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March 30 - May 8, 2018
Did I do my best to be fully engaged today?
To increase our level of engagement, we must ask ourselves if we’re doing our best to be engaged. A runner is more likely to run faster in a race by running faster when she trains—and timing herself.
Active questions reveal where we are trying and where we are giving up. In doing so, they sharpen our sense of what we can actually change. We gain a sense of control and responsibility instead of victimhood.
You’re not constructing your list to impress anyone. It’s your list, your life.
Are these items important in my life? • Will success on these items help me become the person that I want to be?
It is incredibly difficult for any of us to look in the mirror every day and face the reality that we didn’t even try to do what we claimed was most important in our lives.
If we fall short on our goals eventually we either abandon the questions or push ourselves into action. We feel ashamed or embarrassed because we wrote the questions, knew the answers, and still failed the test. When the questions begin with “Did I do my best to…” the feeling is even worse. We have to admit that we didn’t even try to do what we know we should have done.
When we advertise our desire to change, we are openly risking failure, putting our reputation and self-respect on the line.
The fact that other people have similar goals doesn’t make those goals less worthy.
We treat effort as a second-class citizen. It’s the condolence message we send ourselves when we fail. We say, “I gave it my best shot,” or “I get an A for effort.”
As the time between planning and doing increases—and our environment intrudes with all its temptations and distractions—our enthusiasm and discipline fade.
Self-discipline refers to achieving desirable behavior. Self-control refers to avoiding undesirable behavior.
Most people are better at one than the other. They’re good at repeating positive actions, not so good at avoiding negative ones. Or vice versa.
It’s one thing to ask ourselves, “Did I do my best to limit my sugar consumption?” and another to ask, “Did I do my best to say no to sweets?” The former calls for self-discipline, the latter self-control. Depending on who we are, that subtle adjustment can make all the difference.
Whether it’s flat abs or a new reputation, we want to see results now, not later. We see the gap between the effort required today and the reward we’ll reap in an undetermined future—and lose our enthusiasm for change.
By focusing on effort, they distract us from our obsession with results
• Change doesn’t happen overnight. • Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out. • If we make the effort, we will get better. If we don’t, we won’t.
We behave one way when we believe that there is another person at the helm. We can blame that stupid, uncaring person for our misfortune. This blaming permits us to get angry, act out, assign blame, and play the victim.
I end the exercise with a simple reminder that getting mad at people for being who they are makes as much sense as getting mad at a chair for being a chair. The chair cannot help but be a chair, and neither can most of the people we encounter.
When we have the opportunity to demonstrate our brainpower, we’re rarely thinking about a positive result for the other people in the room.
• There’s pedantry.
• There’s “I told you so.”
• There’s the moral superiority you assert when you tell a friend or loved one that she shouldn’t smoke, that he doesn’t need another beer, or that you would have taken a faster route home.
• There’s complaining about your managers, your colleagues, your rivals, your customers.
From wake-up to bedtime, when we’re in contact with another human being, we face the option of being helpful, hurtful, or neutral. If we’re not paying attention we often choose hurtful, largely to prove we’re smarter, better, more right than the “other guy.”
when you cite demonstrable facts to counter another person’s belief, a phenomenon that researchers call “the backfire effect” takes over. Your brilliant marshaling of data not only fails to persuade the believer, it backfires and strengthens his or her belief. The believer doubles down on his or her position—and the two of you are more polarized than ever.
“Every decision in the world is made by the person who has the power to make the decision. Make peace with that.”
When we regret our own decisions—and do nothing about it—we are no better than a whining employee complaining about his superiors.
our environment tempts us many times a day to engage in pointless skirmishes. And we can do something about it—by doing nothing.
That’s one of structure’s major contributions to any change process. It limits our options so that we’re not thrown off course by externalities.
Imposing structure on parts of our day is how we seize control of our otherwise unruly environment.
Dealing all day with difficult, high-maintenance colleagues is depleting. Maintaining a compliant façade around a leader you don’t respect is depleting. Excessive multitasking is depleting. Trying to persuade people to agree with you when they are inclined to oppose you is depleting. So is trying to make people like you when they are predisposed to dislike you. Suppressing your opinions—or for that matter, engaging in any effort to control your emotions around others—is depleting.
when our lack of skill at any task dramatically reduces our motivation to do that task, defaulting to some form of good enough is a shrewd option.
Marginal motivation produces a marginal outcome.
If your motivation for a task or goal is in any way compromised—because you lack the skill, or don’t take the task seriously, or think what you’ve done so far is good enough—don’t take it on. Find something else to show the world how much you care, not how little.
If you think doing folks a favor justifies doing less than your best, you’re not doing anyone any favors, including yourself. People forget your promise, remember your performance.
We are professionals at what we do, amateurs at what we want to become. We need to erase this devious distinction—or at least close the gap between professional and amateur—to become the person we want to be. Being good over here does not excuse being not so good over there.
People have compliance issues for two reasons: either they think they have a better way of doing something (classic need-to-win syndrome) or they’re unwilling to commit fully when it means obeying someone else’s rules of behavior (classic not-invented-here syndrome).
We all have compliance issues, admitted or not. We all resist being told how to behave, even when it’s for our own good or we know our failure to comply will hurt someone.
Most of us don’t notice our episodes of noncompliance, although we quickly spot them in others. It’s the other guy who breaks a confidence, or litters, or texts while driving. Not us. We would never do that.
When we engage in noncompliance, we’re not just being sloppy and lazy. It’s more aggressive and rude than that. We’re thumbing our noses at the world, announcing, “The rules don’t apply to us. Don’t rely on us. We don’t care.” We’re drawing a line at good enough and refusing to budge beyond it.
Honestly assessing the interplay in our lives between these two forces—the environment and ourselves—is how we become the person we want to be.
The change doesn’t have to be enormous, the kind where people don’t recognize you anymore. Any positive change is better than none at all.
The first objective is awareness—being awake to what’s going on around us. Few of us go through our day being more than fractionally aware. We turn off our brains when we travel or commute to work.
The second is engagement. We’re not only awake in our environment, we’re actively participating in it—and the people who matter to us recognize our engagement.
When we embrace a desire for awareness and engagement, we are in the best position to appreciate all the triggers the environment throws at us. We might not know what to expect—the triggering power of our environment is a constant surprise—but we know what others expect of us. And we know what we expect of ourselves.
When we prolong negative behavior—both the kind that hurts the people we love or the kind that hurts us in some way—we are leading a changeless life in the most hazardous manner. We are willfully choosing to be miserable and making others miserable, too. The time we are miserable is time we can never get back. Even more painful, it was all our doing. It was our choice.