It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want To Be

Paul Arden made a huge splash in advertising in the UK, working for Saatchi & Saatchi for 15 years – during which he became the Executive Creative Director. His book ‘It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be’ (published by Phaidon) helps to bring forth the unknown and untapped talents, dreams, thoughts and energy from within.

As the back cover says, the answers seem obvious once you see them written on paper: yes, you may already know these things, but don’t you (like most other people) need to be reminded?

Nearly all of the most rich and/or powerful people have only one quality that others don’t.

They don’t have more talent, better education or better looks.

They have the desire to be rich and/or powerful.

Arden says that your dreams and plans of who you want to be or where (etc.) is the ‘greatest asset’ that you have. One quote in particular that I just love is ‘Without having a goal it’s difficult to score.’

You need to know what it is you really want. What do you want? What specifically? If you don’t know what you want, you won’t be able to get it – figure out what you want and go get it!

Something that both Arden and Timothy Ferriss discuss is the professional/corporate hierarchy and expectations of work quality. Arden points out that there is actually not much of a demand for excellence, but there is a huge demand for mediocrity. Ferriss put an interesting spin on this by pointing out that because of this, setting mediocre goals means that your goals tend to be where the masses have their goals too – meaning high competition for completing these goals. So by Thinking Big, setting extreme goals that very few do, competition to get these goals is actually much less – so it should be easier to achieve them!

Back to Arden and another great quote:

“All of us want to be good at our jobs, but how good do we really want to be?

Quite Good.

Good.

Very Good.

The best in our field.

Or the best in the world?

Talent helps, but it won’t take you as far as ambition.”

Another good point…

We are all looking for the easier way to do something, the solution that automatically puts us at the top of our game (I’d certainly like that!), but lets face it – the only way you’re able to be good at something is to do it, make a mess of it, and do it again – but with more experience this time.

Til next time,

Aim high. Don’t hold back.

“You will become whoever you want to be.” ~ Paul Arden 1940-2008