man prevents decision fatigue by wearing same outfit every day

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To learn about the curious malady known as “decision fatigue,” I was given a very simple assignment: Wear the same outfit and automate as many daily decisions as possible for two weeks, then write about whether it gave me more mental clarity. That was it. Easy breezy. I jumped right in.



On Day 1, I picked out a crisp white shirt, got dressed, opened the front door and promptly spilled coffee all over myself. The first lesson of automating your wardrobe: Select dark fabrics.



<h2>Why wear the same outfit every day?</h2>



By “automating your wardrobe,” I mean following the fashion examples of Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and others whose jobs demand a daily deluge of global-scale decision-making. The idea is simple: To preserve brain space for the big calls, cut back on the less significant ones, because the collective weight of your choices, layered over and over each other, creates what psychologists call decision fatigue. Officially, that’s the “deteriorating quality of decisions made by an individual after a long session of decision-making,” says Jonathan Levav, Ph.D., the King Philanthropies professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Colloquially it means reaching 4 p.m. and no longer giving a damn about the logjam of problems in your inbox.



You can’t always control the flow of the big questions, but you can manage the small ones. Zuckerberg has a family and he has Meta, and he tends to both in simple gray crew-neck T-shirts. (On his first day back from paternity leave, he posted a photo of his gray-on-gray closet and asked what he should wear.) Jobs was too busy inventing the future to worry much about pattern-matching, so he stuck with jeans and black mock turtlenecks. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/us/politics/obama-after-dark-the-precious-hours-alone.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">In a July 2016 profile</a>, The New York Times wrote that President Barack Obama—who wore only blue and gray suits—daydreamed about retiring to Hawaii to “open a T-shirt shack that sold only one size (medium) and one color (white)” with Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan and his former chief of staff. When he and Emanuel were faced with problems that had no conclusive answer, they’d turn to each other. “White,” Emanuel would say. “Medium,” Obama would shoot back.



<h2>Real consequences of decision fatigue</h2>



“Making decisions uses the very same willpower that you use to say no to doughnuts, drugs or illicit sex,” Roy Baumeister, Ph.D., president-elect of the International Positive Psychology Association <a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/why-you-need-to-sleep-on-it/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">told The New York Times</a> in 2011. “It’s the same willpower you use to be polite or to wait your turn or to drag yourself out of bed or to hold off going to the bathroom.” He explored this and more with John Tierney in <a href="https://amzn.to/3GAnK8a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength</a>.



In 2011, Levav and two other researchers <a href="https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1018033108#sec-3" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">conducted a study</a> published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that found Israeli judges paroled prisoners who appeared early in the morning about 65% of the time, while those with late-session appointments were paroled nearly 0% of the time. After a meal break, the probability jumped back to about 65% before resuming its decline. The later-session prisoners weren’t significantly different. They just showed up when the judges had decision fatigue and therefore making the lowest-maintenance calls.



Generally speaking, I have fewer problems than Obama, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Israeli judges and most people on Earth. But I do have a wife, two energetic sons, a writing business and a daily grind. I also love making decisions <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-pandemic-sabotaged-our-decision-making-abilities-heres-how-to-start-regaining-that-self-confidence/">in the most convoluted manner</a>, which involves some combination of instinct, friend recommendations, Yelp suggestions, Amazon testimonials, Google searches and several competing strains of obsessive-compulsive disorder. (I once took two days to decide which NASCAR hat to buy.) There is more data available to us now than ever before, and I do cannonball dives into it.



I was intrigued to see whether eliminating the tiny decisions would truly free up space for the big ones. I dug in and made a plan to reduce my decision fatigue, and then I spilled coffee all over it.



<h2 id="h-choosing-an-outfit-to-wear-every-day">Choosing an outfit to wear every day</h2>



First, I needed a new outfit.



This proved tricky. Deciding what to wear on a garden-variety Tuesday is one thing; picking an outfit to wear every day for two weeks introduces several new layers of commitment.



I considered my needs. Since <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/working-remotely-heres-how-to-do-it-right/">I work from home</a>, many days my interactions are limited to baristas and the lunch crew at Amore Pizzeria. I don’t need anything fancy, but I do need adaptability—something suited for home and the coffee shop, lunches and interviews, school registration and playgrounds. My outfit also needed to be temperature-appropriate. (I wrote this during a murderous July heat wave that inflated temperatures in my Indiana hometown from&nbsp; “comfortable low 80s” to “surface of the sun.”) I also hoped to be reasonably stylish—nothing sleeveless, no bracelets and no concert T-shirts, although I did look pretty hard at my Guns N’ Roses shirt.



Once I started considering these questions, others began bubbling up faster than I could swat them away: Should I wear button-up shirts? Will I be too hot? Should I stick with short sleeves? Jeans or shorts? I don’t like wearing shorts. If I wear shorts, does that mean shoes or sandals? Am I a hard no on the Guns N’ Roses shirt?



Then it hit me. This was the exact sort of unending, superficial, time-killing decision-making I was trying to avoid. Four minutes in and I was already slogging through an invisible decision swamp about choosing the outfit I would wear every day when I had specific orders not to.&nbsp;



I stopped it cold and went full Zuck: gray crew-neck T-shirt, jeans and a pair of Vans. It was versatile and inexpensive, and no one would notice if I coated myself in coffee. I stacked a week’s worth of outfits in my closet and did a hard reset.



<h2 id="h-subconsciously-preventing-decision-fatigue">Subconsciously&nbsp;preventing decision fatigue</h2>



When picking my official automated outfit, I realized an unsettling truth: I wear a lot of the same clothes anyway.



I’m a person of pleasant, arguably predictable, routine. I use one brand of toothpaste and shop at the same supermarket. I always order a burger with blue cheese and jalapeños at the local diner. We’ve made a 12-hour drive to visit family down South for years, and I find myself pulling into the same gas stations, grabbing to-go sandwiches at the same restaurants. Even my subconscious, it seems, is <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-get-comfortable-being-uncomfortable/">more comfortable with the familiar</a>. I justify it as adhering to what I’m accustomed to, though the skeptical could say, “Try some different cheese, dude.” When I told friends about this assignment, they gave me a look that unmistakably said, “This will not be your most strenuous challenge of 2016.”



In all likelihood, you’re in a routine, too. “Most people have a <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/create-a-bulletproof-routine/">fairly structured morning routine</a> where they do the same things, eat the same foods,” Baumeister says. “The human mind is well set up to form habits and routines to conserve its energy.”



Over time, the plethora of decisions we make each day tire us out—and businesses know it, too. Levav found that by <a href="https://www0.gsb.columbia.edu/mygsb/faculty/research/pubfiles/2619/Levav,%20Heitmann%20et%20al%20JPE.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">manipulating the order of choices</a> to put the more expensive default options last—by which time people had grown weary of making decisions—custom-suit stores and car companies could encourage customers to spend more. (“High-end rims? Sure, fine, whatever.”)&nbsp;



<h3>A creature of habit</h3>



In most cases, we stick with what we like. For instance, I decided to automate my coffee orders and discovered that apparently I did that four years ago. This is common: Chris Garrett, manager at my local coffee shop, says nearly all of his regulars have a single order, which changes only when they earn a reward. Even then, however, they tend to order the same drink—just in a larger size or with an extra shot. Audrey Brinkley, a barista for just under a year, says customers don't tend to venture out of their comfort zones unless pushed by a friend or seasonal menu updates. “They don’t think of changing their drinks until you put a new one in front of them,” she says. This was interesting to learn, and terrible for my science. What good was intentional automation if I was already mostly automating?



I started looking for anything I could drop from my daily decisions. I determined that my kids and I would have the same breakfasts: scrambled eggs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and a frosted brown sugar Pop-Tart. (Full disclosure: I’ve been eating the latter pretty much every morning for 30 years so that was no big deal.) To limit screwing around with music in my car, I packed a dozen CDs to cut down on my ability to fire up my phone and pick from every song ever recorded. I sought out low-hanging decision fruit: parking in the same place at home and the store, running the same loop around my neighborhood. I settled in and waited for the avalanche of crystal mental clarity.



<h3>How to avoid decision fatigue</h3>



<ul><li>Make important decisions early, preferably right when the coffee hits your bloodstream.</li><li>Don’t decide hungry. Pack decision bananas or some big-choices trail mix.</li><li>Be easy on yourself. Willpower will come and go. Don’t pressure yourself to keep it up: Learn to manage it.</li><li>If you’re not feeling a decision, put it off. Better to postpone a decision than rush one.</li><li>Get plenty of rest. President Bill Clinton once told CNN, “In my long political career, most of the mistakes I made, I made when I was too tired, because I tried too hard and worked too hard. You make better decisions when you’re not too tired.”</li></ul>



<h2 id="h-what-i-learned-wearing-the-same-outfit-every-day">What I learned wearing the same outfit every day </h2>



First: The good news. During the initial couple of days, a load came off of my shoulders—a light one, sure, but a load nonetheless. My wife works early shifts, so on mornings with coffee to be made, smoothies to blend, day cares to reach, Cubs scores to check and a clock supplying constant, low-level deadline pressure, every little bit of automation helped. I can’t say it revealed brilliant new horizons, but it trimmed the to-do list, which I always welcome.



What’s more, I grew accustomed to my uniform. It’s curious to have one, and I can’t deny the dullish 1984 vibe that surfaced from time to time. But there was also a vague calm to it. I could feel things becoming more efficient, less stressed—not a dramatic lifestyle upgrade, but extra bandwidth. The experiment was working! Life operated a little more smoothly. That lasted for a good four or five days before everything suddenly got super boring.



Turns out when you’re already automating much of your life, making it official can feel suffocating. Right around the beginning of the second week, I began to feel severe burnout regarding gray. I started to miss my other shirts (especially you, Guns N’ Roses). I felt less like the experiment was streamlining my decision process and more like it was eliminating choice. Eventually it felt like work. “Maybe dressing the same is restful for Zuckerberg, but you reacted against it,” says Levav (who, for the record, dresses each morning in whatever T-shirt is closest).



<h3>Having a routine helps with decision fatigue</h3>



But I missed the point, Levav says: “The critical issue here isn’t wearing a gray shirt every day, but <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/16-rich-habits/">routinizing your behavior</a>. It’s not about a specific routine, it’s about <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/4-morning-routine-tips-to-set-yourself-up-for-a-successful-day/">having a routine</a>.” For me, while too little choice was limiting, too much created a paradox wherein I required two days to buy a Brad Keselowski hat.



That said, drawing from a smaller, preestablished pool positively cut down on time and energy. My closet is a lot of blue and gray, sure, but I got to pick which blue and gray. Too little choice scrambles the system; too much oversaturates it. When my experiment of wearing the same outfit every day ended, I went to the coffee shop in sandals and my Guns N’ Roses T-shirt and ordered an iced green tea, something I rarely drink. After all, some choice is good.



This article originally appeared in the November 2016 <a href="https://store.success.com/by-media/magazines/success-magazine-november-2016-megyn-kelly.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">issue of SUCCESS magazine</a> and has been updated. Photo by Dean Drobot/Shutterstock

Would eliminating small choices each day (like wearing the same outfit every day) help prevent decision fatigue? What I learned after 2 weeks.

Would eliminating small choices each day (like wearing the same outfit every day) help prevent decision fatigue? What I learned after 2 weeks. | SUCCESS

What I Learned From Wearing the Same Outfit for 2 Weeks

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Decision Fatigue: Does Wearing the Same Outfit Help? | SUCCESS

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Jeff Vrabel is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in such publications as GQ, Men's Health, Time, Billboard and the official Bruce Springsteen site, because though he's had many bosses, there is only one boss. He lives in Indianapolis with his wife and two sons—the older just stole bacon off your plate and the younger was personally approved by Springsteen (long story). He can be reached at the cleverly named JeffVrabel.com.

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What I Learned from Keeping a Gratitude Journal

Lifestyle

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Confession: Before this assignment, I’d never even considered keeping a gratitude journal. I imagined parchment, elf-crystals, perfumed writing chambers where the air is 75% mulberry incense and purple-haired millennials talking an awful lot about chakras.



Gratitude is also an example of what humans call feelings, and I have spent an awful lot of energy trying to avoid those. But as it happens, what makes me a lousy human also leaves me pretty well-qualified to gauge the effects <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-gratitude-works/">of a gratitude journal</a>—a tally of thanks I kept throughout December to see whether the gurus and positive psychologists are right about its uplifting power.



Science has fallen over itself proving how gratitude makes you not only a warmer person, but also a healthier one. Research has shown a link between gratitude and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6437090/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">emotional well-being</a>, as well as a potential correlation between gratitude and <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022399920301847" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">improved sleep quality</a>.



The idea of the gratitude journal, as with most leading forms of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/why-focusing-on-your-personal-growth-now-is-more-important-than-ever/">mindful personal development </a>(meditation, controlled breathing, ringing the Salvation Army bell, doing yoga in a 105-degree closet), is theoretically wonderful, a warmly resonant concept designed to blast rays of sunshine into your dull cement world of commutes, credit card APRs and Facebook. Gratitude journals are the opposite of work-intensive, requiring only a pen, pad and a handful of quiet moments. You can keep them anywhere. They’re meant to be mentally refreshing, spiritually invigorating, and free of expectation or reciprocation—an example of pure instinctual human goodwill.



The grateful among us <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53cbcafbe4b06e7bc846e3cb/t/5e5292efcd15995a4e9c841a/1582469872914/the-paradox-of-power-the-relationship-between-self-esteem-and-gratitude.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">enjoy higher self-esteem</a> and are <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322508405_Gratitude_Predicts_Hope_and_Happiness_A_Two-Study_Assessment_of_Traits_and_States" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">generally in better moods</a>. They’re<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-to-be-more-empathetic-in-conversations"> </a><a href="https://bmcmededuc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12909-020-02041-4" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">more empathetic</a> and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7460229/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">less inclined to vengeful retaliation</a>. In a famous example, renowned gratitude expert Martin E. Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania experimented with a number of positive psychology interventions. The most successful involved participants who wrote and hand-delivered notes of gratitude to someone who had influenced their lives.



The best part about<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/john-woodens-7-point-creed-be-thankful"> </a>being thankful: You can literally start reaping these benefits before you even shake yourself out of bed. “Begin the day with gratitude,” says Gregory Jantz, Ph.D., founder of The Center: A Place of HOPE, and a personal development author. “Find simple things: I have a roof over my head, I have work. Start small.” The effect, Jantz says, is aggregate. “As I become more grateful, I become more optimistic, more humble, more teachable. I begin to see things I wouldn’t normally see. <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/5-realistic-tips-to-be-more-positive/">I become more positive</a>.”



So with those benefits in mind, I began writing my first gratitude journal entry of the month.



***



Gratitude log 1: OK, so here goes: Thanks to a close bus stop and my instinctual OCD, mornings are pretty chill around here. Instead of frenetically scrambling around prodding the children and occasionally flinging waffles at them, we can actually—you know—eat breakfast. Usually after the oldest heads to the bus stop, the youngest will bobble downstairs, hair frazzling out in about 40 directions, rubbing sleep out of his eyes with balled-up fists and looking as if he’d ask me for coffee if he wasn’t 5. Luckily he is 5, which means we get to spend a few minutes lounging on the couch, he and his screwy hair balled up in my lap, deciding whether it feels more like a Honeycomb or Frosted Flakes morning. I’m not going to pretend that mornings with a 5-year-old are a magic-lit Hallmark scene of redemptive sunlight, but it’s a pretty nice way to kick off the day.



***



Before long, I settle into a December routine: Around 10 p.m., I make tea, find a spot on the couch and dig around my brain being thankful. I start slow, writing about things that generally don’t have feelings of their own: our evocatively cluttered Christmas tree, a reasonably successful year of self-employment, safety and comfort—the usual suspects. Later I’ll improve at this, writing to friends in distant states, college buds I don’t see enough, the old crew that gathers every year for a Christmas party, my mom and myself. I can’t claim to have glimpsed nirvana, but did it make me feel lighter walking upstairs to go to sleep? Absolutely.



“Spending appropriate time thinking about what you’re thankful for—and really meaning it—helps<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/17-inspirational-quotes-to-help-you-refocus-and-renew"> </a>refocus <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/mindfulness-are-you-paying-attention/">what you’re paying attention to</a>,” says Courtney Johnson, Ph.D. “Even if it’s just, ‘I’m grateful this winter isn’t as cold as last year’s’ or ‘The sun is shining even though it’s freezing.’” In short order, she says, the good stuff will pop.



***



Gratitude log 4: This one is dedicated to my oldest. He’s midway through seventh grade—universally accepted as the worst year of schooling—and pretty well crushing it. He’s a sweet kid, imaginative, thoughtful and kind. He can be flaky and frustrating, but in a good way—his brain is firing at absurd repeating rates, taking things in and examining them. It makes him a part-time citizen of the outside world here, sure, but it means there are worlds in his mind that I can’t wait to see open up. One day he’ll walk out the door and end up somewhere exotic, tropical, freezing or remote, confident and curious. It’ll be hard to see him go, but I’m thankful that’s the way he is. He’s taught me much in the past 13 years, more than I ever thought he could, and I’m holding my breath to see what he does next.



***



I won’t sugarcoat this part: Midway through the monthlong exercise, I grew pretty tired of gratitude. As with anything that demands<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/7-ways-to-develop-daily-discipline"> </a>daily dedication, my journal started to seep into the sticky ground of chores, rather than mental wellness. The kids would go to bed, the dishes would be put away, and I’d grab a book and sit down and think, Oh wait. Dammit. I need to go be grateful for something. Gratitude is wonderful; forced gratitude is kind of a nag.



The problem, I realized, is this is when I needed the exercise the most, when I’d just as soon have checked out for the day, gone to sleep or watched the pointless fourth quarter of a blowout Chicago Bears game. The idea wasn’t the journal—that was easy enough—it was the tireless persistence of the journal, the cumulative effect. I couldn’t bail just because I was sleepy.



So because it was late and I was grumpy, I aimed my entry low and settled in to be thankful for video games. It was a balmy 6 degrees that night, with a wind chill of are-you-kidding-me-with-this. After dinner, my wife had broken off to wrap presents, so I adjourned upstairs to accept my son’s challenge in a fierce game of Super Mario Kart 8. Sadly, my youngest had not consumed enough pasta to earn him a turn at the controller, so, relegated to the role of observer, he waddled up to the couch and plopped right between his big brother and me. For a good 20 minutes, that’s where we sat, my boys and I, tucked safely inside on a warm couch on a bone-chillingly cold night letting our brains melt into oatmeal together. I’m not going to say this was a magical moment on par with seeing your child perform a recital, nail a game-winning three-pointer or earn a graduate degree. But, as a little in-between, a cut-scene in the midst of our real lives, it was a pretty good one. Before, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/all-you-have-is-this-moment-how-will-you-choose-to-spend-it/">I might have missed it</a>.



***



Gratitude log 15: Today I have decided to be grateful for the winter chill, which is hard, because cold is stupid. So it’s with gritted teeth and a 48-oz. chum bucket full of hot chocolate that I say the following: I am thankful for you, cold, how the snow sparkles in moonlight, how I can stand at the dining room window and look outside into the water-blue landscape with my family tucked under flannel blankets upstairs, how the snow hangs onto the Tiki lights on the back porch. I’m thankful for how Bing Crosby sounds best in the December nighttime, how Silver Bells means Chicago to me, how my son scribbled HI DAD in the snow on the back porch. I even like scarves. All things being equal, I’d whisk us all to the Caribbean tomorrow if we could, but since I’m here, sprinting from indoor haven to indoor haven, I should make the best of it, focusing on the good in the cold, the way it blankets both me and all my friends and family. Lord, that was hard.



***



A hiccup. If you’ve never had the pleasure of visiting the Midwest in December, close your eyes and imagine flat, cold and gray, punctuated occasionally by ice storms. Here on the western edge of the Eastern time zone, darkness falls around 4:30 p.m., which means if you put in a little effort, you can go an entire workday without seeing the sun. Add in the hapless former Bears quarterback Jay Cutler, the brown slush that accumulates in your wheel wells and the knowledge that once the new year turns, you only have four more months of it, and yeah. Winter is long here.



The house, following suit, had turned cold. My wife and I had been inexplicably short with each other for a week, quick in our annoyance and cleverly sarcastic comebacks. We chalked it up to some lingering winter malady, probably picked up from her children’s hospital job or one of the kids’ schools, the germs within exacerbated by winter and forever-closed windows. The Christmas to-do list rattled around my laptop every few minutes, reminding me that yuletide joy had a deadline. It was, as you might guess, an exceedingly lousy time to keep a gratitude journal. It took this icy low point to make the miracle happen.



Late Sunday night, as is my custom/survival requirement, I went to prepare coffee for the following morning. I don’t know what compelled me to look at the label that night, what impulse drew my eye upward from the routine, but that’s when I saw it, looking at me, taunting me, smirking like the guy who runs the Death Star. Decaf. The tiny word on the label. I could live to be 100 and never understand why coffee companies print that word so unbearably small on their labels.



Having non-coffee in the house is simply not an option for me. I would rather not have walls.



Naturally, I went out in the 34-degree Midwestern sleet to buy coffee-coffee, ungratefully chucking the decaf straight into the outdoor garbage can. Two days later, the sleepy, snappy malaise that hovered over our house like some gray beast was gone, and holiday joy had returned.



***



Gratitude log 24: While the journaling exercise eventually made my heart grow a few sizes and gave me a greater appreciation for my many gifts, it apparently did so with about the same power as caffeine. Obviously I am grateful to know this.



***&nbsp;



The idea of a gratitude journal is worthy; the commitment, difficult. I told myself I’d stick with meditation after a similar monthly experiment for SUCCESS last spring, but concentrated mindfulness hasn’t exactly become a daily routine.



Still,<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-why-you-should-keep-a-journal"> </a>my journaling taught me a lesson that proved similar to that monthlong flirtation with meditation. Probably, by the time you read this, I’m no longer keeping my gratitude journal. It very well might fade, like a disappointing percentage of my attempts to inject productive self-improvement into the spaces of my day generally reserved for stuff such as Super Mario Kart 8. Even at the dawn of the new year—or especially at it—ambition makes a grand, striding entrance, and in short order it is knocked on its silly face by the machinery of daily life, in all its own grand, dull meaning.



At the same time,<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/15-thoughtful-quotes-about-gratitude"> </a>the seeds of gratitude are there, and they’ll remain. Somewhere in my cluttered, crowded brain folds there’s the notion that gratitude heals. The seed of the idea—to shut up and give thanks <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/7-ways-to-practice-gratitude-to-help-you-grow/">more than once every few months</a>—is planted. How it sprouts is up to time. “If you wake up and think, I am grateful that today, blank” says Jantz, “you begin to think in a different way.” And that part worked for me. Well, that and the real coffee.



This article originally appeared in the<a href="https://store.successcom.wpenginepowered.com/by-media/success-magazine-april-2017-jocko-willink.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> April 2017 issue</a> of SUCCESS magazine and has been updated. Photo by Mariia Korneeva/Shutterstock

The idea of a gratitude journal is worthy; the commitment, difficult.

The idea of a gratitude journal is worthy; the commitment, difficult. | SUCCESS

What I Learned from Keeping a Gratitude Journal | SUCCESS

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Business &amp; Branding

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Working remotely comes with <a href="https://buffer.com/state-of-remote-work/2022" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a wealth of perks</a>—potentially increased happiness, flexible hours and the ability to work from Dunkin’ among them. But none is better than the dress code.



For years, the ensemble I uproariously call <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/what-i-learned-from-wearing-the-same-outfit-for-2-weeks/">my “work uniform”</a> has been standard Writer Guy: potentially clean jeans, button-up shirt over a probable graphic tee and Vans sneakers. It’s always felt professional to me, perhaps because prior to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/5-lessons-i-learned-freelancing/">my freelance life</a>, I worked at newspapers including Hilton Head Monthly. (If you’ve never been, newsroom dress codes can range all the way from dressy to deeply casual.)



Of course not all freelance writers dress this way. Gay Talese, <a href="https://contently.net/2013/10/17/resources/news/gay-talese-on-his-career-sinatra-and-new-journalism/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the pioneering literary journalist</a>, wrote in <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2007/08/talese200708" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Vanity Fair</a> in 2007 that “putting on a beautifully designed suit elevates my spirit, extols my sense of self and helps define me as a man to whom details matter.”&nbsp;



For white-collar workers, however, dress codes may be loosening up. That said, we still live in <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296320307797" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a world of impressions</a>, first and otherwise. If I’m in a lobby <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/what-not-to-wear-to-an-interview/">waiting for an interview</a> in my best Vans and the other guy is in a slick suit and tie, I’ve damaged myself. I might be sharper and more talented, and may very well get the job, but I’ll have to dig out of a hole to do it.



“Perception is everything. There is no reality,” says Caroline Dowd-Higgins, executive director of career and professional development at the Indiana University Alumni Association. “If I come to work in yoga pants, the perception might be that I’m laid-back and casual, so maybe my work ethic is, too. I want to be able to set a tone, establish myself <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-get-promoted-4-steps-to-prepare-for-the-next-step-in-your-career/">as a promotable player</a>.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-dressing-for-success-for-a-week-an-experiment">Dressing for success for a week: an experiment</h2>



Frankly, I have little experience in this field. So I set out to see whether the clothes made the man by donning a suit daily—dressing for success for a workweek. I’d wear it to my usual travels: kindergarten drop-off, the coffee shop <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-new-normal-finding-routine-and-perspective-in-coffee-shops/">where I work</a>, dentist appointments, the pizza place where I take my sons on Tuesdays, my standing lunch with my buddy Bradshaw. The idea was to gauge the effects of the visual, to see how a suit affected other people’s impressions of me and—more importantly—my impression of myself.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-initial-confidence-boost">The initial confidence boost</h3>



On the first day of dressing for success, at 8 a.m. in the kitchen, my wife asked, “What in the world are you wearing?” A good start.



An hour later, I opened the door to my usual caffeinated workplace with a noticeably increased sense of swagger, a confidence that had been absent from my previous 14,000 morning visits. But disappointingly, nobody seemed to give the slightest notice to my amplified handsomeness. Not the baristas. Not the other regulars. And not the personable veteran who runs the place.



“But look,” I self-consciously tried to broadcast, ambling slowly to the croissant rack, “I am properly and handsomely attired for the day’s travails! I am a professional! I hath matched mine socks to mine own pants!” I did this for an hour. Nothing happened, except for somebody asking whether I wanted whipped cream on my salted caramel mocha. Of course I did. I was a professional.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-feeling-like-george-clooney">Feeling like George Clooney</h3>



On Day 2, I left for work at the same time as my suburban neighbor, both of us climbing into our sensible family-toting small SUVs while waving collegially to each other. We were headed out to carpe the diem, to grab the world by the throat, to make our mark.



My kindergartener forgot his backpack that morning, meaning I had to return home, retrieve it and bring it back to his school’s office. “Hi, guys,” I said brightly, entering the school in a reasonable approximation of George Clooney walking into the Bellagio in Ocean’s Eleven. “I have a backpack.”



“I can see that,” replied the nice lady at the desk. “It matches your suit.” It was an R2-D2 backpack, so she might have been insulting me, but at least someone noticed.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-dressing-for-success-and-feeling-out-of-place">Dressing for success and feeling out of place</h3>



On Day 3, after waving again to my increasingly weirded-out neighbor, I drove downtown to one of our city’s finest hipster establishments, a coffee shop thick with Ramones music, blue-haired baristas and posters for art riots and kombucha. In this space, looking outlandishly formal, I felt less like I was settling in to write and more like I was about to issue citations about health-code violations.



Later that day, I opened the door to my son’s after-school care with expectations high. I was there regularly—surely the staff and teachers here would notice that something was different, that my formality was worth bringing up! And yet, nothing. Zero.



The next day I wore the suit to Target. Maybe I was just being self-conscious, but it really felt like most of the other people in the LEGO aisle were looking at me funny.



On the morning of the last day, my 13-year-old son asked, “So how long are you going to play dress-up?” That summed up the week pretty well.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-dressing-for-success-for-a-week-the-results">Dressing for success for a week: the results</h2>



I realized my wiseapple eighth-grader was right. That was the effect. I felt overdressed. For everything.



My world is simply not one that demands formality; if anything, it does the opposite. Wearing a suit felt alien to my travels and tasks, some sort of plea for attention. It was nice to enjoy the subtle respect afforded to people who look put together, on the rare occasions when that happened, but mostly it felt silly. And none of these people knew me. My family knew I was up to something, but to everyone else, I was just another guy in a suit.



The problem, I learned, was that I wasn’t matched for my day, my needs, my audience. If you work in an open floor-plan loft that is essentially a pinball-powered juice bar where millennials occasionally build apps, bring it down. If you’re a lawyer, don’t show up to work in a Pearl Jam T-shirt and cargo shorts, or there will be words. The simple solution is to respect the situation.



I’ve spent a considerable and accidental amount of time <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-build-a-personal-brand-9-tips-for-making-a-mark-that-lasts/">cultivating my personal brand</a>, which remains an irritating way to say, “Be what you are already.” People generally know what to expect from me as a freelance magazine writer. When I present myself in a way that’s contrary to that image, it throws things off and makes people feel out of place, uncomfortable. Especially me.



But I looked fantastic.



This article was updated April 2023. Photo by Gutesa/Shutterstock

Here's what happened when one writer (who normally wears T-shirts and jeans) experimented with dressing for success for a week.

Here's what happened when one writer (who normally wears T-shirts and jeans) experimented with dressing for success for a week. | SUCCESS

Does Dressing for Success Really Work?

Dressing for Success: Does It Really Work? | SUCCESS

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friends talking and giving each other feedback

It seems that one of the truths of human nature is that we ask for the honest opinions <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2022/12/do-real-friends-tell-truth-confrontation/672437/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">of our loved ones</a>—so long as that honesty is unfailingly positive and contains no bad news whatsoever. We seem to revel in approval and seek it by means both conscious and sneaky. We ask directly (“Is this what you were looking for?”) and solicit passively (“I’m not very good at this, so I hope it’s close to what you’re looking for.”). Sometimes we ask leading questions (“Does this shirt make my stomach look fat?”) and frame our statements to solicit responses (“Ugh, this shirt makes my stomach look fat.”). We lightly bait those whose approval we crave (“I’m only buying this shirt if it doesn’t make my stomach look fat.”). “Be honest,” we say, when what we really mean is, “Just tell me I’m OK.”



When we’re asked to provide those honest assessments of a loved one, spouse, colleague, barista, barber or bartender, we make a full stop, our brains flinging themselves through a maze of psychological pulls and snap decisions. Should I be honest with this person? Can I be honest? Will they take my honesty too hard? Will I hurt them?



Feedback, in short, sucks. <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/feedback-take-it-or-leave-it-but-dont-defend-yourself-against-it/">When it’s bad</a>, we ignore it, push it away or spend hours listing the reasons why it’s illegitimate, biased or unfair. When it’s good, we wrap ourselves tightly in a blanket of it, assured that our self-opinions have been safely validated. It’s a hopelessly tricky thing. So when SUCCESS asked me to submit to a 360-degree feedback review of myself via friends, family and colleagues, I’m pretty sure I said yes without thinking it all the way through.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-what-is-a-360-review">What is a 360 review?</h2>



No matter the goal or financial <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/5-tips-for-building-and-growing-a-purpose-driven-business/">purpose your company is striving toward</a>, the business will be buoyed or mired, depending on your perspective, by the human element. That means <a href="https://www.pwc.com/us/en/tech-effect/innovation/human-element-in-digital-transformations.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the human element</a> must be considered and regularly evaluated. This is a process that, without resorting to gross hyperbole, has been hated by everyone on the planet forever.



For a while, the go-to means of <a href="https://www.workhuman.com/blog/human-workplace-index-annual-review/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">employee evaluation</a> was the performance review. It usually involved heading to your boss’ office and, with any luck, emerging 45 weird minutes later with a positive review, some vaguely token areas of improvement and a pay raise slightly outpacing the rising cost of living. In the 1990s, a new method had spread and gained momentum: the intimidatingly named <a href="https://www.thebalancemoney.com/what-is-a-360-review-1917541" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">360-Degree Performance Review</a>. It collects feedback from a baseball starting-lineup’s worth of colleagues, supervisors, vendors and clients—a sampling of everyone with whom you regularly interact.&nbsp;



I’ve never been subject to a 360-degree review before—to be honest, I had barely heard of them. Since 2011, I’ve <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/4-ways-you-can-reinvent-yourself-in-the-youeconomy/">worked in the YouEconomy</a> as a freelance writer, one rarely subjected to professional grading of any kind. So I did what any enterprising reporter would do: Asked for thoughts on them from my Facebook friends, who reported, with near-unanimity, that 360s were kind of terrible.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-it-s-more-of-a-feedback-mechanism">‘It’s more of a feedback mechanism’</h3>



Naturally I was full of dread before partaking in my own review. But an assignment is an assignment, and I needed to figure out how to get myself evaluated. To do so, I reached out to <a href="https://www.fhsolutionsgroup.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">FH Solutions Group</a>, “a top national labor relations consulting firm,” according to their website, whose former chief operating officer, Brad Federman, said the approach is typically used for coaching or career purposes.&nbsp;



“It’s more a feedback mechanism than a review,” he said. “It’s not like you hit the goal or you didn’t. It’s more <a href="https://hbr.org/2020/12/what-makes-a-360-degree-review-successful" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">for development purposes</a>.”



The company wrote and shipped a survey to a dozen of my family members, friends and colleagues, including my wife, who had never been more excited about any assignment I’d ever had in my life. The company promised responses would be anonymous, although obviously I planned to surgically inspect each one to determine authorship and, when necessary, exact my revenge.



Wisely anticipating this, Federman had some Yoda-like advice for me. “You have to put 360s into context and be careful about how you use them,” he said. “When you get feedback, you shouldn’t accept it as truth, and you shouldn’t accept it as false.”&nbsp;



Yet some of my friends were a little too enthusiastic about rating me to my face.&nbsp;



“I mean, you’re the one inviting the alligator to your pool party,” wrote my friend Liz, although we’ll see whether she’s still my friend by press time.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-completing-my-own-360-review">Completing my own 360 review</h2>



Yet before I could read what my (potentially former) friends said about me, I had to do something important: Evaluate myself. This is not something I do regularly, and by that I mean ever. My own questionnaire started innocuously enough, with questions about productivity and goals. However, in almost no time it had veered into emotional territory, asking questions about how I “<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/deliberate-calm/">remain calm under difficult circumstances</a>” and “maintain emotional control.”



Here, I paused hard, holding my coffee aloft and staring at the screen like someone struggling to maintain emotional control, wondering what my wife clicked, what Liz said, what my editors would think, whether the front of ice-cold detachment I’d cultivated over 40 years was operational or not. Before I knew it, the questions had gotten even more personal: On a scale of one to five, does he take responsibility for his actions, is he good to work with, does he work well with others? And all I could think of was, I have no idea. <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/lead-by-example-4-elements-of-true-inspiration/">Do I inspire others</a>? <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-delegate/">Have I ever delegated anything</a>? Do I inspire anyone, sitting here in the coffee shop writing jokes and blowing past word counts? Who am I?



Suddenly the fact that I had submitted to a mathematical, high school Scantron-test referendum on my life had coalesced into hard focus. This was real, people were supposed to be honest with me and I was supposed to be honest with myself. I meaningfully sipped my drink and pressed on to the last screen of the 360 review survey, which in three questions froze me cold:



<ol>
<li>“What should this person keep doing?”</li>



<li>“What should this person stop doing?”</li>



<li>“What should this person start doing?”</li>
</ol>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-answering-the-difficult-questions">Answering the difficult questions</h3>



I stared at this screen for a solid half-hour, the impatient cursor blinking, waiting for me to do something, anything. I hadn’t a clue where to begin. My mind raced through the list of participants I had asked to help, wondering whether they’d ever stopped to think about this before—about me or about themselves. The amount of time I spend engaged in this type of self-evaluation, outside of assignments for this magazine, is what HR departments call jack diddly-squat. My frenetic pace in work and life, speedy by a mix of work necessity and genetics, doesn’t leave time for such matters. But I knew one thing: My drive to never ever read what people wrote about me was matched only by my drive to read it, now. So here’s how I finished my end of the bargain:



1. “What should this person keep doing?”



Prioritizing family, then work. Keeping up a regular, steady and productive work pace. Trying each day to be a better husband and dad. Writing. Planning vacations.



2. “What should this person stop doing?”



Taking things so personally. Working fast at the expense of working well. Thinking he knows everything. Thinking speed equals quality. Wasting time comparing myself to others. Taking on projects with little benefit in the long run.



3. “What should this person start doing?”



Focusing on fewer projects. Focusing on bigger projects. Establishing defined goals and working toward them. Trying new kinds of writing. Putting down the phone at night. Being more empathetic. Reading more. Running more. Taking more breaks. Spending less time writing to-do lists and more time addressing them. Writing a book.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-results-of-my-360-review">The results of my 360 review</h2>



Several weeks later, on an otherwise pleasant Friday, Federman called me at home. I immediately shut the door to my office and prepared for the worst. Part of F&amp;H’s 360-degree feedback process involved walking me through the results to aid me in parsing the data. Here’s what we found.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-good">The good</h3>



First, the good news: Responses from my still-mostly-friends (even Liz) were largely positive, at least enough that I could temporarily shelve my studies of the dark arts. For the most part—with a few exceptions—I scored myself about the same as my Others. More importantly, there wasn’t much standard deviation in their responses, meaning that my friends, colleagues and editors were largely united in their impressions of me.



Some greatest hits: My Others have a higher opinion than I do in regard to my collaboration skills, decision-making abilities and, most surprisingly, ability to influence others. Interestingly, there was actually some deviation on the question about my ability to make hard decisions, meaning some of my crowd probably gave me a five while others scored me a 2.5 or three. More surprising, I gave myself middling marks in the fields of accomplishments and structure, and my Others were considerably more gracious.&nbsp;



“You’re probably very critical of yourself, always thinking you can do a better job,” Federman said, “but they’re saying, ‘Look, we know a lot of people who do this, and you’re pretty good.’” So, you know, that was nice.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-bad">The bad</h3>



OK, great, fine, let’s get to the part for which I was relentlessly scanning: the negatives. In the field of “remains calm during stressful situations,” I gave myself a nice fat five. My Others went with a 3.89 in what Federman called a significant difference in how I see myself versus how they saw me. That made me go ouch. When it came to the field of helping others, my ego gave me another nice fat five, while the others hovered around four and, in some cases, lower.



The biggest differences in my self-opinion versus others’ opinions came in how I treated others. “As a writer, especially as an independent contractor, your role is one of individual contribution,” Federman said. “What came out here doesn’t surprise me—it mimics your career at this time. But if you want to change that, adopt a mentor or leadership role. You might have some areas to tackle.”



As it happens, I served a stint as editor-in-chief of Hilton Head Monthly and found myself a little too control-freaky for the job, which these results bore out. In short, this review, as a proxy for some of my closest friends and family, had a clear message: Think more about others. Me and my fives thought I was doing that already. Others disagreed.



The chewy center to all of this, of course, was the feedback to those three killer questions: What should this person keep, stop and start doing? As promised, the responses were anonymous, and despite my stated vow of revenge, I had a little trouble determining who said what, with the exception of, “I mean, at some point you’ll have to cut back on the Jimmy Buffett concerts.” I discarded Tim’s advice immediately.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-the-takeaways-from-my-360-review">The takeaways from my 360 review</h3>



Otherwise, a few things jumped out at me. The first was, “He listens to really dated and silly music that makes him seem older than his hair, which looks really old to begin with.” All of that is 100% on point. The second was: “Perhaps structuring articles in a different way—try something new. I think he could try something out of the box.” That, if I’m being honest, is something I was hoping to hear.



And finally, the three things I most took away from this experience, written by I know not whom. All of them are true, all of them are good to hear and all of them are things I have kept in my mind these past few months:



“He tends to judge too quickly.”



“He can get fussy about things and sometimes makes it hard to collaborate with.”



“While oftentimes he is a good listener and collaborator in stressful situations, he will make hardline decisions and he is too rigid about them, even if it’s something that doesn’t actually matter.”



When I rather impulsively agreed to this process a few months ago, I confess to hoping I would receive a healthy serving of validation—he’s a decent writer, works well with others, maintains exemplary dental hygiene, holds his own at Mario Kart, etc. (My wife joked that I’d even deliberately stocked my pool of Others to maximize my positive returns, which was only partly true.)&nbsp;



In the end, as with anything, the only takeaways that really mattered were the difficult ones. I saw in hard relief that, yes, I do judge quickly. I do dig in on pointless controversies. I’m not as easy to be around as I might have believed—in my work life, sure, but also in my day-to-day. So I’ve kept my feedback—both good and bad—in a little document on my desktop, where I can access it now and again to remind myself of the occasional gulf between what I am and what I think I am. I’m not sure if it’s working; we’ll need another 360-degree review to determine that. But it feels good to try.



This article appeared in the November 2017 <a href="https://store.success.com/by-media/success-magazine-november-2017-scooter-braun.html">issue of SUCCESS magazine</a> and was updated April 2023. Photo by Branislav Nenin/Shutterstock

Our writer asked his friends, family and colleagues to give him a 360 review. Here's what he learned—the good, bad and not-so-terrible.

Our writer asked his friends, family and colleagues to give him a 360 review. Here's what he learned—the good, bad and not-so-terrible. | SUCCESS

How Would Your Friends Rate You in a 360 Review?

360 Review: What I Learned From My Evaluation | SUCCESS

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Professional Growth

Professional Growth Archives

Professional Growth | SUCCESS | What Achievers Read

Human workers are fired <a href="https://www.perkinsasbill.com/the-top-10-reasons-people-get-fired/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">for lots of reasons</a>—they’re chronically ineffective, they’re always late, they pen interoffice memos that leak out and become weeklong viral PR catastrophes (hypothetically). There’s no telling what will cause you to be fired. But there are some things you can say to speed up the process, or at least make it easier for managers to think of your name during the next round of budget cuts. 



<h2 id="h-what-to-say-at-work-to-get-fired">What to say at work to get fired</h2>



Here are just a few of those things, and how you can get around them:



<h3 id="h-1-there-s-just-nothing-else-i-can-do">1. “There’s just nothing else I can do.”</h3>



A lame white flag that’s essentially the same as saying, “I walked away and let Jerry and his team handle this for me.” Unless you find yourself stranded and alone on a scorched volcanic rock in the South Pacific, there is probably somebody you can call.



What to say instead to not get fired: “We’re running out of options, but let me try a few long-shot ideas.”



<h3 id="h-2-this-isn-t-fair">2. “This isn’t fair!”</h3>



When I was 5 years old, my cousin visited me and accompanied me to kindergarten. You can’t talk in kindergarten, of course, so when my cousin leaned over to say something to me, I whispered back that she was going to get in trouble. The teacher stopped reading, glared right at me and said I was a nefarious “talker.” That’s more or less when I learned life isn’t fair, work isn’t fair, baseball isn’t fair, fate isn’t fair and business isn’t fair. And sometimes, no matter how unfair circumstances might be, you still end up losing your animal crackers.



What to say instead to not get fired: Several muted curse words issued directly into your sleeve before figuring out a plan B.



<h3 id="h-3-i-wish-x-y-and-z-would-happen-so-i-could">3. “I wish X, Y and Z would happen so I could…”</h3>



Right? I wish I’d developed the fielding skills necessary to become the starting second baseman for the Chicago Cubs in 1992, but since that has yet to occur (though I’m holding out hope they take a long-shot chance on a 47-year-old who isn’t very good at baseball), I’m basically stuck dealing with the reality in front of me.



What to say instead to not get fired: “It would be nice if X would happen, but here’s what we’re looking at.” (Also, “Go Cubs.”)



<h3 id="h-4-at-my-last-job-we-did-it-like-this">4. “At my last job, we did it like this.”</h3>



Great! At my last job, the CEO wore banana-yellow suits, held delightful four-hour meetings and told weirdly lengthy anecdotes about Norway. Happily, I don’t work there anymore, so none of that matters.



What to say instead to not get fired: When appropriate, bring any good ideas or policies to the table at your current job. Those are great. Making it sound like you’re pining for your banana-yellow past is less so.



<h3 id="h-5-i-ll-get-to-it-but-it-s-not-a-priority-right-now">5. “I’ll get to it, but it’s not a priority right now.”</h3>



There’s nothing people like more than hearing they’re not important to the person they’re talking to. Imagine if the employee at Chipotle said, “Sure, I’ll make your burrito, when I christen it truly worthy of my care and attention.”



What to say instead to not get fired: This is easy—just leave out the second part of that sentence to achieve the same effect without a needless psychological gut punch.



<h3 id="h-6-this-pay-is-so-lousy-here">6. “This pay is so lousy here!”</h3>



Ugh, I know, right? If only you’d, I don’t know, <a href="https://hbr.org/2022/07/how-to-negotiate-your-starting-salary" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">settled on a salary/rate</a> when you took the job. That would have made the pathetically limited pay scale much less of a surprise.



What to say instead to not get fired: “<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-ask-for-more-money-and-get-it/">I should negotiate</a> a higher starting salary at my next job.”



<h3 id="h-7-i-don-t-get-paid-enough-for-this">7. “I don’t get paid enough for this!”</h3>



Probably not! Sadly, Earth is practically coated with people who perform all manner of difficult, demanding jobs for nowhere near <a href="https://financebuzz.com/survey-financial-taboos" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">what they should be paid</a> for them (although for some people, that’s a matter of opinion). I’ll pause while the entire teaching profession raises its collective hand—great, thanks. Also, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/what-happened-when-i-didnt-complain-for-30-days/">nobody likes whining</a>.



What to say instead to not get fired: “One day, I will get paid enough for this.”



<h3 id="h-8-i-m-bored">8. “I’m bored.”</h3>



Interesting! There’s a wide selection of chapter books and Highlights magazines in the corner, and we hope you’ll find them a useful way to pass the time while other people figure out ways to be helpful.



What to say instead to not get fired: Honestly, pretty much anything.



<h3 id="h-9-i-ll-try">9. “I’ll try.”</h3>



Come on, you never saw The Empire Strikes Back?



What to say instead to not get fired: “I’ll do.”



<h3 id="h-10-i-m-not-very-busy-can-i-leave-early-today">10. “I’m not very busy; can I leave early today?”</h3>



Look, I’m writing this in a home office in Indiana and I want to fire you. Admitting you’re not very busy is like telling your manager it’s OK to bench you because your batting average is garbage anyway.



What to say instead to not get fired: “My schedule’s pretty light today—mind if I leave early, and plan to make up the hours when things get busy tomorrow/next week/whenever?”



<h3 id="h-11-this-isn-t-in-my-job-description">11. “This isn’t in my job description.”</h3>



Great! Your job description was written three years ago in a flurry of initial, rote new-hire HR activity. Also, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/want-to-reach-your-potential-then-be-a-learner/">developing a diverse skill set</a> in the right circumstance is generally accepted as a very high positive.



What to say instead to not get fired: “OK, this kinda sucks, but maybe it’ll pay off down the line.”



<h3 id="h-12-ugh-i-hate-it-here-i-m-totally-looking-for-a-new-job">12. “Ugh, I hate it here. I’m totally looking for a new job.”</h3>



Fantastic, and while we promise we’re all giving you much-needed attention, you can actually look for a new job in private by reaching out to contacts and/or shopping your resume in the welcome confines of your own home. In the meantime, it might be nice to keep quiet about it to prevent what HR organizations call “them firing you first.”



What to say instead to not get fired: Not much.



<h3 id="h-13-i-m-sorry-i-have-a-question">13. “I’m sorry, I have a question…”</h3>



Things to be sorry for at work: Handing a backpack full of internal memos to competitors, knocking the water cooler all over Jerry, accidentally lighting the break room on fire, tweeting from the company account instead of your personal one. Things not to be sorry for: asking a work-related question at a meeting. This is a tough one, and I fight it daily, but apologies are only for that which deserves them.



What to say instead to not get fired: You probably won’t be fired for this, but unless you have accidentally released a cage of bullfrogs into a group meeting, leave out the “I’m sorry.”&nbsp;



<h3 id="h-14-i-want-to-touch-base-on-how-we-ll-do-a-deep-dive-into-the-metrics-of-our-core-competencies">14. “I want to touch base on how we’ll do a deep dive into the metrics of our core competencies.”</h3>



OK, full disclosure, you probably will not get fired for resorting to a hopeless waterfall of word garbage, but it’s still a lot of sound signifying nothing and we’d be better served by using actual English.



What to say instead to not get fired: “How’s everything going, Jim?”



This article was updated April 2023. Photo by Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock

If you want to get fired, say these 14 things at work. Or you can save your job and try our communication tips instead.

If you want to get fired, say these 14 things at work. Or you can save your job and try our communication tips instead. | SUCCESS

Say These 14 Things to Get Yourself Fired

How to Get Fired: 14 Things to Say at Work | SUCCESS

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I cut out inessential spending for one month. And by that, I mean: I didn’t come anywhere near cutting out inessential spending for a month.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/7-ways-to-save-money-by-simplifying-your-life">7 Ways to Save Money by Simplifying Your Life</a>

For the record, I tried. My assignment was simple: Eliminate all spending that wasn’t essential to the health of my family, the payment of recurring bills or the survival of the pets. No fancy coffee. No clothes. No cocktails. No movies. Nothing outside of the pure necessities of life in a hardening America. Then at the close of the experiment, I was to report all of my glittering lessons about the value of self-denial, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/14-ways-to-improve-your-self-discipline">discipline</a> and <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/17-beautifully-simple-quotes-to-channel-your-inner-minimalist">minimalism</a>.

Here’s what I learned: Life can get crazy, and sometimes you just want a taco.

This is not to say that a spending hiatus is a bad idea. British blogger Michelle McGagh documented this exact concept in her book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/No-Spend-Year-Michelle-McGagh/dp/1473652146/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1495574387&amp;sr=8-1-fkmr0&amp;keywords=The+No+Spend+Year:+How+I+Spent+Less+and+Lived+More&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=27b5e7341adea69a73008f6d00bdc2e6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The No Spend Year: How I Spent Less and Lived More</a>, which tracked 365 days of no spending by her and her husband. As a financial advice writer, McGagh’s challenge was better organized and executed than mine. After bills, food and toiletries, she writes, “Everything else was off-limits. Which meant there’d be no more rounds of drinks purchased in the pub (tap water only from now on), no new clothes, no presents for my nephews, no takeaway coffees, no meals out and no holidays.” She got around on her bike, discovered free entertainment and allocated the money she saved largely for extra mortgage payments.

Although I might not have cut out all of my spending for a month, this exercise instilled in me, like McGagh, a sharper grasp on what money is going where and why. And I reminded myself that dedicating time and icy, emotionless attention to your budget is a wise and welcome endeavor, as long as you don’t do it so frequently that you end up abandoning joy or companionship.

&nbsp;

<h3 class="BODY rtecenter">Applying a magnifying glass to it all didn’t help me eliminate a new car’s worth of expenses, but it did force me to prioritize them.</h3>

&nbsp;

Frankly, I had neither her <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/top-of-mind-how-to-strengthen-your-willpower">willpower</a> nor her dedication for eschewing an anti-consumerist lifestyle. My family has never been terribly big into gratuitous spending anyway, with exceptions made for travel and Bruce Springsteen tickets. Not to sound like a sore loser, but McGagh also had two big advantages on me: 1) She has no kids; and 2) She lives in London, where some of the world’s most awe-inspiring activities, like hanging out with a sarcophagus at the British Museum, are readily available for the reasonable price of nothing. We have two kids and no free ancient dead people in Indianapolis, so there would be some unavoidable expenses.

But if I’m being honest, it was mostly the lack of willpower that made me fail. Dedicating myself to a milkshake-free month turned out to be an exercise in brutality I&nbsp;was unprepared to face. It’s one thing to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/podcast/ep-47-3-tips-for-making-the-most-of-your-money">be mindful of your expenses</a>; it’s entirely another to walk past La Chinita Poblana on Westfield Boulevard and not drop in for a crispy shrimp taco, just because, at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

One could argue that my failure represents a breakdown of will, an inability to make it even 48 hours before collapsing into a heap of excuses and justifications. To that I’d say: Yeah, I know.

But there’s more to it. First, this experiment in militant miserliness came at a particularly bad time. February contained my son’s 13th birthday, the release of The Lego Batman Movie and the announcement of a summer concert that featured Def Leppard and Poison, together, ON THE SAME STAGE. I’m appropriately dedicated to my work as a writer, but I’m also a sucker for shameless, sugar-packed nostalgia-metal concerts you can see for a $25 Groupon. Also, as you may or may not know, February is the month that has Valentine’s Day in it, and that required a finer present for my wife than hair metal tickets.

Second, and more important, I found out quickly, a life without the occasional indulgence—even, if not especially, small ones—can be a dull and pointless slog. In no way am I suggesting that happiness is available only in the form of moon-sized yachts and cigars lit with rolled-up $100 bills. Some of my favorite people conjure joy with very little, and many of my most prized memories didn’t involve a single expense. McGagh writes of camping trips, handmade gifts and visits with friends that don’t have to happen in pubs.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/can-money-buy-happiness">Can Money Buy Happiness? </a>

But a life without rewards, without a moment to breathe and think, I’ll get that slice of key lime pie or I’ll put this away for summer vacation? What’s the point in that? Isn’t that ill-advised extra glass of wine one of the better parts of life?

***

I initially found the idea of a spending hiatus deeply appealing. As a family, we Vrabels have always been a frugal lot, and by frugal, I mean some of us take strawberry and grape jelly packets from diners instead of purchasing substantial jars at the grocery store. My extended family’s garages contain about 900 buckets full of water-logged golf balls fished out of ponds and mini-golf courses. And my cousin recently confessed that after nearly 15 years of marriage, it still drives him bonkers to see his wife use a piece of aluminum foil only once. “I die a little each time,” he texted, “and don’t even get me started on the plastic bags.”

So I initially thought of this as a welcome and genetically satisfying reset, an opportunity to throw the emergency brake on the <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/dave-ramsey-has-a-plan-for-the-rest-of-your-life">family finances</a>. (It helped that it arrived about the same time as the Christmas credit card bills.)

<img alt="I Tried to Stop Spending Money for 30 Days" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__36811 img__view_mode__full" height="498" src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy/sites/default/files/nospendmonth_2.jpg" typeof="foaf:Image" width="612" />

Besides, I thought, How bad could it be? I already had a house full of unfinished projects, unwatched shows and un-spun records. I re-evaluated old clothes. I found books I’d been meaning to revisit since college. (I am blessed with a few hoarding chromosomes.) But one night, when we settled in to figure out whatever this Stranger Things TV show was, an uncomfortable thought floated right into my field of vision: Does Netflix qualify as necessary? And then, scanning the rest of the house: Does any of this qualify as necessary? Can I eat only dry bread and cans of beans, use gasoline only to get to essential places? Is karate essential? Is school? Frankly, it was way more of an existential crisis than I was expecting. This would need rules. The rules went like this:

<h3 class="SUBHEAD">Inessential spending included:</h3>

<ul>
	<li class="BODY">All clothes.</li>
	<li class="BODY">Books.</li>
	<li class="BODY">Ice cream from The Scoop downtown.</li>
	<li class="BODY">Media, unless we could stream it with an existing subscription.</li>
	<li class="BODY">Breakfasts and lunches out (not dinners, as our Tuesday schedule is packed with after-school events and a weekly Dad-and-boys pizza trip I consider emotionally essential).</li>
	<li class="BODY">100 percent of externally purchased doughnuts.</li>
</ul>

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/50-ways-to-relax-without-spending-money">50 Ways to Relax Without Spending Money</a>

<h3 class="SUBHEAD">Essential spending:</h3>

My first essential was the coffee shop. (Look, I work from home. If I&nbsp;sit in my house all day, I end up a patch-bearded lunatic with 6-inch fingernails who wanders the grocery store in a bathrobe. But I ordered only small black coffees, which is a fairly pathetic version of self-denial, but here we are.) Then it was a dentist appointment. And I&nbsp;confess that I splurged on medicine for pinkeye—the medicine was $30, which at the time seemed awfully extravagant, and I stood at the pharmacist’s counter wondering: Is this an essential expense? Can I just ride this out? Would it strengthen my white blood cells to let them combat this for free? And then I forked over $30 for the medicine, because I was tired of being a crimson-faced demon with itchy eyes.

And indeed, I found pretty quickly that the line between essential and non-essential was nebulous, constantly shifting and subject to my whims and caffeine needs. I also found how quickly I factored in things that were technically non-essential but felt pretty essential. Our Blue Apron subscription, which we use to cut back on grocery bills and shopping time, stayed in. We abandoned cable years ago, but Netflix’s Octonauts and Dragons: Race to the Edge were highly essential, according to the small children who run my house.

***

Why didn’t it occur to me to work from the public library? Well, it did, and I discounted that idea outright: I don’t work from coffee shops for the pricey coffee. I do it to be around people; and as richly valuable as libraries are, they’re not great for people-watching.

These were the kinds of minor justifications that sank me. I decided I could purchase tickets for a concert because it was in May; that I could buy this butter streusel coffee cake because technically I found it before my experiment and also because it’s delicious. Those little cracks of sunlight in the rulebook made all the subsequent ones much easier.

This, of course, is the gradual, subtle process of justification that gets people into trouble: One jacket here, one scone there, and before long every incremental expense adds up to credit card balances and dark phantoms that steal your money without you ever&nbsp;noticing.

Although I didn’t succeed at McGagh’s brutal version of cold turkey, I feel the experiment worked, and here’s why: It demanded vigilance. It coldly identified easily removable spending, expenses I’d become accustomed to OK’ing even when they were red-flagged in <a href="https://www.mint.com/how-mint-works" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mint</a>, the budgeting app I use.

Like most people, I had a broad sense of how much went to four movie tickets, a record here or there, a Panera meal on the run. But that sense was less math and more a vague notion easily shoved to the back corner of my mind. And the cracks in between those merciless digits are where the overspending takes hold and flourishes.

Applying a magnifying glass to it all didn’t help me eliminate a new car’s worth of expenses, but it did force me to prioritize them. Vacation saving, for instance, was the first thing that stayed. My wife and I long ago decided that travel is a primary reason we work in the first place. If you’re not <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/6-tips-to-set-and-achieve-your-biggest-goals">setting goals</a>, working toward them and then enjoying the payoff when they become reality, what’s the point?

&nbsp;

<h3 class="BODY rtecenter">Although I might not have cut out all of my spending for a month, this exercise instilled in me, like McGagh, a sharper grasp on what money is going where and why.</h3>

&nbsp;

And this reordering of priorities—a dull, annoying process—is the life-saving part. Fiscal vigilance taken to the extreme can make you not a lot of fun at parties and a super-annoying spouse, but determining what is essential is worth a few lousy hours.

Now I <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/3-ways-to-spend-your-money-wisely">stop and think before purchases</a>, an automatic little self-check that wasn’t there before. In 30 days—a shorter time than I’d have guessed—I installed a mental hold-up button, one that I’ve been employing ever since. I’d argue that even this entry-level awareness can pay off in the long term.

So I’m left a bit more mindful after this experience, skipping another blue-plaid shirt here and movie there to gradually hoard cash for more meaningful-to-me goals like travel, family, time not thinking about money and maybe a few tickets to see the Chicago Cubs, who raised their ticket prices 20 percent this year—inessentially.

Related:&nbsp;<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/10-money-habits-that-are-leaving-you-broke">10 Money Habits That Are Leaving You Broke​</a>

&nbsp;

This article originally appeared in the <a href="https://store.successcom.wpenginepowered.com/by-media/success-magazine-june-2017-dave-ramsey.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">June 2017 issue of SUCCESS magazine</a>.

Here’s what I learned: Life can get crazy, and sometimes you just want a taco.

Here’s what I learned: Life can get crazy, and sometimes you just want a taco. | SUCCESS

I Tried (and Failed) to Go a Month Without Spending Money

I Tried (and Failed) to Go a Month Without Spending Money | SUCCESS

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One of Jodi R.R. Smith’s favorite quotes comes from a handbook that was published in 1911 and bears the actual title of Polite Matters for Little Men and Women: “That the manners of children in this present day and age are not what they should be or even what they were a generation ago, is an indisputable fact.”

Those words were of course written before people brought their cellphones to weddings and broke up with each other via text message, but Smith says the general idea—that societal norms are routinely shattered by the young and clueless—remains patently wrong, wrong, wrong. “Being rude or socially oblivious isn’t restricted to millennials,” she says. “There’s plenty of it to go around.”

She would know. A former HR executive, Smith guided enough colleagues through missed promotions, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/5-good-lessons-from-bad-bosses">toxic bosses</a> and workplace romances to eventually take the leap and start her own etiquette business, Mannersmith Etiquette Counseling in Boston, which caters to businesses and universities. “A lot of times,” she says, “these were really bright individuals just having a hard time doing a job with other people.”

And it’s harder now because workplaces can look like anything in 2017—more of us are <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/the-truth-about-working-from-home">working from home</a>, and Pixar has beach volleyball, for God’s sake—but the rules governing work interactions have essentially been the same since 1911 and well before. “I explain it like this,” Smith says. “If I get a hit and start running to third base, it’s not illegal, but it will confuse the other team and anger my teammates. The social convention is I run to first. That’s what work guidelines do—allow everyone to enjoy the interaction.”

Happily, those guidelines work whether you’re a ballplayer, CEO or rocket scientist. “This is not rocket science,” Smith says, killing my metaphor. “But common sense is not that common.” Here’s how to knock workplace etiquette situations out of the park.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/7-tips-to-be-the-right-kind-of-professional-at-work">7 Tips to Be the Right Kind of Professional at Work</a>

<h2>How to Handle Any Situation That Will Ever Arise Involving Your Phone:</h2>

Simple rule: The person in front of your face wins. “The second you <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/why-youve-got-to-put-your-phone-down-seriously" target="_blank" rel="noopener">break attention for your device</a>, you’re telling that person they’re not important,” Smith says. This is also true on dates, at Thanksgiving dinner, when playing rugby and in the rest of your life. “If somebody tapped me on the shoulder, I wouldn’t immediately turn around and start having a conversation with them. And that’s essentially what you’re doing when you check your text or answer a call.”

<h2>How to Use Your Phone Anyway:</h2>

Contrary to what you might think, there are times it’s perfectly fine to use your phone, provided you adhere to some pretty basic human-decency rules. “The overarching guideline is to pay attention to the people that you’re with, now.” Sure, there are exceptions; if your boss is in Chicago and you’re in Tulsa, you might have to adjust, but pre-emptive etiquette usually takes care of that. “If your boss is calling and you’re in a meeting, just say, ‘I’ll need to step out.’” Otherwise, only uncork your device if it contains information crucial to the table. Or if you need to look up the Heimlich maneuver or research anti-venoms. Both are acceptable.

<h2>How to Not Automatically Reach for Your Electronic Security Blanket:</h2>

Phones aren’t just distractions in the workplace; they’re also tiny security blankets for some people. “The second someone’s not talking to them, they’ll immediately start fiddling with their phone, and that prevents somebody else from coming up and interacting with them.” In addition to being a general social-interaction problem, this can be especially negative at events, conferences or other <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/podcast/ep-43-networking-202">networking situations</a>. “If you’re in between sessions, unless you’re on deadline or facing an emergency, don’t pull out your cellphone immediately,” Smith counsels. “You’re missing out on the people around you.”

<h2>Wait, Don’t People Know That Sort of Thing Already?</h2>

“You would think so,” Smith laughs, “but no, you need to reinforce it.”

<h2>How to Drink During Drinks:</h2>

Every interaction has a host, Smith says. “It’s like ballroom dancing: Somebody’s leading and somebody’s following.” If it’s your boss, follow their cues. If it’s you, set them clearly. Gauge your setting, whether you’re in a mahogany-and-jazz professional setting or some college-town sports bar with happy hour specials on wings. Host always picks up the tab. And for Pete’s sake, keep your wits about you. One or two drinks maximum and make sure you pack in some carbs along the way. “Getting drunk never enhances your professional demeanor,” Smith says. If this is going to be a thing, order a Sprite. Or meet in a tea room.

<h2>How to Write a Reference for Someone Who Isn’t Very Good: </h2>

Reference letters are hyperbole-packed formalities most HR people scan through disinterestedly, yet here we are. So decide how invested you want to get.

Option 1: Fake it, and omit some of the adverbs you’d employ for sharper colleagues.

Option 2: Ask your subject to bullet-point what they were hoping you’d say, or remind you of the projects you worked on. “That way, you’re not doing all the heavy lifting,” she says. “And you can write honestly about positive things. The more specific the situation, the more it benefits everybody.”

Option 3: If you cannot in good conscience think of a single positive thing, claim gosh you’d love to but simply don’t have the time. They’ll see through your hideous lies, but if they have even the slightest self-awareness, they won’t ask again. “When we call someone for a reference and the person will only confirm the dates of employment, that’s a big red flag,” says Smith. “I used to ask in HR: If this person was applying to work at your company, would you hire them back?” But all that said, there’s not much benefit to denying someone a job opportunity elsewhere. “Someone who isn’t thriving in one position might get into a different culture and blossom there,” Smith says. “It’s good to be able to afford other opportunities.”

<h2>How to Know When It Just Went From a Productive Work Relationship to Flirting:</h2>

First, duh. If you’re reading this part, it did. “Most adults can ascertain when they <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/3-ways-to-be-more-likeable-at-work">really like working with somebody</a> versus when they liiiiiiiiike somebody,” says Smith, doing the sixth-grade accent thing on “liiiiiiiiike.” But when you go from working toward a shared goal to fantasizing about what they’re doing on Saturday, we say again: duh. “If you like working with someone or even have a work husband or wife, that’s totally fine, especially if you have a common goal,” she says. “But if it’s somebody you’re always hoping to sit next to, or touch when you’re talking, that’s too much.” (Also, bear in mind everyone else has figured it out already and is talking about you. Oh, and your office is probably crawling with cameras, so gauge how much you want your flirting/stairwell encounters to be enjoyed by burly security personnel in Jersey.)

If you’re both single and it becomes a thing, check your company guidelines and policies and other things that will seem obnoxious. It’s possible to like a person and still not want to lose your job for them. But after that? Go nuts—but, Smith advises, go the slow kind of nuts. “I spent many years in HR. I saw a lot of office romances turn into long-term marriages. But I’ve seen a lot of one-night stands with co-workers, and I’ve yet to see one end well. If you’re dipping into the company pool for dating, that tells me you need to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/ahhh-6-ways-to-get-better-work-life-balance">think about your work/life balance</a>.”

<h2>How to Stop Stressing About All of This: </h2>

As you have likely noticed, a good bit of this falls under the broad, sweeping umbrella of common sense, which means if you listen to your inner Force, you’ll probably be OK. Which plays into the last and most important rule of office etiquette: Know when to disengage from it. “<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/why-working-more-is-making-you-less-productive">Nobody should be working 24/7</a>,” Smith says. “You have to take breaks and be yourself.” This is obviously crucial for doctors, air traffic controllers, those at the NSA and professional wrestlers, but it applies across the board. “People need to decipher and distinguish between something that’s urgent and a real emergency. We all like to feel important. And I like to talk about etiquette emergencies,” she says with a laugh. “But this is not a life-or-death kind of thing.”

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/do-this-not-that-a-guide-to-drama-in-the-workplace">Do This Not That: A Guide to Drama in the Workplace</a>

This is more than texting during meetings.

This is more than texting during meetings. | SUCCESS

8 Keys to Nailing Workplace Etiquette

8 Keys to Nailing Workplace Etiquette | SUCCESS

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<h2>1. Write down a list of your goals, then wad it up and chuck it in the garbage.</h2>

It’s just gonna <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/19-calming-quotes-to-help-you-stress-less">stress</a> you out.

<h2>2. For an extra morning boost, lie in bed for 45 minutes.</h2>

Sure, some people advocate exercising first thing, but what sense does it make to tire yourself out doing power jumps at 5 a.m.? For a truly powerful kick in the morning, begin each day by lying there for a while, thinking of ways you’d improve the endings of TV shows and/or scrolling through Facebook—comparing yourself to everyone on social media will help shape your self-perception, and your phone’s calming blue light will jump-start your endorphins.

<h2>3. Get plenty of sugar.</h2>

Balance your breakfast by including Sugars, Processed Sugars, The Sugars That Are in Pop-Tarts and, for extra long-lasting energy, Two Donuts from the Circle K, which will fuel you from 9 a.m. all the way to 9:04 a.m.

<h2>4. Stay focused on conference calls by using them to catch up on This Is Us.</h2>

Conference calls are a drag, right? Fight off the brain-crushing boredom by muting yourself and watching NBC’s newest emotionally charged drama, which will replace Anabel from marketing going on about her core competencies with the rich human drama that unites us all. If you have to talk in the meeting, just pause the show, choke back your tears and chime right in. (If anyone asks why you sound like you’re crying, tell them you’re very happy with your spreadsheet.)

<h2>5. Control your finances by purchasing a large book about controlling your finances.</h2>

Do you need to take charge of your <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/19-wise-money-quotes">finances</a> once and for all? March right to a full-price bookstore and purchase the largest volume of basic financial advice you can find, preferably something that involves such advice as “Plan for Your Future,” “Establish an Emergency Fund” and other cutting-edge financial genius from the future. Page through the book while sipping a 48-oz. caramelized mocha at the in-store café.

<h2>6. Install a soothing meditation app on your app-cluttered phone.</h2>

For easier access, put it in the folder with your bank, Facebook and that game where you use a sword to murder fruit.

<h2>7. Constantly envision success, even when your brain can’t focus on success and instead keeps trying to come up with all the lyrics to “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (Buddy Holly, Ben-Hur, Space Monkey, Mafia, Hula Hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go).</h2>

<h2>8. When you’re down, seek out validation from “friends” on social media.</h2>

They’re the ones who matter, after all. Repost a bunch of memes, preferably ones with super-long illegible quotes in scripty fonts over pictures of sunsets. Avoid punctuation and paragraph breaks, which both waste time.

<h2>9. Do one hard thing every day—unless it’s too hard.</h2>

Then do like six easy things. It pretty much adds up to the same thing.

<h2>10. Deal with professional setbacks by wearing a black cape.</h2>

<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/21-quotes-about-failing-fearlessly">Failures</a>, disappointments and setbacks happen to all of us, and when they do, there’s one proven way to inject yourself with restorative power: a silken cape, black as midnight. To maximize its nefarious powers, don it in a darkened room for weeks at a time, staring mournfully out the closed window while maniacally writing mad poetry in a college Composition notebook (you can get one at Target for like $1, which you’ll probably need to do, since you’re likely broke).

If it was a particularly humbling failure, listen to Morrissey, Tom Waits’ “Closing Time” or Norwegian death metal; the guttural sounds from the demon-void of Cthulhu the Necronomicon will ready you to take charge of your next search for venture capital.

<h2>11. Just say “impactful” over and over again.</h2>

No one will be sure whom or what you’re impacting, but people will be like, Damn, that person knows how to drop some boss adjectives.

<h2>12. Maintain a positive mindset all day long, even when that sh*t gets real old at about 3 p.m. </h2>

If you feel your energy flagging, eat some more sugar.

<h2>13. Stay mentally young by trolling today’s youth.</h2>

When you turn 42, immediately replace the word “excited” with “stoked” and never go anywhere wearing fewer than six bracelets. If you’ve been putting off that neck tattoo, now’s the time.

<h2>14. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams—if you feel like it.</h2>

If that proves too challenging, just sorta point that way and wait for someone to give you a ride.

April Fools!

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/do-these-5-things-if-you-want-an-unremarkable-life">Do These 5 Things—If You Want an Unremarkable Life</a>

After all, massive success is easy-shmeezy.

After all, massive success is easy-shmeezy. | SUCCESS

14 Seriously Easy Ways to Be Outrageously Successful

14 Seriously Easy Ways to Be Outrageously Successful | SUCCESS

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My earliest memory is a pretty bad one. I was called out by a substitute teacher in kindergarten for talking during story time.

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You could argue that, in the grand scheme of things, getting in trouble at 5 isn’t that big of a deal. But the story, and how it’s burned into my brain forever, speaks to a shared and brutal human reality: We cling to the bad moments—getting busted in kindergarten, botching a speech, getting broken up with the day after the prom, feeling wordlessly judged by someone in richer clothes, whiffing on a 3-2 count in the bottom of the ninth—with more force than we afford the good ones. Negative memories are monstrous beasts, gross and sticky octopuses that attach themselves with ferocious tenacity to the present. Science, Eastern religion, elections and all eight Star Wars movies prove that negative powers aren’t easily fought. Only the strongest and most disciplined minds can train themselves to destroy the darkness with light.
Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-why-you-need-discipline-to-achieve-the-good-life">Why You Need Discipline to Achieve the Good Life</a>
I do not have such a mind.
As such, SUCCESS challenged me to learn that discipline, to engage in a solid month of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/positive-self-talk/">positive self-talk</a> to see how it improved my mood, to answer the question: Can I strengthen my mind by simply focusing on good thoughts? I have no idea. But I know one thing as I begin—during the Chicago Cubs’ nail-biting road to the World Series and the presidential election—if ever there were a time to test the power of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/4-ways-to-be-more-positive">positive thinking</a>, this would be it.
The idea of using affirmations has proven, tangible merit. David Sarwer, a psychologist and director at the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple University, often begins treatments by having patients talk to themselves in a mirror, coaching them to use more generous, encouraging terms about themselves before starting physical regimens.
Yet the first thing I learn about positive thinking is that the word positive is a big fat lie.
“Let’s talk about what positive thinking really is,” says Gregory Jantz, Ph.D., founder of <a href="https://www.aplaceofhope.com/about-us/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Center: A Place of Hope</a> and the author of 35 personal-development books. “I can tell myself a lie. I’m in Seattle. I can say, ‘It’s not raining’ all I want, but that would be a denial of reality. Positive thinking isn’t about ignoring truths.”


<h3 class="BODY rtecenter">“It’s OK to have negative thoughts, but you need to be mindful of them and leverage them to benefit your behaviors.”</h3>

It’s not even about being happy. “If your goal is to have a constant positive feeling, well, nobody has that,” says a laughing Courtney Johnson, Ph.D., clinical neuropsychologist with Indiana University Health in Indianapolis. “Our culture says we should be happy all the time, but that’s just not how we’re wired. Negative emotions have meaning. They tell us things that are important. Sometimes things really are crummy. It’s OK to have negative thoughts, but you need to be mindful of them and leverage them to benefit your behaviors.” But there’s good news: Johnson says this is a skill you can build.
This is one of those things that sounds easy in theory but is probably exceedingly difficult in practice, so I ask Jantz what Step 1 might be.
“Gratitude,” Jantz says. “If you <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-begin-with-gratitude-and-watch-the-miracles-flow-your-way" target="_blank" rel="noopener">begin with gratitude</a>, you start with a positive framework.” Gratitude begets humility, which begets sensitivity to others, which begets learning to respond to negative stimuli in positive, productive ways.
Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/videos/youtube/ted-talks-want-to-be-happy-be-grateful">TED Talks: ‘Want to Be Happy? Be Grateful’</a>
“If a friend doesn’t return your call, you can respond in two ways,” Johnson says. “You can say to yourself, Maybe they forgot or Maybe they were busy and not have a strong emotional reaction. Or you can think, Oh no, they must not like me, and the next time you see them, you don’t talk to them.”
Jantz has an example, too. “If somebody cuts you off in traffic,” he says, “you can either respond in anger or you can say, Wow, that guy might be having a really tough day. You don’t personalize things. If I’m living in a positive framework, I’m not personalizing.”
I have never once been cut off in traffic and cared to think about how the other driver’s day is going. But science is science, so I resolve to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-5-ways-to-be-more-grateful-on-the-daily">start every morning with gratitude</a>. I wake at 6 a.m. and immediately feel thankful for matters great and tiny: the roof, my job, the unusually warm weather, how my younger son stayed in his bed all night, for remembering to program the coffee maker. “In our nerdy clinical world, we call that taking inventory,” Johnson says. “It’s re-calibrating what we’re paying attention to.”
Positive thinking is linked to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-you-can-stay-forever-young">increased life span</a>, lower rates of depression, a stronger immune system, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and being invited to more barbecues. But these benefits come with a catch: You have to do it all of the time. It’s not like exercising three times a week or deciding against a sporadic brownie. Thinking positively involves an unending process of catching negative thoughts, filing them away in some mental trash compactor and replacing them with healthier ones. “Somebody who’s in chronic pain might wake up feeling terrible every day and tell themselves, I’m in pain; this is my life, and it’s lousy. But those are thoughts,” Johnson says. “That pain doesn’t mean you can’t call your grandchild. The ability to be flexible in thinking is what’s helpful.”
Jantz says the approach is best done in a group. So I tell my wife, children and a handful of associates my plan to be a shiny, happy person for a month. They give me a lot of funny looks, which I interpret forgivingly. This leads to a lot of on-the-fly <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/7-practical-tips-to-achieve-a-positive-mindset">mental adjustments</a>. For example, when my wife texts me to ask how our boys behaved in the morning, I want to say, “Ugh, they were feisty and took 20 minutes to change and brush their teeth and cried when I took away their cereal.” But I change my tone. I’m supposed to be thinking positively, so I respond with, “They were brimming with youthful energy and joy.”
I keep at it. Dealing with the home insurance people? That isn’t a soul-deadening automated-menu hellscape; it is strengthening the safety net surrounding my family. The grinding, squealing noise from the garbage disposal isn’t a future $400 plumber bill; it is probably something I could fix myself. My younger son’s propensity for spilling chocolate milk on the table isn’t a twice-weekly dairy-based nightmare but a lesson in <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-what-basketball-can-teach-us-about-responsibility">taking responsibility for your own actions</a>. My self-employment tax bills aren’t a monthly kick in the pancreas area but a reminder that we all need to do our part to make our country function as a singular cooperative unit (dear sweet Pete, this is hard).
I need help, so I go to the first place I usually turn for it: my phone.
Launched four years ago, <a href="https://www.happify.com/public/about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Happify</a> is one of a predictably blossoming wave of apps that uses “research on the science of happiness” to devise activities, called interventions, designed to improve your mindfulness. “We want to have people inserting these interventions and messages into their daily lives,” says co-founder and president Ofer Leidner. It’s working: Happify has more than 3 million users who follow 1,800 specific tracks covering everything from job stress to relationship stress to handling negative thoughts, which Leidner says is the most popular. Leidner reports that 86 percent of Happify users get happier within two months. I install Happify and similar apps such as <a href="https://www.headspace.com/headspace-meditation-app" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Headspace</a>, <a href="https://thinkup.me/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ThinkUp</a> and <a href="https://www.uniquedailyaffirmations.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Unique Daily Affirmations</a> to help push myself along. Most are heavily attuned to the social component. Post pictures here, share your score with friends there. I also schedule my own reminders. For three weeks, I set my phone to ping me every few hours and remind me to stop what I’m doing and be grateful for something, usually whatever was in front of me: coffee, my family, a chocolate bar.
Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-to-make-mindfulness-part-of-your-daily-routine">How to Make Mindfulness Part of Your Daily Routine</a>


<h3 class="BODY rtecenter">“If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck. Nobody’s figured that out. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won’t work.”</h3>

But I worry my self-imposed pressure to be happy is defeating its purpose—is my mood artificial? And I’m concerned that 30 days is too short of a window to effect meaningful change. But everyone I talk to says it is plenty of time for habit-forming. “You can help yourself quote-unquote get better in five minutes if you do gratitude exercises every day,” Johnson says.
Something else happened, too. Exhausted by the whole sunny enterprise of constantly reminding myself to be happy, I decided to go for a run. I went outside, cleared my head, listened to very loud music, felt sunshine on my face and came back feeling refreshed. In a way, I did something that made me happy, after being wearied by all of the stuff telling me to be happy. “It’s OK!” Johnson laughs, when I tell her the story. “Reinforcement is reinforcement.”
Because, again, positivity is a big fat lie. “If your goal is to feel better all the time, good luck,” Johnson says. “Nobody’s figured that out. And if you put pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, it won’t work.”
The idea, after all, isn’t future happiness, some glistening paradise or some unmet goal/job/love down the road. It’s not the kind of synthetically forced happiness you often find in Facebook feeds either. We shouldn’t even call it happiness; it’s better to stick with the idea that your current state has value, that this life isn’t a ladder but a (sometimes nauseating) roller coaster, that the only thing you can count on is change and that <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-the-6-emotional-enemies-inside-your-mind">you can influence your own emotions</a>.
“When you sow the seeds of gratitude,” Jantz says, “You become other-focused, less absorbed with your own problems, and more optimistic.” A positive outlook doesn’t mean stapling happy to your face. It means being OK with whatever’s on there anyway. And that makes me happy.
Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/videos/youtube/ted-talks-the-habits-of-happiness">TED Talks: ‘The Habits of Happiness’</a>

This article originally appeared in the <a href="https://store.successcom.wpenginepowered.com/by-media/magazines/success-magazine-march-2017-travis-kalanick.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">March 2017 issue of SUCCESS magazine</a>.

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Our writer learns to accentuate the positive.

Our writer learns to accentuate the positive. | SUCCESS

What I Learned From 30 Days of Positive Thinking

What I Learned From 30 Days of Positive Thinking | SUCCESS

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When he was in middle school, my editor, Jesus Jimenez, attempted to break the world record for most clothespins attached to the face. When you’re 14, this sort of ambition is not just logical; it’s essentially the only reason to do anything. The goal is to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/the-secret-to-being-an-influencer">get people to pay attention to you</a> in a crowded cafeteria, and if that involves a little facial pinching, so be it. Jesus reports, with no small degree of pride, he applied nine clothespins to himself, by all accounts an impressive figure but one not remotely close to the actual world record of 51. I wasn’t nearly as ambitious in middle school—or college, or after college. I wasn’t in danger of breaking any records of note, unless the longest stretch without a date counts. Actually, I should research that.

When you get older, things change—including <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-how-to-access-the-power-of-ambition">your ambitions</a>. You may still find yourself inclined to reach for lofty goals, but you redirect your energies. You aim less at absurd feats and more at smaller-scale, achievable ones that will push you a step or two toward your major goals. You work incrementally and that can be wise. But sometimes acting as if you’re still in middle school can be fun, too. With that in mind, and at the behest of my editors, I set out to break a world record—any world record.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-4-tips-for-setting-powerful-goals">4 Tips for Setting Powerful Goals</a>

Jumping right into the book of <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Guinness-World-Records-2017/dp/1910561339/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=677eb384d1a8be4414d8c724b747630d" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Guinness World Records</a> with the mission of finding one to break is daunting. You’re not simply trying to decide how to order your eggs or which project to launch, you’re trying to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-this-is-how-you-leave-a-legacy">be remembered for something incredible</a>—something that will etch your name into a metaphorical mountain that will endure time, memory and erosion. Have you ever sat down and said, “All right, at what thing should I become the best in the world?” It’s scary. Big ambition can be.

I go at it in steps. First I need to determine what records are available and, most important, achievable. To do so, I go to Ashrita Furman, the man who owns the Guinness world record for holding the most Guinness world records, including records for longest underwater Hula-Hooping, most hopscotch games in 24 hours and fastest time pogo-ing up the CN Tower in Toronto (the tallest tower in the Western Hemisphere). If anyone can help me decide how to chisel my name into the walls of history, it’s a guy who’s really good at pogo jumping up the CN Tower. Furman, a spry 62-year-old who owns a health food store in Queens, New York, says he breaks dozens a year. “Some people watch TV. Some people go to parties,” he says, “This is what I do in my spare time. By God’s grace, I’m pretty good at it.”

At the time of this writing, Furman holds 195 records, although he says they come and go constantly. He never takes money or sponsorships for his work. He weaves the record-breaking process in with his <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/i-actually-tried-meditation-for-30-days-this-is-what-happened">daily meditation</a>, using both to make spiritual progress. “It’s a philosophy about self-transcendence, trying to push past your limitations,” Furman says. “It’s about quieting your mind’s doubt and using your inner strength to achieve spectacular things.” His first record came in 1979, when he performed 27,000 jumping jacks over five hours. His hardest was probably the time he did forward rolls for a very nauseating 12.25 miles. “My advice is: It has to be something you really enjoy doing,” Furman tells me. “You’re going to have to spend time practicing, so it must be something you have a passion for.”

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/john-c-maxwell-how-to-carve-out-your-lifes-passion">How to Carve Out Your Life’s Passion</a>

<img alt="How I Beat a Guinness World Record" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__33436 img__view_mode__default" src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy/sites/default/files/youcantstartafirewithoutaspark_1.jpg" style="width: 100%;" /> 
RICHARD ISAAC/REX SHUTTERSTOCK VIA ZUMA PRESS

<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/4-ways-to-find-passion-and-purpose-in-your-life">Find passion</a>—got it. The next step is the process, in which you submit your idea to Guinness. The ideas come from anywhere and nowhere; Furman says he’ll see a kid skipping down the street and wonder if there’s a skipping record. “Some of these records take months of training,” Furman says, citing the record for Most Apples Cut in Mid-Air with a Sword in One Minute. Guinness then gets back to you—usually in a few months—often with rules. They would go for the skipping record, for instance, only if Furman did a full 26.2-mile marathon. (He did.)

Guinness receives 50,000 applications every year, although only about 1,000 actually make it into the book. It’s free to enter, but it can take 12 weeks for Guinness to review a record, so <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-it-only-takes-6-steps-to-plan-your-success">you’ll need to plan ahead</a> before attempting to jump from space. The upside is being in the same book as Neil Armstrong and Usain Bolt. The downside is you’ll probably be in there for something involving lengthy fingernails or chewing gum sculptures.

This process discounts some things immediately, including Oldest Person Ever—for which I am not eligible for another 82 years—or Highest Parachute Jump, for which I am not eligible because heights make me panic-sweat. (For similar reasons, I immediately dismiss records involving spiders, clowns, the original Willy Wonka &amp; the Chocolate Factory and being enclosed in dark spaces. For a guy trying to break a world record, I’m pretty high-maintenance.)

<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/top-of-mind-5-ways-to-get-ideas-flowing">I spend weeks brainstorming</a> and revising my list. Longest Hug is out because the current record is more than 26 hours, and I do not like anybody that much. Longest Continuous Moonwalk is out because I tried that once in 1984 and messed up my knee. I think about Most Eggs Cracked in One Minute with One Hand, but it sounds gooey. Opening the Most Beer Bottles with a Chainsaw in One Minute seems like a questionable thing to do in front of the children, and Most Prolific Mother Ever is out for what I hope are obvious reasons.

You can go down a pretty serious rabbit hole of people who have gone certifiably insane trying to break records, including an Indian man who got 366 flag tattoos and had his teeth removed so he could jam 496 drinking straws in his mouth. It could be argued that success is fueled by a spark of madness. I enlist help. My cousin suggests Most Eggs Cracked with the Head in One Minute (80), which seems like a solid idea but would be hell on the carpet. To keep my face out of it, I could try Most Eggs Cracked with One Hand, and that’s looking like a solid contender. There’s Shortest Time to Arrange a Chess Set, except it turns out my children have been pursuing the record for Most Chess Pieces Stuffed Into Other Games and Forgotten, although now I’m wondering if there’s a record for Fastest Game of Hungry Hungry Hippos That Partly Contains a Bunch of Chess Pieces—I’m feeling pretty good about that one.

<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/stop-using-these-3-excuses-if-you-want-to-be-successful">All of these are excuses</a>, of course, which is the problem here. It’s very difficult to sit at a desk, stare out the window, and think of something at which you will become the best in the world. Frankly, it seems insurmountable. I try to break it into pieces, and think about what I am good at, what I can offer that others can’t, where my natural strengths and passions lay. It is surprising how much time I spend not doing that. You can spend lots of time looking at other records, trying to come up with variations, trying to think of brand-new things, trying insanely lofty and ridiculous ideas. Or you can go with what you’re good at. I decide on Most Bruce Springsteen Songs Identified From Their Lyrics in One Minute.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/to-be-successful-do-what-you-do-best">To Be Successful, Do What You Do Best</a>

<img alt="How I Beat a Guinness World Record" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__33437 img__view_mode__default" src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy/sites/default/files/youcantstartafirewithoutaspark.jpg" style="width: 100%;" /> 
REX SHUTTERSTOCK VIA ZUMA PRESS

This becomes my goal for two reasons: 1) Over the years, I’ve dedicated much of the brain space that others use for entrepreneurial ideas and investment strategies into Bruce lyrics. 2) This is easy. The current record is 12, which converts into one Springsteen lyric every five seconds—piece of cake. I figure I can get at least twice that. But Guinness is, not surprisingly, very specific about its guidelines, so to make this official I need two experienced timekeepers and two independent witnesses. I find them all at a health club in my hometown. One witness is to read an opening lyric drawn from a random list of Bruce’s top-50-selling songs while I answer with the full, unabbreviated title—essentially a Springsteen lightning round.

Is it a hyperbole to say my whole life had been leading up to this moment? No. No, it isn’t.

Still, for an attempt at a largely frivolous record that will remain anonymous to nearly everyone, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/11-strategies-for-managing-stress">this is oddly nerve-racking</a>. There’s being silly, and then there’s being timed by four strangers in a giant conference room and checking rules to make sure I have the approved documentation.

<img alt="How I Beat a Guinness World Record" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__33438 img__view_mode__default" src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy/sites/default/files/sm1609_20greatestsongs.jpg" style="width: 75%;" />

The countdown begins, the two stopwatches start, and after a blur that went something like, “Badlands The River Brilliant Disguise Out in the Street Darlington County,” someone yells stop, and someone else says, “20.”

I beat the record by eight iconic American song titles. I don’t care what record you’re breaking, breaking it by eight feels pretty good. I don’t want to say I’m happy about it, but after I’m done writing this I’m calling my sculptor. There’s still the matter of waiting for Guinness’s approval, a process that takes a few months, and to be honest I’m sitting here awfully nervous about it, worrying that someone’s going to jump on this and get 21 before I get my certificate—or statue.

I’m kidding about the statue. Despite how niche this is, how narrow this is, how incremental it is, being the best in the world at something is <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/5-ridiculously-easy-things-you-can-do-every-day-to-feel-happy">an awesome feeling</a>. And not to oversimplify it, but it wasn’t the hardest thing in the world to do.

&nbsp;

<h3 class="BODY rtecenter">Identify your strengths and passions. Seek out and evaluate need. Find the opening. Position yourself to maximize it.</h3>

&nbsp;

Identify your strengths and passions. Seek out and evaluate need. <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/rohn-how-do-you-attract-opportunity-into-your-life">Find the opening</a>. Position yourself to maximize it. Then cross off anything on the list that has to do with spiders or clowns. (This is not a problem faced by many business owners, but I’m just covering my bases here.) The idea isn’t breaking silly records but reaching some measure of self-transcendence. It’s not, “Hey, cool, I can name a box set of Bruce lyrics.” It’s that I&nbsp;engaged in the process, planning and execution needed in naming a box set of Bruce lyrics. That’s the real lesson. The other is not to attach a bunch of clothespins to your face.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/do-these-5-things-to-actually-stick-to-your-goals">Do These 5 Things to (Actually) Stick to Your Goals</a>

&nbsp;

This article originally appeared in the <a href="https://store.successcom.wpenginepowered.com/success-magazine-september-2016-gabby-douglas.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">September 2016 issue of SUCCESS magazine</a>.
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Have you ever sat down and said, ‘All right, at what thing should I become the best in the world?’ I have.

Have you ever sat down and said, ‘All right, at what thing should I become the best in the world?’ I have. | SUCCESS

How I Broke a Guinness World Record

How I Broke a Guinness World Record | SUCCESS

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‘Play it by ear, go by your gut and do what you feel is right.’

‘Play it by ear, go by your gut and do what you feel is right.’ | SUCCESS

How Michael Strahan Is Crushing Self-Doubt One Opportunity at a Time

Michael Strahan: Conquering Self-Doubt through Opportunities

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Every entrepreneur has a tale about his moment of inspiration, but few of them take place midway through an NFL practice. Mark Clayton, a former wide receiver for the Baltimore Ravens, was running pass routes and listening to music when he found himself repeatedly distracted by his headphones flying off.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/to-perform-best-in-life-remember-these-6-ziglar-truths">To Perform Best in Life, Remember These 6 Ziglar Truths</a>

<img alt="Out Route" class="media-image attr__typeof__foaf:Image img__fid__32224 img__view_mode__default" src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/legacy/sites/default/files/outroute.jpg" style="width: 50%; margin: 4px; float: left;" title="Out Route" typeof="foaf:Image" />“I was picking up speed pretty good when I put my foot down to turn left and my headphones went right,” he says. Clayton spent the following weeks sampling new headphones, but couldn’t find any he liked. So he drew upon his childhood art talents and sketched out his own idea for over-ear, lightweight wireless headphones that would remain in place even during strenuous workouts.

That was 2012; this past winter saw the launch of <a href="https://www.livvheadphones.com/about/" target="_blank">LIVV Headphones</a>, active gear designed both for NFL players and the rest of us. (Mostly the rest of us.)

Clayton retired from the NFL in 2013, but a friend had pushed him to start thinking about his post-football moves a few years prior. “In the middle of it, with the money you’re making, the fun you’re having and the impact you’re having in the community, it’s hard to see life without football,” he says.

But he has adapted to his new digs. “I guess ‘founder’ is cool,” he says. “I’ve always been like, ‘I’m the guy who drew it.’ ”

The guy who produces them is Dale Lott, founder of Nashville-based Aurisonics and a former audio engineer who’s worked with the military and NASA. Lott melded rock star-quality audio performance with Clayton’s design.

Things have moved fast: In September Clayton launched a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $75,000; by October the campaign had raised $117,000. Deliveries are slated to begin in April.

Clayton says the progress has been fast enough to make his previous career pale in comparison. “Oh, this is harder. Football’s so easy. It’s just fun—you wake up and go beat somebody on a route and people say, ‘Whoa, he’s awesome.’ With this, you have to craft your message, work on branding, all that. But we have people who make it fun.”

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/7-dos-and-donts-for-entrepreneurial-success">7 Do’s and Don’ts for Entrepreneurial Success</a>

How a former NFL player turned an annoyance on the practice field into his second career

How a former NFL player turned an annoyance on the practice field into his second career | SUCCESS

Reinvention Doesn't Always Follow an 'Aha' Moment

Reinvention Doesn&#8217;t Always Follow an &#8216;Aha&#8217; Moment

Reinvention Doesn't Always Follow an 'Aha' Moment | SUCCESS

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Reinvention Doesn't Always Follow an 'Aha' Moment  | SUCCESS

Hello. My name’s Jeff, and I work from home. Sometimes that means on my couch, sometimes it means in my minivan. Whatever it means, this is how I make it work wherever I am:

1. Establish your morning routine: Alarm, shower, real clothes, decent breakfast. Dress semi-professionally. Don’t go all crazy with work pants, but sweats don’t exactly make you feel productive.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/12-work-methods-that-will-skyrocket-your-productivity">12 Work Methods That Will Skyrocket Your Productivity</a>

2. Find a <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/6-home-hacks-to-make-the-most-of-your-space">dedicated workspace</a> in your home. This might be an office or a desk. It might be 1,000 square feet or 30. Just as your bedroom should be a space that makes your brain think rest, your office space should make you clock into the work mindset.

3. No TV. But background music is good. (Personally, I&nbsp;can’t work with anything with words, so I’ll put on a jazz station and zone out.)

4. Get a coffee shop rewards card. Obviously.

5. Cut out your social media distractions. Yeah, I don’t do this either. But you’re already surrounded by enough other things to do; <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/5-do-not-disturb-tips-for-avoiding-tech-distractions">minimize them</a> if you can.

6. Take two walks a day. I read this somewhere and dismissed it as nonsense; then I tried it. Now every day at 2:30 p.m., I take laps around the neighborhood—turns out fresh air actually does clear your mind from staring at a computer for hours on end. Who knew? (Well, everybody, but you get my point.)

7. Hang out with others. If your city has a <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/community-in-co-working-and-other-perks-of-the-business-trend">shared-workspace situation</a>, check it out. If not, and you know other people in a WFH arrangement, meet them for coffee.

8. Fold your laundry during particularly long conference calls. That’s just obvious.

Related: <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/the-truth-about-working-from-home">The Truth About Working From Home</a>

&nbsp;

This article appears in the <a href="https://store.successcom.wpenginepowered.com/by-media/magazines/success-magazine-april-2016-kendra-scott.html">April 2016 issue of SUCCESS magazine.</a>

It starts with your morning routine. | SUCCESS

8 Work-From-Home Tips From a Guy Currently Sitting on His Couch

8 Work-From-Home Tips From a Guy Currently Sitting on His Couch | SUCCESS

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It’s not what you see on millennial job boards or in stock art pictures—images of roguishly unshaven guys in T-shirts or women with tousled hair and bathrobes.

It’s not what you see on millennial job boards or in stock art pictures—images of roguishly unshaven guys in T-shirts or women with tousled hair and bathrobes. | SUCCESS

The Truth About Working From Home

The Truth About Working From Home | SUCCESS

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2015 SUCCESS Achiever of the Year: Travis Kalanick

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"My next guest is the co-founder and CEO of ride-hailing app <a href="https://www.uber.com/about" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Uber</a>,” Stephen Colbert said on one of the first episodes of his Late Show before taking a beat to tap on his smartphone. “And he’ll be here in 10 seconds.”

Indeed, by September 2015, the 5-year-old private transportation company had become so pervasive in American culture that its CEO was granted a prime seat at the relaunch of a marquee late-night franchise. There was Travis Kalanick, booked for airtime alongside Vice President Joe Biden, with actresses Scarlett Johansson and Amy Schumer as well as rapper Kendrick Lamar among the premiere-week guests.

The visit was part of a big year for Kalanick, one that found his company becoming the most valuable privately held startup in the world, exploding domestically and across the globe (especially China and India), cementing its status as the go-to ride-sharing app on planet Earth and endeavoring to blow apart what it sees as overly stifling regulatory problems. It might not have always been the smoothest of rides, but the numbers tell quite a story.

In July the company closed a funding round that valued it at more than $50 billion. Only two venture capital-backed startups have passed that level of valuation, and the other was Facebook, which took nearly seven years to do it, compared with Uber’s five. Also last spring, the 39-year-old made Forbes’ list of the world’s billionaires with a net worth of $5.38 billion; that amount has since grown to $6 billion. Uber has 1.1 million active “driver-partners” (those who’ve driven at least four trips in the past month), and 400,000 of them are in the U.S. It has 4,800 full-time employees worldwide (five years ago that number was 300), and as of mid-November, it was operating in 356 cities in 64 countries across six continents.

Even by Silicon Valley standards, it’s been a pretty shocking rise. Kalanick grew up in the Los Angeles suburb of Northridge; by some reports, he’s been coding since the sixth grade. In the late ’90s, he dropped out of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) to launch the music file-sharing service Scour, a bit of a tricky proposition then, and Scour was eventually sued for $250 billion, forcing the company into bankruptcy. From there he founded Redswoosh, a file-sharing company that he sold to <a href="https://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Akamai</a> for a package that included $19 million in stock, plus other compensation.

With more than a few dollars in his pocket, Kalanick commenced traveling the world, which continued until one snowy night at the LeWeb conference in Paris. As the myth goes, Kalanick and Uber co-founder Garrett Camp were standing outside waiting for a cab. Cold and annoyed, Camp wondered aloud why he couldn’t just take out his phone, push a button and fetch a dry ride home. Eighteen months later, in the summer of 2010, Uber launched in San Francisco with a small fleet of cars, seed money and 100 friends. “Garrett brought the classy,” Kalanick said in a five-year anniversary address to employees in June, “and I helped to bring the efficiency.”

&nbsp;

<h2 class="rtecenter">"In many cases [doing something new] means going up against powerful incumbents that will do whatever it takes to keep your idea down."</h2>

&nbsp;

By now Uber’s benefits are well-recited: Drivers use their own cars. They make their own hours, and their shifts are 100 percent self-directed. “People decide where, when and for how long to drive,” he wrote in the Pacific Standard’s “Future of Work” project in October. “They are free to turn off the app and stop working at any moment. In other words, their needs determine their work schedule—and nothing else.” Nearly 90 percent of drivers, he says, cite the flexible schedule as a major reason they work with Uber.

Kalanick and his company faced unprecedented scrutiny and their fair share of obstacles in 2015, including controversies about surge pricing (the practice of increasing rates during busy times), driver and passenger safety, and continued protected battles against regulatory groups. (It also faced off with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio in the summer over the number of cars on city streets.) Several of those battles saw Kalanick participating directly; he’s known as much for his success as he is for his spirited defenses of himself and his company.

“In many cases,” he told UCLA students during a visit in October, “[doing something new] means going up against powerful incumbents that will do whatever it takes to keep your idea down—but in any case, it means going against the crowd—against what everyone else is doing. This requires an <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/5-ways-to-make-sure-self-sabotaging-beliefs-dont-wreck-your-success" title="5 Ways to Make Sure Self-Sabotaging Beliefs Don’t Wreck Your Success | SUCCESS.com">infallible belief in your idea</a>, your principles and your ability to withstand the pressure to go with the crowd, and instead determinedly seek the truth regardless of where it leads.”

Kalanick spent a good bit of 2015 working to mentor would-be game changers like himself. In addition to stops at events like UCLA’s, where he privately mentored students and young alumni, he was active with the educational organization <a href="https://girlswhocode.com/about-us/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Girls Who Code</a>, whose members pitched him ideas for new apps in September. In November he spoke at <a href="https://www.summit.co/about-us/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Summit at Sea</a> alongside former Google CEO Eric Schmidt; before departing he spoke to South Florida community college students about being an entrepreneur and how they could capitalize on their ideas.

He has more ideas of his own: Uber is said to be investing $1 billion in its Indian market and another billion in China. The company is part of the discussion about driverless cars, as you might expect. The carpool-based service UberPOOL marked its first birthday in San Francisco in August and has since expanded to include Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Austin, Texas. The bike-courier service UberRUSH has opened in New York, Chicago and San Francisco; instead of delivering passengers a car, it delivers businesses… well, pretty much anything.

And on Colbert, Kalanick touted something even closer to people’s hearts than convenient rides home: UberEATS, a lunch-delivery service (currently operating in select cities) that’s geared to small restaurants; the kitchens make the food, deposit it into temperature-controlled packaging and then it’s delivered.

He’s not just gunning for your car—he wants it all.

&nbsp;

Read more 2015 SUCCESS Achievers of the Year stories:

<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/2015-success-achiever-of-the-year-travis-kalanick" target="_self" rel="noopener"></a><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/2015-success-achiever-of-the-year-bob-baffert" target="_self" rel="noopener"></a><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/2015-success-achiever-of-the-year-elizabeth-holmes" target="_self" rel="noopener"></a><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/2015-success-achiever-of-the-year-matt-salzberg" target="_self" rel="noopener"></a>

&nbsp;

This article appears in the <a href="https://store.successcom.wpenginepowered.com/by-media/magazines/success-magazine-february-2016-joel-osteen.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">February 2016&nbsp;issue of&nbsp;SUCCESS&nbsp;magazine. </a>
</div>

Uber's co-founder and CEO has disrupted not only an industry but a way of life.

Uber's co-founder and CEO has disrupted not only an industry but a way of life. | SUCCESS

2015 SUCCESS Achiever of the Year: Travis Kalanick | SUCCESS

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2015 SUCCESS Achiever of the Year: Bob Baffert

<a href="https://www.bobbaffert.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bob Baffert</a> began 2015 as a horse trainer whose legacy was already carved in stone. He’d been inducted into racing’s <a href="https://www.racingmuseum.org/hall-of-fame/bob-baffert" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Hall of Fame</a> in 2009 and had more than 2,500 victories and north of $220 million in earnings. He’d been in the business for more than 40 years; his career was the stuff of legends, and he had the respect of his industry. He was just missing this one thing.

And it finally arrived as his horse American Pharoah came tearing around the final turn at the Belmont Stakes in May. There was no doubt: The Triple Crown, the lone professional prize that had eluded him throughout his career, was his. Pharoah, the colt who had already won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes, ended up beating the field by a full 5½ lengths (a unit of measurement in racing meaning the length of a horse from nose to tail). To win the Triple Crown, which is considered the sport’s greatest achievement, a 3-year-old horse must win racing’s three biggest events in a single year. Before Pharoah, only 11 horses had won the Triple Crown. His was the first Triple Crown win in 37 years—so lengthy a drought, in fact, that many of the sport’s pundits believed that modern training and breeding practices made it an impossible feat. Baffert proved them wrong while surrounded by his family and five children: Taylor, Canyon, Forest, Savannah and Bode.

“I had an idea when [American Pharoah] went into the first turn,” Baffert says. “He gets in that cruising mode, and horses just can’t keep up with him when he’s in that mode. But he still needed some luck. I always expect the worst and hope for the best. But once I saw him going into the last turn, I could tell Pharoah was in that mode.”

Baffert was already one of the sport’s pre-eminent names, thanks to a career that includes 12 Breeders’ Cup victories, four at the Kentucky Derby, six at the Preakness and two at Belmont. Claiming the Crown didn’t create Baffert’s legacy. “That was already assured,” says Brien Bouyea of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. “Out at the California racetracks, he’s pretty much revered as a god. It’s not like if he didn’t get this achievement his career would have been thought of any less. But it’s certainly a nice capper.”

In addition to the capping, the Crown win—and run-up to it—catalyzed a resurgence of interest in a sport that enjoys a devoted inside following but tends to break into the national conversation only on special occasions. In short, it was amazing PR. “This horse created a momentum that carried into summer and fall,” Bouyea says. Pharoah and his trainer got big enough that Sports Illustrated announced the horse as a candidate for its Sportsman of the Year award. SportsCenter did a live show from Saratoga; jockey Victor Espinoza parlayed his riding success into a gig on Dancing with the Stars. “It certainly had tremendous cultural impact,” Bouyea says. “And having Bob and Victor as ambassadors helped.”

For Baffert, the road to the Crown took more than four decades. Known equally for his success, shock of snow-white hair, and what industry experts and writers call an “irreverent attitude,” Baffert suffered a heart attack in 2012 and has been, by most accounts, a little mellowed since. “I think his reputation has changed a bit over the years,” says Bouyea. “People have warmed up to him a little more than they had.” Baffert seemingly warmed back: His demeanor with the media eased noticeably, and he let fans and selfie-takers in to see (and pet) American Pharoah.

For his part, the prized colt started 2015 looking impressive but hardly a lock for Crown consideration. Pharoah, Baffert says, had been hurt and was a bit of a question mark. In fact, at the beginning of the year Baffert also had his eye on a second horse, Dortmund. “I actually thought Dortmund would be my Triple Crown horse,” Baffert says. “We knew Pharoah had a lot of talent. But we weren’t sure. We knew he was good, but not super-duper good.”

Baffert kept his team focused, and the super-duper part quickly became clear. Pharoah won the Kentucky Derby by a length and went on to scorch the soaked, muddy field at the Preakness, winning by seven lengths.

&nbsp;

<h2 class="rtecenter">"You want to be big in those big events; you want to be competitive."</h2>

&nbsp;

The famed trainer had gone to Belmont in search of the Crown three times previously: in 1997 with Silver Charm, who fell short by three-quarters of a length; 1998 with Real Quiet, who lost by a nostril; and 2002 with War Emblem, who finished eighth. The list of horses deemed unbeatable is full of horses that were eventually beaten, including such names as Big Brown and Smarty Jones. But down the stretch this time, the outcome wasn’t in question.

Bouyea says the Belmont was simply electric. “Belmont’s always a lot of fun,” says Bouyea. “But there’s a different atmosphere when there’s a Crown on the line. Once Pharoah started cruising around the grandstand, the place started shaking, champagne was spraying in the air, there were 90,000 people going nuts. It went on for 25 or 30 minutes; I’d never seen anything like that.”

Espinoza says the recipe is simple. “You need to be with a <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/john-c-maxwell-4-ways-to-help-your-team-surge-forward" title="John C. Maxwell: 4 Ways to Help Your Team Surge Forward | SUCCESS.com">good team</a> and on the same page when it comes to the big races,” he says. “Bob and I are always on the same page. We just have that luck together.”

These days Pharoah is officially retired. To celebrate a career that included nine victories in 11 starts (and earned $8.7 million all told), he spends his days at the Coolmore conglomerate’s <a href="https://coolmore.com/america/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ashford Stud farm</a> in Kentucky, home to a couple of other Derby winners.

At 62, Baffert can count 2015 as the year he achieved his biggest goal, but he can also keep looking ahead. Horse racing isn’t like other sports, where age and time can push you out. There’s only one question: What now? “It’s like any coach—if you win the Super Bowl, you can’t wait to get back there again,” he says. “The Kentucky Derby drives me more than anything. You want to be in those big events; you want to be <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-to-stay-ahead-of-the-competition" title="How to Stay Ahead of the Competition | SUCCESS.com">competitive</a>. And if you’re lucky enough to win them, it’s pretty exciting.”

He happens to be looking at a new, young horse—one he is prepping for 2016. “I don’t know,” he said, “I think [Pharoah] is probably a once-in-a-lifetime kind of horse. But you never know. We might just get lucky and do it again.”

&nbsp;

<div>Read more 2015 SUCCESS Achievers of the Year stories:</div>

<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/2015-success-achiever-of-the-year-travis-kalanick" target="_self" rel="noopener"></a><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/2015-success-achiever-of-the-year-misty-copeland" target="_self" rel="noopener"></a><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/2015-success-achiever-of-the-year-elizabeth-holmes" target="_self" rel="noopener"></a><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/2015-success-achiever-of-the-year-matt-salzberg" target="_self" rel="noopener"></a>

&nbsp;

This article appears in the <a href="https://store.successcom.wpenginepowered.com/by-media/magazines/success-magazine-february-2016-joel-osteen.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">February 2016&nbsp;issue of&nbsp;SUCCESS&nbsp;magazine. </a>

This legendary horse trainer won racing's biggest prize, the Triple Crown.

This legendary horse trainer won racing's biggest prize, the Triple Crown. | SUCCESS

2015 SUCCESS Achiever of the Year: Bob Baffert | SUCCESS

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On the afternoon of Jan. 28, 1992, Andrew Zimmern walked into a coffee shop on Manhattan’s Lower West Side. He could have come from anywhere—from the building he’d been squatting in for most of the past year, from any of the subway stations where he lurked to lift purses and tourists’ jewelry, from any of the urban caves he went to dry out or come down.

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What the then-30-year-old stepped into was a roomful of friends—“20 of my nearest and dearest,” he says now—who ushered him in, told him again how much they loved him, put a one-way ticket in his hand and sent him 1,200 miles west to Minnesota.

“It was not my first attempt at getting sober,” he says. “I was a terrible alcoholic. I was a heroin addict. I was an everything addict. And for a long time, my addiction dominated my life and devastated the people around me whom I loved the most.”

Not to spoil the ending, but the one-way ticket worked. Since that Tuesday afternoon almost 24 years ago, Zimmern says he’s been “continuously free from anything that affects me from the neck up.” He’s built a food, travel and business empire using three talents: his preternatural gift for cooking, his equally powerful gift for storytelling and an ability to let the lessons of his past guide the principles of his future. “It’s a sweet, spiritual irony,” he says during a calm moment in an airport terminal. He’s on the road, as usual, when we talk. When he’s not flying to exotic locales for his Travel Channel series <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005IQGNGG/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B005IQGNGG&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=7MG6S7U5XTRNIQIE">Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern</a>, he busies himself with a full-service production company, his stadium concessions concepts, writing, podcasting and serving as a board member for a handful of good-cause organizations.

“Everything I do in business is put through the prism of what I’ve learned in getting sober. There’s no decision, no moment of the day that isn’t dominated by my thinking about how I handle things differently now than I did prior to Jan. 28, 1992. I reinvented myself then. It’s my favorite part of me.”

It also led to his fourth talent: He’s gotten really, really good at eating bugs.

***

The gooey, grody and deeply exotic meals of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern (and its offshoots) are a slick, wriggling device; of course, there’s a primal hands-over-the-eyes curiosity to watching Zimmern devour sea slugs harvested from ocean sludge, animal parts not commonly talked about in dinner conversation, or things that have not yet died.

But mostly, they’re Trojan horses. Well, Trojan bugs, probably. Trojan dung beetles. Trojan bamboo rats! Trojan bull testicles! Because Zimmern is a savvy-enough showman to know that you need to draw people into the tent, but a wise-enough businessman to know that novelty alone won’t keep them there. Put another way, there’s a lot more happening on Bizarre Foods—a Travel Channel staple since 2007—than bizarre foods.

“Somewhere around the second season, I realized there was a legacy here,” Zimmern says. He began to understand that what he was documenting wasn’t really food at all. It was the world and its people, the collection of humans sitting around whatever humans sit around to eat—tables, blankets, fires, boats, dirt—wrapping stories around meals and vice versa, stitching togetherness onto a fragmented and disconnected planet. He’s just filtering it through a universal&nbsp;prism.

“Let’s take three cultural constants: math, music and food. You take away the quadratic equation, people will survive. Take away their boom box, you maybe get into a fistfight. Take away their rice? There’s gonna be blood in the streets,” he says. “At this point, I&nbsp;honestly don’t care if I’m eating roast camel or something from the bottom of the ocean. All I care about it is: Who am I eating it with? What’s their story? How can I advance a feeling of rapport with these people and have viewers connect with them?”

That became his goal: not eating weird food, but telling stories. Luckily he was already pretty good at that.

***

“I was at a… ” Zimmern begins; it’s a common starting point for most of his stories. They tumble out of Zimmern, tales with exotic datelines: a hostel in Johannesburg, extremist-held towns in Syria, or unusual locales in Brazil, Kazakhstan and Nicaragua.

He’s had years of practice telling them. As a teen, he’d accompany his advertising-executive dad on business trips overseas, skipping from one exotic city to the next and birthing his wanderlust. He started his culinary training at 14. He attended New York’s prestigious Dalton School and graduated from Vassar College, studying history and art history and honing his powers of observation. From there he returned to New York City and helped launch and operate a dozen restaurants before all hell broke loose.

“I’m <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/how-i-learned-that-ambition-is-not-a-dirty-word" target="_blank" title="How I Learned That ‘Ambition’ Is Not a Dirty Word | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">extremely ambitious</a>,” Zimmern says by way of introducing the dark years of his addictions, “and for a while I had a monstrous ego and low self-esteem, which is a bad combination for anyone.” At his nadir, he was homeless for a year. The intervention at the coffee shop, he says, was not his first. But something clicked that time, something about the 20 friends in a room telling him they loved him, wishing him better than what he’d become, and not just because of the criminal element.

“I’m a deplorable, horrible, selfish person,” he says, and when I&nbsp;chuckle at what seems to be a bit of self-deprecation—one at great odds with Zimmern’s gregarious-to-a-fault TV persona—he stops me cold. “No, I’m serious. I am a user of people, and I am a taker of things. That’s, at my very nature, who I am. I’ve done a lot of work in the past 24 years to change that. I hope I don’t sound like a sophomoric, self-loving jerk, but I think the reason I have a reputation as one of the nicer, more easy-to-get-along-with people in the public eye is that I&nbsp;know the person who is deep inside me is the opposite of that.”

Rehab, he says, helped him find both versions of himself. He spent five weeks at the Hazelden Foundation in Center City, Minn., and then took up residence at a halfway house nearby. “I moved away from a life focused solely on me—what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it, how I wanted it done—to an attitude of, if I wanted to be <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/what-happy-successful-optimistic-people-know-about-life" target="_blank" title="What Happy, Successful, Optimistic People Know About Life | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">happy, successful and satisfied in life</a>, I might want to remember that all those dark shadows around me are actually other people, and I might do well to learn how to get along with them.”

And with that rebooted worldview—and under much humbler circumstances—he got back to work. First up was washing dishes and clearing tables at Café Un Deux Trois in Minneapolis; it took him only seven weeks before he was named executive chef. After six years at the restaurant, he volunteered for unpaid internships at a Minneapolis magazine, radio station and TV station. After four months, all three were paying him. Most important, Zimmern noticed that he was gaining self-esteem by doing productive, estimable acts, drifting toward positives he hadn’t previously known. It wasn’t an overnight-choirboy thing, of course. “Do I break out in a horrible case of me-me-me needs at least once a day? You bet I do. But I&nbsp;worked very hard at being a better person.”

Around that time he also became the in-house chef on a handful of early HGTV shows, gaining more on-camera experience while nurturing his own ideas. One in particular kept nagging at him, one that was about food, but not really. “Food with a story is good, but food that people hadn’t heard about was better. And the best stories are found at the fringe.” The Food Network passed on his pitch, but Zimmern realized he was envisioning as much a travelogue as a food show, so he tried Travel Channel, which was beginning to scratch out a market that included shows by Anthony Bourdain and Samantha Brown. With some 200 episodes completed, shot in over 150 countries, “the rest, as they say, is history.”

To some degree, it seems a little nuts, sending a chatty, playful bald dude with several imposing cameras into the wilderness in the pursuit of “adventure learning.” But the numbers don’t lie. “It’s one of our longest-running, most successful shows on the air now,” says Ross Babbit, senior vice president of programming and development at Travel Channel. “The food is just the starting point. He truly celebrates everything he’s experiencing. That’s who he is. That’s not scripted. That’s Andrew in his full passion.”

It’s an amazing transformation from a mugger to a person whose genuine spirit, humility and <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/why-the-empathetic-leader-is-the-best-leader" target="_blank" title="Why the Empathetic Leader Is the Best Leader | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">empathy for other people</a> is now held up as an example. Zimmern says members of the military have told him they’ve screened episodes of Bizarre Foods to glean hints on how to approach locals. “[A general] said that sometimes his men or women pull up to a tiny, humble town, and somebody will run out and shove a pot into their face, something that might smell off-putting or look strange. If their first reaction is to recoil, they’ve already lost the village before they get out of the jeep.” But, he says, if they’re able to try some of the principles he strives for in his show (and indeed, his greater life), different relationships can be forged.

Zimmern practices what he preaches. Once he was shooting a show in a fish market staffed by Pakistanis. The circumstances were ugly—terrible treatment, grueling jobs, pennies a day. He looked over and spied a group of workers playing cricket in a half-empty parking lot, a pickup lunchtime game. So he ran over to join them. Because, as Zimmern sees it through the filter of his years of travel, wanderlust and second chances, those guys aren’t really all that different from him or you or me. They’re just playing ball at lunch. There’s not a lot more things universally human than wanting to play ball at lunch on a summer afternoon. “I wanted to talk to them. I wanted people who watch TV to see that Pakistanis and Americans, especially at this point in our history, have these shared experiences. These simple examples of people living their lives can be very, very impactful.”

***

Back to that story, or one of them, anyway, that began, “I was at a… ”

This is a quiet one he tells about his time with the Himba, indigenous Namibian herders. He and his crew spent three or four days with them, shooting for television; feasting, of course; and ingratiating themselves with the locals so successfully that Zimmern, on his last day, was offered the chieftain’s 14-year-old daughter as a bride. (He declined.)

On their final night in Namibia, while Zimmern and his crew were hanging around and probably canceling wedding plans, he detected movement in the distance, 400 or 500 yards away from the celebration and fire. As you might imagine, unexpected movement on the African savanna can be cause for alarm. But in this case, the movement was a newer kind of predator: It was a jeep, one with a photographer poking out of the top and focusing on the Himba village through a massive telephoto lens, something available only to professionals or an affluent tourist class. The jeep stopped, and the photographer snapped, click-click-click. Away they drove.

The chieftain shook his head and lowered his eyes. “What bothers you?” Zimmern asked. “And he said, ‘All they do is drive up, take pictures, and they leave. Are we doing something so awful that they’re not interested in talking to us, allowing us to offer the hospitality of our fire? To feed them a meal?’ And I started crying, actually crying. Here’s a tribal chieftain who wants to welcome people, people who are off in the distance, taking what they need and walking away, not even interested in knocking on the door.

“I knock on the door. I share a meal. I try to make myself useful. And great things happen.”

<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/mission-impossible" target="_self" title="Mission Impossible | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">If you think you’ve hit a wall and can’t come back from it, think again. Dive into 4 stories of overcoming obstacles that will inspire you.</a>

&nbsp;

This article appears in the November 2015 issue of SUCCESS magazine.

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On the afternoon of Jan. 28, 1992, Andrew Zimmern walked into a coffee shop on Manhattan’s Lower West Side. He could have come from anywhere—from the

On the afternoon of Jan. 28, 1992, Andrew Zimmern walked into a coffee shop on Manhattan’s Lower West Side. He could have come from anywhere—from the | SUCCESS

'I Was an Everything Addict': The Bizarre Transformation of Andrew Zimmern

&#8216;I Was an Everything Addict&#8217;: The Bizarre Transformation of Andrew Zimmern

'I Was an Everything Addict': Andrew Zimmern's Unlikely Journey

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<div id="_idContainer003">Here’s the story I usually tell when someone brings up nutty sports parents.</div><div id="_idContainer011">At the first T-ball practice of the season, back when my son was 7, I&nbsp;introduced him to the coach. I told the man that Jake had begun playing only the year before, on a team named after a fine local flooring store. The words were apparently a trigger.“I remember you guys!” The coach suddenly exclaimed, more animated than people usually are when discussing the marketing strategies of local flooring stores.“We played you in the championship—you beat us 7-3! You had orange uniforms, right? And you had those little blond twins who were really good.” Here he turned to his own son, who ambled up behind him. “You remember, right?” The kid rattled off their names. This went on for a few minutes, and the whole time I stood there dumbly thinking,&nbsp;Wait, there was a championship?I admit, I’m not what you would call a Sports Dad. It’s not because I don’t believe in competition or that I would prefer to issue participant trophies to all the world’s children. It’s more that I like sleeping in on Saturdays, don’t wish to burn my weekends driving to tournaments in neighboring states, and I’ll let my son skip a “big” game because we have tickets to see “Weird Al” Yankovic. In 30 years, Jake won’t remember whether his team beat the Brewers—should a T-ball team be named the Brewers, by the way?—but he will definitely remember singing along to “Like a Surgeon” and “Amish Paradise” for the rest of his life.Truth be told, I wasn’t very good at sports myself; I was the kind of ballplayer to whom the coach would say, “Just try to get a walk,” code for: “Don’t mess things up—we’ve got a rally going.” And that was weird because&nbsp;<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/10-lessons-we-learned-from-our-dads" target="_blank" title="10 Lessons We Learned From Our Dads | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">the coach was usually my dad</a>. My son’s T-ball coach, by contrast, could recall the score of a game played 12 months prior by children who, at the time, couldn’t be trusted to sleep through the night without peeing themselves.This explains why Jake’s coach wanted little to do with my son. He overlooked him and focused on the other players. Jake—or Jake and I, more like it—didn’t take the game seriously enough. Jake’s the type of player who prefers to spend practices inspecting the outfield’s native flora. And that’s cool with me.It’s not to say we don’t want the boy to have an experience that most adults remember fondly. After a few years off, we put Jake, now 11, back into sports. It’s good for him to have the exercise, exposure, socialization and, of course, the lingering hope that he’ll stumble into an activity that will one day allow him to buy us a house.Frankly, though, Jake’s mom and I were hesitant to sign him up for baseball again because of the T-ball experience. One Saturday that year, we showed up for team photos, and the coach’s wife started shouting—actual across-the-field shouting—because the other team was taking ground balls on the infield while we were sitting in front of the camera. After one loss, the coach’s 70-year-old dad visited the postgame snacks-and-juice powwow shaking his head and saying, “Well, if that doesn’t make you want to start drinking, I don’t know what will.”One morning all of the parents received this email from the league office: “As the season draws to a close and competition becomes elevated in tournament play, please take extra care on the way we act. Above all else, this is recreational baseball, and it is all about the children having a great time competing and learning. Let’s have fun, win or lose, and demonstrate a positive demeanor as good examples for our children.” They don’t send things like that unless a few people have already been charged with errors, so to speak.It’s disappointing. It’s this thing that you swear you won’t do—get involved in leagues like that, with people like that—and then you wake up at 6 a.m. on some Saturday so you can get to the field and stake out a distant spot in the bleachers, a grown man self-exiled because he doesn’t want to hear the other parents complain about the inconsistent strike zone of a 14-year-old volunteer umpire. All parents—even the wackos—just want the best for their kids, what they feel is the best opportunity, because unlike baseball, you only get one swing at it. But when you’re cheering because an 8-year-old on the other team dropped a fly ball in center field, it’s hard not to feel a twinge of discomfort, right?Maybe this puts me in the minority of our pleasantly suburban, Whole Foods- and Honda-happy enclave in Indiana: There are a lot of sports people here. Some of their kids have baseball practices or games five nights a week. Others travel the length of the state to participate in “championship tournaments.”As we prepared for Jake to re-enter baseball this year, I wasn’t sure what competition level was right for him. Or for me. So I asked advice from my friend Jon, a devoted fan and the opposite of me on the Sports Dad spectrum—he’s great at coaching and <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/john-c-maxwell-5-qualities-of-people-who-use-time-wisely" target="_blank" title="John C. Maxwell: 5 Qualities of People Who Use Time Wisely | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">time management</a>. (I’m not kidding when I say I had to sketch a little chart to keep track of it all.)There’s our local branch of the Little League, the international organization that hosts the Little League World Series every year. But Little League is open to everyone, and the really good kids play on travel teams. In the town where Jon and his son live, some of the Little League parents didn’t think their kids were getting enough out of it. They wanted fiercer competition for the more talented players, so they created a traveling team; there are also showcase and all-star teams. Now Jon’s at baseball games four days out of every seven, including Sunday doubleheaders. At one tournament, they played five games over 48 hours, the last of which ended about 10 p.m. on a Sunday.“It’s changed a lot, even since I was playing,” says Drew Storen, closing pitcher for the Washington Nationals, who, at the time of this writing, were the hottest team in the majors. Storen grew up playing Little League near my hometown. “There are a lot more travel teams now playing year-round, which I’m not really a fan of.”Ernie Banks said, “Let’s play two,” but when it comes to Little League, my attitude is more like,&nbsp;Let’s just play one, because we’re going to your cousins’ this afternoon, and I still need to make a Home Depot run.&nbsp;So we settled on the basic Little League.And we’ve been lucky: Our coaches are fantastic. They’ve created an amazing culture of support and kinship among kids who haven’t even had&nbsp;culture&nbsp;as a vocabulary word in social studies yet. If one kid strikes out, the others pat him on the helmet; if he gets a hit, everyone lets loose a burst of energy that leaves me tearing up with pride like it’s the end of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001EJV276/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=B001EJV276&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=sm0fe-20&amp;linkId=5LX33L2QAEKNYQSB">Rudy</a>.And thank goodness, because I love baseball for its ability to teach Jake life lessons. It’s especially great, for instance, for <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/5-ways-to-reframe-failure" target="_blank" title="5 Ways to Reframe Failure | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">teaching failure</a>. If you’re a future Hall of Famer making a teacher’s annual salary for every at-bat, you’re still failing 70 percent of the time. Learning how to win is important. Learning how to lose is, too. We want Jake to learn how to represent himself. We want him to learn how to work at something that he might not automatically be good at and stick with it.Storen got that lesson out of youth sports. “Baseball’s great for that,” he says. “You get some coaches who are able to help kids of all levels. On a rec league team, you’ll have a couple of kids who are all-stars, and some who aren’t. A coach who can work with all of them can teach so many good lessons that carry over to life.”There’s one lesson Storen puts above all others, and it applies to the parents and coaches as much as the kids: “Make sure you have fun. There’s nothing I like better than coming to the ballpark and hanging out and working. If we’re able to hold onto that at the big-league level, there’s no reason a Little League team couldn’t.”Late this season, my Jake was suddenly slated to pitch during a game. The coach arranged for all non-pitchers to take a turn on the mound during the final game of the season, which is a bit uncommon. Jeremy and Sam F. did pretty well. Big Joey got into a little trouble, but fought his way out of it, largely by being 18 inches taller than everyone else on the field.Jake was anxious, and by anxious I mean that he paced the dugout for four innings chewing sunflower seeds and not talking to the other kids. I was anxious, too. You don’t want to see your kid suffer embarrassment, even if learning how to get over that embarrassment is sort of the point of this whole Little League endeavor.You know what? Jake did great. He got two outs—gave up a few hits in the process and drilled one kid in the back, which I think was OK because it instilled a healthy fear in the whole Orioles dugout. (“Who is that pitcher?” I imagined them mumbling. “HE’S LIABLE TO DO ANYTHING!”)The best part was the simple fact that he actually got himself to the mound. He <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-fear-warps-your-thinking-and-3-ways-you-can-fight-back" target="_blank" title="How Fear Warps Your Thinking—and 3 Ways You Can Fight Back | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">overcame his fear</a>, which is exactly what I want him to get out of baseball: the confidence to try new things.I didn’t have to wake up at 6 a.m. and drive three hours across the state to help him attain that confidence. It was more like three minutes to the local field—a bit longer on the way home, considering the stop for ice cream.&nbsp;<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/the-real-reason-athletes-win" target="_self" title="The Real Reason Athletes Win | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">From Little Leaguers to the highest of pros, it takes an effective coach to succeed. Read about why (not crazy) coaches are the real reason athletes win.&nbsp; </a></div>

[node:summary] - Every summer millions of parents push their children to Gehrig-like feats of endurance in youth baseball. Our writer reflects on whether this hard coaching is good for kids and how he coached himself to enjoy the pastime despite it all.

Here’s the story I usually tell when someone brings up nutty sports parents.At the first T-ball practice of the season, back when my son was 7, | SUCCESS

What I Think About Sports Dads (the Stage Moms of Little League)

What I Think About Sports Dads (the Stage Moms of Little League) | SUCCESS

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<div>Have you ever noticed this about the way most American companies select people to manage others? It doesn’t make a lick of sense.</div>They take the most skilled employees and tell them, “Congratulations! You’re great at this! So instead of doing it, you’re now going to supervise others who aren’t nearly as talented. Sure, you may not be good at supervising people, because it requires a totally different skill set than the one you’ve mastered, but this is the only way to grow in the company, so… good luck, boss!”It’s a little wacky, is what we’re saying. And that wackiness may explain this: When you ask people—friends, associates, strangers—for an interesting boss anecdote, very few start with a positive one. Most of us have had a boss who we thought might be, you know, a high-functioning sociopath. Far fewer can say we ever felt truly inspired by a boss. “Companies often choose the wrong people,” says Linda A. Hill, Ph.D., professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and the co-author of Being the Boss. “The criteria for what makes someone a really good producer, salesperson or researcher may not be the <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/top-of-mind-what-characteristic-does-every-leader-need" target="_blank" title="Top of Mind: What Characteristic Does Every Leader Need? | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">criteria that make a good leader</a>.”Complicated politics are involved, too. “We live in organizations that are political,” says Deborah Ancona, faculty director of the MIT Leadership Center. “Negativity comes out of that, things like, ‘I did the work, and he got the credit.’ That often pushes people to self-promotion rather than team promotion.”And while we all may enjoy making fun of the Michael Scotts we have known over the years, these bad bosses are no laughing matter: An oft-cited Gallup study revealed that a gloomy 30 percent of Americans actually feel engaged at work, while nearly 20 percent feel “actively disengaged” (which is totally an oxymoron, but give them a break; they’re depressed). Research has told us that people’s ideas and assumptions about leadership are shaped as early as their first jobs, so if someone forms a bad habit at the ice cream shop where he worked in high school, by the time he’s promoted to senior manager, he’d have had those same foibles for&nbsp;years.All of which begs the question: Are there really that many more terrible bosses than good ones? The answer: yeah, probably.“It’s like when you’re cooking,” says Carolyn Goerner, Ph.D., a professor of management at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. “When it goes really well, you say, Mmm, that was good. You don’t really get excited about it. But when it’s really, really horrible, you remember it. <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/10-quick-tips-to-be-a-better-boss" target="_blank" title="10 Quick Tips to Be a Better Boss | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">The really good bosses</a> who change people and make them better are simply few and far between. Most of the time bosses are just below average, so you just find yourself going day to day without their making much of a difference.”And, of course, there’s the problem noted earlier. “Say you’re dealing with the best tax accountant in the world,” Goerner says. “They can cite federal tax code at parties. So people say, ‘You’re such a good tax accountant that we’re going to let you supervise other tax accountants and take you away from the thing you’re good at.’ ” In other words, pull that tax-code-citing expert (who probably doesn’t get invited back to many parties) out of his comfort zone, plant him in a supervisory position for which he might not be prepared and might not even have the interpersonal skills or personality, and assign him quarterly goals.“In some instances,” Goerner says, “We’re taking people who are incredibly proficient technically and then promoting them to a level of incompetence.”But all this may be missing a bright side, Ancona says. “When we’ve asked people about their development as leaders, we’ve found that people seem to learn more from negative role models than positive ones. People say, Wow, well, this is what I don’t want to do, who I don’t want to be.”For her part, Goerner is warming to the idea of teaching management skills to the technically gifted. “The idea is that we take people we know have high potential and teach them traditional MBA classes—what it means to think strategically, deal with your assets in a way that can get you good ROI.” The catch, of course, is that it’s easier to teach technical skills than management prowess or, in some cases, a decent personality.Some aspects of being a good manager can be honed via a mentor. Communication competence can be taught. Planning ability and listening skills can be taught. “You can help people read emotions,” Ancona says. “You can teach them to be more visionary, to be more critical, to pay closer attention.” But self-confidence, likability and the willingness to trust employees aren’t easily learned. “I wish I knew the secret sauce,” Goerner says. “You either have it or you don’t.”Hopefully your boss has it. Or if you’re a boss, hopefully you do. And if you’re running the show, hopefully you have the stones to replace one of your poor supervisors with a great one. Great management is absolutely vital: A 2012 study by the consulting company Towers Watson found that <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/how-to-make-others-feel-significant" target="_blank" title="How to Make Others Feel Significant | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">feeling cared for</a> by one’s supervisor affected employees’ trust in leadership more than anything else that supervisor did, and that employees who had supportive supervisors reported feeling 67 percent more engaged than their counterparts.In any event, dealing with a screwy boss is a lot like dealing with a screwy anyone. And there are some really good bosses out there. You just might not hear about them as much.“Leadership is personal,” Ancona says. “There’s no single way of leading, no silver bullet. Every person has his or her own way. We’re all incomplete. We can’t be perfect at everything. So if you’re someone’s boss, the trick is finding out what you’re really good at and what you need to ramp up on, and getting better at both.”This article appears in the August 2015 issue of SUCCESS magazine.<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/what-to-do-when-you-squabble-with-your-boss" target="_self" title="What to Do When You Squabble with Your Boss | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">What if you and your boss don’t get along? Take the 4 steps necessary to fix it.</a>

[node:summary] - Some people are natural-born leaders. Others are cruel, inhuman monsters.

Have you ever noticed this about the way most American companies select people to manage others? It doesn’t make a lick of sense.They take the most | SUCCESS

Why Are There So Many Bad Bosses?

Why Are There So Many Bad Bosses? | SUCCESS

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Creative differences. Social misunderstandings. Professional etiquette. You know all the reasons things can go sour between you and your boss. Somewhere along the way, everyone ends up on the wrong end of things.But when a line is drawn, do you know how to reconcile? These four guidelines should help you out of the doghouse:1. Understand one gospel truth: You’re not in a lousy spot just because your boss doesn't like you. Understand, too, that your pride may have to be temporarily shoved in a drawer. You may feel like the boss should meet you halfway, but he probably has more options than you do. More likely than not, it’ll be incumbent upon you to improve the situation.2. Approach your boss and ask for <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/time-for-a-tough-talk-at-the-office-remember-these-5-steps" target="_blank" title="Time for a Tough Talk at the Office? Remember These 5 Steps | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">a (possibly awkward) conversation</a> about what you can do to remedy things. “Be direct about it,” says Carolyn Goerner, Ph.D, a professor of management at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. “Say, ‘I don’t think we’re doing very well, and I want a better relationship with you.’ ” It can be astonishing how easy conversations go, she says, if you’re direct and forthright.Besides, as Deborah Ancona, faculty director of the MIT Leadership Center, suggests, you might not know your boss’s true opinion of you. “Find out their story of you,” she says, “and demonstrate that you have other skills. You want them to have multiple stories of you.”3. Put some concrete steps in place. They may be baby steps. They may be months of baby steps followed by months of more baby steps. But make concrete plans to right the ship.4. Fess up. Sometimes managers are in the wrong, but if things have really gotten sideways between you and your boss, there are probably areas in which you haven’t been an angel yourself. “Everything we know about <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/18-ways-to-gain-trust-at-work" target="_blank" title="18 Ways to Gain Trust at Work | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">rebuilding trust</a> says you need two things: an apology and an explanation for how it won’t happen again,” Goerner says.If both parties sign onto this little contract, progress is not only possible, but very likely.Jeff Vrabel’s “Good Boss, Bad Boss” is in the August 2015 issue of SUCCESS.<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/article/what-to-do-when-the-boss-says-no" target="_self" title="What to Do When the Boss Says No | SUCCESS.com" rel="noopener">Have you ever had a great idea—just to be rejected? Find out what to do when the boss says no.</a>

[node:summary] - 4 steps to fix a bad relationship with the person signing the paycheck

Creative differences. Social misunderstandings. Professional etiquette. You know all the reasons things can go sour between you and your boss. Somewhere | SUCCESS

What to Do When You Squabble with Your Boss

What to Do When You Squabble with Your Boss | SUCCESS

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