When You Feel Like Your Own Worst Enemy

I remember when I was my toughest critic, always falling short of my expectations.

I thought I was pushing myself to be better. But it never seemed to end.

I'd always find something else to be disappointed with.

This not only affected me, but it also affected my team. I became very judgmental of other's performance.

We'll just say the combination of the two had a tendency to create a tense and intimidating environment for those who worked with me.

At the time, it was understandable considering the pressure to get results.  

But as I've studied high-performance I'm learning there are simple things that we do that hold us back from our potential and therefore the potential of our team.

One simple thing that might be tripping you up is the Law of Dominant Thought.

In this video, we'll explore the power of our focus and what is known as the law of dominant thought.  Learn how to:

1. Visualize what you want instead of avoiding what you don't want

2. Achieve higher-performance for yourself and your team

3. Increase the likelihood that you'll be successful in any endeavor

Side Bonus: Improve your golf game while you're at it!

While we're on the topic of maximizing who you are as a leader, have you checked out this Executive Morning Plan?

When You Feel Like Your Own Worst Enemy

Transcript - March 5, 2020

There was a time where I felt like I was my own worst enemy, my own biggest critic.

Have you ever felt that way?

My name is Zach, I'm a performance and leadership coach with great purpose coaching.

I work with a lot of leaders, business owners, and sales professionals to help them transform their leadership and their approach so that they can create the results that they desire to see in their life and in their business.

So, why was it that I felt like my own worst enemy?

Why do you feel like your own worst enemy?

And what if I were to say it's not necessarily your fault?

It's normal because when you want to do well when you want to succeed when you want deeply to create the types of results that your company wants to see from you or you personally want to see, it makes a lot of sense that you would be hard on yourself.

And it makes sense that I was hard on myself.

But what I learned was as long as I kept beating myself, I was preventing myself from showing up as my best.

What would happen is I would go into a sales presentation and I would leave the sales presentation focusing on what I did wrong.

And then I'd go into the next sales presentation. Zach, don't do that.

I am not going to ask close-ended questions.

Or if you're on the golf course..the weather is warming up, so we're thinking about golf, right?

I'll never forget. There's a course I often play and I think it was the third hole.

There's just water, there's water and then the hole is a par three.

And you know what I'd stand up over the tee box and I'd be thinking, "don't hit it into the water."

What happens? Every time it goes in the water.

Then what happens is of even greater concern. There might be some expletives I'd I'd get pissed off at myself.

Eventually, I'd just chuck the ball over the water with my hand. 

This continues for 18 holes--me thinking about don't hit it in the trees, don't hit it in the sand.

And what do I do, I hit it into the trees, into the sand. I getting more and more pissed off. I just want to quit.

I just want to quit. And that happens in business. It happens in performance. It happens everywhere.

And that's why you are becoming your own worst enemy because you're setting yourself up to fail.

And that's the biggest learning here is after studying performance psychology, and reading and learning from other high-performance coaches, I'm learning something that's called the law of dominant thought. 

It is simply that our actions, therefore, our results tend to follow our thoughts, images, and feelings.

And so we tend to create what we focus on.

So every time I stood over the tee box and said, "don't hit in the water," I got exactly what I was focused on. I hit it in the water.

And that's the lesson here for you, instead of having those thoughts of what you don't want to see happen, and what you want to stop doing, I want you to focus on the result that you desire to create.

Focus on the aspiration, not the problem or the challenge or the obstacle.

Don't focus on the obstacle, because there's this awesome quote that I've shared numbers of times that obstacles are those terrifying things you see when you take your eye off the target.

And so that has everything to do with high-performance.

It has everything to do with you hitting your mark on the golf course.

It has everything to do for you to show up with that to that sales presentation, fully ready, fully confident and ready to execute on your vision.

Not on your to-don't list, right.

So I want to give you just this tip, because, over the next several weeks, I want to introduce several more power mindsets for you that will lead you into high performance.

These are mindsets that we often get wrong. In fact, most of us do counter to what the mindset is, and it hurts our performance, just like the one I just showed you.

And so remember the law of dominant thought, you are going to get what you focus on.

Your actions and results tend to follow your thoughts and the images and what you're visualizing.

And so spend some time really thinking about and visualizing, whatever the situation, whatever you're about ready to go into, ask yourself some more powerful questions:

What am I doing when I'm really on my  A-game?

What would my A-game look like here?

What would I be doing?

If I were performing at my best, how will I respond to obstacles as my best self?

Don't worry about what you don't want to do. Because if you're so focused on the target, the obstacles become tiny and insignificant.

They're only terrifying and they only trip us up when that is what we focus on.

But instead, if we focused on what it is we want, we coast right through the obstacles and we actually start to create exactly what we want in those different scenarios in business and life and performance overall.

You know, and so what? What if you go in there? And you know what you didn't execute your vision exactly how you planned on it.

Great. Take that back into the next evaluation. Don't beat yourself up. Just focus on what is it that you did? And what didn't you do.

Focus on what you do want to see yourself do next time.

Keep building upon those aspirations and those intentions of how you want to show up and keep evaluating through that.

Check yourself if you're feeling beat down and feeling like you suck.  How's that really serving you?

I want to leave you this with this one last thing.

I think this will really set you up for success if you're in a leadership position in any shape or form. That could be being a dad, being a mom, or being the CEO of your company, it doesn't matter.

You matter and how you show up for others matters big time.

And so that's why I created the executive morning plan. And it's a way for you to take control of your day, through applying these very principles I just shared with you here.

By setting up your intentions for the day and how you want to show up, how you want to anticipate the day and visualize the day, how do you want it to go and what might be some obstacle, obstacles that show up along the way?

How do you want to respond to those obstacles?

What would it look like for you to respond to those as your best self?

So what are you doing when you're really on your A-game? Focus on that, have an image of that, and go live into that and watch your performance change.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai