For Those of You Conquering Mountains...

Below is an article from rock climbing expert Arno Ilgner. I think it translates well to the workplace and what kinds of mindset contributes to market success.

Your mind will always look for ways to avoid discomfort or circumvent stress. It will seek to eliminate fear or climb the next grade without doing the required work. Your mind will do anything it can to keep from being fully present for the stress that is inherent in a climbing challenge. Even some common, well-accepted calming tactics are examples of this tendency to escape. For example, many people listen to music when exercising, stretching, warming up, or practicing. Some climbers even listen to music when redpointing a route. Doing this may calm and focus your mind, but it’s a short-term solution. If you want to realize your full potential, you will need to come face-to-face with the stress generated in the climbing experience. The only way to do this is to be present for it. By distracting your mind with calming “tricks,” you allow your mind to evade the growth process. If you use a trick to skirt the growth process, you don’t really grow; you just find a way to ignore the stress. Tricks can produce short-term ends, but they won’t help you learn. Learning is the means that allows you to reach your full potential.

Labeling outcomes is another limiting tendency of the mind. Your mind tends to label completing a route as good and successful. When you fall off a route, however, your mind tends to label it bad or failure. Doing this takes attention off the learning process and allows your mind to wallow in the trappings that come along with the label. You’re either lost in the label of success and therefore lose sight of what you actually did to create that outcome, or you’re lost in the label of failure instead of exploring what actually happened to cause the fall. When you operate from awareness, you are curious about what happened right at the moment you let go. Yes, not when you fell but when you let go. What thought was in your mind when you separated from the rock? Did your body or your mind let go? You don’t know exactly, and labeling it as failure won’t help you find out. If you keep your attention on how much your mind contributed to separating you from the rock, then you’ll stay excited about the climbing process and won’t allow your mind to trick you into hiding behind the comfort of a label.

All-or-nothing thinking is another tendency of the mind. When you push yourself on grades that are outside your comfort zone, your mind will resist by creating thoughts to lure you into escaping, or finishing quickly. Your mind seeks the greater comfort before or after the stress and wants to either rush through to the end when the stress is over (all), or not engage the challenge at all (nothing).

Understand and remember that these ignoring, labeling, and all-or-nothing tendencies are your mind’s natural inclination. Simply identify these thoughts when they happen, and use your awareness to deal with them.

Back to the Basics: Why it Pays to Be a Student of the Game

Before the three SuperBowl rings, $6.5 million salary and supermodel girlfriend, Tom Brady was a college athlete who struggled with doubt. As did Michael Phelps and Desmond Howard. All three met with University of Michigan sports counselor Greg Harden who flipped the young men’s perspectives upside down and revitalized them while on the verge of a breakdown with one simple mantra: “Control the controllables.”

Harden’s advice to Brady was to be able to make every throw and to learn the playbook better than his competition Drew Henson. He told Howard to be the best blocker on the team so that he could see the field.

It’s a Wednesday evening and I’m shooting the breeze with my boss Rodger Roeser, owner and president of The Eisen Agency, a public relations firm in Cincinnati, Ohio. Among other things, Rodger is giving me the lowdown on what he believes is key to our brand as a firm.

“Across town we all do the same thing,” Roeser said. “We all write press releases, we all do pitches, we all create media kits. You know what sets us apart? We are the hardest working crew you’ll ever find. In the end, what is creativity? Everyone can be creative and isn’t it all rather subjective? Our promise is to deliver the best. Far and away the number one reason a client leaves a firm is lack of attention.”

Control the controllables. Whether it’s your personal faith, your marriage or your professional success, it all comes back to the basics. Rodger often equates running The Eisen Agency to running a pro-football team. Along with controlling the controllables and giving it all we’ve got, our firm’s success will rest on how well we perform the basics.

Perhaps one of the best facilitator of media relations at our firm is Kelly Gadd. Other than sheer tenacity and strong pitching skills one thing I think plays to Kelly’s advantage is that she is a student of the game. She knows what’s going on in the media. She’s in tune to what the Cincinnati outlets cover. She knows what deserves coverage and, as we eat lunch together in the break room, she criticizes what doesn’t.

Even the most philosophical, complex and academic ideas can be broken down into simple components. Hence the title of my blog. Follow along as we go back to the basics.