She then asked me what was my future plan. I told her that was my future plan. Her response made me think:

“So, what happens when you burn out? Like, when I burn out at work, I can still go in and do other things and still get paid. When you work for yourself, you won’t get paid if you don’t work.”

Now, my mother is not one to advocate going into a job and “doing it really half-assed” (which is “The American Way”, according to Homer Simpson). She has a valid point: most people who work can slow it down to recover from burnout and still get paid. What about me?

This was something I certainly had to keep in mind last week. See, this week, as you are reading this (if you’re reading it the week I posted it, anyway), my wife and I are gone celebrating our one-year anniversary in Orlando at Walt Disney World. I’m probably checking out “It’s A Small World” at the exact moment you are reading this.

Editor’s note: Gosh, I hope not.

But we agreed this would be a “hard” vacation, which meant no work. Other trips I’ve taken this year have involved me taking my laptop along to get some work done in the mornings. This week, my laptop stays at home. No work.

So last week, I had to finish all the work that was due. In a normal situation, this would mean that I would do two weeks’ worth of work in one week. While not an attractive option, it’s doable, and it’s something I’ve done before. But because of bad timing on the part of some of my clients, my week was loaded: 120 pages of content for various clients and 4 white papers.

In other words, nearly TWO MONTHS’ worth of work in one week. Hellooooo, burnout.

I hit a wall around Wednesday, and Thursday was an incredible struggle. With a couple of very late nights, I was able to get all the work done, but I still had to do things to keep myself from jumping out of the window. Working 10+ hour days all week on very unfulfilling work can feel like a cement block tied to your neck.

But I also learned how to manage burnout, and how to keep it from overtaking me completely. Here’s how I got around it, and how you can manage to avoid burnout in your life (without having to go into your job and phone it in every day):

Take Daily Breaks

While so many people understand and recognize that an entrepreneur often works harder than most people do in an average day, some still don’t get it, and they like to throw it in my face that I’m “lazy”. Common ones include: asking me if I’m awake when they call at 10:00am, commenting on me working without pants on (which I don’t do that often), and criticizing my lunch breaks.

See, unless I am swamped, I take a 1 ½ hour lunch break every day. After working from around 8:00am until 11:30, I stop working and leave my office until 1:00pm. This is my only scheduled break for the day, and I take advantage of it. It allows me to get involved in a non-work activity (cooking), and it gives me brain a rest. I can watch something on Netflix with a fresh-cooked meal while sitting on the couch, and I cherish my lunch breaks.

Some view it as lazy, but I see it as priorities. I find it much harder to get back into the “swing” of the work day when I have to rush through my lunch, and hurry up to get back at my desk. A quality lunch break begats a productive afternoon – and yes, I said “begats”.

Maybe you can’t take long lunches every day, but find times to step away from your desk and give your brain a rest for a few minutes during the day – multiple times a day. Otherwise, you’ll go crazy.

Unwind at the End of the Day

I used to get irritated at my brother when we were both teenagers, because after he worked until 11:00pm at the supermarket, he would come home and watch TV instead of going to bed. Then, we’d struggle to get him going in the morning. But my mom said he needed to do that to unwind at the end of the day.

I never understood that until I started working late myself. When I waited tables a few years ago, I wouldn’t get home until 1:00am. But then, I would make a plate of pizza rolls and turn on the TV to unwind. My brain needed to transition out of work-mode. Even when I worked late last week, I had to surf a little bit on the internet after working to calm my brain down.

Unwinding lets your brain focus on something else, and this is where you start really recharging your batteries. You can’t go straight to bed every night and then get up hoping your brain will switch back on. It just doesn’t work that way. Give your brain some active rest.

Find Outlets

There are three “outlets” that I try to tap into every day: creative, intellectual, and physical. For creative, I have this site and HustleLife. For intellectual, I keep my Kindle by my bed. Currently, I’m reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and I will be following that up with Bram Stoker’s Dracula – both are free on my Kindle. For physical, my wife and I try to exercise on a regular basis, and we are in a bar volleyball league with some friends on Sunday evenings.

These are ways to “work” at something, but still keeping it pleasurable. I savor our Sunday evenings, where we get drenched with sweat and dive in the sand for a little bit. It’s fun. Reading something I like to read makes a big difference in keeping my brain strong, and writing on a regular basis keeps that other side of my brain in shape. If your brain only has work to “exercise” with, you are going to get pretty miserable pretty quickly. It’s like being in a gym with tons of things to do, but you are always forcing yourself to run on the treadmill that faces the wall. You’ll stay in better shape and have more motivation to do all of it if you can spread yourself around a little bit.

Take Long Breaks

We’re not awash in money, but we have spent the past year planning this week’s vacation. It literally began as our plane was taking off en route to Hawaii on our honeymoon. My wife turned to me and said, “For our one-year anniversary, we should go to Disney World.”

You can get anywhere if you plan and save accordingly. Sometimes it’s great to just unplug from work and forget about it for a week. It’s the ultimate battery charger, and it should be done at least once a year, if not more.

Yeah, you’re going to deal with burnout from time to time, but you can keep it at bay for longer if you follow these tips. What’s your favorite burnout buster? Share in the comments!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I believe the teacups are calling my name…

It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.

I was watching A League of Their Own with my wife last night and this quote popped up, delivered by (my favorite actor) Tom Hanks. It was manager Jimmy Dugan’s response to Geena Davis’ character Dottie Hinson, who was quitting baseball despite being the best player in the league, mid-season. He told her she would regret it, and she said, “It just got too hard.” Then he let loose with the quote above.

I, like so many other times, immediately pulled out my phone and sent a note to myself about it. What a great line: “The hard is what makes it great.”

How often do we run away from something just because it’s hard?

• We plunge deeper into debt because it’s too hard to sacrifice some things.
• We keep putting on weight because we don’t want to get sweaty or tired.
• Our health goes in the can because it’s a pain to pay attention to what you are eating every day.
• We never succeed in building that dream business because we have to work for years to get it off the ground.
• We stay single for the rest of our lives because it’s tough to compromise with someone every day.

My Personal Saga of Barefoot Running

After reading the excellent book Born To Run by Christopher McDougall (affiliate link), I’ve been inspired to take up barefoot running, as I do believe that it is healthier and safer for you in the long run (pun fully intended). As you might remember, I ran a 5K a couple months ago, and have spent most of this year running. At one point, I was in good enough shape to run almost 5 miles at a time.

Since taking up barefoot running, I just run back and forth in front of our apartment complex. Sometimes I run on the sidewalk, sometimes I run on the grass. In total, I probably run a fraction of a mile in a typical workout now. And yet, when I’m done, I’m sweaty, my calves ache, and my feet are a little sore. I’m retraining myself how to run again, and it is hard.

Hard work is almost always worth it

As I push through that pain, it is gradually getting easier. I’m not as sore for as long, and soon I will embark on my first barefoot mile. As I put in this hard work, I know that my body will eventually reward me.

The gratification of that moment will be because of my hard work. As Jimmy Dugan is saying above, it’s the hard work that will make it worthwhile. Anything that you do that requires hard work is worth it in some shape or form. Maybe it won’t bring the intended result that you wanted, but you will learn something from every experience.

When did we forget how to work hard?

Do you remember learning how to walk? Of course not – it was so long ago. But have you ever watched a young toddler learning to walk? Sometimes they step gingerly. Sometimes they don’t make it past a few steps before falling down, but they keep going. One of the most heartbreaking things I’ve seen is my nephew Mason as a baby, trying to move. His muscles weren’t developed yet, and all he wanted to do was crawl. He’d push himself up on all fours, rock back and forth a little, and then fall face down onto his stomach. Immediately, his face would communicate intense frustration, and he would begin to sob, as he was working so hard to try and move on his own.

We take walking for granted now, but we forget how much of a struggle it was for us to learn. Our bodies had to learn balance and develop muscles we had never used. But nobody can deny that learning to walk was worth the trouble. It was extremely hard work for us to really accomplish it.

As toddlers, we were okay with working hard, because we could see the rewards. They were tangible – you learn how to feed yourself, you can eat faster. You learn how to walk, you can get places on your own. You learn how to talk, and people will finally listen to what you’ve been trying to tell them.

But as adults, the rewards get more abstract, and they are not always immediate. Once we lost patience, we lost the desire to work hard. And it doesn’t help that so many things are given to us nowadays without having to work very hard for it (money – at least a minimum wage, shelter, food from the supermarket, etc.).

My challenge to you is this:

Pick a goal. Grab it off your bucket list, or just think of something you’ve always wanted to do. Got one? Good. Resolve in your mind that it’s going to be hard work at times, but that you are going to accomplish it.

Now get after it. Don’t let anything stop you. Start believing in yourself and your goals. You have the capability to work harder than you ever have before. Even if you think you work hard now, you probably don’t. When things get tough, don’t whine and complain. Just accept it and keep going. Things sucking at times is a part of life, so just take it.

Embrace “The Beast”

One runner profiled in Born To Run was a woman who liked when fatigue set in during a race. While that seems backwards to some, it made perfect sense when it was explained – once fatigue hit, she knew what she was going to be dealing with, and once she learned to love it, she learned how to conquer it.

She called that fatigue “The Beast”. Too often we psyche ourselves out of something because we are afraid of “The Beast”. But more often than not, our fear is worse than what “The Beast” would do to us.

Go after it. Get “The Beast” and make it cower in fear of you for a change. It’s going to be hard, but that’s okay – it’s supposed to be hard. That’s what makes it great.

1. Eating dinner alone. At noon every day, I cook dinner for my wife and me. Then, I stuff half of it into a Tupperware container and put it in the fridge for her, and I stuff the other half in a Tupperware container and put it in a plastic bag for me to take to work. When she gets done with work, she comes home to an empty apartment and reheats whatever I made. At around 6:30pm every night, I walk downstairs to the office cafeteria and pull dinner out of the plastic bag and reheat it. I find a spot at a table alone and eat dinner with a plastic fork. After today, I will be able to greet my wife when she gets home from work and cook a nice meal that we can eat fresh on our dining room table, together. I can’t wait.
2. CNN/Fox News/MSNBC. In the cafeteria, every night, somebody has a loud, obnoxious, insipid political pundit show on. I can’t stand it. Everybody competes to see who can argue the loudest and half the time it’s about issues that don’t affect anybody (sex scandals, anyone?). Can’t I just have a nice sitcom on, or better yet, some peace and quiet? We don’t even have cable at home, so we couldn’t watch this garbage if we wanted to!
3. Public bathrooms. Let’s just ignore the fact that I have to walk halfway across the building to get to a bathroom. Then, when I get there, it’s smelly, it’s messy, and I usually have to use it when there’s somebody else in there. I’m looking forward to having a nice-smelling, squeaky-clean bathroom a few steps from my office where I can use it in peace and privacy.
4. Shoes. I hate wearing shoes indoors. It’s bad enough I have to wear them at all, I hate having to wear dress shoes all the time, too. So now they’re uncomfortable and they stink. At home, we’re rocking bare feet if possible, or socks. If it’s cold, I’ll throw on some slippers. But no shoes.
5. “Casual Fridays”. Yes, you can wear jeans. But tops and footwear have to be the same as every other day of the week. Yippee. So now I can wear jeans with my dress shirt and dress shoes. What a waste. I’ll work in what makes me comfortable!
6. Closed-off computer systems. At work: a Windows XP system with Internet Explorer 6 (because that’s the last browser their inventory system is known to work on), with sports, social networks, and Gmail blocked off. At the home office: an Ubuntu laptop with Google Chrome that I can surf anywhere (on my breaks, of course).
7. The chit-chat. I spend most of my day trying to avoid putting in my headphones – so many people sit and talk to each other that I can’t concentrate on anything. Besides that, I get annoyed that I’m working hard and they’re not, which leads me to…
8. “Putting in time” versus working hard. One thing I’ve always enjoyed about being an entrepreneur is that your income is directly related to how much effort you put into it. In an office, you work a little bit, go get some water, stop at somebody’s desk and talk for ten minutes, etc. I want my efforts to directly affect my paycheck.
9. The other limit on my income. Some people view entrepreneurship as too risky, thinking that it’s crazy to not have a steady income because you might have months where you don’t make as much. That is very true, but there are also a lot of months where you make much more! Those who haven’t experienced it can’t relate. Instead of viewing my paycheck as “At least I’m making this…”, I see it as “This is all I can make…”
10. Rushing out the door. If I’m not answering emails by 1:36pm, I get in trouble. So if I’m on my way out the door and I need to use the bathroom, I have to wait until I get to work and check in. At home, I’m free to take care of whatever needs to be taken care of before I sit down at my desk.
11. Corporatespeak. “Career pathing”. “Computer-Based Development”. “Shout outs”. “Code Red Days”. Endless acronyms. Let’s just talk about how we can do better at our jobs and then get back to work.
12. Meetings, meetings, and more meetings. Yearly reviews. “Touchbases”. “Roundtables”. “Town Halls”. They’re all meetings, and 97% of them are completely worthless and are wasting time.
13. Getting yelled at by customers. Customer service is a job involving a lot of unreasonable customers. I’m worn out on getting personally insulted every time I can’t help somebody. Which also leads to…
14. Not being able to help customers. When our system sucks and drops the ball, customers get upset. Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about it sometimes. It’s not my fault that 7,000 emails were never delivered to us and we’re answering them two weeks late, yet we bear the brunt.
15. Working weekends. When my family gets together, it’s on a weekend, and chances are it’s on a weekend I work. So, while my brothers and my nieces and nephews are having a great time making family memories, I’m stuck at a desk. It’s just wrong.
16. Missing football on Sundays. I’m from Wisconsin. On Sunday afternoons in the fall and winter, I am watching the Packers play. Don’t take that away from me.
17. Missing holidays. I missed half of Fourth of July because I was working. This year, the department is open on Thanksgiving Day. Is there a law against letting employees enjoy holidays? This is the one time where I say, “Screw the customer, let’s all be reasonable here!”
18. Losing spontaneity. “Hey, I’m in town tonight, what are you doing? Want to go grab a beer?” “Sorry, I work all weekend.” “Oh well, we’ll get together soon…”
19. Somebody else’s schedule. Working from home allows me a measure of flexibility, so that I can work my schedule around stuff that needs to get done. In addition, I can work around my productive hours. At an office, somebody tells me when, where, and how I can work. And here, apparently, I’m only valuable from 1:30pm until 10:00pm.
20. Getting stuff done during the day. If I want to cook a big meal or get a lot of laundry done, I can do that while working. I can just take a break to check in on something in the kitchen or switch loads, I can do that and quickly get back to work.
21. Boring desks that all look the same. They call them “cubicle farms”. I call them “suck”. My desk at home is one that I picked out (and it’s a standing desk!), and my surroundings are not gray walls, but walls filled with pictures and other knick-knacks that help me keep my sanity.

I’m sure I could come up with more, but I think you get the idea. There are benefits to working in an office, but I say the benefits of working from home far outweigh the risks. But hey, ask me and my wife again in six months. I’m sure I’ll update you as we go along. Stay tuned!

Three days before, on December 28th, I was standing in the post office lobby reading a certified letter from my landlord informing me that I had five days to catch up on rent or I had to move out. I had put all my eggs into one basket, business-wise, and that basket stopped producing money months prior. I held on as long as I could: my then-fiance exhausted her savings to keep me afloat, my parents had run out of money, and I was completely tapped. I had given up on the business and took a customer service job, working 1:30pm until 10:00pm. I was unhappy, and I was broke. I missed one month of rent and I couldn’t get it back.

Now, I was getting kicked out of my home.

My gracious parents offered up their basement for me to stay in until I could get caught up again. Despite my mom’s terrible allergy to cats, we figured out an arrangement where they would just live down there in the darkness until I got married and could move out. That wasn’t until October.

I was staring down the barrel of a long ten months – working opposite shifts from my fiance and not seeing her much, losing my nights to work and putting off time with friends, working weekends instead of being with my family, and now coming home to a basement every night. As much as I love my parents, it wasn’t what I would call “ideal”. But with no money in the bank and no business left, I didn’t have a choice.

Fast forward to October. I was sitting in a booth of an open-air Italian restaurant overlooking a beautiful golf course at sunset. To my right was my beautiful new wife, and I was sipping Sangiovese as I waited patiently for my lobster tail and New York strip steak plate to arrive. As the cool Hawaiian breeze brushed up against my face, I smiled to myself as I explained to my wife how I never imagined I would have ever gotten to that point.

How happy are you in your life currently? What would you change? Is there something that you sit back and think, “Man, I wish that could be different!” The truth is: it can be. It doesn’t matter where you are in your life. If you are unhappy with something, you can change it. So why don’t you?

For most people, it’s because it’s difficult. Changing your current circumstances often involves a lot of work, a lot of patience, and a bit of sacrifice at times. But the reward is incredibly satisfying.

For me, it involved less time with my fiance, less time with friends and family for a while, and a bit of temporary insanity as I lived in a basement with two cats. But in less than a year, my fiance and I went from broke to having a savings account, a beautiful two-bedroom apartment, a dream Hawaiian vacation (that we paid cash for – no credit cards!), and the freedom and flexibility to allow me to pursue my dream once again. I’m in a situation that I thank God for every night. You can, too.

Allow yourself the imagination to dream up a better situation for you. Then push yourself to achieve it. I’m here – where are you?

[Note: our wedding photographer was the fantastic Andy Stenz. If you need any pictures taken for anything and you are in the Wisconsin/Midwest area, give him a holler. His site is http://www.andystenz.com. In addition, if you would like to see more wedding portraits from my big day, hop on over to http://proofs.andystenz.com and enter "meitner" as the code.]

As such, I’m a firm believer in pre-marriage counseling. Many marriages end in divorce these days, so I enjoyed taking the necessary steps to ensure a lifetime of commitment with me and my future wife. Pre-marriage counseling was a key cog in that plan. So we sat down for a couple weeks with my pastor and went through various Newlywed Game-esque exercises and discussions on what makes a marriage last – and what keeps a relationship healthy for 50+ years.

At one point, my pastor was discussing some of the excuses for divorce that he’s heard over the years: “I’m just not happy anymore” was a big one. We both nodded, as it’s something we’ve heard from people before. If you’re not happy, why keep punishing yourself? But then, my pastor’s rebuttal was spot-on, and it was one of those moments where I thought, “Ooo! I’m going to add that to my list of blog post ideas…” Here is a paraphrase of what he said: you can choose whether or not to be happy.

Pow. That blows all kinds of holes into that argument, doesn’t it? You have a choice. It’s brilliant thinking, and yet it’s so simple. But so many people overlook this. People seriously underestimate the power of the human brain. If you choose happiness, you will be happier with life.

If you are in a marriage that feels like it’s crumbling, you don’t need to give up on it. That doesn’t mean it’s run its course or anything. Just because you are bored or confused doesn’t mean that it’s time to throw in the towel. This goes for just about anything: job satisfaction, friendships, home life, possessions. And here’s a few tips on how to choose happiness in your own life:

1. Understand that it will be hard. This is the road that few take, so it’s not one that you can just stroll down. You have to march down it with intent. How easy is it to complain about politics? Or about the economy? Or about money? Everybody does it and everyone feeds off of it. But when everybody’s talking about something, how hard is it to change the subject? Depending on who you are with, it can be very difficult. And even if you are on your own, digging yourself out of the “shame spiral” is a giant undertaking. Just because something is easy to do doesn’t mean you have to do it. Choosing happiness is hard work.
2. It is a constant, active choice. You don’t decide to be happy, and then it just happens. You need to actively choose happiness every single day. The day you get lazy with it is the day you notice everything going wrong and you determine how much life sucks. Don’t just assume – choose it. Every day.
3. Mental happiness is directly related to physical happiness. That term, “physical happiness”, is something I just made up as I’m typing this. But physical happiness is the state of your body. Are you in decent shape? Do you feed your body good, healthy fuel every day? Do you exercise? How’s your posture? Do you carry yourself as a confident, happy person? These actions go a long way toward your own happiness. Start acting on them.

I’m going to be one of the happiest guys walking the earth on Saturday afternoon and Saturday night. I will be marrying the love of my life in front of over 300 people that I love. We’re going to party all night long and enjoy each other’s company. A week from today, the two of us will be hopping on a flight to Hawaii for 7 days of bliss. This is all going to be a very happy time.

But it’s temporary. We’re going to come home and settle into married life. We’re going to move in together and be next to each other every night. We’re going to eat nearly all our meals together. Once my business gets back on track and I can start working from home, I will see her even more. Every single day. For anyone, the passive happiness will fade. It will start to need more effort. But instead of falling into some deep depression about the state of my life, I’m going to be paying attention. I’m going to be thanking the good Lord every night for the gifts He gives me, including my wife. I’m going to evolve and change, just like our relationship will. And I’m going to resolve to be happy. That doesn’t mean life will be easy, or that there will be no conflicts. It just means that I am going to pull myself through those conflicts and use my attitude and demeanor as a weapon against misery.

And it’ll work, too – because none of us are going through unique situations. Everyone goes through this stuff. This morning, at church, a couple was celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. A few weeks ago, they were spotted walking out of church holding hands. They’re happy. But I don’t assume for a second that they had an easy go of it. I bet they work at it every single day.

You’re stunned. Your knees want to buckle because you are so shocked. Notice your posture in this situation: your shoulders are probably hanging, your head drooped, your eyes staring at the floor. You shuffle your feet because you just want to wallow in your pain. Perfectly understandable, right?

Now, let’s imagine that she didn’t break up with you – you are just walking through the office. Is your body language different? It should be, but for many people (including myself), it’s not. I am consistently strapped to the problem with slouching. As a result, my neck hurts some days, I threw out my back a couple months ago, and frankly, I look stupid.

If you are happier, why doesn’t your body language reflect it? Some people carry themselves this way on purpose. They may just be down on life, rather than be depressed about a specific problem. But who is this helping? I’m currently reading a book called The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz. As I was laying in bed last night reading, he came to a section on how posture affects you and those around you. He says that when people feel important, they will start making real results happen. I wholeheartedly agree with this statement, and I have seen it in action in my own life the past few weeks.

My menial office job has taken its toll on me recently. Working opposite hours than my fiance, struggling to keep some semblance of a social life, planning a wedding, and everything else – it’s all been hitting me lately. As a result, I was drooping even more than usual, and my mood sure reflected that. But once I started carrying myself like a winner, my mood really started to improve. Telling yourself that you’re an important person goes a long way to improving your mood. Here are some great benefits to doing so:

• Mood improvement. Like I mentioned, my mood really perks up when I tell myself that I am happy. If you force yourself to smile through your own pain, you will easily be able to turn your mood around.
• Get more stuff done. A happy brain is one that gets a break every once in a while. And when that brain is happy and not preoccupied with bills, relationship troubles, family life, or the injuries to the Green Bay Packers’ secondary, you are able to focus on the project at hand and get a lot more done.
• Land a better job. If you are a recruiter looking to fill a position, who are you going to hire: the guy slinking into the office while staring at his feet, or the guy that looks you in the eye, sticks out his hand, and confidently greets you?
• Be more attractive. Yup, this’ll do it. If you’re like me, you would watch some of the more “popular” kids in class walking around with stunning girlfriends. Then you start thinking, “What’s he got that I don’t got?” The answer is confidence. If you carry yourself confidently, women will swoon. Those guys in high school were outgoing. Girls dig that.
• Raise the moods of those around you. A well-placed joke will keep you in your workplace. When everybody is bogged down by the weight of the world, be the guy to keep everybody going. They will all thank you for it later.

Now that’s all nice and good, but it’s not as easy as it looks, right? Well, turns out it is about as easy:

• Lift your shoulders and puff out your chest. Don’t go running around looking like Popeye after a can of spinach, but stop slouching. When you are walking or sitting at a desk, start positioning yourself to stand up straight. You’ll get there.
• Look people in the eye. Straight in the eyeball. Stop staring at the floor or pretending to look somewhere else so that you don’t have to look at them. Nobody is asking you to have a long conversation with him. Just politely say hello, smile, and that’s it.
• Constantly tell yourself that you are important. Ever see that Friends episode where Bruce Willis is looking in the mirror giving himself a pep talk? Like that, just not so creepy or psycho-ish. Just take a few seconds a few times a day to tell yourself, “Hey, you’re doing good work, keep it up. You’re doing great!”
• Smile. No excuses. Greet everyone you come in contact with and use a big, fat smile. And show your teeth.

Bottom line: only you can control your mood. The world can’t. No matter what happens to you, nobody and nothing can make you be grumpy if you refuse to be. Start refusing and start feeling better.

Two of the blogs I follow recently had some very interesting posts about opportunity in your life and how to take advantage of them, even if you don’t see them. The Art Of Manliness recently posted a “Manvotional” with a passage from the writings of Edward Rowland Sill, where a man is at war, complaining about his sword, throwing it down and leaving. Then the prince comes by, picks up the same sword, and took down the enemy with it. It’s a beautiful passage that speaks to one man blaming his tools and another making the most of what he has. Last month, The Simple Dollar posted a great piece looking at doing better than where you are now in spite of “karma” and “bad luck”. (Side note: seriously people, there is some great stuff out there on the Web, stop watching YouTube videos and reading about the cast of Jersey Shore and start inspiring yourself a little bit!)

So I started looking at life in general and how you can put these ideas into action. People often think that opportunity has to be obvious and “knocking” like that cartoon guy in those car commercials. But there comes a time where you need to start creating your own opportunities. Those that accomplished things in life are the ones that grabbed life by the… ahem, horns… and made it into something great. Here are some tips that you can use to implement greatness in your life and pull yourself out of whatever gutter you are wallowing in at this very moment:

Ditch the “victim mentality” right now. Like, right now. We have been programmed in the last 50 years to point fingers. You can’t get ahead at work because your boss hates you. You can’t lose weight because you don’t have time. You don’t have any money because the credit card companies charge so much interest you’ll never get out of it. In the movie Network, a news broadcaster stands up on air and yells, “I’M MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!” Okay, now it’s your turn. Stand up and declare to yourself that you won’t take this crappy life anymore. You are going to take control and take all the blame. The reason people hang onto the victim mentality is because then they don’t have to feel bad for lousy parts of their lives. They get to let go of that guilt and push it onto something else. Take responsibility for your life and all the risks that come with it.

Don’t be afraid to fail a few times. In a presentation given at the TED conference a few years ago, Ken Robinson discussed how our school system stigmatizes failure. It’s true: we push failure as the worst thing in the world when you are in school, and you are a lousy student if you fail a lot. But schools should be teaching that failure is an opportunity to learn something. In the real world, failure does not mean you suck at life. It means you were trying something new. Take the knowledge of that failure and alter your game plan.

I ran a successful business – or what considered to be “successful” at the time – for almost 2 years. But after it failed and subsequent attempts to revive it quickly did absolutely nothing, I was forced to take a long, hard look at why it failed. That’s the key: when you fail, you need to answer the question, “Why did it fail?” If you can answer that question and fix that problem, you have a much better shot of making it work successfully the next time. That’s why businesses put out prototypes of products. They are expecting it to fail so that they can learn from it. The same goes for beta versions of software. Failure teaches you something. I sat down and put together a game plan that responds directly to my past business failures, and now I am on the verge of being back in business full-time soon, with a foundation that is ten times stronger than the one I lived on before. I would not have had that if I hadn’t failed once already.

Educate yourself and learn from others. Pride is a strange thing. It will keep us from listening to those who have already made the mistakes we are about to make. Stop refusing to listen to other people. They are trying to warn you or advise you for a reason. Take their advice to heart. This also means reading blogs related to your problems – personal finance blogs, health/fitness blogs, blogs about business building. There is more free advice out there than you can imagine, and a lot of it can help you directly.

Starting today, you will not worry yourself about what other people are doing. If you are at work and someone else is getting rewarded, even though they are being lazy at work, don’t bother. The only thing you can do is work harder yourself and prove your worth. Just because somebody else is successful doesn’t mean you can’t be. It amuses me when broke people make comments like, “The only people making money today are the people that have money.” I couldn’t disagree more. The people making money today are the ones who are focusing on their own actions and not concerning themselves with other people. If you are spending your time and brain energy resenting people who have had success, you will never get ahead. Take that to heart: stop keeping up with the Joneses. It’s your life, no one else’s.

Consider an approach that is against the norm. For years, I’ve been told that, to build a business, I need a formal business plan, funding from a venture capitalist, and blah blah blah. They also said that a college degree will ensure that you will get a good job. What happened to that? If you have an idea that flies in the face of what people are comfortable with, do it. But only do it if you can show yourself how it will work, and show yourself objectively. This leads to…

Hold yourself accountable to the facts, and answer to no one else but yourself. When analyzing your actions, don’t give yourself a sales pitch. Look at the hard numbers. For example, when analyzing my business now, I have a spreadsheet that tells me exactly how much money I make per week and per month, how many leads I have, how many clients I have, and how the money is spread out among the clients. This snapshot gives me a quick reference to see how stable my income is, how I can respond if I lose a client, and I can see the trends in my business to analyze risk. This way, when I pull the trigger, I can do it based on facts. Without it, I would be going on assumptions of how much work I’m getting, and assumptions will get you in trouble every time.

Stop reading and start doing. You can read all day, but nothing will change until you start taking action. Get off your butt and work on your life already!

Have you ever had a sliver stuck in your skin? A sliver is a tiny little speck of wood – often from unsanded or unfinished wood – that gets embedded deep into your skin. Often, you don’t even realize you have one until hours and even days after you get it. But those tiny little slivers can pose a real danger. The same goes for your “tiny little” problems in life.

You may not realize it’s there at first

The annoying part about slivers is that you might not notice one until you are doing something that puts just the right amount of pressure on the sliver itself – sometimes sending a sharp sting into your finger (or wherever). Of course, by then, it’s too late to avoid: the sliver is there, and it’s a problem.

Your spending habits may be out of whack – you’re spending a little more than you’re making, but you don’t realize it. You put on a couple pounds, but it doesn’t catch your attention. Your boss is watching you a little more closely at work, but you have no idea. These “slivers” are gearing up to cause you a lot of pain, and by the time you realize that they’re there, it could be too late to avoid, which leads to…

A little problem turning into a bigger problem

A sliver may look small, but it can cause some serious pain. After all, if your skin is broken, you’ve just sent an open invitation to a large variety of bacteria and germs to come on in and start a party in your body. Your tiny wound can get more sensitive and puffy as a result, and now you have a real problem on your hands.

Those extra couple of bucks that you spent may have been put on a credit card with an astronomical interest rate. Those extra pounds can start to slow you down, causing more extra pounds. Your boss may be gradually reducing your promotion potential. See how a little problem turns into a bigger one really quickly? That’s why you have to…

Endure some pain to fix the problem

There are two ways to pull out a sliver, and neither are particularly pleasant. One way, if possible, is to get a tweezers and grab the end of the sliver that’s sticking out and yank it out. The more drastic way, however, may be necessary if the end of the sliver is beneath the skin. Then you need to sterilize a needle and dig the sliver out. Depending on where the sliver is, this method can be quite painful. But either way, it gets the sliver out, which is absolutely necessary for your health and comfort.

Need to get out of debt? Then you have two options: scale back your lifestyle or earn more money. Or both, honestly. Neither are very pleasant, because this means you are sacrificing things you like to do. If you like to spend money and buy nice things, you need to stop for a while. If you like to just sit around the house after work, you may need to pick up an extra job or start a side business to generate some income. If you want to lose those extra pounds, you need to get up off your butt and exercise, and also start eating healthier. If you want to win back your boss’s good graces, you need to stop slacking off at work and get your nose to the grindstone. Work extra hours and get more done than the next guy to prove yourself all over again. These things are all fairly unpleasant, but you don’t have a choice – they are unavoidable if you want to fix the problem. And, then, finally, after you have fixed the problem and removed the “sliver”…

Ensure that you don’t get any more slivers

If you know where you got the sliver, this part is easy – don’t do that thing anymore. But often, slivers come from seemingly nowhere (just like life’s problems). So now you need to pay attention to what you are doing: avoid working with unfinished wood without protective gear, or watch out where you are running your bare hands or feet.

Keep a budget and closer tabs on your spending. Pay attention to what you are eating and how often you are getting your blood moving. Make sure you know what your boss is noticing. All of these things will ensure that those “slivers” never come back.

Do you have any “slivers” in your life? How do you dig them out?

• You can’t get out of debt without knowing what got you there in the first place.
• You can’t lose weight without knowing how you got fat.
• You can’t have a happy marriage without figuring out what’s making you miserable.
• You can’t get an “A” on that exam without figuring out what you don’t know.

In chapter 7 of the book of Matthew, The Bible says you need to yank that giant hunk of wood out of your eye before pointing out that piece of sawdust in somebody else’s. In the same vein, you can’t point fingers at the problems without looking inward and figuring out what you’re doing wrong. So stop sitting around blaming the problems for your misery and figure out where the problem REALLY lies. You might be surprised to find that it might be you. Just entertain the idea – humor it – and you are going to unearth some big developments in your problem-solving.

Three years ago, I was preparing to move out of my brother’s basement. I had been living with his family in a makeshift apartment and it had reached the point where we were all ready for me to move out. I found a place to move in to and I set about the wonderful task of trying to find stuff for the apartment (i.e., kitchen utensils, various small appliances, and so on). I found myself at Best Buy wandering through the TV section, of all places, and I saw a “sale”: a Dynex 32″ HDTV for $499.

Televisions like these wind up a lot cheaper nowadays, but it was a pretty good deal at the time. Despite having a decent sized TV already, I started thinking about why I should get this thing:

• Well, this whole digital switch is going to happen and my TV will be obsolete anyway, right? I’ll NEED a new TV!
• It’ll be a great long-term investment in my entertainment. When all else fails, at least I’ll have a nice TV in HD!
• I’ll be working from home someday, I’ll want a nice TV to watch when I take breaks!

Oh yeah, and I didn’t have any money. So I whipped out the ol’ credit card and swiped it. And there it was: my glorious, 32″ widescreen HDTV.

Things were great. I was very happy with the quality of this TV, and I went out and charged an XBox 360 to it. I set up a nice HD-DVR through my computer hooked up to it, and life was good. I enjoyed Packer games in HD, The Office in HD, and anything else I wanted. I was working from home and life was grand. Easily, this TV was the best thing I had bought in years.

Then things went south.

I reached a point where I didn’t know where the next dollar was coming from. I had weeks where I struggled through a $10 grocery budget. I had an angry landlord who had to sit while I couldn’t pay the energy bills (and we’re talking winters in Wisconsin). I was prioritizing bills (“Let’s see, if I pay my credit card, I can let my electric bill lapse for a week, they won’t turn it off…”).

Some days I would sit and look at my TV. I’d start thinking about how much it was worth, with sadness knowing that it was worth much less now than when I had bought it anyway. Besides that, the interest had piled up on that purchase, so I have been paying hundreds more for this thing.

After all of that, the nice television offered no comfort. You might think it will – like, once you have it, you’ll enjoy it, even if you’re broke. But you don’t. As much of a TV nut as I am, I couldn’t take solace in having a nice TV when bills weren’t getting paid.

True comfort lies in security and accomplishments. Comfort comes from having a plan. That plan may not work out all the time, and sometimes it may blow up in your face. But you need to approach life with a plan – not with stuff. Stuff can be fun in the short-term, and even in the long-term. I still enjoy my nice HDTV. But before I turn it on, I sit down and make sure that I have the more important parts in my life taken care of.

Don’t pump money into a TV, or a car, or a house as a means of security or a nice feeling inside you. That nice feeling needs to be generated by activity. It can’t be bought.