The Savage: How to Maximize Minimum Potential (Heroic +1 #1,478)

Hi, this is Ryan. Welcome back to another heroic plos one. In our last plus one, we invited David Goggins back to the plus one party and talked about the gritty, potent, primordial power of belief. As you may recall, we discussed an old school study featuring rats swimming in cylinders. Here's the quick recap. Rats without belief Hope swam for 15 minutes on average before giving up. Rats who had been rescued and believed it was possible to survive didn't swim for 15 minutes. They swam for an astonishing 60 hours. Note, that's 240 times longer. That's crazy. And that's the power of belief. We cooked a hero bar together as we reflected on a time when we took one more step and endured something we may have thought was impossible. Remember to feast on that hero bar the next time you feel like giving up. Today we're going to talk about David Goggins inner Savage. And if you feel so inspired, we'll encourage you to consider activating your inner beast. Let's get to work. Goggins tells us, and I quote, if you want to maximize minimal potential and become great in any field, you must embrace your savage side and become imbalanced, at least for a period of time. You'll need to funnel every minute of every single day into the pursuit of that degree, that starting spot, that job, that edge. Your mind must never leave the cockpit, sleep at the library or the office, hoop long past sundown and fall asleep watching film of your next opponent. There are no days off and there is no downtime when you are obsessed with being great. That is what it takes to be the hardest guy ever. And at what you do. He may have used a different word there that I skipped. He continues by saying, quote, know that your dedication will be misunderstood. Some relationships may break down. The savage is not a socialized beast, and an imbalanced lifestyle often appears selfish from the outside. But the reason I've been able to help so many people with my life story is precisely because I embrace being imbalanced while I pursued the impossible dream of becoming the toughest guy ever. That's a mythical title. He used a different title, but it became My compass bearing, my North Star. That's from a chapter called A Savage Reborn, in which we meet David's ferociously ambitious inner dog and the power of his savage alter ego he calls Goggins. As I read that passage, I thought of Matthew Kelly, Bob Rotella, and Mihaly Czikh Semihalyi. Matthew Kelly wrote a whole book on the subject. It's called Off Balance. Getting beyond the work life balance myth to personal and professional satisfaction. He tells us that ultimately we don't want balance per se, we want satisfaction and very importantly, sometimes creating a life of deep meaning and satisfaction requires the willingness to be off balance. He tells us, and I quote him so the bad news is that you can't have it all. The good news is that you don't really want it all. The even better news is that you can experience incredible levels of satisfaction both personally and professionally if you take the time to work out what matters most to you. Bob Rotella echoes this wisdom in his great book How Champions Think. He tells us, and I quote Rotella, I don't see a lot of exceptional people who might characterize as well rounded. I see a lot more people who are very single mindedly. They have a passion for one thing and they pursue it zealously. They generally reserve time for family when they're not pursuing their passion, but that's about all the spare time they have now. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi also echoes this wisdom in his great book Creativity. He tells us, and this is a bit of an extended passage, but it's a good one. I quote Csikszentmihalyi Another consequence of limited attention is that creative individuals are often considered odd or even arrogant, selfish and ruthless. It is important to keep in mind that these are not traits of creative people, but traits the rest of us attribute to them on the basis of our perceptions. When we meet a person who focuses all his attention on physics or music and ignores us and forgets our names, we call that person arrogant, even though he may be extremely humble and friendly if he could only spare attention from his passion and his pursuit. If that person is so taken with his domain that he fails to take our wishes into account, we call him insensitive or selfish, even though such attitudes are far from his mind. Similarly, if he pursues his work regardless of other people's plans, we call him ruthless. Yet it is practically impossible to learn a domain deeply enough to make a change in it without dedicating all of one's attention to it and thereby appearing to be arrogant, selfish and ruthless to those who believe they have a right to the creative person's attention and longer chat. But one of the consistent themes of my chats with Phil Stotts is the importance of embracing what he would call your evil shadow. It's basically a synonym for goggins savage. Today's one Is it time to turn up your intensity level? Obviously, stay grounded and all that and let's go all in today, little PS Here. Why should you consider inviting your inner savage to join the party? Well, Goggin says, and I quote again, the world needs doctors, lawyers and teachers, but we also need savages to prove that we are all capable of so much more.