Here is today’s Game and what’s going on.
This is what I learned from Dave Hollis‘ book, Get Out of Your Own Way.
Today’s highlights and declaration come from the chapter titled “The Lie: I Can Phone It In And Be Just Fine.” Let’s jump in:
- Not using your full potential, putting in complete effort, working hard to see the fruit of your labor? That’s a recipe for unfulfillment of the highest order. That’s treading water day after day. Tread water long enough and you’re bound to go under.
- every time you interact with anyone, you either make a positive brand deposit or a negative brand withdrawal. That’s the case whether you think about how people receive you personally or how they receive your product. If you’re good and have a quality interaction, it produces a deposit that reinforces the quality impression you’re hoping the audience leaves with. If you’re not so good, it acts as a brand withdrawal, giving people an impression of you that will leave them questioning if you are as advertised, if you’re a person or product they should place their trust in.
- What most of us don’t give as much thought to is the real-time reality that we’re in a perpetual state of being evaluated by the folks around us. Every single interaction we have is an opportunity to either leave someone feeling better or worse about you or your product. Like, all the time.
- This isn’t about giving weight to other people’s opinions and adjusting your course to meet them at the expense of who you want to be. This is being conscious at all times of how your actions and your hoped-for reception align to deliver the personal brand you aspire to. That alignment is your integrity: having principles that are reflected in every interaction.
- actually, there’s always someone watching. It may be your kids who will follow your model; it may be that person in the meeting who one day becomes a hiring manager considering you for the next big job. The bottom line is your willingness to show up consistently. The brand you want people to think of when asked about you must be consistent with your actions.
- So if you’re serious about establishing a reputation that matches your character, whether in your career or in your private relationships, trust me, you want to be a thermostat. You want to be someone who is intentional with their actions and how they move you toward that brand, rather than simply reacting, turning on when those rare situations demand it but coasting mindlessly otherwise.
- You have to start with a question: What is the outcome I’m looking for?
- In focusing on the end goal of how you want to be received, you’ll approach every interaction deliberately, and the situational distractions of life won’t throw you off your game. You won’t unintentionally present in a way that doesn’t serve you or the intended outcome. Instead, you’ll more consistently produce the results you’re interested in and be more ready to navigate the unexpected, which you should absolutely expect will come up.
- When you know your personal brand could be audited at any time by anyone, you will choose to show up more consistently. Your actions and outcomes will be aligned. And in that consistency and alignment, you will elicit the response you’re hoping for more often.
- But even beyond the outside audit, consider the impact of the internal audit as well. How will knowing you pushed yourself into an uncomfortable space and survived make you think differently about a challenge the next time it presents itself? When you see the callus on your palm from the hard work you put in, what might that sense of satisfaction in knowing you gave your all make you feel?
THINGS THAT CAN HELP YOU
- Get specific about the details of your personal brand. If you only had sixty seconds to make sure someone knows who you are and what you stand for, would you feel confident you could communicate it in the ascent of a single elevator ride? Work on a regular basis to make sure your actions support and align with that vision. Consider too the whole person when getting into your specifics. Finding balance in all aspects of your brand matters.
- Make a list of the “operating principles” for delivering brand deposits. If you were to describe how you hope to be in your life, could you list the ten things you would need to do consistently to have people describe you in that way? If you set guidelines and stay consistent to them, any person who drops in on your life would see you in the way you’d hope. Start with what you want your brand to be, then ask what it will take to act in a way that reinforces that.
- Remind yourself that you just never know. You never know who in your life will resurface tomorrow in a role that can advocate for or completely close down the thing you’re pitching. When you treat everyone like they might be a decision maker in a future boardroom, you leave yourself open to every opportunity that might present itself.
That leads us to today’s Dadly Daily Declaration:
At the end of the day, not phoning it in is as much about the person looking back at you in the mirror as it is about the way the outside world receives your effort. Push yourself to consistently be your very best, and you will grow a sense of pride and self-respect that redefines who you think you are and what you think you’re capable of. If you go all in, this new sense of self acts as a catalyst to propel you forward in every part of your life. Let’s go.
