🎾 Stop dwelling on every "shot"

The 5-minute weekly newsletter for high-performance dads.

Good evening!

I hope everyone had a great Father’s Day and did something that brought you joy.

As for me, I played 18 holes of golf for the first time in at least 8 months.

You can probably guess how that went….

-Collier

_QUOTE
“If you want to make everybody happy, sell ice cream, don’t be a leader.”
- Nick Saban

Love him or hate him, Saban was the real deal.

As leaders of our households and in our sphere of influence, this concept is vital for us to grasp.

Is it easier said than done? Absolutely.

But if being a leader and enjoying its benefits were easy, wouldn’t everyone be doing it?

I struggle with wanting everyone to like me—something I battle almost daily and, at the same time, it’s impossible to achieve.

But in those times, I try to ask myself: is it more important to 1) be liked, or 2) to stand up, reject passivity, and lead in tough times?

I would argue #2.

This isn’t to say we won’t ever be “liked” or make others “happy,” but that shouldn’t be the motivation.

_WISDOM
Learn not to dwell on every “shot.”

This summer, Roger Federer gave a graduation speech at Dartmouth College.

In his address, Federer shared a stunning stat: “In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches.”

“What percentage of those points do you think I won in those matches?…. Only 54%.”

“When you lose every second point, on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot….You want to become a master at overcoming hard moments. That to me is the sign of a champion.”

“The best in the world are not the best because they win every point. It’s because they know they’ll lose, again and again, and have learned how to deal with it.”

This rings true in a lot of scenarios, but especially given our roles as fathers.

I am going to fail my kids, my wife, myself, friends, family, and even my work colleagues in some form or fashion—it’s inevitable.

What isn’t inevitable is my response to those failures and whether I choose to dwell on them or not.

As Federer said, the best in the world are the best because they accept the ever-present reality of failing and learn how to deal with it.

Take it from the champ—don’t dwell.

(Shout out to EDW reader Charlie for putting me on to this week’s wisdom.)

_ACTION
What do you want to do with your life?

This week’s action comes from Ali Abdaal who talks about an interesting way to answer the question: what am I doing with my life?

One tool that helped him answer the question a couple of years ago was called The Odyssey Plan. It’s an exercise taught by professors at the Stanford Life Design Lab.

The idea is that you answer the following 3 prompts –

• Write out, in detail, what your life would look like 3-5 years from now if you continued down your current path.

• Write out, in detail, what your life would look like 3-5 years from now if you took a completely different path.

• Write out, in detail, what your life would look like 3-5 years from now if money, social obligations, and what people would think, were irrelevant.

Abdaal says that often when we are thinking about what to do with our lives, we think that the thing I am currently doing is the thing that I will always be doing.

We tend to be fixated on this vision of the world that we know. (Source: The Odyssey Plan Revisited post by Ali Abdaal)

But what about the world we don’t know? What would it be like to just ponder for a moment a completely different path?

Just some food for thought. I am going to try the exercise this week.

Holler at me if you uncover any interesting insights!

That’s a wrap, folks!

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