Daniel Coyle is a New York Times best-selling author. His books ‘The Talent Code’, and ‘The Culture Code’ are wildly entertaining reads. In The Talent Code, Coyle describes the irrational mindset of being highly motivated. The highly motivated, ‘…want X later so they work like crazy on Y right now. This is not a rational mindset because getting X is never guaranteed. Being highly motivated is more closely aligned with making a bet because what if the future benefits of working on Y to get X never come?’ I have done my fair share of working like crazy on something today in hopes its benefits would arrive tomorrow, but I had never thought about the risk I was taking because there is actually no guarantee. An increase in probability, maybe, but not guaranteed.
However…
I have interacted with many and at times myself have been on the other side of the spectrum; a scarcity mindset. Scarcity, defined by our friend Google, is ‘an obsession with something you don’t have, so paralyzing, that you cannot focus on anything else.’ Obsessive focus may be a good thing, but it has a dark side creating a paralysis of analysis. Jon Acuff in his book, Finish, touts perfectionism as the cause of most reasons we fail by not finishing things. If it's not perfect we give up. 'The opposite of perfect is not failure, it's finished.' A person becomes convinced they will never have X so there is no point in doing Y to move any closer to X. Scarcity mindset is debilitating and starves your growth. The obsessive sense that there is not enough to go around has a self-fulfilling prophecy effect. It creates a vicious cycle of ‘lacks’ that pulls you into mediocrity or worse. I recently posted on advantages that everyone has access to, but in writing it I began reflecting on all of the things that we lack that starve our potential. These 'lack' are under our own control but our scarcity mindset cripples the risk-taking courage that is necessary to forge ahead.
So, here are six lacks starving your growth that I want you to be aware of and a great book to read about each...
LACK of understanding what passion really is: We misunderstand passion and it starves our persistence. Passion is not an intense like for something. Passion comes from the root word, passio, which means to suffer. Your passion is what you are willing to suffer for. In our comfortable lives, we have a low tolerance for suffering. However, research demonstrates that a willingness to suffer precedes the enjoyment of an endeavor. Passion comes before achievement and enjoyment follows it. A lack of willingness to suffer will starve the possibility that you could grow to enjoy some of your most fruitful efforts.
*Suggested read: Grit by Angela Lee Duckworth
LACK of control of your ego: As Ryan Holiday has famously written, ego is the enemy. Our ego makes us rigid like glass; unable to adapt and easily shattered. Our ego does not pursue new knowledge, skills, and relationships. Like a stagnant pond never taking in new water or being a source of life for any other body of water, ego is a dead end. Dave Bater, founder of Bzzagent, quipped, 'Dig a hole, throw your ego into it, put concrete on top of it. Find humility instead.' Imagine me handing you a shovel right now right after I use it first.
*Suggested read: The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness by Tim Keller
LACK of a pure focus: Soren Kierkegaard is a Danish theologian from the 1800s. To understand him is challenging, to say the least. God just put some people on this earth that think differently than the rest of us. An analogy may be that trying to contemplate Kierkegaard is like an ant trying to understand the internet. But, he has an amazing perspective on what purity is; intense focus. 'Purity of heart is to will one thing.' He goes on to say that 'anxiety is the dizzying effect of freedom.' The country we live in, the economic blessings we enjoy, and the age of the internet have given us unprecedented freedoms and it is so dizzying that we lack a pure focus. Your potential is starved when you lack pure focus and become dizzy with the freedom to do just about anything you want.
*Suggested read: Deep Work by Cal Newport
LACK of cohesive effort caused by incongruence: I have had the pleasure of working with folks who are like human WD-40; everything just works better when they are involved. *Here are 25 ways WD-40 makes things just work better that you probably didn't know about.* Often, these folks have no ego (refer to the previous section!), work hard, do a little more than what is expected, and go all in for the group. These people have very high potential, but a mindset like this becomes increasingly difficult to find. Dr. Tim Elmore, in his book Generation Z: Unfiltered, describes why a lack of this mindset exists through the concept of personal incongruence. We spend too much time trying to be too many things to too many people. Not only does this fragment our focus and create anxiety in us, but it also causes a type of friction that slows down our ability to be what we really are: ourselves. I swear that I'm not smart enough to read a lot of Soren Kierkegaard, but I'm going to reference him again. He gets to the point of this lack in our lives when he states, 'Now with God's help, I will be exactly who I was meant to be; myself.'
*Suggested read: Generation Z: Unfiltered by Tim Elmore
LACK of awareness about the importance of today: A thought that I think about often is, 'You will not get to your most important goals today. You will not get to your most important goals without today, either.' History is full of society-changing breakthroughs that were the result of seemingly meaningless efforts every single day for years on end. For example, the invention and use of sonar and radar is what stopped Nazi Germany from advancing on England and the United States and allowed us to go from defensive to offensive in World War II. Did you know that the implementation of those inventions took eight years and was denied multiple times forcing innovators to get better and prove their worth? Today matters because big things are the compilations of little things.
*Suggested read: The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
LACK of life-giving encouragement: Jeff Henderson, highly successful former chief marketing officer of Chick-fil-A Fil-A and now church planter for Andy Stanley, tells a great story about being an entry-level employee at Chick-Fil-A and sent on a task across Atlanta: to pick up Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick Fil A. On that car ride, Cathy shared one of his great leadership secrets with Jeff Henderson. 'Leaders need to keep an eye out for those that need to be encouraged. Do you want to know how to identify a team member that needs to be encouraged? Breathing. If they are breathing, they need to be encouraged.' At times, we have all had a lack of encouragement in our lives that was starving our potential so here's a pro tip on how to overcome that. Regularly encourage others and you'll be surprised how encouraged you can become.
*Suggested read: Know What You're For by Jeff Henderson
Keep on, keepin' on, friends!
‘Bite Down and Don’t Let Go’ is a collection of writings on being intentional about life in a way that produces great persistence. Read about it more here.
Comments
Post a Comment