Big Mac. It requires persistent vigilance. It requires long-term focus. It requires being there, time and again.

We can’t hack our future with one swing of the chisel. We must strategically and consistently knock away small pieces of the stone to sculpt our destiny.

Make no mistake, there is substance in that Lunch Pail. There is power in being present.

The key is not to get started, but to keep going.

Will you?

What You Put In

You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again.

You get out what you put in.

It’s some simple wisdom that we might apply to our careers, or to motivate ourselves at the gym. But it’s really about so much more than climbing the ladder, or getting the perfect six pack.

It’s about putting a concerted, dedicated effort into everything you do, in order to see results.

This point too often gets lost among us. We all too often believe that “putting in” is something strictly associated with an unpleasant, but necessary experience. For some inexplicable reason, we expect the things that bring us joy to just happen to us, without us “putting in” to make them all that they should be.

We know better. Aside from the sun rising and setting each day, very little in this world just happens. To varying degrees, we have to make things happen.

With this in mind, it’s important to dedicate ourselves to everything we do. Everything we strive for — from being a better parent to making smarter financial decisions — comes down to commitment. Heck, how we spend our free time comes down to commitment, even if we only plan on watching golf on TV.

Why is this dedication so important? It forces us to stay engaged and goal-oriented, even at the times when the goal we’re aiming for is total relaxation. This process keeps us healthier, sharper and more in control of our actions; it saves our mind from the paralysis of indifference.

Commitment forces us to shun the sheep in favor of the lions.

We are all lions. We are all strong, proud and capable of calling the shots in our lives. The key is to step up and take charge of what matters to us.

So the next time you’re zoned in at your cubicle, or preparing for that next set of reps, bottle that feeling of devotion. Then put it into everything else you do. You’ll be surprised how much you’ll get out of it.