The answer to yesterday’s question is waiting for you in the story below. Let’s begin…
On my first-ever call with my first-ever business coach…
(a grizzled old veteran of online marketing, who had been running a multi-7-figure operation since the days of VHS tapes, fax machines, and direct mail)
…He dropped a one-line lesson that is still ringing in my ears, 12 years later:
“All progress starts with the truth.”
Sounds simple enough, I thought.
But the mind has a fierce habit of making the simple truth infinitely complicated.
Because, as I later realized:
We are often more committed to what we want the truth to be than we are to the truth itself.
ie:
We want to believe our coach is to blame for our poor performance, instead of our lack of ability.
We want to believe our product is the best on the market, instead of a lukewarm work in progress.
We want to believe our crush is our perfect soul mate, instead of a flawed human being who gets morning breath and farts occasionally and will stop putting up with our bullsh*t as soon as the honeymoon phase is over.
But again, all progress starts with the truth:
Blaming our coach for our lack of performance leaves us powerless to improve our performance.
Expecting our “soul mate” to be perfect leaves us shocked and disappointed when we discover their flaws.
Believing our product is the best on the market leaves us blind to weaknesses that drive customers away.
We can only deal with reality when we face it directly, the same way a fighter can only deal with his opponent when he expects to get punched.
So, while the truth may hurt, the warm and fuzzy lie is far more dangerous…
…And tomorrow, we’ll explore three of the most common lies that bring progress to a bitter halt.
– T
P.S. Well done to those who spotted today’s lesson in yesterday’s quote from Douglas Adams:
***
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is an indispensable companion.
Though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, where it is inaccurate it is at least definitively inaccurate.
In cases of major discrepancy it’s always reality that’s got it wrong.
The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.”
***
Now, we’ll amend that line into a guiding principle for inner development:
“Reality is definitive. Our mind is frequently inaccurate.”
Or, as I put it during our retreat last year:
“Reality is right.”
Ta-da 🙂
Here’s another link to Part 1, in case you missed it.
