It is said that at a fractal level, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything.
Of course, I’m talking about the process. I first learned about this from Monica Ion, one of the people I worked with in coaching and one of the few who significantly impacted my life. Actually, look how she’s called in my phone :
What does this mean more specifically?
Fractal, pattern, or archetype are the same thing and all refer to a mode of operation. A fractal is a series of mental, emotional, and behavioral habits that write a certain story of your existence.
More simply, how a person approaches a specific situation also reflects how they handle other aspects of their life.
When you manage to change a “piece” of a behavioral fractal, this change propagates and influences your entire system of thinking and action. This is because mental habits and patterns are interconnected and influence each other.
Based on this, this month, I decided to see what the next level of discipline I am ready for and could sustain is.
So I took on a big challenge 😀
Now, most of us are not used to enjoying the process. We want the result with as little to no effort as possible, and we don’t like or are unwilling to pay the cost to get that thing.
Sure, there are much deeper explanations for why it’s hard for us, especially with new things, to put in the effort, why we give up quickly, etc., but I don’t want to go into details now because that’s not what today is about.
The logic I followed was this: okay, the goal is to develop my level of discipline.
What do I like to do without feeling like I’m paying a very high cost or I am drained of energy? Well, I like to play sports. (fitness and muay thai, in particular but also footbal)
Okay. So if I manage to reach the next level of discipline in sports, this will be reflected in other aspects of my life as well. Imagine what chances I would have had with this challenge if I had set out to increase my level of discipline by doing financial reports daily :-s
What would be the next level for me in sports? I want to train for a bodybuilding competition, like a performance athlete, even if I won’t participate in a contest.
Okay. What’s the first thing you do when you want to increase your performance level or prepare for a competition?
I don’t know what it is for you, but for me, it’s to look for people—”coaches” if you want—who can take me there.
After 15 years of entrepreneurship, 3 bankruptcies, and over 150k Euros invested in my education, I’ve reached the conclusion that the fastest way to learn is to pay others to teach you.
So you don’t have to make all the mistakes yourself, waste time, and bang your head against walls when there are people who have already done that and can guide you.
So, the first step I took was to find the right coach.
In my opinion, the right coach has more criteria than having gone through this experience himself, especially in the field of fitness or bodybuilding, where most of those who go to competitions are not people who continuously educate themselves.
Most of them have an old mentality and have done the same things for decades, and people who don’t continuously educate themselves have the impression that they know everything anyway. (I avoid these people in general.)
But be careful. When I say that he should have gone through this, I don’t necessarily mean that he should have performed himself, but those he has trained.
Not all good players can be good coaches, and vice versa. Don’t be fooled by this. Not even Mourinho was an exceptional player.
For me, the right coach is the one who knows that you can perform without destroying your life in this whole process.
Who continuously educates himself. (I repeated that, right?)
If I return to this sport, those open to evolution and implicitly to how things have evolved from Arnold until today.
I will write more about how I chose him and what criteria I considered because I will document this process.
I want to see how far I can extend my level of discipline, the subsequent transformations in other aspects of my life, and, perhaps most importantly, what I can take from this process and replicate in my life, in my business or in those of the entrepreneurs I work with.
And I hope this journey of mine will help you too, so if you want to follow it, come back to this blog from time to time, or write to me on Instagram, and we’ll talk with pleasure.
I don’t want to end without noting one more interesting thing.
When I first talked to the coach I chose and told him what I wanted to do, you know what he said to me?
“You won’t give it your all if you don’t attend the competition. Because mentally, you know you’re not going. You don’t have a strong enough stake.”
I thought a lot about what he said. And I realized that’s how it is. You are willing to go through the process when you have a strong enough stake.
If I think about all the challenges I’ve been through in entrepreneurship, I wouldn’t have lasted without a strong enough stake. Neither your mind nor your body helps you if you don’t feel it’s worth the cost.
So I sat down again and reclarified my stake: why it’s worth it for me and, perhaps most importantly, what I’m willing to pay for it.
This is a very, very important thing, no matter what you set out to do. You see, the problem is that many of us, when we set goals, usually make a plan for how to achieve them.
What we don’t really do is create a list of things we have to pay for at the same time and decide if we will really pay the cost and if it’s worth it.
It helps to ask yourself what the downsides are if you achieve that goal. If you answer that there are none, the chances of achieving the goal are slim, or your price will be felt much more strongly. Any “good” thing has its downsides.
You’ll be surprised at how this perspective changes the game.
I’ll be back next week with my perspective on how to choose coaches. And no, I’m not just talking about sports.
They can be mentors, people we want to learn from, etc.
What do you say, will you join me in this challenge?
See you next week.
David
#globalentrepreneur #stratgicthinker #booklover
