What Successful People Do When Things Go Sideways

People who need certainty struggle with adaptability and flexibility and resilience. Their doubt turns into discouragement, then disengagement. All worry and all fear comes from, what if this negative thing happens and I'm not ready? You can't control the world, you can control more of the day. How about you get a level of structure and prioritization to your day. If you believe certainty is a thing that you need to have, then you are trapped in childlike ambitions. Anyone trying to sell you certainty is trying to sell you something. It's like certainty is the opposite. And seeking and wanting and desiring and hoping for certainty is, I would say, the opposite of what Everything we know in high performance and success, we know that people who desire and drive and operate from certainty are more closed minded. They don't have the openness trait of personality traits that we know lead to long term success. People who need certainty struggle with adaptability and flexibility and resilience. Those are critical to long term success. And I know, listen, it's very popular in my industry. There's people who sell certainty all day long. You gotta have certainty, you gotta have certainty and certainty. What they're trying to say is confidence in self, the ability to push through, the ability to keep going even when you don't know, to work through the doubt and to keep going. But certainty as an end, as a hope, as something you need is the thing that we know in psychology and high performance studies actually hurts you. And so if you're trying to grasp certainty, you need to know it's kind of not there. The world itself is change and change brings uncertainty. The issue is so many people, when they are faced with uncertainty, suddenly they don't feel certain and so they stop because they're seeking that childlike grab at certainty. So they stop. And now they have this doubt. The doubt, instead of being a signal to learn and to skill up and to prepare and to build their doubt turns into discouragement, then disengagement. So the emotions that come from uncertainty leads me to doubt because I don't feel certain. So I'm grasping the doubt makes me now I'll wait. So they feel discouraged because I don't know what to do, so they disengage. So the very thing that you actually need in a new world or a new land is to explore, right? You don't travel across the seas to get to a new land and go, shoot, it's big new land here, I don't know what to do. And you say, well, I guess we'll get back in the boats and we'll go back over there and you turn tail and run. The whole point of New Lands is to explore them. The whole point of doubt is to explore that feeling and emotion and to keep going, not to stop or double track. And that's the difference as a high performance coach versus, you know, selling hype is I gotta go. Hey, no, this is part of it. Let's talk about how you're dealing with it and make sure that you stay open, make sure you stay adaptable, make sure you're building skills and make sure you're active. If we can do those things, we're going to have a whole different experience than those who shut down and disengage. And so the good news is that's what learning's for. You know, from your childhood and from your current experiences, you've learned a lot. And, and of course, you gathered all these playbooks, right? I equate it, and maybe it's not an apt metaphor for today, but it's kind of like a great general in war, when a great general in war goes into war. And I work with the military, they've got playbooks, they, they know strategy, they know battlefield strategy, but they never know exactly what strategy they're going to deploy until they've deployed. They see what's happening, and then they got to choose from a set of other strategies that could be put in motion. They don't go in with certainty or one truth or one strategy. The adaptability is high. And while we're not on a battlefield, metaphorically in the entrepreneurial world, sometimes it feels like it. You're exhausted, you're or out. You know, you got enemies, you got competition, you know, the bank account's on the line. And so it feels like your life is on the line. Your identity's on the line, your name's on the line. I mean, your name is hanging out front on a board in front of a house sometimes, like it's identity. And so when identity feels threatened, we feel like we're at war. What we have to remember, though, is no one goes into war with one strategy. You go in with battlefield strategies, plural. And so you have to realize you develop so much skill, you have so many quivers. I know I'm mixing metaphors a little bit here, but you got so skill sets and so many playbooks, and now it's about being adaptable on the field, right? You don't know until you're in the arena what kind of animals you're going to face. You don't know until you're in the battlefield what your customer or the competitor is going to do. And so train, train, train, skill up, skill up, skill up. But be actively building and be adaptive in that building. And never, and this is important, never bemoan the fact that you have to adapt. When your self talk is like, oh, this sucks, I have to change, I have to try this new thing. I like the old way. When you cling to the old ways, you usually get shot. When you cling to the old ways or the assumptions that you had versus what the battlefield is, that's when we lose. And so don't be clingy to, you know, a decade ago strategy. You know, that's what, that's what people do and people don't realize. See, we often think of retreat as an action, right? I'm running away from the battlefield. And so we think as a metaphor here, but retreat begins in the mind. You know, it's a mental game. I like to teach how it's like, okay, the real retreat begins at fear. And what most people don't realize about fear is there's four, four types of fear. And let's see if this is resonant with you guys today. The first type of fear that we have is called ruin. I'm going to be ruined in this. When we think about uncertainty, it's like, oh my gosh, my whole way of life is going to be ruined. This is called instant catastrophic thinking. Instant catastrophic thinking. A new change comes. So when you are immature in life, and I know that's not a word a lot of people like, but when you are immature in dealing with uncertainty, when you're immature in life, every new change feels catastrophic. And we immediately go, oh, I'm ruined, industry's ruined. Oh, everything's, it's, it's so catastrophic. You know, there's ways to look at uncertainty going, hey, you know what, this might be a 5% decrease, this might be a 6 month lull, this might be right. You're more fine and finite in looking at the impact of the change. When we have learned helplessness, which we talk about in psychology and coaching, we just believe it's catastrophic. We believe it's personal, we believe it's permanent, we believe it's pervasive, right? That's ruin. And so we have to go, oh, okay, I'm worried about ruin. And another way that I like to tell people to think about ruin is this rumination. You're constantly saying, you know, this really equals what if followed by a negative statement. All Worry and all fear comes from this. What if this negative thing happens and I'm not ready, I can't handle it, it ruins me. So you gotta start listening. This is the self talk cue. You're listening for this. Am I saying what if followed by a negative or most of my days, what if followed by positive? And it's not positive thinking, it's actually adaptive thinking. So the first thing we fear is ruin. The second thing we fear is rejection. By the way, these are not necessarily in order. I'm just teaching a framework here. So rejection. Oh, if I do something or if I'm not as successful, or if I don't do this for my clients, everyone's going to abandon me, I'm going to be lonely, they won't approve. This is your judgment button. You know, I always tell people, most people aren't scared to start a dream. They're just embarrassed to be seen starting small. Embarrassment is a form of concern about rejection. So we know from research that when people have concern about rejection where they think an industry is volatile, when people are going to say no, they do less prospecting, less outbound, because the assumption is going to be, no, I don't want to do that. So they stop. The second area that we know in rejection I think is really important right now for people to hear is when they believe an industry is volatile and they're scared of less deals or less sales, a very interesting thing happens and I'm going to jump to another piece of research that is when people have financial failure in their life to the point of bankruptcy. So this is bankruptcy research. They ask people who go into bankruptcy, did you tell anybody that you were struggling? And almost always it's like, no. They were embarrassed that their financial results were not as good as they used to be. So they didn't talk to their spouse. Did you know most spouses are surprised when the couple falls into bankruptcy? Now I know that sounds ruinous to even talk about this conversation here, but I think it's so important because what we do is we shut up, we silently suffer a downtrend and we don't have the conversation. We're embarrassed to even talk about it with our partner. You know, a lot of people, their next level financial wealth, they are capable of getting there, but they've mentally convinced themselves that they can't handle it. I can't handle, you know, taking on this new territory. Hey guys, it's Brandon.

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Just go to progressmode.com we convince ourselves we can't handle it because the responsibility at the next level is too much. Well, in uncertainty, we don't want to be responsible for the reality anymore. I don't know the answer anymore. I'm not the leader anymore. I don't have the certainty and the perfect answer for everybody. I'm embarrassed about that. I don't want to deal with it anymore. A lot of people destroy teams in times of uncertainty because they don't want to be responsible for the ship anymore. At the very time they've got to be in command at the wheel, they just go, I don't think I can handle it. I don't know what's going on. I don't want the responsibility. You'll never see more teams depart and break apart than we probably will next two years. They just go like, I don't want to do it anymore. We abdicate our responsibilities. And this is how you know when people don't understand uncertainty or they haven't faced it before, they just abdicate. They just step away. I can't handle it, so why even try? So for those of you, many of you built very responsible lives. You're responsible for a team, you're responsible for a territory. You're responsible, responsible for your financial income of the household. And you don't want it anymore. You shirk it. You know, you shrug it off because you're like, I, this is too much to deal with right now. I'm not capable. And that's the words. What if I'm not capable? What if I can't handle this new reality? And so you self sabotage because the responsibility feels now. Before responsibility was fun, when you were winning. When you're losing, responsibility feels like pressure. And so I always tell all my clients, hey, be wary of how you are feeling and sensing pressure because you aren't responsible for the world. You aren't responsible for the economy. You can only be responsible for your Daily prioritized actions and how you treat other people. And so just be thoughtful about this. Don't abdicate right now. Last piece on this little framework of things we most commonly fear is regret. I'm scared if I don't do this action or jump to this new opportunity or try this thing, I'm going to have regret. I don't want to live with regret. People fear that regret on their deathbed. And sometimes that's a regret of things they did, and sometimes it's the things they did not do. One thing. And some of. You know, my story with having faced my death multiple times in my life of being a hospice volunteer is I've seen that people towards the end often wish and feel a sense of regret that they weren't more stable for people in their times of difficulty. I wish I'd been a better dad through that divorce. I actually heard that one time from a gentleman and it was a very emotional thing, you know, oh, I wish I had been, you know, better to my team when this thing happened. I wish I'd been more responsible in this transition or it's like, we know that we want to be responsible and stable. So when I talk about or think about uncertainty, I also think about there's a stability in your character. Don't do things you're going to regret. In volatility. And that's what people usually do. They bail. Like, you know, volatility of economy, people get divorced at greater frequency. You know, when the bank account's more volatile, it's harder to keep the home together. And I think that what people do is volatility. Just like any fear causes us to look shorter sight. Like, we get shorter sighted, we get myopic and we forget the long game. We forget about good relationships and good business. Our character is compromised. And that's the stuff we tend to regret when we compromise our character. Like, okay, that's the problem, the fears, right? We're going to fear these things and this what if negative thinking stops us? So what do we already know? And this is so basic. I know you're all going to get. So what does success look like in uncertainty? With daily prioritized action, we just call it dpa. Okay. In uncertainty, yeah, things are uncertain. How about you get a level of structure and prioritization to your day? Like, start there. You can't control the world, you can control more of the day. You can't control the world's agenda. You can control your life agenda. And so basic daily prioritized action, it means every Day you add a list, it's prioritized. You work it by priority, not by comfort. This is important. You work the list by priority, not by comfort. Many things in times of uncertainty are uncomfortable and people put it at the end of the list of the day because it's uncomfortable. No, you work the priority each day. You got to return to prioritization. This DPA gives you a sense of purpose each day, even uncertainty. And everybody needs that. Then I like to add on a few things. I like to add on ER here. ER stands for emotional regulation. You regulating your emotions, which starts with how you handle the fear of uncertainty, which starts with how you deal with stress, anxiety, frustration, doubts. So it's like, okay, I'm going to work my power list here and I'm going to regulate myself throughout the day emotionally. I'm not going to let the discouragement or the doubt shut me down for three hours. Okay, it's okay if I got down or discouraged for 20 minutes, but if you carry it all day, it ruins the day. And so emotional regulation SI stands for social influence. This is during times of uncertainty. You prioritize socialization. You get around people, you talk with your team, you have more conversations with the customer and client and you don't get mad about those needs in volatility or uncertainty. Don't get mad that your spouse wants to talk a little bit more. Don't get mad that the customer needs a third friggin phone call. Don't get mad that the pitch now takes four showings. You can't get mad. You have to prioritize that social influence in uncertainty. So remember that if you want to succeed, we got to have your daylight prioritize action. Manage your emotions, but deal with people more. Focus on being the role model now. Focus on being the patient leader. Now focus on being the leader that builds people up slowly. And if you can do that, it's like a different, it's so different. It's the social component that you prioritize.