Skip to main content

WHEN YOU’RE A CLEANER . . . . . . You don’t recognize failure; you know there’s more than one way to get what you want.

A Cooler accepts what he can’t do and gives up.
A Closer recognizes what he can’t do but keeps working at it.
A Cleaner knows what he can do and stays with it until he decides to do something else.

Cleaner Law: if your name is on the door, you’d better control what goes on behind that door.

Failure is what happens when you decide you failed. Until then, you’re still always looking for ways to get to where you want to be.

It’s Derek Jeter responding to a reporter who asked if the Yankees were panicking during a late-season slump, and how Jeter was dealing with it: “I don’t panic so I don’t have to deal with it.” Total Cleaner. Or Dallas Cowboys tight end Jason Witten, offering to sign a medical waiver so he could return to action with a lacerated spleen, against doctors’ orders. It’s Dwyane refusing to go down with that bad knee in the playoffs, or Kobe refusing to sit out with multiple injuries— including the concussion—that would have staggered anyone else. That’s how you decide to not fail. You go, and you go, always looking for the unexpected option that keeps the situation in your control.

Success and failure are 100 percent mental. One person’s idea of success might seem like a complete failure to someone else. You must establish your own vision of what it means to be unstoppable; you can’t let anyone else define that for you. What does your gut tell you? What do your instincts know about what you should be doing, how you’re going to succeed, and what you’re going to succeed at? How can anyone tell you what that should be?

When someone else says you’ve failed, what they really mean is “If that were me, I would feel like a failure.” Well, that guy’s not you, and he’s obviously not a Cleaner, because Cleaners don’t recognize failure.

What happened with the building was a setback. But dealing with setbacks is how you achieve success. You learn, and you adapt. When everyone else is talking about how you “failed,” you show up like a professional, remap your course, and get back to work. That’s the progression of good-great-unstoppable. No one starts at unstoppable. You fuck up, you figure it out, you trust yourself.

A Cleaner never sees failure because to him it’s never over. If something doesn’t go as planned, he instinctively looks for options to make things work a different way. He doesn’t feel embarrassed or ashamed, he doesn’t blame anyone else, and he doesn’t care what anyone else says about his situation. It’s never the end, it’s never over.

It’s never over. You have choices:
The Cooler admits defeat.
The Closer works harder.
The Cleaner strategizes for a different outcome.

You never know how bad you want it until you get that first bitter taste of not getting it, but once you taste it, you’re going to fight like hell to get that bitterness out of your mouth.

A Closer will keep going until he’s forced to stop— remember, he’s called a Closer because he’s there at the end. But once the end arrives, he knows it, he feels it. It’s over.
A Cleaner can’t ever accept that it’s over. But he does recognize when it’s time to change direction.

One of the hardest things to do is to change course once you’ve set your goals. You made a decision, you worked for it, you earned the payoff . . . but for whatever reason, it’s not going the way you planned.

It’s not weak to recognize when it’s time to shift directions.
It’s weak to refuse to consider other options and fail at everything because you couldn’t adapt to anything.

 Don’t try. Do.

 Success is about doing things that no one else can do.

You can’t be relentless unless you’re willing to take chances. Safe makes you good, chances make you great.

A Cleaner knows when to walk away, and which direction to walk. Never running, always walking; he leaves smoothly and on his own terms. He can lose a battle because he’s still planning to win the war. Lose a game, but win the season. Lose a season, come back and win the next three. Lose a job, start a new business. No one else is getting the last word on whether he succeeded.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Maximizing Your Profits with Scoring

SETTING YOUR MAXIMUM INTRADAY TRADING LOSS First things first: set a max intraday trading loss. There will be days when you just do not have it. Why do you think coaches pull their players when they are not playing well? They are more harmful on the field than off. When you are underperforming, you are hurting your team and your trading business. You need a system to yank yourself over to the bench. A stop loss is your answer. TRADING BASED UPON THE TIME OF DAY A good trader makes note of what time of day it is, when he trades most profitably, and adjusts his trading to fit such times. Your numbers at the end of the month will not reflect your true trading potential. Make the most trades with the most size during the trading periods that statistically are most profitable for you. Money saved during your weaker trading periods is money earned. Consistency The fact is that most trades you make will start working for you right away. But the new traders also hold stocks that are trading ag...
 Loss is painful, guilt can be devastating. Worse than losing one's dream is the knowledge that the loss was self-inflicted. Problems are solutions that have outlived their usefulness. Problems are pattern that were learned in emotional circumstances during one period of life and that now have taken an existence of their own. Many times, outdated solutions replay themselves in a variety of life situations, leaving people mindlessly repeating their mistakes in work, love, and trading. There can be no free will for people who are locked into patterns developed for past challenges. Successful traders are therapists both learn to do what comes unnaturally. The resolution to problems can be found in what people are doing when those problems are not occurring. The problem with many traders is not that they have problems, but that they are focused on their problems. It is this problem focus that prevents them from appreciating what they are doing right, that blinds them to solutions alrea...

So what is your money blueprint set for?

Are you programmed for managing your money well or mismanaging it? Are you a spender or a saver ? Wealth principle: The only way to permanently change the temperature in the room is to reset the thermostat. In the same way, the only way to change your level of financial success "permanently" is to reset your financial thermostat. You can become an expert in real estate or the stock market. All of these are tremendous "tools." But in the end, without an inner "tool-box" that is big enough and strong enough for you to create and hold on to large amounts of money, all the tools in the world will be useless to you. Your income can grow only to the extent that you do. Remember that the first element of all change is awareness.Watch yourself, become conscious, observe your thoughts, your fears, your beliefs, your habits, your actions, and even your inactions. Put yourself under a microscope. Study yourself. Wealth principle: Consciousness is observin...