Success Is Messy
I have started a new book entitled, Habits of the Household: Practicing the Story of God in Everyday Family Rhythms by Justin Whitmel Earley. It is a parenting book, but like most things, I relate it back to leadership. The book outlines habits and daily rhythms to implement that help you “parent with purpose.” And it’s got me thinking about the path to success – both in parenthood and beyond – and how that path to success is messy. We shouldn’t expect perfection. We should, actually, expect failure and some rockiness along the way. No one is perfect, and because of that truth, it is so important to give ourselves grace.
At my house, we like to refer to the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – often. We turn to them a lot to guide us in leading our children, and ourselves, in our decisions and actions every day. I tell my kids, “Be gentle, be patient, be kind to yourself.” And it is imperative that I model those behaviors myself – being gentle, patient, and kind to myself. This is how we ought to live our lives on Earth.
One of the fruits of the Spirit that I think applies most directly to success is self-control. When you have a setback or failure, you ought to exercise self-control, as well. In this use of the term self-control, I am referring to the act of standing back up after failure and getting back into production.
Here are three things I do to exercise self-control to get myself back into production after a setback:
1. Prevent a catastrophic loss. The truth is that we ARE going to experience failures. This should just be an expectation of human existence. What you cannot afford to have, however, is a catastrophic loss. You cannot not pay attention to something so long that it destroys your whole company or your entire team or your marriage or your relationship with your kids. You must prevent a catastrophic loss. First, acknowledge that whatever setback you have experienced is not a catastrophic loss, and, second, prevent it from becoming one.
2. Get back to the basics. Whenever I experience a failure, I return to the basics. In business, the basics are my budget (my financial statements), my leads (how I am growing my business), my processes (the actions I take to prevent failures in the future), and my talent (how I am gaining, improving, and retaining my talent). If I focus on these basics, I will climb out of the failure certainly.
3. Revisit your vision and planning efforts. Recall that vision is what it looks like in the end when it’s done right. When you think about it correctly, vision should produce a feeling, and the creation of that feeling is what you are after. Rekindle that feeling on the inside and reset your view to align with your vision for the direction ahead. The distance between that end point and where you are today is the PLAN. And the plan gives you the next actionable step to take. If you strive to get back into production right after you experience a setback, you must have your plan in place to take that next step. Be selective and intentional about what you choose to focus on in that moment. What you focus on expands, and it will propel you into action.
Now, the world at large may tell us that we need to be successful right away, in a linear fashion. But don’t let the world dictate what your success should look like, or how you get there. For myself, when I find the world trying to dictate what is a big problem and what is a small problem, I set that commentary aside. I will be the one to tell myself what is a big versus a small problem, and I will always take extra care in labeling big problems. I have been blessed with a good bit of perspective in my life – for which I am deeply grateful – and that perspective has shown me that there truly are not many things that qualify as a BIG problem. I was reminded of this in my reading of Habits of the Household this week. The only thing we have to do in this life is love. So, if I am failing to practice how to love my God and love others, then that is a BIG problem. As long as I am acting with love, then any business set back, any production failure is just a small problem. I caution you to be careful about how you choose to label big and small problems. Make sure you are very aware of that differentiation.
On this point of love, and in the spirit of this week’s holiday,
I would just like to expand on this message a bit more…
America has had a very messy path to success. We are the greatest nation in the world, but it has certainly not been achieved in a straight line. There are multiple times in history, and even today, we can look to and allow ourselves to be sad about the way we have become who we have become. But I am proud of how the American people have always returned to the way of love. I truly believe the reason why we are the best in the world is because we love our people. Our love is the bedrock of our beliefs in freedom and liberty for all. As long as we all choose to lead with love, we will always be the greatest nation in the world. It is the nations that don’t lead with love that fail.
Be proud of your country. Be proud of the liberties and freedoms we provide to all of our people because of the loving country we are. As leaders, let us continue to drive that deeper into our culture and throughout the world.
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Written by Schuyler Williamson
REALTOR. Leader. Veteran. Business Owner. Investor.
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God Bless!
~ Schuyler Williamson