🧠 Bill Belichick’s Timeless Advice
Friends,
In 1982, Mark Lenzi set an audacious goal for himself: win a gold metal.
As a diver in a competitive field, Lenzi knew that the odds were stacked against him. Undeterred, his singular focus for the next decade was to achieving his goal.
Lenzi’s intense focus and hard work finally paid off in 1992. He took home the gold medal at the Barcelona Summer Olympics.
Lenzi returned home a champion. Yet, something unexpected happened next: he fell into a deep depression.
Contrast that story with Bill Belichick, one of the most decorated coaches in NFL history. While many hall of fame coaches never win a single Super Bowl, Belichick has hoisted the ultimate trophy a record six times in his career.
Yet, when asked in 2017 what he still wanted to accomplish, he responded:
To the untrained eye, this answer might seem glib.
But Belichick is speaking to something much deeper: focusing on process goals instead of end goals.
Sure, Bill cares deeply about winning championships. But he knows that winning is a side-effect of accomplishing his process goals; namely, playing good football everyday.
That’s the beautiful thing about process goals: you have to do them everyday. Even better, when they become your focus, you get satisfaction from doing them every day.
When added up over time, process goals can deliver a far greater reward than any end goal ever could.
That simple insight it was Lenzi missed. His intense focus on his end goal caused him to slip into a deep depression once he achieved it.
Reflecting on his post-Olympic depression years later, he said: “I had kind of forgotten why I loved the sport so much.”
We know that financial independence is a wonderful end goal for your finances. In the end, however, what really counts is how much you enjoy the process of accomplishing that goal.
Warren Buffett is a believer in this premise. When he was once asked once why he continued to work and invest despite already being rich, he quipped:
We feel the same way. All three of us love the process of getting better at investing. That’s where we choose to focus our time and energy.
And that subtle shift makes all the difference in the world.
– Brian Feroldi, Brian Stoffel & Brian Withers
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November 12th 2020
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