Success Sandbox: A Development Journal of Success & Happiness

By Ian A. Gray and Nicklaus Suino

Some of us may be lucky enough to be born with the traits that contribute to a successful, happy attitude, or into an environment that cultivates them. The rest of us may have to work, study and practice to get there! If you happen to be one of the “rest,” you know you need all the brain food you can get to keep yourself fired up and focused.

Looking for some fresh ideas and inspiration? Feeling stuck or indecisive? Success Sandbox is an all-you-can-eat buffet of ideas on motivation, success, happiness, and creativity that explores many of the challenges we all seem to face on the road to a rewarding and purposeful life. And it serves up solutions in an entertaining and insightful way.

Let the authors do the heavy lifting; you may save some time or headaches by seeing how they’ve dealt with the challenges you face on your own path. You may get a chuckle out of the ways the authors have found themselves stuck, and – usually – dug themselves out from the rubble!

If success is achieved by standing on the shoulders of giants, the authors definitely do some shoulder standing of their own as they explore theories and ideas about success and happiness from figures ranging from historic thinkers like Lao Tzu and Carl Jung, to contemporary movers and shakers like Ray Kroc and Zig Ziglar, and more recent self-improvement gurus like Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, and Jim Collins.

The essays in this book, on topics ranging from success and motivation to happiness, business planning, humility, and creativity, are sure to inspire you, or, at the very least, provide a springboard to help you jump into action yourself. You don’t need to read this book from front to back. Flip open to any page and you'll likely be rewarded with a thought-provoking nugget that puts you in a new frame of mind and kicks you back into action!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Master & Fool LLC
• Release date: Mar 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311053589

Book preview

Introduction

"I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work."

~ Thomas A. Edison

Have you ever dreamed of kicking back on the beach in the warm sun with barely a worry, because you’ve set things up in such a way that you only work when you want to? When you daydream about a life like this, do you then quickly come to your senses and realize the absurdity of achieving such a thing, and then get back to your mature, grownup thoughts? Well we’re here to say, Knock it off!

If you ask people if they’ve ever had a great business or artistic idea, a surprising number will respond enthusiastically with a description of some clever product, service, or creative venture that they’ve had in mind for some time. And then immediately tell you exactly all the reasons they can’t do it right now.

Maybe you think you’re too old. It’s probably a good thing for the KFC empire that Colonel Sanders didn’t think so; he was 65 when he started his famous chicken business, and failed 1009 times, as the story goes. Or maybe you feel you’ve given it a good shot, and thrown in the towel after what you consider some solid attempts. It’s a good thing for both children and adults the world over that Theodor Seuss Giesel didn’t give up so easily; 27 different publishers rejected Dr. Seuss’s first book. Can you imagine a world without Green Eggs and Ham?

We set out to pursue our own rather audacious adventure several years ago. Our dream? To publish an array of tools and resources that truly help other people pursue their dreams. So how do two people totally new to the world of self-improvement publishing achieve this sort of goal? They roll up their sleeves and get to work!

Early in our organizational phase - or fuzzy front end as they call it in product development - we realized we had some hefty challenges ahead. We needed to:

1. Identify core concepts that contribute to happiness and success;

2. Organize those concepts into a coherent body of information;

3. Expand on the ideas in a manner that made them useful to others;

4. Test the validity of the content that resulted from this process; and

5. Figure out how to get these ideas off the drawing board and into the real world.

So how does one accomplish all of these tasks without spending tons of money and time on development and research, banging heads in meeting after meeting? Thanks to the wonders of the digital age, communication can happen any time, anywhere, so meetings thankfully could be kept to a minimum. Likewise with research; the entire world is literally at your fingertips, thanks to the internet.

And that was where our most useful tool turned out to reside; on the web. As it turns out, developing and maintaining a full-blown website is an excellent tool for all of these tasks. So we created one, and began publishing articles on success, happiness, and motivation on a weekly basis. There were other benefits built into this approach. They included:

1. Revenue generation from site traffic;

2. Clarifying branding and style;

3. The built in cred provided by authoring a website or book.

That last benefit was an unintended consequence of all the previous steps. Once you’ve created a website with dozens of articles on the same topic, there’s a fairly good chance that the content you’ve created could hold up as a book. A website - after you strip away all the clever graphics, animated GIF’s and fancy text effects - is after all merely a collection of text documents.

So, this book is that unintended consequence. We didn’t spend a ton of time rethinking the content or padding it to make a real book. This is the down-and-dirty print version of our online development journal as we zeroed in on what we think might help people like you realize your dreams.

There’s no need to read it in order, by the way. It’s a sandbox, not War and Peace! We think the format encourages flipping, skipping, and coffee break reading. We hope you enjoy it and learn as much from reading it as we did from creating it.

Chapter One

Don’t Just Do Something, DO SOMETHING!

Posted by: NICK In: SUCCESS

"Success is often the result of taking a misstep in the right direction."

~ Al Bernstein

The other day I was having coffee with my esteemed co-author Ian, and we were talking about what each of us could do to help people become more effective. I flippantly said that one thing I do well is help people get in the right state of mind to take action. He pressed me to list some of the key principles of achievement. Inspired by the question, I rattled off seven steps that I use as a guide to help myself and others get things done. Here’s what they are:

1. Clearly identify your goal;

2. Learn the path others have taken to reach similar goals;

3. Do something!

4. Pay attention to your results

5. Multiply your successes

6. Modify or discard your failures

7. Do something else!

If you follow success systems at all, you’re going to hear a lot of echoes in my writing of the big players in success coaching, like Napoleon Hill, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar, Deepak Chopra, and others like them. That’s because over the past ten years, I’ve consumed massive amounts of their writings and teachings. I’ve compared what all the success leaders are saying with the wisdom of the ancient teachers of Asia and found that they have a LOT in common. If you can afford it, I encourage you to read the books written by these great motivators, listen to their speeches, and go to their seminars. If you can’t afford it, go anyway!

Here’s the Point

So, after that digression, let me get back to the one thing I really want to share with you today. I’m sure you’ve heard the old expression, Don’t just stand there, do something! If you study leadership at all, you’ve probably also heard of the book by Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff called Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!: Ten Principles for Leading Meetings That Matter.

My suggestion to you is a little different. If you want to reach a goal, don’t just do something, DO SOMETHING! What I mean by that is that when you have a powerful idea, the most effective way to bring it into existence in the real world is to take action, take big action, and take it now!

Small Results Are Hard to Measure!

Small results are hard to measure. If you do something right, but it’s very, very small, you may need a microscope to figure out if it helped you get closer to your goal. But if you do something big, you’re going to know if it worked or not. And if it didn’t, you’ll be able to see what didn’t work about it.

Now, I’m not saying you should just willy nilly do something huge and crazy just to be doing something! You have to clearly identify your goal and learn what path will take you there. I’ll share a lot more about these two steps in the future. But the point I want you to take away from today is that if you’ve clearly identified your goal and figured out the major steps needed to get there, you can work out some major action to take to get you started. That’s the something big I encourage you to take on.

Ideas Have a Shelf Life

And, finally, do it now! Ideas have a shelf life. If you doubt me, go back and look at a newspaper or book from 30 years ago. It looks pretty quaint, doesn’t it? You don’t want your ideas to spoil because they’ve festered too long! Take the first opportunity to act, before doubts creep in, before technology leaves your idea behind, or before you get too caught up in your everyday life to work hard on the one thing that’s really important to you.

So ... if you want to realize your dreams, don’t just do something, get out there and DO SOMETHING!

« Related Post »

Do It Now, or Do it Right?

Posted by: IAN In: THE SCORE

The other day, as Nick and I were discussing how to go about distributing a new book through brick and mortar outlets, a big question popped up for me. The question was do it now, or do it right? For some time, I’ve figured that a couple of key elements of succeeding at a task were:

1. Don’t diddle around and make up excuses to delay simply DOING it; and

2. Do a little research to avoid re-inventing the wheel, and do it WELL.

We were applying our usual rigorous process to organizing a sales strategy, including basics like defining areas to rep, basic terms, and even some inventive ideas for point of sale displays. Somewhere in the midst of researching items to create the point of sale displays, it hit me. Were we overdoing it? Were we trying to do it TOO well, when we didn’t really have the resources? Were our great ideas simply getting in the way of doing what we needed to do in a simpler fashion?

So that’s one of my goals for the near future. To develop a system for assessing the question of do it now, or do it right? This is a peculiar area, because while the problem of perfectionism getting in the way of results is familiar, and although I find it easy to identify this happening with others, I don’t feel like I have a good system for assessing this in my own work.

Chapter Two

Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason

Posted by: NICK In: SUCCESS

"Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door."

~ Coco Chanel

I want to talk to you for a few minutes about a saying I’m sure you’ve heard many times. Maybe you even use it yourself from time to time. I just heard a guy say it in an interview on NPR, and it struck me that what you’re thinking when you say it can make a huge difference in your approach to life.

The saying is everything happens for a reason.

People say it when something bad happens to them. Keith Miller was the guy being interviewed on NPR. He’d been a professional football player, and he’s now actually a very successful opera singer! That’s an extreme change, right? He had played for five years in the European and the Arena Football leagues, both both of which no longer exist. When the leagues went out of business, he found himself without a job. He was a fan of opera, and he went on to become one of most celebrated bass-baritones on stage. He’s singing Madame Butterfly with the Washington National Opera as I write this.

What You Say Affects What You Think!

When Miller said everything happens for a reason, he meant basically the same thing we mean when we say when one door closes, another opens. In my view, however, if we’re wired for success, we should re-write both these phrases to get them out of the passive voice. We should say them this way:

Everything doesn’t happen for a reason, I choose the reason.

and:

When one door closes, I open another.

You Have Control When You Take Control

If we’re really going to excel in life, we need to stop thinking in terms of when something is going to happen to us, and start thinking in terms of making things happen. Which mindset you choose can make a gigantic difference in what you get from life. It made a difference of epic proportions in Keith Miller’s life, and that’s because he chose to make things happen. Here’s what he said, and if you get chance to read the whole interview, I recommend it, because he’s a very articulate guy and his story is a fascinating one. The show is in the NPR archives for March 2, 2011. Anyway, here’s what he said:

"It’s the one thing I’ve learned, is everything always happens for a reason. You know, the biggest losses that we’ve suffered, I mean, in personal life, professional football, you know, when you lose something, you have to go back and diagnose. You’re more apt to go back and diagnose the things that you did wrong, what you can improve upon. And when things go well, you don’t really at the end of the night you know, you just say, oh well, you know, thanks, that was great. You don’t take the time to really assess.

So you really need to have speed bumps in your life to kind of say, hey, what - you know, make some adjustments, fine tune things or just, you know, change the transmission completely.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People

I don’t know if he’s studied success systems, but that’s a great way to explain the benefit of adversity in our lives. When bad things happen, we should reflect on what happened, consider whether we could have done something better or could do something better in the future, and then make adjustments to our actions. The adjustments may just be fine-tuning, or we may need to, as he said, completely change the transmission. It’s as though he’s been reading my journals. For example, look at steps three through seven from my previous chapter:

3. Do something!

4. Pay attention to your results

5. Multiply your successes

6. Modify or discard your failures

7. Do something else!

You’re Not the Problem, Unless You ARE the Problem!

The people who fail, who don’t grow, are often people who, when they experience a failure, either keep doing the same things that caused the failure, or simply stop trying. That leads to paralysis. Soon they feel like they can’t do anything, and that can lead to a pretty miserable life.

The people who succeed recognize that, as Zig Ziglar says, failure is an event, not a person. And how they think about that event makes all the difference in the world. They recognize that they can learn from failures.

When you try to do something great (that’s step three by the way: Do Something!), and you don’t succeed, you can go back and diagnose the things you did wrong (which is step four: Pay attention to your results). Steps five and six are what Keith called making some adjustments, fine tune things or just .... change the transmission completely.

Change Something, and Pay Attention!

What a great lesson! No wonder people who do really well say it’s not about winning and losing, it’s about doing! If you DO SOMETHING with your goal clearly in mind, then the failures will be lessons clearly written out for you to modify your actions in the future. If we could go through life enthusiastically doing things without worrying about whether we instantly succeed or fail, think how much we could learn! What a great mindset to teach our children. When one door closes, I OPEN another.

You know, I’m going to go share this idea with my daughter right now. Everything doesn’t happen for a reason, you choose the reason! And if the reason is to teach you what you need to do to succeed, you can be as wildly successful as any human being can ever hope to be.

« Related Post »

Think Different, Be Happy?

Posted by: IAN In: THE SCORE

I’ve spent a little more of my life than I would like to recall battling with degrees of depression. I was luckier than many; in the end I learned that the majority of it was entangled with and fueled by addiction issues, and when I dealt with THOSE issues, much of my depression was eliminated. So strangely, I’m actually thankful for the overall experience, because it gives me two tools to help others, and a lot more sympathy for anyone who struggles with depression.

Which was why I found it heartening to learn that the University of Exeter had recently done a study of how training in ‘concrete thinking’ can be utilized as a form of self-managed treatment for depression. The study suggests an innovative psychological treatment called ‘concreteness training’ can reduce depression in just two months and could work as a self-help therapy for depression in primary care. I found this idea thought-provoking, and it generated some interesting debate amongst a couple of friends.

While you may find the old Don’t Worry, Be Happy song annoying, or the Apple tagline Think Different trite, there may in fact be something to ponder in both ideas. One of my moodier friends even joked "Hey, maybe this is why I find the Getting Things Done material so useful! It keeps me focused on concrete steps, and keeps me from pondering all the abstract theories that derail me!"

I don’t know if there’s a scientific study to support THAT idea, but it is heartening to know there are mental health professionals out there focusing on the idea that therapy is not a perpetual process, and that personal discipline can create profound and lasting change.

Chapter Three

Fake it ‘till You Make it, Not Until You Break it!

Posted by: IAN In: SUCCESS

"If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced."

~ Vincent van Gogh

You’ve probably heard of the fake it ‘til you make it approach. It has been espoused by everyone from Amway to Alcoholics Anonymous to Zig Ziglar. While it may sound like a trite slogan, there’s actually a tremendous amount of value in exploring the notion, both in terms of how it may benefit you, or on the other hand, impair your progress.

It’s also probably important to note that there are two distinct interpretations of what this expression actually means. To a network marketer or gimmick-driven salesperson, it means pretending to be a lot more than you are until you get there; something that may never in fact happen, especially if you get involved with network marketing at the wrong level or a late stage in the product’s delivery. The other version of what this means is based more on maintaining a positive attitude until you achieve results that match the attitude you’ve taken, and that’s mostly what I’ll be talking about here. I’m going to share my experiences with how this simple principle has both helped me and hindered me, but first, let’s explore whether or not the idea has any basis in reality, or whether in fact it is just more motivational mumbo-jumbo...

Faking It On The Inside - The Science, And Some Common Wisdom

So. Can this fake it ‘til you make it idea actually have a measurable impact? Yes. Not only have there been studies that prove that simply pretending to feel a certain way will help you actually feel that way, but in an interesting twist, it turns out that the simple process of intentionally smiling can have physiological results that are like reverse-engineered happiness. It’s also a fairly well-established aspect of therapeutic or behavior modification strategies to consciously and intentionally change your thought patterns if you exhibit a lot of negative thinking. Therapists and personal coaches will call this self-talk. Most of us have an ongoing chatter in our minds that constantly judges, analyzes, and anticipates. If you’re fortunate, maybe you don’t do a lot of negative self-talk, but many of us do, and don’t even realize it.

You might want to explore this idea if you haven’t. You can do it pretty informally. Just take the time to listen to your own thoughts, and you may notice that they’re completely formed phrases, or you may find they’re less-defined muttering. For just a day, try to listen to what the little voice in your head is saying, and how it says it.

I noticed a long time ago that when I’m having a stressful day, there’s literally a little chattering voice in my head over-anticipating things; usually a little negatively. This is a process that can otherwise be useful to me - as part of my personalized hope for the best, plan for the worst approach - but can seriously undermine my intentions when it gets out of control. I learned a lot of great tools for identifying and dealing with these little demons in a book a personal coach recommended called Taming Your Gremlin: A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way, by Rick Carson. It’s written in an insightful and amusing style, with simple pencil and paper tests to help you identify that inner chatter, and learn to work with it. It wasn’t dramatically life-changing for me or anything, but it offered me a way to approach a problem I knew I had, but wasn’t doing anything about, and in a rather amusing, playful way.

So the takeaway here? When you’re feeling less than enthusiastic, first try working with your negative self-talk. You can’t simply say I’m going to be happy! because the unconscious mind tends to rebel against conscious demands that ask it to be anything other than what it is already being. But you can practice a little intentional positivism, and you can listen to and work with negative mental habits. Most thought is fairly habitual, and evolving your mental habits in a more positive direction tends to have cumulative positive effects. And smile, even if you don’t feel like it. Even though it’s probably a myth that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile, you never know who might smile back, and where it will lead!

Faking It On The Outside - Creating An Impression

In a way, you’re faking it the first day you start creating your business. One day, you have a skill you haven’t marketed. The next day, you have a business card,