The Goldilocks Principle by Michael Neill
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009Michael Neill is a “super coach”, author and advisor to top-level executives and folks like you and me (who can afford him). He puts out one of the best newsletters on improving performance and happiness. His book, Feel Happy Now, is a smart add to your bookshelf. He also has a podcast on Hayhouse Radio. This post, coupled with Marcus Buckingham’s Go Put Your Strengths to Work, remind us that trying to negate our weaknesses versus building on our strenghts, is not the smartest way to improve our lives. Focus on what you do WELL instead of overcompensating for what you don’t. Follow Michael at Genius Catalyst and Marcus at TMBC.
The Goldilocks Principle by Michael Neil The Secret Garden film
A client complained to me recently that he needed to become more disciplined, as he was failing to hit his targets in several key areas of his business. Years ago when I was first starting out as a coach I might have taken his complaint seriously and worked with him on becoming “a more disciplined person”, even taking the time to explore his patterns of self-sabotage and encouraging him to ‘just try harder’ and ‘focus more’ on what he really wanted. Who Loves the Sun release Hellboy II: The Golden Army dvd
But it’s become more and more clear to me over the years that success is less a matter of becoming a different kind of person than of finding what already works well for us and doing more of it. In other words, what holds us back is not some flaw in our character, but rather a blind spot in our understanding. I call this “the Goldilocks principle” – the idea that there is always a way of doing anything that fits just right for you.
Do you think you’re too lazy to succeed? Consider the story of Marc Allen, the millionaire publisher behind such personal development classics as Creative Visualization Daddy Day Camp ipod Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence film
and The Power of Now . I had to get special permission to interview him for my radio show at 11am one week as he normally won’t do anything remotely business related until after lunch, a habit he engendered long before he achieved his financial success.
Are you not tough enough to make it in the dog-eat-dog world of business? Then you might find it difficult to account for the multi-million dollar financial and socially conscious success of hippie-ice cream entrepreneurs Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who balance the demands of their conscience with the demands of running a successful company by creating an imaginary entity they call “the monster” that makes their difficult business decisions for them. As Ben reputedly told Jerry when economic realities made it necessary to let employees go, “the monster is hungry – the monster must eat!”
I told my client the story of a man who designed new buildings for college campuses. In his original designs, the man used to draw in not only the new building but also the routes of access – all the sidewalks to and from the parking lots and other buildings. But to his dismay, when he would visit the campuses months later, he could see that students (and even some teachers) were often ignoring the sidewalks and making their own pathways to the new buildings, ruining the grass and making for some awkward patterns of foot traffic.
Rather than complain about the disrespectful students and irresponsible teachers, the designer came up with an innovative idea. Instead of trying to create a pre-determined path for people to follow, he began designing and placing the buildings without putting in any sidewalks at all. Then, after the building has been in use for a while, his team comes in and builds the sidewalks where the footpaths have naturally evolved.
The point is, you can either try to adapt yourself to fit in to what you think of as the “right way to succeed”, or you can employ the Goldilocks principle and find a way to succeed that fits “just right” for you.
And as George Bernard Shaw famously said:
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.“
