At some point you have to question the facts and figures.

They don’t (really) add up.

Or maybe it’s not really the facts and figures themselves, maybe it’s the conclusions that we are all expected to come to looking at the same data.

• Are you really making a new resolution if  it stops motivating you after a few weeks? Isn’t that really a fantasy?
• If you know everything there is to know about a subject, how much do you really know?  Isn’t that just myopia.
• Can’t times getting tough mean that you are on the edge of breakthrough?  Isn’t that simply hard work.

What are the facts?  Think about it.

Things happen.

They happened this year.  And they’ll happen in the next twelve months.

With or without you resolving anything different before the ball drops in Times Square at midnight on New Years Eve, life will happen.

Facts will be presented.

Figured assumed to be accurate will be shown.

And what you see, and feel, and use as motivation is a matter of challenging the socially acceptable lies we like to tell ourselves.

Like:

• I can’t …
• I won’t…
• I shouldn’t…

And in a hundred different variations we create for ourselves.

All self-limiting and possibly quite “factual”.

And so.

As the days turn into months, and months into the year, your new resolution becomes more like a wimper than a roar.

The facts delute your passion.  And the lies you tell yourself become so moving you can’t tell reality from destiny.

And it’s a waste of “what could have been.”

So.

If you feel like making a new resolution for the next  twelve months, maybe it’s to challenge what you think is impossible.

To push yourself farther than you imagined.

To cry more.  To fear less.

To believe that despite the pain and fear holding you back, you really are unstoppable.

Start acting like it.

“Is that a fact….?”

You’ve probably been asked that quite a few times over your lifetime.

Professors. Parents. Your priest.

They all care about “the facts”.

Come to think of it, the facts (amusing or otherwise) are a big part of everything that we do.

Our whole lives, we have been told how to handle the facts.

All the time we hear how we shouldn’t:

• Misrepresent,
• Leave out,
• Forget,
• Color, or
• Hide the facts.

“Just give me the facts…”, we’re told.

And certainly there are a dozen rhymes and reasons why that might make sense.

Right? The facts are:

• Undebatable.
• Certifiable.
• Logical.

Who wouldn’t want to leave out all the huff-and-puff of opinion and counter-culture introspection?  Who wouldn’t want to deal in raw emotionless absolution?

Maybe someone who wants to be a high performer.

And frankly, here’s why —  the facts can be a self limiting defense mechanism.

“Facts are what we cling to to avoid needing to take sides and making hard choices…”

Facts are biased.

They are. Given the length of time that our minds are alive and the length of time that the cosmos has existed, it’s quite possible that everything we know about everything is absolutely wrong.

Think about two very specific way points over the last 700 years

• It was a fact that the world was flat. For decades, we thought the world was flat. We even put people to death who dared to imagine any other possible solution. Anything other than a logical two-dimensional mindset of cartography was preposterous.
• It was a fact that blacks and whites could not possibly be equal. Four hundred years after Columbus, we knew that black people weren’t equals with white people. They were incapable of being as intelligent, as progressive, or as intellectually capable as their less colorful counterparts.

And now we know that the facts were horribly wrong.

And it shouldn’t be a surprise.

Facts only tell half the story.

Sometimes not even that.

So…

• Be more curious.
• Care less about gossip.
• Make up your own mind.
• Be courageous.
• Fail with a smile on your face.

What you think is a disaster right now might turn into the brilliant destiny you always wanted for yourself.

And that might just be a fact…

Since when did sales come down to the fine art of improving your quarterly performance? To improving your quota by that 4% margin of victory.

Since when did we start looking back (on the worst sales year of 3 generations) to decide whether we were getting the right results.

Since when did we fool ourselves into the nonsense of arbitrary analysis.

OK. Let me lighten up a little.

As a former CEO of a fast moving technology company, I get it. I buy into the idea that you need a rolling 13 month plan of action and that you need to to measure the heck out of anything for which you can make a tick with a #2 pencil.

What you measure you can fix.

That’s partly because once you measure, you know what you need to fix.

You move past the nonsense of unabashed introspection — past the island of hopeful intentions. You get to a place where you see what really is.

It’s now fact instead of fiction.

You can stop hoping to do better and start working on being better.

And here’s where it gets fun. You get to decide what “better” even means.

You probably know what that means. Right now you have five or six things you are thinking about. And that’s key because you know your situation better than anyone else. But here are a few things you might want to look for:

1. How many times did you go the extra mile to provide creative solutions to your customers?
2. Did you increase your intensity around prospecting for new clients?
3. Do you enjoy doing what you are doing?

It’s introspection at it’s finest. None of the numbers. Just a focus on you and your ability to play at a high level.

It’s a look at the core you and pushing yourself to be the best “you” possible.

So what’s the deal with comparing yourself to a spreadsheet of hopes and dreams?

Who cares what happened in 2009 or the first six months of this year? Well…. you do. And I do. And frankly, we all do.

Just care enough to do it better these next six months.

—–

This article first appeared at the Sales Bloggers Union, where each month Dan joins the world’s top sales writers to share their perspective on a single selling idea.

Ever have a great idea and then forget it three minutes later when someone jumps into your office asking for help?

Or how about the problem of not seeing the world as a series of consecutive steps?

What if, to you, everything is kind of inter-related?I know about that.  That’s how my brain works.

It’s not about a series of steps, it’s about the relationship between these steps, your edgy ideas, and the people they involve.

It’s about mapping your mind.

And a product like MindMeister hits a homerun in making that possible.

There are dozens of tools that allow you to mind map.  Some are made specifically for PC or Mac, and others are designed specifically for mobile devices like the iPad.  I like a tool that works anywhere — and that’s where MindMeister really shines.

It’s a web app that works from your browser, your email, or from their iPhone app.

Just send an email with your Geistesblitz (some language for “brilliant edgy ideas that you are about to forget”) to MindMeister and it will automatically be added to your default map.

You start with all your mind maps in folders.

You can keep business ideas separate from personal ideas and share your maps with colleagues or clients.  It’s great for collaboration.

What’s even easier is creating a mind map in the platform.  You start with a blank canvas that continuously updates every few seconds.

You fill in the center of your idea and add ideas from there…

You can add pictures, icons, notes, and even deadlines.  And it’s mostly drag-and-drop.  Create ideas and then place them on different nodes to organize your conquest of the world.

It’s not just about your wild imagination.  You don’t just want to dream big.  You want your edgy ideas (your big dreams) to actually happen.  Right ?

Stop forgetting.

Change the world with your ideas.

MindMeister can help.

Don’t ever tell me “you do what you want to do when you want to do it”…  It’s stupid!  It’s emotional and lacks the sustainability to take you to your goal line.
The best motivation is cognitive.  It is deeply rooted in the neuro-triggers that make every decision that we even start to think about.

Burn your vision into your brain and you will find the sustainability to see your way past any obstacle that gets in your way.

How to do that:

1. Put in extra effort even when you don’t feel like it… you’ll teach yourself the art of “thinkable” discipline…
2. Stop complaining about things that are out of your control… you’ll teach yourself how focus on current reality…
3. Tell 50 people what you intend to do…  you’ll teach yourself how to be accountable…
4. Create a mindmap of how you accomplish your goal…  you’ll teach yourself how to strategize around obstacles…
5. Care deeply about your own success… you’ll teach yourself that putting in the effort is always worth it…

It’s amazing.  When you have finished training yourself (your mind really…) how to act, it all becomes a habit and you find yourself winning rather than losing, fighting rather than throwing in the towel.

You are motivated by how you have trained your mind to think, RATHER than a short term “energy drink” of emotional frantic-ism.