JephMaystruck.com

Baseball hecklers go to games for a reason, they have a goal and for the most part they are good at what they do.  The goal? To get in the pitcher’s head so he’s off his game.  They go about in many different ways but in the end, if the pitcher is at all affected, the heckler considers his work a success.

But what if the heckler is distracted from his goal?  What if the crowd likes him?  All of a sudden he is the entertainment, his focus is taken off the pitcher and put towards impressing the crowd.  He is no longer seeking his long-term goal but instead looking for that short-term gain.

Marketers go into projects with a goal in mind, at least they should be.  When that goal is achieved the project is considered a success.  But what if along the way the marketer creates some funny radio spot, a great Facebook ad or some flashy branding material that really impresses the client?  Is the goal now making the client happy in the short term, or is the long-term goal still in the sights?

Too many hecklers and marketers start with a long-term goal in mind and soon after change to the short-term gain of impressing the client.  Trying to be the funniest, flashiest, loudest, marketer out there may impress the crowd for a couple innings but at the end of the game it’s the guy who stuck to the long-term strategy that is the successful one.  The next project you take on, ask yourself, “Am I trying to get in the pitchers head? Or just impressing the crowd”.

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We all have a choice, in life, in everything we do.  This post is about your choice of career path.  You either have the boring, mundane, heat the same lunch up in the microwave for 30 years at the same job or you have a terrible 15 minutes.

Let me explain.

Boring jobs? You say “not me!” Right?  Wrong.  Do you love your job?  Do you wake up twenty minutes early some mornings to try to get to your cubicle a bit early because you are so excited to work? No you don’t and you’re not alone, over 50% of our society hates their job, that means for eight hours every day over half the people you know are not happy.  So why do they do it?  Why do we settle?

Why is the societal norm to find something that is so mind numbingly boring that no one else will do the job so that the Government of Canada has to pay YOU a premium?  Granted, it could be the jobs themselves that need and overhaul but I think there is more to it.  Simply put, people don’t like awkward situations.  They don’t like stepping out of their comfort zone.  Boring is safe, safe is easy and easy just happens to be what the majority settles for.

So what’s alternative?  Well it’s the super stressful 15.  That’s all, just fifteen minutes a day.  If you set aside fifteen minutes a day to do the worst possible thing on your list for that day I guarantee you will be more productive for the rest of your day and week for that matter.  We being humans hate being out of our comfort zones but for the ballsy, the ones that want a bigger purpose in life, they have figured it out, they can step out more frequently than the rest of society.

Just think back to all the things you passed up because you were too scared, too shy, the bar was raised a little too high.  A different decision at any of these points in life would have made for a much different outcome now wouldn’t it?

Well its not to late, take the leap into the terrible 15 minutes and start enjoying the rest of your day.  The more you are out of your comfort zone the more you will learn, explore, realize different things about life and the beauty of it is every time you do it the easier it gets.  As soon as you figure this out, the closer you will be to achieving those goals you set way back when you decided to take that job because you thought it would be easy.  Refuse to accept easy from now on and do something that scares you.

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Back when I was in University I had the opportunity to attend many conferences.  Many keynotes and group sessions stick out in my mind that had remarkable ideas and life lessons, this is just one of them.

Your life has a bank account; specifically your relationships keep a record of everything you have put into and more importantly what you take out of every single relationship.  Just like a bank account you must make more deposits than with-drawls in your relationships to keep it out of the red.  If you take too much out of a relationship without replenishing, it goes bankrupt and you lose a friend.

Ever meet that friend of yours that never takes the bill after dinner?  Or the friend that always has a beer at your place but never offers you one when you visit?  You don’t feel very good about these people do you, or even worse you have done this before.

On the contrary think about the friend that always drives, that always picks up the first round or just goes that extra mile especially when they don’t have to.  These people get further in life, enjoy their relationships more and their life bank accounts are full.

If you make more deposits in your relationships good for you, keep up the good work!  If you realize that you yourself have been withdrawing more than depositing for some time the first thing to know is that it is never to late to start making deposits, you can even start today.  Give it a try, what do you have to lose?

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