The Pursuit: Volume #40
Delay Mental Fatigue; Why Consequences are Needed; Developing Resilience
[COFFEE]
I snagged 2 bags at Cyber Monday pricing from one of favorite “away” coffee shops - Bozeman, Montana’s Treeline Coffee Roasters. The discount x 2 bags made up for the shipping costs…
Mystique (Tanzania): tamarind, vanilla, and floral tasting notes. Everything one might expect from a great African bean. I’d buy it again. 4/5.
Boss Lady (Columbia): cranberry, chocolate, honey tasting notes. Above average Columbian with more than a single flavor note. I’d drink it again. 3.5/5.
If you want to try anything from Treeline, the code WINTERWONDER23 will get you 10% off your entire purchase until 2/28/23.
[MUSIC]
It’s that time of year… I love Spotify’s Holiday Instrumental Mix for creating the vibe and helping me crank out work in the mornings while I look at our Christmas tree.
Oh, and if you’re thinking of complaining about having to hear Mariah Carey’s holiday songs again (aka, being a hater), check this out:
She makes $2.5 MILLION every year from the song, “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, and has netted more than $72 million all-time from that ONE SONG!
Perspective shift: (Hater-check) What have YOU created (or done) that brings so much joy to so many people that intermediaries (Spotify, Pandora, Amazon music, et al.) are willing to pay you millions of dollars a month in royalties for the right to deliver your creation to their customers?
I would GLADLY take this kind of royalty check for my work to be on repeat! Pretty sure you would too ;)
[BOOKS]
Kick Some Glass: 10 Ways Women Succeed at Work on Their Own Terms by Jennifer Martineau.
Great book about how women can break barriers in the work place. Jennifer is our guest on BHP podcast #117. You can listen on iTunes or Spotify.
The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower--and Inspire You to Live Life in Forward Motion by Phil Stutz & Barry Michels
[WATCH on NETFLIX]
STUTZ - a documentary by Jonah Hill about his therapist Dr. Phil Stutz. It’s phenomenal. So good that I checked out Stutz’s book (see The Tools above) and reached out to see if he’d be a guest on the Better Human Project… 🤞
Takeaway for you: 3 things are unavoidable in life: pain, uncertainty, and constant work. The sooner we accept this fact, the sooner we can get on the path to happier, more fulfilled lives
Tip for Developing Resilience
As someone who teaches mental performance, mindset, and resilience, the above lesson from Dr. Phil Stutz is a critical one to internalize.
In my experience, those who struggle with “resilience” are the same ones who have not yet realized or accepted that pain, struggle, uncertainty, and constant work are inevitable parts of life.
In other words, their “struggles” come from fighting the nature of our existence.
They want perfect and feel as though something is wrong with them if/when a life of ease eludes them.
On the other hand, the most resilient people I’ve ever met, are the ones who accept that pain, uncertainty, and constant work are just part of the deal.
Note, this acceptance does not mean resignation or nihilism.
The most resilient people have a way of seeing these friction points as speed bumps rather than impasses. (See: “constant work”, aka relentless moving of the chains.)
To paraphrase the Indian Hindu sage Ramana Maharshi:
Rather than cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns, it is much simpler to wear shoes.
Rather than wishing for the impossible life without friction, we should seek to be resistant to abrasions. Ya know, become anti-fragile ;)
Aside from accepting pain, uncertainty, and constant work as endless and unavoidable parts of life, here are some others areas on which to focus to develop greater resilience.
7 Keys to Resilience
Self-Regard
Self-Actualization
Optimism
Interpersonal Relationships
Social Responsibility
Stress Tolerance
Flexibility
These 7 Keys are part of of workshop that I’ve co-developed & will be co-presenting in 2023 with Hassan Kamel (4 takeaways from his appearance on BHP #108). We’re already scheduled to present this to the FBI, Police Departments, FD’s and a handful of businesses around the country next year!
If you’re interested in having us bring this workshop to your team/organization to help make yourself + your people more resilient, and better leaders of self & others, CLICK HERE to email me. (Make the subject: Resilience Workshop)
We have options for 90-minute, 1/2-Day, Full Day, and 3-Day experiences.
The Importance of Consequences
I have a phrase that I love to share when I’m working with folks on leadership, culture, or team chemistry.
Without consequences, poor performances become the new standard.
It’s great to have standards.
In fact, I’ll argue that they’re a must.
But having them isn’t enough.
Standards are worthless if we do not hold ourselves, and our teammates accountable for performing up to - and above - these standards. (This goes for sports, business, and life in general.)
Let’s be honest, falling short of our standards will inevitably happen from time to time.
That’s OK.
What’s NOT OK, is tolerating these substandard performances.
When we do fall short, we need to:
Admit/realize it (all progress starts with the truth)
Figure out why we fell short
Create a plan to elevate subsequent performances to prevent repeat occurrences
Train/practice/develop the skills required to elevate our performance
(see: constant work in the resilience section)Perform at or above standards
Repeat cycle infinitely.
If we continue to miss, that’s ok - as long as we continue to do the work to close the gap between reality and ideal.
But we must never stop striving for - or holding - our standards.
Tolerating (aka, accepting) sub-standard performances leads to a lowering of the proverbial bar.
That’s how we get worse over time, instead of better.
That’s why we need consequences for substandard performances.
Athletes get benched.
Businesses lose money. Or employees get passed up for promotion(s). Or they get fired.
REFLECTION QUESTION:
How are YOU incorporating consequences into your life as a means to hold yourself accountable to your own standards?
Training To Improve Mental Focus & Endurance
When we fatigue, mental focus is often the first to go.
In sports, poor decisions cost us the game (penalties, mistakes, turnovers, etc) and in life or business, the consequences can be even more dire.
When I work with athletes, teams, and even some companies, I like to introduce this exercise to help train the mind to stay sharp under duress and fatigue.
I learned this one from Navy SEALs when we did SEALFIT back in 2012.
Each person on our team of 7 was given 1-2 lines of a poem to memorize before a round of physical exertion (an “evolution”).
At various points during the physical exertion, we were randomly asked to recite our memorized lines.
Mistakes meant more physical exertion.
Correct answers resulted in brief respites.
It’s a beautifully simple AND effective training tool.
And it’s incredibly effective at teaching folks to develop - or retain - focus under duress.
You’ll also notice that it incorporates the consequences we discussed in the section above. Like any great training tool, there are immediate and obvious consequences (feedback) as well as rewards for the desired behaviors.
Stay mentally sharp and reap the benefits.
Loose mental focus and suffer the consequences.
Here’s how you can do it:
Memorize 1-2 lines of the poem Invictus (see below)
Do something strenuous. (Run 400m, do some burpees, a set of squats, sit in a ice bath, etc…)
Repeat the line(s) at the end of effort.
Any mistakes = redo until right
Over time, memorize a second, third, fourth line… until you can memorize and recite the entire thing.
Continue to train your mind by doing similar versions of this with other works (song lyrics, poems, etc.) and by increasing the amount (or complexity) of information you attempt to memorize.
Remember the great words from Steve Pressfield in Turning Pro:
“Amateurs do it until they get it right. Pros do it until they can’t get it wrong.”
Keep Moving The Chains,
Munsey