S.E.A - Standards - Expectations - acceptance.

In this blog I want to introduce you to a framework that I came up with in order to help me make sense of what I was trying to achieve. Acronyms have often helped me remember wrote responses but in this case it is more than just that, it is a picture that helps me make sense of performance.

I mentioned in another blog that for me courage was preparing as good as I can, having a plan and diving in fully, as my default historically has been to not go all in, sometimes I would (try to) bullshit myself and say that I had gone all in and make all sorts of justifications as to why I did or didn’t do something. Deep down though I knew that the reason I didn’t go all in was because “what if it failed?”, “what if I wasn’t good enough?”, “what would people think?”, etc.

So one of the ways I have come to deal with this is through the acronym S.E.A which is to have High Standards, Zero Expectations and High Acceptance, which when you think about is (well at least in my head) it is like the wave of an ocean, so there is an image attached of a wave when I see this.

There is something freeing in this mindset and for me acknowledging that the courage piece is actually in the work and not the performance or outcome is liberating in itself. So now I outline what are my values, what are the standards that I would expect from those who are world class? Wayne Smith talks about this in episode 3, where he so eloquently says “You don’t have to be the best in the world to have the habits of the best in the world” and I think this is a lovely reminder and when I work hard on my standards to achieve something I value I often hear the doubting voices creep in to my head and I know I am on the right track, as they are the voices trying to protect me from going all in, just incase I fail. So be clear on the standards that you demand from yourself and set them high, with no guarantee of success.

The next part of the equations is Zero Expectations, yes that is right zero! The world owes you nothing, this is not a transaction where you are guaranteed the outcome because you did the work. The problem with having that mindset is when it doesn’t come off you are not likely to go all in again and if that was your mindset then I don’t think you were all in anyway.

Now this is not about being defeatist, negative or giving up, it is about growing your love for the journey, living to your standards with no expectation of the outcome and while this is easy to write it is hard to live. The conflict here comes from the fact that our goal is likely linked to our expectations, to win the race, or shoot a certain score and we will constantly need to remind our self of this part of the equation. You see it in golf all the time, someone hasn’t played for a while or they are slightly injured and they come out with no expectations, they are calm and relaxed and have a blinder on the front nine, all of a sudden the expectations rise and you guessed it, the back nine is a disaster! There is a saying in golf, “beware of the golfer with a sore back”… well at least I think it is a saying, perhaps it was just my dad trying to get in my head when I was young!

Finally is the acceptance piece and again it is easier to write then do, and again it is not about being defeatist and accepting what happens, but it is about having a high level of acceptance that the work you did was of a high standard and this starts the learning loop or, the learning wave as I see it. With the acceptance being high it puts us in a better frame of mind to gain the learnings from whatever the outcome was, my wife will often say (not her work but I like it) “you can’t be in a protective state and have a growth mindset” and we are often in a protective state when angry or disappointed so we limit our learning opportunities that often arise when things haven’t gone to plan.

So in summary, be courageous and have high standards, expect nothing just because you did the work and then accept the outcome, learn from it and start again.