I gave a speech last week to a small group of sales people and as I was wrapping up and leaving them with an encouraging word about developing their daily disciplines for success one of them asked me to share my daily disciplines. When I finish sharing my disciplines with them another person said, “You seem to expect way more of yourself than anyone else expects of you…” I would have been fine with that, but then he continued, “…why are you so hard on yourself?”
“High expectations are the key to everything.” — Sam Walton, Wal-Mart Founder
As I boarded my plane and headed for home I kept thinking about that comment and whether or not I was too hard on myself. The real answer lays in the fact that I know myself and if I did not challenge myself to a higher standard I would easily fall into a complacent lifestyle. What I know about me is that the things I need to do to be successful and keep growing are easy, unfortunately, it is also really easy not to do them. I could get really comfortable with living an undisciplined life, but things like that compound over time and what seems like a small concession today will be an enormous negative in my life 5 years from now. Jim Rohn used to say that, “It is dangerous to look at an undisciplined day and think that no harm has been done”. Undisciplined days lead to undisciplined weeks, and so on and so on.
“You must do the things today that others will not do so that you can have the things tomorrow that others will not have.”– Anonymous
I am writing this little reminder for me. If you find it valuable I am really glad, but it is to remind me that growing and developing yourself are hard work and no one is going to hold my feet to the fire but me. I saw a “tweet” last week from leadership author and speaker Robin Sharma that read, “I got up to exercise this morning when I didn’t want to because I promised myself I would”. I love the thought of making and KEEPING promises to myself. I have not always been so good at that, but I am improving.
“Set higher standards for you own performance than anyone around you, and it won’t matter whether you have a tough boss or an easy one. It won’t matter whether the competition is pushing you hard, because you’ll be competing with yourself.” — Coach Rick Pitino
Final thought…try to better than yourself. It takes an intentional approach to life, but it pays enormous long term dividends. You can do it!!
