A Letter from Chris Suarez

ONE DAY AT A TIME

Good Morning Team,

Today, I just want to talk about today.

I find myself too often thinking about tomorrow, next month, next year.  This world has a way of pushing us into the future without giving enough attention to today.  I could write on the topic of being present, living experientially, the stoic philosophy of being still ... but today lets just focus on today.

Earl Nightingale said that the “basic unit of success is the day” and that our success comes “not from sudden, sporadic bursts of activity but through the cumulative effect of disciplined, daily effort.”  

Why is that true?  Nightingale believed that the basic "building block" was the day. Well, if we are going to build anything, a home, for instance,  we want it to be stable and to endure forever.  We never head into a building project thinking to ourselves, “let me build this house to last the next 5 or 10 years.”  Rather we always build our homes to last forever.  

I am in the middle of a considerable remodel and this fact has never been more clear.  We hire architects, engineers, inspectors, and contractors to ensure we are building to withstand anything - earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, even time itself.  

That all starts with our foundation, our footings...or as Earl Nightingale would say “our basic building blocks”.  We need to have a solid foundation to build on top of.  Every brick we lay is as important as the next.  

As we lay the foundation of our business or our future success, every day is a brick.  We lay one brick at the end of every day.  So let’s talk about how to Win The Day.

I break each day down into five “C’s”

Win The Day With 5 C’s

Create

Create space in your morning as soon as you wake up. It’s important to set a personal intention.  

Some get that create space thru exercise, some thru meditation, some thru reading. Create a routine. Don’t break that routine. Consistency in your Create space will bring consistency throughout your entire day. My morning routine is the same every day, weekday, weekend, on-day, off-day. It doesn’t matter. Boring? Perhaps. And for me, creating the day immediately upon waking up allows for a sense of control the rest of the day.  

Clarify

Clarify what could be accomplished today. We all have a lot that “could” be done.  Setting everything out on the table mentally in front of you will help you clarify what shows up as most important.  Take the time as you begin your day to clarify what winning means that day. Remember, the day is the building block of your future success. What could you do to move the needle today? Not everything you could do is equally important or will equally impact your business today. 

Choose

Just by acknowledging you have a choice and then actually choosing what you will do each day will set you on a pattern of control for the rest of the day.

Choose the most important thing to move the business forward today.  That doesn’t mean the most important thing to maintain, to survive, or to get by.  As Gary Keller and Jay Papasan would say in their NYT best selling book, choose “The One Thing” that if accomplished would really minimize the impact of everything else being left undone. 

I think about it this way:  If I get only one thing done today, what would that one thing be, so that at the end of the day I am proud of what I have accomplished and can tell myself I won the day.

In 2005 Barry Schwartz wrote about the “Paradox of Choice” in his appropriately titled book.  When too many choices are present, rather than allowing us to be happy and productive, it tends to cause stress and complicate decision making.  An abundance of choice leads to anxiety, indecisions, dissatisfaction, and ultimately lack of any activity.  Use the power of elimination to cut out the choices and be left with your choice.

Commit

We can make a choice every single morning.  We can create, clarify, and choose all we want.  If we do not commit and actually do the work, then we will not win the day.  We will not be putting down the “basic unit of success”.  Remember, success isn't built with incredible spurts of hard work.  We won’t build something by pulling all-nighters for 6 or 7 days in a row to make up for the 3 or 4 days we decided to be lazy.  In life and in business we can’t instantly make up for a string of days of not winning by 24 hours of “killing it”.  

No real relationship was ever built, or repaired for that matter, after weeks or months of disregard by just spending a bunch of time with someone over the course of a weekend.  Likewise, in business, no real business is ever built after weeks or months of disregard by just spending 3 days straight on a dialer calling for business.  Don't allow your business to be built parallel to the rise and fall of your energy level or a fluctuating commitment level.  I'd take one tortoise over a field full of rabbits every day of the week.  Look back at your calendar this week, last week, this month, last month, and gauge your commitment level.  Did you win the day, win the week, with the month?  Did you do what you committed to do?

Steven Covey’s “Law Of The Farm” is the perfect demonstration of how consistent commitment every single day will yield a harvest.  An inconsistent and sporadic activity, even if the perfect activity, will be wasted effort.  Wake up every morning, put your boots and overalls on and go to work. 

Control

At the end of each day ask yourself if you won.  Did you do what you chose to do?  Every single day that we show up for ourselves and show up for our commitments is a day we build confidence in our future success.  It allows to gain and retain control of both our current self and future self.  This control leads to confidence.  German psychologist Eric Erickson built a lifetime of work pointing to the fact that one of the critical components of high performance is the "motivation and self-confidence created by persistence and deliberate practice" over a period of years.  Years.  Some eighty years later, Canadian psychologist, Albert Bandura confirmed that self-confidence is one of the most influential motivators and regulators of behavior in our lives.  The lesson?  Stop looking for motivation to help you do what you need to do and just do the work.  Show up and win the day. Choose what you will do and commit to doing what you chose.  Every single day we will build our own self-confidence in our ability to execute, which will translate into self-generated motivation and ultimate control of our future.

Here is a truth that has never failed me.  When I show up ready every day, clear about how to move the needle, choosing to do whatever that takes, and committing to not let the day end without completing what I promised myself I would do…then I’ll never lose.  Will there be days I may not win?  Sure.  Is there a week that I may not win?  Sure.  And I can handle those in stride.  The results do not control what I do each day.  I control what I do.  I have built delayed gratification over decades of Creating, Clarifying, Choosing, Committing, Controlling.

Later this week I’ll share with you the daily exercise I go through to make sure I am Winning The Day with these 5 C’s.  Remember, these are not nouns.  These are not adjectives.  These are 5 verbs.  These are actions.  You don’t noun or adjective your way to a win.  You verb your way to a win.  One day at a time. 

Go Win The Day,

Chris Suarez