Be Your Best

Bet you can’t guess who this photo is of?  Correct! that’s me when I was 6 or 7 years old playing in my first year of organized hockey.  Why do I choose to embarrass myself by showing you this photo that I ran across the other day?

This photo reminds me of an important principle that I think most of us tend to forget about in our day-to-day lives — amidst the daily rat race.  That principle is how big of an impact one single little thing can make in our lives or others’ lives — but, more importantly, that you always want to be looking for the ‘next’ little single thing that will make another big difference.  And then the next.  It is about the journey of ‘next things’ that make the major impact and create massive positive outcomes.  It’s about continuous learning and continuous development.  It’s about: What’s next?

Using my hockey story as an example — I remember seeing a book about hockey when I was about 6 years old.  Lots of very cool action photographs of game situations with the NHL’s best players of that time.  It was in that single moment, which probably lasted about 5 minutes as I flipped through the book, that I decided I wanted to play hockey.  That one little incident with that book then set off in motion another next little action — telling my parents.  And then on from there.  I played hockey through high school and college, and still play today in men’s league.  Just that one moment with the book when I was 6, set in motion what turned out to be a life long journey of next actions.

More recently, I am in week 7 of training for another Triathlon event in early September.  Last year, I really struggled with the Swim portion of my event.  I trained hard, but the swim is just something that I obviously needed improvement on.  In my mind, I was convinced it was a conditioning issue.  This year, I decided to pick up a book specifically about Triathlon distance swimming and see if there was anything that might help me.  The book mentioned to swim with nearly your entire head beneath the water surface in order to reduce drag and position your body to ‘float’ better.  Sounded interesting so I tried it in my next swim workout.  That one little change made a massive difference!  It seemed almost too good to be true, but just this slight adjustment made my efficiency go up by at least 25%.  What’s the next single thing??  Needless to say, I am continuing reading for the next single thing I can do to help my swimming another 25%!

Jim Collins, in his best seller book “Good to Great” has a concept he calls the ‘Flywheel’.  His business improvement focused analogy (but it applies to us at the personal level as well) is imagining there is a huge steel and concrete wheel suspended on an axle.  If you try to spin it by hand, your first push of the wheel does not move it very much.  But your second push moves it a little bit more, then your third and fourth, etc… Pretty soon the wheel is turning at a good clip.  He then asks the question: “Which push made the flywheel turn fast?”  The ultimate answer is “all of the pushes.”  No one single push of the flywheel was much more or less important than the others.  The wheel got spinning consistently because of all the pushes.  It’s not about the single thing — it’s about that thing, the next thing, and the next thing and the next.

So many times we get wrapped up on THE one single thing that is so important to us vs. looking at each event as one of many along the overall journey.  We tend to beat ourselves up for a failure or mistake.  We need to remember it is always about the ‘next thing’ we can do to improve, develop, or help others improve and develop.  The “journey” is never about a single thing.

And speaking of “books” as referenced at least three times in this article — I believe this is where most continuous learning and development comes from.  Reading books challenges your mind, creates creative thinking, provides images of what may be possible, and gives you confidence and ideas to teach and test yourself. Watching and learning from others is valuable, but reading books (for whatever interests you) and teaching yourself is extremely powerful.  Admittedly, I did not enjoy reading much growing up.  But today, I am consistently reading 3-4 books at a time, print, digital, and audio.  I know that the ‘next thing’ is likely sparked from those books, so I want to get to it asap!  Like Ambrose Bierce famously said: “There is nothing new under the sun, but there are lots of old things we don’t know.”

Look for that ‘next single thing’ in your journey and see where that takes you.  And then look for the next!

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford