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In my blog I uncover the thinking, actions and habits it takes to get the results you want in business and life. No fluff, just facts.
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You’ve seen the ads. These shoes are x amount lighter, x times more cushiony or can spring over a goal post on a football field- buy now and save. You are automatically interested, thinking, for a minutia that you could really use lighter, cushionier and springier shoes. Then your common sense sets in. “Why in the world would I want my shoes to spring over a goal post on a football field?”
Doing the Math
Imagine for a minute that you do the math on these claims. You want to be an informed consumer before you buy running shoes to make you faster. You determine the extra .04 ounces of weight loss in the shoes is equal to the weight of about a half a peanut!
You scream with frustration! “Argh, these stupid marketers are just playing with my mind!” Math says that if you simply cut one peanut out of your diet every day, you’ll be twice as fast as any Bozo that buys these shoes.
The Math is Wrong
But math is wrong. When it comes to the science of improvement, of personal growth, there is a factor that math can’t measure.
Math can’t measure your mindset.
Math can’t measure your focus.
Math can’t measure your effort.
Math can’t measure the idea that you have in your head the morning after you buy the expensive, springy shoes that tells you just how fast and springy your run will be this morning.
Math can’t formulate how much more you will try to prove that the shoes made you faster, which will cause you to, try harder, burn more calories, lose weight and yes, eventually get faster.
The shoes don’t make you faster, but the idea of the shoes do. The idea that you must prove to your friend that these shoes were a good investment, forces you to go faster. The thought that you are a logical spender causes you to grit your teeth and push up the same hill that, yesterday you slogged up the side of.
So do lighter, cushionier, springy running shoes make you faster?
The answer is no, mathematically they don’t.
Until you buy them.
What do people think of you? Are you kind, aggressive, fat, happy, depressed, generous or something else? You can take any number of personality tests or online quizzes to learn more about who your are but there is a problem.
Learning more about who you are does not tell you anything about what people think about you.
Reading the reviews of your work or your last performance review will not tell you what people think about you, and asking people what they think about you will not tell you what they think about you.
There are countless problems with the question, what do people think about me. One is that other people’s perspective of you is as varied as the number of people you know. Stephanie may think you’re brilliant because you helped her find a great job but David thinks you’re an asshole because you haven’t called him back in a month. It’s called the fundamental attribution error. People generalize their opinion of others based on a narrow slice of time. The day you were tired changed the person the world saw compared to the day you were first engaged.
Then there is the problem with them. What is there perception of your political stance, the way you dress or the type of work you do? What they think of you is highly influenced by their beliefs more than who you really are.
Let’s also not forget that people may hate your last book, but love how much money you give to charity. They may love your music but hate the way you dance. You are not a singular entity anymore than the state you live in. I like Texas. . . until I have to drive across it.
So what do people think of you?
Everything.
They think the worst and they think the best they are completely wrong and perfectly accurate and everything in between. The question shouldn’t be what do people think of me, the question is how can I serve the people who do think about me. How can I become the best version of myself so that the people around me benefit from my growth.
I just finished Unleash The Power Within, the four day, 10-15 hour per day Tony Robbins event designed to help you break through limiting beliefs, learn how to achieve more and become a better version of yourself. It is a massive event designed to answer the question, how do I accelerate personal growth. It was amazing. 15,000 people in the Los Angeles Convention Center dancing, screaming, crying and growing all at the same time, for more hours over a weekend than most people spend all week at work.
It was total immersion, which is one of the things that Tony teaches. One of the pillars of personal growth is to take massive action, which is what we did. But the truth is I didn’t grow while I was there, at least not in any way that is measurable by normal means. My bank account certainly didn’t grow, my health and fitness may have gotten worse, (the food in L.A. is amazing!) and my projects in my businesses suffered because I was there.
Why Go?
And yet,
I personally grew. Most of the time when someone asks how to accelerate personal growth, what they are really asking is, how can I make more money, how can I get more freedom or how can I get something else that I want, faster than the average person. and the answer is to take a step back.
Back Up
Take a step back and evaluate where you are, take a step back and define what you want or take a step back and learn what you are missing in order to make your goals a reality. In this world of constant motion and movement, most of us don’t take the time to stop and gain clarity on where we are going, we just go. It’s like getting in a car and driving whatever direction it happens to be facing, constantly going faster and faster, without understanding where you are really driving.
Accelerating personal growth isn’t hard. If your goal is to learn Spanish, you can do it in a few months, if you want to read 50 books, buy an account with Audible and listen all day, by next year you will have met your goal. But accelerating growth for the sake of growing is a problem.
You have to know where you’re heading before you speed off to get there.
If your product is losing your company money, more sales will just put you in bankruptcy faster. The trick to accelerating personal growth is easy. As Tony says, “take massive action.” This will accelerate everything in your life and it is easy.
Knowing where you are going in life is difficult.
There is a correlation between bad students and big success. But it isn’t what most people think.
Prevailing wisdom says, “The better one does in school, the better they will do in their career, their finances and in life overall.” But the numbers just don’t support that thinking.
Bad Students/Successful People
President George H.W. Bush said “I refuse to release my high school transcript. I failed chemistry and I don’t want anyone to know that.”
Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard his junior year, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out his sophomore year.
Here is a list of just a few successful high school dropouts.
- John D. Rockefeller the richest man in modern history
- Elton John, one of the best-selling music acts in history
- World famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright
- Quentin Tarantino, whose film Reservoir Dogs was deemed by Empire film magazine the greatest independent film of all time
- Amancio Ortega, Co-founder of Zara and the 5th richest man in the world in 2018
What School Doesn’t Do
In this article in Inc., Ilya Pozin explains that GPA does not measure incredibly valuable attributes. Values such as leadership ability, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, or unconventional problem solving go unchecked. In fact, one of the most valuable topics for understanding success is the study of heuristics, which most schools never even touch.
But there are outstanding examples of great students, who failed at life. People like Harry Markopolis, Ignaz Semmelweis and Pol Pot who were champions of education. But they either weren’t able to find success, or in the case of Pol Pot, was just a horrible person. Saddam Hussein was one of the biggest proponents of education. Under his reign Iraq had a 100% primary school enrollment and Hussein set out to make sure every person in Iraq could read.
The Student Loan Crisis
Yet we still believe, despite mounting evidence that the path to success is formal eduction. All while wading through a student loan crisis that could be the next downfall of our economy. In a world where over half of borrowers still haven’t paid off their student loans 20 years later, we have a $1.5 trillion crisis on our hands. Not because we need it, but because we are perpetrating a lie. The lie that formal education is the path to success has turned out to be a nightmare for some. It’s a complete farce to most of the people with a 17 year-old student loan for a degree they aren’t even using.
If good students are struggling and bad students are finding great success, why are we pushing our youth to be good students?
Testimonials
Don't just take my word for it.
“I remember being scared to charge $37 for a mastermind group! John asked me one question that changed everything. He became my coach in that moment, and later as well”
“John is a real pleasure to work with. Our team had a guest speaker cancel two days before the event! John was very happy to build a second presentation and fill our additional time slot with only two days notice. He went from conducting a 45 minute presentation to planning two separate presentations and speaking for a total of 4 hours to our entire group! He has great energy and keeps the audience engaged. Thanks John!”
“I have sat in on all of John’s presentations and have seen him convey, in various formats, the optimism and personal power that this population needs to embrace."