That hurts. I thought some of them were actually pretty good, and cannot really tell what was so poor quality about mine.

Here’s the winning submission and my submission side by side. I won’t tell you which one is which, but I’d like you to guess in the comments. There may be some really awful qualities about what I’m submitting that I am just not able to see myself!

Design A

Design B

There are some obvious newbie moves on my part, but that’s because I’m a newbie. To be honest, these are $100 – $200 prize contests I’m competing in and there are some quality designers out there that I’m up against!

I’m considering two options at this point: Contacting the mods and asking for more specifics on what was poor about my design OR cramming 10 tutorials in this week and just applying new knowledge to my design work. Or both.

Either way, I think my strategy will be to run through multiple tutorials each evening this week while submitting and applying new knowledge to design contests. I’ve got 14 days left and I really only need to win a few contests to meet my goal.

Alternatively, if I make some cool new designs I can always add them to a portfolio at Elance or Odesk. Although these sites are a race to the bottom, and I’ll probably only make $50 per design, the point here is to start getting paid. So $50 sucks cause I spend 2+ hours on a design.. but I can soon master more techniques and get paid more.

“..sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.” ― Hunter S. Thompson

Harsh reality:

We’re all wasting our potential. At least to some extent.

It’s likely that we’re all not living like the Good Doctor, Mr Thompson. Not many of us can (a rough and rugged life filled with intense drug and booze binges sounds awfully tiring), and that’s okay.

GET IN.

Somewhere along the line our potential got snipped off just a bit. 5 or 10% maybe. Not much, but a bit of potential remains hidden behind our egos. Honestly, I’m scared to let it all out. I’m terrified of what type of wild ride my whole self has in store if I let that rowdy pony out of its stable.

I’m wasting some potential and I’m okay with it. That 10% that gets left behind, bottled up and full of fury, it builds a lump in the back of my throat (even as I write this) and shouts at me,

So I respond, ‘Oh I’ll take the ride.’ and push myself a little further. Stretch myself a little thinner. Force my consciousness to expand just a little beyond its comfort zone. I’ve increased my potential by doing so, if only by a few points, but potential is not static. There is still that 10% reserved, shouting, calling me out. Begging me to let it loose.

That potential 10% will always be there – very few of us will let it run free – but does that matter? It still exists. It’s still fighting to get out. It’s still pushing me to do more. That 10% still creates a fire that burns furiously within.

So how do you ignite yours? How do you set that 10% on fire so you’re motivated by it and encouraged to push your own limits?

Here’s a story with an answer:

January of 2011 I went to Turks and Caicos (traveling is a big part of this life I never want to leave) with my family and Future Wife. While there, my little sisters wanted to ride horses along the beach. I got the horse with a bad temper. My horse hated being behind another horse and I had to constantly steer it toward the water to keep it from blasting down the beach at full speed.

Why didn’t I let that beast run like it was just shot out of a cannon? The clear answer is that I was scared. I didn’t know what would happen or if I’d ever be able to bring the raging stallion back under my control. In spite of this, I look back on this moment and wish that I had just let that beautiful monster stretch its legs.

My 10% held me back – but it also reminds me to push myself harder. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter that we are wasting a small amount of potential (as long as it’s a small amount) or being slightly restricted due to fear. If we look back on those moments with a shred of regret, we will be constantly reminded to push ourselves forward.

If you can recall a time when fear got the best of you, you can use that to as fuel to propel yourself forward. It’s okay to remember the ‘what if’ moments because you can use them to enable huge steps.

Push yourself. There’s more.

What mental motivators do you use to push yourself beyond your comfort zone?

Hunter S Thompson stamp was drawn by Richie Brown and licensed under the Creative Commons Commercial Use License. See more of Richie’s artwork here.

Doesn’t that sound weird? For the past 4 days I’ve been in sunny Las Vegas, NV where we’ve spent most of our time eating great food, seeing awesome sights (we went for a trip up to Red Rock Canyon – awesome!), we’ve had a blast gambling, we’ve seen Penn & Teller, and I have had a metric shit-ton of fun.

But I can’t wait to get back to my life.

 I think it was Seth Godin who said, ‘Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.’

A really strange paradox is presented here, because I travel a lot. Future Wife and I are gone 50% of the weekends in a year. It seems that I’ve designed a life of perpetual escape and because of this I never really need to escape it (because I am always escaping?) But this is most likely a topic best suited for another article.

What I’d like to talk about is the very first step I made to building this life.

I can remember a time when all I wanted to do was talk about what I will be doing. Not what I AM doing, but what I will be doing in the future. That life was a constant stream of things I said I will do, but never actually did. My dreams were firmly set one month, 6 months, or a year in front of me and never got any closer. Every idea I had was talked about until it was beaten to death.

I remember these days and, honestly, I did have some fun during this time of my life. But the moments where I had the most fun were very simple, often times it was just eating lunch with a friend. The moments that I have the worst memories of are the times I would spend dreaming and discarding dreams. Talking about ideas and never executing them.

The fun in that past life came from simple actions and all the pain came from lofty dreaming and never working towards those dreams. (The second part is important here. Action always trumps inaction, but without some dreaming you won’t have anything to act on.)

The turning point in my life showed up for me when I left my sales job. I had no income and I had to very quickly decide what I wanted to do. This was the start of my IT carrier. I remember, for the first time in my life, I had dreamt a lofty dream and did something with it that I had never done before.

I began to execute it.

I took small, simple, steps each day towards building a dream. At the time, the dream was to be a big shot IT security consultant. As of today, this has changed a humorous amount, but the principle is still the same.

6 years later, I am still doing the same thing. I dream A LOT. I am constantly dreaming. But the difference now is that I begin to take small steps towards making these dreams a reality. I take action.

The difference now is that I always talk about what I am doing or what I have done. Rarely do I talk about what I will do, and even if I do there is a good chance that I will actually do it.

I dream a lot, I work a lot to achieve those dreams, and a lot of those dreams die off and fail. That’s okay. I’ve got more dreams.

I’m a dream machine, baby.

Technically, this is a (sweet) drawing of the dream machine from Inception. But this is totes what my brain looks like on the inside!

This has been a critical element in constructing a life that I am eager to return to, even after experiencing the decadence and fanfare of Las Vegas. Dreams are fuel for your actions, but you’ve got to burn that fuel to get yourself moving forward. Some dreams will be tossed aside after you’ve put a lot of work into them, and sometimes you won’t have enough time to even begin working on another. That’s all part of the process.

The most important part is to take action. Start small. Break down the steps to your dreams into tiny, tiny parts and complete the very first one. I’ll admit that the first time is the most difficult. It’s very hard to see the small steps leading up to the big dream. Keep practicing even if the first few times you stumble and fall. We all fell when we were learning to walk. We all learned to walk well because we got back up.

Break your dreams down into specific goals and set a timeline to accomplish them by. Break the timelines down smaller and smaller until you get tasks to complete each day. I set up aggressive goals because I’m a Focus junkie. I love the feeling of having a goal to focus on and work towards. Since I’m a Focus junkie, I don’t have any problems sticking to goals (even if I do fail hard). Find out what makes you stick to your goals.

Work your ass off. Even if you fail, you will have failed in the most spectacular way possible. No one will ever fault you for that (and if they do, they’re probably just jealous that you’re kicking more ass than they are =) If your outcome is failure or if it is success, take a moment to learn what you can from your experience, and get right on dreaming again.

Can I help? What big dream are you waiting to take action on because you’re having trouble finding the first step?

The sweet dream machine drawing came from Gaynoir who has been wonderful in letting others freely use this work!

Vegas photo courtesy of the fine Geoffrey Gilson – Licensed under Creative Commons – Check out more sweet photos here!

(If you don’t do this, that’s awesome, but a lot of us still do – including me! If you’re totally unaffected by the desire for material things, then I’ve got nothing to offer you in this article. I’ll be up front, because I don’t want to waste your time. That’s just plain rude! =) But I am betting that even the best of us still get a little tingle when we see a new TV or a fancy watch..)

It’s tough to avoid this. We’re bombarded with ‘BUY THIS NOW’ advertisements. That bad ass suit you saw on the dude in the airport, those awesome shoes that girl was wearing at that restaurant last night, the fancy sunglasses on display in the mall – it’s become (dare I say!) a natural part of us to lust after these material things.

We think that these things are the definition of success. We assign this value in our minds as a hard and fast rule and then we work our asses off so we can go buy a new pair of RayBans. And ya know what? They’re the best thing that’s happened to you for about 2 days. You get compliments and it feels great. Then that fanfare fades faster than Brett Favre’s first fifteen retirement attempts.

We become fueled by our desire to acquire a lot of ‘things’. Since this path to happiness is sort of like substituting your cocaine fix for meth, we have to constantly keep ourselves high by buying more and more useless shit.

This will not last forever. At some point we will become burnt out of the endless cycle of buying stuff to feel happy and only

Get me off this thing! I've been here for-fucking-ever and I don't even LIKE zebras.

working to be able to buy more stuff. Our lives become a monotonous carousel – the same view, the same music, the same people in front of you and behind you. It becomes fucking maddening.

Or at least it should!

It’s easy for us to slip into this means for motivation. We think, ‘If I create a business/get a job that makes a lot of money then I can buy these things’ and so we set out looking for a way to make a lot of money. We may even find a good business idea/job. (And shit, we might even move forward with that business idea and open up the business. If we’re really ambitious about getting paid and buying things the business might even start making money.)

But then, at the end of the day, what have we done? We’ve build a life around hollow rewards that are ultimately meaningless to us. We still feel unfulfilled, we still long for more sunglasses and shoes, but the only thing that’s changed is that now we are the people in the Porsche that receive those longing stares. We are the people spending a hundred hours each week working for a paycheck so we can afford all of the useless shit we’ve acquired. We’re not any happier; we’ve just magnified the way that we waste money.

If I’m bringing up some unsavory feelings and thoughts, it’s okay. I still look longingly at nice cars, nice clothes, and big houses – the difference now is I’m looking at them from my 6 year old, $3,000 Mazda (before I bought this car, I bought a brand new car every year – chasing the idea that it would make me happy) I look at them from my 50% off jeans and Target t-shirt and think, ‘Huh. Homeboy in the Porsche sure is spending a lot of money to wait in the same traffic as I am.’

Wow. I am so happy to be spending $600 a month to sit in traffic like this. With a less expensive car, this would be torture!

We allow ourselves to slip silently into this state of being because that’s how nearly everyone around us behaves. It’s not easy to get a grip on your real passions and live a life full of things that really do make us happy. It’s difficult to live our own dream instead of the dream someone else thinks we should live. The picture is very, very blurry at first and to be honest, it never really gets that clear.

Chances are your dreams are not full of 14 hour work days, conference calls, and red-eye flights from coast to coast. I can’t tell you specifically what your dreams are but I can tell you that mine look like full control over my life, the freedom to travel anywhere on the globe to visit friends or family, the ability to work when inspiration hits me (not when I’m fearing the deadline), and the chance to pass on knowledge to others.

My dreams are built on motivating people into action, inspiring others to create a beautiful existence, making people fucking laugh and let them make me laugh. My dreams allow Future Wife and me to spend time with our families, help people in need, give generously to those who need it, and create the largest positive impact we possibly can.

What do your dreams include? Dig deep! If you don’t get a least a bit teary eyed writing about them then dig deeper! Write them down even if you don’t post them here. Say them out loud. Verbalizing your dreams is so powerful. I’d love to hear about them. Please share!

Photo of TV and remote is courtesy of FlashPro

Dream Destroyer Robot was borrowed (under the Creative Commons License) from the Flickr account of Chiarashine

You will fail and you should not be fearful of this. I have known too many people in my life who have never tried, never even attempted to execute an idea, all because they are terrified that they might fail. This mindset is not only limiting (you are guaranteed failure if you never try) but if you enter in to a project with this negative mindset you are much more likely to fail.

‘Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm’ – Winston Churchill

I’ve had lots of failures and I am so thankful for each one. Without them I would not be here today.

In 2005 I tried to start a company. I had no idea what I was doing, but I figured I would have a go at it. It can’t be that hard.. right? I bought a large inventory (about $10k worth of stuff) made the worlds worst website, had nearly no marketing strategy and was actually afraid to talk to possible customers.

If you look really hard, you can see small pieces of my pride somewhere in there..

Wanna talk about failure? That stunt surpassed failure and went straight to absolute devastation.

I tried trading FOREX a few years ago. I was making a lot of money for about 6 months. I was stoked. It was the easiest money I’d ever made. But I wasn’t paying attention to the laws – the CFTC changed the rules and my broker (who was in the UK) needed to transfer all of my funds to a US account and reduce my leverage by about 4 times. For those who may not be familiar, what this basically means is that all of my open trades, which totaled $x, would now total 4 times that amount. (If I had $1,000 in outstanding trades, suddenly I’d have $4,000 in outstanding trades, and I needed the balance in my account to cover it)

The change occurred, and I took a huge, huge hit. All of the money I made in 6 months was wiped back down to $0.

Colossal failure.

I had the thought of starting a blog about a year ago with 2 of my friends. I had no idea how to use WordPress, never mind customize it to make a website look decent. We had no direction, no ambition, and the fly-by-night project quickly dissolved into the air from which it was drawn.

Do you hear the failboat at the dock? *Ouuuun Ouuuuunnnn* 

Alll aboooarrd!

Once I even got hosed by one of those ‘Buy this totally automated online system and start generating huge amounts of cash in 24 hours!’ Ugh. Those jerks!

As awful as each failure was they all taught me something that I found useful later on. Most of the knowledge that I have today comes from failures.

If you are afraid to fail, or you are very disappointed when you do fail, you will not be open to the very important lessons that failure offers. This is not to say that you should try to fail – I do not recommend this – you should always be aiming for success. But if failure happens (and failure will happen) you should be ready to embrace that failure for all it’s worth and soak up every lesson that failure has to teach you.

You are not truly defeated until you give up on yourself. No failure is final unless you allow it to be final. You are in control of this, even after you have failed (which may have been outside of your control) and that is the most important realization you can make regarding your progress.

Progress is actually success in its final form. Success is relative – you may appear successful to others, but from your own perspective you may see more opportunities for progress ahead of you. Success is a goal that you decide for yourself and not a measurement set forth by others. No one else can define success for you, however they may see you as successful. What is important, though, is to continue to progress.

And success and progress will never happen if you are afraid to try, afraid to fail, or so discouraged by your failures that you do not learn from them.

What seriously important lessons have you learned from a failure?

Mushroom cloud nuclear testing photo from EpicFireworks – used under Creative Commons – Check out Epic’s work!