Motivation

Today I’d like to share with you this brilliantly simple personal development idea: making yourself comfortable.

I would like to talk about two meanings I personally have for this saying in a personal development context.

Productivity

Feeling comfortable about doing something is definitely one of the key factors shaping up the success of each task of yours. Of course, other factors include having enough knowledge to do the task, being in a right mood and physically capable of producing the necessary result and being motivated enough to get started, but if you start analyzing each of these factors, you can really see how most of them can be easily brought under the definition of being comfortable.

Make yourself comfortable – in productivity it means being in the right place at the right time, having enough time and enough motivation, being sure in the positive outcome and having knowledge to back your ambitions up.

If you feel comfortable about doing something, your productivity will only benefit. If you are comfortable with the challenge, you may not even have enough knowledge to tackle it just yet, but feeling comfortable will support you and motivate you when you most need it.

As you can see, with productivity, making yourself comfortable is an essential step. Without feeling comfortable, you will not be able to reach your productivity potential.

Personal development

Another meaning for making yourself comfortable I have is less obvious. In personal development, one of the major areas of your focus is a constant improvement. Many things you can learn and improve by reading additional materials in books or magazines, asking someone for a good friendly advice, or simply getting out there and interacting with all the people you meet on your way.

But it is also widely known, than in many cases the self-growth isn’t about some knowledge or skill which you can obtain by using a direct approach, but rather a pearl of wisdom you may only acquire by doing or not doing other things.

For example, take something work-related. Let’s say, a project management. Yes, there are many wonderful books on the topic, which teach you useful techniques and planning strategies, but any seasoned project manager will tell you that you can read all the books you want and still not be a good project manager, unless and until you start managing some real projects.

This is a perfect example of what I’m trying to say – your project management skills will grow not from reading books and attending lectures on this subject, but by managing things – starting with single tasks and progressing onto bigger projects.

Take another example: a skill of dealing with stressful situations. Again, reading books on this subject will be of some help, as you will probably be more conscious of your feelings next time you’re stressed about something. But this will only be part of the learning curve. If you start getting stressed about everything on purpose, such a direct approach will not make you a master in dealing with stress.

Why? Because you cannot obtain this experience directly. Instead, you have to make sure you use opportunities which come your way to minimize the stress for both yourself and people around you, and to make note of every personal success of yours in this matter.

Only by seeing yourself handling stressful situations progressively easier and more successful, will you finally obtain a feeling of being comfortable enough dealing with any kind of stress.

Personal development is about making yourself comfortable

Making yourself comfortable in personal development is a constant reminder for me.

It’s a guiding star, which shows me how I should improve myself in each of the areas of interest. And the reason I told you earlier that the meaning of making yourself comfortable in personal development is not very obvious is this: your personal development is about making yourself comfortable, not staying comfortable.

As soon as you’ve made yourself comfortable in anything, it is a sign to move on. It is a definite confirmation that you’ve raised above the previously arranged goals, and that you have to set new ones, where you will feel unsure and uncomfortable at start, and concentrate on making yourself comfortable yet again, thus improving the necessary aspects of your personality.

Does this make sense to you? Making yourself comfortable means taking one small step after another, moving towards a clearly defined goal. The more you work on this goal, the more comfortable you’re going to feel. But the idea of personal development is to always remember that there is no end to your self-growth.

If you were not sure about doing something, and you had concentrated on making yourself comfortable, you would eventually end up with greatly improved skills, newly obtained experience and wisdom, and an urge to find the next step in the same direction, which you’re not comfortable with.

The success formula

That’s it for today. The only thing left is to give you this simple “Make Yourself Comfortable” success formula.

1. Concentrate on this step towards your next goal
2. Work towards it till it feels natural and comfortable
3. Repeat the same process starting with step 1.

Of course, it is stating something obvious, but like any fundamental knowledge in any science, it is no revelation – it is just a summarizing interpretation of the experience and knowledge you already have.

Today I’ve failed my driving test for the second time. So no full driving license for me this time, not for another half a year anyway.

Obviously, this failure makes me feel sad, but only a little – luckily, I’m conscious enough about the scale of this failure, and I intentionally choose not to feel miserable and depressed about this, but instead learn a few more valuable lessons and proclaim this day yet another successful failure in my life.

Successful failure? Is there such a thing?!

In case you’re asking yourself the same question, let me assure you right away: of course there is! The truth is, you should treat most of your failures as successes! I do, anyway.

I remember the first time I’ve made a comment about successful failures. It happened earlier this year, and I had just arrived to work. With a visible smile on my face, I announced to my immediate colleague that I had just successfully failed my driving test the other day. He looked both surprised and confused by the controversial terminology and my inadequate positiveness about the whole thing. We then laughed a bit and agreed that I’d probably have a better luck next time around.

I happen to believe that each failure teaches us invaluable lessons, and also – inevitably so – brings us closer to the success. I therefore consider all my failures to be a great source of useful lessons to be learned and applied next time I’m in a similar situation.

Failure to achieve your goal does not have to be depressive. You just have to look for the right signs, and you’ll see for yourself how positive it really is. Well, obviously not as positive as the successful outcome of the situation, but much more useful and positive than you might initially think.

Any failure is a measure of a progress. If you can say you’ve failed in something, this usually means you’ve actually tried some things out and worked rather hard to do your best. And so, your efforts were not futile, albeit not enough to make you absolutely successful this time. It doesn’t mean you didn’t make any progress though!

The more you fail, the less options to fail are left

You see, when you’re working consistently on reaching some goal, and you decide to give it a shot one day and you don’t quite make it, you’re still learning so much in a progress that it brings you one step closer to be truly successful one day.

Apply yourself, make sure you learn from your mistakes – and you’ve got yourself one of the best recipes for success in the long term. Do this consistently, use some planning in addition to it, and you’ll be doing better than 90% of all the people around you!

Once you have a rough idea of how many things could go wrong in achieving something, and you start marking each possible option off by trying it, failing and learning the lessons associated with each failure, you’ll realize that every single failure brings you closer to the top.

Why fail miserably, when you can fail successfully?

Let’s just be honest here. Any kind of failure is tough. And the harder you tried, the bitter it will feel to lose. But it is really important to stop yourself from self-punishment and self-destruction, and instead make an effort and learn all the useful information you possibly can in the view of the outcome you’re left with.

Take me for example: preparing for the driving test, I’ve taken numerous driving lessons over the past few month. I’ve studied the necessary theory, and have become quite confident by consistently making small improvements in my driving technique.

Was it enough? No. What does it tell me? I should probably raise my standards and try harder next time. But how does it make me feel? Immediately, it feels really sad. It is depressing to look back at all this time and money spent to improve my driving to only realize I wasn’t good enough.

So now that I know I’ve failed, where does it leave me? I’ve got two options: fail miserably, or fail successfully. They’re not quite the opposites, but they hopefully show you the difference your point of view can make.

Having failed in anything, a person is naturally depressed. What many of us don’t understand (not for another few days, or sometimes even months of self-punishment) is that there is nothing we can gain from self-tormenting talks and blaming ourselves for not being good, strong or smart enough to accomplish something. All this will do is simply make you feel even worse.

Instead, why not make an effort and learn something useful? Extract some positive and valuable lessons from your situation?

You’ve tried your best and you still failed. Does it mean you won’t be much better next time? Of course it doesn’t. Does it mean you will be absolutely successful? There’s not way to tell. You’ll have to try again to find out.

But what it means for certain is this: you’ve learned one more of your weaknesses, and you’ve got a strong and positive signal that it’s really important for you to improve and get rid of this weakness.

That’s what you should concentrate on! That where all you energy should go instead of being wasted for blaming yourself.

You may not be able to get rid of such a weakness in an overnight, but stay positive and be realistic! Focus on the area for an improvement, and make it your daily routine to improve it by at least a tiny bit. Constantly doing so, you will reach your personal best.

The lesson I want you to learn from today is this: if you fail in anything, fail successfully. There’s no point in doing it any other way.

This is an incredibly inspirational story, which shows once again that real love and human will can make wonders. I admire Dick Hoyt for being such a great father to his son, and I understand exactly what motivates him, cause I feel the same urge to do anything just to see my little daughter smile.

Apparently, it’s very hard to find where exactly this article is originally from. I’ve just read it in the Journey With Me blog.

Update: thanks to Marcus, I’ve learned that Rick and Dick Hoyt have their own website – Team Hoyt.

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars–all in the same day.

Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much–except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

“He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life;’’ Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.’’

But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,’’ Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.’’

“Tell him a joke,’’ Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!’’ And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.’’

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker’’ who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. “Then it was me who was handicapped,’’ Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.’’

That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,’’ he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!’’

And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

“No way,’’ Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?’’

How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,’’ he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling’’ he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992–only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

“No question about it,’’ Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.’’

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,’’ one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.’’

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

“The thing I’d most like,’’ Rick types, “is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.’’

Here’s the video… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4B-r8KJhlE

Last Friday I took a day off. I had a great morning at home, playing with our little daughter and reading a book, and in the afternoon I got out to finish some business in the nearby town.

On my way back home in the afternoon, I stopped by a local shopping centre to buy something. While making my way to the shop, I noticed a man playing an old accordion. He seemed to be in his late 50s, and there was something really tired about his look. Yet he was smiling and playing passionately something very light and pleasing. Beside him there was a box for his accordion, opened for people to throw coins into.

The music seemed very familiar. One of the tunes I’ve recognized for sure – it was a rather popular Russian romance – Ochi Chernye (Dark Eyes). I stopped to listen for a short while, but felt guilty for not dropping him a coin (I simply had no change on me) and left pretty soon.

I’ve gotten back to the car, still thinking about the man. What I actually thought was that if I was a better person, I would’ve stayed longer and got some change from the shop, and gave him a coin or two, and maybe bought him a coffee and had a friendly chat.

Do you know this feeling when deep down inside you know you’d love to do something, but you’re so unsure of how it would look to others and how you would be judged, that you start looking for any excuse to bail out? That was the feeling I was experiencing at the time.

I was coming up with one reason after another along these lines: I have no time. I need to go. It would look stupid to buy a complete stranger a coffee. He would not appreciate it anyway, he probably sees hundreds of people just like me – passing him by and never giving him a coin. The bottom line: coming back will make no difference, nothing will change.

I started the engine, and headed for the exit. I kept reassuring myself of various valid and absolutely urgent reasons to leave immediately, but instead something different happened: in the very last moment, I’ve turned and took the last parking space right next to the exit. I shut the engine down.

From that moment on, I knew – the decision was made.

It’s been a good few months of me trying to raise my awareness of everything and anything that happens to me, in order to improve myself. I absolutely hate giving in to minute weaknesses, and always try really hard to force myself and make a conscious decision about some acts and thoughts I particularly dislike. With the time, I’ve developed this external view of myself, as if I’m looking from aside, and this helps me see where I behave absolutely irrational, and I actively try to stop myself from acting like this.

The decision had been made.

It’s incredible, how hard it is to be nice to some stranger. You suddenly have all the reasons in the world to believe it will not make any difference, but trust me it will. It is hard to stop rushing somewhere and smile to someone you don’t even know, but you should try it sometime. Not smile as you’re walking, but actually stop to talk. Stop to ask how life is treating a person, and be genuinely interested.

You know what I did? I came back, and I got my coffee, and stood next to the man listening to his music. I dropped him a coin. I sat at a table of a nearby cafe, and enjoyed another 10 minutes of him playing. And when he made a pause, I walked up to him, and asked if he would like to enjoy a cup of coffee with me. He asked for an espresso, and as soon as I bought it, we sat at the table and started talking.

We talked for about half an hour. He told me about his younger years and his career of a professional musician. Apparently, he had travelled the whole Europe in his early days – he was so good that many famous people invited him for a friendly visit. He knew many great composers and artists personally, and had a house full of photos and music contests trophies back in Romania.

This man had spent his last 9 years in Ireland. He came with his big family, but couldn’t find a proper job due to various reasons. Playing accordion is his only way of bringing money into the family, and so he plays almost every day. I’ve seen him a number of times playing in the city centre, his music was always great and his smile was always a sincere and cheerful one.

We talked like some good old friends. His English wasn’t perfect, but I’ve demonstrated the ability to understand many Romanian words, and so we had a complete understanding talking on various topics.

In just half an hour I’ve learned a lot about his past, his travels and his family. He told me about 3 sons and how he taught them to play various instruments and it’s like a small family orchestra now – they are welcome guests at any party because of this. I told him about our little daughter, and we talked about eternal things like life passing by too quick to notice and children growing up in no time at all.

When the coffee was finished, I stood up and asked for his name. Severin. It sounds like a last name in Russian, but that’s his name. I gave him my name, and we shook hands.

We smiled, and in a moment I was gone.

The last thing I remembered was his box for coins, with the most sincere words I’ve ever seen written on it: NO MUSIC – NO LIFE. THANK YOU.