It’s a question I get all the time:
“Should I work with a coach?”
And every time, I give the same answer:
“Which one?”
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High performers learn from other high performers. If you want to manifest a change in your life or achieve a certain goal, the best thing you can do is study people who have already done it.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked with many hundreds of highly successful people.
Yet I’ve found that there are small things that distinguish the most successful few. One of those is role models.
I keep on my desk a summary of Dale Carnegie’s principles from his famous book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.
In his book he has some 30 simple principles you can easily use that he boils down to short statements like, “Give honest and sincere appreciation.”
I keep them as a reminder for myself and sometimes I work through them with my clients, such as today.
My client is having a difficult situation with one of her senior managers.
The manager has clearly made some mistakes, my client could have managed her better, but at this point my client wants to get the relationship back on the road.
After talking about it for a little bit, we went into each of Carnegie’s principles for being a leader.
It was a hugely constructive way for us to resolve this, and I thought some of you might benefit from reminding yourself of these principles too:
Be a Leader: How to Change People Without Giving Offense or Arousing Resentment
- Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
- Call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
- Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.
- Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
- Let the other person save face.
- Praise every improvement.
- Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
- Use encouragement. Make the fault seem easy to correct.
- Make the other person happy about doing what you suggest.
Those of you who have been around here for a while and know how I roll, know that part of my life is exploring how deep the rabbit hole goes.
It’s “crazy” to tell a “normal” person that you do meditation and hypnosis a couple of hours a day because you perceive that world to be deeper than this one, but that’s the truth of how I live.
I’m not into wasting time reading the news or Facebook or some other crap that people waste their time on.
I avoid their programming. I’m into programming that makes my life better.
And I know that those of you who are serious about evolving beyond this monkey brain and body that we find ourselves shoved into feel the same.
So, I invite you to a game I’ve been playing with myself for a couple of months.
I saw this chart on LinkedIn, so I decided to rip it off and put it here.
Although it’s small, I hope you can get the notion.
I’ve personally experienced this journey a number of times, and many of my friends and clients have too.
They say it takes decades to become an overnight success, and this shows you how it happens.
The 1% aren’t winning. I say it over and over again in my work, but it’s a tough pill for most people to swallow.
Intellectually, we can understand that money is not the same as happiness. But on some basic level we are all taught to equate financial success with life success. No matter what our cultural programming, it’s a statistical fact that 2/3rds of workers in America, regardless of class, admit to being unhappy in their job.
But if the 1% aren’t winning, who is?
The builders. Creators. Sure, many of them may not yet have the success that they want, but they are living a life of purpose, driven by a vision and passion to make the world a better place.
Here are five of my favorite builders:
Everyone has an opinion on surviving a recession. You remember all those terrible news spots and articles in 2008:
- “Everyone should own a liquor store, downturns never affect them!”
- “You should work in healthcare. Even broke people get sick!”
- “Just start a dropshipping company and sell fake purses. It always works!”
And underlying all that advice is one thing:
Happiness in your career and life is irrelevant, just so long as you feel a little safer financially.
If that’s how you feel about your life, then there’s no reason for you to read ahead. Happily stagnate forever. If you want to live a life where you are constantly moving forward, where you are always bettering yourself and moving towards what you truly want, then read on.
Right after the credit bubble burst in 2008, shocked, people scrambled desperately for answers.
Turning to the economists, nearly all of whom failed to predict the deepest recession in decades, they asked, “What will happen next?”
Having seen the obvious writing on the enormous wall of debt shadowing the world, and positioned myself perfectly in a distressed debt investing job, I found it terribly amusing.
If the world’s “smartest” economists couldn’t even see the credit crisis coming, then, how would they have any clue about where we are now headed?
Obama And Trump Won The Same Way
I won’t even turn on the TV or Internet to watch the mostly useless talking heads endlessly debate how “this could have happened.”
Nearly all of them had absolutely no clue before, so, why on earth would they see it any more clearly today?
They won’t. You can already see them blaming Wikileaks, or whatnot.
They will cry in their lattes, but most of them will never get how Trump pulled this off, because they never bothered to ask how Barack Obama did it.
Mesmerized by his nice sounding words, and slow, melodic voice, buying into the meme of the messiah, they simply failed to see they were being influenced.
I am often reminded of the difference between how we like to think the world works, and how it really works.
Years ago when we were doing some work for a public pension fund I learned that in some government jobs there’s a standard racket.
Pensions are set off their final year income, so it’s standard to jack up your overtime in your final year before retirement, so you not only earn more that year, but every year for the rest of your life.
To those who do it, it’s just part of the racket, it’s normal. It’s still wrong.
When you hear stuff like that you think, ugh, it just sucks that otherwise ethical people accept that as truth.
What is Truth?
There’s a lot of that in this election.
Get harder.
More focused.
Become stronger.
Get better.
Keep going!
You’re going to quit at least one job in your life, probably several. In fact, 2.8 million Americans quit their jobs every month. You know what’s heartbreaking about that statistic?
Virtually none of those 2.8 million people know how to quit their job and still win.
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.
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.
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?
I love this quote from T.S. Eliot— “If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?”
It reminds me of this quote from Mario Andretti— “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.”
There’s a common theme here, right?
The other day my buddy Paulo threw a backflip off a jump in Vail.
He landed it near perfectly but he blasted off the bindings on the backs of his skis, which apparently weren’t built for his type of crazy.
Now, truth be told, while it is pretty nuts to throw a backflip on skis, when you understand the process behind it, it’s not that crazy.
Some years ago Paulo and I were hanging out in Manhattan with his buddy Nick who is pretty handy on a motorcycle.
Both guys were having a good laugh about how Nick used to jump his dirt bike over one of the neighbors houses.
“WHAT?” I said to him. “I used to ride dirt bikes, but I never did anything that crazy.”
He went on to say that it’s not that crazy when you simply build up to it over time, a notion he called Raising the Baseline.
He said, at first you start with small jumps, then you get to bigger jumps, and before you know it seems quite normal to be soaring over the neighbor’s house.
Doing a backflip on skis works the same way.
Paulo started jumping with skis on a trampoline, then down a ramp into a pool, then into an air bag, and once he built the confidence and competence to not kill himself, he raised the baseline to go vertical on snow.
While these two examples are extreme, we all have plenty of our own experiences of just how far we can take it when we are first willing to get in over our heads.
Yesterday on a lift, a guy from Boston got asking me about what I do.
After telling me that he too wants to do more of what he wants…he asked, “What is one secret that you can give me right now in 35 seconds?”
I told him, it’s easy for me, but you’re probably not going to like it.
That’s because it’s one simple idea, but it requires doing something hard…
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Commit yourself to developing new skills…commit yourself to get better. “
So, I asked him, if you could develop one skill that would have the most impact in getting more of what you want, what would it be?
“What do you mean?” he asked.
From what I knew about his job he needs to be disciplined in how he uses his time, and he drives his path to success by selling himself and his firm.
Naturally I asked him, “If you commit yourself to this year building mastery at managing your time and learning skills of selling, won’t you get more of what you want?
He agreed, so I threw him two shortcuts: Eat That Frog and How To Master The Art of Selling are two books that give you a good start on mastering both skills.
Done. 35 seconds.
That’s the secret. But it’s also the easy part.
Now it’s up to him to put in the effort and practice to learn the skills for doing he wants…
My buddy emailed to tell me that storm Kayla was coming through Colorado so I checked the snow report—
“Looking ahead, we’ll see a strong storm hit Colorado on Saturday…very heavy snow on Saturday afternoon and Saturday night with double digit (10+ inch) snow totals…”
Woo-hoo!!!!
That’s how I feel, especially given I postponed my trip to New York, again (actually, again, again, again).
Some time ago I set the goal to infuse more and more pleasure into all things.
It really started when my friend Jane got into hypnosis and she showed me how just by imagining a time in your life you can feel that way again.
And in fact, if you really build up this memory and intensify the amazing feelings you had back then, you can feel as though it is happening again now.
When I started writing, the predominate strong negative emotion was ARRGGHH and I had to discipline (force) myself to write by sticking to a schedule.
Over time as I kept writing I learned to enjoy it more, but I wanted to truly love doing it.
I no longer wanted it to be something I forced myself to do, but something that I went to bed excited to wake up and do.
Like as a kid on Christmas Eve barely able to sleep because I was so excited to wake up and tear open the presents, I wanted to feel the same way.
How would it be if you could wake up with this type of excitement?
How amazing would it be to live this way every day?
What would you have to think or do to keep “rehearsing” feeling this way?
Like, for me, just imagining waking up on Sunday to a foot of snow gets me there…
My friend said to me, “You’re obviously very self-aware, so you probably know this…”
I thought, OK, where is this headed?
Then he said, “There is a marked difference in the way that you write when you are in Vail relative to when you are in NYC.”
Hmmm, I’d just come off a site I write at and read some hater comments and I thought, here we go…
Then he said, “Your tone, your timbre, the way you write, it’s all different.”
OK. Good or bad, different?
Then he said, “It’s just more upbeat..it’s more like a…forceful positivity.
It surprised me. I hadn’t seen that.
You don’t notice your nose every time you look out even though it is stuck on the front of your face, but upon further consideration it was all quite obvious.
On my way out to Vail in November I wrote an angry piece about the media 24/7 blasting news about the Paris bombings in order to drive ratings…
When I got to Vail, I paid zero attention to all that.
Just leaving NYC and coming to Vail I stopped talking to people about the noise of the world, the economy, the pathetically JV debates we call an election, the markets, credit bubble, unemployment, and whatnot.
In Vail you don’t talk to people about that; you mostly just talk about how awesome it is.
How awesome was that run? How awesome is the snow? Man, it’s so awesome just to be out here…
You may not be a fish but your environment is your reality.
Hopefully you had a chance to do part one of this exercise that you can find here.
There you reviewed 2015, in particular focusing on re-living the ways that you killed it and could have killed it more, even imagining that you had…That was step one.
Here’s step two: Set goals for 2016.
Here you’re going to lay out five categories of goals for 2016. And you’re not just going to set them, but work your way through a ridiculously powerful four-step process to get yourself to stick to your goals…
1. Set the vision: Dream and scheme, baby. Sit back, close your eyes if you want, and imagine your year playing out how you want it to be. Really imagine it. See it. Make it bigger and brighter. And feel it. Really feel like this is your year, and watch yourself taking the actions and getting the results you want.
Now, for a few moments go beyond this year: Look out 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, a lifetime, and see how 2016 is setting you up! Feel the excitement!!
2. Choose five categories of goals. You will break down each goal in more detail in step 3, but for now choose your goals.
For instance, my five goals are: Loving my fabulous life (yes, I set it as my #1 goal to be loving my life). Driving my business. Family. Friends. And most importantly, my spiritual path and serving. Notice that for me common goals like health, personal development, mindset, and success are missing because they are omnipresent in my life. Some others might be missing that are most important for you.
3. Break down each goal into sub-goals (e.g. a sub-goal of Driving my business is writing my third book), set specific goals for 2016, and then apply the filters A-E:
A. Add Pain: Look, the truth is that us humans more often than not respond to pain more than pleasure. So before you get all excited about what you get from achieving your goals, first ask yourself, what pain will you get from failing to commit and take action? What pain will you feel if you let yourself down? If you wimp out? Will you feel like someone who can’t cut it? Someone who isn’t willing to do what it takes to succeed? Is that who you are? Feel it, add that pain to giving up on your goals, and give yourself the leverage you might need.
B. Add Pleasure: Really feel what you get from your goals. Don’t just think about it, but really feel it. I mean, really. So, if you said, you want a new man or woman in your life, ask yourself, what do you get through that? What is the feeling? Loving someone? Being loved? Sharing deeply? Really, go into the feeling and ask yourself, what do you get through that feeling? If it’s being loved, what do you get through that? And through that? And that? Keep asking this question, going deeper into bliss, and tying as much pleasure as you can to your goals…
C. Get clear on your outcome: Get clear on your target and visualize your goal, feeling what it’s like to blow through your target. Really feel it. Imagine yourself at the end of 2016 looking back and seeing that you killed it. How does this feel? Really, again, like you did in Step B, go deep into this feeling. Punch the air. Celebrate. Imagine what you will do and how you will feel. Imagine, who have you become?
D. Get clear on your process: The reason most people will never get what they want is because they are focused on “manifesting” the outcome, when they need to be absorbed in taking the actions that drive success. Look forward and get clear on what needs to happen to get the results you want. Draw up a plan, imagine yourself taking the actions, and commit right now to take them. Infuse the pleasure of your goal into the actions you imagine taking and also the pain you will get from failing to take them…
E. Get BETTER: Goals are not about what you get, but who you are becoming. Look, if you’ve set a real goal (one that actually requires you to get better or otherwise fail), then you must grow if you want to succeed. So, how are you going to grow? How do you see yourself differently? What do you commit to do differently every day to become the person who is crushing your goals? Write out five things you plan to do differently and apply pain to failing to do them. Is that overcoming fears? Building new skills? Training your mind and body for success? Again, commit yourself to doing what it takes, ask yourself how you will feel if you wimp out, and commit to take action.
4. Super-review: For each of your goals, take your time to carefully work through Steps A-E. Then, after you imagine each goal coming together, sit back and close your eyes for at least ten minutes and imagine all of the pieces coming together making your year even more magical than you could have imagined.
I suggest you take hours if not days or weeks (as I have with a number of clients) to write out detailed ideas for these steps and to specifically tune how your pain and pleasure and focus and actions and growth bring all of this together for you.
Then for the duration of 2016, review a summary of your goals every morning, and the detailed notes at least every couple of weeks. Use this to hold yourself to your goals and to commit yourself to the progress targets required to achieve them.
Oh, and have fun. I’m serious. Look, I’m serious about goals. I’m serious about my business. I’m serious about you getting what you want, but you’ve gotta be having fun. This life, this one moment, this one year, this is all we have…LOVE IT
Think of Kobe Bryant. He’s competitive as heck and wants to win, but every time he runs out on the court he’s playing the game he loves…AND KILLING IT.
Make 2016 the same way!
When I was back in LA I drove my old 911 Turbo which my buddy now owns.
Leaving dinner he kindly invited me to drive, and after adjusting the seat and mirrors, flicking the switch into sport mode we made a beeline for The 10.
Dropping it back into 2nd, nudging the front-end around the corner onto the ramp, I did what I used to do—I throttled it.
Twin turbos blowing, 500 foot-pounds of torque shooting through the P zeros on the front and rear, we launched.
Hitting third I merged with the late night traffic doing close to double their speed. Hitting fourth we left them long behind the whirl of the turbos, and by fifth, well, by then I was braking and backing it off.
Slowing down, my face lit up like a teenage boy discovering a stack of Playboy’s in the garage, I remembered back to the first time I did that.
It was the day I bought the car, only it went a little differently back then. Without any restraint, flooring it in fourth doing some ungodly speed, I hit the redline.
In that instant the car burped and lost all of its power. I learned when to back it off and when to find another gear.
Many people have the same dynamic in their career.
What about you? Is it time to back it off or find another gear?