Getting defensive

Withdrawing from some people

Explaining to people how they’re wrong

Getting agree when people cancel on me

Basically being someone other than I wanted to be with others.

I was pretty relieved when I discovered everyone has their own version of this going on.

Although probably a far less sarcastic version.

The brain is always measuring our level of safety within the tribe

Via a part of the brain called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (mostly) it constantly scans for risk of loss or opportunity to gain hierarchy and connection.

They have always been people with a lot of responsibility. CxO’s, Partners, Doctors, Judges, Entrepreneurs etc

But back in my personal training days working with these folks I would be pulling my hair out trying to get them to create the habits necessary to achieve what they were paying me for.

Their lives were just so unpredictable.

They would get incredible results in 21,30 and even 60 day programs but eventually they would regress back to mean and back to the shape they were previously in.

That’s when I started exploring neuroscience and quickly discovered where I was going wrong.

That’s cool and you’ll get better and better at that with practise too but when there is opportunity to refine NOW your best gets better NOW. You are literally missing an opportunity to get better every time you fail to do this (I added that last line on my second run through this).

You don’t need to wait for your 100th book to produce something you’re proud of.

This ISN’T about perfection at all.

It’s about EXCELLENCE.

Which means taking a step towards more closely fulfilling your pre-defined criteria every time the opportunity arises.

An email is not just an email, a social media post not just a social media post, a book not just a book and a conversation not just a conversation.

Without this skill stagnation is GUARANTEED

When you think about it, incompetence really just means a skill at which you are not yet competent.

Which is all of us at most things right?

If I put together a list of the things that I am competent at and those at which I am incompetent my incompetence list would dwarf my competence list in a very big way.

That’s normal of course, we can’t master everything like we can’t know everything.

Location guilt seems to be the thing we’re talking about when we say work life balance

When we are at home we should be at work when at work we should be at home and that’s without throwing fitness and friends into the mix.

We end up only seeing friends that fit the formula and doing exercise that does too.

It can be like a constant battle for good enough or avoiding too many arguments or criticism.

The members and clientele were people I had created personal relationships with many of them for years before. Recently though a mass of members had joined that treated the place and people in it disrespectfully. I couldn’t see a way out, I felt like it was going to be a long journey what ever plan I created.

There is no such thing as a quick fix though right? Anything worth having takes time... right?

WRONG

We did this thing when I was a kid when we sat down to eat as a family where we would thank God for our food before we ate.

I never completely understood why and I was never completely comfortable doing it but clearly made an impact on me. This was a practise recommended in the Bible.

Regardless of whether you believe in a God or not for a book to survive as long as it has is pretty mind blowing and it is clearly packed with wisdom. It got me thinking about gratitude.

We seem to have created a way of thinking that tells us that time is a more primary part of change than it is. We might say that it takes a lot of time to build a house or it take a long time to build a business or a relationship or a life.

But really those are all process driven. It takes the time those processes take, the quality of those processes, multiplied by the speed of execution.

How much do you charge? It’s the instinctive first question, it’s also the least informative. Coach is their label, what they are to you is a problem solver or rather a solved problem(s) is the side effect you’re looking for.

Your job when selecting a coach of any sort is to ascertain if they can facilitate that.