Mastering the Hardest Thing
While I am not a huge sports fan, I really admire athletes. They are resilient and determined. Particularly those that compete at a professional level. I can’t even imagine what it might be like to constantly strive to perfect our own physical performance. To them, it’s not a game or for fun. And for some, it isn’t even about the money.
Extreme athletes not only have physical resilience, but they also have mental resilience and laser focus. They know how to overcome challenges and test their personal limits. They can endure pain and physical exhaustion for long periods of time. We can learn many lessons in business from observing how skilled athletes perform.
Athletes understand teamwork, particularly those in team sports. As they say, there is no “i” in team. By depending on their team members’ experience and skillsets, praising individual successes, and focusing on the big picture, the best leaders inspire those around them to achieve greater success as a whole.
Effective verbal and nonverbal communication is an integral part of a successful team. It ensures team members understand their duties and responsibilities, helps build quality relationships, and keeps everyone on the same page.
What are the hardest things I need to do?
Not every athlete has natural talent. Their success is often a function of the time and practice they apply to the hardest things they may face. Their road to mastery is littered with hard things and they must callus their mind to get past the roadblocks holding them back physically. It’s easy to cling to comfort and certainty, but that doesn’t produce winners.
Michael Phelps, one of the greatest American swimmers of our time, won a total of 28 Olympic medals (23 are gold). He started swimming competitively at the age of 7 and already held the national record of his age group by the age of 10. According to his coach, Bob Bowman, Phelps didn’t miss a morning practice from the age of 11 through 16 years old. ”He would practice on Sundays, birthdays, and Christmas morning to keep his competitive edge.”, said Bowman. At the time he competed in his first Olympics at Sydney in 2000, he was 15 years old and the youngest male to make a U.S. Olympic swim team in 68 years.
Athletes know to put the most work into the hardest things. Then they are prepared for anything. As competence increases, the goal then becomes success with more precision. Once precision has been achieved, then the goal becomes faster speed, reaction time, or a better score. Executing something hard with precision and speed reflects true mastery.
We have to ask ourselves, what is the hardest thing I do? It is probably the things we most often put off because we don’t like them or feel we aren’t good at them or can’t control them. If we can break that activity into smaller bite-sized tasks, we can tackle them one step at a time. Doing a small task over and over will help us create mastery that will allow us to tackle the bigger task with success over time. For example, I would suspect Michael Phelps worked on his form before he focused on speed.
How can I master my hardest thing?
If we know we need to do our strategic marketing plan for 2024, we may keep putting it off because of the size of the overwhelming task. And we might feel discouraged because of the market conditions. Instead, if we just focus on one element of our marketing first and the rest of the strategy later, then it won’t seem so hard. By creating a list of the hardest things and a loose timeline around tackling them, we can fend off the eternal instinct to put them off.
If we are fearful of public speaking, and we force ourselves to speak in front of four people and work our way up to bigger groups and over time we will overcome the fear and at some point, we will master it. If we need to clean our entire house, just focus on one room at a time and it will seem less daunting. We can string the small tasks together to create the overall strategy for the bigger challenge. People often say to do the hardest thing first, then everything else seems easy. We can trick our minds into better accepting the overall challenge.
Find the fun in it.
Here is what James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, has to say about doing hard things, "When you're doing something hard, focus on the fun part. Many people make a subtle mistake, which is they emphasize how difficult it is to do something. They tell themselves writing is hard or running is hard or math is hard. And so on. The dominant thought in their mind is that this is hard to do. Meanwhile, people who thrive in a given area are often emphasizing a completely different aspect of the experience. They are thinking about how it feels good to move their body rather than telling themselves exercise is hard. Or, perhaps, they aren't really thinking much at all. They may slip into a trance during their run, a meditative rhythm. But what they are almost certainly not doing is repeating a mental story about how hard it is to do the thing. Their dominant thought is about some element of the experience they enjoy. They are working hard but with the fun part in mind."
The key to mastery is to:
Do something hard every day - Athletes (and their coaches) often create a hardship or a challenge so when a situation hits them, they are more prepared to handle it. Make a list of things you have been putting off and try to achieve one each day or each week. It can be as small as taking a proactive stance to cut your own budget without being told. Then when the order comes to cut it, you are prepared.
Reframe hardships - If we toughen up mentally, then when bad things do happen we are more callused to the hardship. Athletes lose. They can’t fall apart when it happens, they have to learn from it and forge ahead. The more we accept friction in our lives the more we can toughen up mentally. If our performance numbers are down year over year, don’t wallow in it, reframe what got us there and see how we can overcome it. Try to not take things personally or make it about others. The best leaders don’t concentrate on what they can’t control but instead focus on what they can control: effort, attitude, and perspective. Doing so helps us move on and focus our energy constructively.
Face the pain head-on - Acknowledge where our weaknesses are and address them. That way we are less fragile when a challenge arises and we are better able to deal with them. Athletes know their sport will often create pain, but they have learned to embrace it. If we have an unhappy client, reach out and acknowledge where things went wrong. If a specific business line is off, figure out how we will proactively replace that business. Dodging challenges or laying blame won’t help us grow and learn.
There is a reason people say “no pain, no gain”. Many of us are exhausted from the ravages of the pandemic and the current market conditions. But we can’t let it defeat us or create inaction. There are a lot of challenges right now for everyone in our industry that are beyond our control. All we can do is focus on what we can control. We must have the right attitude and push ourselves to the limit to focus on the hardest things, even when it hurts.
“I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit, suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion’.” ~ Muhammad Ali, American former heavyweight champion boxer and activist
