-Know Thyself
Coughlin’s Law – “Know who you are and what you want before you leave the house each day.”
Each day we should ask ourselves some questions to start off the day.
What makes me happy?
Who am I?
What am I willing to exchange in my life to earn a living?
By answering these questions each morning, your day will be guided by what makes you happy, who you believe you are (or wish to be), and then what are you willing to exchange for money. This process will help you make decisions in your personal life as well as your business life.
What makes you happy is hopefully a part of what you do in exchange for money to live on. What makes you happy might not be the actions that you do but might be the end results of your actions. For example, for some making food brings them great joy. For others making other people happy and serving them brings them joy. Two different job functions but they both work at the same restaurant.
By knowing who you are or at least trying to answer that question, will help you live your life according to those principles that make up that picture of who you are. If you believe yourself to be a principled and honest person and those values rank high on your list then your decisions and life choices will steer you in that direction. When you come to the fork in the road you will choose the path that closest resembles your vision of who you are. So remember your vision of your true self. We are human and make mistakes and most of those can be corrected or made whole again. One of my favorite sayings these days is
How do you tell if a stick is crooked? You hold it up next to a straight one.
Having that vision of who you are or who you want to be gives you that straight stick.
The third question goes straight to what are you willing to do for money. Everything is an exchange and your commodity is your life. You are exchanging periods of your life for a currency that you can trade in to buy something else from someone else. We used to be more self sufficient and do most everything for ourselves but these days we don’t. So today instead of trading a beaver skin for sugar, we exchange one hour of our life for x amount of dollars. Having answered the first two questions already, the third becomes easier and that straight stick becomes easier to see. What could you do for money? Lots of things. What will you do for money? That depends on how you answered the first two questions.
Some days we wake up and realize that we haven’t asked our questions in a while and when we do and light bulb goes off and we think, where did I go wrong or how did I get on this path. We are human. We make mistakes. What you do after, your decision, then defines who you are. Your decision then starts to fill in that vision of who you are.
I started this article with the title and meant it to be about business but the keyboard took me more in a personal direction. The same questions can be related to business and help you achieve your personal goals at the same time as they should. The answers will define what kind of business you would have or not have, what kind of employees you would hire and finally what kind of customers you want to do business with.
There is no right or wrong answer here. You should just have an answer.
So, do you see yourself pouring a pint of beer and a glass of whiskey in a pub or do you see yourself making a Wild Hibiscus Fashionista in a night club?
Photo by Markus Wichmann
Quote from the Bill Bennett in the morning show
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Robert specializes in CRM, xRM, SCRM and SharePoint Solutions. Robert is a husband, a proud father and organic farmer