Happy Sunday Everyone:
One of the benefits of being the patriarch of our team is I get a little more say in the books we choose to read. Right now, we’re reading one of my favorites, and one I’ve talked about a few times, “The Everyday Hero Manifesto” written by Robin Sharma. I find when I read his stuff, he challenges me to compare myself to his words, his examples.
We’ve probably all heard the great quote from Theodore Roosevelt “Comparison is the thief of joy”, and I agree with it to an extent. I do believe to sit back and compare your life to someone else’s, what someone has vs. what you have, what you possess vs. what someone else possess, isn’t good. You’re either making yourself feel better for being superior or feeling worse for being inferior. Either outcome isn’t good for the development of your soul.
There is a different kind of comparison though, one where you’re measuring yourself to better yourself. To determine where you’re on the right track, where you’re stumbling, and actions you can take to improve. I think it’s also healthy to admire and understand someone else. We hear of fixed vs. growth mindset. To compare yourself to someone/something for the sake of feeling good/bad about yourself is a fixed mindset, to compare yourself to someone/something else to better yourself is a growth mindset.
Going back to the book, Robin Sharma, in chapter 83 talks about “Gargantuan Competitive Advantages (GCA’s). He bases them off of two themes he believes are occurring in our world today:
- Theme 1: The Mass Medicoritization of Humanity
- Theme 2: The Collective Deprofessionalization of Business
I’ll give you his 7 GCA’s with a few tidbits of quotes vs. reciting the whole chapter.
- GCA #1: Always be early: “Its smarter to show up for a meeting a whole hour in advance than even one minute behind”.
- GCA #2: Clear Out Diversions: “Build your days and lead your life around only a few major pursuits. So your gifts and talents remain concentrated around your priorities instead of scattered around many trivialities”.
- GCA #3: Under Promise Then Overdeliver: “deliver 10X more value than they have any right to expect; from initial approach to well after the sale……Do this impeccably on an ongoing basis and the entire marketplace will most certainly beat a path to your door.”
- GCA #4: Protect Absolutely World-Class Standards: “The standards you hold your life to are profound indicators of the levels of success, influence and everyday heroism you’ll reach. Here’s a valuable rule to play with: We get in life not what we wish for but that which we settle on.”
- GCA #5: Pursue Granularity versus Superficiality: “going granular means rejecting all sloppiness and resisting any hint of laziness by doing your job and rolling through your personal life in a near-flawless, immensely skilled, yet wonderfully soulful way. What an advantage”.
- GCA #6: Show Aliveness: in talking of a barista, he encountered “Only his body was in the shop. Going through the motions with little passion. Oh, what an important word is “presence” in our age of endless technological interruption. The biggest gift you can give a customer, as well as any human, is the wholeness of your attention”.
- GCA #7: Come to Play: “The moment you get to work, it’s showtime….You’re only as good as your last performance. And everything you do either brings you nearer to greatness or closer to ordinary”.
The true impact of the 7 requires the whole chapter but hopefully you can glean a high-level understanding. The important part for me, and hopefully for you, is this gives me an opportunity to “compare” my own efforts, attitude, mindset, processes, passion for my job, to these 7 GCA’s. In some areas I can pat myself on the back for being on the right track, in other areas I can give myself and our team, constructive feedback on where we need to improve, by comparing our efforts to these words and examples.