Keeping Up With The Joneses
“Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world…if you do so, you are insulting yourself.” –Bill Gates, Founder, and CEO of Microsoft
Do you know the Joneses? I am sure in one way or another we have all had a run in with them at one point or another. There is that one family in every neighborhood. Let me tell you about the Joneses in our neighborhood.
We were on a walk around the neighborhood one day and as we walked by the house on the corner they just happened to have their garage door open. As we walked by I happened to glance in and I had to do a double-take. In this garage, they had everything I had ever wanted. Not only did they have a nice new car parked in there but there were 4 very nice dirt bikes in there as well.
As I continued to scan around I made another realization. This family was living my dream! They not only had some nice dirt bikes for everyone in the family, they also had a nice camp trailer, and the worst of all they had the Jeep Wrangler I have been wanting for years. The nerve of them!
Walking down the sidewalk the next five minutes my mind was a whirlwind of thoughts on what I needed to do to get what the “Joneses” had. I am sure I even asked my wife how much cash I could get for my kidney at that point. While we all may not have had the same experience with the dirtbikes, the RV, and the jeep I am sure you can think back when you have met this figurative family of the Joneses.
The things we see in others might not be material things. They may be things they are able to do or how well-behaved their children are. Maybe it is the values or the character they have as a family.
One of the biggest forms of competition we have as families might be opposite of what we might think. So many times in our lives we do things to try and keep up the Jones’ down the street. In today’s Facebook world where people are allowed to “market” who they are by the things, they post so we get glimpses into their lives of all the great things they choose to post.
Great organizations know who the competition is in their market. While so many times we think of competition is how we are doing vs someone else, or in the case of our family, the Jones’s. The family down the street or any other family is not the competition. As Bill Gates states, if, and when we do this we are just insulting ourselves. The only thing we need to compare our family too is who we were yesterday, last week, or last month.
Take the steps to get better each day and don’t get lost up in where others are at in their progress.
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Define where you want to go – The only competition we have as a family is the family we were yesterday. This life is about progression and progression comes one step at a time. The best way to see your progress is to define your goal. What do you want your family to become? As you define where you are going you are able to see the steps you take towards that goal each day.
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Define where you are now – Take a few minutes to sit down with your family or maybe the leaders of your family and define where you are now. This is not a gripe session. This is just a time to confront the brutal facts as Jim Collins says great organizations do in his book Good to Great. What are some of the things your family does well? How will you use those strengths to get you closer to the goal of your family? What is one or two things that are holding your family back and what steps can you put in place to change this? This is the real competition in your household. You want to progress further than the family you are now.
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Track Progress – Just like a good road trip you want to put in pitstops along the way to your destination or goal you have for your family. Figure out some things you want to track to see if you are making progress. Make sure each member of the family knows what the goal is and how you are going to track it. Talk about the progress and get the family excited about what you are trying to become. People want to be part of something more than themselves. When we realize that something bigger than ourselves is our family, we feel driven to be a part of the progress.
This life is not a race where we are racing the person or the family in the next lane. Real progress comes when you are not looking next to you but you are looking up to what you can become. You are looking up at the clock to see if you can beat the family you were before. Quit wasting your time in looking side to side and choose to look up to greatness.
As we take the steps to take on the real competition we stop looking more at how green the grass is in our neighbor’s yard and start to see our grass as not what it is but what it can become with just a little diligence. I promise you as you look within your own family you will have far more important things than the Joneses down the street.
One of the best ways to get started on facing the competition in your family is through our one-page family business plan. It will walk you through the steps to define where you are going and what the competition is in your family. Click on the subscribe button on right side of the page and as you subscribe to get great updates from FamilyLead right to your email but you will also get our One Page Plan absolutely free to get you started on planning on how you will take on the competition to your family.
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