Good Morning & Welcome to the Week:
With this being Super Bowl Sunday, there are a lot of things to talk about. With Fitlife Foods, you might assume that talking about how much food is consumed in a day (it’s the 2nd highest) would be something to address (we’ll see you on Monday in the stores peeps) .
It could also be a conversation talking about grit and perseverance of the individual players. I am always intrigued by the incredible human interest stories with each game. The people playing in this game will achieve something that every sports kid dreams of and so few have accomplished. To date, < 14,000 people in the history of the world have ever played in a Super Bowl. Win or lose, it is a massive accomplishment.
The real story is a story of business, perseverance and allowing time to take hold. This past week, I finished the book Grit, by Angela Duckworth. This was an incredible read that I highly recommend. I remember when I was a new parent, I would say, “I wish there was a manual for this.” (If you are a parent, you have likely had that same thought and if you are not, you are probably lying.) Parenting, leadership and self-management all have similar, interwoven components and Dr. Duckworth addresses these in a marvelous way and it is highly linked to these 14,000 Super Bowl athletes and teams, especially the high achieving ones.
As a parent, leader or manager of yourself, you are hopefully concerned with how to achieve your greatest. Dr. Duckworth discusses how in life, people’s skills develop three ways, There is the intersection of Time and Skill. With more time and with deliberate practice, your skills will develop. As you take on something new and progress, you will either “Dropout “(the bottom line), your gains will be marginal (“arrested development”) or you will be “world-class” in something specific.
We are all dropouts and you should be in many things as she addresses, which means you have tried many things. By the way, I was a marvelous dropout at soccer, as a football kicker and acting. I achieved arrested development as a tennis player and kept honing my skills at running and while I am nowhere near world class, I would consider myself pretty good in the amateur world. I ran a 38:16 10K on Saturday at the Best Damn Race in Countryside, FL and that time was good enough to be in the top 1% of runners. How long have a I been running? My mileage has been north of 20 miles weekly with speed work for the last 20 years.
Dr. Duckworth says that you have to “Be Interested, Practice, have a sense of Purpose in what you are doing and have a Growth Mindset” to achieve a world class level in something. Which, brings me back to the Super Bowl this weekend. The players in this game were clearly interested in the game of football and practiced their sport and they had a growth mindset, meaning, they wanted to learn. But, they all have a deep sense of purpose as to why they play and likely it is rooted deep within them about a sense of team, belonging, contribution to a cause bigger themselves or something having to do with their family.
Then, according to Dr. Duckworth, you “need to know how to practice.”
- “Decide you are going to be one thing better. Find your stretch goal.”
- 100% Focus. Fully Concentrate.
- Feedback. Listen and Seek out Help.
- Listen. Most Don’t like feedback. Reflect on it and Refine it.
The other story this made me think of is the story of the NFL organization and Lamar Hunt, who aptly named the big game the Super Bowl. Lamar Hunt was a lover of sports who developed the AFL (American Football League – today’s AFC) and actually MLS (Major League Soccer). He was also the founder and owner of the Kansas City Chiefs (how appropriate for the weekend).
Did you know that on January 15, 1967 the first ever Super Bowl was played between the Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs… and it was not even a sellout! 61,000 of 94,000 available seats were sold. Think about the NFL as a whole. If people really knew at the beginning the phenomenon that would be created, it likely would have absolutely been a sellout, especially for the $12 ticket price (today, the cheapest “get in” seat you can find starts to touch $4,000). The NFL has been perfecting their craft for the last 54 years, which has helped it become a global phenomenon, especially in terms of how the Super Bowl goes.
Over time, the skill of those in the NFL has been elevated. The people who have developed the game over time are focused on a sense of purpose recognizing the power of the game and what it means to the country. (We all know those people who are elated or depressed on Monday after their team wins or loses respectively). This means that the game is tied to an emotion, something greater than just being a product and that is the power of this sport.
So, this begs the question; what are you interested in becoming world class in? What is linked to your greater sense of purpose and because of that, what are you willing to practice each day so you can become world class? What are you interested in? How do you practice? What is your stretch goal? Are you willing to seek out help and feedback and do you listen so you can reflect and refine your craft.
Each day, we all work on our roles in life, our hobbies, jobs and more. We hope to improve, but the reality is that hope has little to do with it. Deliberate Practice has everything to do with it!
I have been leading a healthy prepared meals brand longer than anyone in America and a couple of years ago, one of my investors asked me if I ever thought it was hard and I said to them, “I am interested in food and health, and we GET to do that each day at Fitlife Foods. What we do holds a deep sense of purpose for me in that we get to elevate the way people feel every day and I love learning how to become the best leader I can. I do not know what else I would want to do at this time in my life that I can become world class in so I am right where I need to be.”
I hope that you have a Super week, find your World Class desire and practice hard!
Be Awesome,
