Mistakes Make Us, Lack of Change Breaks Us

We all make mistakes. You likely have made one within the last 24 hours. You know what the good news is though—you should be making mistakes. The bad news comes when you don’t make changes to those patterns or choices as that will lead to ultimate and unreturnable failure. 

Darren Hardy is a mentor to me and has been for years now. It started when I first read the book The Compound Effect in 2017 and has continued with his daily mentoring, seminars and other books he has written along the way. 

Recently in one of those he said “You are your only competition, today is you against yesterday. Make it better.” 

That quote alone has become one of my favorites. We fight battles each day against ourselves and that is tough enough. When you begin comparing yourself to others you lose sight of the most important piece of your growth—you. 

Warren Buffett is a pretty ambitious guy. If you don’t know the name I would be surprised, but to clarify he is the seventh wealthiest person on this planet. He is an investment sage that has set the standard often for market trends, capitalization and growth in numerous business sectors, and is the current chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. 

Buffett took until the age of 55 to reach millionaire status. He famously is frugal with his spending, avoiding the “keeping up with the Joneses” concept we often see in others. As it stands today as last reported by Jeannine Mancini with Yahoo! Finance, he is still driving a Cadillac XTS, model year 2014. 

When asked why he chose the vehicle he stated that “I picked out the car I have based on the fact that it had airbags on both sides.” Profound. Not the look, the make, the model or who else was driving one. He didn’t base it on anything more than safety. 

He famously has said “the big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an inner scorecard, or an outer scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an inner scorecard.”

Call me nuts, but I think you have the balls to make it here by quickly figuring out that his advice is strong and should be analyzed immediately for yourself. So what is your scorecard? 

Is it the car you have to match your neighbors? The new handbag and watch, or have you made the move to determine and understand that while having things is great, comparing yourself and success to others is not the way to find more and grow. 

Taking a deep dive into who you are and your personal goals is sometimes tough to do. It is a focus that has to carry an equal dose of love and hard criticism. You have to be willing to answer to your failures and be willing to make changes so that you can find the evolution needed for growth beyond your current standing. 

In another recent teaching session by Darren Hardy he speaks to Charles M. Schwab, the CEO of Bethlehem Steel Corporation and his choice to seek out Ivy Lee as a business consultant in 1918 to help increase productivity and growth—something that Thomas Edison said was Schwab’s most notable trait, being a hustler. 

Lee met with Schwab and refused payment up front for his executive training service, confident it would work. When Schwab asked what Lee wanted for his services prior to training Lee said in six months pay me what you believe to be the value of my training. 

After spending just 15 minutes with each executive of the largest ship builder and major steel manufacturer at the time, Lee walked away exponentially richer whether he realized it at the time or not. 

His training was very simple—write down six tasks at the end of each day that you must accomplish. Tomorrow, focus on the first until completion. Then move to task two, and three and continue until you hit none remaining. If a task floats to the next day, so be it, but use your task orientation wisely and don’t divert. This became the “Ivy Lee Method” of productivity. 

The basics were simple according to Hardy—“use simple rules to guide complex behavior.” 

The value became so apparent to Schwab and his team that he wrote Lee a check that would equal approximately $400,000 today for the short 15 minutes of time with each executive. Talk about ROI for Lee. 

This method is similar to one of my favorites, the “Eisenhower Matrix” and is all about understanding the tasks before you, how focus is key to invention and growth, and how creating consistent habits in your approach to your day are a must. You also must have depthful planning and understand the correlation with proper planning and success.

You will have failures that happen in your life. How you address them and grow, becoming better tomorrow than you were today is the only way to capture the success you seek. Get to where you can have what you want but not because someone told you that you should or it has become an outside expectation. 

Understanding that mistakes will happen, missteps are headed your way and that some are tied to simple habits is one of the biggest indicators and changes needed for your future. 

Task yourself properly every day, understand your focus and drive should be that inner scorecard and not the outer scorecard, beat your yesterday and the success will come. 

Compounding those good decisions will lead to masterful results.