Most leaders understand the core elements of personal and professional achievement: write down goals, make a plan of action to achieve the goals, share the goals with a friend or coach, and have a weekly check-in with that friend or coach. This method has a 76% success rate. This is a great approach to living and growing. With a coach there to help you through these steps you could really see an appreciable difference over the course of a lifetime or even over the course of a couple of years in a specific realm of life. Some coaches go a bit further and go beyond obstacles to help address Beliefs and Inner Conflicts. These added realms of consideration could get you to a 10 X difference over a lifetime.
When I began thinking about what it would take to be a great coach I had a 10 X mindset. However, I wasn’t feeling great about it. Reflecting on my readings of the top coaches, top leaders, and how top athletes of the world operate and applying my learnings to my coaching practice, I sat unsatisfied. One night my brain kept me up, literally. I was chewing on this dissatisfaction. I was hitting back with advice I had already given to countless other people, particularly in the past 2 years of the pandemic: we are entitled to the limits we put on ourselves. That was the revelation I needed. 10 X growth seems like a lot and most leaders would be very satisfied with 10 X personal and professional growth. However 10 X isn’t extraordinary. We are in the age of unicorns and now have decacorns. We see multi-trillion dollar market caps in public companies built in our lifetimes. We have several multi-billionaires running multiple companies. Three of these went to space on their own rocket ships in 2021. Maybe we are leaving some life on the table with 10 X thinking.
It is not just about the money and fame. A life can be unlived in many ways. However, navigating blindly and with self-imposed limits – in a world where technology, knowledge access, and more allow us to experience and accomplish way more than prior generations – is flat out very hard. If you are reading this you have come face-to-face with yourself and your own life and even the truth that you may be “leaving life on the table.” We now understand that there is much more we can do than even our childhood selves could have imagined. There are way more people that we can help and impact. There is a bigger legacy or institution that we can leave behind. There is a daunting personal pursuit that we are avoiding.
An order of magnitude difference would have been fine, but now you know there is something else. Deep down you know there is a more courageous path that you are avoiding or have yet to discover. For those that understand this, 10 X mindsets just will not cut it.