Life Code: The New Rules for Winning in the Real World (19 page)

I would give you the same advice if your goal, instead of a managerial job, was to get your heartthrob to pop the question, walk down the aisle, and marry you. Your action plan might include such things as figuring out what’s holding him back and then coming up with a solution to overcome his paralysis. If his parents got an ugly divorce and therefore he is scared of merging his life with yours, then you need to acknowledge that and then come up with
a plan
to alleviate his fears. Just going on date after date or moving in together does not target the goal.

You must have plans that do not let days turn into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years, as you sit on the porch and watch your life pass by. Make a plan and write it down with great specificity. Doing it in your head just isn’t effective. You need to write it out so you can refer to it later. Don’t just read right over this and then do it haphazardly in your head (that’s what I would be tempted to do). There is such power in the objectivity you will gain by writing it out and seeing it in black and white.

Take special note of #7 on the list. Now that you have defined the goal and the action plan for achieving it in great detail, you will be so much more efficient than those around you that suddenly it’s going to look like they’re moving in reverse! Since you now have a plan in place, the next step is to set up some type of external accountability system with a trusted person in your life. Face them every Friday, for example, to see whether you achieved the week’s interim steps toward your ultimate goal. This will help you stay on target.

You never want to be predictable. You know that from your time in the dating world, right? The worst thing you can do is to allow yourself to be taken for granted, to be a “sure thing.” To be interesting is to be powerful. And to be interesting, you have to maintain a certain degree of mystery, because it gives you a degree of mastery. Mystery draws people to you because they are curious who you are and how you do what you do. They will check to see where you stand on an issue and see what you think is important. They will check because you are not predictable, so they must. The old saying “Familiarity breeds contempt” is all too often true. Cardinal Richelieu said it well: “If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.” The message is clear: Limit your words. People tend to “over-share.” My dad always said, “Boy, don’t ever miss a good chance to
shut up
!” Good advice.

If your “friends” and co-workers don’t know what you are after, they are less likely to get in your way. Never let them see you “making sausage.” While you are in the planning stages, be discreet, very discreet. It is critically important that you realize that so many aspects of your life are in fact competitive. There may be some people in your life you sit around the fire and sing “Kumbaya” with, but I’m betting it’s fewer than you might think. And there is often competition even within a unit or team. I played team sports all my life, and when we suited up and went onto the field to play the opposing team, we were one for all and all for one. But the other six days a week we were jockeying for position. We were fighting for that first-string, starting role on the team. We might have 90 guys on the football team, but only 11 of us were going to walk on that field when the whistle blew. We all wanted to be among those 11, and that made for a lot of competition.

Competition is certainly not a bad thing, especially if you are good at it. Competition pushes you, it makes you better, and it makes you tougher. But no matter how you feel about competition, do not kid yourself—that is exactly what your life is all about. Unless you’ve got the crummiest job on the globe, I promise you there is somebody who is ready and willing to take it away from you, if you don’t protect it. Unless you’re married to the lousiest husband or wife in the world (and maybe even if you are), there is somebody out there who would be more than happy to take him or her away from you.

We don’t live in a socialist society—and there is definitely a hierarchy, a pecking order, if you will, where most people are vying to improve their position and improve their life. Now, you may not like that, you may think it’s beneath you, and that’s okay. It’s okay for you think it’s vulgar, but that won’t change anything for you. There’s always some old guy or girl spring-loaded to pop up and “eat your sack lunch” if you don’t stay alert and sharp and have a private plan discreetly pursued. Seriously, if you share with your co-worker that a job opportunity has opened up at another company that pays more money with better benefits and she applies for it and beats you out, you are going to wish you had “zipped it up” at your current job and kept your plans close to the vest!

When Dallas gets ready to play New York in the NFL, I can promise you with 100 percent certainty that the Cowboys do not send their playbook and specific game plan to the Giants with a note that says, “We didn’t want to catch you guys by surprise, so here is our playbook and game plan for this coming Sunday. We hope this helps us have a better bonding experience on the field. Signed, the Dallas Cowboys.” They don’t do it, and neither should you. If you’re paying attention to what I’m saying, you are going to have a plan, but make it a discreet plan. Don’t tell people what it is that you want, and certainly don’t tell them how you plan to go about getting it unless they have earned your utmost trust and confidence. If you tell Suzy Q that you’re really interested in marrying ol’ Dave over there, she just might be thinking, “Well, I never really paid much attention to ol’ Dave, but now that she mentioned it, now that she’s interested in him, maybe I’ve missed something. I think I just might take another look.”

If you think this sounds really paranoid and pessimistic, you’re wrong. It’s just human nature. Keep your plan private, and guard it jealously. The same goes with any other relevant information that you have in any competitive situation. Even though it doesn’t have to do with the overall plan, I can assure you that the Dallas Cowboys also did not send the New York Giants a detailed list of their injuries or the players they thought were just really not up to par. Nor should you let your competitors know what’s going on in your life that might be draining your energy or making demands on your time, particularly when you run into the kind of BAITERs I’ve been describing in this book. They will use that like ammunition for a gun.

If you accept my premise that the vast majority of your life is competitive, then it makes perfect sense that you should always pay attention to what’s going on around you. But I want you to do more than just pay attention. I want you to proactively be in constant investigatory mode, constantly gathering relevant information that may empower you to do and achieve that which you desire. It’s long been said that “knowledge is power,” and nothing could be truer. That is exactly why BAITERs are always building an arsenal of information. They do it to
misuse
it; you will do it to
use
it. This is exactly why I told you to always play it close to the vest. I want the
power to be yours
to use in a competitive situation, not theirs to use against you in a competitive situation.

Become a student of human nature. Seriously, I want you to start thinking about the psychology of the situation, the agendas, and the motivations of the players. Become a student of everything that is in play in any given situation. Pay attention to how relevant people react to different happenings, events, or stimuli. What sets them off? What embarrasses them? What angers them? What intimidates them? What are the alliances and allegiances within the group that you’re involved with? What motivates different people to do what they do? I promise you that not everyone in your work group or social group is motivated by, or in pursuit of, the same things. Common sense tells you that if you pay attention to who hangs out with whom, that can be valuable information if somebody comes at you at some point. What can you learn about someone’s background? Often this information can be both diagnostic of the current situation and predictive of the future.

It’s also important to remember that only 7 percent of all communication is verbal. The other 93 percent is nonverbal—including body language, facial expression, eye contact, syntax, tone—and environmental. By environmental, I simply mean the circumstances of somebody saying something of relevance—where were they when they said it and who was around at the time it was said. That might inform you greatly as to their motive behind the comment.

I’m suggesting here that you become a private detective who is “psychologically-minded.” By “psychologically-minded” I mean you should pay attention to the fact that statements and behaviors often occur for other than the apparent reasons. Most often, those “other reasons” come from the inside out. They are motivated by emotion, and to understand the statement or the actions fully, how to deal with the person who’s making them, or how to get that person to do what you want, you need to consider what is driving them to say and do the things they do. This will give you a tremendous leg up on the competition—if you’re coming in with a plan, a private plan, you are extremely goal-oriented, and you are not the least bit in denial about the fact that life is a full-contact competition. If you embrace all these things, you should never, ever be caught asleep at the switch. This takes energy, it’s true, but either you are in it to win it or you aren’t. You are worth the effort, and it’s high time you stepped up for the mate, job, change, or peace of mind that you want.

Let me be clear right up front, I am
not
advocating that you go through life as a fraud. What I am telling you is that if you get an opportunity to move to the next level in your job, for example, do not—repeat
do not
—listen to self-doubt and take yourself out because you don’t think you know everything you need to know in order to do what you think you’re going to be asked to do.

The moment that opportunity knocks is not the time to be overcome with humility, self-effacement, and self-doubt. Some people might call this “fake it till you make it.” Others might say that winners “behave their way to success.” Of course, you have to use reasonable judgment here. If people’s lives and well-being hang in the balance, you’re in a different situation than if somebody wants you to take over the sales department at your company. I’m not advocating that you get all macho about your ability to do brain surgery if, in fact, you’re a nurse or technician, any more than the surgeon could do your job. What I’m saying is you need to have confidence and be bold enough to stretch yourself, scramble to close the gap if one exists, and grow into new opportunities.

If having mastery of a skill set and successful experience were required for being parents, there would be millions and millions of orphans in this world, including my children. But you know what? People do it every day. They figure it out as they go along. They have confidence enough in themselves to be adaptive, surround themselves with competent people, and get the job done.