Every Friday is guest post day. Today, we have an honest, inspiring post from Melissa Gorzelanczyk of Peace and Projects. Enjoy!

What do you want?

Go on. What is it?

Not so easy, I know.

On any given day, the things I want flip-flop. I waffle. I change my mind. So when someone asks me, “What do you want?” I finally found the reply to sum it up:

I want to give the right answer. And that isn’t always the honest one.

Because telling someone what I want feels locked in. I mean, they could broadcast it on Twitter and what happens if I change my mind?

Maybe you want to give the right answer, too. It’s a flawed cycle. It keeps all the secret, awesome, hidden wants hiding between the lines of our desires. The things we want come out too obvious and without detail.

So today, just to go on with your crazy little self, practice being honest about what you really want.  Dust off the idea shelf of your mind. Lay them on the table and take a look.

Here are a few things I want. After typing, I thought, hmm, interesting. Hidden between the lines were new, focused wants. I held them up to the light for a closer look.

Want: To be healthy.

Really want: A toned butt and flat abs I can show off in a bikini.

Shallow? Maybe. But lying about what I really want won’t get my anywhere. I’ll just be sittin on my flat ass year after year. Now I have a solid goal to pursue and a path to figure out.

Here’s another:

Want: A good marriage.

Really want: To sit down and set some goals for the next 5, 10, 20 years and pursue them together, as partners.

That’s my subconscious letting out a huge sigh of relief. That’s saying so long, guilt! See ya, impatience. I can pin down these wants.

So let me ask you again: What do you want?

In life? Love? Work?

Give that safe, easy answer first.

But look. What’s that?

You want to lose weight just to get a boyfriend? You have this idea – it’s probably just a stupid dream, but still – check it out.

You think ballet sounds fun. A flower cart at the gym might actually work. A #1 New York Times bestseller – yes.

Acknowledge it.

Dare to want it.

Melissa Gorzelanczyk writes at Amazing Work and Peace & Projects, where she is figuring out life, love, and getting (amazing) stuff done. She’d love you to come over for a visit, dahlink.

***

I hope you enjoyed the post from Melissa, everyone. She’s a wonderful, brilliant lady, and she’s been a great (online) friend to me – I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to meet you too!

In other news, I have a guest post of my own over at Goodlife Zen, about finding happiness in unusual places. I hope you’ll check it out if you have the time. See you all on Sunday.

People complicate ideas because they’re terrified of being wrong. They qualify and compromise and hedge their bets, because they’re afraid.

Few people are willing to stand up publicly for the simple, direct, powerful ideas they hold in private. Those that do adopt a no-nonsense approach are accused of oversimplifying the issues.

“Life is complicated,” people say. “Everything’s relative.”

But you know what? People used to say that stuff had to be complicated too. People used to say that working a steady desk job was as good as it gets.

The problem is fear of being wrong. If you defend a simple idea, like “Your life is 100% your responsibility and no one else’s,” people can attack that and possibly prove you wrong.

On the other hand, if you say: “Your life is kind of your responsibility, but it really depends on your upbringing and the neighborhood you grow up in and the kind of boss you have and the opportunities you get through sheer blind luck,” you haven’t really taken a position at all, so you can’t be proven wrong. You can always fall back on “It depends.”

“Compromise: An agreement between two men to do what both agree is wrong.” – Lord Edward Cecil

But when everyone’s busy covering their asses and qualifying every statement, when the game isn’t “find the right answer” but “don’t get caught with the wrong one,” we wind up with a world in which no one’s completely wrong, but no one’s really right either. It’s like a fortuneteller whose predictions are just vague enough to pull the wool over customers’ eyes.

Politicians are masters of the “don’t be wrong” game, which is precisely why so little of what matters gets done.

What we need today are leaders who aren’t afraid of following simple ideas to their conclusion, who aren’t afraid of being proven wrong. I mean that literally. People talk a lot about standing up for beliefs and not compromising on values, but 99% of them never follow through.

“Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another – too often ending in the loss of both.” – Tryon Edwards

We try to be everything to everyone, to make everyone happy – and we end up being nothing at all.

Simple ideas are dangerous because they can change the world, for better or worse. They’re dangerous because they’re powerful and don’t leave room for compromise. Simple ideas can hurt – but they’re also the only way to fix what’s wrong.

***

Ask yourself what you believe to be right or good. Now strip away all the caveats and exceptions and little safety nets. What are you left with? Defend that and see what happens. You might be right, or you might be completely wrong – but at least you’ll have an answer. I promise you it’s worth it.

Minimalism teaches us to stop hiding behind our stuff and get out and live. I challenge you to take it a step further: stop hiding behind foggy ideas and get out and take a stand.

Greatness is … Standing for something. Fighting against something. The courage to be right, at the risk of being wrong.

What do you believe in?

“Compromise … does not satisfy, but dissatisfies everybody; it does not lead to general fulfillment, but to general frustration; those who try to be all things to all men, end up by not being anything to anyone.” – Ayn Rand

***

I’m reading 37signals’ new book, Rework (aff). It’s full of amazing, simple, uncompromised insight into life, work, and building a business.

Speaking of new books, my friend Everett Bogue is totally on (e-book) fire. Check out his new e-book, How to Create a Movement. Simple, direct, no fluff. Plus it’s free.

In other news, I’m incredibly excited to be meeting a lot of brilliant people at SXSWi this year. Are any of you planning on attending?

Feeling offended often gets in the way of meaningful change. When people feel slighted, disrespected, insulted – they immediately start looking for revenge, instead of solutions.

Supervisors scream at underperforming employees; employees accuse supervisors of stereotyping; teachers throw students into detention; countries issue condemnations of “provocative” behavior.

And the scariest part? How easy it is to offend people. Show up late to work, and the boss feels disrespected. Support one political party, and members of the other party take it as an attack on their personal values. Live a remarkable life, and some people get defensive because you’re not doing it their way.

Ironically – or appropriately – the things that offend us, that draw out passionate reactions, are the urgent problems most in need of solutions. Where there’s righteous indignation, where’s there’s fire and passion, there are opportunities for progress that often go unnoticed.

What if, for example:

• Instead of berating a teammate for falling behind, you make suggestions to help him keep up?
• Instead of sending a student to sit in the corner, you spend some extra time figuring out why she’s acting up?
• Instead of immediately firing an employee for making a mistake (and incurring the costs of training a replacement), you look for a different way to work?
• Instead of lecturing people on the evils of stereotyping or demanding that they respect you, you fight prejudice by living a non-conformist life?
• Instead of railing against how powerless the system makes you, you work on changing it piece by piece?

Sometimes righteous indignation is the worst kind. You may be morally/ethically/legally right – but if indignation doesn’t lead you to work on fixing the problem, then it’s just a chain holding you down.

The question we should ask is: “What’s going to make this better?” not “What’s going to make me feel better?” Stay focused on the goals and changes you want to achieve; don’t get distracted by the high horse and the soapbox.

Don’t just say: “This is why I can’t fix it.” Ask: “How can I make this happen?”

What if you were so focused on building solutions that you didn’t have time to get hung up on being angry about the problems?

“They know what you think. They’re just too busy making the future happen that they can’t be bothered to be offended.” – Chris Brogan

When doing your legacy work, think about who you’re doing it for. Not just what, but who and why. Ask yourself:

• Who do I want to remember me?
• Who will be impacted by the work I’m doing?
• Why do they need what I’m giving?

Answering these questions helps you focus more on the specific needs of your audience (i.e., work that makes a difference), instead of throwing out “all-purpose” work (i.e., work that anyone can do).

But here’s something you may not have considered: when you choose an audience, you hand them a measuring stick and give them the power to judge your work.

If I gauge how well I’m doing on this blog by how many people subscribe, what happens if a hundred of you decide to leave and never come back? I’ve given you the power to judge my work.

That’s a little scary, isn’t it?

Think about your legacy work. Who’s holding the measuring stick? Your children? Your community? Your students? The Nobel Committee?

You might say, “But I work for myself. I pursue my own passion, and I’m the one who decides how well I’m doing.”

I’d say you’re (partially) right. On one hand, every legacy project has to start with you: your passion, your motivation, your work.

On the other hand, great work doesn’t happen in a vacuum. You can’t make an impact or leave a legacy unless your work affects other people. Those people – the ones you want to help, teach, entertain, surpass, or impress – make up your audience.

***

I’ll leave you with a beautiful story I read long ago:

A young virtuoso violinist was making her debut at Carnegie Hall. As she finished her final piece, the audience rose to its feet in thunderous applause.

But the young violinist seemed not to hear the applause, or the shouts of “Bravo!” Instead, her eyes were fixed anxiously on an old man sitting in the front row. After a moment, the man gave a single, solemn nod of approval.

And suddenly, the young violinist was all smiles. You see, the old man was her teacher, and his judgment mattered more to her than the applause of hundreds.

The right audience will hold you accountable to truly great work; the wrong audience will steadily drag you away from it.

Choose wisely.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to respond to the AOGT reader survey – you’ve been hugely helpful! Let’s take a look at what you said, and what I’ll be doing or changing as a result. Note: I’ve rounded the numbers to the nearest whole percentage point.

On posts per week…

I asked: Currently, AOGT publishes 5 posts per week. What do you think about this posting schedule?

57% of you said: “It’s perfect as is.”
34% of you said: “I’d prefer 3 posts a week.”
9% of you said: “Information overload! 2 posts a week please.”

It sounds like nearly half of you are a bit overwhelmed by the 5-posts-per-week schedule, and half of you are happy with it.

Action plan: let’s compromise and take it down to 4 posts a week, then see how things play out. What do you think?

On guest post Friday…

I asked: What do you think about Guest Post Friday?

75% of you said: “I like it the way it is.”
20% of you said: “I’d rather have guest posts once in a while, not every week.”
3% of you said: “I’d prefer more guest posts each week.”
2% of you said: “I don’t like guest posts.”

Seems like guest post Friday is a big hit for the most part.

Action plan: let’s keep guest post Friday running as is for now, but plan on throwing in a few “different” posts every few weeks or so – perhaps surveys like this one, or interviews with brilliant people, or even book reviews (I’m working my way through some AMAZING books at the moment).

On DISQUS comments…

I asked: AOGT uses a comments plugin called Disqus. What do you think about it?

68% of you said: “I like it as is.”
32% of you said: “I find it annoying. I prefer the normal Wordpress comment system.”

I’ve been having problems with DISQUS loading slowly and failing to send email alerts, and it seems like a significant percentage of you don’t particularly like it either.

Action plan: I’ll be working on transitioning back to the “stock” comment system this weekend. Assuming nothing goes horribly wrong, all of your existing comments should remain as they are.

***

Again, thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to our little survey. I hope you like the changes I’m planning, but if you don’t, please let me know immediately via the contact form.

This might also be a good time to tell you that I’m working on a full redesign of the site, which I hope will be done by early April. More details to come as we get closer to launch – but I expect the new design to be fantastic.

Have a good weekend, everyone. Do something fun and productive, and I’ll see you next week!

At work, I’m trying to help my sub-managers learn to say no. More specifically, I’m trying to convince them it’s okay to say no to me.

As much as I like being in charge, and as much as I want people to support my ideas, I don’t need a team of people who agree with everything I do. In fact, I’ve tried to build a team of people who are strong where I’m weak and weak where I’m strong.

What I need (what every leader and movement needs) is people who are willing to disagree with me and defend their own independent judgment. When I screw up, I need teammates who will stand up and tell me that your idea is terrible, and here’s why – even if the final decision is mine.

In particular, I’m looking for three things in myself and others: conviction, honesty, and reason.

• Conviction means that you trust your own judgment and are willing to stand by what you believe is best, even if your boss/advisor/teammate/friend says otherwise.
• Honesty is the willingness to say what you mean without hiding behind euphemisms, throwing around exaggerations, or jumping onto the soapbox.
• Reason is the ability to defend your opinion, to give justifications for what you believe and why. It’s also a willingness to change your mind when or if you see that your reasons are flawed. Reason keeps conviction from becoming dogma or obstinacy.

***

These principles are key to any relationship, whether it’s for business, romance, or friends. But let’s just talk from a work/business standpoint for now.

As a manager, I need to know that my team members are able to tell me an independent “no” when needed. That means I need to consistently demonstrate that I’m open to criticism. Saying I’m okay with criticism is easy; showing it through action is the real test.

Note that being open to criticism doesn’t mean I’ll change my opinion every time I’m criticized! It doesn’t even mean I have to agree – only that I take the criticism seriously.

I also need to be open and honest when I’m the one giving criticism or praise. I can’t be the kind of manager who says nice things to someone all year, then tears them apart in their annual review. My teammates to know that my praise is genuine and my criticism is unbiased. That’s one hell of an obligation for me. Every day, I learn a little more about how to honor it.

***

Here are the actionable takeaways:

If you’re a leader or in a position of authority, it’s your responsibility to help your people – and yourself – develop conviction, honesty, and reason. Think about this every day.

If you’re a follower (in the very best sense), remember that the people “in charge” need you to stand up and be an independent voice. Even the greatest leaders can get stuck in a rut from time to time. They need you to get them out and moving again.

On the other hand, if you’re following a leader who can’t respect your independent “no” (and by respect, I mean giving your opinion serious consideration, even if they ultimately overrule it), you need to find someone else to follow.

Or, even better, become someone worth following.

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While we’re on the subject of honest feedback: if you haven’t responded to my reader survey yet, I’d appreciate it if you could do it before tomorrow (Friday).

It’s a super-short survey; there are only 3 multple-choice questions, and it’ll take less than a minute of your time. Click here to take the survey.

Thanks to everyone who’s already responded. I’ll be revealing the results tomorrow. See you then!

When I tackle a problem, I tend to do so with words. For me, finding the solution often hinges on the right term, nuance, or turn of phrase to express an abstract idea. I quite literally talk (or write) myself through things, even when the problem isn’t about writing.

Words are the framework of my world, but I’m aware that’s not the case for everyone.

If I’m a linguistic problem-solver, then some of my friends are definitely visual problem-solvers who prefer diagrams and schematics. Others are social problem-solvers, whose first instinct is to seek collaboration.

Just as people learn in different ways, I can imagine a whole spectrum of problem-solving techniques that appeal to different people and work best in different situations. An artist sees the world as shades of color, an architect as expanses of space, a designer as a combination of the two. But right now, I’m curious about what works for you.

What kind of problem-solver are you? How does that affect which problems you choose to address? How does it change the way you see the world?

***

Here’s a similarly fascinating idea:

A few weeks ago, Sam shared a visualization technique for discovering your teachable point of view. In the comments, I wrote this:

I find the different methods of visualization interesting as well. Perhaps it relates to the type of media we consume? As in, if you’re a film buff, you visualize things in movie form; if you’re a bookworm, you narrate things in prose.

I wonder if that also implies that the changes in our media formats (not even the changes in content) affect the way we think.

Do we condition ourselves (or we we conditioned by others) to visualize the world in different ways based on the structure of information we absorb? Will a writer always see the world differently than a mathematician?

Also – can we change people’s opinions simply by teaching them to think in words or images or movies or music, instead of what they’re currently doing?

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Today’s post is rather rough; I’m just thinking out loud and asking a lot of questions. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts on the topic. Let’s talk!

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” – Muhammad Ali

It’s true – nothing great can be accomplished without risk. But that doesn’t mean we have to take all the risks at the beginning.

The way I see it, there are two main ways to start anything: with a bold leap of faith, or a with a quiet step forward.

You can quit your job and move across the country to build your dream company – or you can work on it a few hours each day after dinner, making the transition only after you’ve laid a strong foundation.

Some people relish the risky leap, but I much prefer the low-risk start. Just last week, my business partners and I signed the official paperwork for a new startup that’s been riding quietly on top of our established company (and established income stream) for several months now. We’re not scrambling to make ends meet; we can take it slow. That’s a low-risk start.

I build this blog a few hours at a time, during my lunch break, after dinner, on weekends. I’m building the framework of my ideal life, of my great work, piece by piece. A low-risk start.

The low-risk start is:

• Building a habit with a ridiculously easy first step.
• Starting a business “on the side,” without dropping your day job.
• Doing what you love in your off time.

The low-risk start is not the “no-risk” start. You always risk something, whether it’s your money, your reputation, or your beauty sleep. How much you feel comfortable putting on the table is up to you.

Also, the low-risk start doesn’t preclude the possibility of much bigger risk in the future. Sooner or later, my partners and I will have to trust our new startup to stand on its own. Sooner or later, I’ll have to make a transition from my current lifestyle to the one that I’m slowly building. The leap of faith is waiting – but until I’m ready, I’m willing to let it wait just a little longer.

Benefits of the Low-Risk Start

In general, the low-risk start works best for people who are adventurous and ambitious, but also pragmatic.

• Lower barriers to entry. It’s easier to get started when your world isn’t riding on your success and when you’re not endangering your current obligations. You’re not forced to gamble your current financial stability. You don’t have to steel yourself psychologically for the leap. You don’t have to spend as much time convincing your family and friends that this is the right thing to do.
• Less pressure. Say you’ve resolved to be more productive this year. Instead of locking yourself in to a rigorous new work schedule and risking total burnout, you can start with a simple, flexible productivity system. If you mess up, it’s okay. You try again tomorrow. There’s less pressure, and sometimes that makes it easier to persevere.
• Smoother learning curve. When you start small, you have plenty of time to experiment and learn. We’ve had time to see how a few people respond to our new company’s offerings and prices. I’ve had a chance to screw up my first blog, scrap everything, and start over. I’ve had a chance to find my voice.
• Opportunities arise magically. Okay, so it’s not magical. But I’m always amazed at how, when you commit to doing just a little every day, people and circumstances come together to open doors for you.

Problems with the Low-Risk Start

• Lower sense of urgency. When you have time and money to spare, it can be easy to get complacent or lazy. In starting a business, for example, it can be hard to push through without the constant pressure to become profitable. In building a habit, a ridiculously easy first step can rob you of your enthusiasm for making a dramatic life change.
• May not apply to all goals. If you’re starting an online business, slowly building it at night and running it out of your house is perfectly possible. On the other hand, if you’re trying to build a factory to make widgets, the need for expensive space and machinery makes it difficult (though not impossible) to start without a significant risk.
• Can become a crutch. The leap of faith needs to happen sooner or later. If you get too comfortable in low-risk mode, it’s easy to keep pushing back the big moment until the opportunity’s gone and it’s too late to get it back.

***

I’m a low-risk start kind of person. That’s what makes me tick, what keeps me motivated. It’s worked out well for me so far.

But even I’ll admit there’s times when go-big-or-go-home is better. When I quit video games, for example, I had to quit cold turkey because of the nature of my addiction.

And right now, I’m pushing myself to take some of my low-risk pursuits to the next level. I’m getting stricter with myself on the productivity front (more on this in a future post); I’m working to solidify the business model for the new startup (and find more clients, of course); I’m expanding into new areas online. So I’m waging a battle now for that sense of urgency.

What about you? How do you start things? With a bang or a whisper? And how do you know when it’s time to take it up a few notches? Can I help?

***

So Chris Guillebeau has, once again, beaten me to the punch with the interview with Tsilli Pines he published yesterday. An inspiring, real-life application of the low-risk start – go read it! I promise, I planned this post long before I read Chris’ interview. Sigh.

Jon over at Balanced Bits posted a great guest article about work-life balance from Jeanne Murray.

Along the lines of taking the low-risk start to the next level, here’s a blog post from the Harvard Business Review about how startups need to balance organic growth and structured process. It’s a little denser, but a good read if you have time and are interested in startups and small business. Plus it’s from Harvard.

Have a great day, everyone. Start something. And don’t forget to let me know if you’ll be in town for SXSW.

See you tomorrow!

Can you believe it’s already March? Two months since the new year began, and two months into a new decade. What are you working on? Have your plans for the year changed?

The last month has been a busy one here at The Art of Great Things. In just a few weeks, our community has doubled in size to over 2,000 readers. A warm welcome to you all!

In February, I was fortunate enough to make many new friends and get to know old some old friends even better. I’m so grateful to have met Everett (who has a great ebook!), Sam, Jarred, Amber, Ted, and Michael (who wrote a great book!)

And I was glad for the opportunity to stay in touch with Mike, Sibyl, Anastasiya, Eric, and everyone who’s commented on my posts – there are too many wonderful people to list here. Email me! I hope you’ve enjoyed our conversations as much as I have.

Also, a HUGE thank you to February’s guest authors! I couldn’t have done it without you.

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The Best of February 2010

Just in case you missed them, here are a few of my favorite posts from February:

• Too Many Rules, Too Little Trust
• “You Must Have Cheated”
• The Why and How of Simplicity
• What a Leader Sees
• Obsessed with First
• The Simplest Productivity System
• A Question of Legacy

Do you have any favorite AOGT posts from last month? How about favorite posts on other blogs or favorite posts you’ve written?Read, comment, share!

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In other news, The Art of Great Things has received quite a bit of attention from other bloggers lately: as a blog every life hacker should subscribe to, as a resource in the Book of Wisdom, and as inspiration for other posts. Pretty cool, huh?

As you may know, the annual SXSW festival takes place in a few weeks in Austin, Texas – which just happens to be where I live. So, if any of you plan on attending SXSW, drop me a line and we’ll hang out.

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Okay, here’s something important: I’m looking for your feedback. I’ve put together a super-short 3 question survey here. If you have two minutes to spare, please do take a look at it. Otherwise I’ll have to keep nagging you this week. Thank you guys in advance!

Click here to take the survey.

Keep doing great work, everyone.

I’m looking forward to seeing your responses to the reader survey. See you Tuesday!

Author’s Note: This is a guest post from Eric Fulweiler of Opinion at Large.

Why do we find certain activities easier than others? It’s so easy for us to sit down and watch a 3-hour baseball game (at least, for some of us), but it’s so hard for us to sit down for 3 hours and write a Powerpoint presentation. Part of it is certainly because baseball is more entertaining than Powerpoint (again, for some of us), but the bigger issue here is the standards and expectations that we have created for ourselves.

We have standards embedded within our mentality that dictate the ease and attractiveness of certain activities. We have chosen to believe that baseball is easier than Powerpoint. And these choices have resulted in standards that frequently present obstacles to our personal or professional productivity.

But for those of us who accept that we can control these standards, we can realign them to further our goals, and significantly increase our productivity and potential.

We all have predefined standards.

In our daily lives we all have standards of what is fun and easy, or hard and boring. After years of either personal experience or cultural reinforcement we believe that movies are easy while work is hard, and shopping is fun while class is boring.

But all of these adjectives that we use to describe the emotions and mindset associated with these activities are completely relevant to standards we control.

Think about it; fun, boring, easy, hard, exciting, stupid. It’s all relative, and it’s all dependent on a variable that can be changed. Change the standard and you will change the emotional association. Hard becomes easy, boring becomes fun. Sometimes it’s not that black and white, but you get the idea.

Stop blindly following your embedded standards.

We think one activity is fun while another is hard because we have programmed ourselves, or been programmed by others, to believe it is so. We believe that spending an hour on our friend’s Facebook wall makes us happier than responding to those old work emails.

But does it have to?

If we stop for a minute and resist our initial emotional attachment to these activities, we realize that we can control how we feel. These activities are blank slates upon which we instill value and emotion. Facebook is only fun because we decided it should be.

Old work emails are only boring because we decided they should be. And if it is, in fact, our internal values that we are portraying onto activities, then we can change our association with them.

If we can find a way to believe that working is fun and wandering aimlessly for an hour on Facebook is boring, why can’t it be so? By thinking critically and objectively about the activities we choose to pursue, we can empower ourselves to change our personal standards.

Standards are shaped by a string of consistent decisions.

You don’t have a true expectation after you do something for the first time. It’s only after many repeated experiences that we shape standards for a certain activity. And each experience is built on decisions that we make. Each time we sit down to work we decide whether we want to work on something easy or something hard.

If we make enough repeated decisions to put off anything that’s hard, procrastination becomes a standard in our work activity. And because that standard is based on multiple decisions you can’t change it with a single opposing decision. You can’t sit down one day and work on a hard project and expect that your standard of procrastination has been broken. You have to make that decision to take on the hard project repeatedly, just as you did so many times with the easy one.

You can’t build a standard with only a few decisions, so you can’t expect to rebuild a new standard with only a few decisions. Realigning your standards is a serious undertaking, and true, meaningful change takes time, and repeated dedication to your goal.

Believe in your goals and you will find the strength to change your standards.

It might sound like an intense idea, and it is, but it holds immeasurable potential and yields unbelievable satisfaction.

Imagine, instead of finding ways to procrastinate, you find ways to be productive. Instead of fighting to do less, you fight to do more. All you have to do is realign your standards and expectations for the activities in your life. And yes, it is possible, as long as you stay dedicated to the change you initiate.

In my own life I believe in and apply this theory daily. About a year ago I decided I wasn’t satisfied with how much I was reading, so I set a goal of reading 50 pages a day. The first month I made myself read 20 pages a day, and each month I increased my target by 10 until I got to 50. Now I read 50 pages a day. Of course there are some days I don’t read at all, and some days I read less than 50 pages. But the point is not to relentlessly harass myself when I don’t meet my target.

The point is that I now have a new standard of what I should do. Now reading 50 pages a day is the norm, not the exception. I feel right when I read 50 pages a day, and I feel a little wrong when I don’t. I reshaped my personal standard to align with my goal. However, I had to implement this change in small steps to make sure I did not become burnt out or disillusioned with my goal.

Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.

It may seem impossible when you first start out, and the beginning is always the hardest part because you haven’t accomplished anything yet. But if you set easily-achievable targets for yourself, and ease yourself into the transition, you will be able to reshape your own standards in any way you choose.

However, it’s important not to set the bar too high, or take on more than you can handle. If you set targets that are hard to accomplish, you are setting yourself up for failure.

Set yourself up for success by acknowledging that any step, no matter how small, towards your goal is taking you closer to success.

***

Anything of importance is built on patience and dedication. As long as you clearly identify what you want, and your goals aren’t unreasonable, there is nothing to keep you from it but yourself. Standards and expectations run through our mental process almost constantly, we just choose to accept them instead of question. Believing we are not responsible for our standards is much easier than realizing we have the power to change them. But if we decide to take control and realign those standards and expectations, we can accomplish anything.

The potential is always there, we just have to decide to fulfill it.

***

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