Author: nathancepercygmailcom

How would you choose between these two options?

Option A – You work for 20 years doing something you can tolerate. You’re guaranteed to make untold amounts of money and you’re highly famous.

Option B – You work doing something you love for the rest of your life. Yet all the time you’re constantly unsure if you will ever get any fame or money.

I would guess that 90% of the population would take Option A. And I would almost agree with them. Why not have a nice cushy life now and then transition into doing something that you love later? Seems like the best of both worlds.

But what people don’t tell you about option A is that, life gets in the way. You begin to feel that you’re too old to change courses. You’ve gotten accustomed to the fame. You don’t want to become a beginner again. Then you fast forward, you’re on your deathbed, reflecting on your life… and then you realize:

Only the internal rewards mattered. 

Only the satisfaction of knowing that you chose to follow your dreams, mattered. That you dared when everyone else took the safe option. That you heeded your “call for adventure” and embarked on the journey.

We are faced with this choice between the two options, daily. For me, the way to judge which is better is by asking the question: Which one gives you a better peace of mind? Which one allows you to sleep soundly at night? And if after that you choose option A, then that’s fine. It’s 100% acceptable to choose Option A. Seriously.

But…

If you’ve ever felt the call to adventure and ignored it… then let’s just say that’s going to haunt your dreams for a long, long time.

Choose Option B. Only the internal rewards matter in the end.

If you’ve ever had to do a dietary fast, then you’ve learnt a curious trick about the body.

The first day, your body is screaming for you to put nutrients in the body. On the second day, your body starts to adapt – you might be a little light-headed but otherwise you realize you’re not going to die. On the third day, this is when the magic happens.. You almost feel better than ever before! Your body starts to burn fat for fuel and you realize that you have a ton of energy! Amazing!

Now the trick is that each time you fast, your body adapts to the conditions, faster. Your body learns to get into a great state, quicker.

A similar thing happens when a team has to “do without” an extra person or without the full budget.

First, the entire team starts to complain. Then if this situation continues, some might even jump ship. But if the rest of the team believes in the cause, they will rally together. They will work smarter to cover for the team’s deficiencies. And then they will have the project completed on time and within budget.

As a leader, you must always recognize this “without” phase as a fasting period. It is exactly the same as what happens to your body without food. You can mentally prepare your team for the challenge ahead because you know what will happen. Better yet you can even start “fasting training” and encourage the team to do without.

The fact is you will have to do without at some point. You will be under-resourced or under-staffed – that’s a given.

Will you be ready for that fast?

 

 

Ask any successful person how they became successful and the first word they’ll throw out is: Perseverance.

They all persevered through each of their setbacks and difficulties.

But how?

How do you persevere when the successful business you’ve built for 5 years gets stolen from you? How do you get back up when your enemy takes the job you’ve always wanted? How do you continue when someone tells you and your team that the work is not good enough?

You ignore the story in your head. 

Like the “maybe I’m not actually not good enough” story. Or the “maybe this is the wrong pursuit” story. Or the “how long will it take?” story.

You drop all of those thoughts from your head. Immediately.

The real difference between someone who is successful and someone who isn’t, is simple. One person chose to believe the “I can’t ever do it” story. And the other didn’t.

Now, go back and press any successful person on how they truly became successful. Most of them will wink at you. It’s a code that you get them. So they’ll tell you the truth. And the truth is:

They just ignored the story.

 

How would you get to the top of an 81 story building in the fastest way possible?

You wouldn’t take the stairs, it’s way too slow. That’s obvious. You’d probably take the elevator, which is certainly quicker. But it’s not the fastest way.

The fastest way to get to the top of any building is….

To jump down from a higher building.

Now this sounds like a trick answer. Yet when you think about it, it makes sense. It would be 10x easier to jump from an 82 story building down than to take the ground elevator up.

But yet we don’t normally think that way. We think of working our way up from the bottom in almost all of our goals. We normally set small achievable goals, hoping that we’ll get better bit by bit. One step at a time is our motto.

Especially in our career.

Here’s the key point: You can jump down to your goals by setting higher ones.

For example: You set yourself the goal to become CEO of the company. If you don’t make it, then you’ll at least land at the VP level. Which is where you wanted to be anyway. Or let’s say you set yourself the goal to make a world record in swimming. If you don’t make it at least you’ll be the best in your region.

The only thing holding you back from doing this is that you’ve already invested in your strategy. It feels too audacious to try this jumping down strategy. But what have you got to lose? Your pride? Your ego?

You can afford to lose those anyway. They were holding you back.

Jump down to your goals. You’ll be surprised at where you’ll end up with this strategy.

 

 

 

If you’ve ever been potty trained (and if you’re reading this, then I sure hope so), then you learnt a key leadership lesson.

I’m sure that your first attempts while being trained were probably messy. You were horrible in the beginning. You were constantly a work in progress, at least to your parents. But you stuck with it until lo and behold – the glorious day when you could use the toilet. No misses! No spills! Yay!

While you were learning, there was no judgment. Why? Because your parents understood that you would suck and then you would eventually get better. That you weren’t fundamentally flawed. And they stayed with you, helped you and trusted the process.

Yet as a leader, you probably judge everyone you meet based on their current skill level. Oh they don’t have what I’m looking for now, so they are of no value to me… I can’t help this person, they are so far behind… 

But here’s the secret. We’re all works in progress. 

Knowing this fact should humble you. You weren’t born at your current skill level. In anything. You had to learn along the way. People helped you to get better in your skills.

Which means, you can show this same non-judgment to others. You can allow them to get better. You can encourage their development. You can help them succeed.

We all need non-judgment to become the best teammates/leaders we can be.

Just like you had when you were being potty trained.

Gymnastics is one of my favorite sports to watch during the Olympics. And I think the reason is that gymnastics reminds me of leadership in a lot of ways. They both face a lot of fear in their activities. They both have the spotlight. And they both need to have tremendous balance in their activities.

A gymnast must ensure that she is able to perform her moves within the area allowed. She can’t afford to fall off the balance beam, as she is docked points in competition. Hence, she needs to hyper-aware of how far away from the edge she is at all times.

A leader also must be aware of his distance from the edge in at least one key area: how he treats his team. The two edges are clear. He can order his team around and be branded as domineering. Or he can befriend his team and be labelled as squishy. Neither of which makes a leader effective.

Hence he needs to become a gymnast. Gymnasts make micro-adjustments so that they won’t fall off. Leader must do the same.

The key to this is being in a high state of awareness. Awareness of what the team requires at all times. Someone who forces them to get things done? Check. Someone who can relax and have a beer with them? Check. Someone who knows how to switch between the two easily? Check.

Leading is difficult. So is gymnastics. But when done properly, there’s nothing better to watch in the world.

So you have your master plan.. You know what kind of startup to build. You know how you’ll slay the dragon. You know how you’ll sail around the world. All you need is a team.

Wait.. how do I get people to follow me?

First, serve.

Give them some value. Help solve a problem that has been bothering them. Do the work that they wouldn’t do. Talk to the people that they can’t. Serve them and then watch them come onto your team.

Why? People only care about themselves and their tribe’s problems. It’s a reality of how we’re wired. We don’t have the mental bandwidth to think about too much else.

But what about the mythical saints who are willing to help you regardless of your ask? I’d estimate that this is about 0.01% of the population. And that doesn’t include your immediate family. Sadly, the rest of us humans, only care about ourselves.

Use this reality to your advantage. Provide more value to your potential teammates than they’ve asked for. After that, they will start to pay attention to what you have to say. They’ve given you permission to talk to them. Now you can begin to convince them with your ask.

Conquering the world isn’t nearly as hard as you think. But it does require a change in mindset.

You have to remember to serve, first.

But what are vanity metrics? Any metric that can be used to signal to others “Look at me! I’m more awesome than you” is a vanity metric. Some common ones are: number of Instagram followers, number of likes, how much money you make, how many books you read, how much you weigh, how many projects you’ve worked on etc..

These metrics are drugs. It is incredibly easy to get addicted to the dopamine rush of increasing your numbers. You’ve learnt that a number going up is always good. Right?

The problem is, increasing your vanity numbers feeds your ego. Maybe you’re not the most narcissistic person, but you still have an ego. And believe me, all your ego wants is to be better than someone else.

That’s why you will end up doing things that don’t matter just to feed the ego. Binge watch the latest Netflix series just to say you’ve finished in 2 days? Yep. Tell everyone how many countries you’ve visited even though they don’t care? Absolutely. Brag about how many hours you’ve worked without sleep? You betcha.

You know what’s a better metric? Humility.

Wait how do I measure that?

That’s the point. You can’t. So don’t play the metric game. Focus on your internal state. Focus on the peace you feel by not comparing yourself to anyone else. Focus on you.

Shun the metrics and be humble instead.

For your turn?

For your decision to reach its final conclusion?

For your habit to be fully set before you set another goal?

For the right opportunity?

It’s the ultimate test. It’s even more pressing now, because we live in an on-demand world. We are accustomed to having every thing now (or at least delivered in 2 hours with Amazon Prime).

But the truth is that there is always a delay. A delay between action and outcome. Between hard work and success. The most successful people on the planet are the most patient. Even Amazon’s CEO is famous for thinking long-term. The results that Amazon are having now, are the outcome of work his team did, 5 years ago.

What do you do with the delay? Do you freak out and go crazy? Or do you wait patiently and stay undisturbed emotionally? You always have a choice, even when the world tries to convince you otherwise. Choose to be patient. Choose to let it happen when it will. Choose to be as calm as a stone.

So…

Can you wait?

If you’ve ever played a game at the casino, then you know the feeling.

The “Ah well just one more round.. I’m sure I’ll win this time” feeling.

The “Let’s wait and see what happens next, it’s too early to give up..” feeling

Turns out that this feeling is so popular it’s been given a name. It’s called loss aversion. Truth is: we hate to lose. In anything. You hate to lose your old sweater even though you haven’t worn in it in 5 years. You hate to have to fire a teammate that you hired even if they weren’t performing. You feel gutted and there’s tremendous pressure to stick with the initial decision to save face.

You: Nooo I can handle it whenever I lose.. (as long as I don’t lose, and I never lose anyway)

Righttt.

Clearly, this can be a problem when you’re leading your team. If you make a decision and it doesn’t work out, then it’s your responsibility as a leader to acknowledge it. And quickly. You can let ill will fester if you don’t accept that you made a bad call. And that can ruin the smooth functioning of your unit.

Loss aversion is sneaky. And potentially fatal to team chemistry. So here’s my advice:

If you’ve made a bad decision: Cut your losses. Now.

If you are making a decision that could flop, then set a future time when you’ll revisit your decision. And then move on. Communicate this timeline openly to the team so they don’t question your leadership.

You can win by learning how to lose.