Scott Perry's Blog, page 53

Endeavor Better - A Quickstart Guide

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At the heart of any endeavor is the idea that you enhance your life most through work that enhances the lives of others. Some know what their next project is and who it's for. Others are seeking both an enterprise and an audience for it.

Whichever group you align with, there's always room to endeavor better. But how?

The answer is not by signing up for more learning, purchasing more tools, or looking for more options. You already possess everything you need to begin and grow an enterprise that serves people you care about. The essential thing is aligning who you are with what you're good at and find collaborators and clients who share your values and need your talents to help enhance their lives.

But where to start? Here's a quickstart guide.

First, stop getting hung up on the idea that the “right” project or audience even exists. It doesn’t. But an alright project for a group of people you already know does. Start where you are, with what you have, and who you know today.

Here's a resource that helps me when I'm trying to identify the work I'm meant to do now.

At the intersection of your values, talents, and tribe you can find both an endeavor and an audience for it. It helps if you're clear on who you are, what you’re good at, and where you belong.

Essential to who you are are your values. These are your guiding principles that you don’t compromise on. The Values in Action Strengths Indicator is a free tool to help you dial those in.

By “talents” I mean “soft skill” or what Seth Godin calls “real skills.” His Medium article on this subject can help you dial yours in.

Tribe is straight from Seth Godin’s book. Here’s a summary that lays out the essential ideas. Your tribe is made up of people who share your values and need your talents to enhance their lives.

If you’re “stuck” on identifying an endeavor and audience, this process will help you get out of your own way and get going making a difference through work that's worth your time and effort done with and for people who need you.

So, what endeavor will you begin doing better today?

Let's keep flying higher together!

Scott

BTW, you can get the complete process and additional resources to endeavor better when you opt-in for these three free handbooks!

Ready? Aim. Let Go!

"One’s ultimate aim is to do all in one’s power to shoot straight, and the same applies with our ultimate goal." - Cicero

What is the goal of the archer who steps onto the field, notches her arrow, draws it back, and takes aim at the target?

Most assume that the goal of the archer is to hit the bullseye. For some archers, that may well be. But not for the archer whose aim is to excel. That archer's goal is to put forth her best effort.

"Happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding of one principle. Some things are within our control and some things are not." - Epictetus

Here's the thing. The wise archer understands what is and, as important, what is not within her control. She understands and accepts that while she has agency over her effort, she does not ultimately control the results of that effort. Missing the bullseye doesn't upset her and hitting it doesn't inflate her ego.

The archer who seeks excellence and equanimity over achievement and acclaim chooses the best equipment she can afford and maintains it. She trains and practices diligently. She takes care of her physical, psychological, and spiritual health. In short, she attends to what she can attend to when and while she can.

"A really great talent finds its happiness in execution." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

On the field, the conscientious archer aims for the bullseye, of course. But what happens after the arrow is released is not up to her. Hitting the bullseye is preferred, but it is not her ultimate reward. The effort is the reward.

What are you aiming at today? Is it worthy of your time, training, and effort?

Choose your targets with intention. Endeavor as best as you are able. Then, accept the results fate provides. The rest takes care of itself. You will learn and live to aim better another day.

"It is to shoot straight that one must do all one can; none the less, it is to do all one can to accomplish the task that is really the ultimate aim. It is just the same with what we call the supreme good in life. To actually hit the target is, as we say, to be selected but not sought." - Cicero

Commencement

It's commencement season. One period of life ends, another begins. How are you helping the "graduates" in your life to step into possibility and potential?

Most of us work for a living and we spend a chunk of our lives doing that work. Yet most of us don't much get advice or guidance about choosing that work with intention and integrity.

Some of us spend a lot of time "occupied" in work that neither excites nor fulfills us. How can you help the graduates you know avoid this? How can you help someone discover and develop work that nurtures and nourishes them? How can you do this yourself?

Here are a few tips I'm sharing with the graduates in my life:

Define what it means to be human and happy and dedicate yourself to work that helps you become more of both.
Start with who, not why. Who are you? Who do you want to become? Who are the fellow travelers that you need to connect with to help you get from where you are to where you want to be? 
What are your values? What are your talents? Where do you belong? Meaningful work is found at the intersection of those three things.
Passion, purpose, and prosperity come through meaningful work and are not inherent in it. Any endeavor that you commit to achieving excellence in provides the opportunity to forge meaning and build identity.
Start with the end in mind. At some point, life ends. In that moment, what do you want to see when you look back at yours?

Not every graduate is wearing a cap and gown this commencement season. Some are retiring or contemplating new careers or "second acts" or "side hustles." Choosing the work that you're meant to do now is a decision that you can make at any time. You could do so right now.

Let’s keep flying higher together!

Scott

BTW, Endeavor is a book that shares a process for discovering the work you're meant to do now and concepts and tools for cultivating excellence and well being through doing that work. It's available in paperback and as an ebook on Amazon.

Perennial

It’s spring in Southwestern Virginia. Time to make some important decisions about what flowers to plant in the beds around our small home, annuals or perennials?

Here’s the thing. Annuals bloom only once, but they’re brighter, showier, cheaper, and require less care than perennials. 

Perennials, on the other hand, return and continue to grow season after season. They have structure. Perennials are more hardy and resilient than annuals. Perennials are able to mature.

Annuals are “one-hit-wonders.” Perennials are in it for the long haul.

Annual or perennial, which are you?

Let’s keep flying higher together!

Scott

What's on Your "Stop-Doing" List?

I find a "to-do" list to be a seductive way to "hide" from the "real" work I need to do. What about you?

Too often my to-do list is full of non-essential tasks  like "organize my top desk drawer." Just as often, my to-do list is made up of outright distractions or tasks that get done "automatically" and don't require being listed at all. 

What helps me move forward in meaningful endeavors is a "must-do" list. This is a one-item list. The one next best small step forward into the change I seek to make. One thing that, when accomplished, will serve as a large lever ratcheting me and my enterprise forward.

Everything else gets put onto my "stop-doing" list and is ignored until my must-do list of one is done.

What's on your must-do list? What will you move to your stop-doing list until what must be done get's done?

Let's keep flying higher together!

Scott

"Perfect In Every Way"

How do you reply to queries that come up in the everyday exchange of pleasantries? You know, questions like "How are you?" or "How's everything going?"

My response is "Perfect in every way."

Am I a Pollyanna or just delusional? I mean really, even the magical Mary Poppins was only "Practically perfect in every way!" 

Let me explain. I know I'm not perfect in every way and neither is "everything." But at the moment that someone asks me how I am or how everything is going, I am who and where I am. And both I and the circumstances I find myself in are "perfect" simply because they are as they are.

And in the moment that I'm answering these questions is my opportunity to frame who I am and how things are. I can then make an assertion about who I want to be and how I can make things better. Then I am afforded the gift of being able to choose the next best step forward into those possibilities.

I will, of course, do all of this imperfectly. "Everything" will not turn out as I planned. But everything will unfold as it should. I will then, again, be perfectly positioned to frame myself and the situation. And again I'll have the opportunity to decide "what's next."

"How are you?" "How are things going?" How are you answering these questions today? 

Let's keep flying higher together!

Scott

Sitting with Sonder

I was initially introduced to the concept of sonder by Seth Godin.

Sonder is defined as that moment when you realize that everyone around you has an internal life as rich and as conflicted as yours.

Sonder brings to mind the Stoic practice of not judging others too harshly when they speak ignorantly or behave badly.

“To feel affection for people even when they make mistakes is uniquely human. You can do it if you simply recognize: that they’re human too, that they act out of ignorance, against their will, and that you’ll both be dead before long. And, above all, that they haven’t really hurt you. They haven’t diminished your ability to choose.” - Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.22

Our actions are informed by your beliefs which are in turn informed by our observations and experience. All of this filtered through our inner narrative and drive for “self-preservation.”

Accepting that we’re all imperfect beings doing the best we can while blundering our way toward excellence helps me practice compassion for others and, as important, toward myself.

Let's keep flying higher together!

Scott

Compassion

Compassion is often conflated with empathy, but they are very different impulses. Empathy is the ability to feel and understand the state of mind of another. Compassion is feeling compelled to act on that recognition and to assist.

But empathy is not enough. It is only a step, albeit an important one, on the path to compassion. Paul Bloom’s masterful and compelling book, Against Empathy, offers scientific research that supports this claim.

Empathy requires effort; compassion demands action. Indeed, compassion is empathy in action. But there are still several important distinctions.

Empathy is subjective; compassion is objective. Empathy is exhausting; compassion is energizing. Empathy is most often singular; compassion is more often plural.

Empathy is the gateway; compassion is the way.

For your endeavor to be done with intention and integrity, compassion is required.

And like grace, you must extend compassion to yourself if you are to effectively and honestly extend it to others.

Be compassionate.�

Let's keep flying higher together!

Scott

This is an excerpt from the book, Endeavor: Cultivate Excellence While Making a Difference.

Start With Who

Who are you? Who do you seek to serve? Who are your colloborators? Who’s in your tribe? Who are your fellow travelers?

These questions are worth asking with intention and answering with integrity at the beginning of any worthwhile enterprise. Get the “who” right and you’ve done “the hard part” first. The what and where will reveal themselves more quicly and clearly when you’re working with the “right” people.

Great ideas, vision, and community can fulfill their promise only when you're surrounded by great people.

Before you decide what you want to do and where you want to go, it’s important to remember that the journey almost always takes longer than you think and you may end up somewhere different than you first intend. It’s easier to change what you’re working on or toward with the “right” people." The “right” people don’t need motivating and managing. The “right” people are self-motivated and self-regulated.

The wrong people on the right journey rarely get anywhere worth the time and trouble and often suffer every step of the way. The right people can always find a journey worth pursuing and thrive every step of the way.

Keep Flying Higher!

Scott

"What's It For?"

“What’s it for?”

Embracing this question is at the heart of every Seth Godin program. Why?

Asking “What’s it for?” indicates a commitment to intention and integrity.
It’s an invitation to disrupt self-serving agendas or bias confirmation and think more expansively, empathetically and generously.

Answering the question, “What’s it for?” helps you determine if what you’re about to do or say is worth your time and talents and those of the people you seek to serve through your thoughts and actions.

When you answer the question, “What’s it for?”, you’re stating an assertion whose “trueness” you seek to test. You're not merely reverse engineering a narrative to prove what you already believe to be true.

The practice of asking “What’s it for?” is a powerful lever for the thoughtful and professional creative to ratchet in service of the change you seek to make.

What, where, and when can you ask, "What's it for?", today?

Keep flying higher!

Scott