This post picks up from Part I
Another example of people who aspire to greatness and don’t settle for success is that of Debbie Fields of Mrs. Fields Cookies. Her greatness is summed up in her famous quote, “Good enough never is. Set your standards so high that even the flaws are considered excellent.”
When Mrs. Fields was pleased to see the line wrapped around the door when she visited one of her first stores. She also saw a recent batch of undercooked cookies that she didn’t want sold. She confronted the manager who said, “They are good enough.”
But good enough never was for Debbie or her business.
She threw the entire batch in the trash and made the staff start over. She apologized to every customer and offered them a free cookie if they came back when a fresh batch was ready. Mrs. Fields opened her first store in 1977 and now has more than 300 franchises throughout the United States and in 22 other countries.
Good enough is just being successful, and it’s never enough. Especially when greatness is possible.
How to manifest greatness
Think creatively
Rawzaba Alhalabi wrote an article for Potential entitled, Creative Thinking: What is it, Why is it important, and How to Develop it? In it, he lists 8 reasons why creative thinking is essential. Number 6 stood out most to me: Thinking “out of the box” will help you avoid dead ends. And you’ll like that feeling of seeing what others miss. This mental shift prevents stagnation and settling for success and challenges you to innovate and explore in all phases of your life and career.
Take risks
You could be taking more risks in your life, but you may not see the benefit in doing so. You, like so many others, may be afraid to go through with the risk; get comfortable moving outside your comfort zone. With some simple quiet time, you can start to unearth areas where you haven’t failed recently.
Try using a daydreaming process to develop your list of risks to plan and implement
- Rate an area of your life on a scale of 1-Low to 4-High. If everything gets a 4, you’ve got a lot of fear at work. So, let’s say a particular area got a 2.
- Now without qualifying and removing anything, develop a list of actions you could take to move from 2 to a 4.
- Finally, pick a few actions and regardless of how nervous you are, get started.
Accentuate the positive
“Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” was a popular song back in 1944. The lyrics included:
You’ve got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
Eliminate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-between.
You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium’s
Liable to walk upon the scene.
These lyrics give us some great points for staying positive in what can be a very negative world. They include:
- Focus on what’s positive in your life and around you.
- Remove as many negative aspects of your life as possible.
- Affirm not only what you have right now but also those things that you’d like to manifest.
- Spread joy and have faith.
- Find reasons to smile every day!
Seek adventure
Adventure benefits us physically, mentally and emotionally. The benefits of seeking adventure include:
- a better mood, social life and self-esteem
- decreased mental illness, depression and anxiety
- increased fulfillment and joy
- decreased mental and physical stress
- improvements in brain health and mental sharpness. Adventure creates new synapses and strengthens existing ones, a process known as neuroplasticity.
- Improvements in health conditions such as resting heart rate, cholesterol, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease
- Increased self-confidence and self-assurance
Manifesting greatness is about personal commitment. It’s about reaching deep, taking risks, and knowing you are moving towards your absolute best. Greatness is about staying up late. It’s about refusing to major at minor things. It’s about focusing your efforts, rising above the problems, irritations and distractions of life. Manifesting greatness is about knowing and applying the personal leadership to do not the easy things but rather those difficult things that others won’t do.
What will you do with today. Exist? Continue to pursue success? Or manifest the greatness that was intended for you at birth. And when we manifest greatness, the true reward is the understanding that we are meeting a great need in the world that only we can fulfill!
Start manifesting your intended level of greatness today!