“Communication works for those who work at it.”
— John Powell

Email is one of the most important communication tools we have in the modern world, but like any tool, you can misuse it if you’re not careful. Here are my suggestions for replying to emails.

1. Don’t just hit reply-all every time. Sometimes it is more appropriate to reply to the sender or a subset of the original group. Do everyone a favor and make sure you’re not wasting their time.

2. Double-check the subject. Is it still a valid subject line? Often, someone will “reply-all” to an old topic to capture the correct group of emails. If the subject isn’t useful, change it.

3. Write your reply in a separate editor. This way you don’t accidentally send it before you’re ready. You can copy-and-paste after you’re satisfied.

4. Check your spelling and grammar. If this message is really important, have someone else read it and give you feedback before you send it. At the very least, read it out loud to yourself.

“Don’t tell me how rocky the sea is, just bring the ship in.”
― Lou Holtz

No matter how well you prepared, no matter how hard you trained, sometimes the situation goes sideways. Don’t get me wrong. It’s your training and your preparation that can get you through those moments. You need those arrows in your quiver, but you also need to dig deep and find a way through the storm.

If we’re talking about big-picture success, there are times when you need to execute a strategic retreat. That’s usually when your preparation and training are clearly inadequate. In those cases, check your ego, cut your losses, step away, and get ready to come back better, stronger, and smarter.

On the other hand, there are times when the difference between winning and losing is your willingness to overcome obstacles. It’s your ability to find another level and rise to the occasion. Things didn’t go as expected? Oh, well. You fell down? Get back up. You’re scared? You’re overwhelmed? You’re uncomfortable? Push through anyway.

Sure, you can learn a lot from failure. But the one thing you don’t want to learn is that you’re not tough enough. You don’t want to find out that you lack the willpower to succeed when the situation gets difficult.

So don’t quit. Don’t give up and don’t give in. Let the pressure make you stronger and embrace the opportunity for greatness.

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all others.”
― Cicero

Gratitude gives us a better perspective on life. If you’re thankful for every sunrise, then it’s hard to wake up on the wrong side of the bed. If you appreciate every meal, then it’s hard to complain about the dessert. If you’re grateful for every day with your spouse, then it’s impossible to stay angry after an argument.

If you want to live with gratitude, find the good in everything. That won’t be easy. After all, it’s easy to find problems, but it’s a lot harder to find good things. I easily complain when my glasses are dirty, but I struggle to remember the technological miracle that helps me see. I get frustrated when one of my kids starts whining about a nonsense problem, but it takes work to remember the joy I felt the day they were born.

What if I lose my job? Well, I have an opportunity to show my family how to overcome a challenge. What if I embarrass myself in public? I have a chance to laugh at myself. What if I screw up or I lose? At least my mistakes and weaknesses are easy to see. What if I have to start over? Then I can do it better this time.

An “attitude of gratitude” is not something mastered overnight. It takes practice and repetition. You must form a habit of gratitude. That said, you can start right now. It only takes a second. Find something to be thankful for right now. If you’re struggling with that task, imagine losing something important. Imagine losing your job or the death of a loved one. Then bring yourself back to reality and give thanks for what you still have. Now try this every morning and every evening. When that gets easy, try sprinkling in this exercise throughout the day. If you fail one day, start over the next day.

You’ll have good days and bad days, of course. But the more you appreciate both, the more you’ll improve yourself every day.

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

Learning brings knowledge, but it doesn’t automatically bring success. If you want to be successful, you can’t be satisfied with merely knowing.

Don’t get me wrong. Learning is a necessary step towards any significant accomplishment, but it isn’t the goal. The goal should always be success, and if you want long term success, then you do need to build up a strong foundation of knowledge. But again, knowing isn’t the goal either.

If you want to be successful, you need to put your knowledge to work. Work hard, learn a lot, adapt based on your newfound knowledge, and repeat. That’s the formula for success.

“Being uncomfortable is a sign of success, NOT of failure!”
― Roz Savage

What if you mastered being uncomfortable? What if you could thrive working outside your comfort zone? What if pressure made you happy and stress increased your motivation?

Well, if you could do that, you’d become unstoppable. You’d be able to handle anything life throws at you. It wouldn’t magically make life easy, but it would make the hard stuff in life conquerable.

So how do you get to that level? Well, you need to do something that sucks every day. Does that sound like fun? If not, you’re a perfect candidate for getting started today.

“I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me.”
― Philippians 4:13

Sometimes bad things happen. Sometimes we get hurt, or we get sick. Sometimes a loved one suffers or dies.

You can’t avoid pain. You won’t avoid tragedy. So what will you do about it?

You could fear the bad things in life. You could get angry. You could collapse under the weight of pain and tragedy.

Or instead, you can become a person who can take the pain. You can become a person who is strong enough to handle the tragedy. Better still, become the person who can put others on their back and carry them through when they’ve got nothing left. Become a source of strength for everybody else.

None of this means you won’t feel the pain. It doesn’t mean you won’t cry when you lose someone. But, you can choose to keep moving forward, and you can be the leader that others need.

“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”
— Joe Abercrombie

Everybody makes mistakes, but when you screw something up for your team, a client, or a friend or family member, you need to dig yourself out of that hole. Here is my five-step process for dealing with personal mistakes.

1. Admit the mistake to yourself. If you can’t admit your mistakes to yourself, then you won’t be able to resolve the situation successfully. Take ownership and don’t make excuses even when it’s easy to blame other people.

2. If something is “on fire,” stay calm. Determine what actions are immediately necessary and execute those until the situation is stable.

3. Get ready to apologize. “I’m sorry” is a very powerful phrase when deployed sincerely and humbly. You don’t have to go around proclaiming your mistakes to the whole neighborhood, but if anyone deserves an apology, give it freely.

4. Never let this mistake happen again. You need to debrief and review what went right and what went wrong. Talk with your mentors and teammates, and get to the bottom of what happened and what you can do better going forward. Then seriously commit to improvement.

5. Believe in yourself. You are not defined by your mistakes, but by how you respond to your mistakes. You need to get back in the game, and you can’t play scared.

“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.”
— Seneca

Fear is a part of human nature. You can’t avoid it entirely. You’re never going to completely eliminate your fear, so you have to use it to your advantage instead.

Start by letting go of the things you can’t control. You can’t control everything no matter how much you try, but if you stay afraid, if you stay anxious, you’ll stay frozen in place. Let go and start moving forward.

Next, start fearing the things you can control. Fear failure. Fear boredom. Fear mediocrity. Fear being 90 years old and looking back with regret because you didn’t take action.

That healthy fear will give you the motivation you need to continuously improve. That fear will get you out of bed when you want to sleep 15 more minutes. That fear will help you push through when the going gets tough.

“Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I’ll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I’ll give you a stock clerk.”
— J.C. Penney

There are always a lot of little chores or short-term projects that pull our focus. The necessary tasks stand in the way of the important ones. Distractions are everywhere. Our gadgets, our phones, our TVs, and other frivolous stuff call us away from what matters.

But don’t lose track of the long-term goal. Do something every day that moves you towards that goal. Find an hour a day to work on your success. Everybody can find an hour. You don’t have to do something big, but you need to stay on target and stay obsessed with victory.

Is focus hard? No. Our brains are great at focusing, but we focus on the wrong things. Well, if you’re focused on dumb stuff, it’s going to take a lot longer to reach your goal. Do you want to hit your target faster? Then get ridiculously focused on what matters and stop settling for the status quo!

Decide every day to make it happen. Don’t give in to weakness. Stop complaining and stop procrastinating. Learn to enjoy the process and learn to appreciate the journey.

“Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”
— Ms. Valerie Frizzle, “The Magic School Bus”

Of course, you should try to avoid mistakes, but when you inevitably fail, be ready to learn. Get yourself in that mindset before you even begin. Set yourself up to continuously evaluate, and then adjust as you go. Checking your ego is critical. Self-awareness is absolutely necessary. But, if you fall flat on your face, that’s probably nature helping you with both.

You can learn from other people’s failures, too. They already did the hard part. You simply need to understand what happened. Otherwise, as George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Find examples of people in similar situations to yours and figure out what they did right, what they did wrong, and what they already learned from the experience.

So, always try to win, but give yourself permission to lose. Don’t worry about what other people think of your loss. Focus on maximizing the experience. And after you fail, always get back up and start moving forward better, stronger, and wiser.