Perform at your best at the things that matter most to you. At the Growth Equation, we are dedicated to bringing you pragmatic, no-nonsense information, tools, and practices to help you cultivate sustainable and fulfilling success and excellence.
What does it take to win, to be your best—if not the best—at what you do?
Unfortunately, there is a longstanding narrative that being the best requires being an asshole. You have to be single-minded, obsessed, despise losing, hate your competitors, or some variation of those ideas. Early in Steve's coaching career, that's what he saw. Whether it was Lance Armstrong or Alberto Salazar, you had to be a jerk to be the best. Or maybe what comes to mind for you are athletes like Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant, who carried the biggest chips on their shoulders en route to success. That ethos endures, from politics to sport.
The thing is: it's mostly bullshit. Look to this year's Olympic pole vault, where those competing against Mondo Duplantis, perhaps the most dominant athlete in the games, helped him get to new heights through support and coaching on the field. Or Simone Biles, cheering on her fiercest challenger, Rebecca Andrade, and then bowing to her on the podium to her after she beat Biles.
What's been on display everywhere you look at these Olympic games: people in the actual arena (not firing off tweets from their couch), competing their hearts out to win, all the while respecting, and sometimes even helping, their competitors.
Yes, you can be a jerk and win. But often, it leaves you miserable. (Look at some of the aforementioned individuals' post-athletics lives; or think of certain politicians who are bullies and jerks and, by all accounts, miserable people).
What about Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant? Each attained their greatness while being counterbalanced by the zen master coach Phil Jackson, who put compassion at the center of his philosophy. Did Jordan or Bryant suddenly drop the chip from their shoulders, of course not? But Jackson helped to harness their drive so it could be productive and not destructive. It's not a stretch to imagine that, without Jackson coaching them, Jordan and Bryant may not have attained such greatness.
It's not just our opinion or a series of anecdotes. It's also what the research shows. We've been making this case for months in a variety of articles and podcasts. It's wha lies at the Heart of The Growth Equation. Years ago, we realized that the common caricature of competing and achieving greatness went against just about everything we saw in the actual arena. The greats are fierce competitors, but they are able to flip the switch on and off. They don't carry around some fake machismo. The ones who aren't cheating, who are doing it the right way, they tend to be good people too.
So here's to redefining greatness and reclaiming excellence. To understanding that you can be great at what you do and also a decent person.
It's high time to let go of the nonsense, social media tough-guy, performative, pseudo-greatness, and look to the vast majority of those in the arena who are doing in the right way.
Though neither of us are world-class athletes (and only one of us ever was close), we are, at least by some accounts, by pretty good writers. We do everything we can to practice what we preach. And guess what—in the writing world, it's no different. The people who we compete against and who do it the right way (i.e., who don't plagiarize or hire ghost writers while claiming to be authors) are the people we respect most! Yes, we want to sell more books than Cal Newport, Ryan Holiday, Dave Epstein, and Adam Grant. But it's precisely because we respect them so much! And when they experience success, we are genuinely happy for them, because we are all in the arena giving it our best shot together. This sort of striving and greatness is what we stand for. It's what we know works. And it seems like there is a real cultural moment where more people are embracing it and realizing it is the way. It's still an uphill battle, but one we feel strongly about fighting, and we encourage you to join us. When you talk to your family and colleagues and friends, or when you post on social media, or when you share articles and books and podcasts, or when you coach or teach youth, or lead at your organization, please do everything you can to model the right kind of greatness.
If you'd like to go deeper into the research, stories, and more, here is our best work on the topic from over the last three weeks:
Perform at your best at the things that matter most to you. At the Growth Equation, we are dedicated to bringing you pragmatic, no-nonsense information, tools, and practices to help you cultivate sustainable and fulfilling success and excellence.
Nurturing Independence Read on TheGrowthEq.com Reflect: Quick Thought When it comes to both sport and traditionally-conceived ideas of masculinity, people often conflate suffering and performance. Suffering can be an element of performance, since gritting it out teaches you how to navigate discomfort. But suffering is about simply enduring, whereas performance is about achieving a specific outcome. If we want to be and perform our best, we need to understand the signals our body is sending...
Finding the Right State to Perform Read on TheGrowthEq.com Reflect: Quick Thought Remember those "cool" kids in gym class who never tried? They weren't cool. They were afraid of failing and being embarrassed. True strength caring and embracing the struggle, not hiding from it. Read: Growth Eq Original Feature Getting in the Right State to Perform (Read this on the Growth EQ website here.) Before the Olympic 200-meter final, Noah Lyles came out of the tunnel, bouncing around like a maniac....
Olympic Lessons Read on TheGrowthEq.com Olympic SPECIAL: Get 40% off the Growth Equation Academy for Human Performance (and join us for our exclusive live Olympic coverage): Sign up here. Reflect: Quick Thought The fire has to come from within. If you look at the research on prodigies and phenoms who eventually become standout adult performers, a deep intrinsic drive is a requirement. Success often pulls us away from this inner drive and toward external rewards. But it's important to keep...