Want to give your all to a worthy cause, business or project?
Here’s the secret: Say no to stuff.
It’s painful. It’s confusing. It’s ugly. But it’s the right thing.
As Drucker says, “If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.”
Say no to everything, so you can say yes to the one thing.
Image: Justin Cozart
“Worry is a misuse of the imagination.” – Dan Zadra
“Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.” – Benjamin Franklin
“Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.” – Marcus Aurelius
“I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them have never happened.” – Mark Twain
“If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep.”- Dale Carnegie
I have learned to live each day as it comes, and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us. – Dorothy Day
“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.” – Leo Buscaglia
“Rule number one is, don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule number two is, it’s all small stuff.” – Robert Eliot
“Don’t waste your life in doubts and fears: spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Ask yourself this question: ‘Will this matter a year from now?'” – Richard Carlson
Photo by cesarastudillo
If you’ve read The Power of Starting Something Stupid, you know that we talk a lot about how to avoid future regret. When it comes to living a life of meaning, contribution and fulfillment, I can’t image a more urgent topic. I’d like to share with you two real-life stories that have greatly influenced my thinking and I hope will influence yours. Further, I hope these examples will make you DO something–to act on that “stupid” pressing thought that just won’t go away.
Bronnie Ware, author of The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, worked in palliative care, in a place where she says “patients would go to die” and she “was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.” She asked the patients “about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently.” Through this unique experience, Bronnie discovered five common themes:
These five regrets have helped me change my own behavior and priorities as I strive to live a joyful and enriched life.
I feature this story in Chapter 4 of The Power of Starting Something Stupid and even created something I call “The Bezos Test,” however, I thought you’d like to hear some additional details to the story straight from Bezos’ mouth.
You can watch the video of Jeff Bezos explaining to Achievement.org how he avoided future regret by starting Amazon here: Why Jeff Bezos Started Amazon
Here’s part of the transcript (of the above video) from this interview with Achievement.org. Notice how Bezos’ uses what he calls a “regret minimalization framework” to make his decision to leave Wall Street and start Amazon.
Achievement.org: Here you were sitting in New York City in a very good job, a lucrative position with a future. You go home and you say to your wife you want to throw all that over and get in the car and go to Seattle. What possessed you to do that? What was her reaction? What is the role of risk taking?
Jeff Bezos: I went to my boss and said to him, “You know, I’m going to go do this crazy thing and I’m going to start this company selling books online.” This was something that I had already been talking to him about in a sort of more general context, but then he said, “Let’s go on a walk.” And, we went on a two hour walk in Central Park in New York City and the conclusion of that was this. He said, “You know, this actually sounds like a really good idea to me, but it sounds like it would be a better idea for somebody who didn’t already have a good job.” He convinced me to think about it for 48 hours before making a final decision.
So, I went away and was trying to find the right framework in which to make that kind of big decision. I had already talked to my wife about this, and she was very supportive and said, “Look, you know you can count me in 100 percent, whatever you want to do.” It’s true she had married this fairly stable guy in a stable career path, and now he wanted to go do this crazy thing, but she was 100 percent supportive.
So, it really was a decision that I had to make for myself, and the framework I found which made the decision incredibly easy was what I called — which only a nerd would call — a “regret minimization framework.” So, I wanted to project myself forward to age 80 and say, “Okay, now I’m looking back on my life. I want to have minimized the number of regrets I have.”
I knew that when I was 80 I was not going to regret having tried this. I was not going to regret trying to participate in this thing called the Internet that I thought was going to be a really big deal. I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not ever having tried. I knew that that would haunt me every day, and so, when I thought about it that way it was an incredibly easy decision. And, I think that’s very good.
If you can project yourself out to age 80 and sort of think, “What will I think at that time?” it gets you away from some of the daily pieces of confusion. You know, I left this Wall Street firm in the middle of the year. When you do that, you walk away from your annual bonus. That’s the kind of thing that in the short-term can confuse you, but if you think about the long-term then you can really make good life decisions that you won’t regret later.
Carefully consider these questions:
I have been creating The 76-Day Challenge which I promise as a free gift at the end of The Power of Starting Something Stupid to help you start your dream projects, avoid regret and impact the world for good. I have a group working on this challenge right now before I release it to the public. If you’d like to sign up to receive your copy of The 76-Day Challenge when it is ready, please click here.
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Ok I did it, I quit my very secure high paying job and am pursuing my passion that took two years to build. I started a company that prevents families from being displaced due to foreclosure and its very fulfilling. I have a great group if people filling all the executive positions as volunteers and I’m the only paid employee. We raised $250,000 to start and that was my safety net to quit my job. But for reasons beyond our control the $250k turned into $40k after I had already quit. So we’ve been working very hard to get more companies under contract to generate more revenue. I sold my house and move into military housing since I’m a retired disabled veteran to lower my personal overhead. We are now down to three weeks of operating costs left and I feel strangely calm but I can’t say the same for my family, they are freaking out. They understand I had to do this but don’t understand why I would put is in jeopardy of loosing everything. Your book is the best I’ve read because I read it right when I needed the final push and had lived through everything you wrote about. I’m confident something or someone will be placed in my path just at the right time. Thanks for the final push no matter how this turns out I tried. No regrets.
Appreciate each other’s differences, and focus on each other’s strengths. it’s easy to get frustrated with what the other is not doing if you’re focusing on the negative. instead focus on what makes your spouse special and unique and it will constantly remind you of why you married them and how much you love them.
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今はあそこ専用の洗剤が販売されているのでそれを選ぶのも大事です。
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