As you know if you’ve been following along, I’m a big fan of mental toughness books—whether that’s coming from peak performers in the sports world or the Special Forces or other leadership roles.

See Notes on: How Champions Think, The Champion’s Mind, Winning the Inner Game of Tennis, Win Forever, Go Long!, Chasing Excellence, Coaching the Mental Game, 10-Minute Toughness, The Hoops Whisperer, Raise Your Game, The Way of the Fight, Win or Learn, Unbeatable Mind, Can’t Hurt Me, Discipline Equals Freedom, etc., etc. etc.

So…

When our Heroes recommended I check out a book called It Takes What It Takes by Trevor Moawad, I immediately Amazon-ed it. And, when I got it on Saturday afternoon, I immediately started reading it (literally) and had it nearly read by the end of the weekend.

Trevor Moawad is a mental conditioning coach to elite performers. He is well known for being the mental coach to Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson and has worked closely with prestigious NCAA football programs and coaches, the US Special Operations community, Major League Baseball, and the NBA.

This book is, as per the sub-title, all about “How to Think Neutrally and Gain Control of Your Life.” I loved it and, if you’re equally fired up by the mental-toughness-in-sports-and-life genre, I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.

Trevor’s ideas on “neutral thinking” (vs. negative or positive thinking) are genius. We’ll talk more about those soon.

But…

Today I want to chat about another one of his big distinctions.

Quick context.

At this stage, we’ve probably all heard about the whole progression from being “unconsciously incompetent” to “consciously incompetent” to “consciously competent” to “unconsciously competent.”

Basically: Most people say we want to go from being unconsciously incompetent (where you don’t know what you don’t know and therefore can’t address it) to consciously incompetent (where you know what you don’t know and can get to work on it) to consciously competent (where you know what you know but need to think about it to do it) to unconsciously competent (where you just do what you do without thinking about it).

Note: The highest level of development, they say, is being unconsciously competent.

Trevor tells us that he looks at it a little differently.

In his work with some of the world’s elite, he’s noticed that many peak performers don’t know HOW they perform at such a high level and that’s NOT a good thing if they want to SUSTAIN their world-class level of performance.

So…

He shuffles the order around a bit and tells us that what we REALLY want to do is go from unconsciously incompetent to consciously incompetent to unconsciously competent to CONSCIOUSLY COMPETENT.

He tells us that we’ve GOTTA KNOW what works for us and then DO THAT OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN.

👆 THAT’s how the greatest become the greatest.

Now…

He doesn’t use the word “protocol” but, elite performers basically know their protocol and they work it. RUTHLESSLY.

That’s Today’s +1.

What do YOU do when you’re on?

Are you doing it?

Let’s make our Competence CONSCIOUS.

TODAY.

And repeat it.

Day after day after day after day x Infinity.

Conscious Competence #1256

Is Where It’s At

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It Takes What It Takes

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