Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance - Notes on the Book by Jonathan Fields8/11/2012
Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance by Jonathan Fields
I liked this book much better than his first one, and it also popped on my radar just as I needed it. I particularly like the idea of rituals. It’s hard to sell mastery of entrepreneurship, marketing, and lifestyle without being able to succeed at those very things in your own business and life. The interesting thing about these ratings is that they aren’t based so much on the difficulty of the entire climb as on a set of moves known as the crux. Crux moves are the most challenging moments of the entire route; they often require you to push physically, emotionally, and intellectually, to take big and often blind risks in a way no other part of the climb does. There may be multiple crux moves along a single route. The manner in which you handle the thousands of smaller moments of uncertainty and challenge along the way determines whether you get to the crux moves. But the way you handle the crux moves themselves so strongly determines whether you’ll actually reach the peak that the difficulty of the most challenging crux sequence is often used to rate the entire climb. The book begins with an in-depth exploration of the three psychic horsemen of creation: uncertainty, risk, and exposure to criticism. When you begin, nothing is certain save the drive to create something worth the effort. The more certain you are of the answer or the outcome in advance, the more likely it is to have been done already—to be derivative—and the less anyone will care, including you. Anything certain has already been done. Or you can stand up and make a conscious choice to wade back into uncertain waters, knowing you’ve now invested time, money, and energy in an endeavor that, without substantial alteration, is going to end up a dud. These are tough moments, and ones that no creator in any realm can avoid. Creators need data. They need judgment, feedback, and criticism. But the possibility of loss is also a signpost that what you’re doing really matters, that you’re vested in both the process and the outcome. Knowing that fuels a deeper commitment to action and to striving not just to create something, but to create something amazing. Risk of loss has to be there. You cannot create genius without having skin in the game. Kill the risk of loss and you destroy meaning and one of the core motivations for action. The more you’re able to tolerate ambiguity and lean into the unknown, the more likely you’ll be to dance with it long enough to come up with better solutions, ideas, and creations. The two banks, it turns out, deliberately built their core philosophies, modes of operations, and culture around radically different ideals. For her book Bullish on Uncertainty (2009), business professor Alexandra Michel conducted a three-year study of the two banks. This approach was designed to deliberately amplify uncertainty, to force bankers to constantly reexamine what they were doing and why, and to keep them from falling into a pattern in which their perception of knowledge, expertise, and prestige blinded them to seeing the needs of any given client at any given time. It wasn’t unusual for them to report feeling overwhelmed and anxious as they tried to navigate those waters with very little structure. They immediately had to abandon a sense that they could rely on their own abilities and knowledge to get any deal done. Instead, they learned to harness all the resources of the firm and respond with the freshest eyes possible to what was in front of them. The ability not only to endure but to invite, amplify, and exalt uncertainty, then reframe it as fuel is paramount to your ability to succeed as a creator. Genius always starts with a question, not an answer. Eliminate the question and you eliminate the possibility of genius. However, that’s where things get really sticky. For all but a rare few, “living in the question” hurts. It causes anxiety, fear, suffering, and pain. And people don’t like pain. Rather than lean into it, we do everything possible to snuff it out. Not because we have to, but because we can’t handle the discomfort that we assume “has to” go along with the quest. The aversion to uncertainty, it seems, is hardwired into most people. a part of the brain known as the amygdala, which is a core instigator of fear and anxiety, lights up, triggering a cascade of physiological and psychological events, sending impulses and chemicals rushing through our bodies that induce a state of hyperalertness and, for many, anywhere from mild to severe fear and anxiety. “Remarkably, eliminating the possibility of evaluation by others makes ambiguity aversion disappear entirely.... Introducing the possibility of evaluation . . . is sufficient to make ambiguity aversion reemerge as strongly as commonly found.” We’ll create with abandon, make bolder choices, lean into uncertainty, and take risks far more readily if we know that whatever comes out of that effort will never be revealed to others. The moment we introduce the element of exposure, judgment, criticism, and the potential for rejection, most people run for the certainty fences. And in doing so, they become less willing to push boundaries, take risks, and choose less-certain options that often yield the greatest opportunities. In reality, we may not be as hardwired to avoid uncertainty as we are hardwired to avoid wanting to be judged for taking the lessmainstream path and coming up empty. Fear of judgment stifles our ability to embrace uncertainty and as part of that process delivers a serious blow to our willingness to create anything that hasn’t already been done and validated. One of the biggest awakenings as you strive to build a project, a career, and a life worthy of a legacy is that, in the end, there is no there there. No resting point. No certainty. No place to hide from either the inner or outer critics. The book may be finished, the movie wrapped, the company launched, or the product revealed. But what will you do when you go to work tomorrow? You and what you create will remain, to varying degrees, in a state of constant evolution. For Winsor, it’s not about tempting fate, it’s about going to that place where magic happens. “When the risks are big,” Winsor shared with me, “it’s where I feel most alive. In a weird way, it’s almost a meditative thing. When a lot’s on the line, whether it’s a big business deal or surfing a scary wave, I get so focused. Things slow down. The tiniest of details become alive, the feeling of a pebble beneath your shoe on a rock wall or the real meaning of a sentence in a business deal.” That experience, to Winsor, is what it’s all about. Rather than deterring action, he’s figured out how to experience it as the place from which the greatest opportunities arise. Indeed, the very activities he engages in, especially outside of work, and the consistency with which he undertakes them may be at the root of his ability to experience scenarios that would paralyze others as opportunities to go deeper. Junger’s seeming ability to harness the fear that cripples so many other creators, especially writers, is something that’s been with him for as long as he can remember. In a later conversation with me, he revealed, “I just figured out how to disengage from my experience of the fear and I do that with a lot of different emotions. I can do it with anger, frustration, whatever. I start feeling it and then I could just unhook from it.... I was a climber for tree companies and I’m scared of heights, but I never got over my fear of heights. I just figured out how to not think about it. It was really simple.” FROM THE DAWN of religion, nearly every faith has been built around not just scripture, not just community, but ritual. But if you strip away the beliefs and leave only the underlying rituals, you may be surprised to discover that rituals alone still have immense power as tools to counter the anxieties of an uncertain life. A certainty anchor is a practice or process that adds something known and reliable to your life when you may otherwise feel you’re spinning off in a million different directions. For the creator, whose very existence depends on the ability to spend vast amounts of time living and operating in the ethereal sea of uncertainty and anxiety that is creation, rituals in every part of life serve as a source of psychic bedrock Joe Fig’s fascinating look at the daily routines of artists, Inside the Painter’s Studio (2009), reveals that many of them maintain a near-dogged attachment to daily routine Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance In her classic book The Creative Habit (2003), legendary choreographer Twyla Tharp shares how she would awaken at 5:30 a.m. every day, take a taxi to the gym, work out with the same trainer, shower, eat three hard-boiled egg whites and coffee, make calls for one hour, work in her studio for two hours, rehearse with her company, return home for dinner, read for a few hours, then go to bed. Every day, the same routine. “A dancer’s life,” she said, “is all about repetition.” Commenting on the role of certainty anchors in his life, Steven Pressfield, whose book The War of Art (2002) opens a window into the power of ritual in creative work, shared with me his belief that to be a writer is to live in total insecurity. You never know where your next job is coming from, you never know if the next thing you do is going to find a market. “So . . . let’s say managing my money,” he offered, “I’m the most conservative person in the world. I just give it to a friend who takes care of everything for me. The only place I take risks is in the work. And then that’s where I feel like your job is to take risks.” Creation unfolds in two fairly distinct phases: • Insight/Dot Connecting/Disruption • Refinement, Expansion, and Production. Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From (2010), REP is all about building out, testing, expanding, refining, detailing, debugging, and improving big ideas and insights. For entrepreneurs, it’s where the visionary individual generally ends up butting heads with the operations and process people charged with turning the idea into something executable and profitable. This is where ritual and routine, done right, add immense power to the process. Ritual helps train you to sit down when you most want to stand, when you’re forced to work on the part of the process that leaves you anywhere from bored to riddled with anxiety. Over time, ritual has a funny side effect. It creates momentum. It becomes a habit that builds its own head of steam, one capable of overriding the call of Twitter, Facebook, Green & Black’s Dark 85% chocolate, and trying to learn whether the rumors about Apple’s next product are true. Over time, through sheer force of practice, you begin to get better at the side of the process that empties you out. Maybe never as good as someone whose creative orientation pulls them toward it, but good enough to be better than most others who don’t work as hard at it as you do. Better than you thought you’d ever be at it. And when that happens, you begin to experience that side of the dance with greater tolerance. The distaste and anxiety diminishes just enough to make you no longer hate it. Repeated exposure to it reduces your fear of it. When writing his most recent book, Be Excellent at Anything (2010), Schwartz structured his day into three ninety-minute writing bursts that allowed him to complete the book working only four and a half hours a day for three months. Our brains, Schwartz discovered, become easily fatigued. They need breaks in order to refuel, to be able to refocus, create, and produce. In his book How We Decide (2009), Jonah Lehrer points to the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex (PFC) as the seat of selfcontrol or willpower. The problem is, the PFC is easily fatigued. In a Wall Street Journal article, Lehrer recounts an experiment conducted by Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Baba Shiv that divided students into two groups. While walking down a hallway, the members of one group had to recall a two-digit number, the members of the other a seven-digit number. During these walks, each student was offered a slice of chocolate cake or a bowl of fruit. The students trying to remember the seven-digit number were twice as likely to choose cake. Remembering the extra five digits so increased what Shiv called the “cognitive load” on their PFCs that their brains literally lost their ability to resist the cake. Willpower, it turns out, is a depletable resource. Tasks that involve heavy thinking, working memory, concentration, and creativity tax the PFC in a major way, and as Shiv’s experiment shows, Why should you care? Two reasons. What we often experience as resistance, desire, distraction, burnout, fatigue, frustration, and anxiety in the process of creating something from nothing may, at least in part, be PFC depletion that reduces our willpower to zero and makes it near impossible to commit to the task at hand—especially if the task wars with our creative orientation. In addition, what so many creators experience as a withering ability to handle the anxiety, doubt, and uncertainty as a project nears completion may actually be self-induced rather than process-induced suffering. Certainty anchors, dropped both within the context of your broader life and the boundaries of a specific creative endeavor, can be highly effective tools to counter the pull of fear, anxiety, and resistance. Explore Your Lifestyle Ritual Look at your life outside of your primary creative endeavor and see if you can create routine around the mundane, day-to-day activities. Look at your life outside of your primary creative endeavor and see if you can create routine around the mundane, day-to-day activities. Identify Your Creative Orientation Figure out which creative orientation fills you up and which empties you out: insight and big-idea generation, or refinement, expansion, and production. You may be able to evolve your starting orientation over time, but with rare exceptions we all come to the process with certain strong preferences. Ritualize Your Creation Time and Work in Bursts and Therapeutic Pauses When building your creation rituals, limit your bursts to no more than forty-five to ninety minutes, at least in the beginning. You may be able to train yourself to stay focused longer over time. Refuel Your Brain Between Bursts Between those bursts, exercise, meditate, nap, walk, eat—do whatever helps you refuel. It’s a bit like Shambala Buddhism founder Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s famous quote: “The bad news is you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there’s no ground.” All the founders make a presentation to the group on a weekly basis. There are no secrets. Nobody gets selective protection. Everyone is exposed. Transparency is the rule. This dynamic doesn’t remove judgment, nor should it. As we’ve already noted, judgment, done well, is feedback, and feedback is manna to the creation process. But what it does is change the psychology of feedback by leveling the field. It creates a group dynamic in which each creator becomes far more open to input because that input is clearly driven by the desire to help improve the creation. The all-in nature of the feedback loop also helps lessen the blow. It’s not just your ideas that are being put on the block; everyone’s ideas are. That’s the process. And that’s a good, necessary thing, as long as it’s done right. If you can’t do it live, do it online. We saw an example of that in Scott Belsky’s creation of Behance.net and The99Percent.com. These are both huge creative communities catering to the broader set of “creatives who like to get stuff done.” Now, with millions of monthly page views, they serve as tremendous showcases and sources of feedback for the participants’ work. For Belsky, the communities also serve as gateways to the suite of wonderful creative productivity tools under his Action Method brand. So far, we’ve explored how making certain changes in behavior (certainty anchors, ritual, routine, working in bursts), environment (hives), and access to individuals (like-minded colleagues, mentors, heroes, and champions) can have a significant impact on your ability to lean into the uncertainty, exposure to judgment, and risk that come with the process of creation. WELL-CRAFTED, CONSTRUCTIVE CREATION hives, buttressed by peer feedback and guidance from mentors, heroes, and champions, can be powerful supports in the quest to embrace the uncertainty of creation. They allow us to get the information we need to move the creative ball forward while minimizing the anxiety that often comes from haphazard exposure to less tactful or even maliciously inclined colleagues and leaders A huge part of the uncertainty, fear, and anxiety that defines the typical quest to create comes from a lack of input during the process of creation from those we’d most like to appeal to with our creations. When we plan a business, book, painting, or product, we take our best guesses at what will work. Then we work to either find the sweet spot between what we are organically compelled to create and what we believe people will want or ignore those we hope will eventually love our creations in the name of staying true to our muse. The process, for many, is largely blind. And that often leads to extraordinary levels of uncertainty, fear, anxiety, and suffering. “My philosophy,” Rowse told me, “has always been just to start it and then again just start testing to see whether it’s worth spending any money on it . . . I’ve always been very conservative on that front . . . I don’t like to start things that I don’t think will work, and I don’t like to start things that other people don’t think will work.” Over time, the repeated exposure to user feedback served to diminish Rowse’s potential fear of judgment and intolerance for uncertainty. The same can happen for you: The repeated exposure to criticism becomes the functional equivalent of exposure therapy, one of the core tools in the fear arsenal of cognitive behavioral therapists. The more you act in the face of it and survive, the less you feel its stranglehold. The tenets of lean manufacturing are generally agreed to include: 1. Eliminate waste. 2. Amplify learning. 3. Decide as late as possible. 4. Deliver as fast as possible. 5. Empower the team. 6. Build in integrity. 7. See the whole. In the lean start-up, everything is done in the name not of profits but of learning. Teams build what Ries calls a minimum viable product (MVP) that represents the “least amount of work necessary to start learning.” This product is then released to potential users as a series of experiments; feedback is solicited, then folded into the next MVP. The word “pivot,” which in start-up circles means the process of making serious changes to nearly every assumption your big business idea was based on and everything that’s grown out of that idea, As the legendary Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist Randy Komisar revealed in his book Getting to Plan B (2009), the vast majority of companies, even vetted ones backed by venture capital, get serious elements of their business model, solution, and market demand completely wrong. A willingness and ability to own those mistakes as early and as often as possible has become exalted by a growing number of mentors, founders, and investors Creators of all types are tapping a very different online platform—Kickstarter.com—to fund their creations, solicit feedback, and even pre-sell their creations while they’re still in the idea stage, altering the fear and certainty dynamic in a profound way. According to the description on the company’s Web site, Kickstarter. com is “the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Every month, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.... This is not about investment or lending. Project creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work.” In the three years preceding the book’s publication, Rubin had taken to blogging and had built a substantial, engaged community. She tapped that community on a regular basis to ask questions, share ideas, and offer hints of what was coming in the book. The blog also became fertile ground to test content and see what people were responding to. Then she went a step further and created what she called her tribe of Happiness Project “superfans,” a gathering of readers who got more access to Rubin, along with the opportunity to learn more about the book and share insights and ideas. As we saw earlier, whether you’re tapping a full-blown lean creation process—with rapid prototyping, iteration, and co-creation—or focusing more on just the co-creation aspect, it’s important to preserve your role as the leader and primary visionary in the process. While there is no way to remove uncertainty from the process of creation, technology is now opening doors that allow us to reallocate how and when we experience that uncertainty. Shift Your Focus to Learning One of the big leaps Eric Ries suggested entrepreneurs take is to focus less on traffic, sales, or profits and more on learning as much as possible as quickly as possible Explore Your MVP Ask yourself whether you can create a minimum viable product that is finished enough to be able to release so you can gather feedback that you can incorporate in the next iteration. Be Open to Collaboration with Colleagues and End Users If you are creating simply because that is why you are here, without reference to whether your output will ever earn enough to let you live well in the world, it’s easier to create in a vacuum. However, the moment you seek money in exchange for your creation, the opinions of your eventual buyers matter. Bring Out Your Leader Bringing others into the process requires a set of skills that many creators either don’t normally exercise or haven’t fully developed, the most important involving leadership. Explore Your Value Exchange If you are asking something from others, explore what type of value you can offer in exchange. “When you step into ambiguity and uncertainty, when you surround yourself essentially with uncertainty without a life jacket,” Komisar told me, “you still have to have a foundation, a core, a center. You can’t be completely relative in that environment.... Even though you may not actually have a clear objective and you certainly don’t have a path to get there, you have to have a keel that keeps you centered. Spiritual practice allowed me to find that keel.” Meditation had formed the centerpiece of her creative life for decades. She considers it the most essential thing she does in her business, Practicing and mastering that one skill—touching, then dropping your current thought pattern—is hugely important for any creator. Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance Addressing an audience of film students at Boston’s Majestic Theater, filmmaker David Lynch pointed to yet another form of AT—Transcendental Meditation—as the source of deep calm and tremendous leaps in creativity. “Anger and depression and sorrow, they’re beautiful things in a story,” he said with the audience, “but they’re like a poison to the filmmaker, they’re a poison to the painter, they’re a poison to creativity.” Through his practice, he added, “the enjoyment of life grows. Huge ideas flow more. Everybody has more fun on the set. Creativity flows.” Attentional training (AT) is a catch-all phrase for a wide variety of techniques that create certain psychological and physiological changes in your body and brain. Many of them are derived from centuries-old ideologies and philosophies; some have religious overlays, while others have always been more secular. Major approaches include: • Active AT • Guided Meditation • Transcendental Meditation • Insight meditation • Mindfulness • Zen meditation and zazen • Buddhist meditation • Mantra meditation • Chanting and prayer across many traditions • Biofeedback • Hypnosis and self-hypnosis Each approach is built around a set of relatively simple daily practices. The common element is the experience of focused awareness for a committed period of time, The point is, the right kind of physical activity can induce the AT state. And over time that psycho-physiological training filters past your physical health to your mind-set and creativity. Mindfulness is, most broadly, an approach to how you exist in the world. Sitting and walking meditation are common daily practices, but mindfulness is also about how you wash your dishes, do your work, talk to people, and engage with the world. It’s not about seeking to create change; it’s about being with what you have and where you are, in the moment, every moment. Rather than focusing and excluding, it’s about resting a smallish bit of attention on your breath, then progressively opening to anything and everything that’s happening around you Transcendental Meditation was introduced to the world by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi some fifty years ago. According to TM.org, “During the past 50 years, more than five million people have learned the Transcendental Meditation technique and . . . Maharishi has trained over 40,000 teachers, opened thousands of teaching centers, and founded hundreds of schools, colleges and universities.” It is the most widely practiced and probably the most standardized teaching and practice protocol around today. TM instruction is highly standardized into a seven-session training sequence. Everyone learns the same thing, and training is readily available in many places. Once you learn it, you practice twice a day for twenty minutes at a time. David Lynch has become a huge proponent of TM practice as a tool for creators, because it cultivates a shift in brain coherence, mood, and the ability to lean into fear and uncertainty, and allows you to tap what the TM community calls the Unified Field, a form of shared consciousness that can become a rich source of creative insight. AT drops you into a place that, as your practice deepens, increasingly inoculates you against much of the pain and suffering that accompanies scenarios that would normally bring on fear, uncertainty, and anxiety. It doesn’t change the scenario. It doesn’t alter your circumstance. It doesn’t make things more certain or less fearful or pull you out of the state you need to be in in order to create. It just changes the way you live in this place. It allows you the equanimity to lean into uncertainty, risk, and judgment with greater ease. by Professor Yi-Yuan Tang of Dalian University of Technology and Professor Michael Posner of the University of Oregon, reported that just five days of a meditation-based form of AT called Integrative Body Mind Technique (IBMT) led to “low levels of the stress hormone cortisol among Chinese students.” The experimental group also showed lower levels of anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue than students in a group practicing a nonmeditative form of relaxation. In 1993, University of Hertfordshire professor and author of The Luck Factor (2004) Richard Wiseman conducted a fascinating experiment that demonstrated the potentially limiting impact of blind commitment to a goal and its connection to perceived good fortune and improved outcomes. Good fortune, it seems, smiles upon those who remain open to inviting possibilities and opportunities outside the rigid constructs of their immediate task, mission, or vision. The approach to visualization or mental simulation most often offered is something called outcome simulation. It asks you to create a vivid picture of a specific outcome as if it has already happened. There is, however, a different approach to visualization that has been shown in a number of published studies to be significantly more powerful than outcome visualization. It’s also an approach that is custom-built for the daily mind-set of the long-term, large-scale creator, because it bolsters your ability to better define a project and take action on it on a daily basis. It’s called process simulation, and true to its name, it focuses on visualizing not the outcome or goal but the steps and actions needed to get there. Over a one-week period, for five minutes each day, students in the processsimulation group visualized the actions and steps needed to complete a specified project The driving engine and greatest challenge in any long-term, creative endeavor is to act daily, especially in the face of great uncertainty, fear, risk, and anxiety. How do you make process simulation work for you? Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, MAPP, offers three powerful ways to put this tool to work: Define Your Daily Creation Ritual Use It to Self-regulate or Stick to Your Ritual Here’s where this practice really shines. Actions and rituals have power when you do them. If you’re a writer, visualize yourself putting your notebook or pad in your bag, walking to your favorite café, choosing your table, ordering your favorite beverage, spending a few minutes reviewing handwritten notes, then opening your current creation and writing X words or for X minutes or hours, then taking a break to do Y, then coming back for your second creation about thirty minutes later. Create a Tangible Manifestation of Your Commitment While many people are strongly visual in their thought and learning, others are not. Asking those nonvisual people to visualize even small steps can be an exercise in futility, because their brains don’t operate that way. Writing, however, can be a highly effective approach to process simulation. Rather than simply thinking and seeing the steps, rituals, and actions, take the extra step of writing them down. This changes the dynamic in a number of ways. To-do lists are perfect examples of this. Part of the reason they can be so effective (not always, for as we all know, they can be easily abused or used as crutches) is that they are effectively process simulation lists. In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006), she identifies what she calls the fixed and growth mind-sets. A person with a growth mind-set, on the other hand, assumes that work is the core driver of success and places less importance on genetics as a determining factor An excerpt from a 2004 interview with Murakami in The Paris Review brings home the connection between physical strength and creating extraordinary work: When I’m in writing mode for a novel, I get up at 4:00 A.M. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit, and listen to some music. I go to bed at 9:00 P.M. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it’s a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind. But to hold to such repetition for so long—six months to a year—requires a good amount of mental and physical strength. In that sense, writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity. As Dr. John Ratey noted in his seminal work Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (2008), exercise isn’t just about physical health and appearance. It also has a profound effect on your brain chemistry, physiology, and neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to literally rewire itself). It affects not only your ability to think, create, and solve, but your mood and ability to lean into uncertainty, risk, judgment, and anxiety in a substantial, measurable way, even though until very recently it’s been consistently cast out as the therapeutic bastard child in lists of commonly accepted treatments for anxiety and depression. In a 2002 study, Rhode Island College professor Stephen Ramocki found a significant relationship between vigorous aerobic exercise and creativity, including an increase in creativity immediately following exercise. While higher-intensity exercise seems to be more effective in countering anxiety and elevating mood, Blanchette found that even moderate exercise yielded a significant increase in creativity that was still present two hours after the exercise was completed. And an October 2007 Newsweek article reporting on a series of studies by Professor Arthur Kramer, a psychologist at the University of Illinois, showed that daily aerobic exercise can actually grow new brain cells, especially in the hippocampus, the area that controls memory and learning, and in the frontal lobes, which are chiefly responsible for executive function—planning, abstract thinking, decision making and adaptation, processing sensory information, taking constructive action, not taking destructive action, and knowing the difference between the two. Exercise fostered improved performance on psychological tests of the subjects’ ability to answer questions more quickly and accurately. The research also seems to show there is a “use it or lose it” effect once you are well into adulthood. Stop exercising and the increases quickly fade Indeed, the demand for varied, community-driven exercise has begun to fuel an explosion in alternative forms of movement and exercise experiences and settings among adults. These activities—think martial arts, CrossFit, bootcamps, obstacle challenges, modified indoor cycling, P90X, power yoga, dancing, team sports, boxing, badminton, rock climbing—engage the mind, cultivate passion, and inspire joy. • For more information on easily accessible approaches to AT and to download complementary guided meditations in mp3 format, visit JonathanFields.com/mindset. Read her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success for detailed information about how to undertake the change First, read Dr. John Ratey’s book Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain. When you are called to create, the psychology of the endeavor also changes. Experiencing a calling creates a sense of deeper conviction, of purpose that often you, even as the creator or vision leader, don’t fully understand. When you are driven by a calling or a deeply personal quest and you allow that calling to inspire action, you live in the world differently. You do a thousand little things you’ve never done before. You act and interact with more confidence and vitality. Your personal energy changes. As Guy Kawasaki explains in his book Enchantment (2011), purpose and passion enchant people. They want to be around you. They want to help you. In his book Getting to Plan B, Randy Komisar suggests setting up what he calls a dashboard. You create a grid that identifies all of your major data points, assumptions, and leaps of faith on day one, then revisit it at regular intervals to assess what remains valid. Belsky’s vision is not to create the current line of Action Method products, but rather to create tools and processes that make creatives more productive. What those look like will change over time. And that allegiance to a market, rather than a specific product, gives him a lot of leeway to continue to test, build, bomb, and evolve. All too often, that’s not how start-ups or even established productdevelopment teams operate. They are wedded more to their particular solution than to the notion of serving a market. When they start to have problems with that product, ones that aren’t fixable with easy tweaks, they have a very difficult time moving through these moments. I also had a chance to sit down with Robert McKee, one of the world’s foremost authorities on the structure of storytelling. Through his international Story seminars and a book of the same name, McKee has trained tens of thousands of screenwriters, television writers, and authors, including a laundry list of people who’ve won every award possible. Genius requires craft plus insight. Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance Counterintuitive as it sounds, it’s the undoing that plants the seeds of the greatest doing. What I create in any one medium is made far richer by the fact that I spend considerable time outside that medium. It may mean my path to mastery takes longer. So be it. In the end, I create better businesses because I write. I write better books, essays, and posts because I relish my time as a dad, son, brother, husband, friend, yogi, student, and teacher. we also have an organic cap on our ability to focus. Ninety minutes is the outside window. And, honestly, that’s being quite generous. Business strategist and Be Unreasonable (2007) author Paul Lemberg shared with me that his extensive work with hundreds of C-level executives and thousands of employees yielded a number closer to twenty-five to forty-five minutes. Start by spending a few weeks really listening to and watching your rhythms to get a good sense for the parts of the day in which you’re able to (1) do great work (2) with the greatest ease. Try working at different times of the day, maybe even rising early or staying up later to test a variety of windows. Productive creation rituals let you check back into your nonwork life. They give you both the time and the mind space to drop into that life far more often, spend more time there, take better care of yourself, and remind yourself how wonderful that place and its inhabitants are. Rather than allow these things to derail her, she reframes these challenges as experiences and information that will help make next year’s event even better. In her mind, this isn’t so much a one-shot deal as it is a journey that will build and unfold for years. It’s all about learning and serving. That “reframe” doesn’t eliminate the emotions but rather gives it a different context, a different story line that allows her to lean into it and move through the uncertainty, exposure, and risk with more ease. That shift alone is pretty powerful. Reframing, in the world of psychology, is better known as an example of cognitive reappraisal, changing the story or message around fear-inducing stimuli to alter your emotional response. Reframing literally changes the way your brain processes the experience, tamping down the fear and anxiety that might come as an automatic response to uncertainty, risk, and exposure to judgment. One of the greatest fears of creators is the fear of failure. But that term is pretty fuzzy. It’s more of a catchall phrase that includes (1) fear of judgment (what happens when you crash and burn), (2) intolerance for uncertainty, and (3) fear of what most people would consider extreme loss. We’ll use “going to zero” as a shorthand phrase to describe that trilogy. What we’re really talking about here is the anxiety that sets in when you envision yourself losing a solid enough chunk of money, time, energy, prestige, respect, or reputation that the fall would, in your mind, spell disaster. For many entrepreneurs, artists, and organizational innovators, the experience of going to zero releases within them the freedom to rebuild in a way they’d never have given themselves the latitude to explore had they never been stripped of their prior success. There’s only up or down. The notion that you can just coast through life in neutral is a fallacy constructed to rationalize inaction. By no means is the “sideways is good enough” mentality limited to the fitness industry. In fact, the challenging economy is fueling a mass movement to this position. Concerned about job security, employees who built careers on the back of innovation across a wide spectrum of industries are increasingly unwilling to take bold, creative action. Nobody wants to guess wrong in a climate where money is short and jobs are shorter. The net effect—a stifling of the very risk taking, innovation, and action in the face of uncertainty that fueled earlier success—spells troubling times ahead for many companies that don’t reaffirm their commitment to a culture of innovation, and not just in words, but in actions. In art, business, and entrepreneurship, there is no coasting. There is no neutral. No sideways. It’s a myth, an illusion. There’s only up or down. Leading or trailing be sure to explore the three key questions as well: • What if fail, then recover? • What if I do nothing? • What if I succeed? When you run from uncertainty, you end up running from life. From evolution. From growth. From wisdom. From friendship. From love. From the creation of art, services, solutions, and experiences that move beyond what’s been done before to illuminate, serve, solve, and delight in a way that matters. I built certainty anchors more deliberately into my life and my work. I created more systematic routines around basic lifestyle activities, then rebuilt work-oriented creation efforts around a series of intense bursts interspersed with activities that would give both my brain and my body a chance to recover and refuel. I created and leaned on my own creation hive, an inner circle of like-minded writers, marketers, and entrepreneurs who I knew were insanely smart, compassionate, driven, and abundance oriented—meaning we each viewed the others’ successes as our own and rallied to support them. Leveraging technology, I created my own private creation tribe, which was in part a subset of my already rich online community but also included a number of new voices drawn to share in my process and journey. I shared ideas, insights, and experiences; Recommitting to a twice-a-day meditation practice has allowed me to find what Randy Komisar identified as a “keel” in the storm of life, as well as a place of stillness in which to cultivate ideas and insights and let them grow into actions and then endeavors. Uncertainty: Turning Fear and Doubt into Fuel for Brilliance Hustle matters. Grit matters.
I know, you love ideas, and you are great at them. You have several millionndollar ideas. You are a machine. Listen. Ideas are cheap pieces of head lint. Ideas do not make anyone rich. Ideas are merely daydreams when you do nothing to make them happen. They are nothing more tan wishes without action. You will have a million ideas, and the ideas that you will have will pop in your head constantly, and most of those ideas you won't notice or you will ignore. Some of your ideas will be so good that you will get excited, and you won't tell anyone that way no one will steal your idea. Do yourself a favor and tell someone. Get some new thoughts on your idea, some fresh eyes. More importantly, take action on your idea. get others to believe in your idea, and get hem to take action. Ideas are constant and cheap. Ideas are not the key to success. The only thing that matters is what you take action on and the results you get. What you do matters, not what you think. Take action. Do something. Anything. I do not listen to what people say, I watch what they do. What they say only tells you who they want to be or who they think they are, but what they do tells you who they are. As you start to take action on your thoughts and ideas, and things start to happen, what you will find is thst other opportunities will come up, and other possibilities will come your way. Action creates success. Ideas equal wishes and work just as well. On life, only grit and hustle matter. D NLP: The New Technology of Achievement - Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) - Notes
NLP, Steve Andreas and Chris Faulkner NLP: The New Technology of Achievement Everything you do is the product of a mental habit My mind is a laboratory (I like this, we forget our mind is malleable and can be changed, everything that can be tested should be tested (Taleb)). You can change how you think. Remember this, repeat it until you truly internalize it. Always think; What do I need to know in order to make this decision? What are the major benefits, and how do I quantify them? “The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.” William James Terms; Isolates = smallest units of behavior. Associated = in the action Disassociated = separate and watching the action distantly or apart Our brains simply do not know how to put things into negative language. Saying “don’t think” automatically makes us think of it. In order for our brains to not think of something, our brains have to think it. Instead of saying what you don’t want to do or what you don’t want to think about, think about what you do want to think about. Actions; 1. Make what you want to do and what you think into a positive statement 2. Increase the mental vividness of what you want to do in order to make it more attractive to you. 3. Associate into these successful behaviours and mentally rehearse them so they feel natural. NLP suppositions ( people work perfectly); - the map is not the territory - our mental map of the world is nt the world and can be changed - experience has structure - thoughts and memories have a pattern to them - we can change the pattern and change the experience - if one person can do something, anyone can learn to do it - mind and body are parts of the same system - people already have all the resources they need - you cannot not communicate - the meaning of your communication is the response you get - underlying every behavior is a positive intention - people are always making the best choices available to them - if what you are doing isn’t working, do something else, do anything else For the map is not the territory - as you go through time, the map and the world start to separate. Technique 1; You can take an old situation, something you feel bad about, and restructure it, change the background, put music to it, put a frame on it, and you can change it by conveying the opposite feeling is conveyed. Every image, sound, or feeling is a resouce somewhere for something. Talent is simply a set of resources that have been combined, sequenced, and practiced until they become automatic skill. Technique 2; Circle of confidence - imagine a time when you were in the zone and relive it mentally, capture it in a circle and think that circle when the feeling is needed. Use mentoring - basically modeling on successful examples of what you want to accomplish How people think about something makes the crucial difference in how they will experience it. Read up on Dr. Milton H. Erickson, MD - founder of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. Master of hypnosis, he could induce a profound trance just by telling stories. There are 2 types of motivation, away from problems and towards things or goals we want. People have a tendency to only follow one, but that does not work well. (You have to do both.) Going away from problems has 3 things to watch; You move away from something because there is discomfort but the further from it you get , the less motivation you keep, so you go back and forth, hot and cold, it is inconsistent. Because you are going away from something you often do not pay attention to where you are going or how you will end up. Kind of a “out of the frying pan into the fire” kind of thing. Away from people often experience a lot of worry and stress to make a move, usually a lot more than needed or is healthy. Remember: People are always trying to make the best choices available to them and behind every behavior is a positive intention. Check people and watch them, do they seek goals or are they avoiding problems? Always end comments positive - start with what to avoid, and end with the goal.; First state what you don’t want, then state what you do want. Values matter. What we value determines what life means to us, what actions we will take, what we will move toward or away from. When people become disconnected from their values their motivation goes away. Questions to ask; What are my goals? What is important to me? Then ask; What is important about this goal? What do I value or treasure about this goal? What meaning does this goal have for me? Values measure the meaning life holds for us. Values influence motivation, if you don’t have strong values, you have little motivation. If you have strong values, you have strong motivation. NLP: The New Technology of Achievement Visualization exercise; 1. Imagine a strongly motivated experience, something you really liked. See it clearly. 2. Take a breath and look around. 3, Imagine something not exciting you care about 4. Take a breath 5. Compare the differences you feel are elements your brain uses to indicate value to you. Then; Imagine a valuable task you want to do but you don’t do Think about why you don’t do it Think about the end result if you do. Now use the elements from above to change how you think about the result./ Can also be used in opposite by imagining what you are trying to avoid. Remember to use and utilize an away from motivation strategy to move towards what you want. New Behavior Generator See yourself a short distance away and you are watching yourself from inside a bubble. Watch the other you learn and do the task you want to do. Watch yourself feel good as you do it, and adjust when it does not feel right. Once done, merge the two values. Determine your motivation direction - away or toward. What are others’ directions and use them to improve them? What values do you have and how can they influence you? Phase way from and toward motivation for the best results. Use sub modalities of your thinking to change and increase your motivation. Learn how to be more positively motivated towards. Developing a grand vision
Finding a specific direction for your grand vision
Align yourself with the Mission · question yourself - do your actions match your vision and direction/ why not? · negotiate with the parts of yourself that object - find a way to meet it · remember your time here is finite, do not live a life less than you want · find reasons to continue · persist Goals We earn a living by the money we make, but we make a life by the services we provide. Mission oriented goals are worth achieving and lead to meaningful action, and those action lead to a meaningful life Discovering your mission; a mission is a sense of purpose that lures you into your future. It unifies your beliefs, actions, and your sense of who you are. Exercise Go back in time to when you were small and everyone was big, and you are learning all the time. Words every day, new things, new wiring, remember you have 15 billion brain cells and you can hear 1600 frequencies, your eyes can see a single photon - these abilities can be applied to learn in many ways. Now picture yourself as a system of functional capabilities unrivaled in the known universe. You are a learning machine NLP: The New Technology of Achievement Finding your Passion
John Wooden: Be true to yourself make everyday a masterpiece help others drink deeply from books make friendship an art build a shelter against a rainy day pray for guidance Values/ Principles Think of some of your interests, determine your values/ principles, list the values - they must be your deepest values, what is the one deepest value? 3 ways to find values 1. When someone violates them and you are upset 2. Something makes you happy 3. Deep inner thought/ meditation exercise: Utilizing your favorite hero/ heroine aka role model 1. Think of one who excites you 2. See a particular goal - think of a goal they did that they accomplished by living and doing what they did. Make a mental movie. 3. Step into the role - put yourself into their place, make it yours, really feel it. 4. Question yourself - what are my motives? why did doing this accomplish that goal and why did I choose to do it? how does pursuing this goal make me feel? how does this goal fit into my larger mission? 5. become yourself again. Read biographies of your favorite achievers. Roles are important Your mission determines your roles, and your roles determine your goals. " For example, a person may read a lot. However, if that person does not have an identity as a writer, he or she is not likely to learn to write by reading. A person who strongly believes " I am a writer" reads in a very different way from someone who does not share that identity. A person with a writer role notices different things than a nonwriter. A writer reads not only to get the information, a writer reads to learn how to refine the skills of his or her own writing." NLP, Steve Andreas and Chris Faulkner Life roles - 4 primary types; individual, work, personal or family, citizen Ex: artist, athlete, creator, discoverer, friend to self, hero, hunter, leader, learner, magician, meditator, sage, saint, warrior. Your mission will require many different roles. Knowing what you want is fundamental If it is useful to go through a series of questions to make sure your goals are worth having. Well Formed Goal Conditions - Select a Specific Goal The way you think about your goal makes a big difference - you can think of it in a way that makes it easy to achieve or in a way to make it almost impossible. It is your choice, and in your head. Make sure your goal is what you want and not just what you think you should do, or what others want, it has to be yours. Changing your language, how you say what it is you want, makes a big difference, so change from stating what you don't want to what you do. Make sure your goal is stated in a way that you can get it yourself, no matter what other people do. Your goal must depend on you and not on others. Ex. If a goal is I want my boss to stop criticizing me - that requires your boss to change which is not in your control and it leaves you vulnerable and dependent. Instead - what can I do, or experience that will allow me to remain resourceful, no matter what my boss thinks. How will you know when you have achieved your goal? Make sure you decide how you will know you have met your goal and insure the time line is not long. Better short goals for feedback and encouragement. You want to make sure you think about when you do and when you don't want your goal. It is easier to achieve your goal when you are careful about where, when, and with whom it is appropriate. Make sure your goal fits into the ecology of your life so it does not become one sided. Exercise: Goals you will make the rest of your life. 1. Set the stage 2. See yourself in the future in your chosen role 3. Make your goal well formed Remember: · goal is positive - it is what to do · you want to do the goal, not should · you are the one doing it - not someone else · you can do it - it is not impossible · the goal is specific - not general · the goal is ecological - if achieved it is positive Make your image compelling, notice the pathway. Exercise: Developing a Plan
Taking Action on Your Goals; 1. Assign a realistic completion date 2. Schedule the steps 3. Keep an eye on the mission/ progress 4. Do it - persist. Creating Rapport and Strong Relationships: Other people are the most valuable resource we have. Networks matter. 83% of all sales are predicted on the customer liking the salesman. Successful people know how to make relationships last. You are not in the business of selling - you are in the business of relationships 3 Steps to build relationships;
Success goes to those who think of their customer's goals before their own Long term thinking is important. If you don't have rapport, you simply will not be effective with other people. When you feel uncomfortable talking to someone, you are out of sync, then you are not in rapport 2 ways to think of rapport; First is to intentionally build rapport whenever you talk to someone Second is to assume you have rapport and watch to insure it is not lost. When you don't have rapport with someone, you are acting differently then they are so the way to regain rapport is to become more similar. Matching occurs naturally in rapport, but also can be actively used to establish and increase rapport. You can match any behavior you observe, postures, facial expressions, tone, rhythm Practice voice matching. Don't square off unless you want to keep your distance, instead go in alignment facing the same direction. You can always develop emotional rapport NLP presupposes that the other person wants to deal positively with you, even when yelling, and if you match, you can communicate. Decide what emotional states you want associated with yourself. NLP: The New Technology of Achievement 10-Minute Toughness by Jason Selk ( http://www.enhancedperformanceinc.com/)
10-Minute Toughness: The Mental Training Program for Winning Before the Game Begins This is one of those books that you really debate whether to buy, but after reading it, and making a lot of notes and highlights, I will simply say buy it. I find myself using the breathing technique all the time, and I found the exercises to be worth thinking about and doing.There are some parts that are a little simple, and there is some repetition but over all this is a good solid book. I have noticed that one trait that truly successful people have in common is that they have developed and maintained a solution-focused approach in their careers and in life. You need to always ask yourself, every time you encounter each opportunity - What is one thing I can do that could make this better? Always have a solution on the board: A results-driven model that identifies the biological and environmental obstacles to achieving greatness. What is one thing I can do that could make this better?: A concrete method of overcoming all obstacles and making success a permanent state. An effective way to control heart rate is to use a "centering breath" before and during competition. The centering breath, often referred to as a "diaphragm breath," is a long, deep inhalation of air into the diaphragm. Inhaling air into the diaphragm is a biological tool that helps control the heart rate. Taking a deep, centering breath allows individuals to keep their heart rate under control and perform at a more effective pace. I have tried to simplify diaphragm breathing by qualifying a good centering breath as one that lasts fifteen seconds. The formula is 6-2-7: breathe in for six seconds, hold for two, and breathe out for seven seconds. The heart rate is a primary control of a person’s arousal state. It is important to control heart rate because using the mind effectively becomes increasingly more difficult as the heart rate rises. Once the rate gets to 120 beats per minute, the mind will not be nearly as sharp (unless proper conditioning and mental training has occurred), and at about 150 beats per minute, the mind will essentially shut down and go into survival mode. Do not focus on results but stay in the moment and execute one skill at a time, one routine at a time. If we do not choose our thoughts carefully, they can (and many times do) have a negative impact on performance. "One skill at a time, one routine at a time." When athletes keep their minds focused on positive performance cues, they are more likely to experience success. 10-Minute Toughness: The Mental Training Program for Winning Before the Game Begins A performance statement is a type of self-talk designed to help athletes zoom in on one specific thought to enhance performance consistency. It is a simple, yet concrete, thought that specifically identifies the process of success, or what it takes to perform at your best. The key is to identify the single most fundamental idea of what it takes for you to be successful to allow you to simplify the game. For the majority of athletes, mental clutter usually occurs because individuals do not know what they should be thinking. Mental toughness is abnormal, just as physical strength is abnormal. We are born without much muscle development. As we grow, if we don’t emphasize physical fitness, we will not develop appreciable strength. In that sense, it is somewhat abnormal to be physically strong. The same is true for mental toughness: most people don’t commit to replacing their negative thoughts with positive thinking. In my opinion, the essence of mental toughness is the ability to replace negative thinking with thoughts that are centered on performance cues or that contribute to improved self-confidence. The most helpful method to stop self-doubt and negative thinking is thought replacement. Effective thought replacement occurs when you decide what you want to have happen and then think more often about what it will take to make it happen. Replace all thoughts of self-doubt or negativity with thoughts of what it is that you want, and you will be much more likely to have those things occur. If you determine what you want to accomplish in any given situation and then lock your mind on what it takes to achieve that goal, you will have a much better chance of reaping the rewards. As often as possible, choose to think about the path to success rather than the obstacles in your way. You have to decide what you want and then put your energy into acquiring it. Cognitive psychology has taught us that the mind can fully focus on only one item at a time. In short, if you are thinking about what is going wrong in your life, you cannot be thinking about what it takes to make it right. The most effective way to avoid self-doubt and mental clutter is to replace the negative thoughts with specific positive thoughts. Listen first; then decide; be swift and confident. 10-Minute Toughness: The Mental Training Program for Winning Before the Game Begins Note: see yourself as a advisor to yourself. what would you say to someone else in your position. in my case I would say be what you want to be not what someone wants you to be Self-image is internally constructed: we can decide how we view ourselves. The experience I had with Jenny taught me very early the powerful impact of maintaining a positive self-image. Each of us chooses how we see ourselves. Creating and using a positive identity statement will help you choose a powerful self-image. Largely what determines people’s self-image is the things they continually say to themselves, Simply put, the individual who steps up to the starting line with a true belief in his or her ability to do well has a much greater likelihood of success than those who don’t have that mind-set. In a revised version of Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s work Psycho-Cybernetics, testimonies from top athletes such as Jack Nicklaus and Payne Stewart and coaches such as Pat Riley and Phil Jackson support Maltz’s position regarding the powerful impact that self-image has on athletic performance. Self-image is not mental trickery; it is a scientifically proven agent of control. The key is to create the self-image desired—decide who you want to be and how you want to live—and then continuously tell yourself that you have what it takes to be that person. The self-image will guide and direct actions and behaviors until the self-image becomes the reality. In the words of Maxwell Maltz, "You will act like the sort of person you conceive yourself to be. More important, you literally cannot act otherwise, in spite of all your conscious efforts or willpower. This is why trying to achieve something difficult with teeth gritted is a losing battle. Willpower is not the answer. Self-image management is. Stop thinking about what you can’t do and start thinking about you want to do. Remember: the centering breath is a deep breath used to physiologically control heart rate and arousal. Taking a centering breath at the end of the mental workout is necessary for athletes because completing the personal highlight reel may cause the heart rate and arousal state to elevate. You always want to feel calm, confident, and relaxed up to the point of competition. it is possible to overdue mental work. I tell athletes that doing the mental workout one time a day is great. Some clients prefer to do it a couple of times a day, and that is OK, but there is no need to do it more than twice a day. Let’s take this opportunity to review the five tools in the mental workout before we move forward. First is the centering breath, which will take you fifteen seconds. Then you recite to yourself your performance statement, a self-statement designed to improve your focus on what it takes (process of success) to be successful; this should take about five seconds. In the third step, you run through your personal highlight reel, comprising three sixty-second clips of visualizations, for three minutes total. When your personal highlight reel is over, you deliver to yourself your identity statement, a self-statement to help you focus on developing the self-image you desire; as with the performance statement, this will take five seconds. You finish the mental workout with another fifteen-second centering breath. The three concepts that turn ordinary goal setting into effective goal setting are these: Process goals produce results No excuses; go public Keep goals alive, and live the dream The three levels, or types, of goals that I discuss with clients are ultimate goals, product goals, and process goals Ultimate goals are the culmination of what you want to accomplish and how you want to accomplish it. When identifying your ultimate goals, imagine being able to look into the future and witness your retirement dinner. Product goals are result-oriented goals. They are clearly measurable and usually are most effective if they emphasize accomplishments in the next twelve months. Process goals are the "what it takes" to achieve the product goals you set. Process goals also must be specific enough to be measurable. It is important to write your goals down and let others know of your intentions. The act of writing down as well as talking about your goals makes them more a part of your reality. The more you can see and recite your goals, the more steadily they move from your subconscious into your awareness. "Never make excuses. Your friends won’t need them, and your foes won’t believe them. Excuses promote underachieving. For goals to work, they must become a part of daily training. The 10-MT goal-setting plan is a three-step process: 1. Further on in this book, you will take a few minutes to write down your ultimate goals. Remember that ultimate goals are the summary accomplishments you want from your sport and how you want to be remembered as going about achieving those accomplishments. Additionally, you will set two product goals for the upcoming season, including three process goals needed to help achieve each of the product goals. 2. After practices and games, you will take about three to four minutes to fill out a Success Log. The Success Logs ask athletes to answer the following questions: What three things did I do well today? Based on today’s performance, what do I want to improve? What is one thing I can do differently that could lead to the desired improvement? 3. Just before doing your mental workout, you will take one minute to review your Success Log entries from the previous day. Looking over your log just before going through your mental work will steer you to emphasize your improvement goals in your mental workout. Hence, the power of goals will be more alive in each and every practice and competition. There are four steps you will need to take to personally tailor your 10-MT goal-setting program: Identify what your ultimate accomplishment would be. Determine the specific accomplishments (product goals) necessary to achieve your ultimate goal. For each accomplishment, identify what it will take on your part (process goals) to achieve the goal. Determine the personal sacrifices and character strengths required to live out your dream. Defining your personal vision is essential to selecting the right goals. If you do not invest a little time to figure out with some precision who you want to be and how you want to live, you may well select goals to which you will not stay committed. Consider using a methodology for choosing goals that Tal Ben-Shahar endorses. Dr. Ben-Shahar’s course on positive psychology has become one of Harvard’s most popular courses. In his book Happier, he outlines a process of selecting goals that produce happiness: First, make a list of all the activities that you know you are good at. Second, of all the activities you are good at, make note of those activities that you enjoy doing. Then go even further by selecting the activities from that list that you really like to do. Once you have that list, go one step further and note the activities that you really, really like to do. Those are the activities on which you should focus. The 10-MT personal rewards program allows individuals to identify the specific type of motivation needed for optimal personal success. Distinguishing between material rewards and experiential rewards helps determine what combination balance works best. Additionally, it is helpful to be able to call on a supporting mentor, coach, or parent as you strive toward your ultimate goal. Set goals that will lead to greatness, and you will maximize your athletic potential. It is also important to set new goals once a goal is achieved. College basketball coach Rick Pitino noted that the difference between dreams and goals is that dreams are where we want to end up and goals are how we get there. This doesn’t mean you train during every waking hour, day in and day out. For one thing, it is necessary to incorporate rest into training cycles. What it does mean is that if you know of something that would help your training and competitive performance, you owe it to yourself to at least test it The two keys to being fully prepared and having unwavering confidence in yourself are, first, to put the time and energy into doing everything you know you need to do to be prepared and, second, to be aware that you are fully prepared. I am a firm believer in the precept that winning versus losing is determined more on training days than on game days. I think the person or team who prepares more fully in training wins more often. From a training standpoint, I use the MP100 + 20 approach for work ethic and training. "MP100" means following 100 percent of your mental-training program and 100 percent of your physical-training regimen, and the "+ 20" symbolizes an additional 20 percent of energy put forth to make sure you are more prepared than the competition. Lanny Bassham, an Olympic gold medal shooter, says that 5 percent of the people do 95 percent of the winning. In addition to adhering to 100 percent of the physical-and mental-training plans, root out a way to personally contribute 20 percent more effort. 10-MT program asks you to undertake three steps that will take you no more than ten minutes per day in all: Fill out the Goal Setting for Greatness Work Sheet once a year. Place it somewhere you will see it on a regular basis. Perform your mental workout before practices and competitions. Complete your Success Log after every practice and competition; review it just prior to completing your mental workout before the next day’s practice or competition. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz expound on the power of goals and rituals in their groundbreaking book The Power of Full Engagement. Rituals are the act of creating positive habits. The 10-MT goal-setting program relies on seven principles for optimal effectiveness. Here’s a recap: Process over product. Each day, focus on your process goals, or "what it takes" to achieve your product goals. No excuses. Take full accountability for growth by not offering excuses for underachieving. Go public. Write your goals down, and tell others what they are, to increase your consciousness of your goals and your accountability for reaching them. Keep goals alive. On a daily basis, fill out your Success Log to enhance motivation and results in practices and competitions. Vision integrity. Choose goals aligned with who you want to be and how you want to live. Personal reward preference. Attach rewards to your goals to burnish motivation and commitment. MP100 + 20. Let goals embellish and control your work ethic by aspiring to follow 100 percent of training plans and committing a further 20 percent of your energy into outworking the competition. Mental and physical training is all about putting yourself in the ideal position to succeed. Excellence is achieved through a solution-focused mind. Being solution focused means keeping your thoughts centered on what you want from life and what it takes to achieve what you want, as opposed to allowing thoughts of self-doubt and concern to occupy the mind. The difference between a solution focus and a relentless solution focus is how often you commit to replacing negative thinking with solutions. Consider the following diagram: Let’s assume the chart represents the chalkboard of your life. On which side of the board have you spent the most time making entries? If you are like most people, you have spent most of your time operating from the "Problems" side. The human mind, as we know, is biologically pre-disposed to be more sensitive to problems, and because of this, we are likely to be problem focused. Whenever people get together, a logical topic of discussion is problems. We all have problems. It is natural to focus on problems, and that is what we talk about with each other. An Olympic gold medal wrestling coach once told me that there are two principal types of athletes, those with talent and those with work ethic, and the greatest athletes possess both. While you may not be able to control talent, you can always control work ethic. When we think about problems, our problems grow. When we think about solutions, our solutions grow. I needed to remind him of the difference between a relentless solution focus and a solution focus, which is the ultimate measurement of mental toughness. People have a tendency to become so overwhelmed with life and all of the things that need to be done that it becomes increasingly difficult to accomplish anything at all. Important concept: The idea that success can be achieved by meeting a string of basic, incremental goals in the present that will ultimately lead to excellence in the future. Use the concept to begin chipping away at your problems and even the biggest issues will become manageable before long. Believe in yourself and your ability to make gradual improvements, and the results will follow. Gradual improvement over time brings about vibrant and sustainable growth. You do not need to arrive at perfection; you need to slowly but surely make things better. .10-Minute Toughness: The Mental Training Program for Winning Before the Game Begins Lanny Bassham, the Olympic gold medal shooter mentioned in Chapter 8, calls this handy precept the "ready, fire, aim" principle. Lanny claims that in sports and in life, people spend too much time aiming at the bull’s-eye and not enough time shooting at it. Rather than placing so much emphasis on getting ready and aiming, go ahead and take a shot. Taking the shot gets you started and also lets you gauge how far off the mark you are. Make adjustments, but keep shooting until you get closer and closer, and eventually you will hit the bull’s-eye. Remind yourself that your body listens to what your brain tells it. If you tell yourself you don’t know, you’re right; by the same token, if you start telling yourself there is a solution, you will also be correct. From now on, when you ask the question, you must come up with an answer. Act as though your life depends on your contributing some form of answer. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the right one, but you have to get going on the process, and nothing clogs the process more than the "I don’t know" excuse. This scenario raises another fundamental concept: anytime a person feels uncomfortable, it is a direct response to the perception of a problem. Use this natural alarm system to jump-start the solution-focus process. Anytime you feel angry, sad, stressed, frustrated, or just generally uncomfortable, seek out and define the underlying problem. Keep it simple, spending as little time and energy as necessary on this step. Once you nail down what is causing you to feel uncomfortable, immediately make the shift to the solution side of the board by asking yourself what one thing you could do differently that could make things better. When a problem comes your way that you need to fix, make sure it does cross your mind to take action. Stay solution oriented, and narrow your focus to the present and what you can do now A three-step process carries you to experiencing success as a permanent state and failure as only temporary: Decide what you want to accomplish and what it takes to get there (product and process goals). Choose to act on the physical and mental plans needed to accomplish your goals (MP100 + 20). One of two things happens—either you achieve your goals or you make adjustments to step one (relentless solution focus). when members of a group are solution focused, they will be more successful as individuals. Until there is a solution on the board, continue to ask, "What is one thing we can do that would make this better?" I consider an individual to be mentally tough when the mind is in control of thoughts that help the body accomplish what is wanted When problems knock you for a loop, don’t feel sorry for yourself or make excuses. Get your mind tuned to what you want to accomplish, get a firm handle on what it will take to achieve your goals, and then get busy. Begin the physical and mental work needed to get yourself past obstacles you encounter. If you want to rise higher in sports and in life, it is your responsibility to do what it takes to make it happen. Do not waste your breath or brain cells on cursing the unfairness and difficulty of your plight. Appoint goals, equip yourself with a mental workout that emphasizes what it takes to achieve those goals, and then don’t let anyone or anything stop you. I believe that if you feel the need to announce that you are trying, you probably need to find a way to try harder. "I am trying" is what folks say when they are not accomplishing what they set out to do. Telling yourself and others that you are trying distracts you from thinking about what you need to do differently. Next time, instead of falling back on "I am trying," ask yourself, "What is one thing I can do that could make this better? When you know what you want to accomplish, write it down, and spread the word. Talking about your goals will spring them from your subconscious into your consciousness. It will also add to your accountability. It is harder to call it quits if you have publicly declared that nothing will stop you. Become a "no-excuses" athlete. If you come up short on your goals, avoid giving the reasons why. Simply tell yourself and anyone else who is interested that you missed the mark and you will work on improving and doing better next time. Accountability is a tremendously powerful tool for growth—and excuses are the number one obstacle to accountability. Anytime you are in the presence of adversity, ask yourself, "What is one thing I can do that could make this better?" Force yourself to give a substantive answer. ("I don’t know" is not an answer that will help.) You do not need perfection; all you need is improvement. Decide what you want to accomplish and what it takes to get there (product and process goals). Choose to act on the physical and mental plans needed to accomplish your goals (MP100 + 20). One of two things happens—either you achieve your product goals or you make adjustment to your process goals (relentless solution focus). .10-Minute Toughness: The Mental Training Program for Winning Before the Game Begins The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best—write the story you want to read. The same principle applies to your life and your career: Whenever you’re at a loss for what move to make next, just ask yourself, “What would make a better story?
The manifesto is this: Draw the art you want to see, start the business you want to run, play the music you want to hear, write the books you want to read, build the products you want to use—do the work you want to see done. Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon I went to college on an art scholarship and never took an art class.
I won awards at photography and had my own darkroom and never showed anyone that I knew. I joined a creative writing class, wrote some stories that the class loved, the teacher said I was smarter and more talented than he was. I stopped writing after that class. In the same class, someone was so impressed with my creativity they wrote me in their story. I walked away without talking about it. I used to draw and make cartoons and haven't drawn years, and it is a skill, and it has faded. My apartment used to be filled with paintings and books, and I threw them all away. I remember applying to an art school but delayed the portfolio and put it together at the last minute so it was not the best it could have been. I did not make it. I never applied to another school and got an MBA instead. I have started writing and then dropped so many books I lost count. The list could keep going, I have not done or finished so much. The time of self destructing my creativity is over. D From my adventures in the subculture of addiction recovery, I’d learned that the trajectory of one’s life often boils down to a few identifiable moments—decisions that change everything. I knew all too well that moments like these were not to be squandered. Rather, they were to be respected and seized at all costs, for they just didn’t come around that often, if ever. Even if you experienced only one powerful moment like this one, you were lucky. Blink or look away for even an instant and the door didn’t just close, it literally vanished. In my case, this was the second time I’d been blessed with such an opportunity, the first being that precious moment of clarity that precipitated my sobriety in rehab. Looking into the mirror that night, I could feel that portal opening again. I needed to act. But how?
In truth, I needed an entirely new lifestyle. Finding Ultra: Rejecting Middle Age, Becoming One of the World's Fittest Men, and Discovering Myself by Rich Roll "I wasn't born with any innate talent. I've never been naturally gifted at anything. I always had to work at it. The only way I knew how to succeed was to try harder than anyone else. Dogged persistence is what got me through life. But here was something I was half-decent at. Being able to run great distances was the one thing I could offer the world. Others might be faster, but I could go longer. My strongest quality is that I never give up." — Dean Karnazes (Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner) |
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