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Feed the Good Dog
By
Paul McCabe |
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Sharing the Journey
This book is as much for me as it is for you. Almost a decade ago, I made a decision to be a winner, instead of a lifer. I didn’t want to be the kind of person who spends a lifetime with no spring in my step, no sparkle in my eye, and no vision of where I was going. I had come across too many people (myself included) who had become complacent and lacking in motivation. People who seemed to be waiting for themselves to show up. Rather than spending each day resigned to repeat the pattern of the previous one, I resolved, wherever possible, to embrace its novelty and inject my life with energy, effort and enthusiasm. I have profoundly enjoyed the journey (good and bad) that has brought me to the place I inhibit today, and I believe that I am a very different person now than the one I was all those years ago. Mine was not an overnight transformation, but rather an incremental progression, which included a lot of soul searching, mentoring, experiments and mistakes before I met with success.
My refusal to remain a lifer has led me to identify 7 strategies or steps that I consider critical to the pursuit of success. I revisit these strategies frequently to remind myself of the common sense they contain, because I know that I don’t consistently practice what I preach. In choosing to succeed, we take the most important step of our life. I know I did. But it’s one thing to know what you should do, quite another to choose to do it. In this book, I’d like to review some of the key approaches I have tried to make a conscious effort to apply (not always successfully) and make those choices once more, with you.
My hope is that you’ll find something between these covers that will make a significant difference to you and to the people you will come into contact with every day of your life. Stressed by everyday pressures, so many of us no longer have the energy to use common sense. We are less inclined to apply ourselves to, let alone be conscious of, the reality of the moment and the importance of celebrating it. When you choose to absorb and apply some of the time-tested principles that appear within this book, than you’re making a positive choice to succeed. Whether you apply them to your personal relationships, your parenting, your career, your spirituality or any other corner of your life is entirely up to you.
My intention is to engage, provoke, stimulate, even irritate into action. As you read these pages, my hope would be that you take the time to use this book to reflect on who you are and where you’re going. I’d like to think that the book’s content will help you make the choice to bring about a measurable improvement in your quality of life, aiding you to achieve personal, professional and organizational turnaround. I’m hoping that it will fill the common gap between dreams and reality with a good call to action. Whether you consider yourself a novice, or to be at the pinnacle of achievement, you have it in you to accomplish more. If, in reading the words contained in this book, you experience even the smallest personal moment of clarity, then I’ve more than achieved what I set out to do.
Where’s the Motivation?
The get-rich-quick deals that appear daily on our computers in the form of junk e-mail, promise us instant success in a mouse click. These are best reserved for idle dreamers. But you’re not just a dreamer or you wouldn’t be holding this book. You’re a doer, because you’re prepared to make the necessary effort to translate your dreams into action. You’re willing to take a brief pause from the insanity of our overscheduled lives, to examine what it will take to live a more fulfilling existence. We all have dreams. We must have dreams. Imagination fuels creativity, which in turn enables us to exit the confines of our conditioning to explore new and rewarding territory. But if we fail to make the effort that’s necessary to turn our dreams into reality, we’re simply, and at best, hopeless romantics, ignoring the responsibility we have to fulfill every last ounce of our potential.
In the course of my work, I’ve come across too many people who seem to have made the choice not to succeed. And that seems such a waste. An individual aversion to success may lead to the disappointment of an unfulfilled life. Collectively, such an attitude can destroy the dreams and the legacy of a generation. I see a lot of people who don’t make the choice. At the same time, I realize that I constantly need to remind myself of the importance of the choice I’m making, as well as the importance of how I react and proact.
My motivation for creating this book? You could say that I was motivated by mediocrity. We live in a time that seems obsessed with reducing everything to its lowest common denominator. Step off a place in any major world capital and you’re likely to be confronted with advertisements for the same stage shows, movies, dining experiences, fashion, art, and music. Instead of taking things to the next level, we’ve stopped several floors short and have resigned ourselves to making do with a lackluster package designed to suit enough of the people most of the time. We seem to have arrives at a point where we don’t even care about apathy anymore!
What’s Our Legacy?
Step back for a moment and examine our society. We’re united by celebrity culture instant gratification and short attention spans. We’re encouraged to dream of overnight success and most of us are hungry for it, but we consistently resign ourselves to considerably less than best. However we measure it, success usually looks like someone else. We believe that success is an accident of birth, or the random outcome of fate, So, it’s luck that leads someone else to write a bestseller, enjoy stardom, build a new business or make millions. The strange thing is that, while we’re all hungry for success in life, and we believe that we have a right to succeed, we just don’t expect to. Most of us are happy to sit around pretending that we’re OK without it. Worldwide, we seem to be waiting for ourselves to show up, passively hoping for a series of lucky breaks, pretending to ourselves that success is hiding around the next corner, waiting to present us with out pre-packaged future.
Is that what we’re willing to accept? The good news is that success truly is around the next corner, but it’s waiting for us to show up. We have to choose to make the turn. If we want to win the lottery, we have to buy a ticket. I’ve put this book together because it’s time to get up and do something. Deep down, we’re all hungry for success. If you accept only this, accept the reality of that continuous success-hunger. People who succeed do so because they know that progress wants to happen. They’ve stopped pretending that everything’s OK and they’re hungry for a new world. Successful people make the choice to succeed; it’s as simple as that.
We’ve got to stop listening to all the dream busting reasons why something can’t be done. We’ve got to stop making lists of all the ideas we’d act on, if only we had the time. We’ve got to stop just wishing. We’ve got to stop just hoping. We’ve got to stop just praying. We’re all full of untapped energy, potential energy that’s stored with us, just wanting to happen. It’s time to stop waiting for ourselves to show up because, WE’RE HERE, IT’S NOW, and there’s no better time to choose to succeed.
http://www.feedthegooddog.com/promotion.html
Author's Bio
Paul McCabe has over 25 years of sales and management experience, much of it in the Broadcast industry. He is formerly Vice President with Standard Broadcasting, one of Canada’s largest Broadcasting companies, and spearheaded the formation and development of IMS, Canada’s largest media representation Firm. He is currently President and Managing Partner of COMPASS Performance Strategies Inc, a Canadian-based, international training and consulting company.
He is the author of the critically acclaimed book Feed the Good Dog – Making the Choice to Succeed, and has appeared frequently on National television as a featured guest on shows such as “Canada’s Best Businesses” “Success Breakthroughs” and “First Take Live – Living by Design”
Paul works as a trainer, motivator and speaker for companies and organizations of influence throughout North America.
http://www.feedthegooddog.com/promotion.html
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