5 Steps To Avoid Complacency

Remember the fire in your stomach that you felt on the way to your goal? Goals can involve working on a project, advancing in your career, or a sports championship. You are focused and full of energy to work every day. Once you’ve reached your goal, however, it’s likely that a subtle process has begun to take place, one that I’ve often seen as a performance coach. Have you started to relax and enjoy the pitfalls of success? Found you didn’t work with the same “edge”? Feeling more like the hunted than the hunter? Probably nothing seems to be wrong or broken. Usually in these situations you won’t notice any major alarms or warning signs. But then one day you realize you’re no longer at the top of the pile. Now, complacency has infiltrated. In the more than 50 years of the Super Bowl’s history, only eight teams have won the trophy two years in a row; No team has ever won the Super Bowl three years in a row. Or how about Major League Baseball? With the exception of the New York Yankees, only eight teams have won the World Series in a row, with the Oakland Athletics winning three times between 1972-74. Including the Yankees, repeated championships were only won by 14 teams in 120 years of sports in our country. Why is it practically impossible to win the top honors in any field more than twice in a row? The answers are complex, but at least some of the causes can be attributed to complacency. Teams reached their peak, basking in the glory and losing the ravenous hunger that made them so successful in the first place. Entrepreneurs, artists and leaders are a few other examples. Here are five steps to avoid complacency once you’ve achieved your dream goal.1. Start each day from scratch.Sustainable excellence is about getting better every day. Great performers don’t think about past accomplishments. They don’t take a day off when they get to work. They come to work every day with the goal of getting better. The top performers I’ve worked with have trained themselves to set goals for every practice, big meeting, or presentation. Continuous improvement is not a cliché, but a way of life.2. Surround yourself with people who will tell you so.Successful people often attract followers who want to be associated with success but aren’t willing to pay the price to get there on their own. Their flattery may seem flattering, but it comes at a heavy price. Because they are motivated to stay in the limelight of others, these cheaters won’t risk (or aren’t likely) to give honest feedback. They fear that if they tell the truth, they will be replaced in the ring of success. Relying on these individuals as a barometer has caused the downfall of many successful individuals, teams, and organizations. Note that I started this paragraph with “successful people” not “excellent people”. Sustained excellences recognize this potential trap at the door and resist falling, while those whose sole motivation is success often fail to do so. (See ‘The Difference Between Success and Excellence’.)3. Focus on the process instead of the result.Excellent people and organizations develop a process for achieving and maintaining excellence. They follow this established approach with discipline. If they don’t meet their goals, they adjust the process. Results-focused people may have limited success, but it won’t be sustainable. There is no way to consistently repeat success without a method, a formula, or an approach – i.e. a process. (See ‘Understanding Process and Results’.)4. Constantly learning and adapting.Many successful people and organizations rely on the same methods that brought them to the top to keep them there. This is often the beginning of the complacency cycle. While you need core philosophies and values to guide decision-making, you must also align your techniques and approaches with best practices and market trends to sustainable excellence. For example, even the most conservative companies in the world have social media strategies. They may have been hesitant when the phenomenon first started, but great organizations understand that their employees and customers communicate through social media and expect the organizations they sponsor to do the same. .5. Recharge the battery.Excellent people are very motivated. They don’t work 9 to 5 days, and often they suffer from long periods of what most people call “work-life balance”. To reach the top, sometimes an imbalance may be necessary. But to avoid complacency, you must make time for rest, relaxation, hobbies, reflection, and quality time with family and friends. This provides the energy needed to continue to innovate and succeed. Otherwise, you’ll become the squishy rat in the wheel. The wheel – or the hamster – eventually breaks. Success doesn’t necessarily translate into complacency. Take the challenge to excel, not just succeed, and you won’t have to worry about coming out on top once you get there! Read more: how to install a false beam ceiling fan