This week's book: "Greenlights" by Matthew McConaughey.
"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming."
John Wooden
Success isn't a finish line. It's feedback.
That's what I kept thinking about while reading Part 4, The Art of Running Downhill, of this week's book Greenlights.
Early in his career and after some initial success, McConaughey figured he could coast on raw instinct. Then he showed up to a job and discovered his lines were written in Spanish. His last Spanish class had been in eleventh grade. Talk about embarrassment! Lesson learned.
Later, while prepping for a big courtroom scene, he overcorrected the other way. He knew every single line cold, and when rehearsing he came out flat and lifeless. The director finally told him to put the script down and just say it in his own words. That was the move. Preparation so good and so deep that instinct could finally take over.
Prepare too little and you’ll get busted and embarrassed. Or the opposite, over prepare so much that there's no room to breathe and be yourself. You could choke the life out of what you prepared for. The sweet spot is preparing hard enough so that instinct can take over and you can be yourself. The speech, the presentation, the game, etc.
Having that balance reminds me of one of the greatest example of it I know: Tiger Woods.
In 1997, Tiger won the Masters by twelve shots. It was the biggest margin of victory in a major in a century. He was 21, on top of the entire golf world, and he'd just played what looked like perfect golf.
So what did he do? He tore his swing apart and rebuilt it from scratch.
He watched the tape of that historic win and saw flaws, small things he knew would eventually get exposed. So he went to work with his coach to make something that was really good into something that was great. And it got worse before it got better. Through 1998, while adjusting to the new swing, he won only once. The golf gurus started whispering that the Masters had been a fluke, that maybe he was just a flash in the pan.
Then the new swing clicked. From 1999 to 2002, Tiger put together the greatest stretch of golf anyone has ever played, seven majors in eleven tries. He'd been really good. He chose to get momentarily worse, on purpose, so he could become the best.
That's the hard part of success that nobody warns you about. Getting good is one challenge. Staying hungry enough to keep getting better, when it would be so much easier to coast, is a completely different one. Most people, once they find something that works, ride it right into the ground. The rare ones tear it down and build something better.
One thing to try today
Look at one area of your life where you're pretty good, good enough that you've stopped really trying. Ask yourself an honest question: am I working at getting better here, or just coasting on what already works? You don't have to blow it up like Tiger did. Just pick one small way to get better at the thing you've already mastered.
Where in your life have you been coasting instead of growing? Hit reply, I love to read every one.
I'll go first: this exact thing happened to me in a high school football game. A special honor was on the line if I played well, and I was so excited and so prepped I could barely wait for kickoff. I thought I played great, and there was no way I wasn't getting it. We won. But the disappointing look on my coach's face as we walked off the field said something different.
The film session that Monday was embarrassing. I was bad. It didn’t even look like me on film. I did everything technically right, but I was stiff. I had no flow, no instinct, no moves. I played well the rest of the season, like myself, but the chance at that honor was already gone.
Lesson learned. Be prepared, but don’t forget to be yourself.
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Talk tomorrow,
Mike
Practical wisdom for the life you're building