Burn Your Goals: The Counter Cultural Approach to Achieving Your Greatest Potential

by Joshua Medcalf

• List out 5-10 principles that you would like to guide your life. • For the next week, write out these principles in a circle early on in your day. • As storms come in your day, recite these principles or write them down.

Planes take off against the wind, not with it. Strength is only built through resistance.

• What pain do you have in life right now that you would really benefit from using instead of running from it? • In what areas of your life do you feel like it is pouring rain, and how could you bottle the water and sell it? • Everyone wants to shine like a diamond, but who wants to go through a 2,000 degree furnace, and then have the weight of 7,000 grown men on top of you, AND then, after all that, be cut and polished? • Changing your language from “the problem is” to “the challenge is” or “the opportunity is” is a simple way to change perspective and habitual action over time.

• Read “Talent Is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin. • Watch “Success is not an accident” video about Stephen Curry by @alanstein on the StrongerTeam YouTube channel. • Study how Jack Delosa is building his empire in Unprofessional

• Read Carol Dweck’s Mindset. • Then, read Mindset again! No, really. I’m serious.

• Read Power Questions. • Who could you ask to serve as a mentor to you? • Who can you study that will provide insight into how they have grown? • Who do you follow on social media? Are they providing value? Most of the people who do awesome stuff are giving out their wisdom for free or minimal cost on twitter. Again I ask, who are you following?

• Some of us can start small while others can immerse themselves in this. Give yourself grace. Choose a growth mindset as you try to have a growth mindset. Know that your worth does not come from what you do, but from who and whose you are. Embrace the path to mastery knowing that it will be hard. • Each day focus on getting a little bit better, a littler bit better, a little bit better. • Be deliberate. Be consistent. Be the change you want to see in the world.

We are not willing, the majority of the time, to tear someone else down but we have no problem thrashing ourselves to bits!

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. And the second is like it: love others as yourself.” I always ask people, “Who are we called to love?” Most say God and others. But really there are three people we are to love. Love God, love others, in the same way as you love yourself. Let’s be honest, if we loved others the way we love ourselves then things would look pretty dismal given the results from the exercise above.

• Would you hang out with people who talk to you the way you talk to yourself? • Are you very intentional about how you talk to yourself, especially in highly emotional moments? • We are constantly preaching a sermon to ourselves every single day, and most of us need to preach a new sermon. The self-condemning, horrible negative and destructive track isn’t helping us get any better. • Grab a 4x6 notecard and write out some beneficial and constructive self-talk statements you can say to yourself after you make a mistake. For the people we train who love Jesus, we ask them to write out what Jesus would say to them. Remember, every encounter Jesus had with the misfits, the outcasts, the downtrodden, and the most deformed and messed up members of society he spoke to them with undeserved love, compassion, and relentless grace. • Here are some examples of beneficial and constructive self-talk statements: -Next play. -The next opportunity I will ______________________. -Breathe, and get the next one. -Play present. -Relax, keep your head down, and make a solid swing. -Fake a pass to make a pass. -Bring

Bring the action. -I got this. -I can do this. -Focus. -My value comes from who I am, not what I do. -Enjoy the tough stuff, because you are going to miss it later. -Fall in love with the process of becoming great. -I am on the path to mastery. -The tough stuff brings out the best in me. -This is in my best interest. -What an amazing opportunity to learn and grow. • Remember: WORDS put pictures in our mind. Pictures in our mind impact how we feel. How we feel impacts what we do. What we habitually do impacts our worldly destiny.

“I know it sounds strange, but I don’t really have goals. I focus on getting better every single day.”

How often do we hear bosses refusing to praise considerable growth for fear of complacency?

Focus on progress and achievement will take care of itself.

Those destined for greatness must first walk alone in the desert. -Winston Churchill

I think our desire to make things easier and give those we lead, whether they are our sons and daughters, employees, or members of our team, resources and experiences we never had might actually be crippling their chances of becoming truly great and reaching their fullest potential. Our efforts might give them a better chance of not failing as hard, but it’s giving them an even greater chance of being highly mediocre at everything they touch in comparison to their ultimate potential. Ironically, and counter-culturally, we might be better off trying to make things more challenging than less challenging. Maybe we should be creating intentional constraints on resources instead of giving those we lead all the resources needed to be “successful”. Because that “success” and those resources might be the greatest obstacle to them becoming everything they can be. Maybe they get a “good” job, and have a white picket fence with a dog and two kids, but what if they had the potential to find a cure for cancer or start the next Apple, but you gave them what they wanted instead of what they needed? Our fear of failure for the next generation is creating people primed for mediocrity at best and crippled at worst in comparison to their greatest potential. Sadly, in an era of never before seen opportunity and resources, a generation of people are unprepared to seize almost any of it.

People who do average work are convinced there are shortcuts to becoming great, but there is only blood, sweat, and years of delayed gratification and deliberate practice. Either pay the price of regret or the price to become great.

Who you become forever and always trumps what you achieve.

In leadership: What you say matters. What you do matters. HOW you do it matters even more.

“Imagine if coaches (leaders) today thought of themselves as mentors or aspired to the ideals of mentoring: I am the head mentor or I’m the mentor of the defensive line. Think how much that might have changed the coach-player relationship—a title conveying an UNDENIABLE OBLIGATION to care for players’ welfare, instruct them in virtue, and guide them toward an adulthood of citizenship and contemplation.”

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

John Wooden said, “Young people need models, not critics.” I completely agree, and would take it one step further. PEOPLE need models, not critics. Anyone can be a critic, it is ridiculously hard to be a model.

• What are your biggest challenges in the team you lead? • In what ways could you or your support staff be modeling those problems?

I’ve learned by spending at least 10 minutes in gratefulness prayer at the beginning of my day thanking God for everything in my life, my days go much better.

I’ve learned I would rather inspire people to greatness than strike fear in them with control tactics.

I’ve learned people are infatuated with success, but they get scared when they see what it actually takes to get there.

I’ve learned I don’t want to wait until I have cancer to appreciate EVERYTHING in my life. Even the little things like clean drinking water.

I’ve learned I rarely have control over my circumstances, but I always have control over the explanation of what those circumstances mean to me.

I’ve learned that my work ethic and willingness to sacrifice must be greater than my dreams.

I’ve learned until you take yourself seriously no one else will take you seriously either.

I’ve learned giving your very best is a much higher standard than winning. Anyone can win, but very few can consistently give their very best.

I’ve learned everyone has brilliant ideas, but VERY VERY few are willing to sacrifice, work, and persist to transform those ideas to practical, viable solutions.

I’ve learned that most great things come from experiments, not theories.

I’ve learned Wisdom + Focused Effort + Persistence = Brilliant Results

I’ve learned when I put first things first, that like C.S. Lewis said, second things are not suppressed but they increase.

I’ve learned to try and take advantage of the 86,400 seconds everyday as if I were going to get the opportunity of my dreams.

I learned from Jon Gordon that the difference between an average Major Leaguer and a Hall of Famer is a measly 1.7 hits per week.

I’ve learned from Sun Tzu that “every battle is won (or lost) before it’s ever fought. It’s in the mind.

I’ve learned that the things that will have the greatest influence on where I will be in five years are: what I read, who I surround myself with, what I listen to, what I watch, what I say to myself, and what I see in my head.