Changing Your Story

That’s from Lesson #2: “Find Your Reason Why.”

Note: Lesson #1 is “Take Responsibility.” As we’ve discussed MANY times... We can’t do ANYTHING Heroic until we’ve taken ABSOLUTE responsibility for our lives—which is why Stephen Covey says this quality of being proactive/response-able is Habit #1 of Highly Effective People and why Jocko Willink wrote an entire book on the subject called Extreme Ownership.

It’s also why Bill quotes another legendary coach named Bill. Bill Belichick tells us: “Responsibility means doing what you’re supposed to do, when you’re supposed to do it. It means being where you’re supposed to be, when you’re supposed to be there. It means doing what you say you’re going to do, and doing right by yourself and by others.”

In short... Victims make excuses, whine, complain, and blame others for their problems. Heroes decide what they want, set a clear target, and do their best to hit it.

So... Once we’ve taken 100% responsibility for our lives, it’s time to ask ourselves what we REALLY (REALLY!) (REALLY!!) want to see in our lives.

Asking this question is, for the record, THE fastest way to shift from Victim to Hero.

Rather than acting like a Victim and complaining about all the things that AREN’T going the way we want, we need to act like a Hero and ask ourselves, “WHAT DO I WANT?”

So... With that in mind... WHAT DO YOU WANT?

As in... What do you REALLY (!) REALLY (!!) REALLY (!!!) want?

Get clear on that. Then ask yourself: How badly do I want it?

As in... What price are you going to need to pay? Get clear on that. Then get busy paying it.

P.S. Of course, as you know if you’ve been following along, science says that the best way to make our dreams a reality is to WOOP it. Check out this +1 and our Notes on Rethinking Positive Thinking for more on the power of knowing what you want, knowing WHY you want it THEN taking the time to identify the obstacles you’ll face and mapping out a plan to dominate.

P.P.S. Matt Fitzgerald actually wrote an entire book on this subject appropriately called How Bad Do You Want It? Fitzgerald uses the legendary runner Steve Prefontaine as a case study in the book. In fact, an iconic picture of Prefontaine is on the cover of the book.

Which makes me think of a poster I saw on the wall of Joe De Sena’s wrestling gym when I visited a couple months ago. It has a Prefontaine quote on it. He says: “No matter how hard you train, Somebody will train harder. No matter how hard you run, Somebody will run harder. No matter how hard you want it, Somebody will want it more. I am Somebody.”

That’s from Lesson #4: “Set No Limits — Believe in Yourself.”

There’s a LOT of wisdom in there we can unpack.

Let’s start with the first step in Bill’s process of helping his athletes go to the next level in their performance. What did he START with? The same thing Dr. Nate Zinsser starts with in his great book The Confident Mind—which ALSO happens to be the first thing WE start with when we train our trainers to run their own Heroic workshops.

We need to START by celebrating all of our PRIOR successes. David Goggins calls it his “Cookie Jar.” We call them “Hero Bars.” Whatever YOU want to call it, you’d be wise to KNOW you can succeed in hitting your next big goal and one of the most powerful ways to build that confidence is to start by taking an inventory of all your PAST successes.

With that in mind...

Pause for a moment and think of THREE of the things you’re MOST PROUD OF. Think about a few times in your life when you were at your ABSOLUTE BEST. Feast on those Hero Bars.

Next...

Create a “picture of perfection.” Create a “vision of the very best that could happen, assuming all goes well.” This is the first step in WOOP. We need to START with a vision of everything going GREAT. This is also the essence of Sonja Lyubomirsky’s “Best Selves Diary” in which she tells us to fast-forward 1-3-5+ years and imagine everything in your life being AWESOME.

If you feel so inspired, do it now.

Imagine that BIG GOAL you REALLY (!) want to hit. See yourself showing up as your absolute best. You work hard. Everything comes together. Feel the power of you achieving that which you aspire to achieve.

Then...

Think about who will be your “belief partner.”

When I read the story of the young tennis player and his mom, I thought of being the dad to a young chess player who aspires for greatness. I’m typing this with a big smile and some tears in my eyes thinking about how much I LOVE being there for my big guy.

For whom will YOU be a belief partner? And who will be YOURS on your Heroic quest(s)?!

Finally...

We have “What’s next?”

The great British swimmer Adam Peaty wrote the foreword to the book. I’m typing this in July 2024. The Paris Olympics are in full effect. In fact, just YESTERDAY, Adam came within two one-hundredths of a second of becoming the first person since Michael Phelps to win a gold medal in three consecutive Olympics. His story is incredibly inspiring—in AND out of the pool.

And... When I read about “What’s next?” I IMMEDIATELY thought of some wisdom from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book Be Useful.

He tells us: “There’s a story about Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to summit Mount Everest. When he came back down to base camp, he was met by reporters who asked him what the view was like at the top of the world. He said it was incredible, because while he was up there he saw another mountain in the Himalayan range that he hadn’t climbed yet, and he was already thinking about the route he would take to summit that peak next.

When you reach the mountaintop, it gives you a brand new perspective on the rest of the world, on the rest of your life. You see new challenges that were out of sight before, and you see old challenges in new ways. With this huge victory now under your belt, they all become conquerable.”

P.S. Speaking of Michael Phelps, his book is called No Limits. He tells us: “If you put a limit on anything, you put a limit on how far you can go. I don’t think anything is too high. If you think about doing the unthinkable, you can. The sky is the limit. Anything is possible. I deliberately set very high goals for myself; I work very hard to get there.”

P.P.S. When I think of a tennis player imagining themselves performing at their best, I think of one of THE original mental toughness classics: The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallway. Check out those Notes for some powerful peak performance wisdom!

That’s from Lesson #8 called “Raise Your Bottom Line — Aim for Mastery Not Perfection.”

There’s some REALLY (!) powerful wisdom in that passage. I’m reminded of a number of 1-on-1 coaching chats I recently had with some of THE most elite athletes in the world. Figuring out how to hold ourselves to super-high standards WHILE not diminishing our performance by slipping into toxic perfectionism is a REALLY big deal for them. And, of course, for ALL of us.

Check out Conquering Perfectionism 101 and my Notes on Tal Ben Shahar’s GREAT book The Pursuit of Perfect for some of my favorite Big Ideas on the subject.

For now, know this: As Tal tells us, there are two forms of “perfectionism.” One is actually healthy and the other is definitely not. The PRIMARY difference between the two? Although they BOTH hold themselves to VERY (!) high standards, the healthy perfectionists (which Tal calls “optimalists”) EMBRACES the fact that they will NEVER (!) be perfect.

They know that their vision of a perfect performance and/or perfect life is a GUIDING STAR pointing them in the right direction NOT a distant shore that will someday be reached.

So... They let go of the need to be 100% perfect and focus on doing their BEST—especially AFTER they *didn’t* do their best.

Note: That’s a REALLY big distinction.

And... That’s why I love the 60% → 90% → 100% distinction from Bill.

If you’re expecting 100% perfection and you INEVITABLY (!) don’t hit it, you are likely to beat yourself up and then you’re likely to wind up at 60% performance and then you’re likely to REALLY beat yourself up! (Right?)

But... If you can remember the fact that you will NEVER (!) achieve perfection in ANY area of your life, then, when you INEVITABLY make a mistake, you can quickly alchemize it and get back to work.

THEN... You focus on closing the gap between 60% and 90% rather than trying to do the impossible of closing the gap between 90% and 100%. THAT is how we consistently dominate.

P.S. That’s also why, in The 10 Pillars of Mental Performance Mastery, Brian Cain tells us: “Everyone talks about raising the roof. In reality, it’s about raising your basement so that you have good bad days and are better on your bad days than most people are on their good days—because you can focus better and have better habits and a more elite mindset.”

That’s ALSO why Tony Robbins says that perfection is actually the LOWEST possible standard we can set for ourselves for the simple reason that it is IMPOSSIBLE to hit.

P.P.S. Ben Bergeron—one of the world’s best CrossFit coaches—wrote an entire book on the subject. It’s one of my all-time favorites. It’s called Chasing Excellence. The title is inspired by Vince Lombardi’s quote: “Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.”

Those are the final words of the book. Once again, there’s a lot we can discuss. I want to focus on a couple things. First, here’s a friendly reminder that the ULTIMATE GAME we are all playing comes down to TWO opponents... You vs. YOU.

There’s the best, most Heroic version of yourself that knows what you want, knows what you need to do to get it and then consistently DOES the things you KNOW you need to do and, very importantly (!) also KNOWS you’ll never do any of this stuff perfectly and... There’s the OTHER version of you that DOESN’T take the time to get the clarity and pay the price, etc.

Here’s the question: Which version of you wins? As I say as I conclude every one of my keynotes with this wisdom: “IT’S NOT DEBATEABLE.” The version of you that more consistently shows up as your best self will win. BUT ONLY... EVERY... SINGLE... TIME!!!

Then there’s the fact that we need to be COACHABLE. One of the most fascinating parts of my recent Top Secret trip to work with those elite athletes was the fact that THE most powerful guy in the room was, by far, THE most curious and engaged and coachable. It was astonishing.

Which makes me think of Mark Divine’s wisdom from Uncommon in which he tells us that Microsoft’s co-founder Paul Allen once said: “Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast, or a bridge player.’”

With all that in mind, I ask you... What do you REALLY want? And... How bad do you want it?

Here’s to forging excellence, activating our Heroic potential and fulfilling our destinies so we can change the world one person at a time, together, starting with you and me...

TODAY.