Wow, what a pretentious title for this note. I hope it lives up to its promise.

THE SCENE BEGINS IN AN OFF-BROADWAY MUSICAL:

Last weekend, I saw Signs of Life, the Off-Broadway play about life in Terezin, the model concentration camp the Nazis created to show how well the Jews were being treated. My collaborator Joel Derfner composed the show. The acting and singing was excellent. It was very emotional, and left us in a state of profound … profundity. They announced an after-show talk, and my first thought was, “I hope the cast isn’t there.”

My reaction surprised me. I usually love hanging out with creative types, and really love my actor friends. But in this case, despite the actors’ skill, I wanted to preserve the distance. What was up with that?

CUT TO:

I’ve done a lot of public speaking over the years. Whatever “it” is, I have it. Crowds respond to me. Recently, a speaker with a microphone was trying to get the attention of a room. I stood up, looked around, and said “let’s sit down now” in a slightly louder-than-normal voice. Everyone turned around and sat down. At one speech a few years ago, the tapes of my session sold out while the session was still in progress.

Right now, I’m in my first show since forever. I’m an ensemble member with a full five or six speaking lines. Acting someone else’s line and characters is very different from public speaking. We’ll see how it goes.

CUT TO:

My friend Jamie Kent is building a career as a musician. He’s done a lot of theater and is now learning to perform as a musician in venues where some people are attentive fans, while others are drunken revelers. He and I spoke for a while today about the nature of being on stage. He’s found that doing theater is very different from performing music live, and life music seems different from public speaking. He’s still going up the learning curve. I’m watching.

WHAT I’M LEARNING ABOUT STAGE

Acting, public speaking, and performing music are all ways for one person to engage hundreds or thousands of others. There are critical differences that demand different skills in all three. Yet all three depend on the nature of the relationship between performer and audience.

Stage is story.

One-on-one conversation is easy. We adapt to each other and react to each other’s points. It’s conversation. When one person is engaging an audience, I find it helps me be more powerful to think in terms of story. There’s always a story.

Actors. In acting, there’s a story being told. The actors are the medium. They’re an odd medium, since their skill is in knitting their own authentic emotions into building blocks for characters who they aren’t. The audience’s reaction is to the story, not the actors. The story is made more real through the skill of the actors, but the best actors are the ones who create a character so strong you forget the actor. Sean Penn in MILK was this amazing.

The audience is voyeur, watching the story without being part. Though some stories occasionally break the fourth wall and a character talks directly to the audience, the characters don’t expect an answer, and the audience doesn’t expect to give one. Even the breaking of the fourth wall is, itself, part of the story. (If you’ve seen Avenue Q, you’ll recognize the awkwardness of what happens when the fourth wall breaks. We wonder: are we supposed to participate, or continue our part outside the production?)

For the actor, the challenge is to create a character and story without directing it at the audience. The completeness of the character and the power of the direction is the compelling event that makes the audience want to watch. An actor uses their authenticity to create the character, but their job is to create a fiction with that authenticity.

The actors in Signs of Life did such a good job that I didn’t want to meet them in person. The story was too powerful; I didn’t want to meet them not as their characters.

Public speakers. Public speakers tell the story, and their role is narrator. Since they’re outside the story, the audience can interact with the narrator about the story. The audience is in conversation with the speaker about the story.

For the speaker, the challenge is engaging in a conversation with the entire audience as a whole. The speaker must align themselves with the audience and share the audience’s discovery of the material the speaker is providing. Authenticity works well in public speaking, because people can often pick up when someone’s faking or restraining themselves, and people like to have conversations with people who are interesting and real.

My “it” when public speaking is maybe a mild form of autism spectrum disorder that I’ve managed to turn into a huge asset (joking… I think): like many geeks, I can’t maintain a social facade. What you see is what you get. I suffer from involuntary authenticity.

Leaders. Leaders also tell the story as narrator, but there’s an additional level: there’s the story of what it means to be together, sharing that story. When an audience gathers to be led by Lori Leader, Lori tells stories that bring up emotion in the followers. But the more powerful story is the story of why people are listening to Lori in the first place.

Oprah might tell a story about an abused child. She’s narrator, aligned with the audience to discover truths about abuse. The larger story that many of her followers hold, however, is that by allowing Oprah to be their narrator, they will have richer, more fulfilling lives.

For the leader, the challenge is working both of these messages at once. The leader must have a conversation with the audience about the material, just as a public speaker must. The leader also needs to have a separate conversation, about what that conversation means. “Join me to talk about race relations. [I'll narrate.] Just by being here, you’re showing your commitment to help change the world. [The conversation about the relationship.]”

Musicians. For musician, the challenge is being both actor and speaker. The songs and what they mean to the audience are what forms the story. People see live music because they want to be in conversation with the musician, yet they want a conversation they know: the music that tells the story the audience wants to experience. Audiences can sometimes even get upset if the musician performs a song differently from how they performed it on their album. The audience wants the story (song) they know, plus the emotional connection they get with a narrator. The musician must create both the narrator relationship and provide the story to engage the audience.

Jamie’s learning curve is likely related to the challenge of the duel relationship of actor and speaker/narrator. His pre-music performing experience was all as actor, and he’s just beginning to wrestle with the need to be with the audience even as he’s acting in the story of the music.

SO WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

My larger story is that sometimes, my insights can help others get clarity on issues in their life. I’m hoping you find something useful, or at least entertaining, in these ideas. Let me know.

I’m just playing with these ideas, as I delve into performing more than I’ve ever done. I’d be curious to know how you think about being on stage. What stories do you tell? How do you relate to your leaders, actors, teachers, and musicians?

P.S. I’m available as a public speaker, by the way…

I’m Twittering today. And I’m Facebooking. And I’m blogging. And I’m writing my newsletter and my podcast. In pursuit of building my so-called personal brand, I’m getting my name out there and sharing my brilliance with the world. Once I get some decent lighting, 2010 will see me introduce a video blog as well. Yessiree, I’m building that brand right on up. Yup. Building that brand. Look at it go. Right on up there…

What’s striking, however, is that none of this pays a cent. Not only does it not pay, but it conditions people to want my content for free. I had the audacity to pose a question to my Twitter subscribers last week, to get some suggestions for an upcoming episode. One happy person responded, “Dude, STOP ASKING US how to get stuff done and START TELLING US how to get it done!” I have hundreds of pages of free articles. I have written close to 500 pages of podcasts, all freely available, and apparently that’s not enough.

The social media promise

The theory is that social media lets people discuss my products and services without my intervention. I can now enter into a dialog with my customers, that will let me optimize my products, respond to my markets, and manage my reputation real time. The magically I’ll be successful and have a thriving business. That sounds really good on paper.

Then I think for a moment. I’ve always been able to read reviews of my products. I’ve always been able to survey my customers. And if I’m at all smart about handling customer queries and support calls, I can even optimize my products and design in solutions for my customers based on their problems. In short, pretty much everything social media can do for me, I could do in a pre-social media world. So what’s the difference?

The social media cost

One big difference is the cost. Maintaining an ongoing social media presence is a huge use of time and effort. If I were a big company, I might hire someone full time to do nothing but tweet, twitter, Yelp, Blorp, and Blubber. But as a one-man shop, I have to do all this myself. Then I have to track the responses and figure out which channels are actually getting attention (that will change in six months, requiring another full round of marketing research), and then generate content content content.

At some point, I’m apparently supposed to develop products and services, which is where I make the money. And by the way, those products and services better contain content I haven’t given away for free in the process of generating all this social media.

My prediction

Where will this go? Based on my own experience, I think social media will continue to be important as a channel for monitoring end consumer needs, wishes, and experiences using products. At the end of the day, it’s a giant gossip network, and your reputation is part of your brand, so you’ll have to manage it.

When it comes to content from businesses to customers, I don’t think it’s sustainable. The free content generation will die down over time, unless there’s a clear return on investment to it. Quality content is hard to produce. Companies that can afford to hire someone to be a web presence will do so. They’ll be able to produce high-quality content on an ongoing basis.

Small businesses and solopreneurs will gradually drop out of the fray, simply because the demands are too great and the returns too small. It takes good education and/or experience to be able to generate huge amounts of quality content, and those things are expensive. How much time should a smart, capable, good person with great writing skills spend giving away their knowledge for free without expecting a return? If there’s a demand for high-quality content (which there may not be), it will mainly be on a subscription model.

The few who manage to attract large followings will do great, of course, but that’s always been the case. And attracting a large following seems to be a function of direct marketing skill, more than high quality content creation skill.

Bottom line: in five years, by 2014, we’ll see the quality of free content dropping as the high-quality content creators turn their attention to activities that actually drive their business. Social media will remain important for reputation management, however, and as a tool for monitoring our customers and what they’re thinking.

A Financial Tailspin sucks! Don’t compound it.

We’re going through some … interesting … times, financially. People feel insecure, established institutions are in desperate need of bailout (funny how attractive socialism becomes when you’re the one who needs the handout) and the world economy seems to be teetering on the brink. Now’s a great time to realize: it’s all in our minds.

I mean this quite literally. Have you seen “Money as Debt?” It’s an excellent 47-minute video on where money comes from. It tells how our current system came to be. It highlights flaws in the system and offers some alternatives, all with a tasty dose of conspiracy theory thrown in here and there(*). You can watch the video here: http://www.SteverRobbins.com/r/moneyasdebt

Money is literally nothing more than an idea. It’s a promise we make to deliver a good, a service, or more money at a later date. Why is Bill Gates a billionaire? Because the rest of us agree that he is. We also agree to give him our stuff if he gives us enough money. But it’s all an agreement. Because it’s an agreement, we take action on it, and it’s our actions that have real-world consequences.

“Don’t worry, be happy.”

Bobby McFerrin’s song, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” is right on the money. At any given moment, you may or may not be able to control what’s actually happening around you. But you can always choose your attitude about it.

I was in a meeting earlier this year, discussing a key feature of entrepreneurship: the ability to see opportunity where others see problems. Just for jollies, I decided to try spending a week deliberately asking, “Where’s the opportunity here?” every time a problem cropped up. Every single time I asked the question, I was able to find an answer. Often, in mere seconds.

The housing bubble gave many time in an elevated lifestyle

Then I asked, “What’s the upside of the financial crisis?” You know, one answer is this: millions have had the chance to live far beyond their means for many years. While we don’t much care for the consequences, at least they got to enjoy a standard of living they couldn’t have otherwise afforded. I’m serious about this, by the way. Of course it’s natural to be upset when losing your job, your credit, your home, or your car. But being upset won’t change anything. It will just make you feel bad. You can also choose to feel thankful that you had those things to begin with.

Be a Thanksgiving Gratitude Geek

Are there problems in the financial world right now? Yup. And we can live through those problems giving all our attention to the downside or giving all our attention to the opportunities and the upside.

My suggestion to you: spend this Thanksgiving dwelling on the upside. Ask yourself, “what do I have to be thankful for?” and make a big long list. Help everyone around you do the same thing. They say what we need is more optimism in the economy. Optimism isn’t something “out there,” it’s one of the few things we have control over. So let’s exercise that control and see the glass as 10% full, not 90% empty. Because we can’t always change the outside reality, but we can certainly choose our inner reality.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving. Here are some of the things I’m thankful for:

• Friends and community
• Hot running showers
• Democracy
• My four-year-old iPod that still works great
• The chance to teach high school students at an after-school program
• Zipcar
• My podcast
• Friends and community

(*) I love conspiracy theories! I always like to remind myself that just because someone’s paranoid doesn’t mean the conspiracy doesn’t truly exist.

by Stever Robbins host of The Get-It-Done Guy podcast

Related article: How to write a good cover letter.

In April 2008, I gave a talk at Harvard Business School on the Ten Cultural Career Lies. These are things I believed for most of my life. Recently, the conventional wisdom started seeming suspect. I called several of my classmates who are all mid-career and asked what had led to their successes and failures. Upon close examination, much of what I had believed to be true about careers did not seem to hold.

This is one man’s experience. I invite you to decide if it matches your experience. You can add your comments to the interactive version on my Get-It-Done Guy book blog.

1. You can plan your career (or would even want to).

• That’s not my experience, nor is it the experience of anyone over 35 I’ve talked to.
• Maybe it worked in the 1950s…
• Maybe it works in careers driven by successive degree requirements (e.g. medicine)
• We get trained to think in terms of one-step-leads-to-another by 18 years of linear schooling.
• So: plan less and be more. Hang out with good people doing good stuff and grab opportunity as it passes by.

2. Being the boss makes for a good life.

• Have you ever worked closely with a CEO? It can be a great job, but it can also suck. Like any job, it requires a certain temperament and set of skills.
• So: find jobs that suit your skills and temperament, don’t assume that the “oooh! isn’t that amazing” jobs will be good for you.

3. “Self-made” people exist.

• The most self-made person alive still relied on millions of others to provide financial markets, schools, sewers, and the infrastructure that allowed them to go off and become “self-made.”
• So: Recognize interdependency and build your life around positive interdependency. And when you want to learn to emulate a “self-made” person, pay attention to all the ways they weren’t self-made; that’s where the learning is. (And by the way, they may not be helpful in pointing out ways that contradict their myth.)

4. Hard work and skill will be appropriately rewarded.

• Bear Sterns CEO cashed out for “only” $60 million. Cleaning lady @ $8/hour must work two jobs just to pay rent and still doesn’t make enough to save anything. ‘Nuff said.
• So: understand what is rewarded (by money, power, respect, affection, time off, flexibility, freedom) and do that. If you want money, finance is the surest way to get it.

5. Do a good job and you’ll get ahead.

• So: See #4. Pay special attention to what the people who will promote you want to see. Don’t assume it’s results.

6. I’ll work now and do what I love when I’ve made my first million, cured cancer, etc.

• Management consulting firms and investment banks use this lie as a recruiting tool.
• Dangerous strategy, and I know very few who’ve pulled it off. If you don’t do it, you’re left at mid-life trapped in a career you don’t like, with a non-transferable resume, and a network composed of people who are the last ones in the world who could help you do what you love. But boy, could they help you get even further in the career you despise.
• So: Factor in your passions and ideals from day one.

7. Intelligence matters.

• Up to a point. After that point, it can threaten people. It’s only useful insofar as you have the people/political/marketing skills to get your ideas in play. Even then, unless you’re perfect, you run the risk of overconfidence.
• So: take classes when you need them, but stop assuming more knowledge is the answer to every problem. As a Fortune 500 ceo once confided: “business really just isn’t rocket science. In fact, to a smart person, it’s kinda boring…”

8. Achievement matters.

• Actually not. Who you know and who thinks well of you probably matters at least as much as what you’ve achieved, if not more.
• So: don’t get too caught up in building that great company, finishing that piece of art, or whatever. Yes, getting things done can be good. But if you enjoy and learn from the things that don’t get done, that may be enough.

9. We can control our lives.

• Sickness, death, lotteries, luck, and love all happen. My friend just moved from Washington D.C. to Las Cruces, NM, where his snuggle-bunny has a job. That sure wasn’t planned for.
• So: go with the flow. Learn to accept the things you can’t control. Be o.k. with that. Enjoy the process and don’t sweat it if you don’t reach the outcome. (That said, give it your best shot if you really want it.)

10. Success (money, power, achievement) brings happiness.

• This has been disproven by tons of research. See the books Happy for No Reason by Marci Shimoff, Are You Ready to Succeed by Srikumar Rao, or Authentic Happiness by Marty Seligman.
• This lie causes great unhappiness. See The Happy or Successful diagram below.
• So: orient your life around happiness and look for success, not the other way around.

Happy or Successful Decision Tree

Click to view the image in full-page size.

Decision tree: living for happy vs. living for success.

Click here to listen to this as a podcast.

Download the “Happy or Successful” diagram that goes with the article.

On a recent birthday I was looking back at the strategies that my friends from high school and college and I employed to get where we are today. We assumed that success would bring happiness, and as far I can tell, we were wrong. It turns out that the two are separate, even though marketers would have us believe otherwise.The slogan for Cadillac is “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit.” Of course what your mind fills in is Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. As if a $50,000.00 car will actually make you happier. And maybe it will. But keep in mind, if your life fundamentally sucks, it’s gonna keep on sucking the moment you step out of the car and onto the concrete. So, if the two are different—if happiness and success are not the same—what’s the best life strategy?

We are certainly taught to believe that being successful will make us happy. Society tells us, our parents tell us, our teachers tell us, students in high school as young as 12 and 13 are already being lectured about college. I take it to an extreme. I have a 5-year-old nephew, I am thinking about his college, I am thinking about his high school. It’s ridiculous; I am missing his entire childhood because I am so busy thinking about making him successful in the assumption that thus will he be happy.

I also find that in career coaching new MBAs, they have an almost religious belief that they can plan out a 20-year career path. They say things like, “I will make my money and then I will be happy. Then I will do the things that are meaningful.” Then, then, then. As if, among other things, you can even control whether “then” ever arrives.

So strategy number 1 is: pursue success and hope for happiness. The other strategy is to pursue happiness and meaning and find a way to make a living doing it. This is the strategy where happiness leads to success. Which one is better? Let’s see…

If you go for success and you become successful and you find a way to be happy doing it, yeah, you’re happy and successful. If you go for happiness and find a way to make money doing it, yeah, you’re happy and successful. So, in the case where you can achieve both, it doesn’t really matter which strategy you choose, you end up happy and successful.

But the point we rarely consider is what happens if everything doesn’t work out. If you define your life as pursuing success but you don’t actually find a way to be happy while doing it, or you get to that point where you have the money and now you don’t even know what makes you happy because you have spent the whole time pursuing success instead of happiness, well, great. You’re successful, but you’re not happy. You walk into an empty house surrounded by beautiful gorgeous things. You have a lot of friends and they like you. Why? Because you have a lot of nice things that they want to borrow. You buy a cat, the cat puts with you because you leave its automated feeding bowl in place while you go work at office. It actually hates you because you’re never around. You are too busy working, but at least it will pretend to purr every now and then.

On the other hand, if you go for happiness and aren’t successful, at least you will be happy and you will have a life full of meaning. They found one of the big things that helps people be happy, for example, it is having family and friends and community. So, if you are happy, but don’t quite make it to successful, you may wander into your one-bedroom tiny apartment and be surrounded by friends and family and people who love you and a cat that purrs because it recognizes you—it knows who you are and it appreciates the fact that you feed it. You may not have the money, but you will be happy.

So, in the case where the future works exactly the way we want it to, it doesn’t matter whether you pursue success and then find happiness or whether you pursue happiness and then find success. But in the case where you can’t guarantee the final outcome, it makes so much more sense to pursue happiness and hopefully you can find a way to be successful doing it.

I have spent my life up until very recently doing the opposite. I have spent my life pursuing success under the assumption that it would make me happy and it is not clear that it’s been worth it. Missing a weekend with friends so that I can work hard and earn enough money that I can take time off and … spend a weekend with friends. Hello? This doesn’t exactly make a whole lot of sense.

What I would like to invite you to do today is to examine your own life and your own motivations—How do you work? Are you pursuing success assuming that someday will bring happiness? Are you pursuing happiness looking for way to be successful while doing it? Are you getting both? And I would invite you to play around a little bit. Try doing something from the other camp and find out if that works for you.

If you’re a Type-A Personality Workaholic, skip a day of work, call in sick and do something that makes you happy, that’s meaningful, and that could be a taste of the life you could be living right now, maybe in exchange for money but maybe not. Because when you pursue happiness, you never know what kind of opportunities arise.

I am now one year into a three-year experiment of living my life to the extent that I can get my Type-A Personality to do so. I pursue the things that make me happy and have meaning. The bizarre part is my life is less predictable than ever before. The things I am getting involved with weren’t even on the radar screen a year-and-a-half ago, however, some of them are grander and more exciting than anything I could possibly have planned. Make a choice. Pursue success and find happiness or pursue happiness and find success. Either way you have a shot at both, but in one case you guarantee you will be happy.

The Tragedy of the Commons is a situation where players cooperate or everyone loses, yet each individual has incentive not to cooperate. Also known as the “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” here’s a sample Tragedy of the Commons: farmers graze their cows on a shared grassy area called the Commons. The Commons can support 100 cows. One hundred farmers each bring a cow, and the eatin’s good. But each farmer thinks, “If I bring one extra cow, it doubles my entire income and only puts a 1% drain on the Commons.” All 100 farmers think this, all bring one extra cow, and 200 cows quickly overgraze the Commons. It dies completely, and then, so do the cows, followed by the farmers.

Pollution fits this structure. The Commons is nature’s ability to absorb the pollution. The benefit of polluting to any one polluter is great–they save clean-up costs. But when every producer does this calculation, rivers and landscapes quickly become clogged with pollution.

Energy usage fits this structure. The Commons is energy. The benefit to living in a suburb and driving to work is huge–I get lots of land, a nice yard, and a big house, and pay relatively little for a car and gas. But when 350 million Americans all make this trade-off, we’re suddenly using 40% of the world’s oil driving prices up. We don’t know how this one plays out, yet, but it will be interesting, since our physical sprawl makes cars a survival necessity, not a choice, for almost everyone.

Advertising fits this structure. Any one advertiser can get great returns by sending you junk mail, putting ads on your favorite TV shows, and putting up billboards on your roads. When all advertisers do this, you get so overloaded with messages than now it takes 20 ad impressions for you to pick a product out of the crowd. So now all advertisers must advertise so much that they spend a fortune, and you get overloaded. I no longer even look at my paper mail, and I get around 6-10 pieces a day. A one-week trip brings me back to a stack of 60-100 items. It goes straight into the trash. So now, it’s not clear advertisers can reach me at all.

Littering fits this structure. Any one person finds it convenient to dump their trash on the ground, leaving it for someone else (mom?) to pick up. When everyone in a neighborhood does this, they end up living in a garbage heap. Eventually, no one even sees a point in using the trash can any more and the litter accelerates.

I also think social networking sites are a Tragedy of the Commons. I’m not yet completely sure, though. Time will tell.

The “Tragedy” Can Be Used for Good

The Tragedy works in reverse, too. There are times when no one person has incentive to do a good thing, yet a small contribution by every person adds up to a huge Good Thing. Consider building an interstate highway system. No one person could pay for it, and even if they could, they could never collect enough in revenue to maintain it and make it worthwhile. Yet building it brings great benefit to everyone. The neat thing is that if every person pays just a little bit, we collect enough in total to take on the project. That’s where taxes really shine as a financing device; they’re one of the few good ways to finance building shared resources. Everyone pays a relatively small amount, and we get services that give far more benefit.

Public schools are another example. It’s cheaper for us all to pay a little in taxes and end up with schools for everyone. (Yes, you can complain about the quality of our existing school system, but the quality problems have less to do with the funding and more to do with our model of education.)

Fire protection is another example. While typing this, I received a call from the Volunteer Fireman’s Committee asking for donations. It’s a scary request, as it implies I won’t get fire protection without paying. Yet I’m happy to pay for firemen through my taxes. That way, we all contribute, and we have a fire prevention infrastructure that benefits us all.

Managing the Tragedy is a Fundamental Role of Government

I believe Governments are the only players in our world who can manage the Tragedy of the Commons. Our markets are built on the assumption that each customer/supplier should be free to pursue their maximum self-interest. The Government introduces regulation, tariffs, etc. designed to spread the Commons risk among market players, so the market can function and produce what’s best for civilization overall.

Sadly, I don’t think politicians or voters consider this, so the mechanism fails. Regulation isn’t inherently good or bad; it’s simply the only way to avert certain Tragedies of the Commons. Taxes aren’t inherently good or bad (though many would like you to believe that for their own political agendas); they’re simply one way to raise funds for projects that would otherwise never happen due to Tragedies.

“How to Set Salaries” is an article that first appeared on Entrepreneur.com in May, 2006.

Setting salaries for your staff is always a tricky thing to do. It’s especially hard if you’ve never done it before, because you probably don’t even know where to start. On the one hand, you want to pay enough to get the best possible talent. On the other hand, you don’t want to overpay. What’s an entrepreneur to do?

First of all, don’t panic. Remember that your goal is to attract good talent and pay them fairly… (continued at http://www.entrepreneur.com/humanresources/article159438.html)

This TO DO Sheet Template is a form I’ve found useful in categorizing the urgent, the important, and the let’s-not-do-that-shall-we?

A reader writes: I could use some helpful tips in overcoming stress from not seeing success right away.

For many of us, the economic slowdown has meant less business. We can no longer count on steady growth and reliable money. It’s easy to become stressed when we aren’t seeing the results we expect.

In Western culture, we are rarely taught coping skills for uncertainty. It can be especially hard having patience and a clear mind when things aren’t going the way we want them to (witness our country’s difficulty with two weeks of uncertainty around our Y2K Presidential election!).

If you haven’t been seeing success right away, start by asking yourself “what constitutes success?” If you’re attached to an outcome—say, doing $10 million of sales in your first year—you’ll find that success is all-or-nothing; you’ve either reached the outcome or you haven’t. It may help you feel process to subdivide your goal into smaller pieces. Shoot for at least one milestone a week, so your progress is continuous. Your first week’s goal could be to get a face-to-face appointment with three prospects and land one sale. Each goal you meet will help you feel progress.

The key is that you’re not choosing your milestones just to manage the projects. This is about managing your emotions; choose milestones that will cause you to feel progress in your gut, even if the outside results aren’t there, yet.

You can also succeed with process goals. Process goals measure what you’re doing, not where you are. You’re shooting for three prospect appointments? You might set a process goal of calling 10 Widget Retailers from the phonebook daily. That’s a process goal. If you find you’re missing your process goals, asking yourself why can lead to you choosing a better way to reach your outcome. For example, if you miss your ten daily calls because there are only three Widget Retailers in the phone book, it’s a signal that you’ll need another way to find prospects. Process goals give you the chance for daily "wins" on your way to your bigger goals.

If you find yourself stressed even when you reach smaller progress goals, you might want to tackle the stress directly. Meditate for a half hour a day, get some exercise, and set aside time for yourself to relax and unwind. Choose a time for the day to be over and when it is, go home and do something completely unrelated to work. It can be a challenge, but separating work and home life can save your sanity. At least three times a week, leave your office by 6 p.m. and go play. Clear your mind. Get a massage. Indulge yourself in a bubble bath. Treat yourself well! (My personal touchstone is yoga.)

Of course, it’s possible your business might not be truly sustainable. The market may not be there, the distribution can’t be worked out, or competition makes it impossible to build a business that makes money. Set boundaries for yourself to keep yourself healthy. Decide now how much time/money/effort you are willing to put into the business, so you don’t someday wake up having overspent yourself. Also, think hard on how you’ll know if the business really won’t work. Just setting those limits can help. If you decide three months of consecutive losses is the signal that your specialty Pokeman Roller Skate Shop has outlived its usefulness, then you’ll know when it’s time to quit. And knowing there’s a defined exit point can really be calming.

But meanwhile, give it your all! With well-thought-out process and outcome goals, you may never have to worry about your exit conditions. You’ll know early on if what you’re doing isn’t working, and you can take action to insure your success. With hard work, skill, and a little luck, you main worries will be plotting your multibillion dollar expansion …as you relax in your mansion’s new whirlpool bubble bath.

So take a deep breath. Calm your mind. And Go For It!

An elderly carpenter was ready to retire. He told his employer-contractor of his plans to leave the house-building business and live a more leisurely life with his wife enjoying his extended family. He would miss the paycheck, but he needed to retire. They could get by.

The contractor was sorry to see his good worker go and asked if he could build just one more house as a personal favor. The carpenter said "yes", but in time it was easy to see that his heart was not in his work. He resorted to shoddy workmanship and used inferior materials. It was an unfortunate way to end his career.

When the carpenter finished his work and the builder came to inspect the house, the contractor handed the front-door key to the carpenter. "This is your house," he said, "my gift to you." What a shock! What a shame! If he had only known he was building his own house, he would have done it all so differently. Now he had to live in the home he had built none too well.

So it is with us. We build our lives in a distracted way, reacting rather than acting, willing to put up less than the best. At important points we do not give the job our best effort. Then with a shock, we look at the situation we have created and find that we are now living in the house we have built. If we had realized, we would have done it differently.

Think of yourself as the carpenter. Think about your house. Each day you hammer a nail, place a board, or erect a wall. Build wisely. It is the only life you will ever build. Even if you live it for only one day more, that day deserves to be lived graciously and with dignity.

The plaque on the wall says, "Life is a do-it-yourself project,"

Who would say it more clearly? Your life today is the result of your attitudes and choices in the past. Your life tomorrow will be the result of your attitudes and the choices you make today.