Chasing Excellence

Excellence. Ben defines it as “maximizing everything you have in the categories that matter to your long-term goals.”

Let’s break that down into two parts: 1) Maximizing (!) EVERYTHING you have in 2) the categories that matter to your long-term goals.

Which leads to three questions: 1) What are your long-term goals? 2) What are the “categories that matter” to those long-term goals? And, 3) Are you MAXIMIZING (!) EVERYTHING (!!) you have in those categories?

Our Big 3 always provides a nice framework to define our priorities. Let’s do a quick inventory.

For the sake of bringing that to life, here’s my oversimplified take on it:

How about YOU?

Let’s get clarity and maximize what matters!!!

P.S. That’s from chapter 1 on Commitment. Ben shares a little graph that has complacency on the left, competence in the middle and excellence on the right. Most people are a little more than complacent but they fall into the trap of “good enough” competence: “They’ve got some sort of skill set and the semblance of drive; they *want* to be good, but when faced with the work required to be great, they shrug and tell themselves, ‘Meh, I’m good enough.’”

Let’s not do that. Let’s OPTIMIZE and see what the BEST version of ourselves looks like!!

(Recall: Optimize comes from the Latin optimus which literally means THE BEST!)

P.P.S. Pop quiz: What’s the Greek word for excellence? Yep. Areté.

We could call this book Chasing Areté. And… What does Aristotle tell us we need to do to experience the ultimate good of eudaimonia? Basically, we need to MAXIMIZE VIRTUE. Which is exactly what Ben teaches his athletes.

Only he calls the virtues “character traits”—which is our next Big Idea.

The book is ALL about character. Specifically, it’s about twelve character traits:

1. COMMITMENT

   .

   It all starts with our last idea which was on Commitment. If you’re playing the “Meh, I’m good enough” game then there’s LITERALLY NO CHANCE of experiencing excellence/actualizing your potential/etc. Literally. ZERO. So… Commit.

2. GRIT

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   Committed? Time to get (and stay) Gritty. We’ll talk about that next.

3. POSITIVITY

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   Is key

   . We’ll talk about this as well.

4. EMBRACE ADVERSITY

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   3. EXPECT adversity. Then be antifragile. More in a moment

   .

5. CONFIDENCE

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   “Confidence is what happens when you make the most challenging keys to success part of the daily grind and stick with the character traits unwaveringly.”

6. MAXIMIZING MINUTES

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   This chapter kicks off with this gem from Ralph Marston:

   “Now is everything you have to work with. When you live it fully, it is more than enough.”

   When is a good time to be excellent? NOW. NOW. NOW. Champions don’t just nod their heads in agreement, they MAXIMIZE MINUTES. (Do you?) (I don’t. “Needs work!!”)

7. THE PROCESS

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   Remember Nick Saban’s “The Process” we talked about in our Notes on

   The Obstacle Is the Way

   ? ->

   “Don’t think about winning the SEC Championship. Don’t think about the national championship. Think about what you needed to do in this drill, on this play, in this moment. That’s the process: Let’s think about what we can do today, the task at hand.”

   <- What’s YOUR process?

8. CONTROL

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   Some things are within our control. Others are not. Know the difference, Stoicism 101 style

   . Coach says:

   “Control what you can control. Ignore everything else.”

   Mat Fraser’s tattoo says:

   “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.”

   <- Amen.

9. TURN THE PAGE

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   “Understanding that you only have control over the present moment is the key to being able to turn the page

   . Reliving the past is a recipe for unnecessary depression, fearing the future is a surefire way to anxiety. Learning to live in the present moment is vital, because it’s the only thing you have control over. The only thing you can do to rectify the past or influence the future is to take action

   now

   , in the present moment.”

10. HUMILITY

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    “The moment you believe you’ve arrived at the door of greatness, it will be slammed in your face.”

11. COMPETITIVE EXCELLENCE

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    The mantra:

    “I will maximize my minutes by thinking, acting, training, and competing with excellence, regardless of the circumstance.”

    <- THAT’s competitive excellence. It also reminds me of a little Michael Jordan story from his biography

    Jordan: The Life

    (Note soon). Apparently when Jordan was on the JV team his sophomore year (after being heartbroken to not make Varsity), a Varsity coach cruised into the gym while the JV game was wrapping up. Nine players were coasting. Jordan was going OFF with extreme intensity. The coach assumed they must have been down by one point with two minutes to play. He looked at the scoreboard. Down by 20 with a minute to go. And Jordan is ALL IN. Note: He was ALWAYS ALL IN. <- Maximizing minutes!!!

12. CLUTCH

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    “… the ability to do what you can do normally under immense pressure.”

Quick inventory: Where are you strong? What needs work? (Speaking of inventories: Add the book to your Amazon shopping cart if you want to Optimize those characteristics of excellence. :)

Champions commit. Then they demonstrate grit.

Of course, we can’t talk about grit without talking about Angela Duckworth and her book Grit.

Here’s how she puts it: “In sum, no matter the domain, the highly successful had a kind of ferocious determination that played out in two ways. First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking. Second, they knew in a very, very deep way what it was they wanted. They not only had determination, they had direction. It was this combination of passion and perseverance that made high achievers special. In a word, they had grit.”

And: “There’s an old Japanese saying: ‘Fall seven, rise eight.’ If I were ever to get a tattoo, I’d get these four simple words indelibly inked.”

And, the whole idea of pushing back harder the harder things get reminds me of our +1 on Emotional Stamina. Essence: Things going poorly? Be EVEN MORE committed to the protocol.

So… How’s your grit? Let’s use our next fall to bounce back even stronger.

btw: At the end of the book, Ben shares a story about the great Greek orator Demosthenes. When academics asked him to name the three most important traits of speech-making he said, “Action, action, action!” (Hah.)

And, speaking of grit, get this: In The Road to Character, David Brooks tells us: “It was said in Greek times that Demosthenes was not a great orator despite his stammer; he was a great orator because he stammered. The deficiency became an incentive to perfect the associated skill. The hero becomes strongest at his weakest point.”

That’s from the chapter on the third characteristic: Positivity.

First: We’ve gotta know that we evolved to see the negative. It was, as Ben says, more important to focus on the lion than the beautiful butterflies. We’ve also gotta know that our peak performance requires us to let go of the negative (which makes you slower and less precise). Therefore, we need to ACTIVELY TRAIN (aka rewire) our brains to focus on the positive.

Now, of course, we need to recognize areas of our character and performance that need work. In fact, that’s a key part of the section on Humility. (And Ben shares some inspiring stories about just how hard his athletes work on their weak spots to turn them into strengths.)

But focusing on the negative stuff that’s outside your control by talking about it and complaining about it, does nothing but diminish your performance in sports and in life. AND… By focusing on the negative, we basically program ourselves to see more of it via these two fascinating psychological processes: selective attention + confirmation bias.

Think about the last car you bought. What was it? Now, did you suddenly see MORE of those cars the moment you got it? That’s selective bias PLUS confirmation bias at work.

Now, think about the last time you let your negativity spin out of control. Did you suddenly see MORE negative stuff in your life? That’s selective bias PLUS confirmation bias at work.

Want to chase excellence? Focus on the stuff that’s within your control. Commit to rewiring your brain to constructively deal with the “needs work” “negative” stuff that’s WITHIN your control and, every time you feel the urge to drop into Victimville, imagine you’re training at Ben’s gym and look up at his wall and see his “unbreakable threefold policy”:

NEVER WHINE. NEVER COMPLAIN. NEVER MAKE EXCUSES.

That’s from chapter 4: Embrace Adversity. It’s shared in the context of the “Overload Principle” which is how we build all strength—“overload” your current capacities; build strength. Repeat.

It’s also the perfect explanation of the power of Tool #1: Reversal of Desire. If our infinite potential exists just on the other side of our comfort zone and being outside of our comfort zone feels (by definition) uncomfortable then, if we’re actually committed to seeing just what we’re capable of, we need to learn to LOVE that discomfort and see it as the pathway to our potential. Enter the mantra: “BRING IT ON!! I LOVE PAIN! PAIN SETS ME FREE!”

Or, the slightly more subdued but equally powerful scientifically-validated “I’m excited!!” mantra when we’re feeling the nerves kick up right at the edge of our comfort zone as we choose to step on the gas and use that energy positively rather than bail out of the situation to feel comfortable.

As Grant Cardone says in The 10X Rule: “Rather than seeing fear as a sign to run—as most other people do—it must become an indicator to go.”

So… What do YOU say to yourself when you feel uncomfortable?

Remember: Although we naturally fear adversity, we’ve gotta KNOW that it’s the only thing that makes us better. Let’s stay wise and grounded and bring it on!!

Those are the final words of the book.

Want to be a Champion? Put your old personality on a permanent vacation and ACT LIKE ONE. Now.

Right before that passage, Ben tells us that the REAL challenge is translating a big vision into super-simple, ordinary day-to-day actions. It’s not about the “big, hairy audacious goals.” It’s about “the thing you can and should be doing today, right now, to get there.”

So… What should you be doing today, RIGHT NOW, to execute the next step in your process?

Here’s to chasing excellence and living like we mean it.