BUILDING YOUR GUARDRAILS

The guardrails you create must be closely aligned with the values you set in Chapter 3. You need to have people in your life who will tell you when you are out of bounds. I have a good friend who was a successful and well-known college basketball coach until he got embroiled in some politics and lost his job. We were talking, not long after that, and he shared what I consider to be a very profound insight. He said, “Rich, when I was winning championships, everyone laughed at my jokes. Now they only laugh when my jokes are actually funny.” You need someone in your inner circle who knows you and whom you trust to tell you if your jokes are funny or not.

Alex Mendozian is a teleseminar trainer. We had discussed the possibility of working on a project together. Before we began, he called me and said, “Rich, I have some good news and some bad news. I’d really like to work with you. That is the good news. The bad news is, before I do, I need to have an intervention in your life.” I pushed back, thinking, “What is he talking about? I don’t have a drinking or a drug problem!” He continued, “Yes, you need an intervention!” He then got my wife and his executive assistant on the phone and explained he was having this intervention because I had to quit saying “Yes” to everyone and everything. Warren Buffett once said, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything” (Maddock, G. Michael & Viton, Raphael Louis, “The Stop-Doing List,” Bloomberg Businessweek, December 7, 2010).