This excerpt from our book Traveling The Inner State illustrates the way real peak performers think and set goals. Regardless of the outcome, they are constantly trying to improve whether they win or not.
Real winners know that even though they won on the scorecard today that they “got away with a few hits that were just luck.” And they immediately make plans to go and train on their weakness and train them into their strength. That is what separates them from the rest.
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There is a benefit of setting your own performance goals, especially learning. It challenges you to grow even if all the outside measurements ring you in as the biggest success since the Pet Rock.
Even if your internal measurements give you
the nod of success, in our experience, it takes much more awareness and effort
to learn from achievement than from failure. On this subject, sublime sailor Brad Alford has the perfect educational
anecdote.
“There was a point in my sailing career when our crew was pretty tough to beat locally, but there’s a complacency thing that works in here,” Brad said. “You may be one of the best sailors or shooters in your local club. But if you go to a state shoot or some national tournament, you get your head handed to you because you are facing harder targets. You’re in intense competition and the whole thing is different.
“You could get to where you could win every race locally and then go to a national championship and be in the middle of the pack at best. You’d sit there and go, ‘Why? What’s going on?’
“Well, there’s a guy named Buddy Melges, who won Rolex Yachtsman of the Year three times. He won in the Olympics and all this. Buddy was a guy who I never got formal training from, but I learned a lot from him by just being around him and looking up to him as a role model.
He said something that has stuck with me for a very long time: ‘You never learn anything when you win a sailboat race. You know? We won, we kicked everybody’s butt, but that’s it. I didn’t learn anything. I’m not getting better.”
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