This week, I return to an old favorite book of mine after a exactly a decade – something that I read around this time in 2013. This book has been an inspiration for me, and has influenced me in my journey – so I have to say I did reread it with a bit of trepidation. Sometimes when you reread an old book which you love, it disappoints you – I’m glad to say this one didn’t.
Two Legendary Coaches
Even though the book claims “executive toughness” – the scope of the book is not limited to executives. It is applicable for anyone, and many of the examples are from sports. In fact, the whole premise of the book is based on the life and philosophy of two legendary coaches.
#1: Coach John Wooden: John Wooden is considered one of the greatest coaches in the history of American Sports. Born in 1910, he began his basketball career in high school and eventually led Purdue Boilermakers to national championship in 1932. He eventually turned to coaching and was head coach of UCLA from 1948 to 1975. He led UCLA Bruins to 10 NCAA championship wins, including an unprecedented seven in a row from 1967 to 1972, and a record 88-game winning streak from 1971 to 1974. You can listen to a small tribute to coach Wooden here:
#2 Coach Dan Gable: Gable is a legendary American Wrestler and coach. He won the freestyle wrestling gold in 1972 Munich Olympics without losing a single point throughout the tournament. He retired from competitive wrestling with a career record of 181-1 and was named the greatest wrestler of the 20th century in 1999. But his legacy as a coach was even more significant. In his 21-year career as a coach, he coached 45 national champions, and 12 Olympians. His teams set an NCAA record with nine consecutive championships from 1978 to 1986. You can listen to Dan Gable in the “Joe Rogan Experience” here:
You’re going to survive. So why not win?
You can go with the flow of life and “just survive”. Or you can win.
But what's the obstacle that's preventing you from a win?
There are minor obstacles to your win – also called “road bumps”. You will fall down, your kids will get sick, your superiors may overlook or disrespect you and your competition inside or outside will beat you from time to time.
But these are things you could always recover from. The real obstacles are self-imposed.
Here’s the most common self imposed ones.
#1: Apathy - or the lack of passion
You are in your comfort zone, and you are going "with the flow" of life. They are moving but to no place in particular.
Solution: “What goes with the flow? A dead fish.” Decide who you want to be and what you want to do!
#2: Laziness - or the lack of motivation
Laziness is a habit, and just like any other habit, it can be broken. Laziness breeds more laziness!
Solution: Just as you learned yourself to be lazy, you can teach yourself to be industrious. An easy cure is to adopt the mentality of "sacrifice early, reward later". You need to do the mandatory work (see process goals later) to get the reward of watching TV, as an example.
The Third one is so important; I am going to make that as a chapter of its own.
#3: Fear - or lack of confidence
I am going to spend some time on it, because this is a big one in my opinion. Also fear is often the most undetected, because people only consider “fear” as in being afraid of an opponent, a bully or a boss. These kind of fears are easy to detect.
The real fear is far more subtle, and hence undetected.
Let’s look at a few examples:
#1 Fear of not being able to live up to your own goals and expectations.
Many of us have certain expectations about our abilities and we fear trying your hardest and still coming up short. Instead, we could use an excuse like "If I had really wanted to, I could have accomplished this... but chose not to." Or maybe playing a victim with “If only I had better circumstances/spouse/parents/boss/…”
Solution: Decide on one important goal in life and then go for it. Let it all hang out. Tell your friends about it. Give it your all. You'll dramatically increase your chance for success - and even if you miss it - you'll learn a lot -most important of it being taking ownership.
#2 Fear is not living up to other's expectations.
Maybe you were brought up as a "good " boy or girl who's always following directions and seeking to impress your parents or boss (or someone else significant in your life). So, you like accounting but chose Sales because your girlfriend thoughts accountants were sissies. Or you wanted to be a chef but chose to be a doctor because your parents would disapprove. And you are stuck in the vicious cycle of impressing others rather than living your life.
Solution: The best way to handle this fear is to value your own opinion, needs and wants just a bit more than you value other's opinions, needs and wants. Learn to say no. Focus on owning your feelings, and let others own theirs. Will you disappoint others? Yes. But it's way better than the alternative - chronically disappointing yourself.
Now that we took that out of the way let’s go to the three phases of mental toughness as highlighted in the book.
Deciding your Win
“Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.
Alice: ...So long as I get somewhere.
The Cheshire Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.”
You can’t win unless you can define who you are and what your win is. And much like Alice, even if you win, how will you ever know if you have won?
Define your win involves what your values are, what your priorities are in life are, what is your purpose is.
Now, most people would be a little overwhelmed thinking of a life purpose to be something grand like as Steve Jobs “creating a dent in the universe” or have truly altruistic purpose like Mother Theresa had.
It does not have to be. Here are two simple examples from the book:
A doctor I know has the purpose of serving others.
A client of mine who is a corporate attorney has the purpose of achieving greatness.
What about priorities?
Here again, don’t make the mistake of thinking it has to be something grand. Here’s a sample form the book. This one is for Steve, a financial advisor with Wells Fargo.
1. The first most important thing in my life is my relationship with myself; I want to be honest, hardworking, healthy, fun-loving, giving, courageous, and connected to God.
2. My relationships with my wife and kids are also of great importance to me. I want to be present in their lives. I want to have a great relationship built on love and friendship with each of them.
3. Career is the third priority in my life. It is important to me to be successful. I would like to attain a great level of financial stability for my family by helping my clients have the financial stability they strive for as well.
So go ahead and decide your purpose. Once you defined it, be mindful of the self-communication to yourself. Many fall into the trap of the self-communication not aligned with their own self-image and instead of enriching, destroys it.
Doing what need to be done
Once you are clear about who you are and what your priorities are in life, you are ready for the next stage. Deciding on your goals, and breaking it down to the habits that leads to those goals. Here, the authors use the terminology of “product goals” and “process goals”. I like using the far simpler terminology of goals and habits (aka “systems”). I must say this part is not explained very well here, so I would very much like to recommend you the brilliant book “How to Fail at Everything and Still Win” by Scott Adams where he explains why “Systems Trump Goals”.
But let’s get to the book. You define what needs to be done by choosing 1-3 Product goals. These are ideally some form of BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) that you should be proud of once you attain them. Make sure there are not too many – success is definitely not overworking and killing yourself.
Make your goals count, don’t count your goals.
Make sure your goals are well balanced as well – you should have a career goal, and a personal goal at least.
Now that you have your Product Goals (or just goals), you get to define your Process goals (aka habits or systems). You should have up to three process goals for each product goal. The process goals are things you’d do every day towards your product goal.
Here’s an example:
It has been shown that people who have written down goals have a 900% higher chance of achieving them. Yet only 20% of the population have defined goals and only 10% have written down goals. Why? Check the chapter on fear above!
Focus: Improving Execution and Consistency
So, you have your product and process goals. Well done!
But wait, we have just begun our journey…
To reach the top, we would be to do them every day, measure yourself on yur progress and hold yourself accountable for the execution.
Here are some simple and helpful tips:
Your process goals should be your biggest priority. Make sure you do them first – so you don’t get lost in your daily routine.
Emphasize the start. Everyone has inertia – doing cardio for 30 minutes sounds difficult. Emphasize the start instead – focus on doing cardio for 5 minutes, or just starting the first of those 20 cold calls. Once you cross the inertia stage, things will take care of itself. I recommend a great book called “The 5 Second Rule” by Mel Robbins here.
Evaluate how you did – it’s a part of taking accountability. Measure what could be improved and write them down in a journal.
Stay healthy - you need stamina to maintain focus and energy. Eat well, sleep well, and get regular exercises.
Mental exercises are as important as regular exercises. Your mind can and must be trained like a muscle. Remember those purpose, priorities, and goals? Internalize them and mentally revise them each day so they are a part of your DNA.
Optimism: Overcoming all Obstacles
People often confuse optimism with hope. Hope is that things will be set all right by a divine power or a pseudo religious belief like “universe will conspire to give you what you truly wish for” as propagated in the viral book The Secret.
True optimism comes from the belief that your own accountability, focus and hard-work cause positive outcomes. It’s about having trust in your process and your discipline to overcome all odds.
Two key concepts here are:
#1 Move from PCT to RCF
PCT is Problem Centric Thought. Our brains are somewhat biologically programmed to focus on problems - so a little bit of PCT is unavoidable. However, we should fight back against this and focus on RSF – or Relentless Solution Focus. Sounds complicated, but it’s simple in practice. Every time you are faced with a problem, you simply ask "What's the number one thing I can do right now to make the situation better?" If you know that one thing do it, and then ask “what’s the next thing I can do?”.
Yeah, you keep doing it until the problem is resolved. There’s a reason it’s called “Relentless” Solution Focus.
(Note: don’t forget to think smart here. Is this a problem in the first place?)
#2: Discipline
There’s no getting around the discipline part. Discipline delivers success. There will be off days, you will fall, you will fail, you will be tired. You must trust the system and keep going at it. And you should finish all your process goals. It would be tough in the beginning, but discipline is also a muscle. With practice, self-discipline becomes a habit.
“True optimism comes from the belief that your own accountability, focus and hard-work cause positive outcomes. It’s about having trust in your process and your discipline to overcome all odds.”
Amen! I try and live by that.