TURN EVERY CHALLENGE INTO AN OPPORTUNITY!!

 I love it when life sends us little lessons to be learned. Even better (and more often it seems, in my case) I love it when life steps in and slaps me upside the head with something I need to be paying more attention to. That happened to me just this past week, and the lesson I learned is something that I think we can all benefit from, in our quests for greater happiness.

When you talk about a situation that’s ongoing at your job, something that seems to be bogging you down, or preventing you from reaching your goal, how do you describe it? I bet you use the word frustration a lot to talk about these challenges in life. I sure do. In fact, I think “frustration” is something that I express pretty frequently, whether it’s work-related, or at home. But every challenge doesn’t have to cause frustration.

Frustration is a strong word, and when we use it to describe a situation in our lives, we’re giving that situation a lot of power over our emotional state. What if you made a conscious decision to look for the good in every moment of frustration, every day? Think about it as you move through your day, starting with first thing in the morning when you spill coffee on your last clean pair of jeans on the way out the door. Take advantage of the opportunity to step out of your comfort zone and dress up a bit more than you normally would. Maybe you’ll notice an increase in confidence, just from taking your personal appearance up a notch!

Say you’re in the office now, and a situation with a co-worker is really getting on your nerves. They’re talking all over you in a meeting with your boss and you’re not able to get a word in edgewise, let alone the time to allow your ideas and insights to shine through. Rather than stomping back to your desk and grouching loudly to anyone who will listen about how much you can’t stand that particular Chatty Cathy, use the challenge they present as an opportunity. You didn’t get to speak in the meeting, so send your boss an email outlining your idea! You’ll have his (or her) undivided attention, and have the benefit of being able to lay out your ideas in the most logical progression

In my case, I was thwarted in reaching a goal I had set for myself professionally. Upon expressing my frustration, I was lucky enough to have a co-worker and friend point out just how much power I was giving the situation to affect my happiness. That made me stop, and think, and recognize that frustration for the opportunity that it was, to get involved in other projects and be available to step in and help others when needed, because my time wasn’t already allocated. I made a negative a positive, and really increased my overall happiness!

Next time you start to use that dreaded f-word (no, not that one!), think about the word opportunity instead, and put your creative juices to work in determining how you can make more positives in your own life! 

HOW TO WIN

What does it take to win in business?

Many will say inspiration or luck or simply money and access. But I would argue that we often overlook the personal behaviors that stoke success. These are the small steps you can take every day to move yourself forward in business.

     1.               Develop win-win relationships. The rise of the Internet has served to shrink the size of the world. It has made the importance of trust in business even greater than before. Earning the trust of your clients and trading partners has now become an absolute condition for success in business. In order to develop relationships of trust you must consolidate conflicting interests – something that goes against all logic. In other words, you must foster win-win relationships. This means making sure that even your trading partners profit from your transactions.

    2.      Understand precisely the risks you face. Risk is a word that is almost always partnered with avoidance. Sometimes it seems the entire world is avoiding risk. But the one thing to keep in mind is that behind things that the entire world avoids is often hiding a business opportunity. To be successful, one must risk. But risk is not the same as gambling. To face risk, one must carefully understand its true nature. When we began Rakuten, we took a risk – the risk was that the Internet would not expand as rapidly as we expected. To guard against this risk, we kept our initial scale low. We did not just take a risk – we worked to fully understand the size and type of risk we faced and then developed a plan to deal with it even in the worst-case scenario.

3. As a fundamental rule, move swiftly. In my experience, all of the really excellent 

business people I have met in my life shared the ability to act quickly. I cannot think of a 

single exception. The speed at which they made decisions was quick. The speed at 

which they implemented decisions was quick. They even walked quickly. As a basic 

principle, be quick to act.

Many will fail to achieve their business goals because they are waiting for some kind of outside action to occur – a change in technology or governance or consumer taste that will somehow propel them forward. But the truly successful do not wait for outside influences. They look to their own actions, every day, to create their own personal wins.

THE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE

A philosophy professor stood before his class with some items on the table in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks, about 2 inches in diameter.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks.

He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

He then asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “Yes.”

“Now,” said the professor, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The rocks are the important things – your family, your partner, your health, your children – things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter – like your job, your house, your car.

The sand is everything else. The small stuff.”

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued “there is no room for the pebbles or the rocks. The same goes for your life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take your partner out dancing. There will always be time to go to work, clean the house, give a dinner party and fix the disposal.

Take care of the rocks first – the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”

PARADOX OF RESPONSIBILITY

Do you make excuses for your failures? Do you have a million reasons why you weren’t able to accomplish the tasks you had in mind? Do you blame others when things go wrong, illustrating an external locus of control? If you do, you will find yourself immobilized. You’ll be held back because if you don’t believe the situation you’re in is in your control, you are not going to try to change it. You have already made your excuses. Because that’s what excuses do: give you a bullshit reason not to change. Individuals who fall strongly into this category are most likely extremely frustrated and unhappy with their lives, which becomes especially evident when things go wrong. How can they not be? Having no control over your life is a psychological prison. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.

In this article I’m going to talk about the importance of an internal locus of control, but I’m also going to break down where self-help books fail in regards to this topic. There’s a crucial detail that they leave out, mainly because it would make their idealistic beliefs seem less promising. But at Motivation Hacker, we blow through the fluff and come up with practical ways to live our lives. I have no interest in sharing ideas with you that make you feel good today, but hurt you in the long run.

It is clear then, that an internal locus of control is important. You must assume responsibility for the circumstances in which you find yourself if you wish to change them. You have to shift your thinking from the idea that “things happen to you” to the being-in-control-of-your-life idea that “you have to make things happen”. If you believe it’s in your power to make things happen, you will put in a persistent effort to see the changes you desire. And when you see the changes you desire, you’ll reinforce the idea that you do have the power to make things happen. Basically:

If you take responsibility for yourself, you will develop a hunger to accomplish your dreams.

It’s empowering. It’s quite possibly the greatest discovery I’ve made. As soon as I put myself behind the steering wheel of my own life, things began to happen. If I had weaknesses that were holding me back, I set out to change them. Things like receiving a rejection letter didn’t mean I was rejected. It meant I had to call them again, set-up an appointment and appeal the rejection. When my cellphone provider was going to charge me $500 for roaming fees and every customer service rep I talked to said there was nothing they could do about it, I didn’t sit back and make myself a victim. I asked for the manager. I got the same answer. But I didn’t just simmer in anger and make a cathartic Facebook status about it. I knew I had to find another way, and I did: I was given the email of the president of customer service, who waived the charges. Problem solved. 

When you find yourself in control of your own life, you will find yourself more satisfied and content on a daily basis. You will never again have to feel that feeling of “all these unfair things keep happening to me and it’s not fair” feeling. It’s extremely important to shift your thinking from “this sucks” to “what can I do about it?”. I don’t think anyone with an external locus of control, ever, has reached a significant level of success. If there are exceptions, these would be the individuals who “got lucky”. And are you willing to bank your entire future on luck? I know I’m not. Knowing the right people helps, and getting lucky helps. But these things are overrated. Besides, if you had the power to make things happen, you could weasel your way into knowing the right people and pave your own “luck”. Because is it really luck if you made it happen? Here’s the answer:

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

We all come across opportunities to get lucky every day. But if we’re not prepared to pounce on them, we won’t. In fact, we probably won’t even recognize them if we’re not prepared. So let me repeat that: if you’re in the driver’s seat of your own life, you can pave your own luck. The more control you assume, the more control you will have.

But wait. As I alluded to earlier, it’s not all that simple. There is a paradox here. If you’re familiar with any self-help books, you’ve come across the responsibility assumption. This is the belief that the circumstances in which you find yourself are completely your responsibility. This belief entails taking 100% responsibility for everything in your life. If you find yourself in some unfavorable situation, you put yourself there, either consciously or unconsciously, and it’s your job to get out of it. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of books that go into this. The majority of mainstream self-help books and self-help classics all suggest the same exact thing. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make them right. But wasn’t I regurgitating the same exact advice just now? What gives?

The problem with this advice is that it can be easily misapplied. This happens when an individual assumes control over a situation that they don’t actually control. If you do this, you will find yourself running into a wall repeatedly. Imagine trying to find the solution to a problem, but failing no matter what you do. You’re doing everything you know, working your ass off, and the results are nowhere to be seen. Months pass, years pass, and still no results. In fact, things start to get worse. Whose fault is all this? Yours. Because everything is your responsibility, remember? 

The reality is that you don’t have control over everything that happens to you. Of course you don’t. And we can fall into a lot of trouble when we assign blame to ourselves regarding events that were actually outside of our control. If you own a business and the industry you’re in crashes, the crash wasn’t your fault. But how you respond to it is. However, how can you possibly know the best response? Maybe the wisest thing to do would be to immediately leave the industry and start a business elsewhere. Maybe it’s to stay in the industry until it recovers. Maybe you leave the industry, start a business elsewhere, and that business tanks. Maybe you quit, go back to college, and find a more stable job. If you’re too hard on yourself when shit hits the fan, you’re going to suffer through a lot of mental anguish, which cues the paradox of responsibility: 

How do I take responsibility for everything in my life, if not everything in my life is in my control?

The solution to the paradox, is this: what is in your control is figuring out which aspects of your life are in your control, and which aren’t. Let me repeat that. Not everything is in your control, but you have to take responsibility for knowing when this is the case. When a situation is in you control, you take charge. If a situation is completely out of your control, you approach it accordingly. Referring to the example above, if you know the industry you’re working in is dying, don’t waste your energy trying to keep your business afloat. It’s time to move on to another industry. In this case, it isn’t your responsibility to keep working on your business and making it better. Instead, your responsibility is to realize that the market has changed, and the time has come for you to adapt and move on. Both of these decisions involve taking responsibility (which is obviously a good thing). However, one decision has realistic understanding of where it has control, while the other is beating a dead horse by claiming responsibility under the wrong circumstances.

An unrealistic viewpoint of control is will lead to that running-into-a-wall situation mentioned earlier. Let’s go through some more examples. What if you ask a girl out and she turns you down? If it was your fault, it will leave you ruminating about how your personality isn’t attractive enough, you’re not good-looking enough, or that you’re not intelligent enough. So it’s not her saying yes that’s in your control, but how you handle it and move on. If you mistakenly believe her response is within your control, you’re going to keep trying when there is going to be nothing to gain. Again, you’ll be beating a dead horse. So be very careful in deciding whether something is truly your responsibility or not. If your persistent effort is fruitless; if you’re not getting an inch closer or even falling further away from where you want to be, you should probably reconsider the situation. Sadly, it’s common for individuals to fall into traps like these, for instance: thinking they can change another person’s mind (especially a relationship partner), or that it’s their responsibility to stand by their business even if it’s in a dying industry (and lose all their money in the process). 

Therefore, misapplying the responsibility assumption can carry some pretty serious consequences. However, these consequences pale in comparison to the consequences suffered by individuals who feel, every day, that the life they’re living is not theirs to control. These frustrated individuals are slaves to their own minds and slaves to society. Recognize that while some things are in your control, other things aren’t. However, make this distinction very carefully. There are going to be far more situations in which you do have control than you’ve been taught to believe. Far more than people will tell you to believe. So while it’s important to let go of the things that you don’t control, look to take charge whenever you can. It is better to assume you can mould your own circumstances and be wrong, than to assume you are powerless and be right.

One thing you definitely have control over is ignoring excuses your mind makes. Don’t believe yourself when your mind tells you you’re not good enough. Don’t believe your immediate instinct to label something as impossible. Is it really impossible? Isn’t there something you could do to make it happen? More often than not, there will be a way. So ignore your mind’s silly defense mechanisms, keep your eye on your goal, and do what it takes to get there. You won’t always know exactly what you’re doing, but if you take responsibility for getting there, you’ll figure it out along the way.