There’s a simple equation that’s been used for years when working with top athletes, helping them achieve peak performance. Tim Gallwey first framed this as Performance = Potential − Interference in The Inner Game of Tennis, and John Whitmore built modern coaching practice on it in Coaching for Performance. It’s one of the most useful…
You know what you need to do. You’ve probably known for a while now. Maybe it’s the career change you keep talking about, the relationship you need to end, the health problem you’re ignoring, or the business you’ve been “planning” for three years. You’ve read the books, watched the videos, made the plans. You’ve got…
You’re Not the Same Person Who Started This Course Think back to where you started. Maybe a week ago, maybe longer. Think about the version of you who opened this course for the first time, probably with that familiar mixture of hope and quiet scepticism that you’ve felt before, the part of you that wanted…
You’re looking to make the big move. The one decision that changes everything. The perfect plan that guarantees success. Here’s a fact: for most of us, it doesn’t exist. Here’s what does exist: chaos. Not the panic kind, not the mess kind. The mathematical kind. The kind that means small changes in what you do…
Moving away from chaos, we need to move on to its close friend: causality. Causality is simple in theory. It’s the relationship between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first. Press the button, the light turns on. Touch the fire,…
“It’s not fair.” I hear this expression at least every week. Usually from people who aren’t particularly happy with their lot in life, especially when they feel others have more than them. Sometimes it’s said with resignation, sometimes with anger, sometimes with genuine bewilderment that the universe is out to get them or hasn’t arranged…
Remembering the Fallacy of Fairness from the last article, let’s move onto another concept that seems to affect a lot of people, causing indecision, hesitancy, uncertainty, and a lack of resoluteness in their life. I call it the Grass Is Always Greener Misconception, and it’s quietly destroying your ability to commit to anything long enough…
On a surgical rotation, one of my old mentors at the time (thanks Rob) told me that there are three types of decisions you can make when you have a sick surgical patient in front of you. You can make the decision to operate and take the patient to the operating theatre. You can make…
You’re free. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Freedom. Choice. The ability to steer your own ship. But here’s what nobody tells you about freedom: it comes with a price tag, and that price is responsibility. I speak to people every day who’ve forgotten they have choices. They sit in my consulting room and tell me they’re…
Sometimes moving forward is as simple as letting go of what’s holding you back. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But you’d be amazed how many people stay stuck precisely because they’re gripping too tightly to the very thing that’s keeping them trapped. Think of monkey bars in a playground. You know how they work. To move…