The Truth About "No Pain; No Gain"

Negative emotions were meant to give us a cue to turn the ship around and head in another direction.

Pain cues your body to take your hand off the stove.

Disgust cues your body to get sick when you've swallowed something foul.

 Fear cues your body to pay attention to a looming or sudden threat.

The trick here is that each of these responses is useful only in that instant.

Chronic pain negatively reinforces healthy activity.

Chronic disgust yellows the skin.

Chronic fear slows metabolism, increases our risk for heart disease (the #1 killer in America), and shuts down cognitive functions.

We've all got an emotional default. For most men, it's anger (since it's the only negative emotion men are socially allowed to express publically). For most women, it's sadness.

My emotional defaults are depression and anxiety (they're actually closely related). This is actually what most of my research was about while I was at Penn State.

What's your emotional default? Do you know?

What is your action plan for catching yourself when you slip into that negativity?

Do you criticize? Judge? Complain?

There is literally a 0% return on investment for these chronic emotions.

When something that was once adaptive for our species becomes harmful or constraining, it's called mal-adaptive. Chronic pain, anxiety, depression, anger or any other negative affect is going to slow you down in the long game.

How will you call yourself out?

No one is going to do it for you. It's your responsibility to yourself, your projects, your family, your team, and everyone around you.

How will you tell the difference between short-term pain (an investment) and long-term pain (a habit of suffering)?

Understanding yourself and learning to self-coach, reach out for help, or take a break might not make a difference today, but it will make or break your game in the end.

It's up to you to decide to value it and start putting in the emotional work.

The Secret to Building Something Amazing

You could be doing a lot more, but it'll cost you something.

Do you ever get that feeling? Like you're missing out on something? Like you could be doing more?

The FOMO is real. In fact, it's science.

Your survival instincts kick in when it's time to double down on what you're currently doing. Doubling down means you're focusing resources on one possibility, instead of spreading them across multiple possibilities.

This is precisely the scary part.

It's hard to make amazing barbecue when you could also be making burgers and hot dogs.

It's hard to make amazing shoes when you could also be making t-shirts and sunglasses.

It's hard to make an amazing anything when you're diffusing limited energy across multiple products or projects.

If you want to make an impact, you're going to need to do the difficult emotional labor of sticking to the path, focusing on what's important for your project or brand, and making that one thing amazing.

If you're in the early stages of a startup company, this means you'll need to be taking away features; not adding them.

Only after you build your reputation of consistent amazingness will people trust you to build other amazing things.

Until then, you'll just be making a lot of mediocre things--which might not be the first impression you want to give to your customers.

The 2 Prerequisites to Surviving Long Meetings

How many times have you been in a meeting where you didn't get down to the purpose until halfway through?

How many time have you worked with someone who dances around a question, deflects, or leaves you saying "wait, what did we just talk about for 15 minutes?"

This effect happens in all size organizations, and it's more than just a lack of focus.

It's a lack of discipline and goal-oriented focus.

Sometimes we focus on all the wrong things:

• What color should it be?
• What should we call it?
• Does it need a logo?

You're going to need 2 things to jiu-jitsu your way out of this focus-strangle hold:

1. B.S. Radar

Developing the habit of a consistent, daily, goal-oriented focus will allow you see into this work waste. If you're constantly setting your intentions for the day, meeting, project, etc., it's going to be a lot easier to notice when (you or) others do not.

2. Assertiveness

Impatience isn't always a bad thing. It can be helpful in these instances when you need to supercharge your B.S. Radar. It's how you respond to this impatience that makes all the difference.

If you respond to your team with an abrupt interruption, you might not be conveying the respect that you seek for yourself.

Assertiveness is a stable combination of confidence, calmness, and  affirmation.

It doesn't always mean that you'll need everyone to agree with you, that's different. It just means that you're able to convey your opinion without aggression (which is characterized by increased vocal volume, confrontational hand gestures, and threats).

If you're having trouble with Assertiveness, try reading this free Assertiveness-Training Workbook.

If you can calibrate your B.S. Radar to detect a lack of focus and if you can be assertive enough to speak-up and redirect the conversation, you'll be able to consistently move teams and projects forward.

No one else is going to do this for you.

If you want to be a leader, you'll need to start acting like one first.

What tricks or language do you use to do this, now?