Your Energy, Your Drive

(credit: the eggplant)

I was reading The Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer. It’s a really kick-ass book for telling you the cold hard truth. I put it up there with On Writing by Stephen King, only this is for sales and not writing. Same point.

No one cares about your success like you do.

Man, that’s an important message to have on board at all times. I think it’s what makes the difference between people who are “employees” and people who are living their lives. By the way, you can run your own company, be your own boss, and still be an employee in my book. The difference is whether you’re driving your life or riding along. Not unlike Volkswagen, drivers wanted.

Think about your own career. Do you have mentors? If you do, you probably got them from working hard. They see in you that effort you’re putting out. If not? You might have one piece of the puzzle.

It’s all habits

Everything that goes with success boils down to developing and maintaining habits, strong habits, the kind that you drive hard into the core of your being, such that you don’t think about it any longer. You just do them.

For me, one of my well-developed habits is writing posts and articles like this. I have built it into a habit that I can count on, over and over. A few hours ago, I put out a huge post at Lifehack.org. I might finish this post and go throw something new up on GrasshopperFactory. That’s just something that comes from developing the habit.

There are other habits I want, but haven’t developed yet. Don’t try or think about habits. Do them. Do. Do. Be relentless. If you want to get more fit, make a habit of using your body every day. If you want to write a book, make a habit of writing a page or two or three or seven a day.

Your energy is finite

You only have so much energy. It builds up at some point in the morning (late morning for some folks), and then you can choose to expend it however you’d like. Choose well. Are you going to burn yours bitching with friends about someone else’s success? Are you going to throw your energy into complaining about what you don’t have, can’t do, missed out on?

And remember, there are people around you that will SUCK YOUR ENERGY DRY! They are like human leeches. If you’re any kind of a nice person, you know this type. But there are those who are more subtle, or worse, those related to us who fall into this category. When faced with those situations, be vary aware, and do what you can to politely and gracefully extract yourself from their presence. You need that energy.

None of this is New

One of the biggest fallacies in the self-help, self-improvement sector is that people who read this kind of material want to change. Very precious few do. Some want to hear this type of stuff, read about it, and then go right back to doing what they’re doing. For some, just reading about what it takes to go further in their lives or careers feels almost as rewarding as actually putting in the work and doing it.

If you’re that kind, thanks for reading my stuff. Click the links. Spend money on the ads.

However, if you’re someone who reads this kind of material as a way to fuel your already-charged dynamo of energy, then keep reading, friend. We’re on the same page with this. You and I both know that we’ve got to keep pressing forward, working on what we know we can accomplish, and moving ourselves closer and closer and closer to that prize.

Success begets success, and that counts for small victories, too. What’ve you done lately that counts as a small victory? Can you turn it over into something bigger?

Platitudes Get You Nowhere: Work Does

Try leaving this piece and launching into one thing that might change your career, improve your life, or even up your balance sheet a little to the positive side. What could you do today, once you’re done with this article, that would continue to grow your capabilities?

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