If I ask audience members to choose their preference between two words, UP and DOWN, the vast majority choose UP. We like to be up. We like the stock market to be up. We like our energy to be up. So, with that thought, here are what I consider the 5 ups that go a long way toward a life of success and fulfillment.
#1. Get UP. Sleep is a critical component of a healthy and successful life. A good night’s sleep is similar to taking your automobile in for a tune up. And, isn’t the feeling of picking up your car following a tune up great? All those little running- rough edges have been smoothed out. That engine is purring again and you feel great driving your car. Every night we get a good night’s sleep, we get that complete tune up. But, imagine taking your car in for a tune up, and not picking it up for a month, just leaving it at the dealership. That would be a little crazy, wouldn’t it? Well, that’s like staying in bed following a good night’s sleep. We need sleep for health… but once the job of a good night’s sleep is done, it’s time to get the car out of the dealership and onto the street. So many people wrestle with getting up in the morning, and the wasted hours of people oversleeping and the loss of productivity to our economy would be in the billions, maybe trillions.
To be able to Get Up feeling great, we need to go to bed at the right time. It’s important to manage your sleep game by being proactive with your sleep instead of reactive. My experience with the many successful people I have worked with and known is that the vast majority get up early. Which means they go to bed at the right time to give them the 6/7/8 hours of sleep that they need. I have always gotten up between 4:30 and 5:00. So it’s not rocket science that if my magic number is 7 hours, I need to go to bed around 9:30PM. Manage your sleep and you will be dramatically better off in a myriad of ways and on your way to a more productive life.
#2. Throw Up. How do you usually feel when you throw up? You feel dramatically better than you did just before you threw up. You might even feel great. Why? Because you just rid yourself of a bunch of poison in your system. Negative thoughts are poison. Negative thoughts hold us back and do tremendous damage to a successful and productive life. There is an acronym, CBT, which stands for cognitive behavior therapy. It means using the conscious mind to understand and overcome fear and self-destructive thoughts and habits. Successful people can CBT themselves almost instantly. Figuratively speaking, throwing up any negative thoughts you have first thing in the morning, is like CBT-ing yourself at the beginning of the day, and will produce tremendous positive results in your quest to be all that you can be.
#3. Ready Up… Life is about being IN the game, not AT the game. To be IN the game, one needs to do certain things in preparation. Ready up is getting us ready to play. Ready up is some personal time, such as meditation or prayer. Ready up is having breakfast with your family. There were very few days when our children were in the house, from 0 through highschool, that we didn’t have breakfast as a family. Ready up is working out, which also helps with #2, throwing up. Ready up is getting dressed, and feeling good about yourself and how you look. Ready up is BIG…. It’s very hard to be in the game if you don’t ready up.
#4. Show UP. Showing up is being present. We need to get to the stadium, the office, the school, the hospital, the factory, or wherever it is you make a living. We need to show up with the right attitude. Showing up with the wrong attitude is almost as bad as not showing up at all.
#5. Rise Up. Rising up is now playing the game, and being IN the game — really in the game. Rising up is having all seven words of the Grit Scale working for you. Those seven words are: grit, zest, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity. The Grit Scale came from work the Riverdale School in the Bronx, NY, did studying their students. The Riverdale school tuition starts at $38,500 per year for kindergarten, and goes up from there. They saw that in the big picture of life grade point average (GPA), isn’t nearly as important for its students as character point average (CPA). The Grit Scale is the foundation of CPA.
So as we write the rest of the chapters of our life’s story, here’s to being up, ever upward.
Get up!
Throw up!
Ready up!
Show up!
And, Rise up!
