A couple of years ago I injured my shoulder.  I don’t know how but assumed it happened at the gym.  My rotator cuff hurt severely when I did any type of chest exercise.

It sucked.

I was used to benching a certain amount of weight, but had to cut it by more than 50%.  I can tell you my ego didn’t like it one bit.  I still wanted to workout and knew how to rehab my shoulder.  Within a couple of weeks, my ego agreed to the necessary decreased weight.  But with every gym session I added 2.5 pounds to my bench.  Eventually, I lost track of how much weight I benched and focused on keeping healthy, writing, working, etc.

Several months later, I noticed I was benching a lot more weight than I’d had in my life.  And I workout by myself.  I can’t find a training partner that has a similar schedule to mine.  This taught me something.

Small adjustments can add up.

Writing theEpisodeshasn’t yielded the audience I was expecting.  That was my first mistake, expecting.  But the audience has grown little by little, even though not all vote.  Despite my desire to bring fame and fortune to my book, I realized something.  My disappointment always vanished when I sat down to write.  My heartbreak wilted when I went to the gym.  My love for story, my love for writing, my love and gratitude for the imagination given to me is precious.

Every day I take steps toward my wants and desires.  Every day I do my best to release my expectations by doing the things I love, andexpressing myself honestly.Every day I go to my day job knowing that I’m providing for my ability to live my night job (job is totally the wrong word here).  Every day small adjustments will be made because small adjustments make a huge difference towardsuccess.

I got a lot of comments from different sources regarding my post Throw Out Your Goals.  There were a few misconceptions that I want to cover.  First let me list some of them:

• Goals are important to accomplish what we want
• Brad Pitt has good genes and is lucky
• Success is defined differently for different people
• Just because you love something doesn’t mean you’ll be good at it
• Not every one can do what they love and get paid for it

There were plenty more.

Let’s start with defining success.  My first post never defined success.  It defined certain people’s level of success but never went as far as gave it a definition.  In this post, I will remain ambiguous on the definition of success.  Because who ever commented and said success is different for different people is correct.  I know a man who thinks he’s successful because he’s raised healthy, intelligent children.  I know fighters who’ve beaten great opponents who believe their own performances were below par.  Hell…Donald Trump hates being a multi-millionaire, and only considers himself a success when he has multi-billions.

Success is much like a goal.  Once you reach it, your work, the process to attain it, doesn’t stop.  If a fighter won her first fight, she doesn’t stop training.  She continues to train for the next fight.  If she’s won the world belt in her weight class, then she still has to continue to sharpen her skills for her first title defense.  What happens when she defends it successfully?  Celebrates?  For sure!  Beware.  There are others who are hungry for her belt.  Back to the process.  What if she loses?  Back to the process.

I love this one.  Brad Pitt has good genes and is lucky.  I’m not denying his good genes and looks.  What I do deny is his luck.  To say he was lucky is to deny the hard work he’d committed, wearing a chicken suit, working odd jobs, before he got his first major role.  Look at Steve Carrell.  He was an unknown comic for twenty years until luck struck him.  Luck?  No.  Hard work and perseverance?  Most definitely.  

And good looks was never a prerequisite for success in Hollywood.  With over a million good looking people in Los Angeles, it doesn’t explain Jack Black.  Now, some find him hot.  But he’s doesn’t fit the traditional leading man look.

This next one is good.  You can’t make a living doing what you love is a lot of people’s excuse to settle for mundane jobs.  I’m not saying quit your day job, lose your house, die of starvation.  Keep your day job, but work on what you love during your free time.  John Grisham is a great example.  He was a lawyer for ten years before he wrote his first novel.  He got to the office two hours before he started his real job, wrote, then started on his case list.  The awesome thing is he published his first book.

If you don’t think you can make a living doing what you love, then you won’t.  Simple as that.

Think you’d suck being a parent?   You will.

Believe you can run a marathon?  Follow up with action, and you will.

Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right.  Henry Ford said that.  He wanted to create a V-8 engine.  He surrounded himself with brilliant engineers. You know what they said?  Can’t be done.  Ford pushed them forward, told them it was possible.  Through several failures, it was done.  Look it up.  True story.

The last one I want to tackle is:  just because you love it doesn’t mean you can be good at it.  Crap.  In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers:  The Story of Success, he talks about mastery of skill.  He’d found one commonality among all world class musicians, artists, athletes, etc.  What is it?  Ten thousand hours of practice.  You want to be a world class anything?  Here it is, ten thousand hours of work.  That’s why you gotta love the process, not the goal.  Love the process, the goal will come many times over.

Brad Pitt. A friend on mine told me a story about him. We were talking about how we’re surrounded by people who’ve not only chased their dreams, but have achieved them. What most people don’t see is their perseverance. Pitt had dropped out of college, moved to the city of angels, did a lot of odd jobs like wearing a chicken suit to promote El Pollo Loco for years, before he landed his first major roll in Thelma & Louise. Now he’s one of the biggest movie stars in the world.

There was a study done on a high school class. The study followed late into their adult lives. It found those who stuck to one career path had earned and attained more than their combined classmates who didn’t. This story has floated around the self-help industry for many years, and is rumored to be just a folk tale. But its prevalence tells us a truth.

I was talking to a friend, and she’d reconnected with one of her long time classmates who works for Coke. This person is about ten years younger than I, but has climbed much higher on the corporate ladder. I’d always moved from job to job. She’s worked for Coke since high school, about eight years now, and illustrates an important point about consistency.

A few years ago, I went to a Renaissance Faire. I love them. My girlfriend at the time and I were watching a turtle race. Each person would place bets on a turtle of their choice. The race started. Contestants yelled and screamed, urging their turtle to crawl faster. One turtle, slow and steady, made great headway and was literally one step away from crossing the finish line. Then it stopped with one foot stuck in the air. All it had to do was place the foot down, and, bam, it won. It just froze. Another turtle from behind took the win.

So what’s the point? Once you find your passion in life, follow through with it. Whether success is truly overnight—it does happen—or takes time, love the process. If you love to act, go into every audition and act! If you love to work on projects for your company, or love reaching sales goals, go in every day and love working.

For the process is really what we love. The goals matter little. Why? Well what happens once an actor becomes a huge movie star like Pitt? What happens to the sales executive who reaches their ultimate sales goal? They continue to act, continue to sell, continue their work. All of them display a high level of dedication (knowing what they want), focus (loving what they do), and take each step toward their dreams (doing what they love).

Love your work. The goal will come.

Let go.  This is a concept I’m working on in my life.  Letting go.

I wanted to win, badly.  I was bowling with a bunch of coworkers, and we were on the second game.  I stepped left of the middle arrow, aimed my ball just right of the middle pin.  My breath was filled with anxiety.  I wanted to win.  Steps were taken and I swung.  Seven pins went down.

Fine.

I can take down three.  On my second bowl, I forced the ball down the lane and missed the pin by an inch.  Three pins remained standing, mocking me.  Crap!  I sat down as my coworkers took their turns.  Suddenly, I said fuck it, and decided to just have fun.  Turn after turn, I got spares, strikes, and celebrated each small victory.  I wasn’t even paying attention to my score.  As a result of letting go, I’d bowled my best game.  Keep in mind that my average score is 100.  That day I bowled 186.

One day, as  a team building activity, my coworkers came up with a scavenger hunt that took us through an open mall.  There were about a dozen things we had to collect, and I wasn’t really looking forward to it.  However, I took the time to appreciate what I had–health, job, awareness, food, bank account, etc.

Once we started, I wanted to win.  So did everyone else.  My team of three left in a hurry and started to read the clues to scavenge the items needed.  We seemed to find things pretty quickly, as I’m the worst navigator.  My other team member, never having been at that mall, seemed know the mall like the back of her hand.  She stated she loved malls.  Good enough.  I hoped we were ahead, hoped the other teams were falling behind.

Then we crossed several teams, indicating they were all ahead of us.  I was bummed.  In that moment, I let go without knowing I let go.  I decided to just have fun.  To appreciate the day that my company was paying for us to run around like kids.

As we scavenged and collected, we neared the end of the list.  The very last clue urged us to go to the restaurant we were to eat lunch.  Our gait turned to a speed walk, turned to skipping, turned to a jog, then we stopped.  The restaurant came into view, and our managers were standing there waiting for us.  They were not allowed to participate, but to verify what we collected were correct.  And we were first.  How could this be when we were behind?  Several minutes passed, and the other teams dragged themselves to the final station.

I’d let go without knowing.

Throughout my life, I’ve noticed that when I tried to control the other team by hoping they’d do badly, I would do badly.  Only when I focused on what I was doing, caring about what I did, and, most importantly, had fun, I did well.  Not only that, but when I celebrated my minor successes, not showboating, my successes increased.

How do you let go?

Focus on what you’re doing, have fun, celebrate each success, learn from the failures that are disguised as lessons.

What do you think? Is loyalty something we need? If you ask most guys who are in a monogomous relationship, they’ll say yup. Then why in both life and fiction we see cheating as an explored theme? Look at the show Desperate Housewives.

What if you’re commanding an army? Is loyalty needed? That would be a hell yeah! Without it the commander’s army would fall into chaos.

In friendships loyalty is important. My best friend and I are both writers, and when we read each others work we’re also honest. We’re honest because our friendship is strong enough to withstand honesty. Because if your friendship is built on niceties, then that house of cards is easily destroyed.

I can tell a lot by reading a person’s level of loyalty. Do people invite you to things for their own reasons, or do they leave you out to fend for yourself? Do people call you if they need you or just because. Seeing the differences can tell you a lot about a person’s character. And when I write, I do everything that I can to infuse physical and conversational elements to communicate their level of loyalty. I think this technique can be called foreshadowing because I am foreshadowing what the character might do when put between a rock and a hard place.

Stories like Braveheart and Bridge on the River Kwai explore the theme of loyalty well.