11 Steps to Achieving Impossible Goals

The loftiest goal I ever set in the early stages of my professional career was to become a Navy SEAL. Achieving that milestone gave me a new perspective and set the foundation for the rest of my life. Nothing seemed too far from my grasp.

The first six months of training, called Basis Underwater Demolition/SEAL, is designed to identify those not solely committed to the mission of becoming a Navy SEAL, separate them from the herd, and force them to quit. Unless you quickly identify what you personally need to be successful, you will fail. Here are 11 important tactics I learned during that journey that I use every day in the constant pursuit of personal and professional success.

1. Get the simple things right.

During training, Sunday was always depressing, because you knew the inevitable torture that Monday would bring. Monday was inspection day. To be successful as a SEAL, your attention to detail must be unwavering. So you start with the little things, like making your bed and cleaning the floors. I used to keep my bed impeccably made and sleep on top of the covers with a sleeping bag. If everything wasn't perfect, you paid for it. And sometimes when it was perfect, you paid anyway. The lesson: If you can't get the simple things right, you can't expect to successfully tackle more daunting tasks.

2. Set both realistic and unrealistic goals.

Successful people are relentless goal setters. They break down larger milestones into smaller, more achievable tasks. One of the most unrealistic goals a SEAL candidate can set is completing Hell Week. You don't sleep for a week. You run countless miles with boats, logs, and backpacks. You swim dozens of miles in the frigid ocean. You run the obstacle course daily and do more pushups and pull-ups than you can count. All while battling second-stage hypothermia, sores, and often fractures. Some students quit just minutes into Hell Week. You can't allow yourself to imagine what the end will look like. So you make--and achieve--one small goal at a time and pray for the sun to come up the next day. A series of near-term realistic goals will help you get closer to your big audacious ones.

3. Work hard.

This one seems obvious, but many people underestimate the level of effort it takes to be successful and achieve aggressive goals. It astonishes me that some of the guys showing up to SEAL training put no real time or effort into preparation. If you don't work hard preparing for potential success, you won't change that behavior when things get really tough.

4. Get others to work with you.

A SEAL training class is broken down into boat crews of seven guys each: three on either side of the boat and a coxswain in the rear steering. During the first phase of training, you take the boats out through the surf and paddle miles up and down the beach every day. I was in a winter class, where the swells can be up to 10 feet or more. It takes every man digging in and paddling hard just to get through the surf zone without getting tossed upside down. When setting goals and pursuing success, you must sometimes lead and get others to paddle with you. You can't do it all alone. The minute you realize that you don’t know everything and need help along the way, the better off you will be.

5. Don't make excuses.

Successful people don't make excuses for failure or shortcomings. They acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses and seek feedback from trusted advisers. The longer you sit around making excuses, the further you will drift from the possibility of achieving your goals.

6. Don't underestimate others.

One of the most fascinating things about SEAL training is that out of the couple hundred guys who start a training class, you could never hand pick the 30 or so who will graduate. Rarely is it the Rambo types who make it. Usually they are the first to go. Underestimating people, whether peers or competitors, is one of the worst things you can do. People who go far in life measure others by qualities such as integrity and strength of heart. Empower those around you, and you will be surprised by the outcome.

7. Be willing to fail.

When entering this phase of my life, I knew that statistically, the odds were not in my favor. I also knew that if I didn't try, I would never forgive myself. I decided that I would rather try and fail than be the guy who says, "I was thinking about trying that." You simply can't look at life through a lens of fear. If you take a calculated risk and fail, at the very least you have a valuable learning experience. Get back up. Dust off. And never, ever, be out of the fight.

8. Embrace the repercussions of your actions.

On your path to success, you will make mistakes. One of my early mistakes was slacking off on my pushups after the obstacle course during the first day of the third phase of training. An instructor was looking through the rearview mirror while sitting in the truck. He was counting to see if I did the required 50. I decided to do 30-ish. That mistake earned me a spot with the "cheaters" the following week while at the shooting range. Each day, before we started, during lunch, and between drills, the cheaters would line up and sprint to the top of a nearby mountain in full gear. If you failed to make the cutoff time, you ran it again. It was torture. But the week after, I miraculously cut my four-mile run time by three minutes. Learn from your mistakes and turn the consequences into something positive.

9. Don't back down.

My favorite passage from the Navy SEAL creed reads: "I will never quit. I persevere and thrive on adversity. My Nation expects me to be physically harder and mentally stronger than my enemies. If knocked down, I will get back up, every time. I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my teammates and to accomplish our mission. I am never out of the fight." Enough said.

10. Laugh when you want to cry.

Staying positive seems like an obvious trait for successful people, but it's easier said than done. Your character is defined by what you do when things get tough. During Hell Week, one of the fun tasks is called "steel pier." After spending some time in the cold water of San Diego Bay, you strip down to your undershorts and lie down on the freezing metal pier while the instructors spray you with hoses. Your body convulses uncontrollably as it reaches stage-two hypothermia. But the guys who found the strength to laugh (partly because of delirium) during this event were the ones standing proud at graduation. When things get rough and are out of your control, don't forget to laugh.

11. Make sacrifices.

Success comes with sacrifice. Let selfish ways fall by the wayside, and know that you can't have your cake and eat it, too. The most successful people in the world have made significant sacrifices along the way. To become a SEAL, you give up comfort, and the discomfort only increases the further you go. But you get used to it, because you know what you are doing is worth it.

The path to success is paved with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, but you can't lose heart. Stay strong, be humble, and lean on others for support when necessary.

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The Surprising Side of Mark Cuban You Never See

                      Here's what you didn't see--or read about--from his appearance at GrowCo.

Mark Cuban does an interview with Inc. President Eric Schurenberg during the GrowCo conference. 

Maybe you've heard about it. (Here's the full video.)

Maybe you heard Mark say, "I know I'm prejudiced, and I know I'm bigoted in a lot of different ways. If I see a black kid in a hoodie on my side of the street, I'll move to the other side of the street. If I see a white guy with a shaved head and tattoos (on the side he now is on), I'll move back to the other side of the street. None of us have pure thoughts; we all live in glass houses."

And maybe that comment bothers you.

That is certainly your right. While I felt he was saying we all have our flaws, our blind spots, and our preconceived notions, and recognizing we do is the first step towards change...you could dislike him for what he said. Just as Mark has a right to say what he thinks, you also have the right to decide how you feel about what he thinks.

But there's something that happened at GrowCo you didn't hear about.

Volunteers are often the backbone of huge events. A number of young entrepreneurs, many of them associated with the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, helped at GrowCo in exchange for access to some of the sessions.

The day Cuban appeared one young man spent the entire day manning the green room door. I started to feel sorry for him; here he was at this cool conference and yet he was stuck in a chair guarding a door in a lonely hallway.

At one point I stopped to chat. The volunteer knew Mark was coming in that afternoon. He was excited. He hoped to get a selfie with Mark. I didn't say so but I knew that would never happen: Cuban's time was tightly scheduled, plus local and national media were angling for time. The constant crowd of people, all wanting something from him, would make that impossible.

Mark arrived, did some taped interviews, came to the green room and chatted with Eric, talked to people with enough juice to get in the door--he could not have been nicer.

Then it was time to go on. Scratch that. It was past time to go on. People were hustling him to the door. Bodies were in motion. Urgency was in the air.

I happened to be just inside the door as they were sweeping past, noticed the volunteer sitting outside, and thought, "Oh, f-- it."

"Excuse me, Mark," I said.

A number of eyes narrowed. Didn't I know he needed to get to the stage?

He said, "Yes?"

"There's volunteer who's been stuck out there all day guarding the door. He would love a picture with you. Can I run him in here really quickly?"

I've been in situations like this enough to know it almost always goes one way: 99 percent of the time the celebrity mumbles, "Sorry," (if he or she says anything at all) and sweeps past.

Not this time. Mark stopped, smiled, gestured to David Head, and said, "Hey, let's get a picture together." And they did.

And here it is.

I've met Mark Cuban. But we only talked for 10 seconds, so I don't know Mark Cuban. But I like him.

Why? Just like you, just like me, Mark is the sum of all his parts. Yet we experience him in slices. One slice is what he said at GrowCo. You may not like that slice. Another slice is how he runs his businesses. Another is how he performs on Shark Tank. You may like or dislike those slices.

That's cool. We shouldn't like--much less admire--the same things. We shouldn't always agree with each other. We shouldn't always like each other.

But one slice that is hard not to like is a guy who, even though pressed for time and seconds away from going onstage in front of a packed auditorium, stops to do something nice for someone he doesn't know--just because he can.

That slice is really hard not to like.

I guarantee David won't forget that slice. And someday when he's a successful entrepreneur, I guarantee David will treat young entrepreneurs with the same grace and kindness.

I won't either forget that slice either, since it provides two great reminders.

One, it's easy to view people through the lens of one slice: a mistake, a misstep, a blunder... and then forever view them through the lens of that moment. Yet we're all a sum of our parts, and if we view people through the lens of that one slice we miss the rest of them.

Just as importantly, that moment is a reminder of something we can all do. Sure, we can't always provide significant help to people. We can't always write a check. And we can't always offer major chunks of time to those who ask, no matter how desperately they may need.

But we can always take a moment to be nice, to be gracious, to be kind, for no other reason than because we can.

And because the impact might make a difference that lasts a lifetime.

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The 80/20 Rule and Listening to Your Inner Procrastinator

A decade ago, my friend Bill said, "Perry I've got a million-dollar idea for you. There's just one catch: If you sell a million dollars, you have to give $10,000 to my favorite charity."

"OK Bill, you're on," I said. He insisted I was leaving tons of money on the table by only writing and publishing books. He advised me to expand into business coaching.

I decided he was right. And guess what? I had the hardest time getting myself to actually do it. When I sat down to execute the details, my inner procrastinator said, "Wait a minute, why don't you go get a haircut."

I recognized the inner procrastinator as a signal that I was precisely on the right track. I resolved to finish the project.

That move doubled my income. Bill's favorite charity, an inner city school in Philadelphia, got a check for $10,000.

I'm a passionate advocate of the 80/20 rule, which says 80 percent of your sales come from 20 percent of your customers. It applies to most other aspects of business and life as well, like how you spend your time.

I've discovered that your inner procrastinator -- if you pay close attention to him -- tells you exactly what you should be doing.

The top 20 percent activities that produce 80 percent of your results are the very same things that trigger you to procrastinate -- to delete old emails or water plants instead.

Eventually I had to cloister myself in a library with no Internet to craft the marketing for a business move that scared me deep down. Those demons inside my head knew it was a good idea, so I decided to harken unto them.

Whenever my inner procrastinator tells me to check Twitter or iron my shirts, instead of what I've planned, I know I'm on to something good. I switch it around.

It's not that we don't want to work. It's that we're afraid of doing work that will move the needle. Most of us are afraid of success.

Here are tips on how to direct your inner procrastinator to your advantage:

Flip your daily to-do list. You wake up and list the 10 things you need to do today. Odds are, one item is worth 10 times more than the rest. Our natural human tendency is to put it off until later, diverting into mundane tasks like Facebook. We invent devilishly clever reasons not to get that one thing done.

Check your gut and do it. Now. (Or at least after you finish reading this article.)

The 'procrastination demon opportunity detector' works for big-picture projects, too. If you're all-consumed with $10 per hour busy work, you have no time to stop and ask yourself, "What salvo should I launch next week that will double sales next year?"

That question makes you squirm. The more disconcerting, the better. It challenges the status quo. Whatever gives you that queasy, familiar feeling of asking for a big check -- or for dad's car keys at 11 at night -- that plan probably belongs on the top of the stack.

Make constructive use of the time you liberate. I urge entrepreneurs to hire house cleaners and personal assistants to free themselves up from mundane activities. What do you do with the extra two hours a day you free up? You could fritter it away - or go nuclear on your business strategy.

Perfectionism is the root of all evil.  Most of us soothe our anxieties and stay mediocre by perfecting things that don't need to be perfect at all. You spend 15 minutes editing that email before you press send. You clean out your car twice a week.

Most procrastination isn't doing nothing, it's doing what's comfortable and mediocre.

Put 'Do Nothing' on your to-do list. I'm a huge advocate of Sabbath -- taking Saturdays or Sundays off. Instead of wasting time on busy work such as checking email, everyone should create space where they pray or meditate -- or simply do nothing. Your best business ideas will come when you're not working. When you're having fun doing what you enjoy doing, whether it's reading novels or tossing a baseball with your kids, that feeds your creativity.

I learned this the hard way. I spent years with the pedal to the metal, working seven days a week. It got me nowhere because I was not doing what I needed to do most.

Harken unto your "procrastination demon opportunity detector." Choose the thing that makes you most anxious. Then head straight into the wind, because those anxieties are merely birth pangs of a larger success.

via entrepreneur