Transcription
There's this lesson that I learned at CIA that I still teach now in my training with executives, and individuals, and entrepreneurs. Where CIA warns us not to get track, not to get trapped in what's called the Perfection Paradox. And the Perfection Paradox is not the same thing as perfectionism. The Perfection Paradox is the idea that you keep making incremental improvements to a plan, but you never actually act on the plan. So you're seeking perfection, and you're making genuine improvements, but you're not actually taking action. So the impact of your improvements is not felt. So they warn us against getting trapped in this Perfection Paradox because you can imagine, if you're planning an operation, for whatever, it's very, very easy to just start: how do we make it this 5% better? How do we make it 2% better? How do we make it 1% better? What if tomorrow's intelligence gives us new information? What if intelligence the next day gives us better information? So you get trapped in this paradox.
Instead, what they tell us to do is engage in something called the, uh, called Excellence through execution. Excellence through execution is the idea that by executing you will make mistakes, and then you will improve upon the mistakes because you will execute again. So your excellence comes from execution. After 9/11, as a simple example, after 9/11, President Bush declared war. People were immediately deployed to the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Immediately. Did they plan an operation? Yes, in about 48 hours, and then they were deployed. And then you had paramilitary people on horseback with mules carrying stuff through the mountains. The only way that's possible is through Excellence through execution: get them on the ground and let them figure it out from there, because the stakes are so high, the impact has to be felt right now.
So to your question, how do we give people the ability to bend the rules, bend the world around them? It's understanding that there is excellence in execution, and also understanding that there is a paradox with perfection. So if you want to feel the impact, you can't keep planning; you have to take action. And you have to understand that the action you take may only be 20% of what it will be one day, but today you take the lumps, you make the mistakes, and you get the impact that you need.
The second thing that came to my mind is actually coming from a—I have a centimillionaire client that I work with frequently, and he was talking about this idea of—CTIM millionaire—never had that time before. I know what it is. Yeah, I have a centimillionaire client who, who was working with me on a, on a process to try to resolve some of the challenges that he was having from, from the trauma that he was wired—that was wired in him as a kid, right? And how that trauma has played out in his personal life and his business life and everything else. And he made this awesome breakthrough where he was like, you know, therapists and counselors and spouses—because he's been married more than once—they all tell you to go through your pain, right? It's like you've got to face your trauma, you've got to go through it, you've got to do the work, you've got to bear the burden so that you can heal.
Whereas what I teach, which is what CIA teaches, is why would you ever go through something when you can go around it? So if you're trying to accept or recover or understand and heal the fact that your mom cheated on your dad when you were seven, you can't change it by working through it. You might come to accept it, but what's the point? Instead, you can just go right around that pain and you can be like, my mom, she cheated on my dad, and because of that, this happened, and because of that, this other thing happened, and because of that, I became a self-sufficient independent person who didn't rely on my mom or my dad, and now I'm very successful because all that matters is what's forward. I can't change what's behind. And he made this revelation on his own. I thought it was such a powerful visual because we so often think that the point from here to here, if there's all this mess in the middle, you have to go through the mess, when in fact you can also just go around the mess, and you can go right to the point, and you, you don't have to heal, you just have to accept, understand, recognize, and move forward.
And so what did he do? So he, he was trying to overcome his trauma. What, how did, how does he go around it in that specific example? Well, what he was—so in that specific example, it was under—he went back to the traumatic incident that he experienced, and what he realized is that if his mom hadn't cheated on his dad, then the domino effect that would have come after that would have probably never led to him starting the business that ultimately made him an ultra-high net worth. And once he made that connection, he was like, oh well, [ __ ] I'm glad my mom cheated on my dad because now my daughters are taken care of, my sons are taken care of, my wives are taken care of, like my—I've got 500 employees that are taken care of, I do business in four different countries, everybody's taken care of.
Does that require some time though between the thing that happened and where you are now? Because you know, I was sat here yesterday with a chap who lost his son, his 18-month-year-old son in April, and you know it's hard in that situation—got Francis Ngannou who's a UFC champion—um, hard in that situation to try and find a way around it. It's a couple of months ago. There's no, there's no way around tragedy, that's, that's loss that very few of us will ever know, thankfully. What I, what we don't know is how that will shape him in the future. All we know is what that's doing to hurt him in the present, right? Think about, think about all the famous stories, all the famous inspirational motivational leaders that you've met who had some kind of tragedy happen in the past. Well, actually funny enough, cuz I—CU—I mentioned the loss of a son, I had a guy sat here called Mo Gawdat who was the ex-head of Google X, and his son passed away in a routine operation that should have taken 10 minutes but killed his son, and then he quit his job at Google and went on a search of what happiness is. And if—when I asked him on the podcast I said, would you, would you bring back your son, um, now he said no, like if you could go back and—well, I'm sure he'd bring back—I think what he's saying to me is that if you could go back and, um, change what happened, would he change it? And he said no, it's important, like it's important to understand when you are wired for success because not everyone is wired for success. A lot of people are wired for mediocrity, a lot of people are wired for basic survival, a lot of people are wired for pain and suffering, but when you are wired for success, you can't regret what's happened to you in the past because to erase it or change it would be to make you not the person you are now, and the person you are now is successful. Freed, fres—freedom.