You know I spend a lot of time thinking about how to become an elite athlete and coach. Recently, I distilled the path towards elite to three elements. Do you have these as part of your life?
1. Be intentional about how you think.
For as long as I have lived in Arizona I have said it's hard to have a bad day here. It's warm and sunny with clear skies almost every single day. I grew up in the Midwest. I know the struggle of trying to overcome a dreary day to be happy and productive. That struggle doesn't exist in Phoenix.
Well, in July it's 110 degrees outside every day. It hits triple digits before 7 a.m. We can barely take a morning walk with the dog before we are relegated inside. It's easy to complain about the heat. It takes no effort and no one disagrees.
But it doesn't help you have a better day. In our house we call it stinkin' thinkin' and challenge each other to make an attitude adjustment. We hung three balloons from the doorframe to our living room. If anyone complains about the weather we pop a balloon. We can only do it three times in the week.
This is such a small mental shift. When it comes to your performance and leadership in high stakes situations the power of the mind can have monumental effects. It cannot be understated. It’s the secret to enduring all circumstances, to relaxing under pressure, to focusing your attention in the moment, and to making all the hard work pay off when it matters most.
We all invest a lot of time, energy, and money into developing our skills, tactics, and physical abilities. We put a lot of willpower into being successful and even just having a good day.
Do you realize how one small shift in the way you think can change everything?
And it goes way further than thinking positive during a thunderstorm.
2. Be strategic with how you organize your life.
The most successful people operate with some kind of systemization in their life. They have processes and routines that set them up for success, prepare for their opportunities, and develop them for the performance they desire. It’s not mindless automation. It strategically matches who they want to become and the type of people they want to be, and it gives them valuable feedback for when to adjust and where they can grow next.
You already live by a set of processes and routines. Most of us fall into them haphazardly and some of them are destructive habits we use to avoid something. When is the last time you took an audit of your processes and routines? Are they serving you well for who you want to become and where you want to go? Did they serve you well for a season and now it's time to upgrade?
Routines can be a powerful tool to guide your life, keep you prepared for a hopeful opportunity, give you feedback when it's time to adjust, and give you something to fall back on when you're just not feeling it.
3. Be vulnerable in building a team of trust and support.
Vulnerability is not a weakness. It can be if you're just vomiting your junk on others for them to carry. Used appropriately though, it can be the superpower that binds a team together. It fuels the momentum for deep trust and respect that helps your team endure the wins and losses of life's roller coaster.
If you struggle with vulnerability it may be because you were vulnerable in the past and were hurt or taken advantage of. I'm sorry for that. But it doesn't have to inform the rest of your future. You may fear vulnerability because you fear it will confirm your suspicions that you don't belong, you are a freak, or that it will expose you for who you truly are.
The average athlete or coach who is part of a high-performing team will always go farther than a superior athlete or coach with no support. Until you learn to be vulnerable with the people who are investing in you, and the people you are investing in, you will always come up short of what you can be.