Be Unstoppable

The Code of the Master and Commander has 8 essential actions that can be captured in this acronym: U.P.E.R.S.I.S.T.

You persist. :)

Before we take a quick look at those actions, how about a little more background on our setting + characters? Tim is our young Captain. His mentor is the Master and Commander named Pete. In the beginning of the story, Pete’s friend calls him P2, double P, P squared and a bunch of other funny nicknames. We learn that’s because Pete is called “Persistent Pete.” His boat’s name? Persistence.

They were born in the town called Uptoyou where everyone gets a boat and it’s up to them to improve it throughout their lives. While most never leave their home town (and its Hardwork Harbor), the Master and Commander has charted his own course and explored the world. I smile as I type that. Alden does a great job of creating a little fictional world to weave in these lessons.

And, after each chapter in the fable, Alden helps us apply the wisdom with some vignettes from his life as a SEAL and entrepreneur. It’s perfect.

And now to our acronym and the 8 essential actions to becoming a Master and Commander of our own lives!

1. U = Understand Your Why. It all starts with knowing your WHY. Without a strong why, there’s no way (!) we will persist through the inevitable storms in life. Alden has a great little exercise to help us identify our why for an important goal. We’ll get to that in a moment.
2. P = Plan in 3-D. Once we have our Why identified, we need to map out our plan. In 3 Dimensions: 1. Define it. 2. Divide it. 3. Do it daily. More on that in a moment as well.
3. E = Exercise to Execute. The key variable to executing our plan? The ability to sustain hard work over an extended period of time. Alden makes the case that EXERCISE is the way to build the engine of effort to help us do our best and tackle our big dreams.
4. R = Recognize Your Reason to Believe. Alden tells us we need to create small wins, and use that progress to build self-confidence. We need to see those small wins as “reasons to believe” we can achieve our big goals.
5. S = Survey Your Habits. We need to take a look at what’s getting in the way of our success. We need to “survey our habits” to see what’s working and what’s not. Do more of the good stuff, eliminate the not-so-good stuff. Repeat. Forever.
6. I = Improvise to Overcome Obstacles. Our plans will never be perfect. We will ALWAYS (but only always) face obstacles when we chase big goals. When that happens, it’s time to improvise. Try different approaches. Learn from mistakes. Persist till you figure it out.
7. S = Seek Expert Advice. We need to own the fact that we’re never going to be great at everything. When we don’t know something, it’s time to seek out expert advice.
8. T = Team Up. In addition to seeking out expert advice, we want to team up with people whose strengths compliment our weaknesses. And we stay motivate with our big, shared Why. Nothing great was ever achieved alone so it’s time to team up and rock it.

U.P.E.R.S.I.S.T. If you want to Be Unstoppable, yoU’ve gotta PERSIST! :)

P.S. NEGU? That’s short for “Never Ever Give Up.” :)

This is a recurring theme in the book:

There are only two limitations in life.

1. Your ability to dream.

2. Your courage to pursue your dreams.

So, let’s take a moment and reflect on YOUR dream.

If you KNEW you would not fail, what would you do?

(Or, as Brené Brown so beautifully puts it in Daring Greatly (see Notes): “I took a deep breath and recited my vulnerability prayer as I waited my turn: Give me the courage to show up and let myself be seen. Then, seconds before I was introduced, I thought about a paperweight on my desk that reads, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” I pushed that question out of my head to make room for a new question. As I walked up to the stage, I literally whispered aloud, “What’s worth doing even if I fail?””)

If I knew I couldn’t fail, I would do this:

________________________________

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Awesome. Now, let’s identify the WHY that will power that dream.

Step one in creating unstoppable persistence?

Figure out your WHY.

“Once you understand your why, you’ll figure out your way.”

Here’s how Alden figures out his Why. It’s fantastic.

Take a piece of paper. Write your goal at the very top. Underline it. (I drew a box around mine.) Draw a line down the middle of the page. On the left side, put a “+” and on the right put a “-.”

Then, think about all the amazing positive things you’ll experience when/if you achieve that goal at the top. Write those on the left side of the page.

Then, think about all the icky bummer things you’ll experience as a result of failing to persist until you achieve your goal. Write those on the right side of the page.

If you’re like Alden (and me), you might find one thing that just jumps out at you and becomes your #1 motivator.

Super simple. Equally powerful.

I did this for my #1 goal. It’s amazing. Highly recommend you try it.

Now’s a great time, btw. I’ll wait. :)

We have our dream + our Why. Now it’s time to Plan.

Alden tells us to do it in 3-D: Define it, Divide it, Do it daily.

• Define it. What’s your goal? Be SPECIFIC. Remember, specificity in their goals is the #1 thing that successful people do according to Heidi Grant Halvorson in the most popular Harvard Biz Review blog post in history. What, SPECIFICALLY, do you intend to do and by when? Define it. And write it down and put it somewhere where you can see it all.the.time.
• Divide it. You’ve got your big goal. Alden calls this a “Milestone Goal.” It’ll take you months or years to achieve it. Now you need to take a sledgehammer to it and break it down into TINY pieces—little action steps you can easily take care of in a given day.
• Do it daily. You’ve got your big goal defined. You smashed it into pieces with your sledgehammer. Now you need to take care of a little pebble every.single.day. As we discuss all the time, science says that consistent PROGRESS—however small— is huge. What can you do TODAY to make progress toward your goal? “Daily action is the key to success.”

Define it. Divide it. Do it daily.

That’s how to plan in 3-D.

You interested in that pill? … Can you guess what it is? :)

Research says: EXERCISE gives you all those benefits and more.

It’s unequivocally awesome. Our bodies were MADE to move and violating that basic programming is, obviously, not a wise idea. That’s why Exercise to Execute is Action #3 in our plan to being UNSTOPPABLE.

The fact is, if we want to achieve our big goals we need a TON (!) of ENERGY. Exercise is one of the best ways to build that. (Goes very nicely with sleep + nutrition, of course, eh?)

This is why leading experts like Tony Schwartz tell us that consistent peak performance is not about “time management.” It’s about ENERGY management.

And, Alden makes the important point that the benefits of exercising consistently are both physiological AND psychological.

When we exercise, we get all the scientifically proven physical benefits of exercise (remember, as John Ratey tells us in Spark, exercise is like taking a little bit of Prozac to boost your mood and a little bit of Ritalin to focus your attention) PLUS we get the psychological benefit of knowing we’re the kind of person who does the little things well.

Those little ways of showing up and crushing it matter. They form the cornerstone of the next Action item which is Recognizing a Reason to Believe in ourselves. If you consistently fail to do the little things well, there’s no way you’re going to have the trust in yourself to handle the big things. So… EXERCISE. :)

Alden recommends the pill be taken in the form of 30 minutes of exercise. As Michelle Segar tells us in No Sweat (see Notes), we need to look for OTMs—”opportunities to move” throughout the day. How can you step up your game (yes, it’s a GAME!) a little more today?

P.S. Alden tells us: “When I get stuck, I take a break and pop a thirty-minute exercise pill. Exercise clears my mind and helps me get unstuck. In SEAL training, instructors would offer a simple solution when doubt cluttered our minds: ‘When in doubt—push ‘em out!’ As much as we despised doing tens of thousands of push-ups during our training and our careers in the teams, they remain one of the simplest and most effective forms of exercise.”

“When in doubt—push ‘em out!” ← That’s awesome. Next time you’re feeling stressed or anxious, why not bang out ten push-ups or pop a thirty-minute exercise pill? :)

P.S. Remember this great pill prescribed by Dr. Haidt in The Happiness Hypothesis (see Notes): “Suppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment. Would you take it? Suppose further that the pill has a great variety of side effects, all of them good: increased self-esteem, empathy, and trust; it even improves memory. Suppose, finally, that the pill is all natural and costs nothing. Now would you take it? The pill exists. It’s called meditation.”

Let’s pop the exercise and meditation pills. Daily.

Those are the final words of the book.

First, NOTHING great was ever achieved without a team. Period.

And the only way you can get a team fired up is if you, the leader, have a clear WHY that can become a shared why. Then? Magic happens as we create a culture of gritty, purpose-driven persistence.

So, what’s your big dream?

Remember that only two things limit us in life: Our ability to connect to our most authentic dreams and our courage to go after them.

Dream big. GO FOR IT! :)