Make Friends with Change

Why The Lazy Fear Change

Most people resist change because the unknown is scary, frightening and intimidating. They like things the way they are. One thing they’re not looking for is more work and they hate the idea of anything that might lead to more work. They don’t want to be bothered, they want to get by with the minimum effort, they want to just shuffle through life. Even if unhappy they at least know where they are now.

They are fearful of what change would brining because they just naturally assume it’s going to turn out bad for them. But carrying that attitude is not healthy.

That’s not a winning attitude. 
This stubbornness holds them back and puts them in a position of perpetual resistance and constantly missing new opportunities. They don’t have much confidence, they don’t really want better things, so the idea of change seems unsettling.

The Big Problem
But there’s a real big problem with this approach and that’s because we aren’t stuck in one spot in one point in time, we are moving through life.

Everything is moving, changing and adjusting.

Your friends change, your kids grow older, your business evolves into other forms, the economy goes up and down and it never ends. Even the ground we stand on is spinning through space.

Make Friends With Change
Open yourself up. Change is part of life and unavoidable.  

With every change comes news opportunities however it may well create more possibilities for you than you’ve ever imagined. On the other hand it may save you from losing some of those things you have now but are destined to lose. For example, your company is gobbled up by a bigger company: everyone panics.  

However, with the new management team they may make changes that opens a bigger and better career path for you or because they bought the company it may save you from eventually losing your job because the company you were with was losing money and heading for bankruptcy.   

Sure it’s easier to just keep things the way they are. Unfortunately in this world things never stay the way they are. 

If you want to survive and prosper you would do well to decide to make friends with change.

3 Three Killers of Dreams

Here are the 3 big diseases that kill the possible success of those starting out on new activities, businesses, projects and careers:

1. Hesitation Disease - Instead of jumping in, getting started, asking questions, charging ahead, you hold back. You start thinking about all the things that could go wrong, all the things you don’t know and you freeze. Instead of focusing on what you are excited about and what you like you focus on the unknowns. You freeze and you miss your opportunity.

2. Detail-itis - You want to know everything about everything. You major on the minors. You are never satisfied. You drive yourself to learn every single thing but you never do anything with any of your information. Since you aren’t active you remain idle. The idleness turns you into a busybody, endlessly poking your nose into other’s business, questioning and analyzing everything to death. Instead of making a positive contribution you become a negative, interfering with those doing the work.

3. Excuse-itis - You don’t take responsibility for your progress. You see yourself as a victim who is persecuted by the world. You can’t get anything done because The world is against you. You always have a reason why you can’t get anything done. You focus on problems. You seem oblivious to the fact that everyone has the same problems yet they get things done anyway. You never get anything done, but you always have an excuse.

Avoid these dream killers, and avoid those who have these diseases—because they are contagious and you don't want to get infected!

Be You.

Young people moving up in life are attracted to winners.  

The people at the top of any profession always grab the attention of those on the way up and they're the role models. They’re the inspiration. They show how you can be successful. They give you a template, an example of success. 

One of the greatest ways to learn is by mimicking.  

In fact, that's how we learn as children; that's how we learn most of what we learned to walk, talk, interact with others, what's right, what's wrong. We learned from mimicking others. Now, that's a fantastic way to learn as long as you don't go overboard. The important point is to realize that although you can learn from others—you can copy techniques, ideas, mannerisms, phrases, words, ideas, concepts, schedules, thinking, planning from others but you can never be them.  

You can only be you.  

You are totally unique in the history of the world. Only you were born where you were born, at the time you were born, to the parents you were born to, with or without the brothers and sisters you have, with or without the aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc. in your extended family. Only you grew up in the school system you grew up with and had the teachers you had, the church you went to, the friends you had and the experiences you had.  

All of these things have a tremendous impact on forming you.  

It starts with genetics. Only you have that unique DNA combination of genetics that came from your parents. There could be 20 children in the family yet they will all have their distinct unique personalities and views of the world. There is no one who has ever lived who is exactly like you. So what does that mean?  

That means no one knows what your potential is.  

No one knows what you could be great at.  No one knows how you could impact the world. No one knows what your possibilities are.  There's no way of knowing what level of success you can have in life because there's never in the history of the world been anyone exactly like you. Your joy, your opportunity, your privilege as you live your life is to find out exactly what the answers are to all of those questions.

Go and live your life to the fullness. Be you and find out what that you really is.

You Don't Have To

When faced with an opportunity, remember this, you don’t have to.

No one can make you. It's not punishment. It's an opportunity! It's a chance to do something you otherwise would never be able to do. It's a chance to enrich your life, to move ahead.

But it's your choice.

Don’t do it like a belligerent employee, putting in minimum effort, trying to just by and going through the motions. Give it everything you’ve got! You are doing this for yourself.

You chose to do this, no one made you, you are doing it because you want to. This is the situation that you’ve been wanting, to get all the benefit from your hard work and not just help someone else get ahead.

So do it with all your energy, and a smile on your face— because this time it's for you.

Winner's Book Club Selection of the Week

What are his "Winner Credentials"? 

Apolo Ohno is the most decorated American Winter Olympic athlete of all time!

I love his title ….“Zero Regrets” 

Growing up, it always occurred to me that the one thing I never wanted was to look back on my life and feel like I had passed up special opportunities. I didn’t want to look back later and have regrets that I had passed on once in a lifetime opportunities.

In this book, Apolo Ohno talks about how this theme propelled him to unparalleled success in the Olympics and how he has adopted it as his approach to life.

Here’s what the editors at Amazon say…

It’s a philosophy not just about sport but about life. School, business, academics, love—anything and everything. It’s complicated and yet not. You have to figure out who it is you want to be. Not what you want to be—who. There has to be a vision, a dream, a plan. Then you chase that with everything you’ve got.”

Over three consecutive Olympic games, Apolo Ohno has come to symbolize the very best of the competitive spirit—remaining equally gracious in victory and defeat, always striving to improve his performance, and appreciating the value of the hard work of training as much as any reward it might bring. In Zero Regrets, Apolo shares the inspiring personal story behind his remarkable success, as well as the hard-won truths and strategies he has discovered in good times and bad.

Raised by his single father, an immigrant from Japan who often worked twelve-hour days, the young Apolo found it difficult to balance his enormous natural gifts as an athlete with an admittedly wild, rebellious streak. After making a name for himself as a promising young speed skater, his career was almost over before it began when his lack of preparation caused him to finish last at the U.S. Olympic trials in 1998. A life-changing week of solitary soul-searching at the age of fifteen led him to recommit himself to his training, and at the 1999 world junior championships he won first place overall—one of the most remarkable turnarounds in sports history. From that moment on, the world of speed skating had a new champion and Apolo was on his way to legendary status.

Much more than an account of races won and lost, Zero Regrets is a compelling portrait of a father-and-son relationship that deepened over time and was based on respect, love, and unshakable faith in each other. For the first time, Apolo reveals what he knows about his long-absent mother; he makes us feel what it is like to face the best competitors on the planet with the eyes of millions of fans upon you; and he shares his secrets for achieving total focus and mental toughness, secrets that can be applied in situations well beyond sports. We learn the details of the unbelievably intense workout and diet that he endured while training for the 2010 Winter Olympics, a regime that literally reshaped his body and led to some of his most thrilling victories.

In this deeply personal and entertaining book, Apolo shows how we can all come closer to living with zero regrets. While Apolo’s own journey may be unique, the insights he has gleaned along the way have the power to help us all feel like champions every day.

EXERPT

Nine days after dropping me off, Dad came to pick me up.

In that call from the pay phone, I hadn’t said anything to him about what decision I had made. On the car ride back home, I told him. “I want to try this,” I said.

“Are you willing,” he asked, “to really put forth a true effort? From the bone?”

I told my father: “I want to skate.”

With clarity of purpose, everything suddenly seemed different. I didn’t just want to skate—I loved it. I realized, too, that while I had to want to buy into the training, the discipline, the self-sacrifice, I needed direction and guidance, too. You truly can’t get there by yourself. I needed not only to truly and profoundly depend upon Dad for help but also to welcome those—coaches, trainers, others—who could help me along the way. . . .

I was also making promises to myself and writing them in my journal:

I’m not going to mess it up this time. When I go home, I really am going to be the different person I decided in Iron Springs I would be. I know what I want to do. I want to be the best in the world.

I didn’t know quite yet how I would get there. But I was clear, and I had no doubt— that’s what I was after.

—From Zero Regrets