Famous Failures Who Didn't Quit

Of course, labeling them "famous failures" is tongue-in-cheek.  I'm fascinated with this side of life, and exposing it for the hope it gives those of us working toward great things.  Are you one of us?

Here are some people who failed many times before they accomplished what eventually made them some of history's most successful and influential icons.

Now that I've interviewed a healthy list of successful people, people who have declared a dream and then navigated their way across that sea and anchored on the new shores of their goals,  I am convinced of one thing.  In my book, you achieve greatness before the fame, before the wealth. You achieve greatness when you decide to go get it, and then make your first step forward.

"My attitude is that if you push me toward a weakness, I will turn that weakness into a strength."  -- Michael Jordan

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." -- Albert Einstein

Demoted from her job as news anchor because she wasn't "fit for television." -- Oprah Winfrey

Got fired from his newspaper job for "lacking imagination" and "having no original ideas." -- Walt Disney

Watch the Famous Failures Video

Jordan, Einstein, Winfrey, and Disney are in there. Watch the video to see who else made the list of Famous Failures.

Why Your Mom is Better at Martial Arts Than You

Moms are machines perfectly designed to be awesome at martial arts. And like most things, they are better at it than you.

5 Reasons Why Moms are Naturals at Krav Maga

1. Martial arts training teaches you to become more aware of your surroundings. Find the danger risk before it finds you.  Do you know of anyone better at being aware of their surroundings than a mother?  I don't. Moms have eyes all over the place. On their face, on the back of their head. Amazing.
2. Martial Arts teaches you to "use what you have". When the time comes, you probably won't have the ideal situation or tools to defend yourself. Moms practice this premise on the daily. They dress their kids with what's clean, fix the zipper on the way out the door, and nourish you better than a restaurant with just what's available in the fridge.
3. Defend and attack with minimal time and movement. In self defense training we learn the most direct way to defend and attack, often doing both at the same time. No wasted movement. Moms invented this. They had to. Moms are Generals and Platoon Sergeants all rolled into one. They make strategic decisions and they execute tactics. And they do it in seconds. Usually while everyone else is standing around just scratching themselves.
4. Moms don't cause (real) trouble. I'm serious. Statistically, if you are a mother you are one of the least likely segments of our population to cause a violent crime. But on the defensive, moms become lions. We learn self defense to defend ourselves. But when we defend and counterattack, we train to unleash Hell. Threaten a mom's family, and you'll look Hell in the eye.
5. Our martial arts training partners are incredibly encouraging. I have found so many willing to help me get better. It may be the most important reason why I've stayed with it, and always will long after I test for my black belt. That's what a mom can do. Encourage you to keep going, and make you believe you can do whatever you set your mind to. With mom in our corner, we have everything.

6 Things The Most Productive People Do Every Day

Here's a great blog post that Eric Barker pulled together over at Barking Up The Wrong Tree while he was researching that guru of The 4-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferris.

I like it because he hits on a few habits that productive people have that are often over-looked in the massive amounts of online advice and self-help, career, and business books.

For example, the first one:

1. Manage Your Mood

Barker and Ferris explain the science: "Most productivity systems act like we're robots - they forget the enormous power of feelings.  If you start the day calm it's easy to get the right things done and focus."

So to manage your mood you want to create a routine for yourself. Routines put us in control. And control is what you're after to manage your mood and get your day off to a productive start. This is where The Habits of Mentally Strong People can also help.

That means, avoid things that force you to react. Stay off e-mail, for example, for as long as you can. Make progress on your To-Do List first, before you start working on everyone else's To-Do List (which is what your e-mail Inbox really is! Other people's To-Do List!)

This e-mail example rolls right into the second habit in their list. I won't delve into describing the rest here, but I'll give you the headlines. Follow the link so you can get their explanation on these other great habits that we can all start today.

1. Manage your mood
2. Don't check e-mail in the morning
3. Before you try to do it faster, ask whether it should be done at all
4. Focus is nothing more than eliminating distractions
5. Have a personal system
6. Define your goals the night before

Productive People

By the way, I don't define "productivity" as "working more." And I don't view "productive people" as "workaholics." I am a recovering workaholic myself, and I absolutely believe life should be enjoyed, not worked. So I see "productivity" as getting done what you need to get done in as little time as possible. That's a good thing because it frees up more time for us to spend the way we want, with the people we want.

Check it out:

6 Things The Most Productive people Do Every Day by Eric Barker

And for more about Tim Ferris' book, The 4-Hour Workweek, you can find it here for your convenience:

Brace For Impact

In "Brace for Impact" by Seth Godin, Seth gives us a quick and direct observation that could have a huge ripple effect on our stress level.

When we brace for impact emotionally and intellectually, that is, anticipate a difficult outcome before it actually manifests as a negative experience, we light the flame of anxiety in ourselves.

I have been guilty of this more times than I can count in my life. First, as a kid, when my father called through the house for me to come see him, I would get nervous that I was in trouble, even if I couldn't remember what I had done, if anything. Same with teachers. I'd be shocked if you couldn't think of some teachers you had that sent a chill up your spine simply by saying your name.

As adults, we do it when we know we have a deadline for a proposal that is due next week, or a presentation we must make to a group, or a martial arts class we're scheduled to lead.

A little stress is good stress, but how often are we going overboard, anticipating and fearing an outcome that hasn't arrived yet? And how many times does that anxiety build us up into such a fearful clench that it scares us away from trying something new and stepping out of our comfort zone?

That's my take. Here is Seth Godin's:

Brace for Impact

The Ripple Effect: A Story About How To Change A Life

Amazing how we learn things through stories. We can be "lectured to" and "preached at" by the best of the best, yet we will still retain so little. But tell me a story, and I not only will learn and remember, I may even act.

Here's a story that recently reminded me how much of a ripple effect our attitude, decisions, and actions make on the lives of others.

I'm reading Flow (P.S.): The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. (Let's refer to him as MC from here on out.) While making the point that people can enter a Flow state when they are driven to an activity by pure enjoyment, MC tells the story of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, an Indian astrophysicist who's research became the basis of the Black Hole Theory.

Quick Time Out to explain "Flow state": In short, it's that feeling we get when we are so engrossed in an activity that we lose track of the effort and time we're putting into that activity. Some examples could be reading, writing, hitting pads, singing, cooking, running, or fixing a car.

The Ripple Effect

Chandrasekhar was hired by the University of Chicago in the 1950s to teach courses on campus while also residing and researching 80 miles away in the Williams Bay, Wisconsin astronomical observatory the school owned.

That winter, he was scheduled to teach just one course in astrophysics, but only two students signed up for the course. The university administrators expected him to cancel the seminar. It simply made no sense to have this professor and researcher commute 80 miles, twice a week, on back roads, in the severe Wisconsin and Chicago winter, for an entire semester, to teach only two students.

But Professor Chandrasekhar didn't cancel the course. He apparently loved the topic and the feeling he got when teaching it to others so much that he went out of his way to maintain the seminar.

Here's the part I couldn't wait to tell you: A few years after he taught this course, first one, then the other of those two former students won the Nobel prize for physics. That's the ripple effect in action.

Imagine:

... if the professor caved to the long list of obstacles (weather conditions, distance, university administration's expectations, etc.,) and canceled the course?

... if the professor canceled the course because his attitude told him "only two students weren't worth his precious time"?

... if the professor didn't love his work so much that he never entered the flow state, and therefore didn't have the drive to chase that experience despite the obstacles in his way?

There are lessons we can learn about the flow state from this story, and if you'd like to learn more, you can find the book here.
Flow (P.S.)

But I found this story inspiring because it reminded me that my attitude, decisions, and actions can have a ripple effect on the world and, quite literally, change the course of someone else's life. Going the distance and putting forth extra effort suddenly takes on more meaning because it's not just about me. For good or ill, I am nudging people on and off course with the words I choose when I speak to them, and the actions I take that involve them.

Defend Your Dream: 8 Things You Can Do Now To Live Without Limits

Ronda Rousey has had to defend her dream
numerous times. She has overcome tragedy
and stayed focused and persistent.

Don't you love that rush you get when you cook up a potentially life-changing idea? I'm talking about those visions we craft for ourselves. We call them "dreams." Our dream career, our dream mate, our dream vacation, our dream home, our dream lifestyle.

We want them so much, and for good reason; because they're awesome. So why are we talking about how to defend your dream?

Here's why: You start to work on it. You may even tell the people close to you about your dream and that you're "going for it."

You make a step in the right direction. A little progress. Then a little more. "This is fun! I'll be there in no time," you say to yourself.

Then you hit your first obstacle. You can hear the brakes slam. This is where most people drop off. A small percentage will power through this first wall of crap, make a few more stumbling steps of what appears to be progress, and then another whack. Blind-sided.

Now things look bleak, impossible even, for the remaining dreamers. Maybe this idea can't happen after all.

Guess how many are left, bruised and battered, but still willing to reassess, pivot, figure this darn thing out, and keep going.

One percent.

I'm a big fan of these One Percenters. I study them. Here are 8 things I've learned that they do to defend their dreams and live without limits.

Defend Your Dream

1. Make time every day to defend your dream, even if your workday requires you to work on someone else's. After work, before work, on your lunch break, on your days off, do something to move your football down the field and closer to the end zone. Even a small bit of earned momentum every day works wonders. And watch out for your e-mail inbox. Someone wise once said that your e-mail inbox is nothing more than someone else's To-Do List neatly served up electronically to YOU. Yikes. Accurate, when you think about it.
2. Life can sometimes get you down. Be human. Let it. But another thing we humans can do is get over it, at least enough to keep moving forward. That is an absolute human truth. History has logged over a billion stories of people who have survived sad tragedies. I lived next to a married couple who endured a Nazi concentration camp. Their parents and siblings were killed but they were freed by the U.S. 101st Airborne Division. They started a family of their own when they emigrated to America. That's triumph.  One of my grandmothers watched her little sister die in a fire when she was a child. But she grew up, got married, and had kids of her own. I wouldn't be here if she didn't. My other grandmother's first child died when he was 5. She went on to have 7 more kids, 20 grandkids, and a big loving family. Thank goodness she did not fold up and give up when her son passed away. Those are just three stories I can relate in a matter of seconds from people close to me. I'm sure you can come up with your own too. When you need some perspective, and we all do at times, Google these names: Kyle Carpenter, Brendan Marrocco, Jessica Cox, and Isaac Lufkin. You can defend your dream regardless of the set-back.
3. Manage stress by following a routine. Routines give us stability and comfort. They give us some degree of control in our life. Eric Barker and Tim Ferriss swear by the power that routine gives them in their daily quest to manage stress and remain productive. Make it a part of your daily routine to defend your dream.
4. When you brace for impact, you sometimes, I'll even go so far as to say "often," build up stress and anxiety levels that are unwarranted. Remember to live in the present. You can handle challenges as they come, if they come. Don't waste energy clinching up and expecting them.
5. Don't quit. Just don't. I watched four people survive a grueling black belt test, and I think the single most important thing that made them successful in earning that coveted belt was not quitting.
6. A quick biological trick to put your mind into a positive state: Make a mental list of things for which you are grateful. It takes 5 minutes and can pick you up out of depression thanks to the chemicals and hormones that will wash through your brain as a result. It's a physical process and it does not fail.
7. Show up. Activity fuels more activity. Laziness fuels more laziness. Showing up is everything. When your motivation is low, step one is to put your face in the place.
8. Embrace "the suck" like Alexander the Great did. They didn't call him "The Great" for nothing. The guy knew how to make it happen. One of the earliest lessons he taught himself was how to take control of a situation. That's a Commander. Even at 11 years old, he took command of his life by turning a brutal chore, swimming across an icy river at dawn, (the first ice bucket challenge??), and made it his own. He stopped his tutor from forcing him to make the swim by doing it willingly. That is self-command, and there is nothing more powerful.

If you have a dream, the world will challenge you to defend your dream. Will you stand and fight?

Awaken Your Dreams

Here's a secret that successful people know that others don't:

It usually takes MANY attempts to awaken your dreams. Too many people give up after trying once or twice.

Don't let that be you.

Keep learning, keep searching. You are bound to find a way around the many obstacles that will confront you.

And there will be obstacles. Count on them. Expect them. Let them carve out your path like a machete in a jungle full of obstacles. That's where you find the light to awaken your dreams.