What are you truly capable of?
What is your maximum capability?
Let me introduce you to technique developed by Navy Seal, Ultra Marathon Runner and world record holder of the most pull-ups done in 24 hours, David Goggins that will help you produce more success.
He says that the mind is like a car with a governor on it, when we reach a certain speed, when life starts to get too fast, too hard, too painful, we pull back. The mind is forcing us to retreat and look for safety.
Goggins argues that we are all living at about 40% of our capability. We have it in us to do more, produce more and push out selves beyond what we think we are capable of however we have been trained to believe that when life gets painful or when our insecurities start to show up that we must find comfort.
He encourages us to push through the pain and when we reach that point where the mind is telling you “no more” that’s when you need to break the habit and continue on regardless of what you mind is saying. By starting to nudge the needle up, just that little bit from 40% to 45% you begin to take back control of you mind and break the habit that has been controlling your life.
He says that the mind has an ‘unfair advantage’ over us because it knows our deepest darkest fears, it knows what we are afraid of and due to the survival mechanism built in all of us, just like a governor in a car that is restricting it from going above a certain speed the mind keeps us from moving through the pain, fear and suffering by pulling us back.
What I want you to get from this is that you are in control of your thoughts, your mind and you can rewire it to be able to see pain as a driver, if you believe that you are only at 40% when your mind tells you you’ve reached your limit and you are able to dig down and give more to the situation and apply yourself, push onwards through the pain despite what your mind is saying then you will do more than you expected.
The key is to constantly do this whenever you face this mental road block so that each time your mind reaches the point where its telling you to stop or to take the easy road, or to give up, that you are questioning it, and flipping the switch where you lets do this and push on regardless.
This allows you to take control of your mind and change what you expect from yourself and what you are capable of.
For example, imagine that you are in sales and you found out that your job was on the line? How hard would you push then to produce sales? Instantly it would be possible for you to push harder, to give more, and to see and create opportunities that you maybe didn’t see before.
The brilliant part is, this is what you can do any day to jump start yourself into producing more, you can take back control of your mind and go harder each day.
The next time you feel fear, or your mind tells you to stop or that you’ve ‘done enough’ push just that little bit harder, stay just 5 minutes longer, do that extra 5 reps, make that extra lap, or just keep on going.
Surprise yourself today, reinvent how you see pain as a lever to ask more from yourself rather than less and leverage your insecurities and fears to ask more from yourself.
Another way to do this is to set challenges for yourself, I do this in sales. I know that prospecting is an important part of keeping live opportunities in the pipeline therefore I must push myself to make sure that I can doing this consistently on a daily basis to maintain a healthy pipeline.
But what if you wanted to make the business outrageously successful? What if you wanted to become the top salesperson in your organization?
This is where challenges come in, set yourself your own challenge, for instance, I do something called the 9 before 9am.
This means everyday I expect myself to have reached out to 9 potential new prospects with a proactive of how we can work together over email, phone or in person. I have made a commitment to excellence and maintaining a pipeline that stretches my business by engaging with a least 9 potential new clients all before 9am in the morning.
The beauty of this technique is that these proactive’s - go to work, and it maybe a couple of days later when an email comes back requesting to meet or set up a call. 9 proactives before 9am, 5 days a week also guarantees that whatever happens I have 9 x 5 = 45 new lines of business enquiry working for me in a week.
What typically happens though is by doing the 9 before 9am it primes my mind to see more opportunity throughout the day and using this momentum I end up sending out anywhere from 15-30 prospecting lines of enquiry a day.
If I didn’t have a commitment to a goal, e.g. the 9 before 9am, it would be harder to establish a base on which to build, its about consistently asking more from myself, even when I don’t want to, or I can’t think of how I am going to find 9 potential clients to reach out to, this challenge forces me to be able to create. It tells my mind everyday that we have a habit of doing the impossible, of breaking down the barriers and finding a way, no matter how uncomfortable, we do what is needed not what is easy.
It would be easy to say I will reach out to 9 clients throughout the day, and then maybe miss a few because life got in the way or I got distracted. It would be easy to miss a day, or to try to get 9. But by forcing myself every day to find and go after 9 new clients each day it expands my business and my mind, all the while bringing exciting opportunities to the table, which in turn feed the pipeline.
Control that mind and take back ownership of what’s possible in each day and you will experience more success as a result.
