Dan Waldschmidt's Blog, page 39
January 13, 2016
It Always Takes Avoiding Negative People.
You’ve probably had someone tell you before that you need to “keep your head on straight.”
You were frustrated, frazzled, or about ready to go into an arena where winning meant a lot to you.
Keeping your head on straight? It conjures an uncanny image when you think about it.
More importantly it communicates the importance of staying focused, positive, and hopeful.
The greatest power you have is your desire.
Your ability to work hard right now even though it’s tough because you believe in your soul that what you’re doing is eventually going to pay off. Staying positive.
When you stop being positive, the bottom begins to fall out. (That’s the order in which it happens too.)
Your mindset determines your momentum.
If you’re expecting everything to go wrong no matter what you do, you’ll never work hard enough to do the things that would stop everything from going wrong.
Keeping your mindset positive, focused, and hopeful doesn’t happen easily.
And it’s not a one time thing you do. It’s an all-the-time thing.
The most dangerous impact to your mindset is always another person. Another negative person.
You already have enough negativity for your life. Why pile on someone else’s baggage on top of your own?
The hard truth is that there is a negative person in your life right now who is crippling your ability to be amazing.
Chances are that there are several of them in your life right now. They leach. And moan. Whine, complain, and tear apart your dreams with unfair cynicism.
You leave feeling broken and miserable.
You’re less sure of your direction and more sure of your impending doom.
Avoid those people at all costs. Don’t be around them. Don’t talk to them. Get up and leave if you start to interact with them.
That might sound radical or unnecessary — even immature or hasty. That depends upon how much you care about your dreams.
If you don’t care enough about winning it won’t seem all that important to stop hanging around negative people.
All you have is what you do with your life.
The odds are already stacked against you.
Surround yourself with people who help you fly higher. People who inspire more hope and encourage more focus.
Do whatever it takes. It always takes avoiding negative people.
The post It Always Takes Avoiding Negative People. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.
Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.
Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...
January 12, 2016
Those Stupid Little Things.
It’s natural to believe that you need some grand gesture in order to turn your life around. That you need to throw everything away and start fresh.
Lots of hard work. Massive amounts of unbelievably focused energy.
If you’re only thinking big and quick, you’re probably overlooking small and guaranteed options for long-term success.
You’re so busy hoping to find that one thing that will catapult you towards where you want to be that you’re ignoring the smaller stepping stones that lead you there almost automatically.
Take, for example, time.
There never seems to be enough time to get to everything that you want to do. You want more of it — but know that’s just not possible. No amount of scientific breakthrough will allow you to double or triple the amount of hours in the day.
But what if you got out of bed 1 hour earlier each day?
It doesn’t seem like much. In fact, when you’re groggy and sleepy it hardly seems like it’s even a smart use of your time.
But think about this.
That one extra hour of activity captured each day turns into 15.21 more days over the process of a year.
If you get even more nerdy about it and assume that you really only use 50% of an average day towards productive activity — the rest being spent on sleep, transportation, and meals — it’s easy to see how those 15 days equate to a month of extra productivity.
One whole month. Found in one hour segments for just a year.
Now do the long term math.
What if you were to do that for 2 years for 3 years, 5 years for even a decade? You’re not just adding hours to your productivity. You’re adding years.
Time doesn’t just heal all things, it delivers you the experience to do all things.
The same is true for fitness.
What if instead of chasing that new hip diet you just decided to eat one fewer Oreo cookie each day?
Just one cookie.
It hardly seems like much.
But over the process of a year that one fewer cookie makes a massive difference — slightly more than 19,467 calories.
That is the equivalent of 11 whole days worth of food. One cookie sacrificed each day turns into the equivalent of 35 fewer meals.
What if you kept with that cookie diet? How many calories would you save over 1 year or tw0, 5 years or a decade?
You might not ever have six pack abs or achieve that ultimate body you see in fitness magazines, but you’ll make a big difference in your own life.
The same is true for money.
What if you saved the money you spend at Starbucks and brewed your own coffee at home?
Assuming you only buy 1 cup of “expensive” coffee per weekday at slightly more than $3.25 you could save $70.42 per month.
That’s $845.00 over the course of a year. Or $25,350 over the next 30 years.
Which doesn’t seem like a lot until you do the math and figure out that investing that $3.25 per day for the same 30 year period yields $138,997.45 — or a net gain of $164,347.45.
Think about that the next time you think you “need” to have that extra awesome, super select cup of coffee.
You might be sipping away an empty future.
Stop waiting for the big things — winning the lottery, getting an unexpected inheritance, or getting that big paycheck bump — to guarantee that you live life awesome.
You don’t need to change the world to improve your future. In fact, you don’t even need to change much in order to improve your future a lot.
Better health, more money, happiness — they are all the result of making sure you master those stupid little things.
The post Those Stupid Little Things. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.
Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.
Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...
January 11, 2016
Whiners, Wimps, And Stone Cold Winners.
They only thing that separates you from that person you idolize is your attitude.
Not money. Not education. Not your standing in society, friends you know, or how lucky your life becomes.
Your attitude is what makes the difference.
There are really only three different types of attitudes — whiners, wimps, and winners.
You’re one of these right now.
Whiners see the world as unfair.
They think that their problems are much more difficult than what everyone else around them is going through.
Whiners always think that they have a more difficult struggle than anyone else. So much so that it’s almost as if life is out to get them. People are picking on them.
Consequences are more harsh to them. You just don’t understand what they are going through.
Wimps see the world as impossibly hard.
They don’t spend a lot of time complaining about their circumstances, but they also don’t do much to change them.
They are hopeful that their life will improve, and even spend some time learning new ideas, strategies, and tactics to improve it.
But when things get tough, they just give up. They quit when things are harder than they thought they would be.
Winners see the world as what they make it.
They know that the odds against them are unfair and that it wont be easy to achieve the milestones they have set out for themselves.
Regardless, they are committed to trying. They are dedicated to doing whatever it takes until they achieve the results they want for themselves.
Most importantly, they are deliberate in protecting what they allow themselves to think about. They safe guard their positive mindset at all costs.
Check yourself. What type of attitude do you have?
Be honest with yourself.
You might have the right attitude today, but what happens tomorrow when things go unexpectedly wrong?
Winners are militant about maintaining a winning attitude.
No one can force you to not be a whiner or a wimp. No one can cheer-lead hard enough to make you a winner.
That’s something you have to decide. That’s something you’re deciding right now.
Each moment. Every day.
Who are you choosing to be?
The post Whiners, Wimps, And Stone Cold Winners. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.
Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.
Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...
January 7, 2016
Be Suspect
Be suspect of easy answers to hard problems.
Be suspect of people who never disagree with you.
Be suspect of one size fitting everyone.
Be suspect.
Be suspect of fast ways to make big money.
Be suspect of people who tell you to trust them.
Be suspect of guaranteed returns or sure results.
Be suspect.
Be suspect of doing less but earning more.
Be suspect of those who tolerate bullies.
Be suspect of your circumstance improving automatically.
Be suspect.
Be suspect of getting anywhere useful without a plan.
Be suspect of not making any mistakes along the way.
Be suspect of winning big the first time you try.
Be suspect.
Be suspect of letting anger or jealousy drive your decision making.
Be suspect of blindly following what anyone else is doing.
Be suspect of everything that stands between you and your dream.
The post Be Suspect appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.
Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.
Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...
January 6, 2016
Getting What You Deserve.
Sometimes you work really, really hard and don’t get the results that you are expecting.
Sometimes you do what is right and still end up without any reward for your effort.
Sometimes lazy people get lucky and bad people get what they want when beg.
Sometimes life doesn’t seem fair.
What is supposed to work doesn’t work. What shouldn’t work accidentally becomes a winning solution. The rules seem to get broken.
And you’re left tumbling around in the chaos wondering which end is up.
Seething in the disappointment that comes from unrealized expectations.
The hard truth about life is that it has always been unpredictable.
There isn’t one thing that’s guaranteed to work.
Right now, at least.
Just because you try hard doesn’t mean that you deserve for everything to work out exactly the way you want it to. That doesn’t even make sense. Life happens.
You can’t control most of what goes on around you or to you or for you. What you can control is what you allow yourself to think about and how you choose to spend each waking moment of your day.
Remember, you’re playing the long game.
In the short run, life is chaotic and unpredictable.
But over time, timeless principles about hard work and noble effort guarantee you’ll get to where you want to be.
Don’t give up now in the meanwhile. Don’t quit while you’re starting to get ahead.
Don’t let a few bad days rob you of the lifetime of the success you’ve been working for.
Do whatever it takes to keep your head on straight.
The post Getting What You Deserve. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.
Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.
Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...
January 5, 2016
Just Do One Thing That Matters.
You don’t have to get all the way there. But you do have to get started moving that direction.
The problem with accomplishing big goals is that you often allow yourself to be tricked into thinking that you need to apply massive amounts of effort over a short period of time in order to be successful.
Steady progress is your greatest weapon.
You need to build momentum.
Build it. Keep it. Grow it. And ultimately, leverage it.
Momentum is just a series of small steps applied with consistency. Day by day by day. It’s not a burst of massive energy over a few days. It’s an ongoing commitment to doing a little bit better each day than yesterday until you get to where you want to be.
What does that mean?
It means you make one healthier food choice each day.
It means you invest the time each day to build one stronger relationship.
It means you trade one of your favorite TV shows to read a book that could help you.
It means that you stand more and do one small bit of exercise each day.
It means that you ask one better question — instead of giving your usual fast answer.
It means that you save 1% (maybe even $1) more then you are saving right now.
Take a tiny step. Do one thing.
Not 50. Not 5. Not 2.
Just do one thing today that pushes you closer to where you want to be. And then repeat that tomorrow. And the day after that. And the week after that.
And every day until you get to where you want to be.
The post Just Do One Thing That Matters. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.
Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.
Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...
January 4, 2016
Even When You Don’t Feel Like It.
The hard truth is that you won’t do much today that you don’t feel like doing.
Despite how smart you are or the education you’ve acquired over the years, it’s hard for you to do the right thing when you don’t feel like it.
But that’s where greatness is formed.
When you are deliberate about making daily progress towards where you want to be despite what is going on around you — or inside your head.
Here are a few of those things:
Get up earlier in the day to get the most important things done even when you don’t feel like it.
Spend time planning out your resources, your goals, and the way you want to live your life even when you don’t feel like it.
Take the high road and give other people the benefit of the doubt even when you don’t feel like it.
Live fit, stay disciplined, and get one awesome thing done every day even when you don’t feel like it.
Swap the time you spend watching television shows reading a great book even when you don’t feel like it.
Save more than feels comfortable and invest into your long-term success even when you don’t feel like it.
Eat healthy, get exercise, and stay hydrated throughout the day even when you don’t feel like it.
Have a 3 year plan, a 10-month strategy, and a one-day list of things that need to get done even when you don’t feel like it.
Success is really about momentum.
Building momentum. Keeping momentum. And leveraging your momentum for even greater good.
How much better would your life be right now if for the past 30 days you had been doing the right things even when you didn’t feel like it?
Don’t waste the next 30 days. Do what needs to be done. Start now.
Even if you don’t feel like it.
The post Even When You Don’t Feel Like It. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.
Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.
Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...
December 31, 2015
10 Questions You Should Ask Yourself Every Day.
What skill are you missing that would have the greatest impact on you being successful?
What are you not willing to do in order to make progress towards being successful?
What do you know already that you can start implementing to improve your performance?
What important tasks and skills do you find yourself procrastinating or avoid doing at all?
What type of mentors, coaches, or mastermind group would be most beneficial to get you where you want to be?
What personal vices are limiting your ability to operate at peak performance each day?
What else are you involved with that is competing for your time, attention, and performance?
What simple things bring you the greatest pleasure in your day-to-day life?
What else do you need to know in order to move past the obstacles in your way right now?
The post 10 Questions You Should Ask Yourself Every Day. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.
Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.
Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...
December 30, 2015
Why The Lion Kills.
The lion doesn’t kill because he’s angry.
The lion doesn’t kill to prove that he’s still got what it takes to be the king of the jungle.
The lion doesn’t stalk, hunt, chase, capture and devour his prey to look good, win friends, or feel better about himself.
He fights because he is hungry.
He hunts because he is hungry. He runs to the point of exhaustion because he is hungry.
He strains and stresses and strives because he is hungry.
Hunger is what drives his impulses. Not pride. Not charm. Not ego. Not an over inflated sense of communal purpose. Hunger.
It’s what gives the lion his roar.
The reason behind his majesty.
And it’s what is most often missing from your life when you accomplish less than you know you could. When you give up. When you make excuses. When you pretend that life is more difficult for you than everyone else.
The hard truth is that you aren’t hungry enough to try harder.
You aren’t hungry enough to do more than you have ever done before.
You don’t hunger for triumph.
And so you don’t rule your jungle. You don’t chase and hunt — you trot and look. You go through the motions instead of running through obstacles.
You do enough to not look lazy, but are never possessed by an all-consuming urge to do what it takes to achieve massive attemps at greatness.
Take time to cultivate your hunger.
Think about your success. Let if soak into your soul.
Meditate on it. Live it. Attempt it. Ignore the doubters.
Hunt. Chase. Kill. Stay hungry.
The post Why The Lion Kills. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.
Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.
Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...
December 29, 2015
Mastering The Detail Behind The Details.
It’s usually the small things that make the most difference.
It’s the details that will likely determine your degree of success or failure.
It’s not going to be one big moment or one grand experience that automatically propels you from where you are to where you want to be.
That’s luck. What you’re living is life.
If you want to be better than you are now, you have to improve the seemingly insignificant tactics you execute on a daily basis. The small things you most often take for granted.
That will take a conscious effort — which means you’re going to feel wildly uncomfortable getting started.
But like any exercise done right, when you begin to improve you find yourself addicted to forward progress.
But it’s all hard, painful work.
Figuring out the details to improve and finding new ideas for being better than you are right now doesn’t happen automatically.
There are things right now you know you could improve. They are the sort of things you’re making excuses for right now while you tackle “the big stuff”.
Then there are ideas you hear from your circle of friends. Suggestions that might work for them or someone they have heard about. Depending upon your circle of friends those suggestions might be extremely valuable or completely worthless.
To master the details you might need better friends.
Beyond the relationships, progress is a matter of obsessive learning.
Digging deep into the subject matter that you might not have thought about for years. Asking hard questions from leading experts.
Reading books, magazines, and anything else you can get your hands on relating to what you’re trying to do.
Fixing the details is about trial and error. About not being scared to fail and improve.
But it’s not as easy as just trying different things.
Your relationships impact what you do. Your dedication impacts what you do. Your attitude impacts what you do.
If the details were easy to figure out, they wouldn’t be called details anymore. They would just be common sense.
It’s on you to figure them out.
The post Mastering The Detail Behind The Details. appeared first on Dan Waldschmidt: Author of EDGY Conversations.
Copyright by Waldschmidt Partners Intl... Not sure that all that legal stuff really matters. If you want to share this material, do so. Just don't charge for it and don't tell people you wrote it. Both of those are uncool.
Other than that, all rights are reserved to you to change your life. If you are ready to be amazing, now is the time to get started. Onward...
