Beware: Best Practices – Part 1
Contrary to popular belief, success doesn't happen by accident. It has nothing to do with luck. It's not a magic pill someone swallows or a wand someone waves that immediately manifests a revolutionary change in status and bank balance. Success requires strategic planning, action and commitment.
Success also takes an additional ingredient most people overlook. That ingredient is the ability to thumb your nose at conventional wisdom and so-called “best practices” about achieving success. You’ve heard the lines, "it's luck" or "you have to be in the right place at the right time" or "it's all about who you know" and the big one, "it's about how hard you work." Those lines just aren't true. We know a lot of people who work really, really hard and don't have much to show for it at all. You probably do too.
These statements make up the much of the conventional wisdom about what it takes to become a success. But conventional wisdom is not always the best wisdom and can frequently be detrimental if followed. The term “conventional” by definition should send up a red flag. According to www.dictionary.com it means, "Conforming or adhering to accepted standards," and in another definition, "Ordinary rather than different or original." Accepted standard? Ordinary? Do those sound like the building blocks of success to you?
No person in their right mind would describe an ultra successful person by those definitions. The über successful don't conform and they aren't ordinary. In fact they are the complete opposite. Ahh…maybe we’re on to something here. Let's take it from the top shall we?
From the minute we're born we start to conform and to follow the herd. We do what everyone else is doing, the way everyone else is doing it. We're taught to stand in line and we work to "fit in." We follow the masses and we get the same results they do...AVERAGE RESULTS.
It’s sad isn't it? Average is standard and most people work hard every day just to achieve it. That's same and that's lame.
Here's a little secret...the high achievers in this world play by a different set of rules: theirs. They don't fit in and they don't stand in line or wait their turn. They blaze new paths and make they're own rules while everyone else settles for same old lame.
Have you ever looked up the word lame in the dictionary?
It means, says www.dictionary.com, "A pathetic lack of force and effectiveness." If being the same makes you lame and being lame means you lack force and effectiveness then what chance do you have at achieving everything (or for that matter, anything) you want out of life? Not much!
When you follow the crowd and do what everyone thinks is right—for instance, "best practices"— you're going to duplicate their results. Those results are typically mediocre and average at best. The norm isn't extraordinary. If it was most people would be wealthy and happy and we'd have mind-blowing experiences with businesses and people on a daily basis.
Instead, a normal day usually consists of frustration from businesses and people who are just getting by, limping along and trying to keep it together. That's what conventional thinking and “best practices” deliver.
Extraordinary results come from doing something different…from challenging the status quo and shaking things up. So what can you do to get on a path to innovation, extraordinary progress and extreme success? Here are five things that the ultra successful do differently.
To Be Continued...
