It's not done, until it is...

One of the areas that both Master Achievers, and those who are working to become a Master Achiever struggle with, is the area of closure. Closure is when a task, goal, or project is completed – both in time and in the mind of the one who is performing it.  It seems like a simple concept, but has been famously said before; the devil is in the details.

There are two extremes that a Master Achiever must avoid when setting about to perform a task or a goal – the first, the lazy mans excuse: “It’s 99 percent done, that’s good enough…”

No, if the job is not done, then you have not reached your stated objective – no matter how close it is, if you know in your heart that last little bit that should be completed to give a polished, professional result is not there – then you have failed in accomplishing the thing, at least to the most important person: you.

You see if you know in your heart that you have not really completed the task, then you will carry that with you, and the next time you have a task to do, you are more likely to subconsciously accept the notion of compromise.  You are more likely to give up earlier because you have established that pattern.  You are moving away from being a Master Achiever.

On the other hand, you can be a perfectionist – never fully believing that you are done, never completing the task because you keep tweaking.  This is the perfectionist conundrum: “I just need to do one more thing…”

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The perfectionist has gone too far into thinking that a task or goal needs more features, more polish, more bits of this or that, until too much time has gone by and the task or goal is no longer meaningful.

Both extremes are deadly to the Master Achiever because we all have times where we just feel like we have worked so hard that we cannot do another thing and want to throw in the towel, or we obsess over some minor thing and cannot seem to say “IT IS TRULY DONE!”

This requires balance, and takes practice and a good partner or mentor who can tell you that you are being lazy or you are obsessing over something.  Closure is when, in our own minds and hearts we know we have done our best, given our all, and have now closed the book on some task or project so we can move on to the next one.

And now, this post is done!

David T. McKee

You made it, you eat it!

Most of you that read this have heard of “The Secret” if not, it is a book ( and later a movie) that purported to tell a story about how those few human beings that achieve great things in this life have a carefully guarded “secret” to their success – a secret of such a profound and mysterious nature that some even have killed to keep it a secret…

Wooo! That sounds so mystical-magical.  That sounds like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and I half expect to be digging in an old musty tomb to find the ancient book about “the Secret”…. Hmmm, not so much.

As fun as it may be to imagine that there is some special secret to achievement and success, I have to defer to the “Pit-bull of Personal Development” Larry Wingate, who (and I quote) says “The Secret is a Total Load of Crap”:

“People love that book and the whole concept behind it because it promises you that you can achieve the results you have always dreamed of simply by focusing on what you want. Yeah right. Most people can’t turn the television off long enough to focus on their health, their work, their finances or their own children. Focus is not a strong suit for most people. Besides, I think it takes a whole lot more than “focus” to change your life and results. So I’m not buying it.”

The problem with The Secret, as Larry has so succinctly pointed out, is that just holding a concept or idea strongly in your mind is not enough.  While I do think there is some value in the ideas presented in The Secret, there are far too many people who stop at that point, or delude themselves into thinking that “focus” is all that is required.  It’s not.

Focus helps us see opportunity, it programs our own mental “filters” to tap us on the shoulder when something we need for our particular brand of success becomes available. But, and this is the crux of the issue, it will not substitute for action.

We will have to work for our success – and it will be hard work, make no mistake about that.

So –what do I mean when I say, “Success is only a sandwich away”?  Simple.  What do you do when you decide you are going to make a sandwich?  Do you focus on the sandwich?  Does that work for you?  It may make you more hungry to think about  the sandwich, but if that is all you do, you are going to starve.

No, you don’t think about it – it is like what “Yoda” the buddha-like character from “Star Wars” says to the young Luke Skywalker when he is trying to use the force to lift his ship from the swamp:

“But Master, I am trying!”

“Not try.  Do…or do not.”

In other words what Yoda was saying to Luke was: “Make a sandwich”.  “Just do it!”  You and I don’t think about such things as making a sandwich, we just get up, get the bread and the fillings, and make a sandwich.  I we come across problems such as dropping the bread, mayonnaise side down onto the floor, we clean up the mess and get another piece of bread and continue on.  We don’t whine about the fact that bread falls too easily on to the floor, or that spreading mayonnaise is just too much work, we don’t “try” to make a sandwich, we just do.

That is how we need to approach our own personal achievement.  Do.  Or do not. Make a sandwich – decide what you are going to do, hold it in your mind so that you notice opportunity, but just get busy getting the work done.  If a problem or issue gets in your path, you treat it like bread on the floor – just do the next thing that needs to be done.

That is the true path to achievement – do the tasks that have to be done.

David T. McKee

How can a missed opportunity be a golden opportunity?

Have you ever found yourself wondering what your life might be like if you had taken advantage of some opportunity of the past (“What if I had invested in Microsoft back when Bill Gates first did an IPO?”, “What if I had stayed in my high-school rock band and pushed through to stardom?”)…

We all have these moments of fantasy – and then the balloon pops and the poster shown in this picture becomes all too real (This poster is from a funny sight called “Demotivators.com” ), and most of us have a few missed opportunities where we know we should have “taken the leap”, where we almost did…but at the last minute we wimped out – and a great thing that we could have done passed us by like the train in the poster.

But that is the point that we can find a new opportunity… As “Opportunity” is not something that comes once in a while like you may have believed, but instead it is more like a “force” or a ephemeral “raw material” that is always around you.  Opportunity waits to be seen and then taken, it is not a lottery that rarely comes close to you…no, it is all around you.

But you have to learn to see it, and missed opportunities, weather real or fantasy, can be the impetus for creating new opportunities to succeed and grow.  So lets look at a few examples.

The greatest thing about a missed opportunity is that it provides you with a case study about yourself and how you missed that opportunity.  

• Did you see it but were too afraid of the risks to attempt it?
• Did you miss it altogether because you were too focused on something else?
• Did you notice the opportunity but dismiss it as “unimportant” because you did not think deeply enough about its implications?
• Did you think in your mind that you could make your own opportunity, but then allowed other things to crowd out your idea until it was too late and someone else grabbed it?
• Do you see lots of opportunities and are excited by them all and get distracted as you flit from one to another?

These five are the basic reason we miss opportunities. The last one is especially important to me – I call it “Opportunity ADD” I get myself involved in too many things and tend not to get any of them done if I don’t use some ruthless discipline.

The missed opportunity allows us to discover how we react and what areas of the five points above we need to work on.  Here are some opportunity “lock-in” suggestions:

1.) Realize that you are not the only one who will notice an opportunity, but also realize that few will act on one – make you choice, grab the reigns and create a plan to pursue your opportunity until you see it through.

2.) Make sure you have the time and resources to accomplish what needs to be done for this opportunity – if not perhaps you need to partner with someone or even leave it – finding something else.

3.) Don’t get distracted by other opportunities when you are working on one now – just write the ideas down and move on with what you are doing, otherwise you will never get anything done!

4.) Remember that as you work though an opportunity, you will create more opportunity – it is an inexhaustible resource that gets larger the more you use it up.

Opportunity is hazy when looked at in the present, but become crystal clear when seen from the past – you need to remember that the fantasy that you have of wishing you “knew then what you know now” can be a motivator to get you to “learn now what you will wish you knew” and make the fantasy a reality. You can make today’s opportunities become reality.

Many have done this, why not you?

David T. McKee

Once upon a time, many years ago, a young boy approached his wise old Cherokee grandfather.

“Grandfather, of all the things you have learned over your long life, what is the most important lesson?”

The old man looked at his grandson lovingly, thoughts moved across his wrinkled visage, and then, very slowly he began.

“The most important lesson I have learned is this: That there is a battle going on inside me – and there is one going on inside you as well, it is in all of us.  The battle is between two huge, wild dogs – one is dark and hides in the shadows.  He smells of decay and death, and his flesh hangs rotting from his bones, his eyes are red fire.  He whispers in your ears about wicked delights and unlawful things, and when you give into his temptations, he accuses you and stabs your own heart with guilt. His ways are always easy and filled with pleasures – but his paths always lead to your doom.

The other dog is noble and resides in the light. He is under control, he is clean, he is good. His breath is like cinnamon and honey, and life resides wherever ever his foot falls. He is humble, but make no mistake, he is a warrior and cannot be tamed.  He asks kindly but firmly and always tells the honest truth – even when it hurts terribly. He challenges you to follow difficult paths, but these paths will strengthen your soul and lead you ultimately to joy.

These two dogs fight continually within you.”

At that the boys grandfather went silent.  Finally, the boy asked, “Grandfather, which dog wins?”

And without hesitation the wise old Cherokee looked straight into the eyes of his grandson and answered, “The one I feed.”

Most of us have heard some variation of this story in our lives.  The point of the story is that both good and evil reside within us all and they both vie for our attention – the one we give attention to is the one that will, over time, dominate our lives and the outcome of our efforts.

How does this apply to Achievement and Success? It applies greatly and here is why: Intentional thinking is the willful focus of our attention on a particular outcome we desire.  This focus will allow our subconcious mind to become sensitized to the opportunities that exist in our environment that we can utilize to bring about our desired outcome.

That is essentially the “feeding” of the good dog, especially with regard to the creation of wealth, happiness, and a successful life.  Not setting goals, not intentionally thinking and improving ourselves is basically the feeding of the dark and destructive dog – and we will reap what we sow.

The story may be intended as a moral proverb, but it demonstrates exactly what happens with our success and failure with regard to our lives – we will reap reward based on the dog we feed.  If we see failure as a learning experience, get back up, brush ourselves off, and get going again – we have fed the good dog.  If we sit in the mud and whine – well, that is ignoring the hard lesson of failure and we will be doomed to repeat that lesson and the dark dog laughs.

The point is that we must be intentional about being intentional – about setting our goals and focusing our minds to the specific things we want to achieve – that is the feeding of the noble dog.

David T. McKee

Before I begin this post, I wanted to let everyone know that “yes…I am still alive”.  I have been heads down working on Achieve-Master, the Ultimate Life Mastery System – which, like many projects, seems to have taken on a life of its own and grown to an unwieldy size – which is a complete set of topics in and of itself.  More on Achieve-Master later.  I also experienced a down-size/merger of the start-up company I had been working at and had to find a new day job, so it has been crazy the last few months to say the least.  So I took a hiatus from “The Master Achiever” blog.  But I am back!  So without further ado, let us begin!

Todays Topic: Dress for Success

You may have heard of the book “Dress for Success” by John T. Molloy – you may even have read it. If you haven’t, you should. I say this advisedly basically because while I personally know the advice in this book is true – I am one of those people who would rather wear a t-shirt, blue jeans, and an old comfortable sweatshirt to work. However, while my favorite attire might be okay for writing software in a tiny cube or in a home office, that fact is: how you dress does affect your attitude!

Umm... No.

Molly’s contention in his book was two-fold, that how you dress affects the attitudes of those with whom you work, as well as your own self image of who you are. Remember, your subconscious gives you back what you program it – and if your self image is one of a smartly dressed, successful businessman, then that is what it will give back in self confidence, self image, and the way you carry yourself while working with your peers. They will see you as successful, and more importantly, so will you. If you don’t believe this (I didn’t when my father introduced me to Molloy’s book.), give it a try. Wear your usual or most comfortable cloths the first day and take notice of your own feelings and how able you are at your job – take down notes of how your colleagues at work act around you. Then take Molloy’s advice and dress for success and note ay differences. You will be convinced not so much about how it affects those around you (your peers may ask if you are going on job interviews – politely tell them you have meetings or something innocuous) but on how much it affects your own attitudes while at work.

They all Laughed when I said I would achieve success, but then I showed them my bank account… Success Perception is another category of “Affirmation” – Do you want a method of affirming your personal goals that really works – a way of reprogramming your own mind? Check out “The Sculptor Method” – you will be amazed!

The fact of the matter is, whether you consider it good or bad, most people are looking for someone who will be the leader and the one who will take responsibility. Most people don’t want responsibility – I believe it is an unfortunate outcome of our culture and educational system. This is why when you look the part of a leader, when you dress like a leader in whatever profession you in, you are subconsciously perceived as smarter, more experienced, and a more obvious choice for leadership roles – and that perception will also extend into your own subconscious!

Lets take a non-businessman example of this principle: If you are a welder, you are not going to wear a suit to work – but could you wear clean, well fitting, high quality welding uniforms? Perhaps purchase the very best automatic welding mask? If you feel like a top professional you will try to match that feeling with proper action – you do still need to keep abreast of the best techniques and processes of course, but the fact is when you are seen next to the welder who does not take care of his uniform, does not invest in the best mask, etc. you will be perceived as the leader.

While perception is not necessarily reality, the fact is, for better or worse, what we perceive does control to a large extent what we believe, especially subconsciously. So use this fact to your advantage as you become a Master Achiever!

David T. McKee