The Client Letter
February 12, 2013
Way North of Lake Wobegon
Cloudy 16 Degrees
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Yesterday, a reader sent me this quote and asked for my thoughts about it.
“When things get tough, you don’t rise to the level of your expectations, you fall to the level of your training.”
My martial arts teacher says a variation of this often.
When he teaches someone how to parry (deflect) a punch, he instructs the practice partner to aim right for the person’s head.
In other words, we don’t pretend. We punch.
Why?
Because you fight like you train.
When you’re in a situation where the mind goes into fight/flight mode, you resort to automatic responses based on your training.
This happens in business too. Especially when things go bad in the client business.
When money’s tight, what’s our natural inclination?
It’s to abandon our rules and swim for dear life. We know we shouldn’t chase the client, but we do.
And we end up sorry.
The smarter idea is to train better so you don’t make dumb choices like that under pressure.
Dan Kennedy mentions something like this in his Renegade Time Management course (which is awesome).
He explains that he didn’t wait until he achieved success to start valuing his time, he did it way before he had a reason to.
In other words, he started “training” like he wanted to fight.
To wait until you’re successful is basically setting yourself up for disappointment.
Anyone who thinks life is going to get better when [insert whatever you want] will eventually find out they are mistaken.
If you can’t be happy now, you won’t be happy then.
So a good deal of the work to be done doesn’t just involve “getting where you want to go.” Instead, it’s focused on developing acceptance and appreciation for what is right now.
Bizarrely enough, that’s what seems to you where you want to go. But that’s a topic for another day.
Train like you want to “fight.” Then you can be confident you’ll fight like you train.
Start your training program today with this. You won’t find a better value anywhere.