Outcome Attachment Kills Performance: Relax Instead

PluginID_logo_122x74

BY Brett

Want to know a fantastic way to sabotage your performance?

Be dependent on success. Attach everything to the success of your performance. Say, “If I don’t come through here, I’m a failure. I suck. I’m not good at what I do.”

If you do that, watch yourself tense up. Watch your performance go downhill. Watch yourself get even more tense as you try to save yourself from failure.

More often than not, your tension will end up being your downfall. At the end of your performance, you’ll look at yourself and think, “Well, I lost. I failed. Now I’m not good at anything, and I’m just a failure,” and so on, until you end up shredding your self-concept into a million pieces and think of yourself as the most incompetent human being to ever walk the earth.

Attachment to the outcome – staking your self-esteem on your performance – did you in.

Click Here to Read More...
13

Greatness Requires Consistency

BY Brett

I know, I know – I should be the last one to talk about consistency. I’m not the most consistent man on the planet, that’s for sure.

However, I’ve achieved a fair amount of success. And I know that, in order to be successful, consistently doing the right thing is the key. I’m consistent in my study habits. I’m consistent in how I work out. I’m consistent in how I do my work (an hour and a half of work, followed by a 15 minute break). I’m consistent in how I do just about everything – and, yet, somehow, I haven’t become consistent in my work on this site, even though I’ve been “working on it” for a long time.

Sidenote: even though I know what the right thing to do is, oftentimes, I don’t do it. That’s how hard implementing ANY advice is. So if you’re struggling with implementing self-improvement advice, don’t worry. You’re not alone.

You can’t take days off from practice. You can’t use excuses to get...

Click Here to Read More...
15

The 7 Signs of Greatness

BY Brett

Everyone talks about people who are “great”. You hear people say, “Oh, well, Abe Lincoln was a great man,” or “Steve Jobs is a great CEO,” and so on down the line until you’re convinced that there’s something great about anyone in any leadership position.

But most of us – 99.9% of us – will never achieve any significant leadership position, like being the head of a government agency, a bank, or a multi-billion dollar corporation. And, almost always, when you hear people referred to as “great”, those people are almost always household names. You know, historical figures, inventors – people who’ve changed the course of human history in a significant way.

Those are the people referred to as “great”.

I think it’s wrong, though, to think that you, too, cannot be great. You can be every bit as great of a human being as they. The only difference is the scale of your achievements, which doesn’t really matter if we’re...

Click Here to Read More...
16

How Much Do You Really Need?

BY Brett

You should ask yourself this on a daily basis — “How much do I really need?”

I’ll give you a hint: you don’t need much. You don’t need a fancy car, you don’t need that kick-ass apartment, you don’t need that new smartphone. You don’t need much, my friend.

Here’s what I think you need to live a fantastic life: good food, good shelter (while you don’t need an awesome place, at least get something that feels like home), fantastic relationships with people you love, work that fulfills you, and a good set of habits (like the habit of being a good, kind person).

That’s it. You don’t really need anything else.

Click Here to Read More...
10

What Self-Trust Really Looks Like

BY Brett

“Gah! Why am I getting so distracted? Why can’t I just do what I say I’m going to do on my schedule!”

It was another day of frustration for me. For some reason, I’d lay out a manageable – but full – schedule of things to do, and, yet again, I had disappointed myself. Facebook had distracted me once again, resulting in me wasting another hour being awake, rather than going to bed. The result? I didn’t wake up on time, missed working out, and had to push it back for 3 hours later, pushing back all the work I had to do that day.

This is a common occurrence for me, but after my revelation following this incident, I think the days of me not following through on my schedule are over. I finally figured out what was going on.

Click Here to Read More...
10
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »