What’s On Your Horizon?

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In sports, a common saying is “leave it on the field.”

Which means when you play a big game, you put in 100% effort.

So when the game is over, you’ve given everything.

This is a fantastic idea for sports.

The problem with metaphors like this is when they are misapplied.

For example, let’s say you wanted to walk across the room and talk to somebody.

The “leave everything on the field” approach isn’t so appropriate.

When you’re playing sports, especially an important game, winning is the ONLY thing.

(Except maybe for little league...)

Any team that loses the championship game and shrugs it off as a learning experience may be missing the point.

Imagine your favorite team after losing the superbowl or the world series or the world cup.

“Well, we didn’t win, but the important thing was we learned a lot about our capabilities and we tried some new plays which worked out pretty well.”

Most people would be understandably angry.

But this is an IDEAL response for anything that is NOT sports.

In fact, not getting a hundred percent success rate is a very, very good thing.

Paradoxically, when you DO get a hundred percent success in anything that is NOT sports, you won’t really know why.

Which means you won’t learn much.

Which means you won’t get much better.

Which means your ONLY strategy is to “get lucky.”

On the other hand, shooting for about an 60-70% success rate is perfect.

Because everything that DOESN’T work is the best teacher.

This hard to wrap your mind around for most people.

Especially if ALL you can see is in a short term time frame.

Which is why having a LONG term time frame is essential.

So long as you see any interaction or event as ONE of many, on a continuous unfolding future, it’s much easier to accept feedback.

The more you can accept ALL feedback, most importantly NEGATIVE feedback, the better you can improve.

This is easy in the beginning of the baseball season, for example.

There are always a lot of games still to be played.

How, specifically, can you cultivate this mindset?

By creating something called Horizon Goals.

Undefined, but positive goals WAY out in the future.

At a skill level much higher than you have now.

So that any interaction in the present is more easily seen as PRACTICE.

Once you see every interaction as partial practice for the next, continuous improvement is simple.

Learn How:

http://mindpersuasion.com/deep-skills/