We closed our office at authenticWEB for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I think observation of the holiday is important irrelevant of your view. I had big plans for writing this Mindset Monday on that topic.
Try as I might, I did not “feel” it. It’s not that I am not inspired by the history of the Civil Rights movement. Also, not feeling it is no reason not to do your work but nothing seemed up to par. So I put it off.
I planned on running in the afternoon after publishing this post. I have been running often and seen gains in speed and time. I was tired. My training plan had a fast, long run scheduled. I told myself, I’ll be too slow. I’ll am too tired. My time will be horrible.
I went and ran. As I ran, as when I do the important work like marketing our business, I wondered why I did not do this all of the time. There are always the excuses “Not enough time”, “X is more important”, “I am not in peak shape”, ”It’s just not good enough”. I realized that I was procrastinating this Mindset Monday and running for the same reason. I was focusing on the best I could do and nothing else would work.
Having standards is great, but real success does not come because of your greatest work. Success does not come because of your fastest race or your best marketing materials, those are just indicators. Success comes about because of those times you step up when you are not going to do something great, but just do something, over and over again.
Remember your slowest time? Remember your first foray into marketing your business where it turned out miserable? It’s probably pretty difficult to recollect one. Most likely, in the end you felt good about getting it done. I guarantee no one else remembers those less than perfect moments.
To get to the great moments, you have to embrace the bad ones. Love that this might be mediocre, but you are going to do it. Someone might provide some snark; ignore it. You have to do your work. Realize that the worst outcome really is not that bad, while the best outcome could be spectacular.
By the way Martin Luther King, Jr. was told by his entire team not to begin his speech with “I have a dream”. He had used it hundreds of times before. King, embraced the mediocre, the worst possible outcome, and used the line anyway. We all know how that turned out.
So this week, get it done. Embrace your worst. What’s the worst that can happen? What’s the best?