This post is for me, but if you read something that resonates with you, please let me know. Comment below or send me a tweet @marketcouncil.   I would love to hear your thoughts.

The Way You Do Anything, is the Way You Do Everything

I’m thinking about why my successes are not more consistent.

Why my life seems so yo-yo-ee.   A bit up and down. 

Why I haven’t achieved all that I want by now. Why I don’t have more time for wonder and wander. Why I work so damn much.

How come I still hold on to the last ten pounds of weight? Where is the additional savings in my account? How come I don’t laugh more, have more fun each day?

I’m thinking about how I can improve so that I can have deeper relationships with my friends and family, more sacred moments with less worry and more time for self-care.

I’m thinking about how I can execute for more excellence in my life. How I can improve my life in ways that really matter. 

Perhaps I need to raise my personal standard of performance.

I am inspired by Bill Walsh’s tenets of mental toughness. His dedication to focusing on what should be one, how it should be done and when it should be done.

It’s the deceptively small things that when done every day, make transformation happen.

The counting of each calorie, taking advantage of promotions when shopping, putting aside a few dollars a day to build up our savings, dressing the part for a big meeting or interview, taking a moment to breathe, going to the gym instead of sleeping another thirty minutes and planning the night before to get closer to completing a project I am about to launch.

It’s about making the call, sending the text, holding on to that hug. It’s about realizing that life is so fleeting. Make the time to smile, breathe and enjoy – in-between all the work.

It’s a commitment to never slack off, to maintain the effort each day and to return and perhaps raise the standards that initially fueled my success. To push past my self-imposed limits and test my endurance and performance each day.

Bill’s Tenent’s of Mental Toughness

• Maintain a ferocious and intelligently applied mindset directed at continual improvement.
• Demonstrate respect for everyone you meet. Everyone is your teacher.
• Be deeply committed to learning and practicing what you learn.
• Be fair and honest with yourself and others.
• Demonstrate good character.
• Honor the direct connection between details and improvement, relentlessly seek the latter.
• Show composure and self-control, especially under pressure.
• Demonstrate loyalty to your core values and beliefs.
• Use positive language and have a positive attitude.
• Be willing to go the extra distance for what you know is important.
• Deal appropriately with victory and defeat, adulation and humiliation.
• Promote internal communication that is both open and substantive.
• Seek poise in yourself and those you lead.
• Put other’s welfare and priorities ahead of your own.
• Maintain an ongoing level of concentration and focus that is abnormally high.
• Make sacrifice and commitment your trademark.

And may I add –

Be soft, gentle, curious and flexible and feel the freedom of racing like a Mustang.

The tragedy of life is not death, but what we let die inside of us as we live.

The Importance of Self-Reliance & Taking Responsibility

This post is about taking responsibility.  Responsibility requires constant readjustment combined with increased clarity and purpose.

Real improvements never happen without changing your behaviors. A change in outcome is a benefit of changing habits, attitudes and skills you acquire.

True success, steady ongoing, sustaining success, is systematic. It’s made of incremental improvements in the way things are done.  It is a (daily) relentless attempt to eliminate the unnecessary activities, delay and waste.

Where we decide to put our energy decides what we will actually accomplish.

For me, it begins with identifying the obstacles and problems; tackling the issues I have been ignoring.

I commit to trying to get to the root of the problem.

Asking Why????

1. Write down your specific problem clearly and completely. A good statement of the problem often points to its own solution.
2. Ask “why” the problem happens and write your answer.
3. Continue asking “why” to the previous answer until you or others agree that the problem’s root cause has been identified.

I will use today as an opportunity to do what I have needed to do.

Elevating My Everything

• Triple check my work for errors before publishing, sending or presenting.
• Be more considerate of everyone’s time and attention.
• Review my priorities and ask myself, is this really necessary? What tasks can I eliminate?
• Review and measure the outcomes of each day.
• Give credit to those who have contributed to my success.
• Thank others for their help.
• Look and ask for feedback and follow up when that feedback makes my performance stronger.
• Don’t react to every little thing that happens.
• Make note of the important tasks at hand and the follow up that must be done.
• Watch for signs along the way and know how to read them.
• Stay calm, composed and true to my mission of self-improvement.
• Never stop and never get lazy.
• Pay attention, focus deeply and never get distracted.
• Try not to get side-tracked.
• Seek to work with the very best.
• Raise the standards around me, including my environment.
• Practice what I preach.
• Attempt to decipher the urgent from the important. Do the important first.
• Refrain from enticing short-cuts.
• Respect others, especially when I know they are giving 100%
• Continue to do what really worked in the past.
• Learn new ways of doing what I have always done but also sticking to what really works.
• Devote myself to a daily discipline of focused work.
• Be extremely patient.
• Learn to utilize what is around me.
• Work with a mix of humility, acceptance and strength.
• Face my biggest problems head on.

Ego is the Enemy

Do not wait to elevate your everything. Raise your standard of performance, make everything you do better and better.

From Emerson’s Essay on Illusions. . .

`Set me some great task, ye gods! and I will show my spirit.’ `Not so,’ says the good Heaven; `plod and plough, vamp your old coats and hats, weave a shoestring; great affairs and the best wine by and by.’ Well, ’tis all phantasm; and if we weave a yard of tape in all humility, and as well as we can, long hereafter we shall see it was no cotton tape at all, but some galaxy which we braided, and that the threads were Time and Nature.

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays

Feature illustrations Lion-Comp & Bubbles the Snow Leopard from Daryl at Cargo Collective.