Get Better & Stay that Way

Sports psychologist and executive coach Graham Jones 5 Leadership Lessons as published in Harvard Business Review

1. Learn to Love the Pressure
“I never made any sacrifices; I made choices.” – Greg Searle

Dan’s comment: pressure is what forges us to become better. Pressure focuses us on the importance essence of who we really are. Link to J.K Rowling about getting to her essence by hitting rock bottom.

2. Fixate on the Long Term.
Long term success is paved with small achievements

Dan’s comment: without the perspective of long-term success you will never get through the short-term pain. You must start with the end in mind or you will quit before you get there.

3. Iron Sharpens Iron.
Train with people who push you the hardest.

Dan’s comment: If you hangout with people who don’t push themselves to greatness you will never get moral support from them to push yourself to greatness. Cultures have benchmark ideals and if you want to be bland hangout with bland people. If you want to be great, hangout with other people who also want to be great.

4. Reinvent Yourself.
While it’s good to feel challenged, you need to make sure that any feedback you get is constructive.

Dan’s comment: Tony Robbins calls it the power of CANI; Continuing and Never-ending Improvement. You will never be able to hit 100% potential because once you hit your perceived benchmark you are capable of being better. But in order to become better you have to look at the situation differently and come up with a new plan to become better. You can’t get there from here. What you are doing is getting you the results you have. If you want different results you have to do things differently. It is the Law of Attraction, what you have is what you really want. If you really want something different you will change to get different. The difference between what you really want and what you think you want is the battle between your real values vs. ego driven desired and perceived values.

5. Celebrate the Victories.
The very best performers do not move on before they have scrutinized and understood thoroughly the factors underpinning their success.

Dan’s comment: Celebration is to release the past and move on toward future goals while understanding the now. Using the power of CANI to understand that you are capable hitting or smashing your goals. Celebration is empowering yourself to reinforce victories and to remember how you did it so you can recognize how to get to that sweet spot in your mind and to see a future goal that will happen just as easily.

Look Within to Find Greatness

Stop looking for something out there
And begin seeing within.
Open your arms if you want an embrace.
Break the earthen idols and release the radiance.

—Rumi, from ‘Empty the Glass of your Desire’

You are the Genie in the bottle. Too many people are looking for that next big thing to fill their soul. Too many people are buying self-help books but not doing anything but reading the first chapter. The answers are all within you. J.K. Rowling had to hit rock bottom in her life to discover what she had known since she was a kid. All the great stories are all within you, just don’t wait until you hit rock bottom to discover them.

J.K. Rowling’s Harvard Speech

A great speech on the liberating benefits of failure and deciding to accept who you always were and will always be.

“So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91232541&ft=1&f=1001