Above the Line
Lessons in Leadership and Life from a Championship Program
This is our first note on Urban Meyer, one of the most successful NCAA football coaches in history. It’s kind of like a mash-up of elite football coach Pete Carroll’s Win Forever and elite CrossFit coach Ben Bergeron’s Chasing Excellence in that, like Bergeron, he shares his leadership lessons in the context of a single season but only, like, Carroll, he does it on the football field. It’s a FANTASTIC, hard-hitting book packed with wisdom and Big Ideas. If you’re into sports, leadership, and/or mental toughness books (or all three of those!), I think you’ll love it.
Big Ideas
- Above the Linevs. Below the Line.
- Got BCD?Stop blaming, complaining, and defending.
- The R FactorE + R = O.
- Relentless EffortFor the gritty win.
- The Power of BeliefI will. You?
“To me, the essence of life and leadership is change and growth. It is about pushing yourself to improve every day in whatever you do. I truly believe in the maxim that if you are not getting better, then you are getting worse. Do you know how many people wake up in the morning and say, ‘Today, I am committed to being mediocre?’ I don’t. I believe most people want to give the best they have but don’t have the necessary tools and mindset to get there. That’s where leadership comes in. I go back to the way companies like Apple and Nike operate, and their willingness to continually push the envelope. It’s exactly what we want our players at Ohio State to do. We push our players every day. We train, coach, and perform at the highest possible level. And that level is not for everyone. I often refer to our players as elite warriors, not because they are going to war and certainly not because what we are doing is anything remotely as serious as war, but because they are trained in an incredibly rigorous way and are constantly engaged in physical, mental, and spiritual combat.
Many of our players and coaches have experienced profound changes in their lives, on and off the field, by embracing the ideas you are about to read. I would encourage you to see whether these ideas can have the same result for you.
If you are responsible for leading people, your challenge is to bring them along with you, help them live and work and play with passion and achieve things they never thought possible. In the pages that follow I lay out the leadership template that made the journey of our 2014 championship season so rewarding. I hope you find it helpful.”
~ Urban Meyer from Above the Line
Urban Meyer is one of the most successful NCAA football coaches in history. He’s one of only two coaches to win a National Championship with two different teams: the University of Florida and Ohio State University.
I got this book after Brian Cain referenced it multiple times in his great little fable, The 10 Pillars of Mental Performance Mastery.
It’s kind of like a mash-up of elite football coach Pete Carroll’s Win Forever and elite CrossFit coach Ben Bergeron’s Chasing Excellence in that, like Bergeron, he shares his leadership lessons in the context of a single season but only, like, Carroll, he does it on the football field.
btw: Amazon tells me people who bought this book ALSO bought Legacy and Atomic Habits. Check out those Notes as well.
It’s a FANTASTIC, hard-hitting book packed with wisdom and Big Ideas. If you’re into sports, leadership, and/or mental toughness books (or all three of those!), I think you’ll love it. Check out each of those categories, btw, for some of my favorite Notes. And, get a copy of the book here.
For now, we’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s jump straight in!
NOTE: After reading the book and creating this Note, I learned that Coach Meyer has gone through some personal challenges in which he failed to practice his philosophy of living Above the Line. To which I say: PERFECT. There are no perfect humans. You and I and Coach Meyer won’t be the first to fall short of our standards. Hope you enjoy the great wisdom here as we all humbly yet Heroically strive to do our best and learn from our inevitable shortcomings!
Download MP3
Download PDFNow I understand. Average leaders have quotes. Good leaders have a plan. Exceptional leaders have a system.
Do I have all the answers? I don’t have half of them. But I’ll tell you what: I am looking hard for the answers I don’t have.
Get the BookAbove the Line vs. Below the Line
“It all begins with Above the Line Behavior. It is a Tim Kight teaching point, and it has deeply influenced how I lead and how I think. I was blown away by its force and clarity when he first explained it to me, and, if anything, my appreciation for it has grown.
The performance of a team rises or falls on behavior. Winning behavior is intentional, on purpose, and skillful. It is Above the Line. But it’s easier to be impulsive, on autopilot, and resistant. This is Below the Line. Below the Line is dangerous because it is comfortable and convenient. It is the path of least resistance. Below the Line takes little effort or skill, and the best I can produce is ‘just OK.’ Eventually, it produces failure.
The simple truth is that getting and staying Above the Line is the foundation of success in anything you do—work, school, football, and life. The harder truth is that getting and staying Above the Line is not easy. It must be taught and developed. Every day is a battle for whether we choose to live Above the Line or Below the Line. The choice we make determines how we treat people we love, how we interact with colleagues at work, how we do our job, how we learn and grow, how we deal with adversity and disappointment, and ultimately what we achieve.
Please stop a moment and take this in: Above the Line behavior is the foundation of success in anything you do. There isn’t an aspect of your life that is untouched by it, and because of that, the decision to behave Above the Line or Below the Line is the most important choice you make every day.”
Those are some of the first words from the first chapter appropriately called: “The Foundation.”
As you know if you’ve been following along, when I read a book, I like to pretend like I’m sitting down and having a conversation with a world-class thinker.
As I read, I’m marking my book up like Twyla Tharp on her archeological dig. I’m sitting up straight and approaching the process like it’s my JOB to extract the absolute best Big Ideas and deliver that wisdom to you as powerfully as I can because, well, it IS MY JOB.
And, when an author says something like, “Please stop for a moment and take this in...” I a) do exactly that b) know I just found a Big Idea for the Note.
So... Please stop for a moment and take this in: “Above the Line behavior is the foundation of success in anything you do.”
Right before I folded page 27 over to make sure I came back to it for this Note, I wrote a few things on the top of page 28.
First, I drew my “Areté” lines. Then I drew a line with -1 and +1 at either end. Let’s take a quick look at each.
And, if you feel so inspired, please pay attention because this is a REALLY cool way to frame EVERYTHING we’ve ever talked about. :)
So... First: Draw a line. Your actions can either fall Above the Line or Below the Line. When you are acting ABOVE the Line, you are “intentional, on purpose and skillful.” When you are BELOW the Line, you are “impulsive, on autopilot, and resistant.”
If you want to win the game of life (or football!), you want to spend as much time as you possibly can ABOVE THE LINE.
Which leads us to my two lines for Areté.
As you may recall, I like to draw two horizontal lines separated by about an inch to represent who you are CAPABLE of being in any given moment and who you are ACTUALLY being in that moment. If there’s a GAP between those two lines, you will feel regret, anxiety, disillusionment, ick, etc. Close the gap and be your best self and there’s NO ROOM for that negative stuff. You feel EUDAIMONICALLY great. Which is why I tattooed my body with the ancient Greek word for that state of expressing the best version of yourself: ARETÉ.
Now...
Let’s take those two lines and draw another line IN BETWEEN them. Let’s make that the line in Meyer’s model. Kinda like this:
————————————— Capable
—————————— ← The Line
————————————— Actual
From that line in the middle, you can either choose to behave ABOVE the Line and CLOSE THE GAP between who you’re capable of being and who you’re actually being and experience Eudaimonia via Areté.
OR...
You can choose to act BELOW the Line and experience the painful gap of ick by NOT showing up as your best self in the only moment that ever matters: RIGHT NOW!
Next to that, I also drew my handy-dandy spectrum line that represents Maslow’s wisdom that, in any given moment, you can choose to either step FORWARD into growth or BACKWARD into safety.
←————————————— 0 —————————————→
-1 +1
-1 or +1. -1 or +1. -1 or +1. All day every day. We have a choice. Will we live ABOVE The Line or BELOW the Line?
Choose wisely. Your destiny will be determined by those apparently small decisions we’re making ALL DAY EVERY DAY. Remember the line. And live ABOVE it.
Got BCD?
“It isn’t hard to find people who are caught in Below the Line behavior. All you need to do is look for those whose first reaction is to blame (others), complain (about circumstances), and defend (yourself), or BCD. At Ohio State, BCD is the worst thing you can do, outside of lying or disrespecting a woman. It is much worse than fumbling or throwing an interception. When there is a lot of BCD going on, it means people are not owning their mistakes, [and] not being accountable....
My advice to leaders: ruthlessly eliminate BCD. Instead of accountability, BCD creates a culture of excuse-making and victimization—things that are toxic for your organization and performance. It has never solved a problem, achieved a goal, or improved a relationship. Stop wasting your time and energy on something that will never help you.”
BCD. ← That may just be my new favorite acronym.
Do you ever BLAME or COMPLAIN or DEFEND? Me, too. Of course we do, we’re human.
Do you want to move from Victim to Creator to HERO and do what you’re here to do? Me, too. Of course we do, we’re striving to be HEROIC.
Well, if we’re SERIOUS about our commitment to showing up as the best, most Heroic versions of ourselves so we can help create a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by 2051, then we need to notice all the times we fall into BCD and, instead, live Above the Line as we take EXTREME OWNERSHIP.
No more Blaming. No more Complaining. No more Defending. Period.
The R Factor
“How do you get and stay Above the Line? How do you fight off the forces that want to drag you Below the Line? How do you bring your best when it matters most? It begins with a powerful equation that affects everything we do.
E + R = O
Event + Response = Outcome
This equation teaches something very important about the way life works. We don’t control the events in life, and we don’t directly control the outcomes. But we always have control over how we choose to respond. How we respond means everything.
We call it the R Factor.”
BCD is my new favorite acronym. The R Factor is my new favorite phrase.
E + R = O.
Event + Response = Outcome
We talked about this exact formula in our Notes on Jack Canfield’s Success Principles.
And, of course, this is the essence of Rule #1 of Stoicism and the first words in Epictetus’ Enchiridion: “Of things some are in our power, and others are not... examine it by the rules which you possess, and by this first and chiefly, whether it relates to the things which are in our power or to the things which are not in our power: and if it relates to anything which is not in our power, be ready to say, that it does not concern you.”
It’s also Habit #1 of Covey’s 7 Habits: Be Proactive. Covey tells us: “Look at the word responsibility—’response-ability’—the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.”
And, it’s a reframe of Viktor Frankl’s brilliant wisdom (see Notes on Man’s Search for Meaning) that Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant’s mindfulness coach, George Mumford talks about in his great book The Mindful Athlete where he tells us: “Think about the eye of a hurricane, or the calm still center in the middle of a cyclone. No matter how intense the storm or what’s swept up in its gale-force winds, that calm, blue center is always there. This is the metaphor I like to use when talking about the space between stimulus and response. We all have this quiet center within us. Mindfulness reconnects us to this center space, where we fully experience the present moment and have access to the transcendent wisdom that’s often associated with conscious flow. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, neurologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl famously described it this way: ‘Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.’”
Remember the R Factor, Hero.
Relentless Effort
“Here’s the not-so-secret formula for achieving extraordinary success: clarify what you really want, then work as hard as you can for as long as it takes. Toughness can achieve things that talent by itself can never accomplish.
Success is cumulative and progressive. It is the result of what you do every day. Both successful and unsuccessful people take daily action. The difference is that successful people take action Above the Line. They step up and act with intention, purpose, and skill.
For every goal you are pursuing a process is involved. There is a pathway you must follow. To achieve your goals you must commit to the process with daily Above the Line behavior. Not just once or twice, but repeatedly over time. Success is not achieved by an occasional heroic response. Success is achieved by focused and sustained action. All achievement is a series of choices. The bigger the achievement, the longer the series and the more challenging the choices.
Goal clarity is essential, but so is process clarity. For every goal you have set, be exceptionally clear about the process necessary to achieve the desired outcome. By acting Above the Line consistently over time you can accomplish almost anything.”
That’s from a chapter appropriately called “Relentless Effort.”
“Relentless Effort” is one of the most-used phrases of the book. Tied for first as one of my new favorites right there next to the R Factor. :)
Right below that passage, Meyer tells us: “Relentless effort (not talent or intelligence) is the key to achieving great things in your life. Struggle is part of the process. It is hard and often painful. But it’s also necessary, because it’s in the struggle that great things are achieved.”
When I read that, I wrote down “Effort Counts Twice” to make sure I dropped in some Angela Duckworth wisdom from her research on the science of grit. In Grit, she tells us: “After more than a decade of thinking about it, I finally published an article in which I lay down two simple equations that explain how you get from talent to achievement. Here they are:
talent x effort = skill → skill x effort = achievement
Talent is how quickly your skills improve when you invest effort. Achievement is what happens when you take your acquired skills and use them. Of course, your opportunities—for example, having a great teacher—matter tremendously, too, and maybe more than anything about the individual. My theory doesn’t address these outside forces, nor does it include luck. It’s about the psychology of achievement, but because psychology isn’t all that matters, it’s incomplete.
Still, I think it’s useful. What this theory says is that when you consider individuals in identical circumstances, what each achieves depends on just two things, talent and effort. Talent—how fast we can improve a skill—absolutely matters. But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once. Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive.”
Scott Adams echoes this wisdom in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big where he tells us: “One of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard goes something like this: If you want success, figure out the price, then pay it. It sounds trivial and obvious, but if you unpack the idea it has extraordinary power.”
Plus, we have a Note on a book called Relentless by Tim Grover—another one of Michael Jordan’s coaches. He tells us: “There are no secrets. There are no tricks. If anything, it’s the opposite: Whether you’re a pro athlete or a guy running a business or driving a truck or going to school, it’s simple. Ask yourself where you are now, and where you want to be instead. Ask yourself what you’re willing to do to get there. Then make a plan. Act on it. There are no shortcuts.”
The Power of Belief
“Belief also creates strength of will. Because they believe, elite performers have enormous competitive drive, and that is what makes them relentless. Most players say, ‘I can’t.’ Some players say, ‘I hope.’ Players who believe say, ‘I will.’ Their mindset is: I will do the work. I will do my job. I will make the play. No matter how difficult, no matter how big the challenge, I will do whatever it takes for however long it takes. Their belief empowers them with unshakable resolve and determination. It is what animates their ability to respond to any situation with toughness and tenacity. They have a never-quit, never-give-in mindset. They are the top 10 percenters.
Strength of will is not about the commitment to start; it’s about the commitment to continue. It’s about the many recommitments that are necessary to sustain the journey when it gets difficult, tedious, and painful. In other words, when you face the grind, it’s saying, ‘I will’ when it gets hard.”
That’s from one of the last chapters called “The Power of Belief.”
It’s not possible for me to read the phrase “I will” without thinking about Orison Swett Marden and his great little book, An Iron Will. Marden created Success magazine and was firing people up back in the day when Teddy Roosevelt was president.
Here’s one of my all-time favorite gems: “‘I will.’ There are no two words in the English language which stand out in bolder relief, like kings upon a checker-board, to so great an extent as the words ‘I will.’ There is strength, depth and solidity, decision, confidence and power, determination, vigor and delivery. It talks to you of triumph over difficulties, of victory in the face of discouragement, of will to promise and strength to perform, of lofty and daring enterprise, of unfettered aspirations, and of the thousand and one solid impulses by which man masters impediments in the way of progression.”
What will YOU do to make TODAY the best, most energized, productive, and connected day of your life? Get on that.
Day 1. Let’s go live Above the Line.
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