Train — California 37

Maybe This’ll Be My Year

Train and breaking through failure in 12 steps

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Hard to believe another year is almost gone.

I was listening to Maybe This’ll Be My Year by Train earlier tonight, and it gave me pause to reflect on my own life.

My head was filled with a surreal and vivid montage from my blowing out the candles on my birthday with my parents, to my first kiss, to driving around with my friends, to my graduations. It was a nostalgic moment of things that mattered.Still, I thought about the lyrics of the song and how the singer faced hardship and hoped things would improve. What the song leaves out is the hard work the boys of Train put in to become Grammy-winning, platinum recording artists.

Now, I don’t pretend to have a solution that’ll make you great or let you instantly achieve your wildest dreams; because that simple solution doesn’t exist. All the same, every time I have hit a wall in achieving my goals I follow a simple 12 step and it at least makes me a more well-rounded and focused person who is one step closer to success.All I can say is that it works for me and I hope it helps you even a little bit.

Before we get to my route of breaking through walls, let me tell you a bit about some of the career heartbreak and losses I’ve faced. And please don’t think I’m being pretentious or bragging, it really is not my intent . Moreover, I haven’t accomplished much compared to most of my peers.

I’m in my mid 20s, single,hold 3 degrees, have worked in top political offices and financial firms. Specifically, I’ve attended the best academic institutions in the world and hold a professional doctorate and a masters, have had fascinating work experiences, founded a nonprofit, became an entrepreneur, volunteered a lot, have traveled through 16 countries and met amazing people and so on and so on.

Sounds half-way decent right? Now those things make me who I am, but so do my failures. I’ve had plenty of them along the way and it’s no small list:

1. I was repeatedly rejected by top universities for each of my 3 degrees;
2. My novel manuscripts have been declined by dozens of literary agents;
3. I floundered when attempting to build a nonprofit organisation;
4. I failed miserably at an ecommerce startup;
5. As I attempted to switch careers, I couldn’t find a job I wanted and moved back in with my parents. I had networked like crazy, applied for hundreds of positions, and just couldn’t get what I was looking for;
6. And, yes, I’ve been dumped and rejected a lot.

Each time I would at first blame the people who rejected me, and then I blamed luck and fate. Now, most people would stop there, but that’s not where the buck stops. It stops with me and you.

And so every time I failed I took an even harder look; first at myself as a person and then my work-product. Now, I like myself as a person, but we all have things we need to improve upon. Sure some things are outside of your control, but odds are there are a lot of things you could have done to ensure a more positive outcome. Whether it’s your interviewing or writing skills, or how you present yourself, there is always room for improvement. As for my work-product, I often found that I liked the big overarching ideas but was sloppy in the delivery or just created a veneer that lacked depth.

Now I’ll spare you the details of what I did to overcome the obstacles and failures I faced because the details don’t matter. What I did to rectify them does!

In short, I adopted a simple mantra every time,“No maybes, no excuses, just do work” and that 12 step formula I previously mentioned. It sounds like it belongs on the wall of a locker room, but guess what, it applies to life too. Whether on or off the field, life is a hard slog through the mud so learn to love it.

Anyways, here’s my step-by-step for powering through failure:

The “This’ll Be My Year 12-step”

1. Take Responsibility! Be honest. Really, take a hard look and think about every awkward social situation to every terrible rejection AND take responsibility.
2. Have stellar friends! Look at the people you surround yourself with. Are they winners? The people you associate with are distinct, but habits and ways of thinking rub off. I get it, your friends are your friends, but you also need to be around positivity and positive role models.
3. Talk Less, Do More! Don’t tell everyone what you’re working on before you have any substance. Be a person of action.Stop thinking, talking, and sitting around doing things that don’t actually matter to you (ahem, watching a whole season of a show on Netflix). Just do work.
4. Get feedback! Have an accomplished person you can turn to who will give you crushing and ruthless feedback on your skills or lack thereof. Don’t take it personally, take it to heart and work on them.
5. Live like there’s no tomorrow! No more last hurrahs, or not tonights. Just do work and do it now! Whilst, you don’t have to achieve your goals in one day, but you do have to work toward them EVERYday. Why? Because winning is a habit.
6. Set 3 categories of goals. A. Short term and practical B.Midterm and less practical C. Long term and shooting for the stars.Track all of your goals and work towards them in relation to one another. All goals should be accretive.
7. Share your goals with close friends and family. We all need a cheer section. Let them know what you’re trying to achieve because they want to see you succeed and will support you.
8. Celebrate the small wins. You need this to keep going. While you’re at it, learn to LOVE work! It makes achieving that much easier.
9. Learn from your losses because if you’re following everything else each failure is just bringing you that much closer to winning.
10. Stay positive! Losing sucks; but it makes success all the sweeter.
11. Be relentless. Never give up! Ever!
12. Help others along the way. Do this, not just because it is the nice and kind thing to do, but because being a mentor teaches you a lot about people, yourself, and even new subjects!

Hope this helps you focus your mind a bit.

It’s a tough path; I understand.You will feel low; you will hit rock bottom. But you can either wallow in mediocrity or you can power through, drop the “maybes” and get it done. And it starts with one simple thing. Take responsibility.

Personally, I still have a lot to learn and I continue to fail at some of the things I mentioned. It won’t last, I’m certain of one thing in this life, hard work and taking responsibility wins out in the end.

Good night and good luck!

O.K.

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