Best practices for life, love…and business

Best practices for life, love…and business 19 January 2017 / by Girls Just Wanna Have Bling The concept of best practices is not new. It’s how you differentiate a beginner from a master – for example, anyone can make a cake. The master chef knows the best way to do things to make the cake that much better, while the beginner just follows the recipe as well as they can. But can you really have best practices for life, love…and business? Setting your standards high Anyone can do anything. How many times have you been told that? You can grow up to become president, or an astronaut, anything you want. The problem is, most people never try and reach the heights of what they could be, and if they do try, they fail because they don’t know what they are meant to be doing. The way to find the best practices for whatever you choose is often to work backwards. The goal may be to become an astronaut. The last step is to be sitting in the chair, strapped in, waiting for the rocket to launch. But how did you get there? Years of training? Luck? You can find out a lot of information through a web search – “how do I become an astronaut?” – but you can also discover a large amount by studying successful astronauts. How did Neil Armstrong become an astronaut? What about Buzz Aldrin? John Glenn? Susan Helms? By studying each of these people (even just a quick glance through Wikipedia entries), you will find patterns. These patterns will be things like discovering they flew jet planes before training to be astronauts, they studied physics in school, and perhaps they trained as engineers. By combining the stories of people who are successful in a particular field, you will find the ideal model to follow to become whatever you want to be – ideally, this will be a simple, straightforward plan. The simpler it is, the better. When you can turn it into a list with checkboxes, you’ve most likely found the best practices to get you the result you desired. Applying modelling to the best practices for life There is an ideal ‘you’. At the moment, you might not be aware what it is, but unless you discover what you want to be, you’ll end up living your life in disappointment. Spend some time setting some goals for yourself, and work out what will make you happy – design the life that would truly make you fulfilled. And then, start the modelling process. Find people who have achieved everything you want to achieve (this doesn’t have to be one person for all your goals, you can find people for each goal you have) and find out how they did it. Create a model to follow to help you achieve greatness. How can this work for love? Modelling can work for anything – life, business, and love included. Try to make a list of people who have relationships you admire, people who are clearly in love and do what is best for their relationships. Remember, these don’t have to be famous people, they can just be people you know. When you’ve made a list of at least 5 people, look at the people on your list with a critical eye. What exactly do they do to make their relationships so fantastic? Are they always complementary to their partner? Do they treat them as an equal? And do they pamper them? Do they get up early or stay up late? Are they always spending a night in with their partner, or are they always going out? Once you find common patterns, you’ll be able to attempt to emulate them in order to improve your own relationships. There will always be an outlier that does something different, but they are usually the exception – if you want to be successful, you’ll often have a better chance by following the path that others have taken before you, for these are the best practices. Best practices for life are simply the rules that specify the best way to do things for you to achieve the result you desire. There are of course other ways to achieve the results, but they usually won’t be as straightforward. Building your own best practices for life Only you know what you truly want to be and do. Once you’ve set your goals and found some people to model, make a list of your own best practices – things you need to do every day, things you need to do in certain situations, places you need to go, things you need to learn, and so on. Follow your list as if your happiness depended on it – because in a way, it does. One thing to remember: a best practice will never put you or anyone else in danger. Your health, safety, and well-being is paramount. Without those three things, you stand little chance of being truly happy, so always look after yourself. There is a reason they are called “best” practices! Don’t delay your happiness. Get started now, set some goals, find some models, and write down your own personal best practices!