3 thoughts that can bring you from bad to good…but not good to great (part 2)
Thought #2: I should think about my mistakes.
Yesterday, I started telling you about how going from good to great requires an operating model flip.
It requires you to take a bunch of things that totally worked to get you from bad to good…
Things that were your greatest allies and most reliable rules and habits…
And flip them upside down and start doing the exact opposite.
It’s very confusing — unless you know what’s going on.
And I told you about the first thought you have to flip.
Thought #1: I need to win all the time.
Thought Flip #1: Even when I give my all… I expect to fail a good portion of the time. That’s a normal feature of going after expert-level pursuits.
You can read all about it here.
Today, let’s talk about the second thought you have to flip.
Thought #2: I should think about my mistakes.
When you’re going from bad to good, you’re learning the foundational skills in your field…
AND you’re learning how to learn from your mistakes.
You’re learning not to ignore mistakes or make excuses or sweep them under the rug…
You’re learning how to take full ownership for your results, no matter what.
And you’re learning how to assess what happened and what you need to change, with discipline and commitment, every single time you get a bad result.
When you’re going from good to great…
You’ve already built the habit of radical ownership of your results.
You’ve already built the muscle of constant assessment and improvement.
And now you have a different challenge in front of you.
Now, you need to prevent these muscles from being OVER-powered and accidentally hurting you.
You’ve corrected for UNDER-dosing on these habits…
Now you need to make sure you don’t OVER-dose on these habits.
Under-dosing on ownership is bad.
It leads you to make excuses, blame everyone else, and not take accountability for the changes you need to make.
But over-dosing on ownership is ALSO bad.
An over-dose of ownership calcifies into fragility.
You start taking responsibility for things that are truly out of your control…
Putting unreasonable burdens of responsibility on your own back…
Thinking that heroic individualism should be able to overcome ANY structural, systemic, or societal headwind…
Every failure unleashes an internal barrage of self-criticism.
And at the same time, you’re also going after expert-level pursuits, which have WAY lower success rates to begin with!
An overdose of ownership…
Combined with the high failure rate of expert-level pursuits…
Will lead to a breakdown at some point, unless you adjust your dosage levels.
Under-dosing on self-assessment is bad.
It leads you to make the same mistakes again and again and stay stuck for too long at the same level of performance.
But over-dosing on self-assessment is ALSO bad.
An over-dose of self-assessment disrupts your focus in the moment.
I’ve written before about how presence is what makes your breaks you — not just preparation.
The constant chatter of self-assessment disrupts your presence. It’s like trying to have a conversation while a siren blares in your ear.
I’m going to quote again from Roger Federer’s excellent Dartmouth commencement speech. He said:
When you lose every second point, on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.
You teach yourself to think: OK, I double-faulted. It’s only a point.
OK, I came to the net and I got passed again. It’s only a point.
Even a great shot, an overhead backhand smash that ends up on ESPN’s Top Ten Plays: that, too, is just a point.
Here’s why I am telling you this.
When you’re playing a point, it is the most important thing in the world.
But when it’s behind you, it’s behind you...
This mindset is really crucial, because it frees you to fully commit to the next point… and the next one after that… with intensity, clarity and focus.
Because expert-level pursuits have high failure rates…
You need to play a lot of points in order to get the results you want.
And you need to play each one of those points with intensity, clarity and focus.
You can’t do that when your dosage level of self-assessment is too high…
And the chatter in your mind is constantly distracting you.
This is why, as deeply unintuitive as it sounds…
The second thought flip you need to make in order to go from good to great is…
Thought Flip #2: If I make a mistake, I should let it go.
You have five meetings today, and meeting #2 went badly?
Let it go. It’s only a point. Full forward focus on the next meeting.
You’ve been working for months on a huge transaction and at the last minute, a new issue pops up and almost derails the deal?
Let it go. You didn’t miss anything. You didn’t screw this up. No “I should have seen this coming.” Full forward focus on what you need to do to resolve it.
You were planning to eat healthy today, until you saw free donuts in the office and before you know it, you’ve eaten two?
Let it go. It’s a momentary blip. You don’t have to wait till tomorrow to course-correct. Full forward focus on the rest of the meals in the day.
If you’ve gotten from bad to good…
You are no longer in danger of under-dosing on ownership or self-assessment.
You’re not going to blame others and fail to take accountability.
You’re not going to fail to spot your improvement areas and stay mysteriously stuck at the same level of performance.
You are now taking ownership and making constant improvements automatically.
Your habits in those areas are 100% on lock.
You can’t turn it off even if you try.
You’re now in danger of OVER-dosing on ownership and self-assessment.
Of over-blaming yourself for things that are outside your control…
And over-beating-yourself-up about what you need to improve…
And burning out and staying stuck as a result.
So make this thought flip and watch as you achieve the ultimate win-win…
Feeling better AND getting better results.
That’s the goal we’re always aiming for around here.
We’re not feeling better…and letting performance suffer.
We’re not getting better results…but suffering in the process.
We’re 👏🏽 Doing 👏🏽 Both 👏🏽
And when you find yourself in a spot in your life where your feelings or your results are suffering…
There’s a simple way to figure out why that’s happening and what you need to adjust to get back into flow.
That’s the baseline toolkit I teach all my clients.
And it’s the skill I help them practice and gain mastery over during 3 months of coaching together.
It all happens inside my one-on-one coaching program.
Learn all about how it works here…
And then book a free consult call with me.
We’ll talk about what you want to work on in coaching, how I can help, and which package might be the best fit for you :)
What my clients have to say…
“My general happiness levels are higher. I have coping mechanisms during stress. My husband is seeing the results of it — I have a better married life with him.
Coaching has given me more inner peace and focus as to what are the things that I want and how to go after them without setting ceilings.
And it’s allowed me to get to the root of what it is that I want, and not just chase the next big thing.”
—Client | CEO, PE-backed company
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⬅️ Thought #1 || Thought #3 ➡️
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