Are you chasing your current goals out of present purpose, or are you secretly trying to avenge a ghost from years ago? Rich breaks down the trap of "score settling" in athletics and career leadership, and reveals why letting go of past validation is the ultimate key to peak performance.
[00:00:04] Yo, what's good? This is Rich and you're listening to Competing on Purpose, a podcast about what it means to perform when it counts. And I got a question for you. Are you competing to win or are you competing to settle an old score? Are you competing for the present joy, the present fulfillment, maybe where you want to be in the future, something you're working toward? Or are you competing against something from the past?
[00:00:30] And I thought about this in particular because I realized that I've been doing it in an athletic context, but I've also done it in a professional business context as well. And it's something that I want to call Score Settling. And in the last episode, I talked a bit about my experience at Outdoor Nationals with the long jump, the triple jump. None of my events going well, but after the long jump, me questioning if it was even fun anymore.
[00:00:53] And I also talked about the experience 20 years ago when I was a senior in college and we had our athlete banquet and the head coach went around and talked about all the seniors and what they accomplished. But when he got to me, he talked about what I could have been. Now, that coach was very well-intentioned. It was clear that he believed in me in that moment. I'm sure he thought that he was being helpful.
[00:01:15] But what I didn't realize was how much that could have been was embedded in my subconscious and even showed up in the way that I'm approaching track and field all of these years later. And the long jump goal that I've been after, while it was reasonable in that it reflects this season of life, that goal was based off of a goal from 20 years ago that I didn't get to achieve adjusted for age.
[00:01:43] So this long jump goal that I've had hasn't been about now and in the future. It's been about the past. It's been about time travel. You could call this a time travel goal with me wanting to go back to 2004, 2005 and finally put the exclamation point on this story and prove that I'm the athlete that I always knew that I could be, even if it was in a new season of life.
[00:02:10] And I've also done this in a professional context as well, where several years ago I was in a role that I had been in for a little bit of time. And prior to that role and for the first couple performance cycles in that role, I'd gotten a consistently meets expectations or the meets expectations rating, the average rating. And I had gotten that cycle after cycle after cycle.
[00:02:35] And with this last team that I was on, as far as this story goes, there was a point where I was completely over the work. I knew that I didn't want to do this role anymore, but I wanted to get an exceeds expectation rating. Like that was the goal. I wanted to show to all of the managers in this org, to the other people around me that I am more than an average meets expectations performer.
[00:02:58] And my manager at the time said something to me that ultimately led to me changing roles, but I think is also relevant here, where she said, would you rather stay in a role that's not fulfilling, chasing a performance rating? Or would you rather potentially find a new role that's more fulfilling, that's better aligned with your skills, where maybe you'll get that performance rating even quicker because it comes easier and more natural to you?
[00:03:28] And that ended up being some really sage advice that I still refer to frequently to this day. Because that was an instant of score settling. I didn't stay in that role because I wanted to accomplish more in that role because that's what I wanted to do because it would help me move forward in my career.
[00:03:47] I wanted to stay in that role and keep trying to perform to prove something to people who ultimately didn't give a damn and were too busy, not too busy, but they were busy with their own lives and everything else that they had going on. So again, it was an instance of trying to go back in time in some ways and to rewrite an old story or create this new narrative to go, see, I knew that I could do it and then move on from there.
[00:04:13] And so what I've realized is that score settling is not much more than revenge disguised as ambition. Because if we think about that track and field goal, I thought for sure I was being reasonable. I adjusted it for my age. I was thinking about what I could realistically jump based off of all of these different factors. And based off of this past season, the data has been very clear that I've been nowhere close to that particular goal.
[00:04:41] And it's actually been a couple of years that I've been nowhere close. Meanwhile, the triple jump, the other event that I've been doing, has continued to improve over this time without me really even working on it. And so that's something that I want to call proof blindness, where you ignore the obvious data, the obvious truths.
[00:05:03] And I thought about this blindness concept because I was wondering, how did it take me so long to make this realization that I need to focus on the triple jump? It is so clear when I look at the numbers of how I've performed across the past two seasons that I should be spending more time on this event. But the bulk of my time has been spent focusing on the long jump because I've been so focused on chasing and achieving that goal to settle this old score.
[00:05:32] That I couldn't even see the opportunity that was right there in front of me. And I realized that the feelings are always going to come first. And that's part of with anything. There's no, you know, you just got to put the feelings to the side and just see the facts. No, no, no, no, no. It is facts after feelings. Feel whatever you need to feel first about a particular situation or whatever it is.
[00:05:55] But after you're done feeling the way that you've been feeling and you've worked through a bit of those emotions, you got to look at the facts. You got to look at the data. Because, oh man, that sounded so work. That sounded so corporate. I promise I did not mean that. You got to look at the data. You got to synthesize the data. You got to bubble that up. Anyway, you got to look at the facts.
[00:06:17] It is okay to feel whatever the emotions are, whatever it is that comes with whatever the particular situation is. If you're disappointed, the way that I was disappointed at nationals, it was okay to be disappointed. It was okay to be frustrated. But I also needed to look at those numbers to finally say, yo, this is not working in the current form.
[00:06:43] And I have something else over here that is a potentially great opportunity that I'm just now seeing that I really want to capitalize on. And it's something where I can really test and see what's possible and what can be accomplished without it having any of the baggage attached to it. And so I want to ask you, where in your life might you be score settling as opposed to competing on purpose?
[00:07:12] You know, what rating, title, ghost are you going after from the past? What phrase or what words did someone say to you years ago that you're still going after now under the guise of ambition? What did someone say to you? You weren't, maybe it was, I can remember being back in middle school or maybe it was elementary school. Middle school, elementary school, it doesn't matter. But no, it was definitely middle school with the principal saying that like I wasn't going to amount to anything.
[00:07:42] That's crazy to say that to someone who's 11, whatever years old you are in seventh or eighth grade or seventh grade. That's crazy to say to someone that you're not going to amount to anything. And there were some years after that, a number of years after that, where I thought about Sister Kate. Yeah, it was a Catholic school where I thought about Sister Kate and what she said.
[00:08:02] And so where are there things like that in your life where maybe you, you, the signs are there that you need to go a different route or that you need to make an adjustment. But you are so focused on proving you can get back to or that you can finally avenge or that you can get the closure for.
[00:08:26] I want you to think about that because it's probably slowing you down in an area where you think that it's actually speeding you up and it's actually helping you be more productive. It's not because you're not competing from a place of where you are now and looking forward. You're competing from a place where you're constantly looking over your shoulder and looking back. And chances are what's in front of you is never going to be good enough.
[00:08:53] And you're not going to ultimately get to where you can because your eyes aren't forward. You're fighting against the past. And so that is the thought that I wanted to leave you with. Are you settling the score or are you competing on purpose? So I want to thank you so much for listening to this episode. Had to jump on here real quick and drop this one. It's been top of mind for me.
[00:09:16] So I want you to be really thoughtful as you're embarking on new journeys or maybe there's something you've been spinning your wheels on for a while now and you're just not making any progress on it. You need to ask yourself, am I competing on purpose or am I trying to settle the score? So I got to go off and get ready for this flight. It's going to be at least a couple of weeks before the next episode drops. But again, I want to thank you so much for listening. Be well, move with purpose and go earn that shit.
[00:09:46] Peace.