Dakota Coombes Blog

Just this evening as I was typing the finishing touches to this blog post, in a moment of weakness as I scrolled Facebook waiting for my computer to restart and stop being stupid - I was struck with the feeling of pain and heartache.

Last year was a wild one with the highs of my wife and I getting engaged, getting a puppy shortly after, getting married shortly after that (wild three days), and later that year celebrating our marriage with a trip overseas to Iceland, Ireland, and the UK. In that sense, it was a great year.

It was also the hardest year of my life. Our sweet Great Dane, Norman, was diagnosed with bone cancer on his spinal cord. It was crushing it, decreasing his mobility in every moment that he was alive. This was terrifying for him - and he was already a fearful boy. We got him back on our anniversary and, upon getting him home, knew instantly that he couldn’t live like this. We thought we’d have more time.

This left us in a one dog household with my sweet man, Hank, and his cat companion, Moose. Hank couldn’t be the only dog again. I wouldn’t allow it - so we got another Great Dane - this time a puppy instead of a rescue because we couldn’t stomach losing another dog after only having it for 2.5 years again.

While we were in London - I received a call that crushed my soul. Hank was a mess and I needed to pick him up. Only I couldn’t. I was stuck in London. To get us home it would cost $20k and we needed to be able to pay for whatever was wrong with him. His trainers took him to the vet. Heart failure.

With Norman, we were told we’d get a few more weeks. With Hank, 6-12 months. We got a night with Norman. A few weeks with Hank. This was eye-opening.

Now Truman is left as the only dog and I am continually looking for a companion for him. Syd and I have agreed that another Mastiff of some sort would be great - we love giant dogs. We stumbled across Max, an English Mastiff, at one of our favorite rescues yesterday and thought he was a sweet, older man. Today - I saw a post of his passing. He had intestinal cancer that was discovered today.

It brings tears to my eyes. The thought of an older dog, surrendered to a rescue and dying without the love of the family that raised him. It also serves to remind me of the cruel year that I had with my dogs. My best friends. Left with the twisted reality that we don’t live forever and are only guaranteed the present moment we are living in along with the moments we have already lived.

In a sick way, it serves as a reminder as to why we need to show up and improve every single day. In a small way or a big way. I don’t care. But to show up. Because you never know what could happen to you or to those that you love.

Without showing up, reflection, and iteration - you stand no shot at achieving your goals. Instead of risking being judged by people you don’t even really care about, you risk knowing that you didn’t do enough because you thought that tomorrow would always come.

I talked about the concept of iteration in my previous post. Iteration is fundamental in business - especially if you want your business to survive for any length of time - but it has broader applications. It transcends business and products and has the potential to profoundly influence your life.

In reading Ready, Fire, Aim one of my biggest takeaways is the importance of taking action. Taking action puts you in the position to receive feedback from customers. Receiving feedback from customers gives you the ability to iterate. The ability to take the feedback, learn from it, refine your product, and push out a new version - in whatever form is applicable to your business.

Let’s step back a little. Blow this out to a scale that we can apply it more broadly as there are many business lessons that are just as applicable, if not more applicable, to life.

First, let’s apply this to what I am doing. Writing.

We start learning our language long before school. Listening to people talk and attempting to imitate. This progresses to imitation, which becomes full blown communication. Some of us learn how to read and write a little bit before school and others don’t start until they get to school. Once you are in school, you start by tracing letters, learning how to draw the shapes that make up the letters. This progresses to writing words. Then sentences. Then the dreaded paragraphs. Maybe even some cursive! Once you have gotten proficient at paragraphs, you start writing multiple paragraphs which evolve into essays. You learn how to research and use research to create arguments to back your points.

The more you practice, the better you get at writing within the confines of the MLA (or insert applicable format here) format. You got feedback from parents, teachers, professors, peers, and family members that helped refine and force you to iterate and improve. All of this stemming from you being an infant, learning how to make funny sounds with your mouth that are commonly used by others making up this thing we call language.

Up to this point in your life, you likely have limited yourself to consciously iterating on feedback from others or subconsciously iterating on feedback in your personal life. Depending on how you view life and your ability to achieve your goals - this has led to improvement to this point or you drawing back into your shell, culminating with where you are now.

In my life, I have found that if you can positively iterate on feedback you can achieve a standard, but objective level of success with a small degree of drive, perseverance, and intelligence relating to the fields that you are practicing in. This led to me graduating from a 5 year college program in 4 years with an MBA at the age of 21, making $100,000 within 4 years - doubling my starting pay, and getting to a low level leadership opportunity at the age of 27. All of this by listening to what I was told to do, receiving feedback along the way and iterating. It was rare of me to push back unless someone disagreed with where I was trying to get to. Most of what I did was show up and do the job that was asked of me.

If you want to achieve something similar, follow the above paragraph and you too can achieve that. Just be mindful that you will need to choose a job that has the growth opportunities to support it. I found early in my career - in school, sports, and work - that all it takes to be perceived well by those providing you direction and making decisions is showing up, doing the work they tell you to do at a decent level, and taking their feedback seriously.

If you are reading this - I doubt that you want the above. At the very least, you don’t want the above outside of a means to an end.

Mindset

To be able to iterate consciously, we must first understand how conscious we are in life. This starts with your mindset.

Your mind is the most powerful tool at your disposal. With intentional use, it can build you an empire. Unintentional use can lead to your downfall. What building an empire or your downfall looks like differs from person to person but the point to understand here is that the only way for you to achieve anything in life is to utilize your mind.

One of the biggest mental hurdles that you will face are limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs are exactly what they sound like, subconscious or conscious beliefs that can prevent you from realizing your full potential. Some examples of limiting beliefs are:

I’m not good enough.
I don’t have enough time.
I’m too old or too young.
I’ll never be successful.
I’m not smart enough.

I don’t have enough experience.
Your limiting beliefs are shaped throughout your life and the experiences that you have had.

Take a moment and reflect. Using the above examples, what limiting beliefs do you have? What experiences have you had that validated these beliefs? How have you validated these beliefs? Have you taken the time to challenge these beliefs? Were you previously aware of them?

If you are anything like me, your mind probably went blank when I asked you “what limiting beliefs do you have?” That’s okay - I can’t remember how old I am when people ask, or my birthday and this is a much deeper question.

Instead of asking those questions, think of the last time that you wanted to try something new but didn’t. The last time you wanted to do something but didn’t will likely work as well. Why didn’t you go through with it? What hurdles did you allow to get in the way? Was it a real hurdle? Are you justifying to yourself why it was a real hurdle? If you are justifying why it was a real hurdle, it likely wasn’t and you found it to excuse yourself from trying.

If you still can’t think of anything - I’ll let it slide. This time. BUT - now that you are aware of this, I expect this to surface in your mind. Ask these questions. More simply ask yourself, why? Why am I thinking this thought?

It is imperative that you identify your limiting beliefs as they will be your excuses for not pursuing your goals. You will likely find more of them as you experiment more and as you become more mindful. It will be challenging, if not impossible, to accomplish what you want to without understanding the limiting beliefs that you hold.

Identifying these beliefs is the easiest part of the battle. Why? Because now that you have identified them, you will be able to spot them with increasing ease. The hard part is that for you to achieve your potential, you will have to challenge your beliefs. That is incredibly difficult and an ongoing and ever-present challenge. These beliefs are like . When you think you have overcome them, they will resurface and you will have a decision to make. Sometimes you will make the right decision, sometimes you will make the wrong decision. Both are okay as long as you use them as learning experiences.

Here is what I find helpful - think of the ideal version of yourself. What would their beliefs be? What would they accomplish? If they were struggling with the same limiting beliefs, what decisions would they make? Think of this person when it comes to making hard decisions. Cast a vote in that decision to make one step closer to being them. I don’t care about the size of the step. A step in the right direction is a step in the right direction.

At the end of the day, your goal should be to believe in yourself and the vision you have for your future and take intentional action to actualize that version of you. This will evolve and, through iteration (ehhh, see what I did there?), will become easier and clearer - evolving the closer that you get to where you want to be.

Sometimes you will feel like you are moving further away from your goal. This is a great moment to check-in with yourself. When was the last time you evaluated your goal and the direction that you are headed in? Do you need to reevaluate? A step in the wrong direction enables a more educated next step.

One last thought. Through this process, you may feel like you don’t even know who you are or who you want to be. That’s okay. This is an ever evolving process over the duration of your life. It’s important to become aware of where you are and where you are going. Identify how your current day to day actions are impacting the path that you are heading down in life. I won’t take this any further here but I expand on constant experimentation in my post The Claws of Comfort which gives you more actionable ways to push yourself to find who you are.

Application

Your mindset is a tremendous part of applying the learnings of this post. Once you have done that, you enable yourself to take action. Your actions make up the other portion.

Think about what you are currently working towards. This can be something personal or work related. When was the last time you consciously got feedback - internally or externally on that project? If not, start now.

Ask yourself, what has worked for you historically? What hasn’t? Where are you wasting effort? Where is your effort being well spent? If I make this change what is the worst plausible outcome? What are the potential benefits? Are those potential benefits worth the worst plausible outcome? If so, do it. If not, reevaluate and try again.

Once you have applied this to one area of your life, expand.

Try it in another.

And another.

Watch your life change.

If you can’t show up for yourself - show up for those that you can’t stand to lose with the thought of “I could have done more” permanently stamped in the back of your mind.