Tag: doing

If you accept average

Posted on by philipdodson

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People moan. They moan a great deal.

Often that is all that they do, online, indoors, at lunch with colleagues.

Yet that moaning rarely turns into action and often in spite of moaning, people go back or repeat.

Average is what many things are, poor value for money, badly made, badly designed, ineffective, poor service, inedible beige food, unsatisfactory, just OK, unfulfilling.

Yet the moaners go back to that job, that life, that product, that service, that restaurant.

If you accept average in what you choose to do, or in what you choose to buy or use, then average is all you can expect from your life and more ineffective moaning won’t alter anything.

We have to choose to improve, lead, feedback and take action. Vote with your feet on poor service, poor products, average anything.

Also, vote with your feet on yourself and average ideas, average performance, on your average life.

Better comes from taking action, belief, commitment and a desire to not accept average or simply good enough in anything.

Those that have chosen to do better haven’t chosen the easy option, but the hard work and challenge that action involves reaps huge rewards.

After all, there is only upside on pushing yourself to achieve better.

Who you kidding?

Posted on by philipdodson

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We tell the world and ourselves sometimes that we are a particular thing or we are doing a particular activity. A common one is when exercising or dieting, we tell ourselves we ate carefully or walked x miles, when sometimes we didn’t. Short-term it makes us feel better inside.

We might say ‘I am writing a book’ to convince ourselves we are an author, yet we have not even written a single word, having the intention to do something, or adding it to an action list, does not mean that we have done it.

Yet the more we indulge in this habit of talking and not doing, the more we convince ourselves that we are actually an author, or a coach or a whatever we intend to be. Saying it does not make it so.

Surely it is better to try to do that thing, do the hard work, commit and even it fails, at least we had a go, learnt, and did it better the next time than it is to carry on kidding ourselves?

After all, we are expending that time and energy on kidding ourselves, much better to stop the drifting, the pretence, and just do it.

The chemical reward we get from doing makes us happier, healthier and leads to a longer life. The stress, fear, regret and often anger and frustration of not being or doing something makes us unhappy, unhealthy and leads to a shorter life.

It is only ourselves we are cheating as no one else really cares, they are too busy with their own lives and challenges.