Yesterday, it was announced that he had signed with the Detroit Tigers for 9 years and a staggering $200+ million. Disregarding the argument of whether or not he’ll be worth that kind of money to a team, I was happy for him.

And yet, when you ask around, or you log onto Facebook, you start seeing the same old clichés:

• “Geez, I could use that kind of money!”
• “I’m in the wrong line of work!”
• “All that money to play a game…”

And so on.

But while I agree that athletes make more money than they are worth, I am not envious of them. Think of what that money means for a player like Prince Fielder:

• Every move he makes in public, and every comment he makes to someone is scrutinized.
• He is on the road and away from his family for over 200 days a year, not including practices, spring training, media appearances, and spokesperson deals.
• He works a lot of nights.
• He will miss a lot of family holidays – many athletes do. Want to spend Christmas with your family? If you’re in the NFL or the NBA, you likely won’t.
• He is constantly showering with a bunch of other guys.
• He takes a lot of risk – if you break your leg, you might be off from work for a little bit. If he breaks his leg, he could risk losing his entire career, depending on the nature of the injury.

I don’t even have kids of my own yet, and I can see why that life would suck. What about you? If you are at all close with your family, you’re going to be kinda miserable.

There is probably a segment of you saying, “So what? I wouldn’t mind the travel, and I’d love that kind of lifestyle!” Well, you’re probably not walking around telling people that he’s overpaid, either.

When we’re unhappy about where we are in life, we tend to be quick to point fingers at people who are somehow making our lives worse. And yet, the heads of corporations are powering industries that make our lives easier – and I’d argue better – every single day. Heck, even pro athletes are powering industries that make our lives better: without the players, we wouldn’t have games to go to or watch on TV with friends and family. We wouldn’t have that escape where we can cheer and boo who we want.

We get so focused on what we don’t have that we ignore what others don’t have, either. I’m sure Prince Fielder is happy, and he loves playing the game of baseball for a living, even if it comes with some lousy parts. He’s willing to make the sacrifices necessary to bring in that kind of dough.

Do you want to make your life better? Is there some aspect of your life that could be improved? If so, you’ll have to make other sacrifices to get there. If you’re not willing to do that, just shut your mouth and get back to work. Whining isn’t going to do anything but make everybody else cranky too.

So, 2012 is upon us, hey?

After jotting down my thoughts on 2011, I really wanted to spend some time looking ahead to this new year. In fact, I’ve been downright excited to write this post. So then, it figures that I start having problems with the site that I have to address before I can keep going.

First, the site went down… again. This was a fairly common occurrence this past year, and I don’t want to risk it happening again. So, I switched servers, which took most of last week. I figure there is no reason to slap together a new post and try to drive traffic to it if the site doesn’t work. So I waited.

Then, yesterday, I notice that MailChimp had screwed up my signup forms for The “I Can” Movement. After hassling with customer service, I decided to switch over to Aweber, which I am still in the process of doing.

So, after all of this, I am ready to start some serious writing, and the site and community should be happier for it (and if the signup form on the right side of this page looks bland, just be patient. I’ll get it jazzed up soon).

So, I find a great exercise is to sit down and figure out what you plan on doing this year. After discovering all the cool stuff I was able to accomplish last year, I was even more excited to put this list together. There’s a great mix of travel, professional, and personal stuff (much of it from my bucket list) on here that should make 2012 a rousing success. If you keep up with what I’m doing here or elsewhere, then here’s what you have to look forward to:

I’m going to totally dominate Europe this year.

This is the big one. In October, my wife and I are going to celebrate our two-year anniversary by flying into London and doing a giant figure-8 across the continent. We’ll be visiting my old college roommate in Scotland, as well as hitting up Germany, Ireland, England, Rome, Paris, and Austria. It’s going to be the trip of a lifetime.

After visiting Taiwan a few years ago, I’m doubly excited to hit another continent, as well as immerse myself in the cultures of the world – and the food!

Attend a Packer game while they’re good.

I’m from Wisconsin. That means I’m a Green Bay Packer fan. They only lost one game all season this year, and as of this writing, they are defending Super Bowl champions. In other words, they’re good. I plan on heading up to historic Lambeau Field to enjoy it in person next season.

Make $50,000/year.

This is the next income goal on my bucket list, and I think it’s very doable this year. It’s going to take a lot of effort on my part, but I look forward to the challenge. As I expand my business, this should become more and more of a possibility. I did not come close to this income level in 2011, but I am poised to make a run for it if I play my cards right in 2012.

Get 1,000 Twitter followers.

It’s not the be-all, end-all in terms of influence, but I do feel that having over 1K followers on Twitter will really give me the opportunity to spread the word about what I’m doing, as well as connect with more awesome people. One thousand is a completely arbitrary number, but it’s a big one for me. As of this writing, I’m sitting at just under 800.

Play guitar at a performance level.

I don’t have clear parameters on this yet. I’d like to record myself playing, or even hit up an Open Mic night somewhere. I love playing guitar, but I’m generally pretty bad at it because I don’t practice enough. This is the year I dedicate myself to the craft so that I can be at a level that I can be proud of for a change.

Attend a bloggers’ conference.

There are lots of these available, but I’m headed to Portland, Oregon in July of 2012 to attend the World Domination Summit. It’s much more than a bloggers’ conference, but it will give me the chance to connect with so many more like-minded individuals.

Take a train somewhere.

I’ve never really been on a train (Disney World doesn’t count). We’ll be taking it around Europe, so this should take care of that.

Run a half marathon.

Yep, last year I ran a 5K independently. Twice. Now, I’m taking it up a notch. I planned on working on this sometime later in the summer, but a friend of mine convinced me to sign up for one on May 5th. So I guess this one will be crossed off a lot sooner than I had originally planned!

Write more epic stuff.

One reason I really enjoyed the 2011 review is because I was able to write a much longer post. That’s the goal this year. I find that it will be better for me as a writer, and it will force me to come up with stuff that you guys will enjoy and be able to learn from. In my head, I’ve got this post from Corbett Barr over at Think Traffic stuck in my head.

Implement “No TV Tuesday”.

Last night, my wife and I had our first full-scale “No TV Tuesday”. We have struggled with leaving the TV on and watching “just one more” episode of something, effectively killing our desire and resolve to get stuff done. Instead of leaning on that, we are now actively not watching television on Tuesdays. The result? We got a lot done, and we spent time playing a board game instead, which was actually a lot of fun.

TV isn’t evil. As I’ve written in the past, I love TV. But it can control your life if you’re not careful. When I was hanging out with Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus when they were in town last month, Joshua said that he didn’t own a TV, but only because he knew he would watch it constantly.

It’s not as simple as saying something is “good” or “bad”. It’s about recognizing your own weaknesses and shortcomings, and taking steps to fight them. That’s what “No TV Tuesdays” are about for us.

Migrate from SEO writing into full-time direct mail copywriting.

SEO writing has gotten me out of the office job, and for that I am grateful. However, it’s not a very challenging or fulfilling occupation. With direct mail, I’ll be able to make a lot more money and work less, creating more freedom in my life while we pay down our debts. I’ve  igotten my foot in the door at several companies, but I have to make sure I perform to the highest level so that I can establish myself. Once that happens, I can ditch the SEO work. It’s a switch that I’ve been waiting to make for 6 years.

50 Guest Posts in 2012

According to Caleb Wojcik of Pocket Changed, I’ve got a little competition for this one. The only way I can grow the audience here and at HustleLife Magazine is by getting my name out there, which means I have to make guest posting a priority. That’s what this year is all about. So I’m hoping that I will be able to knock out 50 guest posts on various sites to really start gaining some traction!

Smarter consumption of information.

A lot of people feel that there is an information overload in today’s online world, and I would be inclined to agree. But I don’t think that we necessarily need to cut it all out. In fact, you can limit your information overload by having a better system of managing it. Some people will use different tools, but here is what I have:

• My Kindle + Readability. With my Kindle, I can read books anywhere – quickly and easily. This is great, but the real power of the Kindle comes from combining it with Readability. With the combination, I can find long-form content online and send it to my Kindle with one click for later reading. So instead of managing magazine subscriptions for my long-form content, I just keep my Kindle. One of my favorite places to find great content that I can read is LongForm.org, which allows me to click “Send to Kindle” and be done with it.
• Google Reader. I keep trying other tools, but Reader still can’t be beat for clean and simple feed reading. I manage a lot of feeds from Google Reader, but I don’t read everything within their interface. Sure, I will if I have the time, but if I want to batch my stuff and save it for later, I use…
• ifttt and Evernote. With these two tools, I can save links from Google Reader and Twitter that I want to review later, eliminating my need to constantly consume information. With ifttt, as I’ve written about before, I can star items in Google Reader that will go into my “Links to Review” notebook in Evernote. Then, when I see an interesting tweet or link on Twitter I want to look into, I just “favorite” the tweet and it is sent to the same notebook in Evernote. Then, I can just read them at my leisure on my…
• Netbook. With my new netbook (see the goofy picture above), I now have the laptop I’ve always wanted/needed. I can use it for quick access to links and content that I want to review, and I can use it for portable working (or blogging – which I’m doing on it now).

Having an organized system of digesting content allows me to read on my own time, where and when I am comfortable. Then, I am able to weed out the important stuff and keep my brain learning new interesting and valuable information without becoming overloaded. Oh, and the entire system uses free services, which is awesome.

Okay, what about you?

What do you want to do this year? Let’s chat in the comments section!

Last Saturday, September 10th, I knocked another one off the bucket list:

53. Run a 5K barefoot (9/10/11 – 27:04)

Above is me heading toward the finish line. Also, something I’ve always wanted to do but did not actually have it on my bucket list, was to win a medal for something athletic. I’ve run cross country since 5th grade, and through my junior year of high school, I never won any medals. I won a certificate for Honorable Mention All-Conference, but that’s because one of the kids ahead of me got disqualified.

Lo and behold, at this small race for my church, I came in second place in my age group, so I received a silver medal. Yeah, it’s not that big of a deal since it was a small, mostly non-competitive race, but I’m still pretty darn happy. It now hangs next to my computer monitor:

Next Saturday, September 24th, I will be in Washington, DC with my buddy. We will be touring the White House after going through our congressman’s office to set up a tour. That will be another one off the list. So what are you crossing off your bucket list lately?

You see, Steve is a big proponent of the Paleo Diet. The essence of the Paleo Diet is simple: eat stuff that’s pretty much always been around. Meat and vegetables? Great! Pringles and Doritos? Not so much. If it can’t be found in nature, it shouldn’t be eaten. He has coached at least dozens of people to their health and fitness goals, and he says real results happen when they fully commit to the Paleo Diet.

I’m interested, but disappointed. I like Pringles. I like Doritos. I like ice cream. While I know they are not healthy, I enjoy having them as snacks. My wife is the same way with certain foods. Tell her she can’t have noodles this week and you’ll need to duck before her fist hits you in the face. So, while we try to keep processed foods to a minimum around here, we do enjoy eating them from time to time.

I brought this idea up to Steve, and he recommended that we go for the Paleo Diet at, like, 90% effort. When he goes out to a bar with friends, he’s fine with grabbing a few slices of pizza. As long as he doesn’t gorge himself to the point where he derails his diet, he knows that he’ll be fine.

After reviewing some of his posts on his site, he believes that even trying will get results. After all, even if you accomplish 20% of your ultimate goal, that’s still a heckuva lot more than you would have gotten if you didn’t try at all. It’s an interesting concept, and one I want to explore further. So let’s go after something we’ve never tried before, but temper our fears in the process.

• You’ll get closer to your goal. Want to run 5 miles? Cool. But when you go out and run 1 mile, you don’t get discouraged. After all, that’s one more mile that you ran, as opposed to sitting on the couch. Changing your diet? Even if you change it every other day, that’s 50% closer to a full-on, healthy diet.
• You’ll build momentum when you see results. All it takes is noticing something different about yourself or your life, and you might just be tempted to keep going.
• It will let you try something out for a while, without fear. It can be scary to implement change. So don’t worry too much about it. Instead, try it out. Tell yourself it’s temporary. If the goal is good, you’ll be able to test the waters before going at it with full force.

So let’s set up a plan:

• Pick a goal. Any goal. Ideally, pick something you’ve always wanted to do, but never tried because you thought it was too difficult. Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself. That’s why we’re only going halfway.
• Set up a specific plan. If you plan to do something temporarily, it’s easy to let that goal be engulfed by the day-to-day crap. If you say, “I’m going to eat healthier three days a week,” you’re going to slack off even more. Instead, commit to a specific type of diet, or commit to cutting out certain snack foods. Write it down somewhere so that you remember it. And put a deadline on it.
• Enjoy your “off days”, but keep it under control. If you are dieting or exercising, enjoy your off days by eating guilt-free, but keep some boundaries. The goal of the off day is to allow yourself to enjoy your temptations – not unravel all the work you are putting in on the other days.
• Cut yourself some slack. It’s going to be tough, but focus on the deadline. Make sure you are committing to it. When you know it’s not forever, you psychologically give yourself a break.
• Pay attention to the results. See if you lose weight. Watch your bank account. How do you feel today? How are you sleeping? How is your mood? Whatever your goal is, recognize and celebrate the results.
• If it works, jack it up! Often, you’ll see the little results and you will be motivated to crank it up farther. You’ll change your diet completely and only have one off day, or something. You will start associating good thoughts with doing those things, which will go a long way in keeping you on track.
• It it doesn’t work, cut it loose. When Dave Ramsey tells people to pay off their credit cards and cut them up, he tends to receive a lot of vocal opposition to the idea. On his radio show, he tells them something simple: “Try it for a couple of months. If you find that you really hate it and need to go back to your old lifestyle, you can always get another credit card and start using it again.” In other words, he knows it will improve their lives if they just give it a chance to see for themselves. And he’s right: more often than not, you can always fall back into old habits if you want to quit.

Give yourself a chance to succeed. Instead of looking at the big picture, focus all your energy on just getting started. You run a marathon one step at a time. You eat an elephant one bite at a time. Step-by-step, you’ll start to see the results you were afraid to pursue.

Me, 10 years ago, after my last 5K. Yes, that's my hair.

I’ve been training for a few months to run a 5K this Saturday, May 21st. It will be my first race in almost 10 years, as I was a junior in high school during my last stint in cross country. Because I spent 7 years as a runner, I know how long I’m supposed to be able to run on average, and I want to get there as quickly as possible.

But don’t tell my knees that.

I’ve had some illnesses in the last couple months which stifled my running a little bit, but I was running over 4 miles a day right before I got sick. The last sickness knocked me out of running for a couple of weeks. Knowing that my body needed to be able to run at least that much as I approached race week, I spent the last couple weeks pushing my body to get back up there. I went from two miles to three miles pretty quickly, so that I could make sure I could complete the race.

Then my knees exploded.

Last week Friday, while on a run, suddenly I couldn’t pick up my feet after about a mile of running. My knees felt like they had knives plunged deep into them, and I physically couldn’t run. I tried to walk it off, but I couldn’t. I limped/jogged the rest of my planned 3-mile run. A 25-minute run turned into about an hour of being out, and I had trouble walking when I got home.

I took a day off on Saturday to rest, and I was scared that I wouldn’t be able to run. Sunday afternoon, I went out for another one, and was able to go 2.5 miles with little knee troubles. But Monday, my knees gave out again after 1.5 miles.

After Googling around, I discovered I had “runner’s knee” in both knees.

Runners’ knee is a condition where your kneecap isn’t being held in place properly because the muscles surrounding your kneecap are not strong enough to keep up with the impact of the running. So the kneecap grinds against all the nerves and ligaments in your knee – and it causes some pretty sucky pain. Fortunately, I can ice and stretch my hamstrings and other leg muscles, which will strengthen them and rid myself of the knee pain. Unfortunately, it means I need to slow down and not run so much.

I’ve been going too far, too fast, and my knees can’t keep up.

Slowing down is not really an option, because Saturday I intend to cross that 5K off of my bucket list. As far as I’m concerned, Saturday completes my running comeback, and I can do something else for cardio for the rest of my life. I don’t want to put this off. So I have to take a couple days off this week and hope that my conditioning is good enough for the race on Saturday. But it’s probably going to hurt.

Establishing a foundation is one of the most important things you can do.

I’m overenthusiastic. When I get my mind set on something, I want to do whatever it takes to get there quickly. A lot of us are like that. But we run into trouble and don’t accomplish much when we don’t take the time to build the proper foundation first.

• Marriages tank because couples don’t spend time building their relationship.
• Diets don’t work because you don’t establish new lifestyle changes.
• Businesses fail because you run a sloppy business and don’t organize yourself properly.

Without a foundation, a house will crumble. So will your goals. So instead of focusing entirely on the end result, take the time to figure out what kind of base you need to build first, and then you can move forward toward your goals. I didn’t do that in my training, and now it is putting my goal in jeopardy.

Have you ever jeopardized a goal because you were too anxious to get there? Share in the comments!

A buddy of mine and his wife had a baby boy on Mother’s Day (just a few days ago – that’s him up there!). He’s a little, five-pound beauty that just melts you. I’m a big baby guy, and my wife is crazy about babies, so we enjoyed just hanging out with them and passing the kid back and forth, watching him sleep or groggily stare at the weird people who were holding him.

We’ve been married for more than six months, so now is the time when everybody and their brother pounces on us and asks the same question:

“So when are you guys going to start having kids?”

Before we were married, my wife and I made sure we were on the same page when it came to kids. The last thing you want is to be stuck in a marriage where you disagree about when/if you’re having children. We settled on two years, feeling that we would want time to get used to each other and enjoy being married before adding kids to the mix. We made up our minds, and even though we are tempted from time to time, we know it’s a smart decision and one that both of us can be happy with.

But you know, that doesn’t matter to other people. And they’re usually just trying to be cute or funny when they do it, but there’s a grain of truth behind their badgering. Just like when you are dating for a while and they start asking, “So when are you guys going to get married?”, bugging couples about kids is just what people who have kids do, because they are anxious to see someone else go through the experience.

And it’s not that we dread the idea – we’re looking forward to what having kids will do for us and the opportunity to raise a family. But we know we’re not ready for it yet.

The importance of making up your own mind

It amazes me how often people make decisions based on what other people think. I used to do it all the time. You start in school, when you pick what to wear based on what others are wearing, and what music to listen to based on what everybody else is listening to. You see the same movies and the same TV shows, because you just want to fit in with everybody else.

But some of us don’t grow out of that. We keep making decisions based on what we think we’re “supposed” to do, instead of what we really want to do. People that do that are destined to just repeat history, so to speak.

There’s nothing wrong with being logical

It’s very easy to judge actions based on emotions. Some of the people who have kids and are pushing us to have kids didn’t plan on getting pregnant when they did. So they just assume that it’s going to happen to everybody. They figure, “Why bother trying to have any control over your life if it’s just going to spiral out of control anyway?” You can see this attitude in their approach to having kids, managing their money, or pursuing their careers.

The truth is, you have much more control than you think. When you are making life decisions, you can certainly sit down and be logical about it – working on facts instead of looking at your emotions.

For example, if you are deciding when to have children, you should sit down and look at your age, how many kids you want to have, your goals for your marriage, and what you want to do over the next few years. My wife and I did that, and that’s how we approached our baby-making decision. This is the same approach you should have for any big decision: where to live, where to go in your career, managing/improving your health, and your money management.

Life will throw you curveballs

Being logical also means understanding that not everything will go according to plan. A married couple may have an unexpected bundle of joy, a crisis can wipe out a bank account, and any number of unplanned events can impact your health.

But that does not mean you just go through life without a plan – even a loose one. Setting goals for yourself is important to take full advantage of everything that has been given to you. Everybody has opportunities for growth and for success in different areas, but if you are not working with some sort of guideline, then you’re going to miss them. You know where that gets you? Exactly where you are now.

Be flexible. Roll with the punches. But have a plan. And most importantly, don’t let anybody else influence it for you. Their life is not yours. They made their own decisions, and you make yours. And just like their success or failure has no influence on your life, your success or failure won’t do anything to theirs. Don’t feel guilty about trying to build a life that is not in line with those around you.

If you’re new here, you should know that I quit my job in November to work from home. It involved taking on a little bit of risk, as my business wasn’t quite at the point it needed to be, but my wife insisted I do so after we got married and she realized how wildly unhappy I was while I was there. By the grace of the good Lord, clients came in and I built myself a nice little stable of 3-4 clients who sent me regular work.

But over the past month or so, something changed.

I noticed my workload started dropping, and I didn’t have a full pipeline of work anymore. In fact, I had one steady client left. Some of the others, while happy, stopped contacting me altogether (which, by the way, is my number one pet peeve of dealing with businesses – blowing people off is stupid and unprofessional).

In my past foray into self-employment, I wouldn’t have noticed this until I ran out of work. Then I would panic, try to hotshot my way into some more clients, and tank the whole thing over the course of a couple of months, while at the same time draining our bank account and making us generally miserable. Heck, last time it happened, I got kicked out of my apartment for not being able to pay rent.

Fortunately, this time around, I developed a tracking system and spreadsheet that always gave me a clear picture as to what work I had coming, what I’ve made for the month, and where I need to be. So before I ran completely out of work, I could see that I had to go out and get some more clients.

All I needed was one or two clients to make our budget.

But I didn’t set out to get one or two clients – because that’s impossible. I can’t make “getting one or two clients” a goal. It depends on what other people do, and I couldn’t make anybody listen to me, so I set a different goal based on past experiences: I would send out 20 emails a day to firms offering my services. That would generate leads that I could follow-up on regularly and eventually get some work.

My work screeched to a halt. I ran out of work, so I had about a week or so where I didn’t have any active projects. Based on the numbers I had, there was no need to panic yet, as we were still on pace for our budget. When my wife could tell I was getting frustrated about it, she always gave me a gentle reminder: “Hey, you know that you’re going to have weeks like this every once in a while, that’s just part of doing this, remember?” But since I had extra time, I upped my output to 40 emails a day, and for two weeks, I spent every morning writing emails with music blaring to keep me from going insane.

After 10 working days, I had sent 325 emails.

It generated over 20 leads, but no work. And then, on Thursday and Friday of last week, it blew wide open. I have emails and calls coming in at all times of the day and night, and throughout the weekend. Those leads are sending me sample projects to see how I do, and 3-4 are promising steady work if all goes well. Paying work is coming in, and the immediate financial stress has been relieved.

In other words, the system worked.

But there’s a reason it worked. Like I said earlier, I had to make “20/40 emails a day” my goal. I couldn’t make “getting one or two clients” my goal because that’s not something I can achieve. That depends on the potential client. The reason the system worked was because I focused on what I could control, and I based the system off of a few factors that you can apply to your goal-setting:

1. I knew I could achieve it. It would take some effort, but it was something that I was capable of accomplishing.
2. It was specific and measurable. I keep a spreadsheet of all the firms I come into contact with and my correspondence with them. I track notes and dates, and when I need to contact them again. I continue to follow-up with leads every day, trying to generate more and more work. There are numbers and dates attached to everything I do, so that I can be clear as to whether or not I’ve accomplished it.
3. I knew it would generate results. I’ve done this before and I know what works. I watched the results of the campaign as I did it, so I knew it was working. I focused my energy only on actions that would lead to results.

You can’t make it your goal to get a certain number of customers. You can’t make it your goal to lose a certain number of pounds. You can’t make it your goal to win the lottery. Why? Because these are things that have other factors that you can’t control.

You can, however, make it your goal to accomplish a certain number of marketing activities per day that will lead to getting customers. You can make it your goal to exercise a certain amount and eat healthier, both of which will lead to losing weight. You can focus on achieving more at work to stand out from the pack and get a promotion that will lead to making more money.

There’s a difference between goals and results.

Setting goals is an awesomely-powerful thing. But you need to focus on the right stuff. Goals lead to results. You can’t make results into goals. If you accomplish your goals, you will enjoy lots of great benefits, but you have to focus on the action, not the result.

What do you think? Do you find that focusing on the results you are expecting frustrates you out of achieving your goals too, or do you disagree? Let’s talk about it in the comments!

This is part of a new series where I try to give you ideas for little goals that you can accomplish in your day-to-day life. Remember, small goals lead to big achievements, so try something out for a while and see if you can stick with it. And why 237 goals? I don’t know. I chose the number at random. I didn’t want to overthink it.

Recently as of this writing, I was at a get-together with my family. My mom and I were discussing our reading habits, as I have a Kindle and she has the Kindle software on her phone. One of my brothers and I were also discussing books we have read recently, and one of my other brothers came up behind us, laughing:

“You guys know they make, like, TV and movies now, right? You don’t even have to read – the story is right there and you can just watch it!”

He was mocking us, for sure. He felt books were boring and too “low-tech”. Yet, I feel like the entertainment world in the United States is on a sharp decline. Television shows are riddled with either the same old procedural cop shows or “reality” garbage, while the film industry is run by marketing teams whose sole purpose is to entertain and sell to under-25 year old males with explosions and lots of CGI in the place of a well thought-out story. The world around us is dumbing down, and as long as TMZ has their own television show, I will not accept television as a viable source of endless entertainment (there’s only so many ways you can say, “Charlie Sheen is a nutball”, before you just gotta give up and move on, guys).

So what benefits are there to – *shudder* – reading books? Aren’t books ancient? Aren’t they just boring old scraps of paper? Well, some of them are. But books hold a lot of value for your own entertainment and learning:

• They exercise your imagination. Yes, this is the classic grade-school, Reading Rainbow argument. You can transport yourself into different worlds, right? Well, sure, if you want. But exercising your imagination is good for your brain. Keeping your brain sharp is the key to being a well-rounded thinker, and thinkers succeed in life.
• They don’t necessarily rely on electricity. I run a home server in our apartment, so my wife and I have access to hours upon hours of television shows and movies. There’s no excuse to be bored at our house. But we came home from church last week and our electricity was out for over an hour. We ate lunch and sat around in the living room. Guess what we did? We read. I busted out my Kindle and she grabbed a book, and we quietly read to ourselves to pass the time. If it was dark out, we could have lit a few candles if we really wanted to, or grabbed flashlights. But without electricity, all those computers and the TV were useless.
• They can go anywhere without disturbing people. Grab a book and carry it around when you have to go places. Sure, you could take headphones and watch something on your expensive smartphone, but that will eat up your battery quicker than you can say “overpriced”. But while you’re in the waiting room at the doctor or while you are getting your oil changed, having a book there is quiet and doesn’t disturb anyone else while keeping you occupied.
• There are many more options available to you, and you don’t have to jump through hoops to get them. Authors from around the world get their stuff translated into your language. There are a kajillion books to read. You can read old war stories, psychological thrillers, hilarious satire, behind-the-scenes exclusives, gripping adventures, thoughtful philosophies, and even a wide range of vampire-related love stories (ugh). You are not limited to what a bunch of producers and marketers thought would get ratings.
• You can find a lot of books for free or insanely cheap. Ever hear of the library? It’s this magical place where you can rent books – for free! And there are tons to choose from there alone. You can even browse your library from home and request books as well. Or try a service like PaperbackSwap to get gently used books for the price of postage. Heck, even a great mainstream site like Amazon has a ton of used books available for purchase. If you’re an ebook lover or own an ebook reader, you can even get free titles from Amazon or from sites like Project Gutenberg.

So, if books are this awesome, why aren’t we reading as many of them anymore? In my mind, it’s because of school. The school system is built to get you to hate books. My teachers existed to try to get me to agree with their interpretations of books. It made me not want to read. And if I’m being forced to read for school, I’m going to associate reading with school, which means reading sucks. Unfortunately, so many people don’t grow out of this habit, and it’s hurting them exponentially.

How do you start reading again? Your goal, as with any small goal, is to make reading easy, accessible, and rewarding. You don’t want to jump through a lot of hoops, and you don’t want to be stuck reading something that keeps putting you to sleep. So, here are some ways to start getting yourself into the habit of reading:

• Start with short stories. The prospect of reading a big, long book (with no pictures!) is daunting if you aren’t used to it. Start with shorter pieces. There are plenty of collections of short stories around that will keep you busy for a while. They cater to your attention span, and they help you build up the stamina to read. Heck, there’s no shame in just sticking with short stories, either!
• Read the book versions of your favorite movies. You’ll be surprised at how much better they are than the movies, for one. But this also gives your imagination something to start out with, so you can better picture the story. Book versions tend to have a lot of stuff in them that the movie versions couldn’t fit, so they lend themselves well to surprise and can be quite fulfilling to a new reader. Suggestions: The Bourne Identity series is a great place to start for exciting reading, but even the more mainstream stuff like Harry Potter or Twilight is supposedly good (if you’re into that sort of thing).
• Stick with your interests. Love sports? My goodness, there are a ton of fantastic sports books out there! Horror fan? There are thrillers that will keep you up at night. Love documentaries? Browse nonfiction sections related to your areas of interest, like war history or biographies of people you are interested in. Just browse around for a while on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or just go down to the local bookstore and peruse the shelves.
• Get a Kindle. The current Kindle is $139, and I got one for Christmas. It’s one of the best gifts I’ve ever received. If nothing else, having a Kindle will motivate you to read because it’s a great toy and we all like new gadgets. Plus, you don’t have the intimidation of larger books, and you can read it like a regular book for weeks at a time. And with loads of free books and built-in dictionary system, you can finally tackle those classics that you’ve always heard were good but never got around to reading.
• Stop reading a boring book. What’s that? You have a book that’s putting you to sleep? Stop reading it. There’s no problem with that. Get another book. There’s plenty of reading for everybody. You are not in school anymore, so don’t force yourself unless you are really trying to read something deep to expand your mind. Get through a chapter or two to give the book a chance, but after that, if you don’t like it, don’t read it!
• Get involved with a book club. You can start one with a group of friends or join one online at sites like Goodreads. Either way, hold a little accountability and enjoy some good discussion with fellow readers. It might open your mind to some new ways of thinking.

What about you? What is your favorite tip to get started reading? Do you have any favorite books that you want to share? Drop them in the comments!

There are plenty of places to look if you want to see “impossible” achievements. This post by Jacob Sokol lists a stunning 48 examples of people who have rocked their worlds with fantastic achievements. But if you are sitting around, not getting anywhere in life, trying to visualize yourself quitting your job and traveling the world may feel like a stretch. These people must have resources you don’t – intellect, money, time, or whatever.

Right?

Nope – they’re average people. They’re your peers. I’ve had conversations with many of them personally, and they didn’t just get up one day and knock it out of the park. They started small – they achieved goals that look minor on the surface, but those goals propelled them into excellence. They laid the foundation with achievement, so that they could build the momentum and confidence to go out and grab their dreams.

What’s more, you’ll see below that some of them are still going after little goals. Changing your life is not a one-time thing; it is a continual process of going after the things you love and the dreams you’ve always had. With this in mind, you can go after your goals and clip them off, one by one, building on the last achievement. Change isn’t impossible – you may have to start small, but getting started is often the hardest part anyway.

Here are 20 of your peers – some are members of The “I Can” Movement (see the subscribe box to the right!), and some are entrepreneurs and inspirations of mine that are doing some amazing things. Check it out, in their own words (emphasis mine):

Tom’s note: I really wanted to include pictures of everybody here, but I didn’t like what it did to the formatting. If you care that much about how they look, just click over to their pages. They’ve got pictures. I would’ve just stolen them from there anyway.

David Cain – Raptitude – @DavidDCain

David’s blog has the awesome tagline: “Getting better at being human”. He currently has over 90,000 monthly readers while he discusses his efforts to destroy life’s difficulties. Here he emphasizes taking steps towards your goals, which is something I love to preach here.

“One pretty ordinary thing I did was start a blog. Just another blog on a heap of hundreds of millions of blogs out there. Anyone who can Google ‘How to start a blog’ can do it. Since then it has grown beyond my expectations, but that was a gradual process and there was no one task I did during that process that was particularly difficult or took any kind of special character. So I don’t think it’s a huge accomplishment. I didn’t have to reach down to the depths of my soul to move it forwards, I only ever had to go and do the next thing. And if I ever got to a point where I didn’t know what the next thing was, then the next thing was to figure out the next thing to do. Most big accomplishments are just a series of ordinary, fairly easy actions. They become insurmountable when you look at them as if they’re one giant action that only a superhuman could pull off.”

Mark McGuinness – Lateral Action – @MarkMcGuinness

Mark is a coach that focuses on helping creative professionals. He is incredibly friendly and is the most successful poet I know (okay, that doesn’t say much, but the guy is very respected in the entrepreneur community!). I like that he shares his struggles with his goal and how he was able to hold himself accountable to it – and how often do we fall into this trap?

“An everyday goal that eluded me for years was the simple habit of practising daily meditation. I would do it in fits and starts, for days or weeks on end, but always came unstuck by skipping the odd day when I was ‘too busy’. Finally, I posted it on my blog as a new year’s resolution, and told my readers they could hold me accountable for it. As a coach I’d have looked pretty silly if I’d had to admit the following year that it had been ‘too hard’ for me to establish a simple habit. A year later and I’d done 363 days out of 365, and over three years later I’m still sitting every day, so it worked – finally!

Here’s the original piece.”

Ali Luke – Aliventures – @Aliventures

Ali is a writing coach who I’ve seen write for many of my favorite blogs over the years, including Dumb Little Man. I’ve had the pleasure of having a few short conversations with her lately, and as she is getting into the self-publishing game, I have a feeling I’ll be talking to her more and more. She’s in the business of writing – and she’s good at it. She also admits to not achieving some things that most consider to be “average”.

“I’ve accomplished all sorts of very ordinary, humdrum things. And there are plenty of very average achievements that I’ve not managed yet — I can’t drive, for instance. I guess one of the most “average” things I did was to lose weight, back in my teens. I was overweight from childhood, and I was convinced that I couldn’t really do anything about it. Once I really focused on eating healthily, though, I found that I lost the weight quite quickly. It not only gave me a ton more confidence in myself (I used to hide under baggy clothes), it also made me realise that so many goals are possible, you just need to start moving towards them!”

Jonathan Mead – Illuminated Mind – @JonathanMead

Jonathan focuses on helping people ditch their day jobs in favor of getting paid for their passions. He, obviously, is a very passionate guy and recently put out a free workbook to help people figure out where their passions intersect with sustainable profits. He also values marriage very highly, which instantly makes him a favorite of mine. Lesson learned: you define what is extraordinary:

“The most ordinary thing I’ve accomplished is a great marriage. It might seem ‘ordinary’ but to me it’s something amazing, and epic in an unassuming way. My relationship with my wife is something I really cherish, and things wouldn’t be the same without my ‘partner in crime.’”

Marc And Angel – Marc And Angel Hack Life – @MarcAndAngel

I’ve followed Marc and Angel for several years now, and if you are looking for a little inspiration to keep you going throughout the week, their blog is the place to find it. They successfully merge inspiring content with practical tips every week. Congratulations to them for getting in better shape and making some friends – two goals I’m working on as well!

“Here are three ‘ordinary accomplishments’ Angel and I have conquered in the past year:

1.  Ran in four 5K runs for charity.

2.  Started consistently working out at the gym three days a week.

3.  Made several new friends in San Diego (we moved here two years ago).”

Brett McKay – The Art of Manliness – @ArtOfManliness/@BrettMcKay

If pressed to define two guys that I would consider to be “heroes” of mine, I would say Chris Guillebeau (see below) and Brett McKay. Brett runs possibly my favorite blog and community on the internet: The Art of Manliness. He also wrote a book of the same name. While the title makes people laugh, the content is classic advice to help dudes be better human beings instead of the buffoonish caricatures that we’ve become. He also ditched being a lawyer to do it – you gotta love that! His goals are pretty exceptional to some, but not everybody does this kind of stuff:

“- Paid off my school debt in a year and a half

- Graduated college in three years

- Had my first blog, which was a much smaller blog, The Frugal Law Student, named one of the ABA’s best law student blogs

- Made varsity on the football team in high school having not much natural ability but a lot of hustle”

Nathan Agin – Nonstop Awesomeness – @NathanAgin

I didn’t know Nathan until Jacob Sokol (see below) introduced us. Jacob thought he would be a good addition to this post, and I totally agree. Describing himself as a “permanent nomad”, Nathan dedicates himself to pretty awesome experiences. Heck, his average goal is something that plenty of people in this country probably thinks it pretty awesome:

“I file my taxes early.”

Tyler Tervooren – Advanced Riskology – @TylerTervooren

Tyler is one of my favorite guys on the ‘net these days: he’s established himself as a guy who’s swinging for the fences, and he’s put together lots of great, usable stuff. I purchased his Guerrilla Influence Formula a couple months ago, and it’s made a huge difference in how I’m approaching things here on The Nerd. He calls himself the “Professor of Riskology”, and his site is chock full of stuff that will help you take a few risks toward your goals. He has a great attitude towards accomplishments, too:

“This is such a hard question to answer because, honestly, most of my achievements are pretty ordinary. In fact, I think most extraordinary achievements come from piling together a lot of fairly ordinary ones. For example, I’m a pretty unfocused and scatterbrained person, so just picking something and sticking to it is an average accomplishment. Nothing special about that, but when I do it long enough and for the right reasons, cool things usually start to happen.

Nothing big that I’ve accomplished really ever started out that way. It usually started small and then grew as the little, ‘nothing to write home about’ successes started to mount.”

Jacob Sokol – Sensophy – @JacobSokol

If I ever need a little encouragement, I know where to find it. Jacob kick-started his online identity by being challenged by a reader to take ridiculously-successful (and busy) Gary Vaynerchuk to a New York Jets game. He got it done, and the rest is history. His post from the beginning of this article is the one that got my rear in gear. And he’s a cat guy, so he’s got that going for him:

“My most ‘ordinary’ accomplishment must have been getting two new best friends: Krylon and Prisma. Of course, you may refer to them as cats but I know them in their respective roles: my cuddling cartel.

My entire life I had always wanted a cat but my momma’ never gave the go-ahead for them. Well, one week I indeed did come home with my homeboy Krylon. Huge chick magnet BTW – he’s got a set of head-handles (ears) that could have melted Saddam Hussein’s heart.

Anyway, I’m not fronting. Those enormous ears instantaneously made way into my mom’s heart. She fell in love with the little guy and we’ve been homeboys ever since.”

Peter – Member of The “I Can” Movement

Great to see a couple guys from The Movement drop in and share their experiences as well. Peter walked away from a job, but managed to get it back, better than ever. Way to go, Peter!

“After twenty years of being a signwriter I returned to my first career as a dentist (I’d left that a couple of years out of college), first finding out how, then doing the required 300+ hours of retraining whilst working part-time and looking after our children before finally getting a job. And guess what – with a bit of maturity and life experience behind me, I am a much better dentist now then I ever was as a fresh faced twenty year old!”

Matthew – Adventure-Some – @AdventureSome – Member of The “I Can” Movement

If you’ve participated in the comments of this blog over the past two years, you likely have seen Matthew’s name pop up. He’s been an ardent supporter of The Nerd for a long time now, and he’s also a guy working very hard to put together his digital business. I’m very happy to have him as part of my Mastermind group.

“- Read all of the Harry Potter books

- Purchased a motorcycle (managed to do w/ cash so that it’s paid for, which might make it a bit less average)

- Studied abroad for a semester”

Colin Wright – Exile Lifestyle – @ColinIsMyName

How can you not like a guy who has his readers vote on where he’s going to live for the next 4 months? Colin is a very generous guy (as you can see by his great answer below), and is working hard on Ebookling – a self-publishing ebook platform. Like Ali Luke above, I have a feeling I’ll be having more conversations with this guy. Good thing, too. You should also check out his very good TEDx Talk.

“From my early teens, onward through my early college career, I had REALLY bad skin. For a slightly type-A, super-clean person like myself, it was offensive to the max that I had such horrific acne. I knew that other people probably assumed that I just didn’t take care of myself, and that irked me even more.

For years I had been telling my doctor I wasn’t so vain that I needed to take serious meds to deal with the problem – the potential side effects were INSANE – I didn’t want to take the risk, and I could deal with the bad skin until I grew out of it.

Eventually it got to the point where it was clear this wasn’t just going to go away on its own, and I had a very heartfelt nurse tell me that she was praying that I would go on Acutane, because she was afraid I would be ‘scarred forever by your acne, before it goes away.’

Looking at it from that perspective, how could I NOT try something new? All the other meds I had tried had very little impact, and I figured it was time to try a new tact.

So I did, and it was one of the better decisions that I ever made. My skin cleared up and I didn’t experience any side-effects other than a little dryness while I was on the meds. Booya.

It was a truly ordinary achievement – all I had to do was decide to give in an try something new – but it was one that made all the difference in the world for my confidence level. Sometimes it’s the little things that end up accruing the most positive results over time.”

Matt Gartland – Modern Audacity – @MattGartland

Matt’s whole platform is centered on doing some pretty awesome stuff. He is currently pursuing 10,000 Random Acts of Greatness, and is working hard to help people achieve their dreams and live fulfilled lives. Just check out the “Popular Articles” section on the right side of his blog for instant inspiration!

“My ‘ordinary achievement’ would be surviving middle/high school. Teenagers can be brutal to the unpopular, and I wasn’t. Add on top of that academic pressures, and those years are ripe for lots of challenges. Most of us face these challenges; most attend a middle school and high school in some fashion. And although we’re not always on the short-end of the popularity stick, we all wrestle with our emerging self-identity crisis (which is what I believe most/all of teenage popularity drama is about).

I overcame the pressures, putdowns, and whatnot to graduate a co-valedictorian and multi-time varsity sports letterman. Good achievements for sure that I’m proud of. But the mere fact that I finished is what’s most important. Many students still don’t finish high school, dropping out or worse.

The lesson here, to me, is that we must all endure everyday challenges in order to have an opportunity to become extraordinary. Sure, some have an easier path than others. But we all have our commonplace struggles and modest achievements. Engage in them, endure through them, and aim high!”

Penelope Trunk – Brazen Careerist – @PenelopeTrunk

Penelope has a bit of notoriety on the web for her honesty. I discovered her blog rather recently (though I’ve heard about it for years), and it’s stunning how open she is about her life. However, at the same time, she lets those stories inform some really valuable lessons. Her perspective is one I value very highly, and that’s not just because she’s also from Wisconsin.

“Getting out of bed everyday to me seems like a huge accomplishment. Life is hard, most days are not euphoric, we just hope they will be. I can’t believe more people don’t kill themselves. It’s so much easier than going through life. But still, I get out of bed every day and try to make things better. It feels heroic, but what I love about the world is that we all do it. Together. Every day. ”

Pete Michaud – Pete Michaud – @PeteMichaud

Pete is another guy that has been generous with his time, and I can’t thank him enough. His blog is a lot of fun to read at times, and rather poignant as well. He emphasizes the fact that we have more control than we think, and the time to act is now – so you can see why we’re going to get along just fine.

“I think all accomplishments are kind of trivial in retrospect.

Think of passing an English exam maybe, when you were in high school. Make it an easy one, for argument’s sake. You took the test, answered the easy questions, and moved on. But it’s only trivially easy in the context of the 12 years of prior ‘trivially easy’ English tests you took, leading up to that one test.

So sure, an A on the easy test you passed would be a monumental accomplishment for a fourth grader, but a fourth grader isn’t even going to be the situation where he has the chance to take the test.

So it is in life. You have to put in the consistent effort of taking baby steps through what you consider trivial accomplishments, to ‘graduate’ to a context where you can leap into what you think are major accomplishments now. Except when you get there, that ‘major’ accomplishment will feel like just another trivial, baby step to you.

That’s how normal people (read: everyone), reach extraordinary goals.”

Chris Guillebeau – The Art of Non-Conformity – @ChrisGuillebeau

As I stated earlier, this guy is my hero. The Practical Nerd exists because I read his great (and free!) guide called, 279 Days to Overnight Success. Had I not, this site would still be a blog devoted to ’90s pop culture – and you wouldn’t be reading it (nobody was). His book is a true inspiration, as is his whole story. Some could look at his answer below and not see a whole lot of value in it, but I immediately did, and here’s why: this is a guy who devotes his life to traveling all over the world. He published a book and put together his own book tour. He works incredibly hard and accomplishes stuff that people only dream about. But look at what he wrote below: does that sound like an average guy or what? Even people who are dominating their goals place great value on the average things they do, even if it’s just running a mile or writing a blog post:

“Not sure… got up this morning? Ran 1 mile? Wrote one blog post?”

Lachlan Cotter – The Art of Audacity – @LachlanCotter

Besides having some of the coolest designs on the internet, Lach’s site is a boot-in-the-butt for everybody who is tired of being ordinary. He also has my favorite call-to-action on his front page: “Not the life you signed up for? Sign-up here instead.” And he’s honest about his struggles, too:

“There’s really not much difference between an ordinary, average, little goal and an extraordinary, impossible goal. It just comes down to perspective. Just about every ‘big’ thing I ever did seemed pretty ordinary once I’d accomplished it. So it’s easy to lose sight of how far you’ve come. You are where you are. And since you’re always looking forward it often feels like you’re stuck. Like you haven’t ‘made it’. But by the standards of the ‘you’ of 5 years ago—you’ve made it big time. The reason big goals aren’t much different to little goals is no matter how ambitious the prize, the process to getting there is always the same: what are you going to think and what are you going to do right now, in this moment?

My little goals include: getting up in the morning, writing the next article, making the next call, knowing myself a little better than yesterday. And yeah—sometimes I still have trouble with the little things.”

Karol Gajda – Ridiculously Extraordinary – @KarolGajda

Karol’s name has been around the web for a while, and if nothing else, I owe him a debt of gratitude for helping me discover the wonders of the Neti pot. His average goal isn’t even considered a goal by many, but how many of us skip this important step? Maybe it should be a goal for us:

“I woke up and ate breakfast! Underrated and underutilized, but very important, average goal.”

James Clear – Passive Panda – @PassivePanda

If you are looking to start a business, even on the side, start by visiting Passive Panda. James is a very smart guy, and he should be charging for the kind of advice that he puts up there. In addition, he was also a very friendly, personable guy to chat with. His lesson is maybe the most important:

“My most ordinary achievement has been believing that achievement is ordinary.

It doesn’t require permission, it doesn’t come with an award, and you won’t get recognition simply because of having that mindset … but it builds the foundation for great things.

It’s your responsibility to believe in everyday achievement. Getting something done today should be the standard. Moving in a positive direction should be expected. Building new relationships should be part of the typical day. You have to make accomplishment a standard practice. Everyday progress is the only way to reach bigger goals.

Don’t make this harder than it has to be. Take one step in a positive direction. Reach out to someone new. Start on a project you have been putting off. Just get out there and make something happen. Then do it again.”

Yours Truly

My favorite “ordinary goal” is getting rid of cable TV. I’ve talked about it here, and in fact, multiple times. I have an even more sophisticated system now (thank you, wedding money!), but as a kid who grew up watching television nearly constantly, I was viewed as crazy by people around me – even members of my own family! But today, I don’t miss cable one bit, as there are plenty of great offerings online and through Netflix. Besides that, I’ve cut down drastically on my TV consumption, allowing me to do things like read more books or, I don’t know, start an online business.

What about you? What goals have you rocked in your life? Remember – no goal is too small!

“This takes too much time.”   So does growing your own food, but if you compare the taste of the vegetables from your own yard to what you buy at a grocery store, you’ll wonder why you paid for colored cardboard all this time. - Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

To say that I love a good piece of bread is an understatement. Ever since I was a kid, if the cupboards were empty and I was hungry, it wasn’t uncommon for me to grab a loaf of bread, get myself a glass of water, and just sit there, munching away. In fact, my brothers parodied this little quirk of mine in the Grand March at my wedding by carrying loaves of bread and bottles of water. Nobody understands why I do this, and there is really only one reason: I think bread tastes good.

Then, I entered the world of baking.

After discovering that white bread – my favorite kind of bread – generally contained high-fructose corn syrup in it, I started to question what I was eating. I’m not somebody that thinks HFCS is going to kill you if you consume it on occasion. As long as you balance it out with lots of good foods that are healthy and HFCS-free, I think you’ll be fine. But it bothered me that this stuff was in my bread. To me, bread should just be flour, yeast, and water, right? So I started toying around with bread recipes. My wife and I purchased a bread machine, and I nailed down a recipe that tasted good and had few ingredients. Boom – we stopped buying loaves of white bread.

My best buddy, knowing that I had discovered a love for baking bread, bought me a cookbook for Christmas with one sole purpose: to teach me the art of baking bread. I spent time learning how to properly knead the dough and bake the bread on a stone, and my breads are getting better and better.

But time can get away from you.

Anyone who’s ever baked a loaf of bread knows that it is something of a time commitment. While you can dump the ingredients into a bread machine and let it run for 3 hours, baking bread by hand involves a series of kneading, rising, and punching down that can take all day. Because I work from home, this hasn’t been a problem: I can set up the dough, let it rise while I work, take a break to go deflate it and leave it to rise again while I work some more, etc. But last week, I didn’t get a chance to get to it, for a variety of reasons. On the meal plan for the night was grilled cheese sandwiches. We needed bread, and we didn’t have any.

We had to buy a loaf of white bread from the store.

This isn’t that big of a deal, because I know that it’s okay to eat stuff like that once in a while. It wouldn’t kill us, and it’d be a nice treat to eat a store-bought loaf of bread for a week. The sandwiches were still delicious. So, having a loaf of bread there for the eating, the next day I went in there and grabbed a couple slices to munch on at my desk. Holy cow, did it suck. After eating homemade bread for months, we had gotten used to the much-better quality of the bread versus the mass-produced lousiness of store bread.

So, what’s my point here?

Once you experience the results, the work doesn’t seem so bad.

Virtually everybody tells us that they could never spend the time to bake bread or make pizza from scratch every week – that it would be too much work. But what makes me laugh is how we couldn’t get used to not doing this every week anymore. After eating the store bought bread the other day, the work it takes to bake a loaf from scratch doesn’t seem to be a whole lot, because I know that the results are going to be ten times better than the alternative.

You probably have goals that involve a lot of work: losing weight, paying off debt, eating healthy, building a business, etc. Before you start it, it’s going to look impossible and miserable. It might even be that way when you first get going. But once you start experiencing the fruits of your labor, you may not even want to go back to your old ways.

Never lose sight of the reason you are pursuing your goal.

I was together with some buddies watching football a few weeks ago, and I told them I had to leave because I had loaves of bread cooling on the counter that needed to be sliced before they dried out. They went ballistic. “You’re baking bread?!? You know that stuff’s, like, 60 cents at the store, right?” They couldn’t let it go. It would have been easy for me to crumble there, laugh, let my loaves dry out, and go spend 60 cents the next morning to buy a ready-made loaf. But I knew why I was going to leave to slice that bread: that bread would blow any store-bought bread out of the water.

You’ll be challenged when you make a change in your life. People might think you’re dumb. You’ll be tempted by how easy it is to just not do whatever it is you’re shooting for. Focus your energy on remembering why you’re doing it: how great you feel when you lose a couple pounds or pay down a credit card. The euphoria in your heart when somebody gives you money for your product or service for the first time. Whatever it is, let that propel you further, and remember how crappy things would be if you didn’t keep pushing towards your goals.

If I didn’t bake bread every week, we’d still have bread and I could spend more time sitting on the couch or whatever. But the bread would suck. If you didn’t pursue your goal, you could still have a pretty decent life and you’d have more time to sit around or do whatever it is everyone else does. But the life would kinda suck, wouldn’t it? What keeps you pushing yourself toward your goals?