If There's a Chance You Can do it, Say Yes

I've gotten a long way in life because on several important occasions I said yes to an offer of work I wasn't necessarily prepared for.

We often hear that we have to get training, a degree, have experience, and so forth before we can get a job. My experience is exactly the opposite. I got the job then got the experience. Most of them were chance opportunities that I took the moment they were offered.

What would it take to become controller of a $2 million company? A degree in finance? Years of experience? CPA? Maybe, but for me it took being in the right place at the right time when the previous controller left. My previous job at the company? Editor.

What would it take to become Chief Financial Officer of a $6 million public company? All of the above plus SEC experience. By that time I had some of the above, namely two years of experience. All I knew about the SEC was that it had some regulatory powers.

I became editor of a weekly newspaper chain with six months experience as a newspaper reporter.

Why did all of this happen? Because I said yes to the offer when it came. Could I have worried about the experience I didn't have? Been afraid the job would be too much? Of course.

I didn't because I learned very early on that the purpose of education and training is above all to teach you how to find out what you don't already know. To learn the CFO job in a few weeks required me to look at what the previous occupant of the job had done and make sure I did it too. It required listening and observation and the confidence that the needed information would be there when I needed it.

Nobody knows everything. Nobody is ready for the next job. Nobody has the experience to do the next job up. You get that experience by doing the job. This applies to everyone, up to and including CEOs of major corporations.

I just watched the Undercover Boss show on ABC tonight. The CEO on the show had been with the company, a waste processing operation, for under a year and came from a completely different industry. On the show he saw much of the company's operations for the first time. He was getting his experience in that business as he worked.

The next time someone offers you a job you are not quite ready for or commissionsyou are not quite confident you can carry out, stretch a bit and take it. You will surprised by how much you CAN do.

The Difference Between Wanting to Do Something and Doing It

As I contemplate the last seven months of writing one story a day, it becomes very clear that what I am doing is nothing special. In fact it is what every successful person does every day of their lives. It's also the reason there aren't that many successful people, by whatever measure they use on themselves.

It's the difference between wanting and doing. Everyone wants something, whether it's money, happiness, hobbies completed, a book written, a spouse, a friend, or a house. How many people have you heard state that they've wanted a certain thing for a very long time but they never seem any closer to making it happen? Be honest, it's almost everyone, including you.

If you see yourself here, ask yourself one question and come up with a very honest answer. Why don't you have what you want? The honest answer is that you don't want it badly enough to make it a priority in your life. If you did that, you would have what you want.

Last year, I attempted to start writing on one or more of my blogs once a day. Now a lot of people do this but above 99 percent of all bloggers don't. It's hard, it takes a lot of work and time, it takes commitment. I even joined a couple of challenges and failed miserably, the first one after five or six posts and the second after 15 posts of a 30-day challenge. For a writer this is a sad situation indeed.

Yes, I had excuses but the simple truth is that I forgot and then didn't follow through. These contests weren't important enough to me. I had other work going on, book projects, clients, speeches, and so forth. Doing the writing wasn't important enough.

When August rolled around, I wondered what I could do to get back on track. The best path seemed to set an insurmountable goal and then attempt to achieve it. Why the best? It was a challenge that I would put out publicly so that I couldn't fail. I made this blog part of what I do every day, no matter what.

Achieving a goal is simply taking the actions that lead to success. In my case, the goal was to write one story a day for one year. That goal is very clear and very straightforward. I know exactly what I need to do to make that goal. Write a story. Every day.

If you look to the right side of the blog you will see the months since August and you will see that there is a post for every day since August 25. Instead of wishing I could write a story every day for a year, I started doing it. Interestingly, it wasn't that hard once I made the decision to do it. I may do it late at night, in the morning, at lunch, whenever. They key point is that I do it.

The goal of writing a story a day for 365 straight days seems impossible, if viewed as a whole. The goal of writing a story every day seems impossible. The goal of writing a story before you go to bed that night isn't so impossible. In fact writing one story before you go to bed is easy. So here it's gone, one day at a time, with great success.

This is how goal achievement works. It's not a big chunk you have to swallow all at once. It is a step by step process where you do one item at a time without worrying about all the other items you will need to do. I don't think about coming up with 100 story ideas. All I need is one, right now.

Try it with whatever you want right now. Start today, right after you read this post. Then keep doing it piece by piece until your goal is met.

Our History is Filled with Mistakes and Outright Lies

I've always been fascinated by the history of the world and by the history of families. If you read the history books, it seems like we have it pretty well down, year by year.  Yet, when you get below the superficial aspects of rulers and wars and other movements, much of our very recent past is almost unknown and unrecorded. In many cases the written record is entirely wrong, based on assumption and misreading.

Here's one example: In our history one of the most celebrated voyages is that of the pilgrims to Massachusetts in 1620. All the names are well known, well researched, in fact over researched. Yet of the passengers on the Mayflower, we know the actual origin in England of less than half. We know the parents of even fewer. Many of the maiden names of the women are unknown.

Here's another example from one of my own families. John Drake was a well-known settler of Connecticut in the 1630s. Based on letters and wills, he was identified as a member of the Drake family of Ashe, Devon, a very well connected baronial family. One will even referred to John Drake as being in Connecticut. No problem. It had to be that family. However, there was one inconsistency. John Drake had children born in England and no record of them had ever been found around Ashe, Devon, or anywhere. One of the names was Job Drake, very unusual. Still the identification stuck.

With the indexing of more and more records, researchers continued off and on to look for Job Drake without much success. Finally one day he was found and not where anybody expected to find him, Hampton in Arden, Warwickshire, in 1619, several counties away from where he should be if the assumptions about his family were correct. His father was John Drake, his mother was Lettice, and his brothers were the same men with the same birthdates as later appeared in Connecticut. It seemed the aristocratic connection was all wrong and the Connecticut Drakes would have to give up their royal ancestry.

However, there is a twist to this story. Arden was near Stratford on Avon and when John and Lettice's marriage record was found, her maiden name turned out to be Shakespeare and given the few of that name in the area, she is most likely a cousin of that well-known dramatist William Shakespeare.

This problem happened in the era about 400 years ago in an era when there were plentiful records. If you go back in history another 200 years, the records fade to the vanishing point and much of history becomes a web of tales written down many years later, annals compiled by people of varying veracity, and mostly by the winners of whatever conflicts were going on at the time.

When we reach ancient history, the records are very thin, scattered and incomplete. So when anyone speaks of certainty about what happened in any given period of history, and bear in mind that we use history and its myths to justify almost everything we do, just remember that they don't know any more about that period of time than you do and that what they do know is probably wrong, just as the accepted story of my ancestor John Drake was so miserably and fascinatingly wrong.

One Thing After Another Going Wrong?

How many of you live lives where it seems like one thing after another goes wrong, when you can't seem to catch a break? In this economy I'll bet there are a lot of you. Money is tight, jobs are scarce, clients are hard to come by, dollars go out faster than they come in, that great client just quit, you didn't get as much money for that last job as you wanted, and on and on and on.

Most people are programmed to remember the past that way. We are usually complainers, whining about all the problems we have. If this is you, stand up and admit it. Then stop it.

I too have had many things go wrong in my life. I could name a few of them: companies I worked for going broke, companies getting sold out, failing job interviews, a divorce, losing money, and there must be a bunch of others. You see, when I sat down to write this post, I had to think hard about what they were and when they happened. The reason is that I remember the things that went right in my life, even if they seemed to go wrong.

Here are a few examples:

When I went to college I got accepted to Pomona College, an expensive private school, but could not afford to attend. Bad news. Then I got into the University of California, Riverside and got a full ride Regents Scholarship, one of only 36 that year.  Good news. Which do I remember? The good news.

I searched a lot for my first job and got turned down in a lot of places, including selling insurance. Maybe not such bad news. Then I applied to the Fullerton News Tribune and got hired to report on night meetings. Good News.

I had a part time job with Newberry's Department Store and got fired because I didn't want to be on the management track. Bad news. A month later the Fullerton Tribune offered me a full-time job as a newspaper reporter, my passion. Good news. Getting fired from Newberry's? No big deal.

Because of problems at the newspaper in Placentia years later, I quit with no new job to go to and no idea what I would do next. Really bad news! A week later I got a phone call offering me the job of editor at the Newport Ensign in Newport Beach, a peachy job. Good news. VERY good news! Quitting that job? The best thing I ever did.

I could go on and on with seemingly bad things that had great endings. It's the great endings I remember and talk about because they are what count. The bad parts? Well, they happen to us all. I just choose to not dwell on them.

Next time you are tempted to cry about all the bad things that have happened in your life, clamp your mouth shut and try to remember the good part. It will be hard at first but eventually you will find something. Hang on to that good part, make it part of your life and eventually that bad thing will fade into hidden memory and your whole life will change from that person with a disaster of a life to that person with a charmed life.

Try it. It works.

How Bad is it, Really?

Every generation thinks they're having the toughest time in history and yearns to look back at the "good old days" when everything was fine, we all got along, and problems were fewer.

We lament the latest disasters, like the Japanese earthquake and the nuclear reactor explosions and think it is a horrible disaster, which it is. However, 66 years ago two atomic bombs exploded over Japan, killing hundreds of thousands of people, ending one of the most destructive wars in history.

We lament fighting two wars and losing some American soldiers. Yet the same 66 years ago a worldwide war ended with many millions of people dead and a wide swath of destruction, both physical and economic.

We complain about the quality of our schools and yes they have their problems. However, 150 years ago most children had no opportunity at all to attend school and many spent their entire lives unable to read or write.

We complain that politics is divisive yet 150 years ago we were in the middle of a horrendous civil war that almost split this country in half and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children.

We complain about immigration yet one hundred years ago a far higher percentage of our population consisted of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Eastern Europe, Germany and Scandinavia. Their descendants are among our most productive citizens.

We complain that we have too much information. Yet 150 years ago almost nobody had any information at all. News took days if not weeks to make its way around the world and never reached many places at all.

We complain about a weak Arab world and its destabilizing problems. Yet 500 years ago, Europe was surrounded by Arab and Muslim states and the armies of the Turkish sultan were threatening the gates of Vienna and controlled all of the Balkan countries.

We complain that medicine is ineffective yet 500 years ago most children did not live beyond the age of 2 or 3 and most adults were aged or dead in their 50s.

We complain about repressive regimes yet we have more democracy in the world than at any time in its history.

We complain about disputes among our churches yet less than 400 years ago almost one-third of the population of Germany died because of religious conflicts.

The next time you decide to complain about a situation, whether political, personal, or religious, just remember that however bad we have it today, it's been worse, far worse, not that many years ago. Instead of complaining, give thanks for what we do have, for the leaders we have and for the technology that has allowed most of us to live in ways the emperors of 500 years ago would have thought impossible.

Our world is more peaceful that at any time in its history, more people are more educated, have better jobs, live longer, have more medical attention and have more control over their lives, both economic and political, than ever before.

And we should celebrate that.

It Can All Change in an Instant

It only takes a few seconds for everything to change and we never know when it might happen. People going about their daily tasks can never know if the next moment will be the one when the great quake strikes, the tornado touches down, a hurricane comes to town, or a volcano erupts.

Yes, we have warning systems, but these are geared to the last such incident. In Japan for instance, there are very sophisticated warning systems protecting Tokyo, where the last great quake in the 1930's hit. Nobody expected one off the north coast of Japan, where the last huge quake was 1200 years ago. So the warnings came to those who needed them the least and for the north coast, where the quake hit, 5 to 10 minutes was all the warning anyone got.

We seem woefully unprepared for huge disasters. When New Orleans was flooded, nobody knew what to do. The impact was just too big. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, earthquakes are second nature and we've handled them mostly pretty well. However, what about St. Louis, Missouri, which sits right next to a very dangerous fault and which has no earthquake preparations in sight?

It is well to remember, as we continue to build in very dangerous areas, that Nature will act up from time to time with very little or no warning to us. Many of our coast cities are the potential victims of earthquake and flood, the plains cities will get devastating tornados, ice and sleet can devastate the northern cities. And of course, little known to most of this country, Yellowstone Park sits on top of what would be a hugely devastating volcano, should it decide to erupt.

In spite of all of this, with a few minimum precautions, we can live normal lives and not worry about such incidents. They will come when they will come and will damage what they will damage and those of us who remain will carry on until the next one arrives. Calls for reform, for change will mostly go unheeded, the damaged areas will be rebuilt in the same places, and time will march on.

Once we have done the best we can, we can't worry about the worst. That would paralyze us all. We must instead forge ahead with what we individually do best to make the world the best place we can for our families and descendants.

Meanwhile, think twice before building your house on the San Andreas Fault or in a deep river valley or one of California's fire zones.

The Earthquake in Japan Puts Our Problems in Perspective

I remember many years ago, on January 17, 1994, when the Northridge earthquake occurred in Los Angeles. At the time I was living in Irvine and worked in Beverly Hills, fifty miles closer to the quake epicenter. At first the most spectacular damage showed up in the news. Part of the Santa Monica Freeway, and several other regional freeways, collapsed, very near to my commute route.

However, aside from this and some collapsed buildings, the 6.7 magnitude quake appeared to have done relatively little damage. At my home in Irvine we felt it but had no damage. On my commute I saw no collapsed buildings so there was an eerie sense that yes there was an earthquake but unless you went close to the epicenter in the San Fernando Valley, it wasn't too evident and except for a day off work, didn't affect me much.

During the weeks after the quake, damage estimates rose. Thousands of buildings were declared unsafe, roads were cracked and water mains broke. It was a major disaster that caused 20 billion dollars damage, making it one of the most costly natural disasters in United States history. We heard about deaths, eventually estimated at 33 to 60 or so, and thousands of injuries that were not evident at first.

After several weeks, we realized that we had lived through one of the worst catastrophes to hit in the United States yet it didn't affect most of us in the Los Angeles basin that much, unless again you lived near the epicenter.

The disastrous earthquake in Japan puts all of this in perspective. Watching the videos of raging water, entire cities destroyed, over 1,000 people dead, tsunamis all along the coast, and incredible destruction of infrastructure, I can only imagine what the ultimate toll will be. This is only the beginning and already it is makes what we experienced here in Los Angeles 17 years ago rather minor.

Over the years we have hosted a number of Japanese students at UC Irvine and my wife checked in with some of them and to our relief they were okay. However, many people in Japan today are not okay and I suspect it will take many years of reconstruction before the country is back to normal.

The Quake in Japan: There are problems, then there are PROBLEMS

A few days ago I wrote about my problem with upgrading my Writing for Marketers blog in Wordpress. It seems it had been so long several items needed to be upgraded before the site would work again. It's all pretty technical but at least I figured it out.

Now this kind of problem is a major hassle. If your site doesn't work right, people can't read the blog. It also takes a lot of time to figure out what went wrong and make it right again.

Just as I'm breathing a sigh of relief that my blogs are working well again, my wife calls me down to the news. It seems there was a huge earthquake in Japan that set off a tsunami that wiped out a big part of  a city on the north island of Honshu, set off fires in Tokyo, and pointed a tsunami right across the Pacific Ocean toward Hawaii and toward us here in Southern California as well.

My blogs suddenly became far less of a problem compared to what the people of Japan and other parts of the Pacific are now facing. The damage promises to be devastating and the loss of life possibly huge.

I just watched the water sweeping into the city nearest the quake, near drivers on a roadway attempting to get away, taking out buildings like they were matchsticks. Nothing could stop it except time and distance.

Instead of thinking about how bad our problems are, let's take a moment of silence for the people of Japan and the Pacific, who REALLY have problems.

The True Secret to Success in Writing and Business

By Lee Pound

193 isn't a particularly meaningful number. It's one more than 192 and one less than 194 but it's just a plain ordinary number. So what does it mean to write 193 stories in a row, every day?

We know a lot of people who can do a task for one or two days in a row, maybe even three or four, and think they've done pretty well. Get to ten and that's really an accomplishment. Those people are fooling themselves. Doing a task ten times in a row isn't much and it isn't hard to do. I don't care what that task is.

The plain truth is if you can't do your basic tasks every day, day in and day out, you are setting yourself up for failure. Successful salespeople make a certain number of calls every day. If they don't, they aren't salespeople, they are order takers and they fail when the orders don't come in.

For a writer, writing is a basic task. Writers write. Every day. Or they aren't writers.

Yes, I write a story every day. However, I'm also writing and editing two other books, not to mention several ongoing clients. My Profitable Social Media book is scheduled to be completed this summer. I work on it every day. Adapt or Perish is scheduled for completion this spring. I work on it every day. Success for a writer means writing every day.

Success for a business means doing the basic tasks of your business every day. If you get around to them once in a while, you aren't in business. Just like writing, there are certain things you must accomplish every day. You know what these are.

This is why 193 stories in a row, one every day, means something. If you can build the habit of doing what you need to do every day, in a row, day after day, you will find massive success in your business.

Writers, if you write every day, not just one story, but a story, a chapter, an article, every day, you too will succeed. You will find yourself growing as a writer exponentially, you will find that your ideas come more readily, writing seems easier, and every so often one of those pieces you write will get published.

This is the secret to success. Tools are important but commitment is critical. Without it all the tools in the world won't make you a dime.

How committed are you to success?