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Nothing means anything until you give it meaning.

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If I were a psychologist, my specialty would definitely be Cognitive Psychology, which this quote from Steve Chandler pretty much sums up in just a few words. CP focuses on the way we process outside information.

When we apply faulty reasoning, invalid assumptions, and misconceptions to otherwise neutral events, we end up with “cognitive distortions.” Examples are “all-or-nothing” thinking, over-generalizations, and jumping to conclusions.

The best book I’ve found on the subject is Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by Dr. David D. Burns.

In Business:

When you’ve invested a lot of yourself into your business or profession, it’s easy to take any rejection as a personal rejection of you. “They’re not saying ‘no’ to my offer; they’re saying ‘no’ to me and anything I might ever have to offer.”

It’s important to see all the no’s for what they are: neutral events. Do not apply any additional meaning to them. Instead, learn from them, if you can, and move on. As Steve Chandler is also fond of saying, “The proper response to ‘no’ is ‘next!’”

In Life:

The quarterback throws a touchdown — half the stadium cheers and the other half boos. They all witnessed the exact same event, but it was the meaning they assigned to the event that dictated their reaction.

When you have an extreme reaction to any event, take a moment to ask yourself how much is due to the raw event itself and how much is due to the meaning you’re giving it.

So remember…

Nothing means anything until you give it meaning.

— Steve Chandler

Discipline is remembering what you want.

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Wow. That’s a lot of life-changing power packed into six little words.

In Business:

You could say that, in business, discipline is staying true to your brand.

I once heard someone say that a brand is nothing more than a logo and a crowd. I disagree, though, because in order to draw that crowd to the brand in the first place, there had to be something that distinguished it from the others in the market.

In advertising, it’s known as the “Unique Selling Proposition.” Rosser Reeves, one of the real-life Mad Men of Madison Avenue, coined the phrase in his 1960 book, Reality In Advertising.

You may have never heard of Rosser Reeves or his book. But I’ll bet you’ve heard, “Melts in your mouth, not in your hands.”

That’s his! And it’s still used to this day as the USP for M&Ms.

Once you establish your own USP in your market, discipline is staying true to it, while simultaneously shouting it from the rooftops.

In Life:

Willpower is temporary. To truly change, you have to change your relationship with the people, place, or thing that’s at the center of your habit. Let’s call it a “habit trigger.”

Remember that twenty pounds I vowed to lose? Well, it’s still here. And so is my current relationship with chocolate cake.

The cake brings me immediate pleasure. It’s a dependable friend who never lets me down. It gives and gives, and never asks for anything in return.

But wait a minute. Maybe it’s not as good of a friend as I think. Maybe it’s not just giving. Could it be taking something from me? Maybe it’s holding me back from living a more active lifestyle.

My knees hurt. I bet if I weren’t lugging around an extra twenty pounds, my knees wouldn’t hurt as much. Hmmm…

Do you see how my relationship with chocolate cake is starting to change? Instead of a friend I hang out with everyday, maybe we just get together on special occasions.

Now it’s not a question of willpower and resisting a constant temptation. I’m just not that into the cake anymore. We used to be friends, but now we’re just acquaintances. Our relationship changed and we drifted apart.

In Psycho-Cybernetics, Dr. Maxwell Maltz metaphorically describes willpower as a stretched rubber band. You can hold it stretched tight for awhile, but as soon as you get distracted or tired, you’re going to let go and it will return to it’s normal state.

Keeping your ultimate, positive goal in the forefront of your mind will keep you from getting distracted, while you also forge a new relationship with your habit trigger — one that puts you in more control, with you calling the shots and dictating the terms.

In this way, discipline is not the ultimate restriction; it’s actually the ultimate freedom.

So remember…

Discipline is remembering what you want.

— David Campbell

We are kept from our goal not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal.

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Do you remember the scene in Raising Arizona where Glen tells a joke, then calls it a “way-homer?” He said it’s because you only get it on the way home.

I didn’t appreciate the brilliance in this quote at first, but it stayed with me. I now put it right up there among the all-time greats.

In Business:

Voltaire said, “Good is the enemy of great,” and James Collins had a bestseller (deservedly so) with Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make The Leap… and Others Don’t.

Most businesses settle. They settle for mediocrity and they settle way too quickly — sometimes before they even open their doors.

I love pizza. A couple of weeks ago, a new pizza place opened up down the street. I walked in, ordered the two-slice and a drink lunch special, and proceeded to be staggeringly underwhelmed. Again.

I gave them the benefit of the doubt and they instantly proved to be just another me-too, copycat pizza place serving barely passable, me-too, copycat pizza. What’s the point of even opening if you’re not going to at least attempt to make great pizza? Why do you even exist? To quote Raising Arizona again, “That’s your whole damn raison d’etre, ain’t it?”

But here’s the kicker — double kicker, really:

  1. It was lunchtime, they’d been open a few weeks and I was the only customer in the place.
  2. After he heated up my two slices, the owner was just sitting there, shooting the breeze and laughing it up with the waitress.

You better believe if I had sunk all that money into a pizza place, I’d either be out pounding the pavement with flyers or samples or both in an effort to drum up some business. Or I’d be in the kitchen working to perfect my dough, my sauce, my toppings, and every other element of great pizza.

Congratulations on settling for your lesser goal, Mr. Pizza Owner. Hope your lease is month-to-month.

In Life:

I’m a big believer in the 80/20 Rule. Eighty percent of your results come from twenty percent of your actions.

You wear twenty percent of your clothes eighty percent of the time. When you open your refrigerator, eighty percent of the time you’re reaching for the same twenty percent of items. The list goes on and on.

When we fail to achieve goals in life, eighty percent of the time it’s because we saw a clear path to a lesser goal; only twenty percent of the time did an actual obstacle stand in our way. In our minds, though, we think it’s always the obstacles.

Maybe I set a goal to lose twenty pounds, and when I don’t I think it’s because I don’t know how. My lack of knowledge is an obstacle. Or it was the holidays, or we had company over the summer. Special circumstances were the obstacle that got in the way.

The truth is, I had a goal of losing twenty pounds, but I kept settling for the lesser goal of gaining immediate pleasure by eating that giant piece of chocolate cake, followed by a slightly smaller piece later that evening. There certainly was a clear path to it, too — right from the fork to my mouth.

If there’s a goal you’re not reaching, stop looking for pretend obstacles and start recognizing the lesser goals you’re constantly settling for.

So remember…

We are kept from our goal not by obstacles, but by a clear path to a lesser goal.

— Robert Brault

Feelings are what you get for thinking the way you do.

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It seems like we live in a world governed more and more by feelings, doesn’t it? Since so much hinges on them, it would be pretty helpful to know where they come from. Well, this quote sums it up best.

In Business:

Always remember that people buy based on emotion, then use logic to justify the purchase.

A middle-aged man wants that red sports car purely for emotional reasons, but he’ll tell himself (and his wife) how much better gas mileage he’ll get, how they’ll have more room in the garage, and so on.

In Life:

You are in complete control of how you feel. In fact, you’re manufacturing your feelings as you go through your day.

Did you have one of those Play-Doh Fun Factories as a kid? You put the star-shaped template in front of the hole, push the lever and viola — little stars would ooze out while you cut them with a plastic knife. You could make squares, half-moons and other shapes, too.

Well, your thoughts are the templates for your feelings. In the Fun Factory of your mind, you select the template you wish to apply to completely neutral, malleable events of your life. Press the lever and here come the corresponding feelings oozing out, based on the thought-template you selected.

So the next time you’re feeling bad, pick a different thought template and re-run those original thoughts through your mind again. I guarantee you’ll feel the difference.

So remember…

Feelings are what you get for thinking the way you do.

— Marylin vos Savant

My life has been a terrible string of misfortunes, the vast majority of which never happened.

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Though it usually gets mis-attributed to Mark Twain, a French philosopher who lived in the 1500s coined this particular piece of brilliance. 

In Business: 

The longer you’re in a particular business, the more risk-averse you become.  You tend to get gun-shy, and the downside seems a little steeper.

The truth is there’s often more risk in doing nothing.  Even worse is going into the “prevent defense” you often see football teams adopt when they try to protect a tenuous lead in the closing minutes of a game.  Instead of playing to win, they start playing “not to lose.”  How many times have you watched that lead disintegrate?

Sometimes it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, too.  You spend all your mental energy imagining what you don’t want, and miraculously it appears!  Not a good business plan.

Instead, take yourself out of the equation as much as possible.  Remove all the emotion from your assessment and confidently take the calculated and necessary risks that are required to grow your business.

In Life: 

Nobody’s telling you to put on rose-colored glasses and ignore the risks that come with living a full life; but it’s not much fun going through life with one foot on the brake, imagining every worst-case scenario that lies around the next corner.

Like so many things, it’s a matter of balance.  When does prudence and exercising good judgment descend into needless, destructive worry?

Usually, it’s when your thoughts are repeatedly keeping you from taking a specific action.  If it’s something that keeps coming up in your life, there’s probably a valid reason to address the issue. Not going down a dark alley at midnight is good judgment.  Not going to the doctor because you’re afraid of what he might find is destructive worry.

So remember…

My life has been a terrible string of misfortunes, the vast majority of which never happened.

— Michael de Montugue

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