I’m still recovering from attending Deepak Chopra’s Sages & Scientists symposium in Beverly Hills last weekend.
People keep asking me how it was, and I say, it was fascinating, yet on the inside I’m still piecing it together.
Over some 20 hours we covered the gamut of science of the cosmos and quantum, to topics of consciousness.
From as big as this infinite ever-expanding universe that is made mostly of invisible matter.
Inside we all have a vision for our lives and who we dream to be.
For some of us this is an extension of our current path, but for many of us, going after what we truly want requires a deliberate shift, which can be hard to do.
Not only must we find the fuel to drive ourselves forward, but often we too must remove those things that hold us back.
If you try to drive your car while the handbrake is still tightly gripping the wheels, you’ll hardly get anywhere, and going after what you truly want is much the same way.
It’s the business end of the season, how do you plan to play?
A new client said to me, “Post labor day is when I really hit my stride for the year.”
I laughed, but he was serious.
He went on to say that, the beginning of the year he comes out of the gates hard, he takes a breather in the summer, but like a 400 meter runner rounding the last bend, it is now that he finds his best.
In New York you feel this energy, almost like the city itself is winding up to close out the year strong.
My buddy said to me, “When my mom died, there was only one thing that haunted her.”
It wasn’t the cancer that had ravaged her body. It wasn’t leaving this world.
It was regret. She had been a great mother. A great wife. Had lived a wonderful life, yet, on her death bed, she regretted those things that she didn’t do.
At the time they seemed like the right trade-offs, but looking back, she wished that she had pushed a little harder to do some more things just for herself.
Plenty of research studies of people late in life confirm this common regret, and there are tons of cliches and quotes on this topic, like Mark Twain’s:
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Personally, I don’t see anything odd about affirmations, but I know other people do.
Perhaps it’s something about talking to yourself, or trying to convince yourself of something, but we are always doing this anyways.
For instance, yesterday in a meeting, my host kept saying, “I’m risk averse.”
It’s true, he is risk averse, and by continuing to say it, he keeps reminding himself of that wild and ferocious bear some call “risk.”
We all want ways to feel better and better every day, and this is best.
The verifiable truth is that the way we feel is not dependent on what is happening in our lives, but how we choose to use our bodies and minds.
One of my advisors has an interesting take on where she thinks many professionals are stuck.
She says, particularly in the drag race that is New York, many hard charging men and women have had the mojo beaten out of them.
Whereas most of us started our careers feeling unstoppable, somewhere in our twenties and thirties, after sustaining inevitable setbacks, many of us feel like we’ve lost a step.
And while it can sometimes feel like that mojo got left behind with Austin Powers, like a well-driven Aston Martin that has taken a few dings over the years, often we only need a little touch-up.
Do you sometimes look out at the world and wonder, how did it come to be this way?
Do you look at the way we work and think, who is winning at this?
In the blockbuster book, Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari, offers some answers. And many of them aren’t what you might have thought.
For starters, many of us think that human evolution looks like a straight line in which we graduated from swinging from trees to punching keys, but the origin of our species is far less clear.
The fact is, at different points in time, a number of species of “sapiens” coexisted (ala Lord of The Rings), with all but homo sapiens dying out.
Nobody knows why, nor how seemingly overnight the human brain made an enormous leap in size and cognitive ability (a huge problem for all evolutionary theory).
Relative to dinosaurs that roamed the earth for 165 million years, over merely a couple hundred thousand years our species has evolved, and while evolution has greatly benefitted our species, it hasn’t always been good for us individuals.
An example Harari covers is the Agricultural Revolution which he refers to as history’s biggest fraud.
Whereas the story many of us have come to believe is that humans evolved from hunter gatherers into a more advanced agricultural society, the truth is the opposite.
As he put it, “The Agricultural Revolution certainly enlarged the sum total of food at the disposal of humankind, the extra food did not translate into a better diet or more leisure. Rather it translated into population explosions and pampered elites.”
From here Harari goes on to suggest that a similar fraud today impacts the way we work.
He writes, “How many young college graduates have taken demanding jobs in high powered firms, vowing that they will work hard to earn enough money that will enable them to retire and pursue their real interests when they are thirty-five?”
Answering his own question, he writes, “But by the time they reach that age, they have large mortgages, children to school, houses in the suburbs that necessitate at least two cars per family, and the sense that life is not worth living without really good wine and expensive holidays abroad.”
Referencing devolving back to our origins he asks, “What are they supposed to do, go back to digging up roots? No, they double their efforts and keep slaving away.”
It doesn’t need to be this way.
We can all do what we want, but only when we stop monkeying around!
London last week was dead.
Traffic was, on some streets, non-existent.
At dinner at a popular private club, we shared the restaurant with only two other tables, the night before it was closing for a couple of weeks. At a late night spot typically overrun with party-goers, we took prime position in the lounge.
It was a stark reminder that, in Europe, people, actually, do take vacation.
It made me think of a book I read many years ago that had a deep impact on me at the time, Work To Live, by Joe Robinson.
The founder of the Work to Live campaign, Robinson had dedicated himself to lobbying for a minimum of three weeks vacation for all Americans.
As Robinson pointed out, relative to those in Europe who were getting 4-5 weeks vacation a year, many in America were barely getting 1-2 weeks, and of those who were, many were unable to even take them.
Back when I read his book, some five years into my career at Goldman Sachs, I scarcely remembered even taking a weekend off, let alone a week. To get 4-5 weeks off would have required open heart surgery.
At the time I accepted that was my trade. I had given up the reasonable rights of an employee to charge like a racehorse in a profession that didn’t slow down for weekends or vacations.
Truthfully, that was all good with me, but Robinson’s book helped me see some of my underlying drivers that “forced me” to keep charging, and the fact that many people who have far less choice in their careers were working harder and longer than ever before.
Over the years this notion drove an interesting dichotomy for me.
On the one hand, I am mission-driven. “Working” has never been a sacrifice to me, but what I like to do, a pursuit of meaning, driving what matters to me. Yet, on the other hand, to be truly effective, you must be taking time to reset.
Beyond that, it’s crucial to keep stepping back and getting clear on why you are working so hard, what you want to get from it, and how you weigh your time today relative to the time you hope to have in the future.
I don’t think of these topics as work-life balance, nor the false binary choice to either work to live or live to work, but about getting clear on what matters to you, and making deliberate choices about how you use the dwindling days of your life.
Time waits for no man, but she does let you choose how you date.
A lot of things.
A winner. A champ. A man 100% dedicated to his craft, and his goals.
Yet, there’s something more specific that you observe: A machine. A purpose-built machine. A body that is built for getting through water.
Like we build boats and submarines, Phelps has crafted his body for optimally powering through water.
You see the same with other top athletes in the Games.
None of them look “normal.” Their bodies are sculpted for their unique purpose.
Think about a cyclist. Lanky frame. Rake-thin arms. Flat chest. HUGE legs. A body that is built for pushing a bicycle, fast.
A pole vaulter has built her body for launching and slithering over the pole. A shot putter has built a mass for pushing a heavy ball far from the body. A gymnast, well, is there a more beautifully crafted human machine?
Think about that for a moment.
What does it take to build the world’s greatest machine for competing at this highest level?
Of course it takes absolute dedication, but it also takes something more.
It takes knowing how you must craft the machine if you are to be standing in the center podium with gold slung around your neck.
That’s not only true in the Olympics, but in every career.
If you’re a banker, no client cares about the size of your pecs, but your skillfulness in getting deals done is highly valued.
If you’re a lawyer, it’s irrelevant how far you can push a heavy ball, but that machine must push and push for its clients.
If you’re a consultant, you’re not valued for your ability to jump high, but to provide unique and valuable insights.
While few people will train themselves to be the equivalent of an Olympic-level consultant or lawyer or banker, a master of his or her craft is constantly tuning the machine.
They don’t do this just to win, but to compete.
They don’t do this because it’s their “job,” but because of how it feels to show up as your best.
Too many of us have settled for too little.
We got a good job, made good money, built a good life, but what have we left behind?
For many of us the struggle is gone, but so too is the fire.
In the orderly nicety that has become our lives, we’ve left behind the chaos of the building.
In our nice homes and neighborhoods we’ve left behind the lack, but also the fear and passion that once ignited us.
The fire that once burned for many people is today barely a cinder.
They might register a heartbeat, but there’s no fire coming alive.
Many of us who once dreamed to change the world settled for being a cog in a machine that is barely turning over.
Many who dreamed to live an extraordinary life stopped once they exceeded ordinary, the “extra” perhaps in reserve for the next lifetime.
We’ve won many battles, but many of us have given up on the war.
We’ve lost sight of what this is about for us.
Lost track of who we are destined to be.
And, many, most tellingly, lost the fire for something more.
We are good family men and women.
Good members of the community. Good friends and workmates.
But how many of us are setting the world on fire?
How many of us are waking up every day and starting our own fire?
How are we dreaming?
How are we striving?
How are we are driving a life where we are giving more?
Doing more?
Being more?
When we reach the end of our lives we will look back on what we did, and who we became.
If you’re reading this, you’ve already achieved a lot, already come so far.
But, if you are like me, my clients, and anyone I want to know, you know there is more in you.
More ambition. More self-belief. More drive. More hunger. More grit.
More fire.
How are you waking up every day and lighting it?
In his book The Icarus Deception remarkable thinker and prolific author, Seth Godin, challenges us all to fly closer to the sun.
We all know the legend of Icarus, yet on the first page of his book, Seth identifies an aspect to the story that many of us don’t know.
In a bold plan to escape the prison of King Minos, Icarus’ father, Daedalus, crafts a pair of wings for himself and his son.
With the wings attached with wax that melts under heat, Daedalus warns Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, but, of course, as the legend goes, overcome with hubris the young boy soared too high, lost his wings, and fell to his death in the sea.
The lesson we are taught from this story is not to dream too big, not to fly too high, but, as Godin points out, the part of the story that is often missed is that Daedalus also cautioned his son not to fly too low, as the sea below would steal the lift from his wings, and also lead to certain death.
Yet, that’s exactly what most of us do.
Fearful of flying too high, we settle for flying too low. Fearing what it means to stand out, we conform, doing the same things as everyone else, somehow hoping for a different result.
Godin implores us to see that our careers have changed, and putting your head down and working hard is the wrong answer.
“Your ability to follow instructions,” Godin notes, “is not the secret to your success,” and inside this wonderful book he encourages us all to see our role like artists, creating, and sharing our uniqueness with the world.
Even if that’s not how you perceive your career, the lesson still holds. To create a truly remarkable career and life, you must break free of the groupthink to cultivate different ways of thinking, and take different types of actions.
While we often perceive that flying closer to the sun requires great risk, even the grandest of plans comes together through a series of small steps, that are embodied in this simple two-step exercise:
1. Dream BIG. Bigger than big. What is your version of flying high? Close your eyes and imagine what this means for you. For a few minutes, watch a mental movie of you flying all the way there. Imagine what you are doing, who you have become, and most importantly, the feeling of soaring to new heights.
2. Focus on one step: From where you are today, imagine the one step that is now in front of you. Some of you might imagine that as a big step, such as your next promotion, and others might see it simply as the actions you are taking today. Now, with all the energy of reaching new heights, see yourself taking this step.
In achieving even the tallest goals, you don’t need to think beyond this, but to merely keep taking each step as it presents itself, step by step, flying higher and higher.
I recommend doing this exercise frequently (I do it daily), continuing to drill into your mind your highest vision for your life, and reinforcing your focus on CRUSHING the step right in front of you.
I don’t know about that, but I certainly know that many of us want to keep unlocking more of the power of our minds.
When I first began this work, I thought of getting what you want far more practically than I do today.
Back then I saw it as getting clear on what you want (goals), and building powerful processes and skills to get it.
Today, that’s still the foundation of my system, yet over the years I began to see the deeper force behind all these things is your mind.
I saw that, in order for you to be willing to dream up what you truly want, you must build that type of optimism and belief into your thinking.
That for you to take powerful actions, and to have the motivation to keep getting better and learning skills, you must condition your thinking to do so.
In all, behind these practical steps to getting what you want, it is our ways of thinking, feeling, and our motivation to take actions, that is driving all of the steps.
And, behind this, there is something else too, what we might call “Will.”
That is, quite simply, your skillfulness at getting your mind to unlock more of your potential.
We all know that our minds quite happily operate in our comfort zone of habit and redundant thinking, and left to their own devices will do more of the same.
Rather than go to the gym and give it your all, for instance, the mind does what it is comfortable doing, and it’s the will that trains the mind to stretch and do more.
Similarly, when you dream, when you really think big, even if you can stretch your mind far enough, you must be able to get it to stick there, to form a new comfort zone beyond where your old fears and inhibitions would kick in.
Training the mind to flex this way is more than just occasionally thinking positive, and, instead, like training any skill, you want to use your will to methodically train.
When you’re at the gym, by challenging yourself to reach new levels, you keep proving to your mind that it can comfortably keep expanding your capabilities.
In your work, you want to remind yourself that you can give more, do more, take better actions, and keep proving to your mind that you can achieve better results.
And, in every aspect of your life, you want to train yourself to see the limits that your mind had imposed and keep doing things that expand your view of what is possible for you and your life.
In going for what you truly want, you surely need clear goals, and powerful processes and skills, yet all of these things only become possible through unlocking the power of your mind.
This week Elon Musk unveiled a new “master plan” for his ambitions with Tesla and SolarCity.
Doing so, he said: “Starting a car company is idiotic and an electric car company is idiocy squared.”
Don’t you love that?
Someone who knows how “idiotic” his ambitions are, but who only keeps doubling down.
What enables him to do that? What does it take to keep driving your grandest vision for your life?
Well, of course there are many things that can unleash us in life but principally there is one…
A tough one. A real tough one… Stop fear from holding you back.
Look, fear holds us all back. It leads us to question ourselves, to be tentative, to look for the easy way out, and so on, yet it is an emotion we can learn to master.
As I wrote about some time ago in reference to Adam Grant’s fantastic book, Originals.
It’s not that men and women who do remarkable things never suffer from fear, it’s that they are unwilling to let fear dictate their choices.
How do you do this for yourself? Honestly, it’s not easy, and, it can take constant vigilance, yet here are three powerful ways to do it:
If you want to be a Mind Champ at this, I suggest downloading my free e-book to Building Your Limitless Mind.
But, you can also make a lot of progress eradicating fears, simply following these three steps:
1. Ask, what do you possibly have to fear? You do something, it goes wrong, so what? Maybe you lose some money. Maybe you lose some time. But, if the consequences were terribly dire, you wouldn’t be considering it anyways, right?
2. Instead of fearing actions, fear inaction. How would you feel at the end of your life knowing that you played it safe, that there was a dream you failed to pursue, that you left the grandest vision for your life on the table? Fear that feeling!
3. Pull yourself toward the feeling of what it’s like to put fears behind you. How good does it feel to crush a fear? Say, if you were terrified to jump from a high diving board, how do you feel once you’ve done it? Don’t you want more of this feeling?
Candidly, from my research and personal experience, these types of questions are not to be asked once, but constantly, daily, in a life of expanding what is possible for you.
P.S. You can read here more mindset articles.
P.P.S. And you can read here more specific articles on destroying fear.
Every night one of my clients sends me an email detailing how he used each hour of his day, and laying out how he expects to spend his next day.
It’s an extreme approach (even for my clients who tend to be extreme), but, in his case, it’s the way that he maintains his discipline.
He’s a busy guy with big goals, and that demands he shift as much of his time to productive actions, but there’s also something else going on here…
He’s facing the resistance, or avoidance, that many of us face, when it comes to doing hard things.
Here’s a simple three step process for busting it:
1. Commit: Stop questioning. No matter how you are feeling, commit to the task. In my client’s case, he works to a schedule, and reinforces his commitment by emailing me.
How might you reinforce your commitment?
2. Get moving: You’re lazing around in bed, hitting snooze. What do you do? Stop. Put your feet on the floor. Watch them magically walk you across the room, and get your day going.
Whether it be jumping out of bed, diving into a tough project, or anything else, once you get moving, it’s easier to keep the momentum.
3. Get absorbed: Even if you love running, the first 10 minutes can feel hard, but once you find your rhythm, you just keep stepping. All tasks are the same. The trick is to become absorbed in the task for long enough until you get there. For hard projects, a way to “force” discipline is to set a timer, and keep going until your time is up.
Often, once you’re in the groove, you’ll naturally want to keep going anyways.
Many of us have a loose idea of what we want, but without a clear definition of what we want, and why we want it, we can fail to take the right actions.
Give this exercise a shot. I will warn you might be surprised by what you learn.
Step 1: List your goals. Here’s some to consider, add and subtract as you choose:
Step 2: Force rank your goals. I know it’s hard to rank say, health and family, but that’s the point: How do you prioritize what matters to you?
Step 3: Get specific. It’s great to know that say, wealth is important to you, but how do you specifically define wealth?
Step 4: Get to “Why?” The trick is to ask a very specific question, “What do I get through that?” For instance, take your wealth goal and ask yourself, “What do I get through that?” You might say, “Financial security?” Now, ask again, “What do I get through that?” You might say, “I can give my family the best.” Now, ask again, “What do I get through that?” And, keep asking that question until you get no further. This is your “value,” the goal behind your goal, what is ultimately driving you.
Step 5: Are you living it? Think back over the last 6 months, and ask yourself: How aligned are your goals with your choices? If, say, health is a higher priority to you than time with friends, how do your choices reflect it?
Step 6: Changes: Based on what you have learned, what changes might you make to your goals or the choices you are making?
Interesting exercise, right?
I suggest refreshing this exercise frequently, and, ideally, briefly revisiting your goals daily, to ensure you are taking the right actions.
Coming out of a meeting with a business associate he met some four years ago, my client observed that he was still in the same place.
When they first met, my client’s business, having just gotten started, was less than half the size of the other guy’s, but today he is more than three times his size.
When I asked my client what had made the most difference, he said: “Simple. We keep winning because we keep getting better at everything.”
“We keep getting better at our processes, better at managing our teams, better at marketing, better at selling, my mindset is better, my skills are better, and hence our business keeps getting better,” he said.
There’s not a lot of mystery to success.
The willingness to obsessively keep the eye on the ball and advance it every day will get you most of the way, but the surefire way to crush your goals is to keep outgrowing them.
Sure, there’s some probability that you do nothing right and keep winning, or that you do everything right and end up failing, but, generally, if you’re getting better, you should keep getting better results.
But, that doesn’t happen haphazardly.
You don’t improve at golf by showing up and hitting balls, but by swinging the club better each time. It’s not about one swing being better than the last, but building a system of continuous improvement to keep improving your swing over time.
Doing this, you must constantly analyze your performance, tweak your actions, methodically practice, and seek new ways to grow and improve.
Approaching your business or career the same way, you want to get clear on ways you can improve, develop the metrics to measure your performance, and then build the systematic practices for consistently driving better actions and results.
Growing this way, you are surely more likely to outgrow your competitors, but that’s not the only reward.
As my client put it: “It’s not that my business has outgrown his, but I’ve grown, and that’s the greatest reward.”
I started listening to podcasts.
For years I’ve known that plenty of people are putting out great content on podcasts, but, quite frankly, I haven’t made the time to listen.
It was my loss. I’m listening now.
This weekend I listened to The Unmistakable Creative podcast with Srini Rao interviewing author of The Talent Code, Dan Coyle.
He shared many fascinating insights on unlocking human performance, and there was one particular metaphor that deeply stuck with me.
Throughout the podcast, Dan talked about “filling your windshield,” meaning, what you are looking at, with the people and things that you want to be your reality.
In describing how people develop quickly in “talent hot beds,” Dan uses the example of a skateboard park.
Every day, kids are surrounded by better skaters, going for it, ripping new tricks. And, up and coming skaters can be constantly filling their windshield with these role models.
When they are in the park, they’re not just practicing on their own, or surrounded by people who allow them to coast, but they are constantly shown a successful role model of who they could be.
Those skaters who are serious about developing, not only watch, but learn to emulate their role models, then over time, become role models to others, and so on.
It is in this way that talent hot beds in Russia consistently produce top tennis players, kids riding around together all get better faster, and we can each challenge ourselves to new levels of performance.
Fascinating way to see it, right?
A question it inspired in me was: To keep getting more of what you want, how should you be filling your windshield?
On this special July 4th weekend, I am most grateful for America.
I wasn’t born here, but I do feel that I was born to live here.
I may not be what many people today associate with your typical immigrant, but like millions of others, I came to America to live my dream.
And I am living it. I know that might sound cheesy, but America has made it true for me.
Sure, my life isn’t always rainbows and unicorns, but I do what I want. And I get to earn my living doing what I love, sharing ideas that make other people’s lives better.
I couldn’t do this at any other time, nor anywhere else in the world, other than America.
This land that was founded on new thinking, innovation, and exceptionalism, is the place I feel I can truly be me.
A nation that prides itself on freedom and liberty, still today we stand on the greatest battlefield of optimism and hope in our uncertain world.
America has stumbled, and she’s a little more battered than just a bruised knee, but she is strong, resilient, and ever adaptable to change.
As a nation, we are far from perfect, we have many challenges, yet we still live in the greatest democracy that the world has seen.
There is no place on the planet where people even talk about something even close to the American Dream.
And, on this weekend, I’m very grateful to be living mine.
How about you? How are you celebrating living yours?
A couple of years ago, I was stuck, stuck, stuck.
Having taken a number of years to “try” to finish my first book, I didn’t know how to keep taking steps forward.
Most days, waking up early to sit down and write felt more like Andy Dufresne crawling through the sewer to freedom in Shawshank Redemption, than it felt like doing what I wanted, but, I knew if I kept moving, I would find my way.
Around that time I read a book by Ryan Holiday, titled, The Obstacle is the Way.
I remember one of the stories at the beginning of the book of a King who wanted to test his people by hiding a stash of gold beneath a huge boulder that he left in the middle of a path.
Many of his subjects walked around or got stopped, but one man, seeing the obstacle was the way, found a lever, moved the boulder, and uncovered the gold.
Ryan’s book is full of similar tales that get you to think about your “struggles” differently, and, get you to move those boulders and find your way.
In psychology, there’s a notion that says: What we resist persists, but what we embrace has the power to transform us.
Take for instance, a basic fear, such as the fear that many people face, of public speaking. Their entire life they might go out of their way to avoid this fear, and hence it will persist.
Yet, inevitably, that one day will come when they are “forced” to stand and speak (perhaps at their own wedding), and, perhaps at a time that matters most, they will perform terribly.
Having failed to see that obstacle as a way to grow, and learn, and squash those old self-doubts, they will likely reinforce that old fear and continue to do their best at avoiding those things that are uncomfortable.
Like a river backed up by an enormous boulder blocking the flow, the things you avoid only cause you to stagnate.
Indeed, the obstacle is the way.