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The art of Excellence (3): Risk, success and happiness

There is a beautiful story about 2 sales people of a shoe company sent to a deserted African country to examine business potential. The whiner calls his boss and says, “People here walk barefoot. They do not wear shoes at all. Our sales potential is zero”. The winner calls his boss and says, “People here walk barefoot. They do not wear shoes at all. We have no competition. The whole market is ours for the taking”.

Every success involves risk. It may sound funny, but the greater the risk, the greater the achievement. Poor people consider risk takers foolish, but those who excel will tell you that no achievement is ever accomplished by staying in your comfort zone.

The “comfort zone” is a very dangerous place, because it repels creativity and success. The comfort zone is the place where you welcome your fears with open arms and keep them company. There is nothing wrong with relaxing from time to time and resting before climbing the next mountain, but when we get too comfortable, out choices are eventually limited to getting up or drowning.

This post is part 3 of 4 in the series Excellence

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The art of Excellence (2): Fighting poverty

Luck has nothing to do with success and all the successful people will tell you that most of their success did not fall from the sky but there was some opportunity they were able to recognize. Developing the attitude to recognize opportunities is mistaken for some mystical luck similar to winning the lottery.

When my son was preparing for a competition, I told him the lottery story. This story is a ticket out of poverty. Take every opportunity to use it.

Every Friday, the archangel Gabriel went down to the Wailing Wall to pick up the notes of requests people stuck on the wall during the week. Every week, he read all the notes and organized them before presenting them to God.

One day, Gabriel want to God and said, “Dear God, there is this old man who comes here every week, rain or shine, for 25 years. Every week, he begs you to let him win the lottery. He is a good, religious man and never asks for anything else. Please God, I have read his requests every week for 25 years and it breaks my heart. Can you please grant the poor man his wish?”

God said, “I would do it gladly, if only he bought a ticket”.

This post is part 2 of 4 in the series Excellence

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The art of Excellence (1): Success with high standards

In the eyes of the average person, there is something snobby in striving for excellence. For some people, possibly for most, excellence is pure luck, almost a luxurious state of living that you are either born with or not. It is no coincidence that those who think this way do not excel at many things in life.

There is a paradox in the search for excellence, because it is the result of an attitude, a habit you need to have in the first place in order to achieve it. There is something frustrating in understating what T. Alan Armstrong said, “Champions do not become champions when they win the event, but in the hours, weeks, months and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely the demonstration of their championship act”. It is frustrating, because it makes you think that excelling is hard work.

Excellence goes together with extraordinary success that is higher than all standards. It is frustrating because you cannot reach excellence without succeeding big time.

This post is part 1 of 4 in the series Excellence

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I Want to Be a Billionaire

Some time ago, the kids and I discovered a song about being a billionaire by Travie McCoy (sung with Bruno Mars), most of which goes like this:

I wanna be a billionaire so [beeping] bad
Buy all of the things I never had
I wanna be on the cover of Forbes magazine
Smiling next to Oprah and the Queen
Oh every time I close my eyes
I see my name in shining lights
A different city every night oh I swear
The world better prepare
For when I’m a billionaire

Call me a pest, but after hearing them sing it many (many) times, I thought it might be a good chance to bring up the topic of money. Ronit and I believe that kids should be exposed to various topics at different ages simply because they are part of life. They may not “get it” every time, but they “get” a little bit more and develop their understanding over time. This way, they have fewer surprises when they become adults and have to take care of themselves.

The issue of money is no different.

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Anybody Can Do It

If you have ever been to a seminar about personal development, wealth creation, investment, Internet marketing or business (and I stopped counting them some time ago), you have heard the following resounding statement:

“If I can do it, anybody can”

This is typically said at the end of a story of how the presenter has clawed his or her way from extreme poverty, shame and rejection to the stellar success that forms the basis of the whole seminar. Some of these presenters look like pretty normal people, even if they dress up a bit more than their audience, so why not believe them?

Because everybody can IN THEORY. Sure, everybody can retrace the presenter’s steps and, if everything also happens the same way, make lots of money and become really successful and happy.

Oh, wait. What if it does not happen to me the same way?

Exactly! This question appears in most people’s minds as soon as they start thinking about applying all those wonderful tips and methods to themselves and their own life.

You see, when a person stands on stage, having made lots of money, it is easy to imagine them having the same confidence when they first started out. But they did not have it, and it dawns on us as soon as we shift our focus to us.

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Five Minutes Past the End of Your Nose

Nowadays, I am faced with deadlines almost on a daily basis for my university studies and at my job. This brings on considerations such as what to do first and when to get started. I also have many opportunities to go out and forget about all the things I have to do. There are great things on TV, lots of friends to chat to, parties to attend and books to read. I could really forget about assignments and deadlines and just go out. Going on from Dad’s earlier post Do it NOW, I want to chat to you about the value of planning ahead, of thinking five minutes down the track and the importance of this for children (and teens and young adults).

There was a wonderful saying in the classic 60s movie Mary Poppins. It goes something like this:

“Sometimes a person, through no fault of his own, can’t see past the end of his nose”

Of course, Mary Poppins was referring to the fact that people sometimes don’t accept things that aren’t part of their world. But this saying is always associated in my mind with the fact that sometimes children can’t fathom that while they get what they want right now, there are consequences to their decision.

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Raising Grownups

Parents often see themselves as “raising children”.

Not true.

Parents are actually raising future grownups and this is an important distinction, because grownups are independent, hopefully self-sufficient humans, whereas children are rather dependent and undeveloped beings who need continuous care and attention.

So in essence, no matter what we do today, we should do it with the final creation in mind – our future son or daughter when they are ready to say goodbye and beyond.

Will they be healthy and able to care for themselves so they can stay healthy?

Will they have the knowledge they need to not only survive in the world but also succeed?

Will they have the strength of character to do well and be happy?

But daily life is quite different for most parents. In most homes, parents are busy people and when they interact with their kids, it is often to do with housekeeping, cleaning up their messy rooms, getting off the computer or getting ready to go somewhere in a hurry. Most of the communication between parents and their children is aimed at right now (“Come here”, “Stop making noise”, “Clean your room” or “Let’s go”) and sometimes at the recent past (“Why did you…”, “If only you had…” or “You should have…”).

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The Meaning of Life

Briana was a young woman in her late twenties. She came to life coaching to find purpose and reason. My discussions with her revealed a very mature young woman. She reminded me so much of my own daughter. Life smiled at her – she got along with everyone and you could not pick a fight with her even if you wanted to. Yet, she was so smart that every job became boring a couple of months after she started it and she felt lots of confusion about her career choices, because she did everything very well, but without passion.

Here is a self-test for purpose. Let’s say you have all the money in the world, you can do anything you want, you do not have to work for a living, you are in perfect health and until the day you die, you can live anywhere you like, any way you like and have any lifestyle you like. What will you do with your time?

If you have no answer for this question, start searching for it right now. You see, Briana failed the purpose test over and over again, because every time I asked her about it, she looked at me with an embarrassed smile and said, “I don’t know”.

I have decided to write this post and share with you not Briana’s success at finding purpose, but the process she had to go through, because I think there are many people who think and feel exactly like Briana did and that blocks them from finding their purpose. That leaves them feeling like something is wrong with them, when in fact, no one has ever taught them how to find their purpose.

This post is part 3 of 18 in the series From the Life Coaching Deck

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Children are Our Future

Being parents means our job is to prepare our kids for the future, particularly for the unfortunate event of us stopping to be there for them. Whitney Houston made the phrase “I believe the children are our future” famous singing The Greatest Love of All.

Yeah, well, this is exactly it: we need to stop thinking about how we used to be and focus more on how things are for our kids right now and how they are likely to be for them in the future. Lingering in the past is possibly the biggest disservice we can do for them.

We must grasp the idea that our kids’ life is going to be incredibly different from ours and that there is really no way to know for sure what it is going to be like. In fact, it is likely to keep changing all the time and very rapidly, which means we need to build them for change.

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Kids Leading Social Change

Next month, for the second time, I am taking a group of 50 student leaders from 7 schools to a leadership camp called “Kids Leading Social Change”. The reason I gave the program this name is that I believe kids can lead social change.

One of my 11th Grade teachers told me that if I make a difference in the lives of four people and they make a difference in the lives of four people each, and the cycle of change continues, after a very short time, we will make this world a better place.

Six kids who attended the previous camp organized other students from their school, with the help of their chaplain, and wrote an intergenerational play for elders. They performed their play during Senior Week in front of 400 elders. My teacher said I needed to change only four people, but soon after that camp, I had reached over 400.

When I prepared the camp for them last year, I searched the Internet for things kids can do to make a difference and found a great big list of kids and their ideas for making a difference. I have added my ideas at the bottom of the list and I hope that after next month’s camp, I will add more.

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