I'm really thrilled to bring you a guest post by Dan Andrews. He runs a product development company in San Diego, runs the Tropical MBA blog, and the Lifestyle Business Podcast. Some really good insights on there, and he's a really solid guy too. Here's Dan -

Try Losing Some Moral Battles and Winning Some Real Ones

When you are bemoaning the success or victory of others, you are generally seeking to achieve a sort of victory yourself. Let's call this a moral victory. Moral victories are addicting. You can achieve them at will. They magically appear whenever you need a boost.

Moral victories do one thing: they make losers feel like they’ve gotten some victory.

Moral victories are popular with people when they feel like they have no real power to make changes in the world. This makes some sense to me-- building power, wealth, and influence is generally difficult.

I think it's a good strategy to put off moral victories and operate as somebody who has the potential to make a real impact. If you act like someone with real power, you are more likely to achieve it. Try the following strategies.

● You decide to stop complaining completely (as best you can) Read Tim Ferriss’ “Real Mind Control: 21 Day No Complaint Experiment.”

● When you feel jealousy you instead stop and focus on appreciating the principles that led to some sort of success in the world, even if those principles were carried out in a way, or by a person you find intolerable.

● You cultivate a small identity and inspire critical feedback about your person and projects. Read Paul Graham’s article on “Keep Your Identity Small.”

The more success I achieve, and the better I get at building the things I'd like to see in the world, the less I bemoan the success of others. I give less and less a shit about what other people, governments, and organizations who are irrelevant to my projects have to say or do.

This is a big change for me. My development years were spent trying to intelligently criticize those things going on in my sphere of thinking.

I don’t mind intelligent criticism at all, I probably love it too much.

That’s why I remind myself that my beloved criticism loves to masquerade in victory’s attire.

Succinct and strong point, eh? It's worth going to check out the Tropical MBA blog and Lifestyle Business Podcast.