Daily Closer

Show me the person who doesn't believe better clarity could dramatically affect their business, finances and personal life and I'll show you a fool. A "freedom from indistinctness or ambiguity" is a pretty sweet deal on all fronts. The clearer you get with what you currently have; such as motivations, current situations, desires, fears, and aspirations the better off you'll be to deal with how you approach life.

The people who achieve greatness in this world get very clear about what they're here to do. They've made several big decisions, sometimes very early on, about what they want in life. What they can bring to the world, what kind of experiences they want to participate in, who they want to become and why they want to become that person. Not only do they make these decisions but they possess the character to embody them, to own them, and stick with them through whatever hurdles are thrown their way. Straying from your purpose isn't an option if you make it a part of your identity.

Achieving clarity will not occur without commitments being made. Sheer, uncompromising commitments that require wholehearted backing, about your identity and the way you'll choose to see the world. I'd like to reach down inside of your mind, if you'll let me, and show you three guaranteed steps to achieve true clarity.

See: your mind.

3. Clean Up Your Mental Traffic

Most of our minds work like a huge multi-lane highway without solid traffic directions. We have neural connections being made going every which way, establishing beliefs that interrupt the flow of other previously acquired belief systems. The longer you live and the more things you experience, the more lines of traffic start popping up. Crossing over each other, weaving in between and straight up ramming into one another. It's downright violent. Occasionally, a new belief flow will come along and knock the hell out of a current one that was in its way. A huge disruption will happen but the dominant belief flow will return to normal unless the new one provides persistent backup to permanently interrupt it.

No ones mental traffic will ever be perfectly organized or harmonious, but we do have control over redirecting it and establishing some rules. Eliminate belief systems that do not serve you, establish ones that do, commit to prioritizing certain belief systems and do not allow other random "traffic flows" that pop up to interfere. So although you cannot stop the inevitable interruption of a major belief flow from an outside stimulus, you can choose to constantly feed the major one so it's never interrupted permanently. Most importantly, you must be the police force of your own mental traffic. The sooner you arrive to break up a disastrous collision and the quicker you clean up your current unpleasant mental traffic the better.

You're here to be here.

2. Methodically Explore Your Strengths & Weaknesses

The only way you'll ever discover your purpose in life, and therefore be able to align it with action to achieve clarity, is if you systematically explore your strengths and weaknesses. We do this naturally during our formative years, but all too often we get sidetracked or distracted by perceived failures, so we latch onto the first or second strength that we come across. Worse yet, we get attached to the idea of something that is a weakness and spend years working to become good at it, never achieving the level of excellence that would have been there if redirected to an area of natural strength.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for working on weaknesses and building upon them. The problem is that we currently have an average lifespan of just under 30,000 days. Better yet, let's call it 700,800 hours of existence. If that sounds like more than enough time to become outstanding in areas of weakness and strength, think about how quickly an hour becomes wasted. Waiting in line to get your license renewed, boom. Sixty minutes gone.

700,800 hours of existence is more than enough time to give absolute focus to key areas of your life, however, if managed properly. For this reason it's vitally important to continue exploring your strengths and weaknesses methodically well into adulthood, even if you skipped college. Don't get sucked into what's convenient, or what you're halfway decent at. If you're in this slump now, go take a hard look in the mirror and ask yourself, "Do I want to live a decent life or would I rather live a driven and purposeful life?"

Just because you're currently doing something decently doesn't necessarily make it a strength. Does it drain energy from you or does it electrify you? Gauge it. No matter where you're at in skill progression, if it's a strength it will provide you with boundless energy - guaranteed. If it's zapping the life out of you, heed the warning and act upon it. Ignore the signs at your own risk.

Pick one, leave the rest.

1. The One Thousand Important Decisions

Before you can achieve true clarity you must make one thousand very important commitments. Absolute decisions that you'll have to re-commit to each and every day for the rest of your life. The first one is the easiest one, once you've done self-exploration and have determined your greatest area of strength, which is what you want out of life. If it's in relation to your career, it's who you'll become in order to build upon this strength and share what you can give to the world. If it's clarity in personal relationships, it's who you are as a mate and what you can bring to the table in that kind of partnership. Your finances, your family life, and your spirituality.

Clarity in every category can be achieved by becoming very specific in your commitments to these areas, but after making the first easy decision, you will have nine hundred and ninety-nine more decisions to make: what not to do.

Steve Jobs famously said, "Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do." Coming from the visionary who created and maintained one of the most thoroughly successful companies of the new millennium, the man was onto something. He cultivated an unparalleled environment of commitment and focus within Apple, establishing a company that went on to create revolutionary products that change the world. If Steve Jobs can do that by applying the principle to just his business, imagine what you will be able to accomplish when you put it to work for you in every aspect of your life. Total clarity.

The definition of closer is a person or thing that closes

"Always Be Closing" is a notorious phrase, probably uttered from the lips of every decent sales manager the world over at some point or another. The concept is clear: at all times, you should be fully aware of the fact that you're selling and constantly looking for a way in. For a way to close the deal.

Rejection is a deadly disease. It ruins lives, inhibits potential, and scars people time and time again throughout the remainder of their fleeting life on Earth if left to its own devices. Children who grow up in dysfunctional homes are crippled by it, their vision of humanity tainted. The girl whose father ran out on his family feels rejected as a human being, or the boy who was severely beaten and harassed by his drunken mother understand the concept very clearly, and become defined by the notion. Horrific yet ordinary stories that have become ingrained in our culture to the point of expectancy. We expect our youth to learn and feel rejection, hell 68% of our youth as of 2010 are now growing up in non-traditional families due to one reason or another. It's literally the epitome of modern day living.

The worst part of it all? Rejection is an illusion, perpetuated by our brains due to ancient biological triggers. In a society like what we're dealing with today I feel it's even more important we take an aggressive stance to cure ourselves of this odd disease, and it truly is disease-like in nature, almost a cancer that grows off of normal psychological responses and behavior mechanisms. We've been treating the symptoms and trying to band-aid over it, dealing with it like a tangible thing, when in all reality it's a creation of perceptional confusion.

In a nutshell, people develop the psychological disease between the ages of 0-6 when the brain is still underdeveloped and learns in very primal ways, so it's actually easy to see how the perceptional confusion can occur and how this boogeyman of emotions can become a reality. Susan is 36 months old, is fumbling around the kitchen and knocks over the cookie jar. Her mother has eighty-eight different things on her mind stressing her to her limits as it is, so when little Susie makes this in particular ruckus it just pushes her over the edge: she screams, curses, yells and emotes negativity straight at her rambunctious toddler. Susan doesn't realize that her mother is simply responding to a perception of a stimulus, all she understands is her provider is rejecting her. Needless to say, she responds and cries in a classic attempt to acquire pity and soothe her own emotions. The mother, however, is too furious to give in to the cries and snatches her up and puts her in the corner or even spanks her.

Is any of this out of the ordinary? Nope. It happens quite frequently, and when Susie's gambler father eventually disappears later on that year her mother spirals downward into her own depression, now having the burden of raising a child to herself. Susie grows up with only the most shadowed memories of her father, constant berating and obvious scorn from a mother who has the slightest vendetta against the child she's stuck taking care of by herself, and one big underlying emotional pattern: rejection.



You see, Susan never understood that her father wasn't rejecting her as person and as his daughter. He was rejecting himself as a father and responding to a perception of being unable to handle the responsibilities he was faced with. She never quite logically understood why her mother seemed distant and when she did pay attention it was to scorn her for one thing or another. Emotionally though, she came to conclusion after conclusion that she was not worth it and was just being continually rejected.

During the defining formative years, we contract this disease that feeds off of illusion and is enabled by everyone who acknowledges feeling rejected as a human feeling, when in fact it is quite the opposite. Rejection is a dehumanizing psychological experience. You may feel disappointed, uncomfortable, angry, distraught, confused or feelings of discontentment but you never feel rejection. We create it, we spread it, we let it prevent us from living unbridled by it and it's all a lie.

True success and happiness cannot be obtained in any form while being shackled down by this boogeyman. It's time to break free.

According to Malcolm Gladwell's acclaimed novel, Outliers, the formula for expertise is a matter of time invested honing the skill. 10,000 hours to be exact. Allegedly, the only difference between a virtuoso of the violin and a non-violinist can be attributed to a mere 10 year, 3 hour per day investment repeatedly practicing the craft. I believe this to be an improper analysis of a complex issue converted into a wrong unit of measurement - numbers. There are late bloomers, explosively quick learners, early birds and mid-life yet thorough innovators and they all have stories behind them that cannot simply be equated to a matter of time invested. What if there were a way to predict gainful expertise in an area, though, and you could do it by looking at three key things in the developmental stages of the knowledge? Would that be interesting?

I'd be inclined to say so, which I did and began probing through the skills acquired by moderately to extremely wildly successful industry folk. I'm absolutely convinced that no matter what it is you wish to become an expert at, the foundation upon which you build those skills is the most critical component. The foundation I'm talking about is being a masterful beginner, or I should say, becoming an expert at beginning things. Due to the fact that our entire first impressions of a craft are based upon our initial reactions with it, we must actively take a stance that sets us up to become extraordinary or no matter how "genetically prone" or however many hours you invest in practicing it you will fall short of outstanding. Excellent at best.

The great news is you can change today and even rebuild a new foundation for an old attempt of skill architecture. Here are three killer ways to start your path towards becoming a better beginner...



3. Get Seriously Curious 

The things we inevitably become "naturals" at are those which either start with an innate, deeply underscored curiosity or a forced sense of curiousness. When you're a child you experience this phenomenon effortlessly, and over time due to our brains picking up on similar patterns of everything we do and experience in life this can start to slightly fade. Unless you purposefully tune in to it and work your curiosity like a muscle on a daily basis. Look around and remember the world is changing on a moment by moment basis while your busy going about your daily routine. A lot of times opportunities arise within our line of sight but we lack the tuned in vision to see that something new has popped up in our reality, so the opportunity goes unnoticed. Remaining curious will keep your keenly aware of these things, and also be the kick start of motivation that propels you to dig deeper into topics and things of interest. It will drive you to constantly adapt while learning the array of new skills you're immersing yourself in to become an expert at your craft, which is an essential part of practice.

Think about it, if you monotonously played the same sequence on a piano over and over again, you'd be rehearsing technically but would you be growing? If you're not growing every time you practice or utilizing a skill, you're not pushing yourself. Imagine a bodybuilder that used the same weights whenever they hit the gym. Their body would undergo some minor strength changes but it would adjust to the current stimulus and nothing would change, so their physique (expertise) would remain the same. In order to progress you need to thrive on challenge within any area of study whether you're learning to play guitar or working on becoming an outstanding salesperson.



2. Physically, Mentally & Emotionally Embody A Master

Recent studies done from Northwestern University explicitly show that what you wear affects you inside and out. Mood, intellect, attentiveness, the works. Essentially, you are what you wear but moreover you are what you immerse yourself in totally. The more thorough and convincing the immersion the better, so go all out, if you want to become a computer programmer buy or rent out every book, video and mp3 you can get your hands on that has anything to contribute to programming knowledge or industry. Join the forums, maybe attend a college campus class and start associating with others who are interested. Don't settle for general interest, though, you've got to be absolutely intrigued down to a gut level. Study what the current masters do. Eat it, breathe it, live it.

Let's say you've never been a so-called people person but for whatever reason you wake up one morning and decide that with all your heart you want to become a mobile home salesperson. You've never been overly talkative but mainly you've just been expected to be a more reserved person so you've played your role up until now, but deep down you've always felt a burning sensation to take control of social situation and influence people on a deep level. You want to inspire people to take action, and you want to be the best at it. So how do you go about undoing the old programming and contradicting beliefs you've picked up along the way? Simple. Begin eliminating the cues.

What's a cue, you ask? Any emotional, verbal, or physical event that acts as a trigger for that belief system and reinforces it. Sometimes they're people, in which case the simplest yet daunting route to go is to distance yourself from them. If they're in your life on a daily basis, you're going to need to make some cuts. Cut it down gradually if need be, but the fact remains that as long as you have these influences putting contradicting inputs into your mind you'll be fighting an uphill battle about removing your old limiting beliefs. We just have to get rid of them. Identify which people, places and things in the past have reflected that perception of you not being an exceptionally social individual - and cut 'em out, one by one.

After that it's just a matter of immersing yourself in sales and just like any position, you've probably already began acquiring complimentary skill sets up until this point that will aid in the process. Analytic skills, emotional intelligence, body language reading, etc.

We're a race of imitators. It's the basis of our creativity and how we have evolved technologically, too. With that in mind it's important you...



1. Eliminate The Beginner's Perception

When you first pick up a bicycle to learn how to ride it, you don't glare at it and wallow in your amateurism. You don't wonder what will happen if you never learn how to ride it. You just do it. Your deep level of interest drives you to just follow the path towards delving deeper into what you're interested in, which is riding a bike. Our minds learn to second guess, triple guess and re-evaluate every little thought and emotion we encounter as we age and our logical brains develop. We assess the nature of all things around us constantly, sometimes over-analyzing to a fault. The key here is to just immerse yourself in whatever it is you want to do, refuse to look at yourself as a beginner, and constantly be pushing what you can do with your craft. This is entirely different than faking it until you make it, but if you start out with your lack of experience in mind you'll be focused on the lack and less focused on progress. It's literally the difference between someone who fails and someone who refuses to accept logical explanation. "Beginner" is a reasonable explanation and being reasonable about your goals and aspirations just isn't that productive. Michael Jordan was unreasonable when he decided his high school coaches were wrong about him not being cut out for basketball. He did also become one the most iconic athletes in American history and very unreasonably wealthy.

Decide you are the greatest at a thing, do it and refuse to judge yourself along someone else's linear scale of great and you will become an expert through sheer willpower, persistence, and hard work. Will it take 10,000 hours of intense dedication to a thing for you to become an expert? Who knows.

I can assure you of one thing: you sure as hell don't want to spend 9,999 hours as a beginner.

Close yourself on you every day

There's a statistic buzzing around out there that states employers have made their decision on whether or not to hire you within the first 120 seconds of the interview. Now, I'm not one to call bullshit too quickly but I'll go ahead and say it, as someone who's been on the interviewing side of the equation: you probably have a 180 - 360 second time frame to get a solid impression in before your interviewer's decided to offer you that lucrative position or not. Those had better be some golden seconds.

If you watch a game, it's fun. If you play it, it's recreation. If you work at it, it's golf. -  Bob Hope

Here are five subtle ways to make a killer first impression.

This man is clearly buying a Kia.

Inspiring confidence in the hearts and minds of millions, eh, George?

If there's one thing to remember, whether you're maneuvering the landmines of your current boss' personality or functioning as a team member in an assembly line, it's a simple one - you're in the people business.

We're just an advanced form of bacteria, aren't we?

One day, we will be doctors and you will be HIV.