You'll Never Outperform Your Inner Circle
"You'll never outperform your inner circle." (John Wooden)
Coach Wooden didn't just share that pearl of wisdom, he provided a strategy for implementing it.
Who Is In Your Inner Circle?
Coach Wooden said to take a piece of paper and draw three columns, one for each of your main social circles: personal, professional, and a social organization.
In each column, write down the names of the five people you are closest to within that circle.
Those people are your inner circle.
Who Needs To Get Kicked Out?
For each name on your list, ask these two questions:
Is this person going where I'm going?
Is this person the kind of person I want to have along with me on my journey to that place?
If the answer to either of those questions is no, you cannot afford to keep this person in your inner circle…not if you want to achieve your goals.
You Will Never Outperform Your Inner Circle
If you've surrounded yourself with people who can't pass those two inner circle qualifying questions, there's your answer to why you're not getting what you want out of life.
This Will Be Hard
Getting rid of the wrong people will not be as easy as you might think.
It's easy to get rid of the jerks who the second question disqualifies.
It will be much harder to distance yourself from the wonderful, kind people in your life whose ambitions do not match yours, so they're not going anywhere.
If you want to get where you're going, those wonderful people who are going nowhere cannot be in your inner circle.
You gotta put yourself around some wonderful go-getters.
They're out here.
You gotta first be one yourself, then you can seek out and attract some.
