The Power of One More

Welcome to the very first words from the very first chapter: “One More Identity.”

Ed tells us that our identities are like a thermostat.

Here’s how he puts it: “Remember this key point! Unconsciously, we always find a way to get back to where our thermostat is set based on what we think we’re worth.

Simply put, you can’t achieve 100 degrees of fitness or wealth with a thermostat set for 75 degrees of fitness or wealth. Your thermostat boxes you in until you can create a new identity that triggers growth and change.”

We’ve talked about this many times in different ways. Most recently, we discussed the idea of your self-image (aka, your identity!) in our Notes on Darrin Donnelly’s The Mental Game.

He tells us: “You can’t consistently perform in a way that is inconsistent with your self-image. This means you can’t outperform your self-image—at least, not for very long. In the long run, whatever you believe about yourself becomes reality. See yourself as a successful person capable of achieving great things and you’ll prove yourself right. See yourself as a victim of unfair fate who can never get ahead and you’ll again prove yourself right. It doesn’t happen overnight. Sometimes it can take years, but eventually it happens: your reality ends up matching the setpoint of your self-image.”

He continues by saying: “Think of your self-image as a thermostat. You set it at a certain temperature. Depending on weather conditions, the room temperature can rise above or fall below the set temperature at various times, but eventually it settles back to the thermostat’s setpoint. It’s the same way with your self-image. Whatever it’s set at, you will live up to—or down to—that setpoint. When you give your self-image a setpoint, your mind—mostly subconsciously—works day and night to reach that setpoint.”

Then we have James Clear and his great book Atomic Habits.

He tells us that if we want to change our lives we need to start with WHO—we need to start by crafting our identity. We have James to thank for introducing us to the ancient etymology of the word “identity.” The word literally means “repeated beingness”—which gives us a great clue as to how to CHANGE our identities.

We need to START by imagining who we are at our absolute best. Then we need to think about what that best version of ourselves would actually do. Then we need to actually DO those things.

Repeat. All day, every day. Forever. Enter: Your new Heroic Identity.

P.S. We architected the “Practice” part of our Heroic app to help you do EXACTLY that.

That’s from One More #4 on the “Five Principles of Time Management.” Here’s a quick look...

#1. Add More “Days” to Your Day. Ed tells us that we can do stuff in minutes, hours, or days that used to take us weeks or months to do 100 years ago. He also tells us that we need to break our days down into “mini-days” within a 24-hour day. He chunks his day down into three mini-days. His “first day” goes from 6 a.m. to noon. His “second day” is from noon to 6 p.m. and his third day goes from 6 p.m. to midnight.

The result? “While you’re living seven days in one week. I’m living 21 days in one week.”

#2. Approach Time with a Greater Sense of Urgency.

Urgency. Urgency. Urgency. ← I didn’t count the number of times that Ed used the word “URGENCY” but I can assure you that it was a LOT.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: Ed isn’t suggesting we approach life with a JOYLESS urgency but a JOYFUL urgency—like a runner who sprints through the finish line.

#3. Learn How to Control Time Instead of Time Controlling You.

Key idea here: Take control of the first 30 minutes of your day. Start strong.

Ed tells us: “How you approach the first 30 minutes of your day will set the tone for the balance of the hours to follow. That means staying away from your phone, computer, television or any other forms of input that can distract you from what’s important in your life. Instead, use that 30 minutes to plan our your day; review your meetings, phone calls, and projects; create priorities, meditate, pray, stretch, practice equanimity, reaffirm your standards, and update yourself on your goals.”

#4. Measure Your Performance Often. Want to improve something? MEASURE your performance in it. Want to REALLY improve your performance on something?

Measure it all day every day. He tells us: “As you shrink your timeframes and increase your urgency, you also need to shrink the intervals of how often you measure your performance.”

#5. Focus on the Future. Ed tells us that we need to LET GO OF THE PAST if we want to dream of a better future and be productive in the present moment.

As he brilliantly puts it: “The past is gone forever, but until you let go of it, the past is a thief and steals your ability to dream and imagine.”

P.S. Later in the book, Ed walks us through how to set goals. He makes the BRILLIANT point that we need to set goals while in a peak ENERGETIC state.

Same thing with “Time Management.” As we’ve discussed, we need to START with ENERGY MANAGEMENT. See this +1: Energy Is Everything and our Notes on Kevin Kruse’s 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management for more. And, of course, this is the theme of our Masterpiece Day work in our Heroic Coach certification program.

That’s from a chapter called “One More High Standard” that comes right after a chapter called “One More Goal.”

Ed connects the relationship between our GOALS and the STANDARDS we need to hit (aka, the behaviors we need to engage in/the price we need to pay!) in order to make those goals a reality.

It’s basically our never-ending conversation about OUTCOME goals and PROCESS targets.

We talk about Saban’s standards (he literally calls it “The Process”) in our Notes on The Obstacle Is the Way where Ryan Holiday quotes him saying: “Don’t think about winning the SEC Championship. Don’t think about the national championship. Think about what you needed to do in this drill, on this play, in this moment. That’s the process: Let’s think about what we can do today, the task at hand.”

As I read that passage, I thought of the time I recently spent with four-star General Bryan P. Fenton and his top special forces commanding officers at USSOCOM. Before I gave my talk on Antifragility, I took nearly a dozen pages of notes on all the wisdom being shared by THE MOST ELITE commanders in THE MOST ELITE military in history.

One of the first things General Fenton shared in his opening remarks echoes the above and is permanently tattooed on my brain. He emphasized their RELENTLESS commitment to trying to improve and their commitment to doing the right thing OVER and OVER and OVER again until they never get it wrong. (Goosebumps typing that as I feel the power of him sharing it.)

THAT is how the best (and all of us at our best!) show up.

How about YOU?

Equanimity. ← That is one of my all-time favorite words.

I can’t think about equanimity without thinking about Marcus Aurelius and what I call his “Equanimity Game.” In Meditations he tells us: “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.”

The quote that precedes this chapter is the modern adaptation of that wisdom from the great modern Stoic, Viktor Frankl: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Ed talks about how ubiquitous the ideal of equanimity and peace/serenity is across ALL ancient wisdom traditions—which made me think of our Notes on Ryan Holiday’s Stillness Is the Key.

Ed also makes the important point that we don’t want to be PASSIVE toward life in pursuit of equanimity. He tells us that we want to figure out how to maintain an “aggressive”/intense/ALL IN attitude to life *while* maintaining our non-attached equanimity.

Phil Stutz helped me frame this when he told me that we want to be simultaneously ALL IN *and* not attached to outcomes. Ultimately, we need to be most fiercely committed to *being* committed—especially when the outcomes aren’t going the way we’d like.

How can YOU step up your equanimity game today?

Those are the final words of the book from the final chapter (called “One Last One More”) in which Ed tells us about his dad and how he was the ultimate inspiration for this book.

I’ll tell you the story about HIS dad and MY dad in a moment....

First... Philosophically, we need to KNOW that we will NEVER KNOW when that last year/month/week/day/hour/breath will occur.

← THINK ABOUT THAT SOBERING FACT FOR A MOMENT.

Then we need to Memento Mori as we wake up to the fact that THIS ISN’T A DRESS REHEARSAL and alchemize that awareness into a sense of purposeful URGENCY to make the most out of our precious lives. And... You know that whole “Quick Trip to Hell” story we talk about in Basic Training, the Coach program, in my book and in this +1? That’s a useful tool here.

Now... For the short story on a couple dads and how they impacted a couple guys’s lives...

Ed’s dad was a good man who struggled with alcoholism for the first fifteen years of Ed’s life. Ed never knew which version of his dad would come home that night. Then, one day, his mom gave his dad an ultimatum—to conquer his addiction to alcohol or lose his family. His dad chose wisely, conquered his challenges and stayed sober (ONE DAY AT A TIME!) for the remaining thirty-five years of his life while dedicating his life to helping others conquer THEIR challenges and modeling how to be a humble, good man.

As I read this chapter, I felt the parallels between Ed’s childhood and my own. I also felt the differences between us and the different choices our dads made. Unfortunately, although a good man, my dad was never able to meet his challenges with alcohol head on and struggled with it for the rest of his life before dying in a single-car accident nearly twenty years ago.

Like Ed, my dad has provided an inspiration for my life’s work. In many ways, I have come to realize that one of the reasons I work so hard is to see how I might be able to connect with my dad if he was a young man alive today.

My dad enlisted in the Navy at 17. Can I serve our military in such a way that, if he was alive today, we might be able to give him an idea that could have changed his life? My dad worked in a grocery store for 39 years. Can I serve the corporation he worked for (one of the biggest in the world) in such a way that we might be able to give him an idea that could have changed his life? My dad was a huge fan of sports. Can I serve the sports world in such a way that we might be able to give him an idea that could have changed his life?

It’s fascinating to see how much of my life’s work fits into the coherence of this narrative. (See our Notes on William Damon’s A Round of Golf with My Father for more on the subject.)

To wrap it up... Ed tells us that his dad’s challenges didn’t “happened TO him.” They “happened FOR him.” I feel the same way. How about YOU?

How can YOU create a coherent narrative for your life and use all the challenges you have faced (and continue to face!) as FUEL for your next-level of humble yet Heroic service?

We need you to do the HARD work to forge the strength for two. That’s the only possible way we’re going to change the world—one person at a time, together, starting with YOU and me and all of us... TODAY.

ONE MORE time... Day 1. All in. LET’S GO, HERO!!!