Good Student Mentality vs. Con Man Mentality (Part 2)
Yesterday, I told you that I love con man stories because Con Man Mentality is the complete opposite of Good Student Mentality.
(And Good Student Mentality is a total trap.)
In Part 1 of this series, I told you the first way that Con Men are different from Good Students:
Good Students play the game.
Con Men see the board.
Today, let me tell you the second way Con Men and Good Students differ—
Good Students are brittle. They crumble at the first mistake.
Con Men expect things to go wrong. That’s when they get smart and scrappy.
Catch Me If You Can is one of my favorite movies.
It’s the story of an incredibly bold con man (Leonardo DiCaprio) being chased by a plodding but persistent FBI agent (Tom Hanks).
There’s a great scene in the movie where Carl (the FBI agent) finally catches up to Frank (the con man) and shows up in Frank’s hotel room to arrest him.
A Good Student would crumble at this point. They’ve screwed up. They got sloppy. They let this happen. Now it’s time to accept the consequences and go to jail.
Is that what Frank does? Nope!
Frank gets smart and scrappy.
He calmly shakes the FBI agent’s hand and tells him that he’s a Secret Service agent that’s also been tracking Frank and that Carl showed up just a minute too late — Frank just got away.
That’s right.
When confronted with the realization that he’s majorly screwed up…
Frank doesn’t crumble, beat himself up, and give up.
Frank gets smarter, scrappier, and more playful than ever.
He does some of his best work when things are going wrong.
Good Students think that one mistake or bad result means “game over.”
Trying to build a new habit, and you stumble a couple times? Game over.
Trying to do a career pivot, and you got a few rejections? Game over.
Getting into standup comedy and you had an awkward open mic night? Game over.
Con Men know that it’s never game-over. If you’re still alive and kicking, then there’s always another way.
Trying to build a new habit, and you stumble a couple times? Great, what are we adjusting for next time?
Trying to do a career pivot, and you got a few rejections? Cool, who else do we need to talk to?
Getting into standup comedy and you had an awkward open mic night? Alright, what jokes are we trying tomorrow?
If you’re anything like me, you’ve been operating in Good Student Mentality for a very long time.
And Con Man Mentality sounds way more fun and freeing…
But how are you supposed to make the switch?
You make the switch by updating your mental operating system.
And how do you update your your mental operating system?
That’s exactly what I’ll teach you in my course & coaching program, Less Stress, More Flow.
You’ll learn the real root cause of stress and flow.
(Spoiler alert: It’s not what’s going on around you. It’s the Mental Mode your brain is going into.)
You’ll learn how to identify exactly what Mental Mode your brain is currently in.
You’ll learn 7 concrete techniques for changing your Mental Mode.
You’ll learn how to build the habit + build the playbook to embed that new Mental Mode into your day-to-day life.
And you’ll have me available on demand for coaching and problem-solving every step of the way.
Everything you think and do and feel is a result of the mental operating system running in your head.
And all mental operating systems (even completely healthy ones!) have bugs — cognitive illusions, fallacies, biases, outdated stories, and confirmation bias loops.
They’re all things that helped us at one point in time…but now they’re keeping us stuck in emotions and actions and outcomes that don’t serve us.
Being able to debug your own mental operating system is a critical life skill every person needs to know.
And that’s what I teach you in my course & coaching program.
Join the waitlist today :)
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.
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—Client | CEO, PE-backed company
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