Auteur/autrice : marc

Day 534. Whatever you plan, whatever you do, never ever expect things to run and work as expected. There will always be this tiny cloud in front of the sun, this speck of sand in the sandal, this small black dot on the white page. So be it! You can always wait for the cloud to move, get the sand out and wipe clean the while page, but it will have been an unexpected hurdle.

Ever ran a marathon? If you do, there will always be a moment you will want to quit, even if you went through the best ever preparation and started with a high spirit. And this is the exact moment you should NOT quit. This is the exact moment you have to take action to go beyond this moment. You may call it the wall of pain, Murphy’s law, sh*t happens, whatever. It will happen and you have to go through.

This is generally the reason why people do not plan. If you do not plan you’re never surprised. True and false. Because if you plan, you are prepared, whereas when you do not plan, you’re unprepared. Change is natural and nothing works as expected. This is a basic rule of any project. Get prepared and go! Do not quit!

Day 533. The universe has no limit. We tend to think that our own world has its own limits. Of course, your eyes define the limits of what you can see. But the mind defines the limits of what you can imagine. With today’s technology, our own world does not have limits anymore. We have an almost unlimited ways to connect and an almost unlimited connections available.

We can send our information and our products to the other side of the planet, and even the astronaut, Chris Hadfield, has shown that music can even be made in space and broadcasted on our blue planet. The limits are gone! Therefore, you are only limited by the limits you impose to you. Of course, you may say that we are limited by our own resources. True, but there are almost limitless resources out there, it’s a matter of willingness to go, ask for them and use them.

All great successes relied on external resources at one point. If mankind was playing within its limits, it would never have gone to the moon. And then, there are all these vultures and crows out there, complaining about the crisis and the horror it created, about global warming and that we are killing the planet (the planet will survive thank you). Although it’s important to look for ways to do things better, fairer and with more compassion and help, the sky is not the limit anymore. Break the barriers, be bold, give you the authorization to go beyond the limits, nobody else can give it to you but you!

Day 532. Repeat, repeat, repeat, and when you’re done, repeat again. An actor on a stage has rehearsed an incredible amount of time to make you feel the play is natural. A habit ingrained in our behavior is the consequence of thousands of conscious or unconscious repetition. If you want to play a music instrument, you’ll need to repeat hundreds of time a sequence before it becomes « natural » for your fingers.

And we want things to be perfect in a matter of hours! It’s foolish! The 10,000-hour principles describes by Malcom Gladwell is the book Outliers, though it can be proven wrong sometimes, shows that perfection does not come overnight, but it the consequence of hours and hours and hours of repetition, of work. Rome was not build on a day, as the old saying goes, and so is perfection.

The path to success is neither straight nor easy, it’s not what is shown in magazines or on TV. The path to success is paved with sweat, blood and tears to paraphrase Winston Churchill. Your goal is there to be reached, it’s your choice to put the efforts to make it, and to fall one hundred times and stand up one hundred and one times.

Day 531. I was busy, I was tired, I was about to say, tomorrow is fine. But no, tomorrow is day 532, and day 531’s post has to be written and published on day 531, so this is it. Just a simple post to remind that a commitment is a commitment, today is today, tomorrow’s another day. Never think doing tomorrow what you can do today.

Delivering on a commitment on the promised day is putting off a weight carried on your shoulders, and building the trust in yourself and the trust others give you. It’s simple, but sometimes difficult. It’s the simplest things that are the hardest, and the one that are so overlooked by mediocre people. It’s generally not a matter of great effort, it’s just a matter of being true to your words. Have a good night! Mine will be, I put the weight on the floor.

Day 530. Every month, my boss’s boss reminds everybody that either we win or we… learn. I like the idea, because it shifts with subtlety to a positive stance. Popular wisdom says that the « winner takes it all » and the others get nothing. Actually, you can say the others get nothing and if you are one of the others, you can put in your minds that you lost and got nothing.

However, it’s your choice to decide whether you got nothing or got something. Because I truly believe, you got something invaluable: you tried and did not come first. The two questions being: Why did not I come first? What should I do differently do come first? And this is the best learning ever. Coming second or third is a blessing, as much as coming first. First gets the reward, second gets the learning.

If you start looking at potential failure as learning experiences, you will change the perception you have of risks. This does not mean you should start to act foolishly as consequences of foolish behaviors can be dramatic, but this will make your decision making process fluid and bold.