Conrey is for Closers

Be proud of the stuff you have done. If it is the best effort you could put forward, be proud. Tweet it, facebook it, email it to everyone you know. This doesn’t guarantee success in the minds of others, but you should recognize that you have done something you couldn’t do before and be proud. Doing the best you can do is a reason to be proud everyday. As part of the fatoff I have put up among the slowest times for each workout I’ve done at Competitive Fitness- but when I redid my first workout I cut it by more than half – you can bet damn sure that I was proud of that, regardless of the fact that I’m in third place in the actual weight loss.

Don’t be proud of stuff you haven’t done yet. “I am the tortoise and I will prevail. Continue being proud of yourself for a race not yet won.” – Bully says it far better than I could have and in under 140 characters. Anyone who is proud of what they haven’t done yet, are already set for failure.

No one owes you anything. Let me repeat that to make sure you got it – No one owes you anything.

You aren’t entitled to anything because you know someone, because you did something good in the past, because you got a college degree, because you know something new.

People with a sense of entitlement are rarely the people who are actually doing the awesome things around us. The people who are doing the good stuff are just putting their heads down and getting it done. Look back at the last things you said to a client, or to a coworker, or to your boss – did you come across like they owed you something? If you’re being honest you probably have done it at least once today.

Stop acting like the world owes you something, instead go out and earn it. No one owes you anything.

You can look backwards at your mistakes or look forward to things you can do to make it better. It is a simple choice that we all can make every time we find something we did wrong. When you make a mistake you can spend days trying to figure out exactly what WENT wrong: where you made the wrong choice, said the wrong thing, clicked the wrong button. Or you can figure out exactly what IS wrong: what you can fix right now, what you need to say to the affected parties, what to do to mitigate the problem.

This extends even to looking backwards at things you’re doing now. A fear of looking back because of a mistake keeps most people from doing anything in the first place.

No one walks their dog, or runs a marathon looking backwards – it’s a great way to run into something painful. Why would we work on anything else that way?