Legacy

That’s from the first chapter on Character.

Imagine that. The greatest players on the greatest team ever after a big win. They celebrate with family and press, they reflect on the hard work that got them there and the hard work ahead.

Then they sweep.

Reminding themselves to never be too big to do the small things that need to be done.

Humble warriors.

Reminds me of Ryan Holiday’s wisdom in The Ego Is the Enemy: “My friend the philosopher and martial artist Daniele Bolelli once gave me a helpful metaphor. He explained that training was like sweeping the floor. Just because we’ve done it once, doesn’t mean the floor is clean forever. Every day the dust comes back. Every day we must sweep. …

Every day for the rest of your life you will find yourself at one of three phases: aspiration, success, failure. You will battle the ego in each of them. You will make mistakes in each of them. You must sweep the floor every minute of every day. And then sweep again.”

Our Legacy starts with character which starts with humility—playing for something bigger than ourselves and never being too big to do the little things that need to be done.

#sweep

Better People Make Better All Blacks.

It’s really rather simple: If you want to be better at what YOU do, be a better person.

I recently did an interview with a friend of Hal Elrod’s who leads thousands of mortgage professionals. We were talking about Habits 101 (and a range of other things) when he asked me what advice I would give to mortgage professionals.

I basically read him that quote. (Hah. Seriously.)

I told him that every time a friend asks me for strategic advice about their business I remind them that their consciousness/who they are as a human being is the most valuable asset of their business and that if we want to increase the value of the biz, we need to optimize THEM.

Then I kinda went off on Wooden and his socks and the fact that it’s all about the fundamentals, etc.

So, what do YOU aspire to be great at? How do you want to leave a Legacy?

Can you see that WHO YOU ARE is the greatest determinant in that success?

With that in mind, let’s reflect on two of our most powerful, fundamental questions:

What’s the #1 thing you could do starting today that, if you did it consistently, would have the most positive benefit in your life? (Now a good time to start? Go all in Habits 101 style. Make it happen.)

And, what’s the #1 thing you could STOP doing that, if you just stopped doing it completely, would have THE most positive benefit in your life? (Now a good time to crush it? Remember, we ALL have kryptonite/sirens singing to us. Let’s do the work to systematically remove them from our lives.)

Better People Make Better All Blacks.

A few things I want to highlight here.

First: That’s from a chapter on the importance of creating a learning environment in which James reminds us of the three aspects of human motivation Dan Pink walks us through in Drive: Autonomy + Mastery + Purpose. (See those Notes for more on that.)

Second: He quotes Apple founder Steve Jobs who tells us: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on but that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that are there. You’ve got to pick carefully.”

Love that. Focus is less about “Yes” than it is “No.” You get your BIG “YES!” on the most important thing that needs to get done *then* you need to flex your NO muscle on the HUNDRED other good ideas that can get in the way. That’s hard.

James continues by comparing the process to “taking all the furniture out of a house—all the chairs and tables and fixtures and fittings, and the mysterious stuff that accumulates in drawers—and only putting back what is useful.”

Imagine that. Imagine looking at your life like a house. You have a ton of habits and behaviors and commitments and projects, etc. filling up your house-life. Take it all out. ALL OF IT. Then only put back what is useful.

Brian Tracy calls this “zero-based thinking” and says this in Focal Point (see Notes): “To simplify your life, zero-based thinking is one of the most powerful strategies you can learn and apply on a regular basis. Here’s how it works. Ask yourself, ‘Is there anything I am doing right now that, knowing what I now know, I wouldn’t get into again if I were starting over today?’”

(← That’s a REALLY powerful exercise to do. Frighteningly powerful at times. :0)

Then there’s my favorite Idea: Marginal gains. We want to employ some Kiwi kaizen and strive for constant and never-ending improvement.

James touches on some of the same wisdom we cover in Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed (see Notes) where Matthew walks us through the enormous power of marginal gains thinking by sharing the story of British cycling’s dominance: “His [Sir David Brailsford, general manage of Team Sky] answer was clear: ‘It is about marginal gains,’ he said. ‘The approach comes from the idea that if you break down a big goal into small parts, and then improve on each of them, you will deliver huge increase when you put them all together.’

It sounds simple, but as a philosophy, marginal gains has become one of the hottest concepts not just in sports, but beyond.”

Find the 100 things that can be improved 1%. Those tiny little marginal gains that might not seem like much but when you do that day in and day out on all the little aspects of your life and then compound that over an extended period of time, the results are truly ASTONISHING.

I like to make this an ongoing, CONSTANT practice. Every.single.day there are tiny little things we can notice about how we approach our days that can be optimized just a tiny bit (1%!). Look for them. Have fun implementing those little improvements. Make it one big game. :)

P.S. Remember this gem from Muhammad Ali (that James shares): “It’s not the mountains that wear you out, it’s the pebble in your shoe.”

Find the pebble(s). (What are YOURS?) Remove them. Continue running. :)

That’s from a chapter all about Expectations. Specifically: EMBRACING those expectations.

For the All Blacks, that means embracing the fact that their expected to win EVERY.single.game.

Imagine that pressure.

Then remember Steven Kotler’s #1 piece of advice in our chat about The Rise of Superman in which he told me, “No pressure, no diamonds.”

If you want to RISE LIKE SUPERMAN you need to step up and challenge yourself—holding yourself to extraordinarily high standards.

And, like the golfer MAKING SURE he gets par, focus and crush it.

James tells us that “it’s this internal benchmark that sets apart the great from the good” and quotes Michael Jordan who says, “I challenge myself to be the best basketball player every moment I’m playing the game.”

This also reminds me of Orison Swett Marden’s wisdom from He Can Who Thinks He Can (see Notes) where he tells us about how our potential can only be unleashed in the most trying of circumstances: “Every man is a stranger to his greatest strength, his mightiest power, until the test of a great responsibility, a critical emergency, or a supreme crisis in his life, calls it out.”

Marden uses Abraham Lincoln as his prime case study. No Civil War, no Lincoln. It was that ultimate Loss Aversion of seeing our nation crumble that elicited the ultimate potential latent with Lincoln.

The same holds true for us. We need to be willing to embrace expectations. Be afraid to let ourselves (and loved ones) down and go do what needs to get done.

No pressure, no diamonds. Embrace expectations.

That’s from the chapter on Preparation in which we learn HOW to turn pressure into diamonds.

As you’d expect, it’s ALL (!!!) about controlling our attention. Can we put our attention where we want when we want in the most demanding situations?

Guess what?

a) That’s not easy.

b) If you want to get good at it, you need to TRAIN the ability—PRECISELY the same way you go to the gym when you want to build core strength.

As Enoka says, it’s CRAZY (cray to the cray cray cray) that we don’t see this and prioritize it.

If we’re serious about this whole OPTIMIZE thing, we need to hit the mental gym.

My preferred (and recommended) approach is meditating every.single.morning for our 10-20-30 minutes. (Remember it’s strength training for your mind.) And, use every little annoying moment in our days to practice bringing our attention back where we want while challenging every negative interpretation we make.

Do that again and again and again and you can’t help but build mental strength. <— Let’s do that.

Champions give extra. And they begin at the end.

What’s your ultimate end look like? Who says what at YOUR funeral? What legacy are you creating and what legacy will you leave?

James tells us: “Think of Buckminster Fuller: ‘What is my job on the planet? What is it that needs doing, that I know something about, that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?’ What is the extra that will make us extraordinary?”