Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - Dream Big and Step Small

Episode Date: March 29, 2020

In this episode I talk about: The relationship between having your head in the clouds and keeping your feet on the ground The Stockdale Paradox What it means to be the "Michael Jordan" of your niche or industry How to stay motivated and assess the reality on the ground while moving towards your big picture goal

Good morning. Welcome to your world within daily. Today, we're going to talk about keeping your head in the clouds and your feet on the ground, simultaneously managing the big picture and the small stuff, nonstop belief that things will work, that there's an answer, that you're ultimately going to get there, and that you won't quit until you do, while also being, brutally honest with the facts on the floor, the reality around you. A lot of times I think there's a tendency to conflate positivity with a detachment from reality, but they're very different things. You need them both for success to unfold. You need the big picture and you need the minutia, the steps, the little things that add up,

over time. In the book, Good to Great, Jim Collins calls this the Stockdale principle. Or Admiral Stockdale, I think at the time, Commander Stockdale was shot down during Vietnam. He was prisoner of war for over seven years in Vietnam, and it was just obviously a brutal experience. And, you know, one of the things that helped him survive was being, painfully pragmatic while also knowing in his soul, right,

with every ounce of his being that he would ultimately get out, that the men he cared about and helped so much would ultimately get out. And so when Jim Collins is interviewing him, you know, he says, Admiral Stockdale,

what differentiated the ones that made it and the ones that didn't? And the answer is incredibly surprising. He says optimism because the people that were overly optimistic said, we'll get out by Christmas. And Christmas comes and they don't get out. And then they say, okay, we'll find we'll be out. We'll see our families by Easter. And Easter comes and they're still there.

Okay, maybe next Christmas. Next Christmas comes, nothing changes. He says those are the people that died of a broken heart. There was too big of a gap between the reality, the components needed to progress. progress the way they wanted to progress and the way they were thinking. You know, you have to be willing to look in the mirror and diagnose a situation. You know, that's applicable to business. It's applicable to your personal life.

Dream big, step small. Believe, but act. Be cognizant of the world around you, the reality that you're living in. You can't change something. that you don't understand intrinsically. You can't progress if you haven't analyzed something. And this is not about your capabilities. This is never a call to doubt yourself.

It's to be strategic. This is just saying that you need to understand the reality so that you can improve upon them. If you want to be the next Michael Jordan, that's a huge ask. That's a lot. it's possible. You can do it.

And you need to believe with every ounce of you that if that's what you want to do, it's a pursuit, you know, worth taking. But you also need to know what it means to be Michael Jordan. You got to understand the commitment, how he sacrificed relationships. He sacrificed, you know, his friends. his love life. He got up every single morning. All he did was basketball. How he took thousands of shots a day. How his mentality and his aggressive behavior, right, his mindset, the way he looked at life

and approached life on and off the court. It required that he was so intense and so obsessed with winning that some people couldn't handle it. It meant that. that everything stopped except being the best. That's a big ask. A lot of people can't do that, don't want to do that. But that's what it takes. And to think you're going to be Michael Jordan without understanding, one, the commitment that's required

and how you stack up, it's going to be in vain. I remember the CEO of the company that I work for at out of college, he used to say, look, you have to be able to be. able to be honest and say when your baby's ugly, right? Look at what you have and be able to draw a line from where you want to be. So you can fix it. So that's the point. If you can juggle those two things, you'll be unstoppable. Unstoppable. If you can be the one to trust yourself enough to know that there is a big picture, you will pursue it relentlessly and you will get there. If you can take that and you can marry it to the little things, right, to the awareness, to promising yourself that you will

continue to analyze, assess and do what needs to happen on the ground, that you will be realistic, you will be pragmatic. When things fail, you won't sugarcoat it. You'll dive in. You'll look at why it failed so that you can pick up those pieces. and build something stronger and continue to build and continue to build, stack, and stand on what you've made. Those are the people that change the world. Those are the people that get things done,

that get results. Dream big, step small. See you tomorrow.