I am a big fan of John Maxwell’s leadership books and his newsletter. In this months article titled ‘Improvising your approach to Improvement‘ he discusses how you can view improvement differently, offering 5 tips for improvement: developing habits, befriending discipline, admitting mistakes, measuring progress and continual change.

I love this paragraph on discipline:

In life, there are two kinds of pain: the pain of self-discipline and the pain of regret. The pain of self-discipline involves sacrifice, sweat, and delayed gratification. Thankfully, the reward of improvement softens the pain of self-discipline and makes it worthwhile. The pain of regret begins as a missed opportunity and ends up as squandered talent and an unfulfilled life. Once the pain of regret sets in, there’s nothing you can do other than wonder, "What if?"

The point on change is also very interesting:

Continual change is essential for improvement. One of the great paradoxes of success is that the skills and qualities that get you to the top are seldom the ones that keep you there. The quest to improve forces us to abandon assumptions, embrace innovation, and seek new relationships. If we’re complacent for too long, we’ll fall behind the learning curve. Once this happens, it’s a steep, uphill climb to get back to the top.

I can remember a customer once saying to me when we had reached a very strong position within an account: ‘Now don’t start acting like XXX, the reason why you are here is because they became complacent and arrogant’.

The climb back to the top of the hill is steep indeed and when you are on top, the toughest place to be. After all, you have to set your goals on the big blue sky ahead ….