Tony Stark Policci watches people ignore dog-waste signs in a park and picks up messes that aren't his. He argues success means owning your own responsibilities and sometimes going further, but warns that constantly cleaning up after others breeds codependency. The extra mile only works when it's purposeful and aligned with what you actually value.
Chapters
Hey, it's Tony Pollici. See this sign right here? It says clean up after your dog. I'm out in this beautiful park next to my house. Give you a look at it here.
But you see, probably twice a day, early in the morning, around 10 o'clock at night, I take these beasts that belong to my family, none of which are mine actually, but but I get the job of walking them out here to exercise them. Now, the interesting thing is, see, there's— let me show you this sign here again.
Not only is there a sign, but there's this nifty little carrier underneath here that holds plastic trash bags.
So there's 3 of these strategically placed in the park at every entrance.
No matter how you come into the park, there's one there, and they instruct you to pick up your dog's dogs dookie. However, so many people don't do this because every time I'm walking out here I see messes that are not picked up.
So oftentimes I find myself not only picking up my own dog's mess, but a mess that was left by somebody else's dog, and it irritates me. See, I think that each one of us needs to be responsible for picking up our own messes, cleaning up our own messes, taking care of our own responsibilities.
But you know what, if you want to succeed, that's just what's expected, is to take care of your own responsibilities.
If you want to succeed, you have to go the extra mile.
Sometimes that means doing things that aren't your job. Now I'm not saying that I should go running around picking up other dogs' messes. However, I care about the park, I care about the fact that my kids come out here and play, I care about this just the whole atmosphere in the environment. And so it irritates me and I do something about it. You have to make a decision about what kind of messes you want to pick up, because if you start doing, uh, everything that's not your responsibility, then you become an enabler or codependent, and that's a whole lot different than going the extra mile. But my charge for you today is, are you picking up the messes that you're responsible for in your life? Are you taking care of the responsibilities that are yours to take care of?
And are you going the extra mile?
Are you doing that little bit extra? It's too easy to say, "That's not my job," and just blow something off. But successful people do what unsuccessful people won't do. So today my charge is to push forward and do something extra for yourself. Go out there and get what you want. Talk to you later.
