As many as it takes.

Kathy and my latest adventure involves a great deal of reflection and self-improvement; for your life to be the best it can be, you have to be the best 'you' that you can be. Generally speaking this means dwelling on how to succeed, the way to train your brain to see everything in a new and positive light, and other ideas of that general nature. But you also have to deal with the other aspects of your personality, the negative aspects that might be holding you back.

And so I've been thinking lately about how I deal with failure, which inevitably lead me to ask myself exactly what failure is and how I decide when I have failed and when I have succeeded. And, if I have failed, what do I do then? Because, let's face it, everybody is going to fail, and for many of us we are going to fail more than we are going to succeed. Is that discouraging?

Well, no. Or I should say, not now it's not discouraging, although it used to be. What I have discovered is that I used to measure success by short-term goals, did I accomplish this or that today, or this week? If I did not achieve those short-term goals then I labeled the effort a failure, because I have been trained to think in terms of the same instant gratification society as everybody else. I want it now, I want to achieve it now, and if I don't then I must be a failure. And since most of the time I fail, what's the point? Right? Isn't that how a lot of us think? Why bother doing something that probably isn't going to work anyway?

What I finally realized is that I have short-term thinking but a long-term life. What if I had discovered this when I was 25, what would my life look like now? Much different. But I didn't discover it at 25, I discovered it 30 years later. So what? I will judge my latest venture in 2 years, no less, because if I work hard for 2 years and that leads me to a lifestyle that gives me more fun, freedom and fulfillment, is that worth it?

Heck yeah.

The decisions I made three years ago determine the life I am living today, so if I want to change my life three years from now I have to make changes today. How many times am I willing to fail until I succeed?

As many as it takes.

I don't get it

It must just be me. Every Monday I wake up excited for a new week, and every Monday I read how many people dread going to work. I love getting up on Mondays. Is that because I don't have a 'job?' It must be.

I earn money, and I want to earn a lot more money. But I don't punch a clock, and I don't want to punch a clock. I've done it before, of course; I didn't always feel this way. I didn't learn how not to punch in for work until I was in my 30s, so it's not like I'm some genius or anything. I just didn't know there was another way.

I had been sold the 40/40/40 plan. Go to school (and run up huge student debt), graduate and get a job (that wouldn't come close to paying off the debt it cost to qualify for that job), work 40+ hours a week for 40 years and then retire on 40% of what you couldn't live on before you retired. Sound familiar?

I will say that early on I learned that I preferred to be paid for my results (by working on commission) rather than for my time, so I did learn that much before my 30s. But I wish I knew then what I know now; I would have been an unemployed millionaire long ago.

The best part about waiting, however, is that now the learning curve for starting a new project has shrunk to almost nil; success is pretty much pre-packaged, like cake mix in a box. Follow the recipe and you will succeed, change the recipe and you will probably fail. As simple as that. I never would have believed it, but thank God I'm not stupid enough to overlook it.

And so that's why, when Mondays roll around, I'm pumped up to see what the week will bring. I have successfully re-wired that part of my brain. I am one lucky guy.