Master-Mind Alliance: The Key To Less Work, More Life, Balance

We Get What We Set
Written & copyrighted by Richard Paris Borough, Ph.D.

Here's what I know. No one wants a life that sucks. No sane person would pick that. All of us would like to have a successful business career that makes us plenty of money, lets us to express our competency, and allows us to be as happy as possible. I've never met anyone who wanted to have a failing career, be poor, and miserable all the time. Successful, rich, and happy is just flat better than failure, poverty, and misery.

Now here's a shocker—the experts are often wrong! Nearly anything can be done. Young Peter Pan said it best, "Everything is possible if you try hard." I believe that business can offer you personal satisfaction and a good livelihood. I believe that if you think that you can, or if you think that you cant, you're right! I believe that we can do our work and live our lives with hope and anticipation, or with fear and despair. It's our choice. Expectations, what we tell ourselves, are more important than we sometimes think.

Do my clients sometimes have bad days? Sure. Improving the performance of a business so people can have a chance to be deliriously happy, at least some of the time is not easy. Sometimes it seems like you're rolling rocks uphill all day long only to have them roll back down as soon as you turn your back. Sometimes tomorrow is not your favorite day of the week. Being successful isn't for sissies. It takes courage to be successful. It does. And you know what John Wayne said about courage? "Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway."

When I talk to business groups, I sometimes ask the audience to stand and recite a little chant three times while pumping their fits in the air. I ask them to say: "I like myself and I love my work." This chant is affirming and powerful because of a complex psychological principle, which can be summed up in five words. "We Get What We Set." For most everything we do, either consciously or unconsciously, we set up expectations. With this little chant, we set up expectations of happiness. And that's a good thing because positive expectations can help our behavior improve. With better behavior, our feelings can improve too. We can begin to feel happier because we are happier. We Get What We Set!

Here's the heart of the matter. When you think about the level of success you've achieved, here's the question. Are you less than deliriously happy? If the answer is yes, if there's room for improvement then let's understand what's holding you back. And there are only three possibilities:

• First possibility: You find it difficult to imagine that anyone else could be in the same spot you're in and you don't think anyone could help you. Well guess what? You're not that unique. Whatever's going on with you, someone else has been in the same spot before and somehow they got out of it. So, that's not it.

• Second possibility: You have dedicated your life to enduring as-much-pain-as-possible; so naturally, you resist any improvement that could possibly lead to happiness as a matter of principle. This is rare, but it happens sometimes.

• Third and most likely possibility: Your life is so complicated that you feel overwhelmed. It's as if you've bumped up some invisible ceiling of complexity, which drains your physical and mental energy.

So life's complicated. And finding success and happiness through work does not come easy. If it were, we wouldn't call it work. But John Wayne and Peter Pan had it right. "Nothing is impossible, if you'll just saddle up and try real hard." Success and happiness are products of choice and hard work. So go out there, with a positive expectation, and see what you can do.

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Richard Paris Borough, Ph.D. , is President of Strategic Business Development; a Humboldt County, California based small business consulting firm. He is director of The Master-Mind Alliance -- and also publishes “Keys To A DONE BUSINESS” -- a monthly newsletter featuring business management best practices.