What You Need to Know Before 2021

COVID-19 has impacted us all, but sometimes in unexpected ways.

My client Joe, by most standards, is a successful guy, but despite his efforts, education, and incredible levels of discipline, the pandemic was starting to take a toll on his confidence.

Like many of us, he grew up feeding off the notion that going to school and being disciplined and hardworking was the formula for success. “If I can’t outsmart it, I’ll outwork it” was his motto, but it was a motto that had kept a ceiling on his performance for most of his life—and straight-up failed him when times got tough.

“I must not be smart enough, or maybe I just lost my edge,” he told me. I could tell that he was recoiling, slipping into survival mode.

Unfortunately, survival mode is a...

...guaranteed way to lose when you're operating within a hyper-dynamic and competitive environment like we live in.

I explained to Joe how, in simpler and less competitive times, things like self-discipline, mental toughness and hard work were all that was required. That was for a time when we worked our bodies like machines.

“Then why is everyone talking about that kind of stuff?” he asked.

“Because men take pride in those things,”...

I said, “and if you poke a man in his ego, he’ll buy anything. That’s why you see so many guys driving cars they can’t afford and motorcycles with incredibly loud exhaust systems so that people will look at them.”

They’re caught up in the antiquated definition of masculinity that their fathers and grandfathers passed down to them.

Joe would have to change if he was going to thrive and lead others in this new world.

I told him how, decades ago, the SEAL and...

...special operations communities had to make the same pivot. It wasn’t about brute manly force anymore. It was about a renaissance approach that required that we use complex STRATEGIES and TECHNOLOGIES.

So Joe and I went to work. We started by redefining manhood. We took inventory of what elements mattered in his life and defined what success looked like in each element. Then we went on to designing, building and deploying the STRATEGIES required to care for those elements. Finally, we embraced some light TECHNOLOGY.

Soon, not only did Joe start building up his depleting levels of time, money, energy and creativity, but he was able to identify what his true purpose was because of the technology we were using.

As Joe’s world opened up, and he began...

...to settle into his true self, things became easier for him. He was better able to compete and make forward progress, not because things in the world got easier, but because he was now playing as the all-out version of himself. He no longer had to be a victim of circumstance.

As you go into this next year, I invite you NOT to travel in submission—to politics, pandemics or whatever story you have about why you may or may not be living out a life for which you were born to live.

It’s a new world, but that doesn’t mean your life has to get worse or more difficult. It just means that you need to adapt faster than it changes.

In the Teams, we call this “Shoot. Move. Communicate.”

Eric