Posts tagged Human Potential
Why Spain are so far ahead of England at football
This whole article offers a great insight into why the Spanish are so far ahead football-wise of the English (and indeed the rest of the world). As someone who has long been an advocate of character as being a critical ingredient behind all true success, it is not at all surprising to see the talk of humility in the context of the Spanish team as a telling factor.
Spend any time in the company of Roxburgh and Martinez and the word “humble” peppers their conversations. There is a humility to this great Spanish team. “Vicente Del Bosque is so humble – like most of his players,’’ said Roxburgh. “Vicente told his players on Sunday: ‘You are only football players – but you represent the face of Spain.’
“The Barca players are noted for their humility and it shows in the work-rate and the way they behave to other people. That all comes from the youth programme.’’
Giving up the things you enjoy to achieve your goals
I have to say I was delighted to read earlier that Danny Care - the England rugby player - has given up alcohol. Not that I have anything against alcohol; I was simply sad to see a young guy throwing away his career due to not being able to control himself after having a few drinks.
Danny has been in the press far too often in recent months getting arrested and banned from driving due to alcohol induced offences. The way the same thing kept happening was making me reach the conclusion that his career was as good as over. You can’t keep making the same mistake over and over and expect to succeed.
Thankfully he’s finally realised that the best thing to do is quit alcohol all together. And, hopefully, that will free him up to pursue his dream of playing for England again.
The truth is that we all will need to give up things we enjoy if we are to achieve success. Each of us has vices that trip us up and hold us back. It’ll take strength of character to give it up completely. But we must. Our future success demands it.
How to make your life more interesting
Don Miller:
Ask yourself before your next major decision “If I were a character in a story, what decision would make the story more interesting?”
You’ll be surprised at how differently you feel about the decision. You’ll weigh safety over excitement, risk over comfort. You’ll likely decide to love people more, quit your job, bring home roses, leap off the cliff into the water and so on. Great characters in exciting stories don’t sit around on the couch playing it safe. They get up, move, try, fail and risk it all again. (Emphasis mine.)
Love this!
Goals are not the ultimate purpose of our lives
Stephan De Villiers, quoting Anthony Robbins:
Goals are a means to an end, not the ultimate purpose of our lives. They are simply a tool to concentrate our focus and move us in a direction. The only reason we really pursue goals is to cause ourselves to expand and grow. Achieving goals by themselves will never make us happy in the long run. It’s who you become, as you overcome the obstacles necessary to achieve your goals, that can give you the deepest and most long-lasting sense of fulfilment.
Stephan then goes on to say:
Therefore goals are never an end in itself. Many people lack a sense of fulfilment when achieving goals, because the role goals play, is distorted to something it was never meant to be. This is why many people abandon the whole discipline of setting and achieving goals, denying them one of the most powerful tools to achieve real success when used correctly
This is a great reminder to keep goals as servant rather than master in our lives. And Stephan’s post does a great job of getting into the details of how we can make the most of goals in our lives.
The difference willpower makes
Roy Baumeister and John Tierney:
People with stronger willpower are more altruistic. They’re more likely to donate to charity, to do volunteer work, and to offer their own homes as shelter to someone with no place to go. Willpower evolved because it was crucial for our ancestors to get along with the rest of the clan, and it’s still serving that purpose today. Inner discipline still leads to outer kindness.
I mentioned a few months ago that I was interested in reading this book and, though it’s taken me a while, I finally finished it last night.
Honestly, it’s been one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in quite a while. Each chapter is filled with so many insights on topics ranging from decision making to finances, to parenting and dieting. And, for a book of this type, it’s thoroughly practical too. I can’t remember the last time I found myself highlighting so many sections of a book.
The premise of the book is this: Willpower is like a muscle that can be strengthened with practice and improved over time. The latest laboratory work shows that self-control has a physical basis to it and so is dramatically affected by simple things such as eating and sleeping - to the extent that a life-changing decision may go in different directions depending on whether it’s made before or after lunch.
It was intriguing to see, as part of their conclusion, the link between willpower and altruism as quoted above. All in all, the point that the books seems to make is that if we want to have a better life, and if we want to live in a better work, then willpower needs to be a muscle that we take time to develop and build up.
All in all, highly recommended and a definite thumbs up from me.
Talent, hard work, and character: Lessons from Keri-Anne Payne
I’ve long been fascinated by talent, strengths, success, motivation, and other such human potential elements. I’m particularly interested in people who do an amazing job of pushing themselves to the limit and maximising their abilities.
One person who I’ve been ‘strengths watching’ from a distance of late is the British swimmer Keri-Anne Payne. Keri-Anne already has an Olympic silver medal, two World Championship gold medals, and was the first British athlete to qualify for the 2012 London Olympics.
I started following Keri-Anne on Twitter just over a year ago and following her updates and reading various articles about her over this last year has been interesting and enlightening.
One of the things I love about Twitter is the way it enables you to get a fuller glimpse into people’s personalities and interests who you would otherwise know very little about. It also opens up your eyes to get a sense of the day-to-day life of, in Keri-Anne’s case, an Olympic athlete.
On reflection, there are three main aspects to watching and learning about Keri-Anne that have stood out to me the most this past year: Talent, hard work, and character.
Talent
The truth is that I could put just as many hours into swimming each week that Keri-Anne does and it wouldn’t make me an Olympic standard swimmer. Oh no! In fact, I would be wasting my time. Without talent, hard work is wasted.
And having a love for something doesn’t mean you have a talent for it. Watch X Factor if you don’t know what I mean. There you have no end of people who love singing, but who can’t sing. And some of them work really hard and invest no end of time into their singing dream, but the truth is still the same: they have no talent.
So the challenge is to find something that you do have talent in and invest your time in that. That is what Keri-Anne has done. She’s discovered her talent and then made the necessary investment to turn it into a strength.
As an aside, it is important to recognise the difference between a talent and a strength. Talent is innate potential; strength is developed potential. Keri-Anne was born with the potential to be a great swimmer, but having that talent was no guarantee of success. Talent is never enough.
Hard Work
The reason Keri-Anne is an Olympic silver medalist and World Champion is because she invested in her talent. How? Hard work. There is no such thing as an overnight sensation. Even when someone rises to the top seemingly from nowhere, you can be sure that hundreds and hundreds of hours of practice, hard work, and skill development has taken place behind the scenes.
If you’re not convinced of just how much hard work Keri-Anne does, here’s a breakdown from an article in The Times today:
- 30,000 Approximate distance in kilometres swum by Payne over ten years to London 2012, almost as far as to the Moon
- 8,000 Strokes to complete a marathon
- 600 Approximate hours that will be spent swimming between now and the Olympic trials in the spring
- 75 Minimum kilometres that Payne will cover a week in training this winter
- 7 Events in which Payne has made the world’s top 30 in the past ten years
I’m tired just reading that!
But that’s the kind of hard work high level success requires. There are no shortcuts. Success comes from identifying your talents and then dedicating your life to developing them. It doesn’t matter whether your talent is suited to sport, business, arts, or wherever, the principle is the same. Focus on what you’re good at and work hard at becoming great at it.
Character
There is one final element that is often ignored when it comes to success. And that is character. Who you are is as important as what you can do. There are so many stories of people whose careers have been undermined, weakened, or sometimes completely curtailed, because of character and integrity issues. And usually one or more of the deadly trio of money, sex, and power are in the mix when this is the case.
It is sad to see how many people are able to show such self-control when it comes to developing their talents but, when it comes to other areas of their life, it’s as if they don’t know what self-control is!
There are two things I’ve noticed about the articles on the internet about Keri-Anne: first, they’re nearly all about her swimming. And second, when they’re not about swimming, it’s about her wedding next year!
My point is that she’s in the papers for the right reasons. Her career isn’t getting distracted by unhealthy pursuits and activities.
And, on top of that, she seems like a very genuine, authentic, all round decent person.
Lessons for us all
There’s is no doubt much more that lies behind Keri-Anne’s success, but these three aspects of talent, hard work, and character are undoubtedly big factors that lie behind Keri-Anne being the top-level swimmer that she is today.
But the good news is that any one of us, no matter what we do, can apply the same approach to our own lives and careers, no matter what they are.
You can read an interview I did with Keri-anne here. You can also keep up-to-date with her via Twitter or her website.
