When Things Go Wrong - Learn and Move On

10 Things Successful People Do When Things Go Wrong, by Robert Locke (via Life Hack)

It is easy to imagine that successful people have always had that magic touch, when everything they do turns to gold. The reality is that they too have screwed up and failed. This article will tell you how they cope when things go pear shaped. If they can get over failure, then so can you. Lots of useful life lessons here.

1. They know how to adjust their goals

Successful people are not going to give up that easily. If X went wrong, it does not affect Y which is the hallmark of their success. They are adaptable, resilient, and determined to go on. That means having a plan B ready so that the phoenix will rise from the ashes.

2. They are realistic optimists

They know that optimism is what counts and their glass is always half full. Research suggests that the realistic optimist is more likely to be successful. In addition, they are grateful for what they have achieved and will concentrate on their successes.

3. They learn from their failure

“When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.” – Dalai Lama

If successful people fail, it means that they were prepared to:

• move out of the safe comfort zone
• take calculated risks
• experience the joy of growing and fulfilment

When and if they fail, they are able to sit down and assess calmly what went wrong. There is a lesson from every failure and they know how/where to find it, accept it, and above all apply it to future projects.

Bill Gates’ first company called Traf-O-Data was a failure. He was able to adapt and try again with Microsoft and we all know how successful that is.

“Success is moving from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill.

It is interesting to note that Churchill was defeated in many elections until he finally became Prime Minister at the age of 62!

4. They know that failure is a prelude to success

“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”- Michael Jordan

Michael Jordan kept at it and made sure that he perfected his technique. You can do the same by assessing your skills set and see how they can be improved. Or maybe you need to spend more time on networking and building relationships. Is there a way you can take the initiative the next time?

5. They ask for advice

Many entrepreneurs were able to crawl out from the ruins of failure and start again. But some were wise enough to seek advice from friends or mentors. Obviously these have to be the kind of people you would trust your life with. They are also upbeat, confident, and can boost your morale.

Those who make it to the top also know how to get help from their networks and connections, when they want to start over after failure or setbacks.

Conversational Greatness

Here's an excerpt from a great piece by Jason Treu-  How to Start Great Conversations To Make Powerful Connections. Jason Is a former lawyer, and "life mastery coach."

Years ago, I was very nervous to approach strangers and especially large groups of people I didn’t know. I watched some of my friends dive into these situations with ease, and wondered how they made it look so easy and natural. Meanwhile, I found myself awkwardly alone, palms sweaty, clutching a cocktail, and desperately brainstorming witty things to say.

How did I go from being fearful and uncertain in meeting people and starting conversations to confident, energetic and positive?

There are ten key principles on how to start great conversations to make powerful connections. They made a huge difference in how I gained confidence and expertise in meeting new people, creating rapport, and building extraordinary relationships.

By practicing and using the information below, I mastered the relationship building process and mentor others across the world on how to do it.

By the time you finish this article you will learn how to:

• Start great conversations
• Never run out of things to say
• Build instant rapport and connection
• Leave people wanting to get to know you more

1. Delivery Trumps Content

People focus way too much on what to say and trying to say the right thing. Research has found your delivery is much more important than content in building rapport, especially in initial interactions.

It’s not WHAT you say, it’s HOW you say it.

People feed off your emotions, energy, and vibe, because you are projecting your thoughts and emotions to them. They feel and see your charisma and magnetism when you do this correctly, and when you are being yourself.....

Read the rest at the link.

Making Customers Feel Awesome

From 6 Tips For Making Your Customers Feel Awesome (and Why It Matters) by Alice Default via @Buffer on Twitter. Good article at the link above.

Undrstanding Context

"All meaning is context dependent" is a phrase that has been very helpful to me. Therefore, I appreciated this article by Joel Gascoigne at Buffer - The Habits of Successful People: They Work To Understand Context. The material below is quoted from the article.

I’ve had a few different experiences in my past that made me reach a big realisation. What I’ve discovered is that the context of any situation is very important.

Hiten Shah clearly already understands this very well. This Tweet from him is what tipped me over the edge to share some of my further thinking around context:

                      Get context before you give advice - @hnshah

Why we should seek context at all times
“Seek first to understand, then to be understood” -Stephen R Covey

The above quote is Habit 5 of Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

I’ve read the book a couple of times, and I’ve read other content around the topic of gaining context, but it’s something which has only just “clicked” for me as to why it’s so important. Also, after now understanding the importance of context, I’ve found it to be very difficult to actually practice.

The premise is quite clear as to how vital context is: without context, we immediately jump in our heads to what we want to say next, based on the very first few words we hear from the other person. This is something I find myself doing far too frequently.
Most of us listen to someone with the intention of replying, and therefore as soon as we have a “reply” in mind, we stop listening and wait our turn to reply. No matter what remarkable new insights are uncovered in the subsequent words from the other person, it is likely that we now have a strong desire to share that initial thought we have about what to say back.

With context, on the other hand, we can achieve so much more. If we truly understand the background of the other person, we can tailor the approach for each occasion. I believe gaining or having context can be useful in so many scenarios:

• giving advice
• receiving advice
• meeting a stranger
• making friends
• getting press
• raising funding

The conversation that shocked me

A while back, I was in a Skype call with someone to try and help them with their current startup challenges.

As normal, I asked about the founder’s startup and what stage he was at. After uncovering a tiny amount of context about his previous experiences and where he was now at, I unfortunately slipped and switched to my own thinking about what the best next steps were for him.

I proceeded to advise him based on my previous experience. The experience I based my advice on was the following:

• I had worked on an idea for a year and a half which I never charged for
• I therefore generated no revenue, and consistently had to work on the side
• While I had a few thousand users of traction, I failed to raise funding

I advised him to charge for his product from Day One, since that worked for me the after the first failure. I also advised him to aim for revenue and not worry so much about user numbers, since that’s what truly freed me from working on the side.

He was very receptive of my advice—even thought it was the wrong advice for the situation he was in. Luckily, he went on to share extra information that changed everything:

• He had a previous startup for which he had hundreds of paying customers and good revenues
• He was still making money from the idea and had runway to last almost indefinitely working on a new idea
• He got into an incubator with the idea
• He went to the Valley to raise funding, but since he had low user numbers (even though they were all paying) he struggled to raise funding

I could now completely understand why, in fact, he shouldn’t just follow the advice I gave him. He had almost entirely the opposite previous experience to me, yet equally valuable and foundation building. He was perfectly poised to try an idea which could gain massive visibility rather than simply making money. Making some money was not his biggest challenge, as it was for me when I started.

Our opposite contexts meant that in fact opposite choices for next steps made complete sense. I was genuinely taken aback when I realised this....

More at the link.

Worth a Look

Some links worth a look:

10 Must Read Blogs for Advanced & Intermediate Marketers

14 Things That May Not Exist in 2020

Study Less, Study Smart: The Best Ways to Retain More in Less Time

Secrets to Awesome Weekends

Everybody loves the weekend. Everybody needs a break. So check out How Can You Make Your Weekends More Awesome, by Eric Barker;

What’s the research have to say about making Friday through Sunday that much better…?

For The Most Part, Don’t Trust Your Instincts

Ever eat or drink too much, feel awful, then do it again… and feel awful again? As counterintuitive as it may sound, we’re actually pretty bad about remembering what really makes us happy.

Reading Harvard happiness expert Daniel Gilbert’s bestselling book Stumbling on Happiness my main takeaway was this:

"Much of our unhappiness springs from the fact that we’re terrible at accurately remembering how things made us feel in the past, so we make bad choices regarding the future."

In Gilbert’s own words (and backed up by many studies):

"We overestimate how happy we will be on our birthdays, we underestimate how happy we will be on Monday mornings, and we make these mundane but erroneous predictions again and again, despite their regular disconfirmation."

When most of us have leisure time, do we do what truly makes us happy or do we opt for what’s easy? Easy wins it most of the time.

Via The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work:

"Studies have found that American teenagers are two and half times more likely to experience elevated enjoyment when engaged in a hobby than when watching TV, and three times more likely when playing a sport. And yet here’s the paradox: These same teenagers spend four times as many hours watching TV as they do engaging in sports or hobbies. So what gives? Or, as psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi put it more eloquently, “Why would we spend four times more time doing something that has less than half the chance of making us feel good?” The answer is that we are drawn—powerfully, magnetically—to those things that are easy, convenient, and habitual, and it is incredibly difficult to overcome this inertia. Active leisure is more enjoyable, but it almost always requires more initial effort—getting the bike out of the garage, driving to the museum, tuning the guitar, and so on."

The things we frequently choose to reduce stress are often the least effective:

Via The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It:

"The APA’s national survey on stress found that the most commonly used strategies were also rated as highly ineffective by the same people who reported using them. For example, only 16 percent of people who eat to reduce stress report that it actually helps them. Another study found that women are most likely to eat chocolate when they are feeling anxious or depressed, but the only reliable change in mood they experience from their drug of choice is an increase in guilt."

So What Works?

Spending time with friends on the weekends definitely helps:

"A large portion of the weekend effects is explained by differences in the amount of time spent with friends or family between weekends and weekdays (7.1 vs. 5.4 hours). The extra daily social time of 1.7 hours in weekends raises average happiness by about 2%."

But you knew that already. What are we missing?

That Mountain of E-Mail

Some good advice here on overcoming your mountain of daily e-mails: The Secret of E-mail : The Golden Rule by Kirby Ingles at Adam Smith's blog - 

Ever wonder how you can earn more time doing what is most important to you?

Do you feel like escaping from behind your desk and away from the 126 emails the average person receives per day?

There is a way for you to process through all your emails.

Would you love to hear more about it? Out of 126 emails, only 77 are legitimate.
How would you enjoy knowing about a golden rule that pierces through your inbox?

Save Yourself from Email

When I was a Human Resources Manager in Upstate New York, my days centered around email. It seemed as if I was chained to my desk. I was so buried in processing email that I would forget to drink my coffee. Not realizing the time that flashed by, I would grab my cup and sip some nasty, cold coffee. After several months of reliving this tragedy daily, I bought a candle warmer to keep my coffee warm. The problem was not the coffee cooling, but it was me living inside of my inbox that kept me from enjoying my favorite morning beverage.

“Veni, Vidi, Vici”

“I came, I saw, I conquered.”

How to Take Over Your Email

The golden rule of email is the same concept as Get Things Done. If you spend longer than two minutes processing an email, put it in a folder to process or reply later. Create 3 folders. First, create a folder to place emails that require a response that lasts longer than two minutes to draft. Second, you need a folder where you can store things that do not require responses, but are waiting upon an action. Last, create a folder where you can archive items that you think are valuable and will reference later.

The average Jane or Joe types 38-40 words per minute. Sentences are comprised of 8-11 words to be easily read. Do the math and that equals 7-10 sentences per 2 minutes. Generally, you can communicate effectively to most emails in 7-10 sentences if you cut out the fat. If you want to change your behavior, you must change your thinking. Take a Twitter-like approach who limits tweets to 140 characters. Instead, use 7-10 sentences to convey your thoughts. When you slice the excess fat, that means you use plain text, limit attachments and no abbreviations or emoticons. Do not send one-liners such as Thank You, Okay, and kill the read receipts. You’re not only fiddling around, but cluttering up inboxes with rubbish. Respect the recipient by providing a prompt, clear, concise and easy-to-read email. Your goal is to keep the amount of elapsed time to less than an hour in your email.

7 Steps to Make Certain Your Inbox is at Zero

1. Start using the golden rule of email.
2. Create a 3 folder system.
3. Process your inbox first by reading the subject and scanning.
4. If you can craft an email response in two minutes, execute.
5. Process your folders according to importance.
6. Process emails in each folder from more important to least significant.
7. Spend more face-to-face time with the people you work with and enjoy hot coffee.

Ultimately, once I took control of my inbox, I was in a position to be a more engaged leader that had a face, not a signature block.

Serendipity of Creativity

What Happens When I Surround Myself With Creative People- By Ryan Smith at Adam Smith's website:

As I’ve mentioned before, your creativity is highly influenced by your environment. The way that you see the world is through the lens of your experiences, both past and present. All that you’ve been through and all that you know shapes your perception of what it takes to be different.

So when it comes to being different, to adding your own uniqueness to the world, it dramatically helps to bring together others who are interested in doing the same thing.There are classic examples of great thinkers, innovators, artists, and other creatives who were only able to do what they are known for because of the company they kept.From the discussions between Plato and Aristotle, to the letters of J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, to the joint efforts of the impressive actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, collaboration and discourse led to improvement and inspiration.

Some of the biggest movements in history stand out not for individual accomplishments, but for the way that individual innovators drew from each other to create their own individual works that reflected what they as a community faced. Looking at times like the European Renaissance during the 14th through 17th centuries, to the Harlem Renaissance in the early 20th century, to what I would call the “Technology Renaissance”, occurring as we speak, it’s through relationships, the sharing of ideas, and building of bonds that these were possible.

It’s no coincidence that historical and modern-day figures of those eras were all present during the same time period, making waves. It’s actually through the discussions, the arguments, and the observations they made that they were able to build off of each other and create something novel.

If you’re looking to become more creative, work with others who are doing the same. They don’t have to be at your level. They can be just starting out if you’re a veteran, or vice versa. One of the great things about creativity is that it doesn’t really have a hierarchy. You can be just as creative today as you were 10 years ago. There’s always something to learn from others, and always something to gain from trying new things together.

I try to spend time surrounded by creative people whenever I can. It’s an amazing feeling to be with those who are also interested in creating something new and just see their approach to not only the creative process, but their entire lives. I always come away with something new. It could just be the way I think about my ideas or it could be entirely fresh ideas built on the topics we discussed.

If spending time with creative people is not something you regularly do, I would strongly suggest that you make that a priority. Creativity is a multiplier; you will see massive changes in the way you approach your work and the way you approach your life.