Michael Hyatt's Blog, page 51

What Extreme Athletes Can Teach Us About Overcoming Our Fears

The Triple Power of Trust, Preparation, and Mindful Engagement

At twelve years old, when most girls her age were learning algebra and crushing on the members of NSYNC, Samantha Larson was preparing to conquer a fear that few adults would face: climbing to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, Africa. By eighteen, Larson had also successfully climbed each of the Seven Summits, ascending to the tallest peak on each continent and, at the time, becoming the youngest person to achieve the feat.

The first time Larson felt real fear was at the bottom of Kilimanjaro, when she and her father (who completed all of the climbs with her) met a gentleman who had gotten sick because of the change in altitude and couldn’t make it to the summit. He warned them that they, too, would probably struggle. But instead of backing out, Larson committed to pressing forward.

“Fear is such a personal thing, but in a lot of situations, fear is just a reaction of the human brain, which is wired to convince us that what we may want to do is a bad idea,” says Larson. “When we face fear, we have to ask ourselves how badly we want that thing that we’re afraid of, and how can we learn to work through the fear when we feel it.”

Trust in the face of fear

We typically assume that the opposite of fear is courage or bravery. But according to the popular saying, it’s actually trust that arises when fear is absent. And this is certainly the case for professional slackliner Heather Larsen.

Slacklining is the process of walking across a tensioned cord that is suspended between two anchors, similar to a tightrope (but with more slack in the line, hence the sports’ name). So what’s the key differentiator between slacklining and the standard, circus-variety tightrope walking? Some slackliners, also known as highliners, choose to trek across canyons, carefully balancing on lines that are literally hundreds of feet from the ground.

Despite built-in safety mechanisms (participants typically wear a harness with a leash that connects to the line itself) highlining definitely falls on the extreme end of the sports spectrum, with risks that include fractures, sprains, broken bones, and even death. For Larsen, who was introduced to slacklining through climbing, the ability to overcome the fears associated with traversing a 2.5-centimeter wire high above the ground is based on her assurance that she will remain safe even if she falls.

“I trust the gear, my rigging team, and my partners, and I trust my skills and abilities to walk the line,” Larsen explains. “[When I first started highlining], I think I easily trusted my gear because of my familiarity with building climbing anchors in the past, and I trusted my friends because I was aware of their experience. I now also have the knowledge and experience to evaluate my environment and the teams I work with.”

Whether you’re an extreme sports athlete, a newlywed, or a startup entrepreneur, being able to rely on a partner or team to carry part of the burden and minimize some of the risk certainly helps to mitigate fear. But this trust doesn’t develop overnight—nor does it develop without personal effort.

“I am constantly learning from others in the slacklining community; my friend just taught me a new knot that is much easier to check and very clean for rigging highlines,” says Larsen. “I think that in order to develop and maintain trust, you have to be willing to be a student [of your industry] and the groups you work with, as well.”

Preparing for victory

Ultimately, the more you study, the better the perspective you have for your circumstances and the greater the likelihood that you will be able to adequately prepare for what lies ahead. U.S. National and World Champion powerlifter Robert Herbst admits that youthful exuberance may have blinded him to the fact that he could be injured while competing. But with age and a twice dislocated sacrum (due to scoliosis that developed when he was a child), Herbst credits preparation for the confidence he feels each time he hoists a bar—weighing more than triple his own body weight—over his head.

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The more you study, the better the perspective you have for your circumstances and the greater the likelihood that you will be able to adequately prepare for what lies ahead.

—ANDREA WILLIAMS

Herbst recalls seeing a competitor ahead of him blow out his leg while lifting a weight less than what Herbst was about to attempt. Yet, because of his focus on both physical and mental training, Herbst was more than prepared to make his lift, even in the face of fear.

“Preparation reduces risk because it enables you to deal with situations as they arise,” says Herbst. “If you are prepared, then you know you have the answer, and you can rely on their training. There is then less to fear as you know you can cope.”

According to Herbst, preparation also allows you to ignore the possible consequences and risks when action is needed. You have to be aware of the potential to lose your 401K when launching a business, or the chance that you may alienate your customer base when introducing a new product, but once you have accepted those risks and prepared as much as possible to avoid them, ignoring fears isn’t naïve. It’s calculated and strategic.

“After my deadlift at the World Drug-Free Powerlifting Championships this year, I had broken blood vessels on my face as if I had been punched,” says Herbst. “If during those lifts, I had thought that I might tear something, I maybe would have subconsciously backed off and not have been able to give the same effort. And I think other people in extreme situations know that once they have committed themselves, they have to focus on the moment and what needs to be done, and not worry about extraneous things such as risk. Otherwise, they may not be as effective or successful, and they will still be exposed to the risk anyway.”

Mindful fearlessness

Mountain climber Samantha Larson has come to understand the difference between real, flight-or-flight danger and the mind’s natural tendency to default to the path of comfort and least resistance through her path toward mindfulness. And more than just the buzzword on every wellness guru’s lips, mindfulness can mean the difference between failing to reach our fullest potential and living the lives we were divinely created for.

“More often than not, when we feel afraid, we’re actually safe,” says Larson. “Mindfulness techniques can very helpful in working through fear in almost any situation, and that means going through the process of recognizing that you feel afraid, analyzing whether you are actually in a dangerous situation, using that analysis to consciously decide how you want to navigate the situation, and then trusting in that decision and acting on it with purpose.”

4 Steps for Dealing with Self-Doubt

How Barack Obama and Sheryl Sandberg Beat the Imposter Syndrome

It’s natural to feel like an imposter sometimes. But don’t dwell on your self-doubt. Instead, the solution is to recognize your feelings as a healthy part of your professional and personal development, realize that other successful people feel the same way, understand that you already have the strengths needed, and use this fear as a tool for making even greater strides in your progression in life.

I know. Easier said than done, right? There are those times when you feel like you’re faking it, even as you succeed in launching a new business or project. Mark Zuckerberg felt that a few years after launching Facebook, when others were telling him to sell the business to other firms instead of sticking to his plan to keep the social media giant independent. “I wondered if I was just wrong, an imposter, a twenty-two-year-old kid who had no idea how the world worked,” he admitted.

Then there are those soul-crushing moments of adversity that make you wonder whether you will ever achieve your purpose. Former President Barack Obama felt that way in 2000 when he “got whupped” in his effort to defeat incumbent Congressman Bobby Rush. At that point, the future president thought “for me to run and lose that bad… maybe this isn’t what I was cut out to do.”

When left unchecked, self-doubt can either make you indecisive on important issues or, worse, cause you to act out against colleagues and loved ones who have your back. But as Zuckerberg, Obama, and other leaders have shown, it doesn’t have to be that way. By taking four steps, you will not only learn to deal with self-doubt but leverage it as part of your growth in all aspects of your life.

1. Accept it—self-doubt is normal

Society makes it seem like certainty and self-confidence the norm. But as a team led by Reed College Psychology Professor Kathryn Oleson determined in a 2012 study, self-doubt is the normal consequence of the realization that life is filled with uncertainty. Even when things are great, the possibility of layoffs, business failures, even debilitating illness, can be around the corner.

Self-doubt also comes as you take on new challenges and opportunities. After all, to paraphrase the disclaimer on many a mutual fund, past performance is not indicative of future results. This is especially true when a new venture takes you out of your areas of expertise and, more importantly, your comfort zone.

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There is nothing unusual or even necessarily unhealthy about having twinges of self-doubt.

—RISHAWN BIDDLE

Simply put, there is nothing unusual or even necessarily unhealthy about having twinges of self-doubt. If anything, you should be worried about not having any doubts at all. If you don’t have any self-doubt about anything you do, then you aren’t stretching and progressing. James Cameron was right when he said that “no important endeavor that required innovation was done without risk.”

2. Realize everybody else thinks they’re faking it, too

Despite all of her success, poet Maya Angelou always feared that she wasn’t good enough. As she once admitted: “I have written eleven books, but each time I think, ‘Uh-oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody, and they’re going to find me out.’”

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has a long record of success that includes serving as chief of staff to former Treasury Secretary Laurence Summers, and overseeing Google’s global sales operations. Yet she admits that “I force myself to sit at the table, even when I am not sure I belong there.”

One thing is clear: You are not alone. Contrary to what we might think, being successful isn’t a result of never having a moment of doubt. If anything, it is a result of admitting the feeling of being an imposter—and yet still working and achieving and succeeding. The next time you are in a meeting or a conference and feel like you are just faking it to make it, look around the room and realize this: Everyone else who is successful like you feels the same way.

3. Embrace the fact that you are enough

Once you accept the existence of self-doubt and realize that others feel like imposters, too, you can see that you are more than capable of fulfilling your purpose. A key step starts with applying Apple Founder Steve Jobs’ famed adage that “you can only connect [the dots] looking backward.” Often, it means looking at your past successes, as well as previous episodes of adversity, and how they can help you tackle the challenges and opportunities ahead.

Another step lies in realizing that you are smarter, more talented, and more influential within your circles than you think you are. This means trusting your vision and instincts. After all, they helped you make past strides as well as avoid pitfalls that could have hindered your progress.

Finally, you should stay true to yourself. Authenticity is an overused word. But it is critical when it comes to dealing with self-doubt. Says former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns: “I realized I was more convincing to myself and to the people who were listening when I actually said what I thought, versus what I thought people wanted to hear me say.”

4. Keep learning and growing

But as I noted earlier, self-doubt isn’t all bad. When utilized as a tool in professional and personal development, it can help you grow in all aspects of your life.

Self-doubt can help you admit that you may not know everything you need to take on the next challenge. So seek out books on the matters you are now undertaking. After all, there is nothing new under the sun. Also, seek out counsel from trusted sponsors, mentors, and loved ones so they can be part of your growth.

Another value of self-doubt comes in the form of humility, that much-needed antidote to the hubris and arrogance that has destroyed many a man and woman. Accepting your own uncertainty about yourself helps make you more-tolerant of the shortcomings of others around you. It can even be useful in your own role as a mentor to the generation of strivers who are coming right behind you. Especially your own children.

One Easy Self-Assessment for True Success

How to Keep Track of the 10 Domains that Make up Your Life

One key for designing the future we desire is self awareness. A study study by Cornell University and Green Peak Partners found it was the single greatest predictor of success among executives. That goes for most of us.

Our lives have many domains. Consider your spirituality, psychological and physical health, family, friends, and work. It doesn’t stop there. As Michael says, it’s helpful to see our lives as consisting of ten interrelated domains: spiritual, intellectual, emotional, physical, marital, parental, social, financial, vocational, and avocational.

Struggling to keep track?

A critical insight is that these domains are interrelated. Each one affects all the others. Take work. Job stress can drain our physical and emotional energy, tax our closest relationships, devour our margin for recovery, and more. It’s the same with our physical health and our families. How many people have you seen riding high until an ailment or a divorce brought everything to a screeching halt?

The trouble is visibility. True self awareness means we know how we’re doing in all ten domains. Easier said than done, right? It’s challenging to maintain focus on one area while keeping an eye on all the others. It’s like a game of existential Whac-A-Mole.

A few of us don’t even try. We pursue whatever comes easiest and forget the rest. But I bet most of us want much more out of life. We just struggle to keep our eye on so many moving targets. We want to build a strong marriage, give our best on the job, and stay connected to our kids—all while making room for friends and pastimes that help us rejuvenate.

We know most things don’t get better on their own. Improvement takes attention. One tool that can provide the visibility we need is the LifeScore Assessment. This is a tool that lets you rate yourself in all ten life domains. It then assigns a numeric value to your answers and calculates your overall LifeScore.

How far can you go?

The score let’s you confirm what’s working well already and spot opportunities for improvement. As Michael says, the LifeScore Assessment gives you the clarity you need to design the life you want. This is the third year we’ve offered the assessment, and one thing we love hearing is how it’s already helped leaders, entrepreneurs, and others make progress toward designing the lives they want.

“The first time I took the LifeScore Assessment was a huge wake-up call for me,” said Kelly Thorne Gore, founder and president of iBloom. “I was really strong in certain areas, and I was proud of that. There were certain areas where I was really frustrated.” Seeing the gap gave Kelly insight into what needed her attention next. “That awareness was a defining point for me,” she said. “It was realizing that I had to make some changes. And I was worth it. My family was worth it. It really was the catalyst for creating one of my best years ever.”

“The LifeScore Assessment has meant everything to me,” said Rick Kloete, president and managing partner for the Kloete Group, an executive search firm. Because of the assessment, “I knew where I needed the most improvement and what was most important.”

Steve Anderson, a speaker and industry consultant on technology and its uses in insurance, said the assessment “is a great tool to help you understand more objectively than probably you can on your own where you stand in terms of your goals.”

How far have you come?

The score not only tells you where you are, it can also show you how far you’ve come. “I am a numbers guy,” Mark Timm, CEO of Cottage Garden and Ziglar Family, said. “That’s one of the things that I think I liked about the LifeScore Assessment. It actually gave me a number I can use to benchmark my progress.”

“Take it once,” he said, “that’s your baseline, and then take it again. . . . So you can measure the progress that you’re making.”

The future is built on the present. Our decisions and actions today contribute to the shape of tomorrow. But without a good sense of where we stand right now in all of life’s domains, our decisions will be uninformed and our actions lopsided. The LifeScore Assessment gives us the insight and balanced attention we need to make significant progress across the board.

What’s more, watching your score improve will help you stay motivated and engaged for the long haul.

How far will you go?

The LifeScore Assessment only takes about ten minutes to complete. Once you’re finished, you’ll get a score-specific report along with tips and strategies you can use to improve your number in the coming year. Best of all, the LifeScore Assessment is totally free—for a limited time. We’re offering the assessment as part of the prelaunch promotion for the 2018 edition of our 5 Days to Your Best Year Ever course. After that, the assessment will only be available as part of the course.

Discover Your LifeScore Now!

Don’t miss this chance to discover your LifeScore. It’s fun, fast, free, and will give you the visibility you need to succeed in all of life’s domains.

5 Tragic Losses Caused by ‘Someday Syndrome’

‘Either get busy living or get busy dying.’

“You have Parkinson’s Disease,” said the doctor. It was September 22, 2011—the day before my 46th birthday. While not usually fatal, Parkinson’s is a degenerative disease. This means it inevitably worsens over time. There is no cure. I was suddenly facing the prospect of limited mobility as my future unfolded.

In the movie Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne says to his pal Red as they sit in the prison yard, “It comes down to one simple decision. Either get busy living or get busy dying.” My life had taken an unexpected and unpleasant turn, but it was not over.

I decided to get busy living.

Do you value your values?

An advantage of contracting a disease like Parkinson’s is that it clarifies one’s perspective and focus. For instance, I realized that I wasn’t really “valuing my values,” because I had been spending my time doing other things. The things I called “priorities” were merely wishful thinking. Real priorities demand our attention. If I say it’s a priority to read a certain number and kind of books, but I never do it, I deceive myself.

What causes us to behave in this way? Why am I able to spend countless hours staring into the gaping, blue-lit void of my iPhone screen, but seemingly powerless to pick up Hemingway?

Before my diagnosis, I had claimed that certain goals were important to me—but I was not demonstrating this with my time, energy, and focus. But after that fateful diagnosis, I understood too well that I had finite amounts of all three. I had squandered what I once possessed in greater measure.

Deadlier (to me) than Parkinson’s

I realized that I had been suffering from a big, fat case of “Someday Syndrome”—a killer if there ever was one. This insidious mindset allows us to deceive ourselves into believing that “someday” is a valid plan.

“Someday I’ll spend more time with the kids.”
“Someday we’ll start investing.”
“Someday I’ll get serious about reaching my fitness goals.”

Perhaps you find yourself unable to do the things you want to do, and you can’t seem to stop doing things you don’t want to do. Even St. Paul struggled with this problem. “I don’t really understand myself,” Paul writes, “for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate.”

Sound familiar? Chances are you have become an unwitting slave to behavioral triggers. These triggers are powerful. They can prevent us from following through with our conscious desires. They can replace those conscious desires with unconscious behaviors. And these unconscious behaviors are often counterproductive and even damaging.

We know them as habits. Automatic behavior patterns that we often feel powerless to resist. This may explain why you feel blocked from your destiny. You may believe that you are somehow unable to muster the discipline to achieve your goals. Take heart! The doors of destiny are not locked but are often held shut by the chains of habit.

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The doors of destiny are not locked, but are often held shut by the chains of habit.

—RAY EDWARDS

Someday Syndrome is deadlier than Parkinson’s or any other disease, because Someday Syndrome kills your dreams and aspirations.

You don’t have to fall victim to its grip! Awareness of the syndrome, in and of itself, is curative for many people. And rest assured, a cure is needed. Because Someday Syndrome will cost you so much more than a shiny new sports car, or an exotic vacation in the tropics. Sadly, Someday Syndrome prevents you from fulfilling what you were designed to accomplish.

The 5 tragic losses

I believe there are five tragic losses brought on by indulging in Someday Syndrome. Pursue your priorities now! Don’t put them off until someday. For if you fail to act now, you’ll likely suffer these five losses:

1. The loss of your integrity. Integrity in this context means your ability to remain true to your values and worldview. For example, if you say that you value spending time with your family, but you work 80 hours a week and are never home to see your children or your spouse, you’re not behaving with integrity. This leads inevitably to Tragic Loss Number 2.

2. The loss of your self-respect. Steven Covey said, “Private victories precede public victories.” When you behave with integrity you win a private victory. You have proved to yourself that you can keep a promise even if it’s one that only you know about. This builds your self-respect. If you consistently break promises to yourself, such as saying you will do something someday when you know you never will, you slowly erode your self-respect. You can even go down that path so far that you come to a place of self-loathing.

3. The loss of leadership. All of us are leaders. The first person we lead is ourselves. Then comes our family, our spiritual community, our friends, our co-workers and team members, and our acquaintances. If you don’t respect yourself as a leader in your own life, you’ll have very little influence in the lives of others. As they witness your lack of integrity and loss of self-respect, your position of leadership is weakened, eroded, and destroyed.

4. The loss of your legacy. Legacy is about more than just money or property, it is about the imprint you make on the world while you’re here, the memories you create in the minds, hearts, and lives of other people. The values you demonstrate to your children and to your children’s children are your legacy. It’s been said that people don’t remember so much what you say, they remember who you are. They know who you are based on what you do. This is your legacy. Are you building a legacy you can be proud of or one that makes you feel ashamed?

5. The loss of God’s gifts. Now don’t get me wrong, the Bible says that the gifts God gives us are “irrevocable.” So, if he has given you a gift of hospitality, or the gift of leadership, or of vision, or of artistic talents, he does not take these gifts away. So how can it be that you could lose God’s gifts? Simple. By not using them. If you put these priority gifts off until “someday when you have more time,” you’ll go to your grave never having utilized the gifts that God has given you. You only have one life in this world, don’t waste it, and don’t waste the gifts you’ve been given.

These five losses are all the more tragic because they are completely avoidable. If you’d like to avoid them yourself, here’s what to do next.

First, decide what your priorities really are. Next, get an understanding of why those are your priorities. What is the reason these priorities are important to you? Write these reasons down. Having a powerful enough “why” will get you past the problem of figuring out how to accomplish your priorities. Finally, construct a plan of how to begin accomplishing your priorities, and put a deadline on that plan. This is called a goal. An aspiration with no deadline, on the other hand, is not a goal, it is simply a dream.

For me, it took a Parkinson’s diagnosis to wake me up. My challenge to you is to wake up now. Don’t wait for a tragedy to shake your world. Stop dreaming. Make your priorities your true priorities and don’t suffer the 5 tragic losses that come from someday syndrome.

You Can Design Your Year

The drift happens when we succumb to the current of life, like a boat carried along by the water. It’s a passive approach to life. We let the year happen to us instead of causing the results. But it doesn’t have to be this way. In this episode, we’re going to establish that you really can design your year—and talk about how.

Are You a Pilot or a Passenger in Your Own Life?

Avoid the Drift and Choose Your Way

Imagine you’re in a sailboat on the open ocean. You have a map and, after looking at several different options, you decide where you would like to go. Now what? Do you hope the wind and waves will get you there? Or, do you use the sail and rudder to direct your boat to the right harbor?

One of the most obvious things about the future is that we are not there yet. The question for us as we approach a brand new year is whether to drift or direct our lives where we want them to go.

Drifting through life?

The word for this direction is agency, our power to affect the future. But amazingly, some people believe they have very little agency in life. Things will be what they will be. We run into people like this all the time. Maybe we struggle with it ourselves. It seems like we’re just bobbing in the waves, going wherever the current leads.

But we have far more power than we think. All we have to do to see this is imagine what little it would take to steer our lives into ruin. The things we keep doing every day to keep our lives on track show that we have great power if we’re willing to become aware of it and use it.

What would happen if we used that agency to take our lives to entirely different destinations than the ones we’re currently drifting toward? Ask yourself: Are you a pilot or a passenger?

The power of agency

Our agency is like the rudder we thrust into the seas to direct our vessels to our chosen destinations. There are four different aspects of our agency that help us achieve our goals, according to Stanford University psychology professor Albert Bandura.

1. Intention. This means we can set our minds to a particular outcome and work with others and within our circumstances to achieve it.

2. Forethought. By visualizing the future, we can govern our behavior in the present and give purpose and meaning to our actions.

3. Action. Beyond intention and forethought, we have the ability to act on our plans, to stay motivated, and respond in the moment to stay on course.

4. Self-reflection. We not only act, we know we act. That means we can evaluate how we’re doing, make adjustments, and even revise our plans. This remarkable capacity for self-reflection is why I created the LifeScore Assessment, which lets us reflect on how we’re doing in life’s ten main domains. You can find out more about that here).

Because of these abilities, as Cicero said in On Duties, a person “discerns consequences, sees the causes of things, understands the rise and progress of events, compares similar objects, and connects and associates the future with the present [and] easily takes into view the whole course of life, and provides things necessary for it.”

If we’re drifting, it’s only because we’ve forgotten the deep-seated, inherent power we have to pilot our lives the way we want to go.

Are you making progress?

In large part happiness, confidence, and satisfaction in life come from making progress toward significant goals. But the first step is realizing that we have the agency we need to set and meet those goals.

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Ask yourself: What would your life look like if you directed it, instead of drifted through it?

—MICHAEL HYATT

Drifting is just motion, but direction leads to real progress. Are we pilots or passengers? It’s time to set the course, engage the rudder, and get going.

Run the Race You Want to Run

Lessons Learned from Building the Wrong Business

It was a year ago. I had dozens of people working for me. My business was losing money every month. Everyone thought I was successful, but I was stressed beyond belief. I was racing toward a meltdown.

After bootstrapping my company to seven figures, I was now living in the stressful reality of running a company. Was this what I signed up for? Was this what I really wanted? “I think it’s interesting,” one friend said, “that you started a business so you could write more, and now you’re not writing.”

How right he was. The truth is that I thought all growth was good. I thought that the bigger my company got, the easier things would become. I’d have all these employees doing things for me, and I wouldn’t have to work as hard anymore. That ended up not being true.

Run your own race

“You don’t have to do this,” my business coach would tell me every week when we met on the phone. I’d hired him to help me scale my business, but now he was telling me, “I think you’d just be happier running a smaller team and focusing on your writing. That’s your genius.”

Even though the thought of this excited me, I still resisted the advice. It felt like failing. I had to keep up with all my friends who were “killing it,” which, thanks to social media, I could see broadcasted loud and clear every day. At least, that’s how I felt. It’s demotivating to run a race and see everyone pulling ahead of you.

Ian Cron once shared a story with me about a time when he was running a marathon and was watching all these people pass him. Frustrated, he began to work harder, striving to get ahead, but it only made him more exhausted and less likely to finish the race. Finally, just as he was on the verge of calling it quits, someone came alongside him and shouted, “Run your own race!”

That’s what I had to do with my business: find out the race that was mine to run and just run it well. But how?

Deciding to scale back

I contacted a few friends and mentors, people I’d admired for years and respected how they had grown their own businesses. One was Seth Godin, a best-selling author and successful entrepreneur. He responded within an hour and asked me to call him. Over the course of a twenty-minute phone call, he blew my mind.

He asked me about my business goals. “I want to spread ideas that change culture,” I said.

“That’s your mission,” he corrected, “not a business goal. Don’t expect to always get paid for your mission.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, I sell online courses that help writers get paid and published.”

“Good,” he said. “That’s a business. Why did you start it?”

“Because, I guess, I wanted freedom?”

Then he said something I won’t ever forget: “Don’t build a business because you want freedom. Build a business because you want to run a business.”

Seth laid out two options for me: Scale my business, become a CEO, and commit to running a business that I might be able to one day sell. Or keep the business at the same size and focus on profitability instead of growth, saving half the money I made. Then, with that free time and energy, focus on writing.

“There will be times,” he said of the second option, “when you will get paid what you’re worth. And there will be times when you won’t.”

“What happens when I’m not paid what I’m worth?” I asked, worried.

“That’s why you put half your money in the bank.”

“Oh.”

We concluded the phone call with my telling Seth I would consider both options. But in my mind, the decision had already been made.

Finding what I really wanted

The next day, I was making breakfast for my kids, flipping pancakes in our kitchen, thinking about my schedule for the day. I didn’t have any commitments until 11:30. It was 8:30.

I looked at my daughter and my son who were six months and four years old, respectively. I thought about spending the next two years of their lives trying to scale a business, which felt like precious time to spend on something I didn’t want to do for the rest of my life. I don’t want to run a business, I thought.

The next day, I started making decisions. It was a hard road ahead—full of my having to let some people go and cut back on some projects that I’d committed to. But in the end, I’m glad I did it. A year after the fact, my company is more profitable than it’s ever been, I have more freedom than I’ve ever had, and I’m really happy because I’m spending my time the way I want to spend it.

How I did it

Maybe you’re reading this thinking you’d like to do something similar. Maybe you find yourself in a situation of your own making where you are no longer in control. Here’s what I did and what I would recommend:

First, right-size your business. Or organization, or project, or whatever it is you’re working on. Bigger isn’t always better. Better is better. What could you accomplish if you only had half the people on payroll that you currently have? What could you do without that building or that website? See how constraints can lead to greater creativity and innovation. You don’t have to make things smaller, but maybe you don’t have to double or triple this year as you thought. Maybe you can accomplish your mission with something a little less crazy or stressful. And if you can, maybe you should.

Second, choose your craft. Focus on what only you can do. Is there something that you are the best in the world at? Best in your community at? What is your “highest and best” that you can do? Do that, and cut out everything else.

Third, run your own race. This is more important than anything. Turn off any channels or distractions that will cause you to doubt yourself. Once the decision is made, stick to it. Stay in your lane.

Maybe this won’t work for you, but it’s worked wonders for me. And you know what? Since making these decisions and experiencing the fruit of them, I’ve had countless conversations with those peers that I was trying to keep up with, and they all told me, “Wow, I’m in that exact position.”

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Right-size your business, choose your craft, and run your own race.

—JEFF GOINS

Changing the game

Here’s what I learned. You can’t have what other people have if you aren’t willing to do what they do. Seth was right. Don’t start a business because you want freedom. Start one because you want to run a business. And now that I’ve scaled back to a size that is more manageable for me, I really do enjoy running my business.

Next, you don’t always need to grow to get what you really want. In all likelihood, you have everything you need to do what you want to do—right now.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this is your game you’re playing. Not someone else’s. So if you feel like you’re losing, change the game. Hanging out with some of my more “successful” friends with bigger companies always made me feel insignificant until I realized we were really playing different games. Today, I can celebrate their wins and they can celebrate mine, because we are playing on completely different fields. There’s no competition, only admiration for how well the game is played.

So that’s what I did, and I couldn’t be happier. If you’ve felt the pressure to build something big to do what you really want to do, remember these words: you don’t have to do this. You can create the life you want without playing somebody else’s game. So go play your own.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Goal Sharing

When and How You Should Go Public

I’ve always done my best to keep up with the latest research in goal achievement. I not only want to learn from it myself, I also want to distill the lessons for fellow leaders. But the tricky thing about science is that it often causes us to reevaluate our assumptions. That reevaluation can be uncomfortable, but it can also help us take our performance to the next level.

Case in point: I had always believed and taught that we’re more likely to accomplish big goals if we share them publicly. I assumed public declaration would create the accountability we needed to follow through. The potential embarrassment of not delivering on the prediction would help ensure we got results.

I probably believed this because of my personality. According to the Enneagram personality profiling system, I am a performer (Enneagram type 3). A performer’s greatest fear is public embarrassment—like the kind that might result from sharing but not meeting goals.

But then along came entrepreneur Derek Sivers to pour cold water on my belief. Sivers makes the compelling case that public goal declarations can backfire big time. The CD Baby founder argues that telling others your goals can have the opposite effect of what we intend. Because of the way our brains work, goal sharing often gives us the same psychological satisfaction of accomplishing the goal without having to do the hard work. In other words, talking becomes a substitute for doing.

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Goal sharing often gives us the same psychological satisfaction of accomplishing the goal without having to do the hard work. In other words, talking becomes a substitute for doing.

—MICHAEL HYATT

Sivers doesn’t say this lightly. He points to a study by NYU psychologist Peter Gollwitzer that included four separate tests. In these tests subjects wrote down their goals and then worked toward them for up to forty-five minutes. They were allowed to stop at any time. The twist was that half of the test subjects announced their written-down goals and the other half did not.

I guessed the people who announced their goals would perform better. But the opposite was true. Those who kept their mouths shut mostly worked for the entire forty-five minutes, and afterward said they still had a long way to go. Those who had gone public averaged only thirty-three minutes. They felt they were close to accomplishing their goal and didn’t need to work the entire time.

When we learned of these dramatic results, I quickly shared them with my blog readers and admitted this was a reversal of what I had taught about one aspect of goal setting. I also admitted that I was still puzzling through what it meant at an organizational level. After all, goals are a big part of what drives our organizations forward.

This caused us to turn over more rocks and reexamine other aspects of goal setting. It turns out there was one thing both kinds of people in the experiments Sivers describes did exactly right. They wrote their goals down. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at Dominican University in California, conducted her own goal-setting study with 267 participants. She found that you are 42 percent more likely to achieve your goals just by writing them down.

Beyond that, Matthews also found there is a place for sharing our goals after all. How so? Participants “who sent their commitments to a friend accomplished significantly more than those” who didn’t, and those who followed up with weekly progress reports to their friends did even better. So don’t set goals and tell everyone under the sun. Instead, tell those people who need to know and can provide the support and accountability you need to get results.

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Science often causes us to reevaluate our assumptions. That reevaluation can be uncomfortable, but it can also help us take our performance to the next level.

—MICHAEL HYATT

Similarly, organizations should dial back the pre-celebrations when launching new initiatives. This is just another way of getting the dopamine hit early. Odds are good your energy will peter out. Instead, make and share the goals with all the important stakeholders and let them know their help and dedication are necessary for success. Save the celebrations for when the team manages to achieve the goal.

And of course feel free to share the goal with the whole world once you’ve achieved it. After all, that’s part of your success story.

Why Discomfort Is Good for You

3 Reasons We Should Jump Outside Our Comfort Zones

Most of us have heard about the very first marathon. After the Athenians defeated Persian invaders at the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., a messenger ran twenty-six miles to share the exciting news. At least, that’s how the popular version of the story goes. But in The Road to Sparta, Dean Karnazes tells the real story. And, surprisingly, it’s even more compelling.

The runner, whose name was Pheidippides, actually ran more than 150 miles all the way from Athens to Sparta—and then back again. And he did that before the battle. Karnazes says the same runner might have run the final stretch after the victory at Marathon for a grand total of more than 325 miles!

If that sounds farfetched, Karnazes tells the story of a British air force commander named John Foden. In 1982 Foden led a small group who ran the distance from Athens to Sparta in under thirty-five hours. A year later Foden cofounded a 153-mile race retracing his steps. It’s called the Spartathalon, and Karnazes ran it himself in 2014.

As an ultramarathoner, Karnazes had already chalked up major feats, including fifty marathons in fifty states on fifty consecutive days; running 350 miles in three days—without stopping or sleep; finishing the Badwater Ultramarathon multiple times; even running a marathon at the South Pole.

But the Spartathalon held mammoth challenges of its own, including Karnazes’ determination to run the distance with only the foods Pheidippides would have eaten: olives, figs, and cured meats. Why would a person willingly go through something like that?

The upside of discomfort

I first read about Karnazes several years ago in an article in Wired, and I’ve followed his career ever since. I was so inspired by that first article, I bought his book, Ultramarathon Man, and devoured it. I then made a commitment to run my first ever half marathon. I’ve run several since.

It’s never easy, but Karnazes says that’s good. In an interview with Outside, Karnazes makes an important point that many of us have forgotten:

Western culture has things a little backwards right now. We think that if we had every comfort available to us, we’d be happy. We equate comfort with happiness. And now we’re so comfortable we’re miserable. There’s no struggle in our lives. No sense of adventure. We get in a car, we get in an elevator, it all comes easy. What I’ve found is that I’m never more alive than when I’m pushing and I’m in pain, and I’m struggling for high achievement, and in that struggle I think there’s a magic.

That observation doesn’t just apply to running. That applies to all of life, especially the goals we set. Personal engagement, happiness, and satisfaction come when we’re making progress toward significant goals. I’m talking about the kind of achievements that push us outside our Comfort Zone.

That’s why Karnazes made the Spartathlon even harder than it needed to be. He knew he could tackle the race. He’d already run longer distances. But running the race with the same limitations Pheidippides was under made his experience even richer.

3 reasons to embrace discomfort

I’ve never run the kind of distances Karnazes regularly runs, but I have achieved daunting goals. I’ve started businesses, written books, surpassed revenue targets, and lots more. I’m sure you have too. Maybe you created a new product, salvaged a damaged relationship, got into top physical shape, or grew a sales channel by double digits.

Given the difficulties and our inherent fear of failure, we might resist setting daunting goals—even if we’ve got some big wins under our belts already. I get it. But there are at least three reasons we should all embrace discomfort when it comes to setting goals for our lives.

First, comfort is overrated. It doesn’t lead to happiness. It makes us lazy—and forgetful. It often leads to self-absorption, boredom, and discontent.

Second, discomfort is a catalyst for growth. It makes us yearn for something more. It forces us to change, stretch, and adapt.

Third, discomfort is a sign of progress. You’ve heard the expression, “no pain, no gain.” It’s true! When you push yourself to grow, you will experience discomfort, but it will be worth it. I like what St. Ignatius said in his letter to his friend Polycarp: “Where the labour is great, the gain is all the more.”

Don’t shrink from discomfort. Instead, let it guide you toward accomplishment.

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Don’t shrink from discomfort. Instead, let it guide you toward accomplishment.

—MICHAEL HYATT

Dean Karnazes continues to do that. Despite his impressive string of accomplishments, he keeps pushing himself further. In 2016 he ran the Silk Road Ultramarathon. The course covers 326 miles through the deserts and mountains of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. And he ran it in just eleven days.

Whatever challenges we accept, the bottom line is this: You can be comfortable and stagnate, or you can stretch yourself and grow. You may think that comfort leads to happiness. It doesn’t. Happiness comes from personal growth and feeling as if you’re making progress on worthwhile goals.

The Surprising New Science of Achievement

Goal pursuit has a familiar rhythm. It normally begins with great momentum then grinds to a halt due to unforeseen obstacles. If you’ve ever found yourself frustrated with a stalled goal, the latest achievement research provides the insight you need to break through. Join us to discover four counter-intuitive tactics to drive you forward.