Wallenda’s feat—one of his seven world records—made us think about the purpose of the safety nets we so routinely seek in our everyday lives. Are they coaxing us forward, offering us the protection we need, or holding us back? So we asked Wallenda, a 37-year-old father of three, for his take on safety nets, and he graciously shared with us the wisdom gleaned from a legendary seven-generation family of high-wire artists. “Our minds are extremely powerful,” he told us. “You can learn to control what comes in, and filter out the negative. Fear is negative. You can either be overtaken by it, or you can overcome it.”

Performing without a safety net, to Wallenda, is more of an assertion that he is in control than a scary reminder of what could happen should he lose it. It’s not that he has a false sense of security, or a cavalier attitude toward risk. But we found that what Wallenda does applies just as much to those of us who prefer to view the Grand Canyon by tour bus—a grit mindset that can help us conquer the comparatively mundane risks each of us face in our lives. It comes down to becoming, in essence, your own first responder: identifying worst-case scenarios ahead of time, then training yourself what to do if and when they occur. Should that moment arrive, you will have the training—and the confidence—to calmly respond, rather than hastily react. This is where guts, resilience, initiative and tenacity truly payoff.

All it takes is mindfulness—an ability to zoom in on the problem at hand.

“Some are born with grit, and it comes easier,” Wallenda allowed. But, he went on, “we are all growing, all the time. You can gain more and more of it, or you can also lose it if you don’t practise it. Scary is not in my vocabulary. Fear is really just a deep respect. I clearly remember the first time I grasped this: I was six or seven years old and sitting on my father’s shoulders while he was riding a bicycle across the wire. I had been around wild animals in the circus all my life—elephants, tigers, chimpanzees—but I was never afraid of them. I was raised to respect them, knowing they could kill me. On top of my father’s shoulders that day, even though I knew it was something my dad could do in his sleep, I still felt this jolt. I understood that I could either sit there and shake and tremble, or tell myself to be calm and collected. I chose not to be scared. I realised that I’m in control of my mind—my mind is not in control of me.”

Although performing on the high wire has long since become second nature to Wallenda, he continues to respect what could hurt him. That keen awareness and respect, in turn, has taught him to prepare for the worst so he can do his best. He and his team spent five years studying terrain and conditions in the Grand Canyon before undertaking the stunt described at the beginning of the article. While there was no way to predict how much fine desert dust might settle on his two-inch-wide cable the day of his walk, or how powerful the upward drafts of hot air from the canyon floor might get. Wallenda prepared himself for those conditions and rehearsed manoeuvres he could do in response. Before the Grand Canyon walk, he practised for hours every day in his Florida backyard, using wind machines to create 91-mph gusts—stronger than any ever recorded in the canyon itself.

When Tropical Storm Andrea slammed ashore in Florida a week before Wallenda’s historic walk, he seized the opportunity to experience the unpredictability of the fierce storm by practising on a 35-foot high wire in the wind and rain. When the momentous day came and Wallenda found himself making his way across the gorge and feeling the wire bounce beneath his slippered feet, he reminded himself: You trained for 90-miles-per-hour winds, even though they never get above 60 here. You prepared for this; you know what to do. As he neared the other side, Wallenda broke into a sprint, and nimbly leapt back onto solid ground, before going home to ponder what challenge to take on next.

When confidence becomes a muscle memory, panic is replaced by peak performance.

Don’t fear disasters, plan for them

Flight attendants are trained to evacuate a jumbo jet filled with passengers in 90 seconds or less [in the United States, it’s a federal requirement]. Airlines and training academies drill trainees over and over again using realistic mock cabins and simulated emergencies, such as a crash or fire.

Lee Yoon-Hye put her training to the test on 6th July 2013, when Asiana Flight 214 hit a seawall on approach to San Francisco International Airport, broke apart, then cartwheeled down the runway and burst into flames when the jet’s fuel ignited. You might remember seeing news images of Lee: the petite 40-year-old cabin manager from Seoul, South Korea, could be spotted carrying passengers to safety on her back. What you didn’t see was the phenomenal grit she displayed inside the Boeing 777 cabin, where an emergency slide had deployed within the wreckage, trapping terrified passengers. Lee grabbed an axe so that a co-pilot could puncture the slide. Seeing flames erupting in the back, she tossed a fire extinguisher to another crew member as she began herding passengers to safety. All but three of the 307 people aboard the plane survived. And not surprisingly, Lee was the last one off. The San Francisco fire chief hailed her as a hero; doctors later discovered Lee had been assisting the evacuation with a fractured tailbone.

“We followed our training,” she modestly told reporters afterward. “I wasn’t really thinking, but my body just started carrying out the steps needed for an evacuation.”

The fear and trepidation most of us face in our daily lives falls far short of having to save trapped passengers in a burning plane or potentially free-falling to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Yet we routinely rig our lives with the kinds of safety nets that would suggest otherwise. If you wait to act in a situation until it’s risk-free before venturing a toe out onto your own proverbial high wire, what you’re really risking is a lifetime frozen at the starting line.

A woman creates a multimillion-dollar business she started online in her dorm room, while her ex-boyfriend shows up at the class reunion with a job he hates and vague proclamations about waiting to get all of his ducks in a row. Sound familiar? Perhaps you fantasise about taking salsa lessons but refuse to sign up until you lose 12 kilos because you want to look good. Or you’re heartsick over your town’s plans to level a small old-growth forest for a strip mall, but can’t summon the time, energy, and political savvy to fight it. Rolling over is a lot less painful than falling on one’s face.

Too often, our typical default setting is to fear disaster, rather than actually plan for it. And that, Nik Wallenda tells us, is the true catastrophe.

“It’s easier to settle for what’s comfortable than to push on and excel,” he explains. Too often, we live life avoiding what we fear, a hundred times a day. And what we fear often comes down to failure or rejection.

If you wait to act in a situation until it’s risk-free before venturing a toe out onto your own proverbial high wire, what you’re really risking is a lifetime frozen at the starting line

Get rejected

When hypnotist Jason Comely invented an online game called Rejection Therapy a few years ago, one of his stated objectives was to teach people “to be more aware of how irrational social fears control and restrict our lives.”

The game had only one rule: You must be rejected by someone every single day. In fact, rejection equalled success in the game. If your target didn’t reject you, and instead granted your request, it counted as a failure because you evidently didn’t ask for enough.

Chinese immigrant Jia Jiang came across the challenge after quitting his tech job in Austin, Texas, to devote six months to pursuing the dream he had hungered for ever since Bill Gates had spoken to his high school in Beijing: to become an entrepreneur. Four months into his six-month sabbatical, though, Jiang looked down at his vibrating phone in a restaurant to see a devastating text message from the major investor he thought he had on the hook to finance his start-up: No, was all it said. Jiang excused himself to go outside and cry.

“My choices were rejection or regret, and both stunk,” Jiang recalled in a TEDx talk that has since made him a YouTube sensation. Jiang considered cutting his losses and going back to a “real” job two months early. “But in the end, I chose rejection and kept going, and the world was never the same again.”

Intrigued by Comely’s game, Jiang decided to desensitise himself to the pain of rejection by challenging himself to endure one hundred days of rejection, and record it on a hidden camera for his video blog. He immediately began racking up points. Costco refused to let him talk to its customers over the store intercom. A stranger declined to loan him a hundred bucks. FedEx wouldn’t send a box to Santa at the North Pole. “But then a funny thing happened,” Jiang reported. “I started getting yeses.” He knocked on a stranger’s door and was granted permission to play soccer in the family’s backyard. A guard let him dance Gangnam-style on the building’s security camera.

Then there was the time Jiang walked into a random company and asked to speak to the CEO. “Why?” the receptionist wanted to know.

“Because I’m going to challenge him to a staring contest,” came the reply. And he was invited in to see the CEO.

[The CEO turned out to be a her, and she won.]

Rejection, Jiang discovered, had turned him into “a better communicator, a better negotiator.” And the customary sting he had experienced upon being rejected had been replaced by a feeling of liberation that he found exhilarating, pushing him to take ever-greater risks.

When Jiang strolled into a Krispy Kreme shop to request doughnuts customised to resemble the Olympics logo, an obliging employee said she’d see what she could do, then returned shortly to proudly display her creation—a box of five-interlocked doughnut rings in the Olympic colours. “It’s on me, get out,” she said with a grin when Jiang asked what he owed. Jiang’s hidden-camera video of that encounter drew so many viewers on YouTube that the media took note, and the rejected Jiang became a star.

His experiment, Jiang told his TED audience, “taught me to see rejection eye to eye and remain calm, and see it as what it is. It’s not this monster bag of hurt that I thought. It’s not some universal truth about who I am. It’s just someone’s opinion, and it says as much about that person as it does about me.”

There’s a big difference, Jiang pointed out, between remorse over not having done something, and rejection. Rejection is getting shot down and surviving; remorse is never taking flight in the first place.

He has yet to hear back on his hundredth request—an interview with President Obama—but Jiang did score a yes he never foresaw the night he received the text message that had crushed his dreams: he landed a deal to publish a book about the power of rejection.

Facing constant rejection can be devastating. But it can also be the impetus you need to work harder than you ever thought possible.

The customary sting he had experienced upon being rejected had been replaced by a feeling of liberation that he found exhilarating, pushing him to take ever-greater risks

Draw on your inner resources

Selling a cartoon to The New Yorker magazine takes a Herculean amount of diligence, dedication, stamina and grit. When Bob Mankoff first started out as a cartoonist, he submitted thousands of entries to The New Yorker before one was finally accepted for publication. Almost 30 years later, after penning some 950 New Yorker drawings, Mankoff is the cartoon editor of the magazine. He and his team laboriously sift through as many as two thousand entries a week, knowing that only 17 or 18 of them will make the cut. And many of the submissions are from regulars, talented artists who face an acceptance rate of only 10 per cent.

Yet they refuse to give up, drawing on a reservoir of creativity and wit that seems to be limitless. Mankoff believes their creativity is actually fuelled by The New Yorker’s low acceptance rate; like a gambler’s high, the artist never knows when, and which, of his drawings will be a winner. “Every so often,” Mankoff told us, “you will get that jolt of positive reinforcement to fuel your resilience.”

It is often exactly the motivation artists need to reach deeper into their creative imagination and spur their sense of grit.

Go with your guts

The hypercompetitive tech industry, with its take-no-prisoners culture, seems to breed a lot of introspection about grit. As a female engineer in the testosterone-driven Silicon Valley, senior Google manager Sabrina Farmer frequently battled self-doubt and harsh self-criticism. She realised that questioning or downplaying her capabilities had become second nature. When an acquaintance mentioned plans to run a triathlon, Farmer instantly responded, “Oh, I could never do that!” Later, she found herself wondering: Why not? What made me say that? She summoned the grit to sign up for the race, train and compete, then went on to run a marathon. It wasn’t, she confessed later, something she particularly enjoyed, but the insight it gave her was well worth the effort and agony. She realised that her habit of belittling herself served as an air cushion from failure’s hard falls. But that emotional safety mechanism was also holding her back.

Farmer attributed her tentativeness to what psychologists call “impostor syndrome.” In her book The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, Valerie Young writes that people with impostor syndrome tend to dismiss their accomplishments and abilities “as merely a matter of luck, timing, outside help, charm—even computer error… that they’ve somehow managed to slip through the system undetected, in their mind it’s just a matter of time before they’re found out.” And it strikes successful women more than any other group. It’s what prompted actress Jodie Foster to confess on 60 Minutes that she thought her Academy Award was “a fluke” and that “everybody would find out, and they’d take the Oscar back. They’d come to my house, knocking on the door, ‘Excuse me, we meant to give that to someone else. That was going to Meryl Streep.’’’

Now, when Sabrina finds herself clinging to the safety net of self-doubt, she stops to ask herself three questions:

1. What is the problem?
2. What’s the worst that can happen?
3. Is the worst-case scenario real, or just my perspective [an emotional response]?

She then pinpoints what it would take to fix the problem at hand. If it’s a tool or skill she doesn’t have, she figures out how to obtain it. Using this approach makes taking on something unfamiliar a challenge to solve instead of a humiliating failure waiting to happen.

Linda’s favourite impostor story was of the time she almost got her bough of holly decked one Christmas when she jingled the wrong bell. A struggling actor in her mid-twenties, Linda was just getting by on a string of part-time gigs, giving piano lessons, teaching music theory at City College of New York, acting in off-off and more-off Broadway shows, etc. When the extremely wealthy head of a yogurt dynasty offered fifty dollars—more than half Linda’s rent!—to play Christmas carols at the family’s annual holiday reunion, Linda grabbed the gig. But there was a problem.

“I was a poor Jewish girl with, shall we say, a limited repertoire of lyrics that included the words ‘Jesus,’ ‘saviour,’ ‘Christ,’ or ‘Bethlehem,’” she recalls. “But I was a pretty good sight reader and I needed the 50 bucks, so I took the job, and bravely walked inside an apartment so huge it had its own zip code.”

The yogurt patriarch turned out to be a formidable man in his early 50s who clutched a baton in one hand and a scotch in the other. He demanded to know if Linda knew all of the 37 carols he placed on, the beautiful Steinway concert grand she was about to play.

“Well, not really,” Linda answered, a tad too honestly. “But I’m a quick study.”

Scrooge McYogurt turned several shades of purple, he was so angry. “He leaned over to me—I can still smell the scotch on his breath—and warned me that if I played just one wrong note, he would bodily throw me out the door.”

Linda might have succumbed to the impostor syndrome in that moment and walked out. But she was so incensed by the guy’s attitude toward her that she decided to prove her competence instead of questioning her qualifications. And her inner sense of grit served her well. She played not just well, but brilliantly. Not only did she play every note perfectly, but she began to improvise and embellish the music, dazzling the party guests with her impassioned interpretation of each tune. “By the time we got to ‘Silent Night,’ there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. Family members surrounded me at the piano singing with me and asking me to stay long past my allotted time. And the best part? Scrooge McYogurt gave me an extra 50 dollars!”

And she came home with far more than a bulging pocketbook: “What I learned that evening was that even when I took the risk of going out on a limb, doing something I wasn’t really qualified to do, I was able to step up to the plate, stretch my limits, and accomplish more than I ever thought possible. Instead of feeling scared, I felt emboldened. I ended up proving to myself that, just maybe, I had underestimated my talents and abilities.”

So our advice? When in doubt, ring those bells!

Take a Leap

Robin faced down her own imposter syndrome moment when she was approached in 2013 by a recruiter seeking a CEO to run the American Legacy Foundation, one of the nation’s largest non-profit organisations. Legacy, recently renamed the Truth Initiative, was the antismoking advocacy group that had been established in 1999 as part of the $206 billion Master Settlement Agreement—the largest civil litigation in history between the major tobacco companies, 46 states, the District of Columbia, and five US territories. The recruiter needed to know within 30 days whether Robin was interested.

Accepting the job would mean dismantling every safety net Robin had. It would mean leaving the advertising industry, where she had focussed her professional efforts for her entire career. It would mean leaving a for-profit enterprise for a non-profit one. It would mean leaving her native New York, her beloved friends, and a career’s worth of business contacts for Washington, a city where she knew almost no one. Robin’s husband, Kenny, would have to quit his job as a hospital administrator and find a new position in DC. Everything in her life added up to that one thing we all set out seeking: security. “It was absolutely terrifying to think about leaving all that, to take a step off the edge and challenge myself again.”

When the Kaplan Thaler Group merged a year earlier with Publicis New York, we went from an agency of 250 people to one with 700 employees. Much as Robin welcomed the chance to lead Publicis Kaplan Thaler, she realised that after many decades working in the same business, what she really craved, as scary as it seemed, was the chance to have a “second act”, one that would bring an opportunity to learn something completely new and use her years of marketing experience to do something that would have a positive impact on people’s lives. Linda assured Robin of her heartfelt support and told her to “go for it”.

So Robin picked up the recruiter’s letter, and with the deadline a few days away, wrote a passionate response. Going from selling shampoo to saving lives seemed like an unfathomable leap. On the other hand, Legacy’s “truth” public education programme for teens was legendary. The campaign had won every major award in the ad industry and had been proven to have prevented 450,000 young people from smoking in its first four years. As she drafted her response, it became clearer and clearer to her how strongly she felt about the organisation’s crusade. She saw herself as twice victimised by the tobacco industry, first as a pack-a-day teen smoker duped by cigarette manufacturers who hid the long-term health effects from the public, and second as a marketer whose entire field was tainted by the money and muscle of Big Tobacco.

Robin knew how hard it was to quit—she had stopped smoking for two years and then relapsed, before kicking the habit for good at the age of 28. Though we had never represented tobacco at Kaplan Thaler Group, no one in advertising could escape the shoot-the-messenger backlash from consumers who felt horribly betrayed by advertising campaigns promoting smoking.

She finished writing her letter and went to bed. You know what, Robin, that’s probably the end of that, she told herself.

But it felt good to convey how the tobacco companies had made people in advertising look deceptive, manipulative and dangerous.

“Of course they’re going to hire you,” Linda predicted when Robin told her what she did. And after a couple of gruelling rounds of interviewing, Robin had indeed beaten out more than one hundred candidates and got the job.

Accepting the new position was both liberating and terrifying, all at once. Peering down into that metaphorical career canyon, Robin steeled herself by flashing back to the toughest question that had been thrown at her during the final interview with toe board of directors, when she had been asked how she would feel about running a controversial organisation whose rich and powerful foes might well decide to go against her personally. It could, she was warned, get very ugly. Her answer, immediate and straight from her native Bronx roots: “Bring it on.”

Excerpted with permission from Grit to Great by Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval and published by Crown Business

The post Why you should give up your safety nets! appeared first on Complete Wellbeing.

As a result, the small cues, the simple gestures, the random acts of kindness that give life texture and meaning are too often overlooked or ignored. We feel too pressured to notice the nuances of human behaviour, or to bother with the small personal efforts that may, ultimately, win us more attention than our grand acts or intentions. Taking the time to give a compliment, or being attuned to a colleague or customer’s subtle body cues, are not inconsequential actions. They tell a story. They are the details that make or break a relationship, or decide your promotion. It is our smallest behaviours, and not our grandest gestures, that so often define us and create an imprint of who we are. But the fact is, no one gets ahead, wins the promotion or saves the guy or girl, without noticing, sweating over and taking care of the small stuff.

Believing that it is the small things we do that make the greatest difference is not just an ideology, it is also timely and pragmatic advice born out of the economically challenged world we live in today. Saving a large sum for the future is a daunting task, but focussing on saving penny by penny, fen by fen, paisa by paisa, is easily done, no matter where in the world you live.

We often labour over creating long-term life and career goals and plan five- or ten-year strategies to accomplish them. But life rarely works according to such a grand design. It is the tiny victories we accomplish each day, the details we take the time to worry about, that ultimately lead us to future success.

So please, read on. Just by following these “small” suggestions, you will begin to notice the huge impact it will have on your life.

Taking the time to give a compliment, or being attuned to a colleague or customer’s subtle body cues, are not inconsequential actions

1. Little things matter

Larry was a computer programmer stuck in the sales division of a major apparel company. He was someone everyone took for granted, and was largely invisible to everyone around him. Larry would watch the men and women of the sales department who were constantly getting promoted and praised, and would admire their outgoing and confident demeanour. Larry knew he had some great ideas, and secretly thought, “I can get ahead, I want to get ahead, but no one even knows I’m alive!”

Then one day, Larry strolled into Patricia Fripp’s men’s hair salon. Patricia was an immensely talented hair stylist, because she saw the inner ‘amazing’ in each of her customers, and decided to give Larry a new ‘do’, one that was contemporary, sexy, and a bit daring.

The second Larry got back from the salon, all the women took notice. “Lar-ry,” they squealed, “you look awesome!” Even his wife gave him a knowing wink when he came home to dinner that night. That small gesture, a new haircut, had given Larry a totally new lease on life. He bought a new set of clothes, started working out in the local gym and became more socially engaged with his colleagues.

Larry began to walk, talk and behave with a newfound confidence even he didn’t know he possessed. He offered his boss suggestions on how to improve the company, and so impressed his superiors that when he asked to be moved to a regional sales position, he was awarded the job.

A job he executed brilliantly.

Before long, Larry became the best performer the department ever had, and within a few years he became the chief sales executive of the company.

Yes, Larry had brains and talent, but if you ask him what changed his life [and we did ask], he will tell you that he owes his success to one great haircut from Patricia Fripp [who is now a successful life coach!]

Point here: never underestimate how valuable a small change can be. You don’t need to do a massive overhaul to overhaul your life. Sometimes success is just a hairbreadth away.

 no one gets ahead, wins the promotion or saves the guy or girl, without noticing, sweating over and taking care of the small stuff

2. A kernel of kindness goes a long way

Simone and Jake had been dating for two years. In Simone’s mind, they were a perfect couple, and she was convinced Jake was the man she wanted to marry. There was just one problem: Jake was commitment phobic, and terribly fearful of the ‘M’ word.

Over time, Simone began to despair. Nothing seemed to change Jake’s mind—no amount of convincing, pressuring or ultimatum conversations even made a dent in his desire to remain single. So one evening Simone decided that she was going to break up with Jake once and for all. She had to move on with her life.

On their way to dinner at their favourite restaurant, they passed a homeless man, shivering and starving in the cold, wintry night. Simone, who had been wrapped up in thinking about how she was going to break up with Jake, suddenly stopped in her tracks, jarred back to reality by the sight of this desperate stranger.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Jake. Simone dashed across to the deli across the street and next, into a second hand clothing store. When she returned, she draped a warm woollen coat around the man, and offered him hot soup and a home-made sandwich. The stranger smiled, and they continued on to the restaurant.

As they were about to order, Jake suddenly blurted out, “Simone, will you marry me?” Simone was totally overwhelmed and perplexed with Jake’s spontaneous proposal.

“Why now?” she asked. Jake replied, “When I saw you stop to give that homeless man a coat and a warm meal, all I could think was: ‘How could I not spend the rest of my life with someone this kind?’”

Needless to say, Simone said yes, and today they are happily married with three beautiful children.

More than anything else, it is not the huge investments of time and money that truly chart the path our lives will take, it’s those tiny gestures of compassion and empathy that will make the hugest impact.

Especially when it comes to relationships with our loved ones.

According to Howard Markman, a professor of psychology, “Most couples in trouble think that for things to improve, extraordinary changes, if not miracles, have to take place. But the breakthrough comes when we realise that by making even small changes in ourselves, we can effect big, positive changes.” It means paying attention to the smallest details, listening more attentively, and treating those we care about with just a tad more empathy and love.

It’s the tiny gestures of compassion and empathy that make the hugest impact

3. It’s a byte size world

The digital age has condensed planet Earth into a cosy community of seven billion citizens, give or take a few million, and it’s shrinking by the nanosecond. We’re LinkedIn, YouTubed, Facebooked, Tweeted, Instagramed and Googled at all hours of the day and night. Most of us think this is a good thing. But is it?

Living in a byte-sized world also means we are a click away from being totally visible and vulnerable to virtually everyone from Bombay to Bermuda. That’s great if you’re launching your new “how to build a house in three days” app, but not so great if you do something rude, illegal, or just down-right thoughtless.

A few years back, a young woman from South Korea, who will forever be known throughout the world now as “Dog Poop Girl,” took her pet with her on a South Korean subway train. When the woman’s dog decided to relieve himself on the floor of the train, the passengers urged her to clean up after her pooch. The woman haughtily refused, made a rude remark, and happily left the smelly mess behind. But what she also left behind were over two dozen irate riders with myriad cell phone cameras that recorded the unfortunate event. Within minutes, the pictures were posted, and within a short time, the whole world saw the owner and her hound’s heinous gift on Facebook and YouTube.

This woman’s small selfish act will haunt her forever. Yes, she may one day cure cancer, but the first thing that will come up when you Google her name will be the moniker, “Dog Poop Girl.” For pages and pages and pages.

Moral here? Next time you are about to do something thoughtless or mean spirited, think how it will look on the International CNN report that night. Yes, the world is now that small!

Living in a byte-sized world means we are a click away from being totally visible and vulnerable to virtually anyone

4. Everyone matters

In the frenetically paced world of today, we often interact with several people a day, sometimes hundreds a week, and there is a tendency to believe that only a select few of those people are important to us. We tend to ignore or disregard those at the bottom of the corporate rung, or the lower socio-economic strata, because we assume their opinions will not amount to much.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Several years back, a major restaurant chain was losing a ton of money because its crystal glassware was breaking with alarming frequency. Regional bigwigs and district managers met at one of the restaurants to discuss the problem. Should the glassware be replaced even though it would be a huge expense? Would it keep happening, no matter which brand they switched to?

Suddenly, a busboy, overhearing the discussion, pulled one of the executives aside and took him to the kitchen. There, he demonstrated how the commercial dishwashers the restaurant had installed would vibrate. Repeated exposure to those vibrations, he suggested, might have weakened and ultimately shattered the crystal. The dishwashers were replaced, the breakage stopped, and the restaurant chain saved a fortune. The busboy was given a $150,000 tip. Not bad for a day’s work!

Never judge someone by their pedigree, their diploma, or their job description. Because, that someone—just maybe—could change the course of your company, your future, and your life.

5. Make small talk

We are so pressed for time that we routinely dismiss casual conversation as idle chitchat, a waste of energy. Why bother with polite pleasantries when you have a 45-page PowerPoint presentation to get through? It’s not like a life-or-death decision is being made when you forego a few minutes of small talk.

Well, we would argue, sometimes small talk can be a lifesaver, figuratively and literally.

Annamarie Ausnes loved meeting people and getting to know more about their lives. Every morning she would see her favourite barista, Sandie Anderson, at her local Starbucks and would ask her how her day was going while waiting for her favourite short-drip double-cup of coffee to be brewed. One morning, however, Sandie could tell that Annamarie just wasn’t herself. She seemed extremely tired and depressed.

“Are you feeling okay?” Sandie asked her. Annamarie was reluctant to speak the truth, but because they had exchanged pleasantries for so many months, she blurted out the tragic news. “I was just placed on the national kidney transplant list, and I’m getting ready to go on dialysis.” Her kidneys were failing and, tragically, none of her relatives were a blood match, so it would be years before she might receive a kidney from the organ bank.

Looking across from the counter, Sandie blurted out, “I’m going to get tested for you!” Annamarie was astounded, but Sandie felt that although they did not even know each other’s names, their casual conversations over the years had created a bond between them.

As luck would have it, Sandie was a perfect blood match, and soon after, she successfully donated one of her kidneys to Annamarie, very well saving her life. Needless to say, they are now the best of friends, inexorably tied to each others lives.

Look at it this way: every person you meet is a door that, once opened, can potentially enrich your life in ways you never imagined. And all it takes are a few kind words to turn the knob.

sometimes small talk can be a lifesaver, figuratively and literally

6. Go the extra inch

It’s not the grandest gestures that lead to change, because those opportunities are not often available to us, and involve great sacrifice, time and money.

It’s the smallest steps you take that have the power to catapult your career, your business and your life’s trajectory.

Take the case of celebrated restaurateur Danny Meyer, the owner of several high end restaurants throughout New York, whose little meaningful gestures have made him renowned in his field. But ask Danny and he will readily agree that his success is not attributable to any single brilliant business decision. Rather, he credits his success to the myriad small decisions that make every customer’s experience enjoyable, positive and memorable.

Danny personally hand writes at least two notes a day to people dining in his award-winning establishments, whether it’s to wish them happy birthday or congratulate them on a recent promotion that he has read about.

When booking a reservation, he has his staff ask if there is a special reason for the lunch or dinner. If, for example, a couple will be celebrating their anniversary, he has a special menu printed for them, so when they open it up there is a heartfelt note from him and the staff. And that couple, like all the others his warmth and personal attention have impacted, will now be customers for life.

Remember, climbing Mt. Everest can only be accomplished with a series of steps, each one taking you further up the mountain.

So what small steps can you take to improve your business?

It’s the smallest steps you take that have the power to catapult your career, your business and your life’s trajectory

7. Solve small problems

Hungarian mathematician George Polya believed that the biggest problem we face is that we are trying to solve problems that are too big to solve! He believed that every huge challenge needed to be unbundled into a series of smaller, more doable problems. Just by tackling those, one at a time, the larger questions could eventually be answered. In essence, there was no bridge that could not be crossed, as you shall soon see.

In the late 1800s, Niagara Falls, which separated the United States from Canada, was a natural wonder that both countries were eager to market as a vacation destination. But, lacking a bridge over the falls, one that would give sightseers a magnificent view as well as connect the two countries, made it an undesirable tourist attraction. They knew they had to build a suspension bridge but there was no way for a boat to get a cable wire across the falls in order to begin construction. The engineers were stymied; without a cable to connect the US and Canadian sides, building the bridge was an impossibility.

Ultimately, the winning solution came not from a member of the experienced team of engineers, but a local man. He suggested they have a kite flying contest! Needless to say, the engineers thought he was crazy. Until the man suggested that whoever was able to fly their kite across the river first would have successfully landed a string across the falls. And that string, once secured on the other side, could be attached to thicker and stronger lines, which eventually could become a steel cable.

Several months later, the bridge opened to the public, and today Niagara Falls has become one of the premiere destinations for travellers everywhere. All because someone was suggested that a kite be flown!

Break every roadblock down to bite-sized bits and you’ll see how much easier it is to tackle even the biggest problems that come your way.

The biggest problem we face is that we are trying to solve problems that are too big to solve!

8. Little mistakes spell disaster

Years ago I had a college boyfriend who graduated at the top of his class, excelling in every pre-med course he took. His dream was to become a physician, and his professors assured him he would make every top tier medical school in the world.

To his amazement, he was turned down from every school. As he was about to apply to one last med school, I asked him if he would show me his application. His grades were stellar, but, while reading the personal essay he had written, I realised he had spelled the word “medicine” incorrectly. He had spelled it “medecine” repeatedly throughout his essay. Fortunately, I pointed out the error before he sent out his last application. Needless to say, he was accepted to the med school and went on to become a successful doctor. [Good thing he had not attempted to become an English teacher!]

We are doomed by the smallest mistakes we make. Sending an email to a client and spelling his name incorrectly. Cc’ing someone on a note that you absolutely never intended for them. Not taking the time to proof read even the smallest FB post, or not double-checking your presentation slides, shows a lack of respect for the other person. Think about the last time you received a correspondence that was obviously never spellchecked. That person definitely will go down a rung or two in your book.

We are doomed by the smallest mistakes we make

9. Celebrate small victories

Smaller, more attainable goals will allow you to experience more frequent mini-rewards. And those myriad rewards send a feel good sensation to your brain, a sensation that makes you feel happier and more empowered to work harder on the task ahead. Marathon runner Paula Radcliffe believes that this “thinking small” mantra has been key to her success.

When Paula wakes up at the crack of dawn to train each day, she never thinks, “I have to run 10 miles this morning.” Fixating on the long run ahead would only make her want to hit the snooze button and fall back to sleep. Instead, she concentrates on counting her footfalls. “When I count to a hundred three times, it’s a mile,” she says. “It helps me to focus on the moment and not think about how many miles I have to go.” Paula’s strategy pays off—because she sets small goals, she feels good every time she achieves those goals.

So tomorrow, instead of picturing how much work you have ahead of you, try making a list, and checking off one small item at a time. Your endorphins will be flying high as they experience a whole slew of mini-accomplishments, and you’ll be surprised how much you will end up tackling by the time the day ends.

Smaller, more attainable goals will allow you to experience more frequent mini-rewards

10. Small things can change the world

Never believe, for one instant, that no single individual has the power to improve the world. In fact, world changing ideas are coming more and more from individuals rather than foundations or governments as we become increasingly connected to the plights and misfortunes of others.

While vacationing in Morocco with his wife, Don Schoendorfer watched beggars jeer as a destitute woman dragged herself across the road by her fingernails. He was outraged, but felt powerless to help her. Nonetheless, the vision of this poor crippled woman scrabbling painfully across the Moroccan road stayed with him long after he returned to his comfortable home in California.

A mechanical engineer by profession, Schoendorfer, spent the next several months scouring discount stores and tinkering through the night in his garage, and finally was able to build a low cost, durable wheelchair that people in developing countries could afford to use.

Today, Schoendorfer’s non-profit group, Free Wheelchair Mission, has delivered more than 75,000 chairs to people in over 33 countries, but he’s not stopping until he has built over 20 million chairs.

The truth is, each of us, no matter if we are eight or 80, has the potential to make this world a bit better than the way we found it.

Never believe, for one instant, that no single individual has the power to improve the world

The first small step

As the co-founder of one of America’s fastest growing agencies, which we grew from a small fledging startup to one with over three billion in billings, I can tell you first hand that using the power of small is what made our agency as big as it is today. We built our business day by day, brick by brick, idea by idea. And once we realised the power of thinking small, it became the vital element of our professional and personal lives, nurturing both our careers and our relationships. Focussing on the tiniest details of the work we love, finding magic in even the smallest inspirations, embracing the briefest moments—that’s where the passion is.

And what about you? Why not embrace the power of small in your life? There’s a world that needs fixing, a career waiting to soar, a life ready to be transformed into the extraordinary.

So the next time you are searching for the “next big thing” or trying to see “the bigger picture”, remember it’s the little things that, ultimately, make all the difference.

Take that first small step.

And keep on walking.

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