In our last couple +1s (here and here), we talked about Yoda’s wisdom on who’s going to be a star.
As you may recall, Phil told me that a Hollywood movie director once told him that he KNEW who was going to be a star based on ONE thing…
In short…
The speed with which that person recovered from a poor audition.
(I got goosebumps typing that.)
Guess what…
That same basic truth—that it’s ALL ABOUT how quickly we can go through the process of winning or learning!!—is the key to greatness in EVERY domain.
This is why Phil says that THE MOST CREATIVE ACT in the universe is the speed with which we can recover from what he calls a “glitch.”
Something go wrong?
PERFECT.
You’re human.
Things will ALWAYS, inevitably, go wrong.
QUIT BEING SURPRISED BY THAT FACT OF LIFE.
Simply use that glitch as a cue/trigger/prompt to PRACTICE YOUR PHILOSOPHY and MAKE IT A GAME to see just how fast you can recover your equanimity.
I love to do this with Marcus Aurelius and Morihei Ueshiba in mind.
In fact, I was chatting about this while on a drive to the airport with one of our Heroic team members after I flew to Europe to coach some elite athletes. (Thanks, Bryan! 🙌)
Aurelius puts it this way:
“When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.”
While, in his book The Art of Connection, Michael Gelb tells us one of Ueshiba’s students put it this way…
“In the 1990s I trained regularly at the dojo of Mitsugi Saotome Shihan, one of the great contemporary aikido masters. A resident student with O-Sensei for fifteen years before being sent to the United States to represent the art, Saotome shared many stories of his time with Ueshiba. He recounted the awe with which all the resident students beheld their master.
On one occasion Saotome exclaimed to his teacher: ‘Your techniques are perfect! You never make any mistakes. You never lose your center!’
O-Sensei replied, ‘I lose my center frequently. I just find it again so quickly that you can’t see it.’”
And…
That’s Today’s +1.
Hit a glitch Today?
Perfect.
Quit acting surprised.
You’re not going to be the first perfect human being.
Use that “Oops!” moment as a cue/trigger/prompt to PRACTICE YOUR PHILOSOPHY.
See how fast you can recover your equanimity.
TODAY.
P.S. Pro tip… Practice in the little moments so you have the strength to dominate the “big” moments!
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