Transcript

Listening #1181 · From Chad

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A 16 year old walked up to a stranger and asked to be
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criticized. There's a story behind that.
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This is your daily message from Chandler 1181 to upgrade your
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mental game today by telling yourself a better story.
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Because the most important story you hear is the story you tell
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yourself. This message is dedicated to
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Whitney Ruble. Here's the upgrade.
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You hear failure but upgraded thinking.
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Here's feedback. Here's the story I've told you
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about the Johari window before. Check out message #5O6.
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Picture a window divided into 4 panes.
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What you know about yourself and others know too, that's the open
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pane. What you know and hide, that's
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the closed pane. But nobody knows yet, not even
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you. That's the mystery pane, and the
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one that matters today. What others can see about you
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that you can't see about yourself?
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That's the blind pain. These are your blind spots.
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You cannot think your way into that pain.
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You cannot journal your way into it.
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Somebody has to hand it to you. Michael Jordan was a junior in
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high school when a recruiting analyst named Bob Gibbons was
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introduced to him. The first thing out of Jordan's
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mouth wasn't a boast. It was a question.
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What do I need to do better to be a better player?
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That's a Joe Hari move executed by a teenager unprompted on a
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stranger whose entire job was evaluating players like him.
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He wasn't defending his game. He was requesting the contents
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of his own blind pain. Jordan wanted to know his blind
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spots. Another coach, Nick Saban, has a
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line that fits him exactly. Average players want to be left
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alone. Good players want to be coached.
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Great players want the coach to tell them the truth every day on
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every play because they want to be perfect.
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In Jordan's freshman year at North Carolina, Roy Williams
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flagged him for coasting. Jordan pushed back, said he was
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working as hard as anybody on the floor.
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Williams told him if he wanted to accomplish great things, he
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had to work harder than everybody else.
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That was the whole conversation one time.
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William said later that no one ever outworked Michael Jordan
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again. One piece of the blind pain
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handed over once, and it never had to be handed over again.
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It wasn't always that clean for Jordan.
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Doug Collins once told him he was shooting too much and
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missing too much, and Jordan responded by forcing up eight
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shots in a row just to try to prove Collins wrong.
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Collins told the front office privately the team couldn't win
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with him like that. Even Jordan slammed the window
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shut before he learned to leave it open.
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But by the 1991 Finals, doubled and forcing up bad shots, Phil
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Jackson called timeout and looked right at him.
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Who's open? Jordan wouldn't answer.
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Jackson asked again. Finally, quietly, Jordan
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responded. Packs, Jackson said.
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Then throw him the ball. Packs and hit five straight
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fourth quarter shots, helping Chicago close out its first
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title. The most gifted scorer alive
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couldn't see the one thing that could win the game, but his
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coach could. That's the whole window and one
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time out. Jordan explained the mechanism
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himself. Years later in his book Driven
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From Within. He said he could admit when he
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was wrong, accept criticism, take a better idea from somebody
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other than himself, because most people can't do that.
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They treat it as an attack on their intelligence, and they
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want so much credit that they can't share it, Jordan said.
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Successful people listen, and those who don't listen don't
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survive. Successful people learn from the
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outside in. Successful people get knowledge
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they can't obtain on their own, he said.
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Successful people listen because talent tells you what you
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already know about yourself, and listening is the only thing that
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opens the pain that you can't get alone.
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The better story to tell yourself is I separate feedback
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from a verdict on my identity, some self knowledge you can dig
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up on your own. Enough silence, enough honesty,
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enough sharing at the staring at the guy or gal in the mirror and
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you'll find it. But the blind pain, your blind
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spots don't work that way by definition.
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It's the part of you that you cannot see no matter how hard
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you look. The only Rd. in runs through
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somebody else's mouth. That's not a bug in the system,
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that's a feature. Listening to others isn't the
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one method among many for knowing yourself, for that pain.
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It's the only one that works. Tell me a story of something
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someone saw in you, a blind spot that you couldn't see yourself
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to. From chadsmith@gmail.com.
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Send someone a text and ask them what's something I need to hear
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that you've been afraid to tell me.
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You can get a free copy of my book, The Most Powerful Story in
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the World, by going to fromchad.gumroad.com.
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The transcript of this message and hundreds of others are
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always available at www.fromchad.com.