No matter what your circumstances, you can always make your future bigger than your past.
Dan Sullivan
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Book Quote of the Week 150
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The Crowd’s Chanting ‘Airball’… You’re Thinking, ‘NEXT!’
One of the most difficult things I deal with in coaching high school basketball is getting the players to buy into the “Next Mentality.” It’s not much different between boys teams, girls teams, the star players or the bench warmers. When they screw up, it’s hard for them to forget about it. It’s not just with screw up’s either, it might just be a missed shot, botched defensive assignment or something else. With some players, if they miss a shot, it’s over. You’re not going to see them take another shot. They’re not going to take the chance of missing again.
Over the years I’ve improved at coaching the “Next Mentality,” but I know that I’m far from perfect because I had a player going into their third year of playing for me that had to have a refresher last week. If I’ve done my job right, each player on my team should know their role. They should know their assignments. They know the shots they should take as well as the shots they shouldn’t take. So if they are playing their role and doing the things they are supposed to, but a shot doesn’t drop… WHO CARES?! That does not mean you stop shooting or fulfilling your role. But most important, it does not mean you dwell on it and keep beating yourself up over it. It’s over, you’re not going to change it, NEXT! Then the next time down the floor, when you get that same shot that you just missed, there’s no hesitation, you confidently shoot it again. You’re not even thinking about that last shot that you missed. Maybe you make it, maybe you miss it. Either way… NEXT!
I was recently having a conversation with someone who wanted to grow their brand online but they were beginning to fear putting their thoughts out there because on a few of their posts they had some haters add some really negative comments. The first time it happened they were devastated. They couldn’t get it off of their mind and began wondering if they should just throw in the towel. They didn’t know the person, but the comment stung.
When they asked me my opinion on whether or not they should keep going I asked them to tell me again why they were doing it. When we talked about their purpose and their why, the actions they had been taking were a good fit for what their goals are. So my suggestion to them was, “Next!”
I explained to them that if they were the best shooter on my basketball team and they shot an airball in a game, I wouldn’t want them to stop shooting for the rest of the game just because the opposing fans were chanting ‘airball’.
Look at the biggest influencers out there today. GaryVee puts out insane amounts of content. Does he only get positive, supportive feedback and comments? Of course not. But if he quit creating content after his first hater made a negative comment would he have 6.4M followers on Instagram (@garyvee), 1.9M followers on Twitter (@garyvee), 3.2M followers on Facebook (Facebook.com/gary/), plus the millions more following his other channels? No he wouldn’t. So why did he keep going?
Well, on Twitter he told us exactly why: “I just done give a @%#$ about what anybody thinks about me, because they don’t know who the @%#$ I am inside.”
So why do you spend your time stressed about a negative comment from someone who doesn’t even know you. There’s too much to get done in this life to spend time valuing someone else’s negative opinion. Fulfill your role. Take your shot. If it was a good shot and you miss, don’t worry about what anyone else says or thinks. You’re not going to change it. Don’t dwell on it or waste your time thinking about it. Just be ready to keep shooting! NEXT!
Whether you are just starting out or you’ve been at it for a while. If you are willing to play full out and push yourself to amplify the performance of your business and your life you need to join us for our ELITE PERFORMANCE MASTERMIND! We guarantee incredible results, but only register for this event if you are willing to take what you learn and implement massive action to achieve your goals!
The Greatest Teacher
How do you perform under pressure? How do you perform under emotional pressure? When something goes wrong, you’ve failed, how do you react?
As a basketball coach I have to admit that I have had experiences when things were not going right and things got emotional, and I didn’t respond in the best way. If a referee makes a bad call in a basketball game that has a negative impact on my team at a key point in the game, will it make things better for us if I lose my mind on the ref? Is there a chance if I scream and yell that maybe he will apologize and change his call? Of course not.
But on the other hand what negative could come from it? To begin with, that negative emotion is absorbed by my team. I’m showing my team, through my actions, what is acceptable. The referee isn’t going to be looking to give me any breaks or do me any favors going forward, maybe even beyond this one game.
I’m not writing this to talk about basketball referees and how you should react if they make a call you don’t agree with. What I want to look at is how we can take all of our experiences, both good and bad, and learn from them so that when we face a similar circumstance in the future we will be prepared to deal with it in the best possible way.
Whether we are in a team environment or as an individual we can look at both our good and bad experiences and learn from them. In both cases there are emotions tied to the experience that we need to be able to work around. In a positive outcome we may be flooded with positive emotions that give us the false belief that everything went right and we don’t have to think anymore about it. In a negative outcome you may feel that nothing went right and you don’t even want to think about it anymore. But the reality is that we have much to learn from both outcomes that can transform our futures.
As an individual, as a family, as a business or as a team this is an exercise that could have a major impact on your future outcomes.
After an event, either positive or negative, take the time to learn from it. Capture what the situation was, what are the facts? What about it wasn’t great and could get better? What worked? Strategize about how to make sure it happens for the better next time.
Dan Sullivan talks about “The Greatest Teacher” in his podcast INSIDE Strategic Coach. He suggests making three small boxes on a piece of paper to work through the situation:
- What Worked – This should open the flood gates and allow everyone to appreciate the there were things that worked
- What Needs to Improve – Here you can identify the problems, the things that didn’t work, so that you can improve on them for the future
- Strategies for the Future – This will make you alert to all situations in the future. You may not have an identical situation, but by going through this exercise you will be aware of how you can apply this experience to others situations in the future
Dan says that by going through this process you can create a positive momentum for the future and not be bogged down by the past.
In my basketball example I have two opportunities to go through this. First I could sit down with my assistant coaches and have a discussion and secondly I could go through the process with my team. This would allow us to look at the situation and the outcome. It would allow us as coaches and as a team to strategies on how we would react to a similar situation in the future which will hopefully bring us a better outcome.
Today in the entrepreneurial world failure is often looked at almost as a badge of honor. We hear the quotes:
“Fail Fast”
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again”
“Failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success”
“Failure is the key to success; each mistake teaches us something”
The last quote in this list is key because for anything good to come out of failure, we have to learn from our mistakes. Otherwise, failure is just failure.
As I have mentioned earlier, this is an exercise that should be used after both successful and unsuccessful outcomes so that we can learn from each of them. But this is an exercise that will allow us to look at our failures to learn from them so that we can be successful in the future.
“Your experience when you’re having intense [positive or negative] emotions is the greatest teacher you can possibly have. Channel it and you’ll always come up with amazing breakthroughs.”
– Dan Sullivan
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Your Not-To-Do-List
At the end of every day I take a look at my list of things I needed to accomplish during the day. If there are any items that couldn’t be completed for some reason, I deal with them. It might be rescheduling them, delegating them or deleting them all together. I then review my list for the following day, which are items I had already scheduled along with new items that surfaced in the mean time.
The next morning, when I sit down at my desk, the first thing that I’ll do is review this list again.
In the past I’ve had days that this list seems to grow bigger and bigger, regardless of how much I check off of it each day. I’ve found myself feeling great as I’m checking off item after item, feeling like I’m being producing and getting things done. But then I’d get to the end of the day and realize there are still a lot of important items that I haven’t even looked at yet. How can this be? I’ve been working and knocking things off like crazy.
Often, this problem arises not because of the number of items on my to-do-list, but because of what the items are and which ones shouldn’t even be on my list in the first place.
One of the best exercises you can do to increase your productivity is to create your Not-To-Do-List!
Think about this, there are things you do every day that move the needle the most for you and/or your company. Maybe it’s sales, maybe it’s marketing, maybe it’s coaching your team. It’s whatever you do that creates the biggest results/revenue. These needle movers are the things you should be spending your time on.
Now look at all the things you do on a daily basis that are not creating these results. That are not the needle movers. If you are putting off the needle-mover items to work on these other things, you need to stop. Stop Now! These are not the things that need your focus and that you need to be spending your time on.
It’s hard to make changes that free up big blocks of time in our days. We have smaller moments that we need to utilize and take the best advantage of. You need to create your Not-To-Do-List to free up these moments so that you can focus on the needle-movers in your life.
Let’s do this right now! Don’t put it off, grab a pen and paper and lets get started…
What things do you spend your time on that don’t serve growth, a greater income, empowerment, your God, your family or a bigger future?
- Make a list of the non-needle-mover activities that you spend your time on.
- For each item mark it as:
- Automate,
- Delegate, or
- Eliminate
Now that you’ve made this list, follow through. Maybe it’s your monthly bills that you can get online and automate the payments. Maybe it’s a daily task that you’ve felt it was just easier if you took care of it yourself. Delegate it! Maybe it’s something that just really doesn’t matter. Eliminate it!
When you clear the clutter from your to-do-list, you clear your mind. Your stress level decreases and your creativity increases.
As important as a To-Do-List can be, even more important is your Not-To-Do List!
*Add this exercise to the top of your To-Do-List right now! Actually do it and get it done!
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