It’s another blog swap day! Today’s guest post is by Srinivas Rao, a personal development blogger at The Skool of Life. Srini obsesses over riding waves and finding life lessons through the sport of surfing. He is also the co-founder and host of BlogcastFM, a podcast for bloggers.  Also, check out the post I wrote about lessons I’ve learned since graduating college over at The Skool of Life today.

While you might think that perfection is success, upon closer inspection you’ll find that success is the byproduct of one imperfect failure after another. Perfection on the other hand is a word we’ve made up, we’ve given meaning to it, other people have agreed with our meaning and as a result, our fear of not being perfect keeps us from beginning the journey to success.

Last week Nicole’s post about entrepreneurial perfectionism syndrome really resonated with me. I come from a background where you are continually taught that the end goal is perfection. If I brought home an A-, I was asked why I didn’t get an A+. Our reports cards were never put on the fridge. It was just expected that we brought home A’s. But, nobody ever asked the more important question. Did you actually learn anything?

The constant mentality of compare and compete was a driving force behind how many kids in my community were raised. The fatal flaw in this however is that there will always be someone better and someone worse. In the game of life you really shouldn’t compete with anybody other than yourself. The fact of the matter is that YOU WILL NEVER BE PERFECT. But, who cares? It doesn’t matter one bit. The fallacy of perfection actually sets you up for failure.

How Set Yourself up for Massive Success

One of the most useful things I learned in Tony Robbins Personal Power II course was the idea of making it easy for yourself to feel successful. Let’s take a look at a blog as an example. Let’s say you measure the success of your blog by the amount of traffic and you decide that some arbitrary number makes you successful. Well, anytime you don’t hit that arbitrary number you give yourself the message that you are a failure. Now, what if we said “anytime I wrote a blog post, I’m successful.” It’s a minor difference, but what happens is now you are setting yourself up to feel successful and as a result you will hit a success cycle. Make it easy for yourself to feel successful. Don’t let this be confused with having low standards. This is about conditioning your mind to feel good and one small success leads to a bigger one, which leads to a bigger one, which leads to the snowball effect.

As a result of this snowball effect, your subconscious starts to get a very different message. It’s a series of successful events instead of series of failures. Try it for 30 days and you’ll be amazed how much more you accomplish and how much better you feel doing it.

Welcome to Ms. Career Girl’s shortest blog post ever. 

I had some really interesting conversations this weekend that really got me thinking. I’m sure you’ll hear more about these soon. 

Here’s one fragment for you to chew on for today.

What would you do if you were given $1,000,000 right now? (Tax free, no strings attached)

• How would this money change your life?  Your career? 
• Would it change the types of people you date?
• Would you move? 
• Would you feel more confident?
• What’s the first thing you would buy?
• Would you give any away?

Money is a really interesting (and psychological) thing.  I’m very curious about your responses.

Take 5 minutes to watch the awesome video below, made by boxofcrayons.biz (@boxofcrayons). I promise it will rejuvenate your mind and your attitude.

In Review, The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun:

1. Get Focused: stop hiding who you really are.

2. Get Focused: start being intensely selfish.

3. Be Creative: stop following the rules.

4. Be Creative: start scaring yourself.

5. Use Your Wisdom: stop taking it all so damn seriously.

6. Use Your Wisdom: start getting rid of the crap (habits, memories, attitudes, people).

7. Take Action: stop being busy.

8. Take Action: start something. Don’t wait any longer for permission to do what you want to do.

Keep this post handy on your desktop or in an inspiration folder. There’s no doubt you will want to come back to this post when you are feeling stuck and review these simple yet powerful concepts.

This post is dedicated to NSE, a person who has always lived by these rules and is the definition of fun and success wrapped up into one.

Here are some random thoughts about what I was reminded of this week:

1. A bit of positive news builds a heck of a lot of momentum. This week I talked to ForbesWoman.com and mscareergirl was officially accepted into their blog network. For me this is a huge honor, and hopefully the start of lots more business-related writing.

2. Writing lists are only so helpful. It’s apparent that I only do what I want to do on my list.  My laundry has been sitting in heaps waiting to be folded for 3 days, my house is a disaster, and my fridge is low on inventory.  Although these were big items on my list, I could not have cared less.

3. The power of focus is pretty amazing. And no, I haven’t focused on cleaning at all this week, but I’ve made a lot of progress on planning for Ms. Career Girl’s improvements and growth.  This happens before and after my day job.  Working on this passion is what gets me out of bed every morning, drives my energy and my happiness every day. 

4. Without passion, women will never achieve focus.  If we don’t care about something, good luck focusing on it.  Especially for spacey ADHD types like me.

5. We suck when it comes to doing things we aren’t good at. I notice this in myself at work and in my friends/family. We ask our co-workers a few extra times if we are doing something correctly, we stall, we procrastinate, we complain to those at home, we get stressed out, we make it way harder than it is, we want to escape. This will definitely be a career barrier if we don’t overcome it.

6. Asking for/saying what you want (or stating how you feel) is so much easier than worrying about being polite, delaying the inevitable, or bottling up energy. That in itself crosses a lot off the to-do list, saves time and rids toxic energy. In my opinion, this is one thing career women need to do more of! I have several examples of this from the week which I’m not going to get into.  And- sidenote- I’ve noticed that being direct keeps getting easier and easier…you should definitely try it!

7. “Shoot for the moon and even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” Think and dream really REALLY big.  It is really REALLY fun!

If the statistics are true, more people than ever before want to star their own business someday. Of those people, I bet 90% of them have no clue what type of business they want to start. Today’s post provides a process that should help you start gaining clarity on what Your Company, Inc. looks like.

Before we begin, there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Defining your business mission is not an easy or quick process. For many it takes years. The important part is that you keep on searching and keep trying new things until something feels right. Whatever you do, don’t get discouraged and quit. (Kind of like dating, weird.)

2. Remember that your business will probably change and evolve several times before it settles and starts making money. This is normal and ok. You are not a ditz if this happens.

3. Get over the fact that there is a recession going on and stop using it as an excuse. Many great companies were started in the midst of a recession, check out this article for proof.
The books that helped me focus my brainstorming process the most were ones I read in the last year: Ladies Who Launch and Escape Corporate America. Here are some ways to start putting your dreams into action based on these books.

Step 1: Fantasize

In your handy entrepreneur notebook (which I hope you have purchased by now) jot down the answers to the following questions. Put down the first things that come to mind, even if your thoughts seem odd. These questions are not necessarily easy, so come back to them over time as needed.
• What did you love doing as a child?
• If money were no object, what would you do?
• What do your friends and family say about you? (Sarah is so great at connecting people, Tara is so organized, Corrine hosts the best events) Sometimes what your friends and family say about you are things that you didn’t notice in yourself. Pay attention to these compliments and write them down.
• Outline your perfect workday. Yes, I said perfect. Yoga, manicures, lunch with Oprah, driving your Range Rover, and playing with your new puppy can all be included.
• Who are your career idols?

Step 2: Research

• Write down a list of all of your interests. Yes, this includes any secret interests you have such as bowling and color-coding your underwear drawer. Once you get that list, start googling and twitter searching the interests to prove to yourself that there are way more careers and small businesses out there than you imagined.
• Now write down your skills and talents. They can be conventional skills such as your ability to build a website or your mastery of Quicknooks, or they can be unconventional. “Soft” skills are just as important when you have your own business. Start drawing parallels between your interests list and your skills/talents list.
• Use the skills/talents and interests list to make up your dream job title. If you could have any dream job title, what would it be? Make it fun if you wish. My new job title is “Chief Executive Diva” of Ms. Career Girl. Now see if this job title exists, and if not start researching ways to make it come to life.

Step 3: Go Shopping

Hell no! I am NOT talking about a trip to Michigan Avenue here. Rather, window shop your dream job and take advantage of the dressing room. Here are some tips on how to start “shopping”:

• Start reading blogs on entrepreneurship and on things that interest you daily.
• Join Twitter or use your existing Twitter account to start connecting with people who have similar interests.
• Research your “competition” or existing “dream companies” to see what they are doing. Then, get some guts and ask someone from that company to lunch.
• If it is possible, volunteer doing something that helps you meet new people and get a little closer to your targeted industry.
• Take a class at a local college, join an incubator or get involved in your local Women’s Business Center even if you’re not sure exactly what you want to do yet. These groups will really help.
• As you get more confident, offer to guest post on a blog or start your own blog.

Just start somewhere. Consider it your new part-time job to find your strengths, passions and future business aspirations. Talk to everyone you can and try on many different “outfits,” you never know what could fit.

Once you get your “dream on,” then we can start talking about implementing the dream. And let me know if you want to be considered as the subject for part 2 of this post.