A Million Reasons to Fail

There is no shortage of people who can tell you all of the reasons why you will fail in accomplishing your dreams. But such pronouncements are really a confession—they are telling you why they fail in achieving their goals and dreams.

When I was a teenager I played on the high school basketball team. I had always been a starter on the team, but one year several “friends” began telling me all of the reasons why I wouldn’t be a starter in the upcoming season. I hadn’t grown enough, I wasn’t fast enough to play another position, I simply wasn’t good enough. Such negativity began to weigh on me and I started to believe it. Ultimately it had an impact on my performance.

Some people do not like the idea that others harbor big dreams. It is a slap in their own face, a reminder of their own failings. But rather than re-evaluate their own conclusions and make the requisite changes, they prefer to drag others down to their level of misery.

While we cannot change such people, we can take steps to reduce their impact on us. We can refuse to deal with them. We can recognize the fact that their failures are no reflection of us. We can reject their self-pity and rise above it. Most importantly, we can associate with people who are not jealous of other’s success, but admire and encourage it.

What are you Waiting For?

A recent “Thought of the Day” from the Napoleon Hill Foundation asks this question, and then points out:

Far too many people spend their entire lives waiting for that glorious day when the perfect opportunity presents itself to them. Too late, they realize that each day held opportunity for those who sought it out.

Waiting for the perfect opportunity is a futile endeavor—it will never arrive. As the quote states, every day holds opportunities, and the ones we take advantage of today will create additional opportunities tomorrow. A building—and success—is constructed one brick at a time.

There are countless ways in which contractors bypass opportunities. The most significant is not engaging in continuing education. Knowledge is a powerful tool—the more we know the more we can identify opportunities. And the more successfully we can take advantage of them.

For example, many painting contractors loathe sales. They know that they must sell jobs, but the entire experience leaves them filled with anxiety, dread, or boredom. They just want to paint. But each lead is an opportunity. Improving your sales skills allows you to take advantage of that opportunity and be more successful. Would you prefer to give 10 estimates to get 1 job, or get 4 jobs from the same number of estimates? Would you prefer to sell at the “going rate”, or get premium prices?

What we do today determines what we can or cannot do tomorrow. The bridge we build today can be crossed tomorrow. The bridge we burn today will leave us stranded tomorrow.