Rework Your Brain for Challenge

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This week is going to be a “brain read.”  

If you want to learn how your own biology can work for or against you — and how to start shifting it up — this will be a big one.

I often work in high-stress, highly competitive environments. These are people who often compete on a national or global scale with other companies and, by extension, other heads of those companies — and there’s a mindset that I see resonate within these individuals that I also see in the professional athletes I’ve worked with: 

They transform potential threats or competitions into challenges they are excited to take on and to win.

An example of this was a pro athlete I worked with, and he reflected on this element a bit, saying, “I remember even in high school, telling the coach what yards I’d get that year. He’d just shake his head, but I’d do it. The competition never mattered to me. It was my show.”

There are frameworks that people operate under that allow them to get excited about what lies ahead. Monstrous, big things that look like obstacles, that look like impossibilities, spur the very elite to say “let’s get it” rather than shy away. And, as a result, some people end up running straight into the fire even while everyone else is running away or watching from a distance. 

So let’s talk about the frameworks to use, sometimes quite naturally, that can help make this happen, how to shift up your mindset on the challenges that lie ahead, and how the big guns use this position to conquer things others find intimidating.