DON’T ASK HOW HIGH, ALWAYS GO THE LIMIT

I sometimes wonder if this is the most important thing I have ever learned. When I was a fifteen I met a man who changed my life. He was a former sergeant in the Viet Nam war and was a tough guy who demanded excellence. In one of my first practices with him he came up to me, got his face right into my own and growled in a low voice “When I say jump, what do you say?” Here is where I should mention that I was raised by parents who taught me to respect and listen to my teachers, while striving to be the best. I meekly, but confidently answered “How high”. I was shocked when he yelled out “You don’t ask me how high, you jump as high as you can and I’ll tell you if it was F—ing high enough.”
Needless to say, I didn’t understand the lesson the first time. I just thought the guy was a lunatic who in some way hated me. I spent more than three years working with this man and learned that, although he was at times a bit of a lunatic; he certainly did not hate me. He became one of my mentors and taught me that if a person always does something to the best of their ability, they will usually succeed and will never have to apologize for failing.
There is no reason to feel bad about failing if you did everything within your talent and ability to achieve the goal. This is true whether you are an Olympic athlete who comes home without a medal or if you are asked to do something at work and you cannot complete the task successfully. The key here is always doing everything as well as you can. If someone asks you to do something and you feel it is outside your capabilities, you may want to explain the possibility of failure right up front while at the same time making it clear that you will put everything you have into it. If you work your hardest at something and someone ends up better than you, congratulate them on their achievement.
Too many times we determine what the expectations are and set our goal to the same level. This often true even when exceeding expectations would take very little, if any, additional effort. Sometimes we forget that our glass needs to be more than half full, and that our own success depends on us moving forward. Instead of providing the best we can, we provide what is expected. Many of us don’t realize where the hollow feeling in what should be a goal achieved comes from. Usually is comes from us being dissatisfied with what we deliver because we know it can, and should, be better.
Do not undersell your life. Whether it is love, work or play, always go the limit. If you don’t know what people expect, you will never measure yourself to false limits. No one expected Bill Gates to one of the wealthiest, most successful businessmen in the world. No one expected Martin Luther King Jr. to change the world. No one expected Dr. Jonas Salk to discover a vaccine for Polio. No one expected Oprah Winfrey to become a force for changing the way the Americans read books. Because these people simply jumped as high as they could, they achieved results that even they could not have expected. They did not estimate their abilities based on the limits of others. You should decide what you want to do and do it as well as you can. If you need to, improve your skills so you can do your task even better.
Many people do things to the best of their abilities and are upset because the end result is not up to their own standard. Amazingly these same people often do very little to improve their skill sets. You must want something bad enough and be willing to do whatever it takes, if you truly want to reach your greatest heights. If you want to get a promotion you must do your job incredibly well. You must also be willing to learn new things and acquire to skills that, along with your experience and effort, will make you worthy of a promotion. If you want to run your own business, take classes in business management, accounting and other related topics. If you want to coach your kid’s baseball team, take the time to read up on how to work with kids and learn the best ways to teach the fundamentals. Approach improving your skill set with the same intensity as the rest of the project. Your skills combined with your effort will usually lead to success.

Take Responsibility for Everything That Happens to You

You can’t blame anyone else for your failures or success
Not your parents...
Not your Teachers, the government, physical limitations, race, sexual orientation, Uncle Louie, or ANYTHING ELSE
ONLY YOU!

I know this concept is hard to buy into. It’s easy to give examples of how the forces of the world and the people in it have molded you into who you are. No problem. But, why are you “that way” if you do not want to be? It is your life. You control it today, so you must take back the control for every day prior to today.

Only by accepting responsibility for everyday of your entire life can you truly take responsibility for the future of your life. Responsibility starts with removing the blame from everything that you feel has shaped you. What are the “facts”? Make a list of all the reasons you are the way you are. It may be that your parents did not express love or perhaps they abused you; you were not able to enjoy a life a wealth; you are not as innately intelligent as the smartest people you know (who is). Maybe it’s that your skin color puts you at a disadvantage, maybe you are short or ugly. Maybe you are too pretty to be taken seriously. OH WELL! Get over it and take responsibility for the effect those things have on you. Of course, you did not choose your parents or your skin color, but you can build your own life.

Of course, bad things have happened to you. They may have never happened in the same way to anyone else. Obviously you cannot say that you caused those things to happen, but you CAN effect how they cause you to feel and act. This is your life, damn it! And only you can reshape it. People with backgrounds and make-ups similar to yours are doing great all over the world. So it is not those “facts” that make you who you are, it is your ability to own them and take responsibility for how they affect every day from today on.

This blog will give you the building blocks that you can use to build the foundation of a great life. From this point forward and from this point backward, you are in now in control of everything.

I know a beautiful woman who has a successful career and great friends and family who love her deeply. She makes friends easily and everyone is immediately comfortable around her. She has, in her fifteen years in the workforce, held jobs in such diverse places as Minneapolis, Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco. Had you met her at age 6 or 16 you would not have guessed that this was her path. Born and raised in Nebraska cattle ranch country she was allergic to nearly everything. She had a family who worked hard and was successful by the measure of their surroundings, but she did not come from wealth or warmth in her childhood. She spent her elementary school years, as did most of her peers, moving between several small schools, including at one point a one-room schoolhouse. She did graduate second in her high-school class, but considering that her graduating class was only eight students, the accomplishment was not perceived as it may have been had she been elsewhere.

When she graduated from high school she decided to start taking responsibility for her future. She chose the largest school she was familiar with and majored in a topic complete outside of her life experiences. At Nebraska University she lived off campus in an apartment. She was living in the largest city of her life, majoring in Business and enjoying life in many new ways Like most college students she worked many part-time jobs. On a whim she took a job with a stockbroker at a local branch, working in junior roles. Upon graduation, she applied, and was accepted, for a position in Minneapolis, one of the largest cities in US. Minneapolis is a major urban hub with millions of residents, skyscrapers and very little in common with rural Nebraska.

The vibe of the city was exciting and different and she knew that she was finally following a path that fit her personality and ambition. Her goal was to have what she wanted and to be happy in her life. The people and energy of the city helped her feel alive and she thrived in her new life. Many people would have been content to simply build and grow a life based on such feelings, but she knew that there was more waiting for her. After a few years she packed up everything that would fit into her car and drove across country to Southern California. She got a job almost immediately at a small start-up firm that worked in an esoteric arm of the financial world, variable annuities. Southern California was nothing like Minneapolis, much less Nebraska, but yet again she thrived. She kept her friends from her past and built new, strong friendships that helped make her new life even more vibrant.

After a few years her little, successful, company was acquired by a much larger company headquartered in France and with major offices in Manhattan. When offered a chance to relocate to New York she jumped, even though she had never been there before. When she got to the “center of the universe” she insisted on living in Manhattan, rather than one of the other four boroughs. Manhattan has an energy unique to itself and she wanted to soak it up, even though it was incredibly expensive and she was not paid a huge amount of money.
By most people’s measurement she was now a success. Amazingly she was not so sure of that. Although her professional career had been fantastic up to this point, she could make the same claim about her personal life and love life. She knew it was time to take responsibility for all of her life and decided to see a counselor.
She finally understood her own feelings and took responsibility for controlling them, rather than them controlling her. This didn’t happen with an epiphany followed by a ten-minute monologue like it does in the movies. It took months and years of work and the work continued long after she understood her feelings and knew what she had to do about them. The actions were difficult and at times traumatic, but the results were life changing.

After years of working on taking responsibility for every aspect of her life except love, she finally made the plunge there as well. At an airport in Florida she caught eyes with a stranger. When they landed in New York, she did something completely out of character. She walked up to him and asked three questions. If any of them were answered incorrectly she would know this wasn’t a guy she needed to waste time on. She needed to know if he was the right age. Too young and he would not be able to understand her life path, too old and, well TOO OLD. Where did he live? She loved New York and had decided that she wanted to spend much more of her life there. Lastly, was he already committed to someone? No use in expending energy if it was a one-way street.

To her amazement he answered the questions correctly and they went out days later. He, like most people, fell in love with her quickly and waited while she learned how to do it too. Eight months later he whisked her to the top of the Empire State Building, a place she had never been, and asked her to marry him. She said yes and within months moved in with him. She did this even though a week after they met he moved to Northern California, far away from New York, the city she loved so much. She says she is happier than she has ever been. She does not blame anyone for the bumps in her road and can take 100% credit for every good thing that has ever happened to her.

You probably saw parts of yourself in this story, especially the earlier parts and career success. The truth is that none of that would have made a bit of difference if she had not taken responsibility for the things that were brought upon her personally by others. No one will ever fix your life for you. No one can ever truly take responsibility for how you feel, except you. What happened is in the past. Of course it will affect you for the rest of your life. The question is simple: Will your past help you build your future or will it hinder you from reaching your potential. It is all up to you, your past is not your future.