There this book by Dale Carnegie called “How to Win Friends & Influence People”. It has exposed 1 of my greatest weaknesses.

I know, the title feels a little scammy. But just check the bookshelves of any successful business person, and you’ll likely find this work. It’s timeless for a reason.

Your level of success, whatever that looks like to you, in whatever you pursue, is a direct product of how well you deal with people.

The lessons in this book have shown me why I’ve plateaued professionally. The way I deal with people has gotten me this far, but it’s no longer good enough to get me where I want to be next.

I handle people well enough to get a decent job, acquire some freelance clients, and not get into fistfights every day. But what’s next?

What’s next is starting my own business. What’s next is building my own dream, not someone else’s.

In order to do this, I have to improve...

Yesterday I wrote about when you should beat yourself up. You can read that here.

Have you ever tried to start a new habit, develop a healthier routine, or learn a new skill? It’s pretty fun at the beginning. There’s a very real possibility of finally making a positive change in your life.

But after a week or 2, the enthusiasm of starting your new thing dies off. Then it just becomes another thing you have to work at.

Fitness jumps out to me as a good example.

When you start a new fitness program (on a Monday because all new fitness programs have to start on Monday), you’re full of energy, confidence, and determination. You hit the gym like you own the place. You high-five everyone. You sweat and exhaust yourself but you hardly notice because you’re so excited about your new fitness routine.

You don’t skip a workout for a week or 2 or even 3!

Then the notorious day rolls...

I could create a new story or write a new song every week. I have the skill, passion, and equipment. But I rarely produce that much.

I know some creatively ambitious folks who don’t produce as much as they should either.

They may or may not beat themselves up over their lack of production. I don’t know for sure. But I do know that I don’t always beat myself up for it.

This is wrong.

It’s wrong to not beat yourself up when you know you have the resources to make your creative vision a reality, but you still don’t produce the work.

Resources Can Be…

• Time
• Money
• Experience
• Skill
• Passion
• Equipment
• Friends who have these resources

Also remember that you may not need as many resources as you think you do.

Beat Yourself Up When…

Beat yourself up when you have what you need to create your vision, but still don’t.

Beat yourself up when you put in the Netflix, Snapchat, “research”...

I don’t think we know the whole truth about ourselves. Many people grow up believing a certain story about themselves and then go on living that story until they die. I feel horrible for the ones who die believing in a false story.

I’m thinking of the little girl who never learns to put herself out on the line because she’s been told she’s the quiet, safe one. Or the little boy who never learns how to treat people and never wins friends because he’s been told his brashness is an asset.

We only get a handful of moments to examine our stories to make sure they’re completely true. These moments come from breakdowns, trauma, heartbreak, big life-changes, risk-taking, travel.

It’s possible you’re going through a moment like this…if not, there’s always one coming. Don’t rush through it. Look around and look inside.

If there’s a false story inside you, expose it for a lie.

When do we stop saying, “This is who I am. Deal with it,” and start saying “This is who I am. But I can probably love people better.”?

When do we apologize for that “quirk” that creates unnecessary tension in a social situation? By the way, we get to call it a “quirk” and not “rude”.

Should we feel bad about hurting a person’s feelings because we just had to speak our mind? Heaven forbid we keep our mouths shut for 2 seconds.

Sometimes I fear we only live in Tweetable quips, snide remarks, and self-aggrandizements.

“Be who you are and speak your mind. Never apologize for it,” is the dominant message of our day.

Being individuals has become more important than loving on people. Our own agendas have taken over the world.

If you think up ideas for new blogs pretty often, you should try out my test. I created it to help me stop wasting time on shiny new blog ideas.

I’ve actually gone and built full-featured Wordpress blogs just to realize that I only had 1 thing to say about the blog’s topic.

You should see how stacked my domain name portfolio is. Oh, and there are a lot of my abandoned Twitter accounts out there.

So nowadays, I do this little test before wasting money on a domain name or wasting time building a site.

The easiest way to test whether or not you should start your blog idea: come up with 20 or more blog post ideas in 1 day

Failing this test indicates 3 things

1. You might not be passionate enough about this topic
2. You might not be knowledgable enough about this topic
3. There might not be enough meat inside this topic to begin with. It may be too narrow of a focus.

If you can’t come up with...

I love poetry and fiction. I also love sports and competing. I’m also into sad indie songs, 90s R&B, and I’ve fallen back in love with hip-hop. But I also love entrepreneurship and business. Oh, and I dig web design/development.

This list could go on for a while–I’ll spare you.

Now get this: the business I’m building only deals with 1 of my loves. And it even niches down a few deeper levels from their.

I used to hate the idea of limiting myself to 1 focus because I hate being categorized. I’ll bet a lot of folks feel the same. Most normal people have a wide variety of interests. That’s what makes us all so intriguing.

But whenever the life of your creations relies on strangers giving you money, signing up for your email list, reading your content, you’ll have a much easier time if they can easily categorize you.

When people can easily categorize you, they can make a quick...

Sometimes, when I’m at my most cynical, I can’t understand how anybody ever accomplishes anything. You who are trying to create, make an impact, change your life – there’s so much rising up in defiance against you.

Steven Pressfield calls this “The Resistance”. Seth Godin calls it “The Dip”.

I call it…well I don’t call it anything really. I just like to list out everything that wants to steal your vision:

• Self-doubt
• Perceived lack of energy
• Fear
• Distractions like TV, social media, even books and research
• Perceived lack of time

These are some things that really want to keep you down, lazy, sterile. And yet some of you still create. You’ll still accomplish. You will break away.

Creativity is touted as an ultimate mind-resource. And I suppose it’s justified. Without creativity, humans would have died off as quickly as we came. Luckily we were given brains that could envision tools and dexterous hands that could actually fashion them.

So okay, creativity is one of your most powerful mind-resources. Now if only someone could teach you how to tap into it…

Oh wait, there are thousands of books and articles about creativity, how to manage it, how to get it, how to never lose it, and so on. See this Amazon search and this search on Medium.

Small sample size I know, but you get the idea.

Are there times when your creativity is worthless?

I’m not sure if all those books and articles ever talk about when creativity is worthless. Of course, I’d have to read every single one to know for sure. But the general message I see is this: Creativity is everything. If you’ve...

What’s your most valuable asset? What’s the one thing that, if you lost it, you’d be worthless, finished, all washed up?

No, it’s not your domain name, your air-tight business plan, your Google search rank, your email list, your Twitter followers.

It’s not even your staff, or building, or investment capital.

It’s not even your time. You don’t know how much of that you have anyways, so why try to count on it?

Asset Defined…

A resource with economic value that an individual, corporation or country owns or controls with the expectation that it will provide future benefit. (Investopedia)

Based on that definition, you’re most valuable asset is yourself – your mind, body, soul.

If You Don’t Read

Then you’re crushing your mind. And I’m not talking about reading only books that deal with your enterprise. Read anything/everything that looks interesting. Hint: You don’t even have to...