One of the biggest reasons many of us struggle to adopt the methods and mindsets that give us the best chances for success is that we get distracted by all the wonderful opportunities that come our way. In fact, I often think the only thing harder than trying to have everything is trying to do everything — even when everything seems so good.

Discipline, I’ve discovered, isn’t just about rejecting time-wasting activities in favor of the things that matter. More often, and more challenging, it’s the good things that distract us from pursuing the better things. So effective discipline sets our agendas, allowing us to reduce or eliminate some things from our schedules. By saying “no” even to things we enjoy or that provide some benefit, we can say “yes” to things that provide a greater return on our investments.

For instance, consider Frank Bures. In 2010, Frank decided to stay “offline” for one full workday each week. No Internet, thus no surfing of his favorite sites for work or for pleasure; no email; no YouTube, no Twitter, no LinkedIn, and no Facebook.

The first day of his tech-fast was surreal. “It was like finding myself on the moon, staring back at earth,” he wrote in an April 2011 article for The Rotarian magazine. By the end of the day, however, “I felt something that I hadn’t in a long time: a sense of accomplishment,” he wrote. “And when I finally logged on to see what I had missed, I was surprised by the answer: not much.”

Discipline allows us to develop the things we value most; it drives all the processes that create results that set us up for success regardless of the circumstances around us. Are you maximizing the disciplines in your life?

This blog is based on content in my latest book, Up, Down, Or Sideways. It is available wherever you buy great books. Click here to learn more about the book or click here to learn about my other speaking services and learning resources.

An explosion on April 5, 2010, resulted in the deaths of 29 coal miners at a West Virginia mine, making it the deadliest U.S. coal accident since 1970. An independent report released about a year later blamed the mine’s owner (Massey Energy Co.) for operating “in a profoundly reckless manner” and state and federal regulators for failing to enforce safety laws.

Among the many lessons we might learn from the tragedy is the importance of building — correctly building — reserves that will give us the best chance of success regardless of whether times are Up, Down, or Sideways.

There are four main areas in which we all need reserves — financial, physical, psychological, and spiritual. We all need to save money for a rainy day. We all need to take care of our bodies. We all need to strengthen our minds. We all need to invest in eternity.

But here’s the thing: Our drive to build reserves can’t come at the expense of other people. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of the coal mine explosion. You see, building financial reserves isn’t just about fattening your personal or corporate savings account. It’s also about investing in things like the highest standards for safety for your employees. Or, on a personal level, it can be about investing in others by regularly giving your time, talents, and money.

Another quick example: A man walked into a nonprofit agency that, among other things, operates a food pantry for people in temporary financial distress. He was retired and living on a fixed income, and he needed help, he said, because of an unexpected increase in the costs of his medications. All that was true, but the agency denied his request. Why? Because they discovered he had a savings account worth $200,000. His unwillingness to spend his own reserves — on himself, much less on others — would have damaged the agency’s ability to help others with legitimate needs.

There are payoffs from building reserves the right way, and there are dangers in failing to build them or in building them with impure motives. Commit to building your financial, physical, psychological, and spiritual reserves in ways that prepare you for good times or bad — and in ways that contribute to the greater good of those around you.

This blog is based on content in my latest book, Up, Down, Or Sideways. It is available wherever you buy great books. Click here to learn more about the book

Knowledge provides critical leverage for dealing with the battles you face whether you are Up, Down, or Sideways. In other words, if we’re playing chess and I know four moves and you know eight, then you have the upper hand. Today, information abounds. It’s all available at the click of a mouse or the tap of an app. But it’s not enough to have access to information. We need to be able to assess whether the information is useful to us.

There’s always been a need for assessment. The difference today is that the volume of information we need to assess is measured in exabytes, or billions of gigabytes. We feel the data coming at us from every direction, so much so that we don’t always know what to do with it.  We need to know its source, the evidence that backs it up, and its relevance to us before we know whether we’ve got something we can use.

Baseball is a sport that has always been awash in data and statistics. A virtual alphabet soup of E.R.A., R.B.I., etc., has been used by generations of fans and management alike to assess the performance of players. For over a century, baseball scouts and managers used the same data when building their teams, the statistics that every fan, even kids, could recite about their favorite players: batting average, home runs, runs batted in, stolen bases, etc. Yet building a team based on this data often didn’t work out as planned.

About a decade ago, Billy Beane began to wonder if baseball was assessing its data correctly. Beane is the subject of the movie Moneyball, released this month and starring Brad Pitt, as well as the bestseller of the same name by Michael Lewis. As general manager of the Oakland Athletics, Beane revolutionized the way baseball management assesses data about players.

Beane began to focus on obscure statistics like on-base percentage and slugging percentage, and even formulated his own statistical categories. He found that they were better predictors of success than the traditional measures. Rather than assessing “who got the most hits,” Beane sought to assess “who contributes the most to his team” and found the answers to those questions differed. Just because a player gets a lot of hits doesn’t always mean his team scores a lot of runs. Beane developed ways to sift through baseball’s mountains of data to find the relevant knowledge that he needed.

Using these new measures, Beane has had remarkable success identifying prospects in baseball’s draft and his teams have made several post-season appearances. Now, many other teams have adopted Beane’s approach, most notably the Boston Red Sox who have won two titles using his methods.

Beane’s innovation was to focus on the evidence and the relevance of certain kinds of baseball data. What he saw prompted him to take a different approach from his predecessors, an approach based on careful assessment. That approach gave him a distinct advantage over his competition and a place in baseball history. To top it off, now Brad Pitt is portraying him in his cinematic life story. That’s not a bad return on the assessment investment.

This might come as a surprise to some younger readers, but there was a time when there was only one ESPN and most televised sporting events aired on one of three networks — NBC, CBS, or ABC. Now, my television package offers dozens of networks dedicated specifically to sports. ESPN has four or five sister networks. Golf has its own channels. Some college conferences like the Big Ten have their own networks.

We love competition, and not just in America. It’s one of the common elements of any society — the desire to create systems for scoring performance.

Ironically, we also live in a society that doesn’t want to be judged. The overreaction to over-competitive parents led some youth leagues to do away with scoring. And in a misguided attempt to foster self-esteem, there are those who promote the elimination of any type of grading system.

The reality, however, is that we all use scoring systems for our lives. What most of us don’t realize is that we can change our scoring system and, in doing so, change our game.

Many people get locked into a scoring system that defines them even though it doesn’t really represent who they are or what they want out of life. In Up, Down, or Sideways, I write about the importance of discovering and living by a personal scoring system that will guide you toward success whether times are good, bad, or in between.

Most people organize their life and their work around one of four scoring systems: Results, Recognition, Recreation, or Relationships. Which of those most represents your scoring system? Who influenced and influences how you score your success in life? How often do you find yourself complaining about things like the lack of money paid in your profession or the lack of time you get with your family because the hours you put in to maintain a certain income?

It might be time to change your scoring system. Maybe you need to change careers to fit the scoring system that really represents your values and dreams for your life. Or maybe you need to recognize that you’re living your dream and, therefore, you should embrace a scoring system that fits it rather than one that’s imposed on you by pop culture, your parents, or some other outside force.

Your scoring system shapes your priorities and your definition of success, so the first step toward enduring success comes from aligning that system to who you really are, what you really value, and what you really want out life.

This blog is based on content in my latest book, Up, Down, Or Sideways. It is available wherever you buy great books. Click here to learn more about the book or click here to order it from Amazon.com.

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Working with corporate America during the Down economy, I’ve noticed that many managers have stopped playing to win and started playing to limit their losses. While recessions can be frightening, negative goals rarely, if ever, lead to positive results.

Now that football season is in full swing, I am reminded of one of the most vivid examples of “playing to win” in Super Bowl history.

In Super Bowl XLIV, the New Orleans Saints faced long odds at halftime. Already the underdogs, they were down by four points at halftime. To make matters worse, the Saints were scheduled to kickoff to the favored Indianapolis Colts, giving the ball to their vaunted offense to start the second half.

At that critical juncture, New Orleans’ head coach boldly made the decision to be proactive, to play for the win. He called for an onside kick in the hopes of recovering the ball and the momentum.

As Sean Payton knew, playing to win means understanding potential problems and obstacles, avoiding unnecessary risks, and at the same time, pursing opportunities for success. What appeared to be a very risky gamble to many was actually an exercise in focused optimism and farsighted faith. He had assessed the risks and the costs and still saw an opportunity for victory.

He knew that the probability for the recovery of a surprise onside kick is actually quite high (about 60%). He also knew that the Colts were probably just as likely to score whether they received the ball in their own territory or the Saints’. He laid the groundwork for his success by getting the support of his defense – they would need to stop the Colts if his plan failed – for the call and explaining his plan to the referee, so the officials would be prepared for it.

He understood that if the plan failed, he would be blamed, perhaps ultimately for costing his team a championship. But he knew that the real risks were to his own reputation and not to his team’s chances for success. He went for it, his team recovered the ball and the momentum, and the Saints went on to win the Super Bowl.

His decision is now hailed as the boldest in Super Bowl history. However, his boldness rested on his understanding of his team’s situation and the relevant data concerning the risks. It was a calculated risk based on credible evidence. In this case, playing to win may have seemed very risky, but he knew that playing not to lose was even riskier.

Payton’s boldness began with optimism, a focus on the opportunities, rather than the obstacles, in front of him – a focus on the potential for victory rather than the possibility of defeat.

A friend read a story in the newspaper about how the long-struggling housing market was showing signs of a recovery. For my friend, however, that news brought only frustration.

“It’s not recovering,” he said, “until my house sells.”

My friend had gone through a divorce he didn’t want and ended up with a home he no longer lived in, didn’t need, and couldn’t sell. So when you asked him how he viewed the housing market, he saw it through the lens of the You Economy.

Like my friend, most of us are far more interested in our personal economy — the You Economy — than the economy at large. The economy is impersonal. Your economy is personal. As I explore in my new book, Up, Down, or Sideways, both economies impact our chances for success.

The You Economy and the world’s economy aren’t always in sync. You can be Up when the world is Down, or Down when the world is Up. And like the world’s economy, the You Economy isn’t always predictable. However, it is marked by at least three things that we all should understand:

Dumb Luck — the times when you do the wrong thing and it still works out.

Informed Misfortune — the times when you do everything correctly and things still fail.

Sustainable Success — the results you get by consistently adopting the right mindsets and practicing the methods that are important, regardless of whether times are Up, Down, or Sideways.

The lesson: Don’t grow frustrated in times of Informed Misfortune, don’t feel empowered during times of Dumb Luck, and never take for granted the things that give you the best chance at Sustainable Success.

This blog is based on content in my latest book, Up, Down, Or Sideways. It is available wherever you buy great books. Click here to learn more about the book or click here to order it from Amazon.com.

I have a great appreciation for professional baseball players, especially the ones who perform consistently over time at the highest level of competition.

Albert Pujols, for instance, hit .313 or better in each of his first 10 seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals, with at least 32 home runs and nofewer than 103 RBI. And only twice did he play fewer than 154 regular-season games. He might not play for my Rockies, but it’s hard not to admire his consistency and his dedication to excellence.

Like all batters, however, Pujols goes through occasional slumps. In fact, he got off to a horrendous start in 2011. In the 29th game of the season, Pujols went 0-for-5, and his batting average was a very un-Albert-like .252. Do you think Tony La Russa, the Cardinals manager, was concerned?

“He’ll be fine because he’s smart and tough-minded,” La Russa told reporters. “He won’t allow himself to be less than his best.”

La Russa knew Pujols had what it takes to deal with grueling nature of a 162-game season. He can’t avoid slumps, but he knows how to get through them. In other words, there are things Pujols does regardless of whether times are good, bad, or in-between — and those are the things that make him great.

My new book — Up, Down, or Sideways — explores the methods and mindsets that lead to that type of consistent success. Like Pujols, we can’t avoid life’s slumps. But there are things that help us mitigate the downturns, maximize the upturns, and create predictable and persistent success regardless of circumstances.

So much of life is outside our control. Pujols, for instance, can’t control the weather; sometimes he has to play when it’s raining or cold. He can’t control the umpires; sometimes they call a pitch a strike when he thinks it was a ball. And he can’t control whether a pitcher walks him on purpose or throws an inside curveball or a fastball right over the plate.

Likewise, we can’t control things like the economy or the moods swings of our boss or the strategic planning decisions of our customers and clients. But there are methods and mindsets we can embrace regardless of anything the out-of-our-control world throws our way.

I was inspired to tackle this book project during one of the most challenging periods in my life. The economy was in a deep recession, meaning, through no fault of my own, my business and my personal investments were suffering. And that same year, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Yet I felt incredibly blessed. I knew things could have been worse — much worse. I wondered: What methods and mindsets had I practiced when times were Up or Sideways that were paying dividends now that times were Down? What should I do or keep doing now that times were Down? And what did other successful people do consistently that I could learn from?

Like a professional baseball season, our personal and professional success is measured over the long course of time. There will be slumps. But they don’t have to define us. We’re defined by how we think and act consistently, because those are the things that shape our results. If you read Up, Down, or Sideways, I think you’ll relate to the things I’ve identified. I’m going to blog about some of them over the next few months. And I hope you’ll add to the discussion with your own methods and mindsets that have served you when times were Up, Down, or Sideways.

This blog is based on content in my latest book, Up, Down, Or Sideways. It is available wherever you buy great books. Click here to learn more about the book or click here to order it from Amazon.com.

The quote is from Epictetus, the Stoic philosopher. The concept is as powerful now as when he said it nearly 1900 years ago. His advice has withstood the test of time.

I’ve noticed that when you take care of the moments, the moments take care of your life.

So simple to understand yet so challenging to accomplish.

My moments are often roughed up by distractions, battered by criticism and diminished by worry.  They lose value through inattention and carelessness.

There are times I understand I’m not taking care of the moments but find it almost impossible to redirect my attention. Life is full of things that easily shift our attention to doing anything but care taking the moments.

It is about focus. Rational focus. Not an obsessive or panicked attention, but a thoughtful awareness of how we are spending the moments of each day.

The best assurance for a day (or life) well spent is to caretake the moments.

I often read authors and hear speakers who warn their audiences not to read or watch the news. Why? Because newspapers and news shows are so full of negativity. While this is certainly true, the advice is neither practical nor prudent.

The same folks who say we shouldn’t pay attention to the news do recommend reading lots of positive, upbeat material from self-help books and other sources. While I agree with this recommendation, it doesn’t go far enough.

Leaders need both information and inspiration. Information is basically neutral. We evaluate it and make a value judgment: this is good news or bad news, positive or negative.

If you are a homebuilder, news about housing starts being down isn’t–in your frame of reference–good news. It is, however, important information. Denying the reality doesn’t make it go away.

What’s happening around us shapes our strategies and tactics from operations to pricing to hiring. To ignore reality (much of which is negative) is dangerous. The goal for an effective leader is to be informed, and that requires accurate information that describes reality, both the good and the bad.

Inspiration is what encourages us to constructively use information. Inspiration is both the counterbalance to negativity and the impetus to move forward rather than give up.

Where should you be getting your inspiration? The sources are broad and include classic literature, self-help and religious writings as well as speakers, thought-leaders and clergy.

The danger of information is that we can become overwhelmed by the challenges it conveys and become blind to the opportunities. Orison Swett Marden, one of the earliest writers in the self-help genre, said, “Difficulties are great or small in proportion as you are great or small.” Inspiration wisely acquired and considered equips us to be greater leaders.

Information can create fear but inspiration creates courage.

Information describes what is happening but inspiration determines how we respond.

Information gives us ideas but inspiration is the fuel for acting upon those ideas.

For effective leadership, information and inspiration are inseparable. Information without inspiration can be oppressive but inspiration without information can be foolish. By considering and consuming both, we can become better.

I first met, Simon Mainwaring, author of We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World, at a SANG event. He immediately impressed me with his ideas. Simon is exceedingly smart and personable-the kind of person you’d like to drink a beer with. As a columnist for Fast Company with extensive global branding experience, he is a leading edge thinker in this new world of business so I asked him to contribute a guest blog based the book which releases today:

Mark has kindly invited me to share with you a vision I have been formulating over the last several years. This vision seeks to transform the business world into a powerful force for social transformation in the world. Our planet is in dire straits, with myriad crises plaguing the advancement of humankind. The private sector has the resources, expertise, leadership and management skills to be the game-changer here. It is time for corporations and businesses to rise to the challenge and become a real “third pillar” of change in the world, assisting the first two pillars, governments and philanthropies, which are unable to cope with the scale of problems we face. Corporations and private companies of all sizes—along with consumers—must act as partners in this mission, working together to put the entire private sector into the service of building a better world.

I became interested in this when several years ago I read a speech Bill Gates gave at the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2008. In his talk, Gates challenged corporations to be more creative about how they could respond to the needs of the world’s poor. He entreated had to create new methods to account for making money so they could do business in the poorest regions where profits might be as scarce as clean water and regular meals.

Gates speech inspired me to contribute my thinking. First, I reflected on the myriad crises of the world and what needed to be done to solve them. What quickly became clear to me was that we needed to perform a significant reengineering of capitalism—overhauling it, tempering it, and transforming it to shift it from what I called a Me First into a We First economic system.

The shift from Me to We entails persuading corporations and their leaders to modify the current practice of capitalism and its business models in order to adopt new ways of thinking about commerce and profit. The basis for this shift is not abstract or utopian; it is predicated on the truth that we now live in complex, interlinked globalized world where our lives touch upon and influence each other as never before. We simply can no longer practice capitalism the same way.

The We First approach adheres to four different operating principles:

1. Recognize the benefits of mutual self-interest. We can no longer define our self-interest in immediate narrow and selfish terms. In a world of 7 billion people and 120+ countries fighting over the same resources, we must learn to recognize when mutual self-interest is more rewarding, or at the minimum, that sometimes our self-interests lie in ensuring that everyone wins something.

2. Integrate purpose into profit. We can no longer maintain our short-term, myopic focus on profit-for-profit’s sake to the neglect of purposes. The future of profit is purpose. Corporations need to make profit, of course, but we can no longer overlook that they must also play a role in contributing to society.

3.  Expand our notion of sustainability. Corporations are slowly coming around to adopting environmentally sustainable behaviors, but we need to extend the notion of sustainability into other domains. For capitalism to survive in this global world, we need it to be economically, morally, socially, and ethically sustainable as well. All five domains go hand in hand.

4.  Re-instill values. Many agree that capitalism has lost its values and it is time to reinstate them. We need to infuse values such as accountability, responsibility, global citizenship, and fairness of rewards back into the daily practices of companies.

You may be wondering, how can we conceivably implement the transition from Me First to We First? This is where my background in branding and social media led me to the answer.

We are now witnessing a new dynamic emerging between brands and consumers due to social media. Consumers throughout the world are connecting as never before, gaining access to communication tools that allow them to talk amongst themselves, share and publish their ideas and opinions, and organize social activism in ways more powerful than ever in history. Through social media, consumers now have the ability to talk back to corporations and expose bad behaviors. They can increasingly act on their desire to see corporations take on greater social responsibility in the world—using their voices and wallets to reward conscionable and well-intentioned brands through their referrals, reviews, recommendations, and purchases. They can also use their power to spread the word about not only those companies that produce bad products, but also those with inauthentic messaging, false promises, and unsustainable and irresponsible social behaviors.

But at the same time, social media also offers brands new opportunities as well. Through social networks, they can reach out and engage their audiences in deeper, more meaningful ways. They can find out what makes their customers tick, and use social media to build stronger relationships and earn greater loyalty from them.

Social media is thus providing the driving force that can bring about the change we need from Me First to We First. It offers consumers a powerful voice and leverage to help change capitalism, and yet it gives corporations and their brands a motive to engage with consumers in the process to win something as well.

This is my mission and I invite you to join the We First movement. Whether you are a CEO, executive, or consumer, there is a role for you to play, using your leadership skills and your commitment to We First principles to help all of us build a better world.

Simon Mainwaring is the founder of We First, a social branding consultancy that helps companies, non-profits and consumer groups build a better world through changes to the practice of capitalism, branding, and consumerism using social technology. More information is available in We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World (Palgrave/Macmillan, June 2011).  Or visit www.wefirstbook.com. Note that 10% of book proceeds go to the United Nation’s Girl Up Foundation that supports education for young women in the developing world.