Book Notes Straight-Line Leadership: Tools for Living with Velocity and Power in Turbulent Times by Dusan Djukich

This is the most helpful book I have read and reread.

Main big takeaway from this books are:

I will be better summarizing my notes. Here are my highlights.

PREFACE THESE ARE FOUNDATIONAL SKILLS
foundational. They are not soft skills, and they’re not hard skills;
Most individuals in business try to correct their unwanted situations by introducing new soft skills (morale and team-building training) and even hard skills (software training to track activity and results), but those skills will be greatly diminished when the foundation is not addressed.
Someone who is effective is said to be “coming from a committed place,” and someone who is ineffective is often said to be operating from his “inner victim.” What most people don’t know is that there is a way to take absolute control over this foundation inside of you and to create it to be whatever you choose.

INTRODUCTION THE GEOMETRY OF SUCCESS
What’s the fastest way to get to B? What’s the most effective way to get a result? It’s simple geometry. It’s a straight line. It’s a straight line from A to B, as in the shortest distance between two points. From where you are to where you want to be.
A straight-line leader is extremely effective at solving problems in life. They solve their own problems and they assist those they lead to become adept at solving their problems as well.
We assist our clients by waking them up to the straight line that’s always there. It’s the straight line that they usually don’t see. Why can’t they see it? Again, it’s because of geometry. They are traveling in a circle—usually a vicious circle, going around and around, repeating the same old unworkable behaviors, performing the same actions and hoping for different outcomes in their personal and business lives.
And we’re going to create this straight line a little differently. We’re going to put your pen on point B first (your future) and then draw the line back to point A (your present moment) so that now you have brought the future into your immediate present-time actions. The future is solely created in the present. The future can’t be created in any other place but the present. What an individual creates “now” determines what the new “now” or what we call the future will look like. Otherwise you are living in a circular world and your future is always stranded out there as something you want but don’t have. And it’s that demeaning habit of continuous wanting (it’s your lack) that keeps your confidence and vitality low.
Wanting what you don’t have robs you of the very energy that would get it for you. This continuous wishing, hoping, and wanting will replace a relaxed, focused mind with a worried mind… always getting out ahead of itself.
These distinctions are not definitions or a new form of knowledge you’ll have to try to remember or retain. They are tools for escaping a circular existence. They are tools to create the “Now I see!” moment for you.
We work with committed people from a wide spectrum of industries who do not have a back door that they can take when the chips are down. We work with these types of people to get at the source of why they are not performing at the stellar levels of which they are capable. You could say the straight-line coaching distinctions we utilize are used to “unstick” the stuck.
The world said conform, the world said settle for less, the world said compromise and no one will know… so I made my own world. Bijan

CHAPTER 1 WHAT’S YOUR INNER STANCE?
You can think positively all you want. If your inner stance is weak—nothing good happens.
Most people have no idea that there is a way that they see things. They think that how they see things is “just the way it is.”
Therefore, sitting down and figuring out where you want to go is not the most important first step in getting results. It’s a great second step though. In fact it’s critical in the long run. You certainly can’t hit a target that you don’t have in front of you. And yet, there is still something much more basic to living a life with velocity and power. It’s something that runs much deeper.
It’s not where you want to go but where you come from that most determines your success and results in life.
While it’s true that “where you want to go” provides direction in life, “where you come from” is like adding rocket fuel to the process. “Where you come from” is the foundation of “where you want to go.”
The position you operate from in life is what ultimately has you be “who you are.” By “who you are” I mean how you exist. How you live. How you function in life. The things you do and don’t do. The things you say. The things you don’t say. How you are experienced by others as well as yourself. I call this operating position your inner stance.
Your inner stance is the position or mental posture you create to live your life from. It is how you choose to live your life, exist, or “be” in regard to yourself, others, challenges, or life in general.
Wisdom is being aware of the inner stance that you are operating out of in the moment. Power is the willingness and ability to shift inner stances at will.
Most people have multiple inner stances that they function from daily. Sometimes people are so familiar with the stances they function from that they just assume the stances are “who they are” rather than something they either choose directly or choose out of agreement with someone or something else. They don’t realize that they can re-choose or re-create their stance when the current stance doesn’t serve them.
Some people can be very defensive about their stances because of how deeply they have confused the stances for who they are. They trap themselves in disempowering stances by identifying with the stances themselves. They think in terms of DNA and permanent personalities.
Choosing to operate as a straight-line individual is choosing to drop your disempowering identity (self-concept) by shifting your inner stance. Until now, almost all of your stances have been unconsciously assumed. From this point on, you will be choosing them consciously.
Conscious stances allow for freedom. You can always re-choose another stance to live your life from. When you are not pleased with the results that you are getting from your current stance, change it until you adopt the stance that gets you what you want.
Unconscious stances become prisons, especially when you are unaware that you have identified yourself with the stance.
Remember that your stance isn’t “you;” it’s just the stance you take. You can change it at any time.
Distinctions are tools of vision, like microscopes and binoculars. They are being presented to you so you can see the stances you are operating from. Without seeing them, you can’t change them.
As Nathaniel Branden says, “You can’t leave a place you’ve never been.” And I would add to that, neither can you change a stance you don’t see.
See clearly that what I’m presenting is not “positive thinking.” You are not trying to paper over or cover up your negative beliefs with positive pep talks. Those pep talks tend to evaporate overnight. I’m not looking to sugarcoat anything. I am asking you for a total change of who you are on the inside at this moment, at the deepest level, where your chosen stance lives and dictates everything.
The inner stance you operate from, when consciously and intentionally generated, will allow you to live your life with velocity and power. Or, if it’s a dysfunctional stance, it can stop you dead in your tracks.
So it’s never knowledge alone that gets you what you want. It’s where you come from. The inner stance that you operate from will determine how successful you are at taking on new knowledge and getting it successfully implemented.
Most people don’t really pay much attention to the stances that they operate from in life. They simply focus on where they want to “get to.”
The stance you operate from literally becomes your life. It determines whether you will take the necessary required actions to “get to” where you want to go in life.
It boils down to this: Where you come from determines the actions that you take in life and the actions that you don’t take in life. Your stances will always be the keys to your castle or your jail cell.
Many times people have been operating out of such disempowering stances that they just “dummy down” and justify themselves and their actions with “that’s just the way I am” or “I was just born this way.” This can be an extremely painful, expensive, frustrating and confusing way to live life.
Soon they find themselves chronically complaining. They can’t see that complaining is a poor substitute for being responsible for getting a result.
individuals coming from circle or zigzag positions are almost always struggling, with minimal results.
Distinctions provide awareness, which is critical for change. You won’t change something of which you are unaware. The inner stances that are distinguished here are the same ones that top executives, professionals, and successful national figures in sports and the arts are coached in on a regular basis to allow them to perform at such high levels.

CHAPTER 2 LIVING IN THE CIRCULAR WORLD
Why do we live in loops and cycles instead of getting to the point? Why do we keep repeating past mistakes? The reason is this: we believe success is about having the right information. And for that reason it isn’t long before we think we need more and better information. We keep seeking something that does not help, and it returns us full circle to the same failure that caused us to seek in the first place. We chase rainbows of information. What causes us to seek is what’s causing us to fail. We don’t always get that knowing what to do and implementing what you know are two entirely different things.
We believe we don’t know how to do what would have us be successful. We believe we don’t know what to do. So we look for more information.
But, for the most part, information is not what’s missing.
Transformation is what’s missing.
And the most effective tool for breaking the cycle of endless mental circles? A DISTINCTION. I use the term “distinctions” to indicate a clear grasping of new choices available to you. “Distinctions” are dramatic, graphic opposites, like life and death, day and night, profit and loss. I use this approach because opposites are easy to see. There’s no hidden subtlety. There’s no wiggle room. There’s no missing information to be filled in.
People can be divided into two classes: Those who go ahead and do something, and those people who sit still and inquire, Why wasn’t it done the other way? Oliver Wendell Holmes
The best thing about a clear distinction is that once you get it—and you get it like you get a joke… a spontaneous awakening—you don’t have to think about it. Or try to remember it. It’s a true jolting insight.
Circle people are running around seeking secret knowledge, always trying to find the next new thing. While many are quite competent, their competency is neutralized by their habitual self-indoctrination of needing that last piece of sacred information before they will allow themselves to take action.
As stated above, competency is not normally a problem for most circle people. Most circle people already possess adequate knowledge. Many have college degrees. Many of them have already read hundreds of books. But what they don’t realize is that knowledge must be utilized to be of value.
Knowing about something and still not using it gets you the same level of effectiveness as being ignorant. In fact, you are worse off with all that accumulated unused knowledge because you now have wasted a lot of your time, energy, and money gathering the knowledge that you’re not using!
When you first used a hammer, did you have to believe in it? Or did you just grasp it and start pounding a nail?

CHAPTER 3 THE ZIGZAG WORLD
Zigzag people move between the first two worlds, the straight-line world of high performance and the circular world of wheel spinning and non-performance.
But unfortunately the surge only lasts for a short while. Then they crash again. And this cycle repeats when the next awareness and inspiration hits: temporary high performance and then down again.
Remember the three worlds: 1) The straight-line world inhabited by people who get things done—they are amazingly effective. They are the people who others admire and look up to. 2) The circular world occupied by people who confuse activity with accomplishment. Like the dog chasing its tail. They never get anything important done—often they just burnout and quit. And 3) The zigzag world, whose occupants get some inconsistent success, but they also spend a lot of time off in the ditches of life.
My goal here is to make you so aware of these worlds that you can no longer live in one without knowing exactly where you are and the consequences of living there. When you become awake and aware of these three worlds, they can no longer happen by default. They now become matters of choice. The sleepwalking is over.
You can see why zigzags cannot be counted on to get anything done long-term. They are constantly stalled and stopped in life. When you break momentum, you have to start over. Start-up energy should only have to be generated once as having to re-start projects and actions leads to a sense of burnout and defeat.

CHAPTER 4 STRAIGHT-LINE PEOPLE
It’s easy to be misled because straight-line leaders do not simply “understand” these distinctions and then process them as information. They live the distinctions. So it’s important to notice: “Are you understanding it or are you living it?”
Straight-line individuals can read three chapters out of a business book and accomplish more than a zigzagger who reads seventy-eight books and underlines every word. Straight-line individuals are not content with understanding. Their purpose in reading is different. They are disciplined in remembering what their intention is. They are not interested in blabbing about the book to their friends and trying to impress them with their newfound information.
I get them to see that not applying certain “distinctions” will lead them to “extinction.”
Straight-line people simply create (and utilize) more internal tools. And once those tools (distinctions) are incorporated, there is nothing but pure, powerful, intelligent action!
Circle and zigzag people are not in action because they are hung up. They are trying to sort out what they see as necessary preconditions to action. For example, they say they need more courage. Or they think they need to get rid of a certain bad habit. Or learn more about the situation before they can act. Straight-line people don’t focus on those concerns. They simply act decisively. Fear or no fear. They know that all results come out of decisive action. So rather than looking for the courage, or the strength, or “enough time” to do something important, they forget all of that. It’s too mentally exhausting to work on all of that. So they just drop the preconditions. They know from experience that getting from A to B is always about doing the NEXT REQUIRED ACTION.
The universe just rewards the action taken. It doesn’t matter if you have a lack of confidence or total unshakeable confidence.
Most people get sidetracked into “getting things” they think they need before they act, or getting rid of things (like fear) before they start.
Decisive action will defeat confidence and good feelings any day of the week. Just move ahead to take the decisive action that you are not taking but you know needs to be taken. Do this enough times and confidence and good feelings will no longer be an issue for you. You
Straight-line individuals simply decide what they want to accomplish, jot down what the necessary required actions are, and then do the necessary required actions.
Because most people never define the necessary required actions to achieve what they intend, they will always simply do whatever actions are comfortable at the time. They are always going with the feeling of activity instead of insisting on doing the necessary required deed. You can counter this habit by asking yourself five times a day, “Am I being productive or just going through the motions? Am I just inventing things to do to avoid my NRAs?”
A straight-line individual has a deep understanding of what it is to make a commitment. Their definition of commitment is crystal clear: Commitment = A created stance in which you know what you will do (or not do) regardless of what happens or what doesn’t happen.

CHAPTER 5 WANTING VERSUS CREATING
Straight-line individuals immediately shift from wanting to creating. Circle and zigzag individuals either stay at wanting or easily relapse back into wanting.
But notice what happens when you persistently want something to occur. Wanting soon leads to more wanting. And wanting depletes your energy and tends to upset you. It dramatizes and gives exaggerated “reality” to your identity as a person who does not have what he wants. That becomes who you are being. It becomes how you live. And, as with every other stance you live from, there are consequences.
It’s fine to have wants and dreams as long as you are willing to wake up and make them happen. But staying in the wanting state is simply degrading.
Remember, it’s the deed—not the doer—that gets you the results that you are after.
Take weight-loss diets as an example. It’s my observation that all diets work—every last one of them. It’s the dieters who don’t work.
the deed is not being done. It has nothing to do with labels we attach to the doer.
People will do the deed (necessary required action) once they stop caring about anything but the deed itself.
What he helped me see one day is that most people are focused on their own comfort and feelings. They care about how they’re coming across. They care about what people think of them. I saw that it was possible at any time to just drop all that and focus on getting the result. To care so much about the result, that you are no longer controlled by the judgments of others. You no longer just say what you think people want to hear. You say what will make a difference.
To be more effective in producing results, have it be that when you say you will do something you can count on it. Make your words powerful and your language generative. The hallmark of a committed individual is that he can be counted on. In other words, what you say now makes things happen! Most

CHAPTER 6 STOP STOPPING VERSUS STOPPING
Without persistent, focused action everything you know is virtually useless—a series of interesting mental exercises—nothing more.
You tried it for a while, and then for one reason or another it just dropped out of your life. You started and then you stopped. Now it’s time to stop stopping,
the past, if you are like some of the people I coach, you’ve started a lot of various projects. If you had just stayed with them you would have success now beyond imagining. But you stopped. Stop stopping. When you practice the act of stopping your stopping you will leave your zigzag life behind. This will keep you on the straight line. And it’s the “keeping” part that’s the most important. When you are on the right track, it no longer matters. When you hit some bumps in the road that slow you down, you will still get there if you stay on the right track. Just stop the stopping.
You can even slow down to a crawl and become more focused when you know you will not stop. Because frantic speed is not as important as “getting from A to
Choose your path and stay on it. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “But why do I do that? What’s wrong with me? Why do I stop? Don’t I need to find that out?” No, you don’t need to figure any of that out. Why does it matter? It will only delay your progress to wallow in past theories, stories, and beliefs. You want to replace all that mental spinning with pure action.
There’s an extremely effective formula I frequently use with clients to provide access to achieving desired outcomes. It goes as follows: Step One: Decide what you intend to accomplish. Step Two: Define exactly what actions it will take from you to achieve the outcome. Step Three: Decide if you are willing to pay that price. (If you’re not willing to pay the price to get whatever you want, you’re just going to get frustrated.) Step Four: Monitor the results of your actions and make corrections when needed. Step Five: Continue to take the required actions and DO NOT STOP until your outcome is realized.
Most people never really define what it’s going to take to get the result that they want. Therefore they are unable to confront whether they are really willing to do what’s required.
Somebody sees a big expensive house and says, “Well, that’s my new goal. I want one of those!” and they don’t really confront what they are really going to have to do that they are not doing now to get this big expensive house. They never decide if they are really willing to do what’s necessary or not and therefore, as always, no house.
You’ve got to define the necessary required actions you’ll be taking. And then you’ve got to do the necessary required actions without stopping.
Also remember to constantly observe the results that you are achieving to see when your actions are moving you toward your desired outcome or taking you further away from
People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don’t know when to quit. George Allen
eliminating the habit of throwing the “quit switch.” Some people, out of a life-long habit, throw the quit switch at the first sign of frustration. Their workout gets difficult, so they throw the switch and go home. Their day of making phone calls gets frustrating so they stop calling and go to get coffee with a co-worker for two hours of sympathetic negativity.
Children don’t stop even when you tell them no. But somewhere along the way we learn about stopping as an option. Soon we start stopping everything that gets uncomfortable. First we do it after a severe frustration, and then we get down to stopping things after a medium frustration, and soon we stop in the face of any discomfort at all. We quit.
When you learn to stop stopping you will achieve virtually any goal you ever set. You will never give up on your projects. You will finish everything that you are truly committed to.
The habit of stopping too soon is misinterpreted as a lack of willpower, courage, drive, or desire; but that’s nonsense. It’s only a habit. And like any habit, it can be replaced with another habit. One’s inner stance is all that has to be changed. You can have the inner stance of a quitter, or the inner stance of a finisher. The choice is always yours, and it’s never too late to choose.

CHAPTER 7 WHAT DISTINGUISHES A STRAIGHT-LINE LEADER?
People love to be inspired. They hate being fixed and corrected. But they love being encouraged by what they see.
Leading begins with distinguishing the disempowering inner stances with which you are stuck. It is far easier to see the unworkable inner stances that others are stuck with than our own.
The positions that you operate from define and shape your behaviors and actions in the present. Therefore, they generate your future results. Results are always ultimately produced by the behaviors and actions that are sourced from your current operating stance.
Explanations justify behavior but offer no access to alter behavior. Shifting your inner stance will.
And as exhilarating as inspiration can be, it usually fades. You get no access to change your behavior from what inspires you. You change by “inventing” workable inner stances from which to function.
Most zigzag and circle people ended up being who they are by their lack of personal intentionality. An “unmotivated inner stance” will do this.
You don’t always have a choice about the immediate circumstances or conditions of your life, but you do have a choice about the “inner stance that you live from.”
A lot of people think having confidence is important, but it’s not. Confidence is actually quite overrated. “Lack of confidence” is often used as an excuse for inaction. Lacking confidence will not stop someone from taking appropriate action unless they let it. When you apply the “radical self-honesty distinction” to the “inaction due to the lack of confidence” excuse, the excuse will simply not hold up.

CHAPTER 8 A PROBLEM VERSUS A DECISION TO MAKE
A problem is composed of three parts: 1) A deviation from normal. 2) You don’t know the cause of the deviation. 3) You choose to do something about it.
You know the cause of it. So you automatically know what it will take to remedy the situation. Therefore, you don’t have a problem. You simply have a decision to make.
The willingness and ability to consciously choose and act decisively is real power. It’s a complete demonstration of integrity. Integrity is the linchpin that provides access to performance. There is nothing complicated about integrity. Integrity is a “created stance” that says “you will honor your word once given.” The key to power is to say what it is that you are going to do and then go do it.
Most people are paralyzed by both problems and having to make decisions. They believe that they are “dealing with” their problem simply because they are talking about it and thinking about it. But their inner stance has not shifted, and no action has been taken because there hasn’t been a decision made to act.
The magic is in consciously creating and living your inner stances through decisive action and not thinking things to death.
The great Roman philosopher Seneca said, “It’s not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it’s because we do not dare that things are difficult.” When you have a problem, dare to make a bold decision and take decisive action now.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this yet, but people don’t do very much about what they are “interested in” doing. So why pretend? When any of the interests become commitments, then we can talk.
Focus on the “what I am committed to accomplishing now” list. Make a decision. Take the required action.

CHAPTER 9 WHAT I KNOW VERSUS WHAT I LIVE
“What are the necessary required actions?” Werner Erhard once said, “Power doesn’t come from knowledge. What people know doesn’t make them powerful. It’s being present to what you’re dealing with that gives you power.” It’s never what I know.
Of all the information I’ve acquired, what do I live? What do I implement?
In straight-line coaching we consider intelligent people as those who implement what they know. Even when they have not acquired a lot of information, they are much more valuable to themselves and others than someone who absorbs tremendous amounts of information and rarely does anything with it. Unless your goal is to be a walking, talking human library trying to entertain yourself with what you know (content with insight), it’s best to start implementing what you know. Life is much more satisfying that way.
You might know that a more organized week, and a more deliberately created day, will have you be more effective. But do you live this way?
Remember that reasons only help you to sound reasonable and that they have nothing to do with producing personal and professional accomplishment.

CHAPTER 10 WANT TO VERSUS CHOOSE TO
Standing around wanting it to happen just burns up energy. It’s ultimately degrading. It makes you feel much worse no matter what it is that you are wanting because it lowers your self-respect and, therefore, puts you at a further disadvantage when it comes time to go get it.
So wishing, hoping, desiring, wanting—all these things are a waste of time. They deepen the story that you don’t have something yet. You are unfulfilled. You feel incomplete. You don’t have what you need to be happy.
Ask someone what he wants to do and he can talk forever. You will hear a lot. Now ask him, when he is finished, what does he choose to do? Silence.
That’s because there is a huge difference between the two activities. One lives in endless feedback loops of mental fantasy. The other lives in the real world of action. Whether the action happens or doesn’t happen always depends on what you CHOOSE to do. It will never depend on what you want to do.
This fear of getting it wrong keeps people stuck in their want to without ever going to the more powerful choose to option.
it rarely matters which course you choose, as long as you choose and act. Keep choosing. Stop worrying.
What, in the end, determines whether something was a good choice? You do. What you do after you choose can turn almost anything into a good choice.

CHAPTER 11 CAN’T VERSUS WON’T
Can’t refers to what is not possible for you to do. Won’t refers to something that you are capable of doing but just choose not to; you are not willing to exert the effort.
If someone offered you five million dollars to do what you are hesitating about, your answer might now be “Heck, yes!” Now you know that that one was a won’t as opposed to a can’t.
This is called being radically honest with yourself. Many times it doesn’t feel good, but it is a way to dramatically increase your effectiveness in life.
Life gets difficult, painful, and frustrating when you don’t keep can’ts and won’ts separate. This is because you’ve disconnected yourself from the power to choose, act, and achieve.
“I can’t solve this thing” is very different from “I won’t solve this thing.” You can choose how to behave regardless of how you feel. When you feel uncomfortable doing something, it means you have the opportunity to grow. Growth does not occur in the land of comfort. It all comes down to: 1) What comfort choices do I need to give up? 2) What growth choices do I need to take on?
People don’t get frustrated about what they’re not capable of doing. People get frustrated over knowing what they are capable of doing and are still choosing comfort over action. They choose comfort over commitment—the commitment to do what is required.
When it comes strictly to money, your greatest expense will always be the gap between what you are capable of earning and what you are really earning. This gap is always due to the inner stances you have adopted in which to live and operate. Some inner stances can be very expensive.
We subconsciously believe that by labeling uncomfortable actions as impossible and things that we can’t do, we give ourselves relief. We take ourselves off of the playing field. But in truth we are losing strength, inside, every time we retreat. Our inner stance weakens each time we surrender to comfort. Soon we’ve developed an inner stance of total incompetence and impotent passivity. It’s the most frightening way to live. It’s a life without the power of choice. To allow your power of choice to be overwhelmed in this way is insane.
That power that you give up by thinking that you can’t do what in reality is quite achievable. That same power that you could utilize to act decisively! Where does that power go? It goes to outside circumstances and other people. Soon you are living in fear of the latest economic news, whether people are supporting you, and who is gossiping behind your back.
These are the consequences of telling yourself you can’t do the things that you really can do. Repetition becomes hypnotic. Pretending that you are not suffering consequences from your current behavior doesn’t make the consequences any less real.
Obeying your fears keeps you from acting effectively. It’s that simple. Soon you’ve created a history of inaction. The choice is clear and simple. Do what’s required now or repeat history.

CHAPTER 12 BEING TRUTHFUL ABOUT WHERE YOU ARE VERSUS LYING ABOUT IT
But when people keep ignoring what’s present, it makes them stupid.
You can’t be telling everyone who could help you that “Things are fine!” when they are not.

CHAPTER 13 PLEASING VERSUS SERVING
Approval seeking is a toxic addiction. It is the one thing of which a person must be cured if they are going to do anything worthwhile in life.
We know of coaches and consultants whose whole motive is to please their clients, to try and make them a little more comfortable during a consulting session. But they never truly serve them or move them forward. They are having unreal conversations. And unreal conversations just create more unreality. It doesn’t matter whether they are completely dishonest or simply fantasy conversations (such as those that recommend positive thinking); the result is the same, and the consequences are expensive.
Anything you proclaim is “going to happen” only means that right now it’s not happening.
Questions often make people uncomfortable, and when they are effective questions (as these have proven to be), they demonstrate the power of truly transformative coaching, versus “chatting” and “therapy lite” and “pumping the client up.”
“What if you could act decisively with or without fear?” Most of us have bought into the supreme majesty of fear as the all-powerful force in the human realm. After we learn to worship fear, we run our lives avoiding what we fear. When we fear something, we don’t even consider doing it.
Change is never a matter of ability. It is a matter of choice.
We all know that another diet isn’t going to work is not true because all diets work. It’s people’s inner stances that don’t work. Change your inner stance and any diet will work. Where are you choosing to come from?
Now I ask you, “How do you need to be to make this happen?” And notice I want you to look inside, not outside. I want to have our work be about inner stances, not just outer circumstances. In fact, we can’t change outer circumstances by themselves. The change won’t hold. We have to change the way you are being, and subconsciously you already know that because I always get immediate, eager answers to this question. People know how they need to be to get the job done.
WHAT STOPS YOU? This may be the most interesting of all my questions put to you because this gives me the stories that disempower you. It reveals your perceptions about life and other people and your own power to change. This question uncovers your underlying, disempowering beliefs.
“What would life be like if you responded differently?”
“How do you want this to go?” You will then tell me what you ultimately want to achieve and I’ll ask, “What experience do you want by achieving this?”
want to know why you want the experience of achieving that goal, so I also ask, “What purpose would that serve?”
Now once we have the desired result on the table, and the reason behind the goal, the purpose behind the project, I ask a question that often surprises people, “Are you open to it?” I can only be committed to what you are committed to. So when you lack commitment then there is nothing to coach. “Why would I not be open to it?” Well, somehow you haven’t been open to it in the past or you would have had it by now. You wouldn’t just be talking about it. So something in you has been CLOSED to what it would take—who you would have to be—your inner stance. Are you open to it now? If I support and guide you, are you open to leaving the vicious circle and actually doing the necessary required actions? It’s important to know so and say so. That’s what we call a commitment.
These questions do not have to come in any rigid linear sequence. Everyone is different. We simply deal with what’s there in front of us.
And here’s an effective question when things get bogged down in endless stories and excuses, “WHAT DO YOU FEEL THE REAL ISSUE IS?”
Playing it safe by pretending to be indecisive is like building a bomb shelter and then locking yourself in.
“What are you waiting for to go away before you act?” People believe that if they don’t act and if they wait long enough, difficult problems might just go away. But experience says otherwise. And it helps to call myself out when I catch myself doing that.
Why base your life on avoiding fear and feeling safe? And this question will often stop someone cold. I’ll have nothing but silence for a while. Sometimes even tears: “When did you stop growing? When did you give up?”

CHAPTER 14 A CREATED WORLD VERSUS A REPORTED-ON WORLD
The straight-line coach helps his client to determine the specific measurable result that the client wants. Once the result is identified, behaviors and actions are created that bring the result into reality.

CHAPTER 15 A DREAM VERSUS A PROJECT
Circle people want to pursue dreams. For straight-line leaders, dreams are unstable. They are either to be discarded or converted immediately into a project. There’s nothing wrong with any dream you have; but to live an effective life, the dream has to get converted from your head (thinking about it) to a project that you can get your hands on and do something about.
A project takes you out of the infantile dream world of hope and change. It moves you away from the disempowering world of I want. It delivers you to a more vital world of I am accountable.
As Dr. Brad Blanton, the author of Radical Honesty says, “Wishing is a way to remove one’s self from what’s going on now. Hope is how most people avoid growing up.”
The beautiful thing about converting your dream into a project is that true project work won’t ever burn you out. As you move on your straight line from A to B, the movement energizes you.
“There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.” Douglas Everett
Burnout only occurs from trying to use your mental dream state to solve the same problems over and over again. You operate from the same undistinguished inner stances that are producing the same unworkable behaviors and actions that are producing the same unworkable results.
The Chinese have a saying that if you don’t watch where it is that you are going in life, you will end up where you are heading. Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan refer to this as the “default future” in their best-selling book The Three Laws of Performance. Default futures can be desired or undesired.
Ask yourself, “What will happen if nothing changes?” Once you can see what will happen, you’ve identified your default future. Motivational talks will not replace the default future that you are headed for. They will often keep you in the dream and out of the project. Getting started on your project is your solution.
Straight-line individuals know that the only time you can ever change from a dream to a project is now. As Lindsay Brady asks in his book As the Pendulum Swings, “Which now are you going to change in?”
And the good news here is that it is always now. And the only time to change is now. What are you thinking right now? The five most damaging words you could be thinking right now are: “IT CAN’T BE THIS SIMPLE.”
But it is that simple. And simplicity gives you strength. What are you waiting for? Do you need to find more reasons to take action on your project? Reasons will only help you to justify your actions. They have absolutely nothing to do with creating the life you choose.
Change only happens from the choices you make once you’ve experienced where you are at and how you are operating. This book may produce a number of very exciting awarenesses for you, but your choices after you experience the awarenesses are what will change your life.
And as you become more and more aware, you’ll see that real awareness occurs as a result of confronting where you are and how you actually operate in life. When you refuse to see the inner stance you are taking, there is nothing to choose. The stances that you operate out of are chosen. But remember, most people don’t realize that. They think their stance is “just the way I am!”
But thinking that the way you operate is the way you are is exactly what keeps you stuck. It’s also what keeps your problems in place and looking more complex and daunting every day.
Your very personality is, itself, a pattern of made-up stories about itself. All productive change comes from breaking such unproductive patterns. You can get caught up in those patterns by defending the unworkable positions out of which you were functioning.
In the end, it’s about doing what’s required. It’s about observing how you actually operate and when that’s not workable, choosing a stance that does work for you.
It’s been said that your life, when it’s over, will either be a warning or an example. So ask yourself, “Will my life be a warning to others? Or will it be a powerful example of what’s possible for a human being to do?”

CHAPTER 16 WORRY VERSUS CONCERN
Worry is passive and concern is active. People who think it’s a good idea to worry are basically confused. Worry sends you in circles. Concern can straighten you out.
Concern is a more mature approach to life. Concern has dignity and creativity in it. You can act much more effectively from concern.
Concern leads to action. Worry leads to dysfunction.
Worry is a practice. It is not a natural outcropping of love. It is a bad habit. Anything you practice long enough becomes a habit. It starts to feel natural. Upgrade worry to concern so that effective new action is possible. From a state of concern you can now create appropriate action. Creating is the answer to just about any problem.
Waiting for things to go away is living life as a victim. Give me one sane reason why you should stay at “waiting” or “worry” or “victim?” This is not about trying to deny an unfortunate reality. It’s about addressing an unworkable position that is putting you at a serious disadvantage.
Are you living at the level of choice or circumstance?
You can always change as long as you are aware of where you are living.
The purpose of straight-line coaching is to get participants to see that there is a choice and a more effective way to operate in life and that they can choose it. Playing wait and see for the rest of your life won’t work. Waiting for a big aha won’t work either. You have to choose. And only by choosing will you be able to live deliberately.

CHAPTER 17 SHOULDS VERSUS MUSTS
People almost never do what they think that they should do. But they always do what they feel that they must do.
A should do is a very weak inner stance. You can tell that by the results this type of inner stance produces. And remember that inner stances are not good or bad, but they do produce consequences. Some of those consequences are extremely desirable. And some are extremely undesirable.
When you create your own musts (commitments) and throw the shoulds away, you finally own your life. And if you don’t step in and own your own life, who will?
Give up the story that it’s hard. It’s just the nature of the game that you are playing.
Most of your problems arise out of having been ineffective. And that lack of effectiveness often comes from trying to do what other people think that you should do. Trying to always live up to other people’s expectations will kill your spirit. And a person whose spirit is dead will encounter nothing but problems. And the longer you believe you should be solving those problems, the less you will approach them.
Everything changes when you see that those problems must be solved. Feel the difference? Your energy goes way up. You are filled with new strength and resolve.
What people don’t know that they don’t know is that functioning from a disempowered inner stance does not allow you to just do it. Disempowered inner stances determine how you perceive yourself and how the world occurs to you. Your stance determines what you can see as possible. And what you can see will always limit (or inspire) your actions and behaviors.
Failure to commit is the high cost of low living. James R Baker
Only by becoming aware of the disempowered inner stance from which you are functioning will you have the choice to shift to an empowering stance. And it is that stance itself that will allow for the necessary required actions to “just do it.”
No one is special. It’s just that some people are willing to exercise the courage to begin and persist until they get the result that they are after. You are rewarded in life for taking effective action—not thinking, trying, or even the appearance of “giving it your best shot.”
Procrastinating on basic responsibilities is a covert attempt to make everybody you can your “mommy” figure in life. It’s back into the crib. Provide for me! It’s a refusal to evolve and grow up. You mature into your real power by the practice of not needing mommy and becoming an adult.
Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. And that happens when you’re willing to operate from a must-do list every day.
It’s a proven fact that healthy people produce more than unhealthy people, and they are more effective on the job. Challenges involving fitness and employee stamina commonly revolve around the habits of smoking and overeating.
The people Terry coaches really get that merely understanding why they smoke or overeat doesn’t do much to stop the destructive behaviors.

CHAPTER 18 “I’M RESPONSIBLE” VERSUS “IT’S THEIR FAULT”
Here’s a hot, politically incorrect tip if you can take it: saying “that’s not fair” makes you sound stupid and naïve. It also makes you sound like a whiner, which is even worse. People will not respect you.
Really strong straight-line leaders are even effective at leading people who might not like their style. Because those people still respect them. They respect the leader for being responsible to be and do what’s required… even when they don’t approve of how it’s done.
People who worry about being liked and being approved of will never be straight-line leaders. They will never be effective.
Remember, too, that you don’t have to like it. You just have to do it.

CHAPTER 19 GROWTH CHOICES VERSUS SAFE CHOICES
There is no standing still in life. There is only growing or contracting.
Can you exercise once and for all? It simply would not work. You could lock yourself in a gym for a year and create the perfect body. But if you stopped working out, it wouldn’t be long before you started to develop that spare tire around your waist that you worked so hard to get rid of.
So when faced with a choice between two options, don’t forget to ask yourself, “Which option would be most likely to grow me? Which option is most likely to just keep me safe?”
“It’s not safe, but we’re asking you to consider a stance that does not value or seek safety.” Rita began risking. She proposed bigger projects with bigger fees attached to them. Every time she entered a negotiation or wrote a proposal she asked, “What if I asked for more?”
And even when they said no, she didn’t lose the relationship. In fact they ended up apologizing to her for not having the budget to accept the bigger offerings. “Why didn’t I do this from the start?” she said. “I can’t even begin to add up all the money I could have made in the past two years.” We explained that her inner stance of safety first had prevented her from seeing what was really possible and that shifting to a growth stance would make a huge difference in resolving the matter.

CHAPTER 20 CONTENT WITH INSIGHT VERSUS ONLY RESULTS COUNT
If you are going to be successful in life, the first thing you will have to do with all of the great information you learn is to get it out of your head and into the physical world.
Receiving an insight is just a mental thing a person does. He hears a good idea, he is excited about it for a while, but he doesn’t really alter his behavior so he never gets a result.
It’s extremely wise to ask yourself, “What am I really going to do with all of this great information that I am accumulating? Am I going to utilize it to get the results that I am after in life? Or am I just content with knowing about it?”
To bankrupt a fool, give him information. Nicholas Nassim Taleb
To get out of the circle of insight—all those new insights you got at the latest seminar—you want to perform an almost physical leap. When an insight occurs you have taken in information. The leap is created by taking appropriate action with the information that you have absorbed. This is what will move your life forward.
When you find yourself in a vicious circle you might just be stuck on the track of spending your life being happy to accumulate insights. You might end up, at the end of your life, being the most well-informed person in the nursing home, but you won’t accomplish much.

CHAPTER 21 OPTIMISTIC DENIAL VERSUS THE VALLEY OF DEATH
Living in optimistic denial is no more effective than beating yourself up.
Sometimes I will get a client who is in persistent denial of a defeated position and yet he keeps selling himself an optimistic interpretation of his situation. Even though he is stuck down in the valley, he speaks as if he is on the mountaintop. I sometimes ask, “How has telling ‘realistic’ stories kept you from the life you desire?”
Your past behavior is nothing more than an irrelevant story that you choose to tell and re-tell. The best predictor of future performance is the position that you are coming from right now. And that is yours to freely choose.

CHAPTER 22 PRODUCTIVITY VERSUS BUSYNESS
This need to put on a show—for yourself and those around you—of excessive busyness comes from not taking productive actions in the first place.
If you were actually performing productive actions you would have to have a lot of free time.
Productive actions are the necessary required actions that are vital to a successful outcome. The more successful your outcomes are the less the need to appear busy.
However! When you take the easy way out and don’t do what’s required in the first place, it goes without saying that you are going to get further and further behind. Therefore, you come up with the greatest show on earth: excessive, dramatic, stressful busyness.
You are actually attempting to replace required actions with busybody activities that are less confrontive and easier.
When you get far behind because what was required was not done, you often try to make up for it by a flurry of foolish activities that never end up amounting to anything.
We begin with a series of questions: “Is what you are doing in the next hour highly productive for you? Is it your next necessary required action? Or are you just keeping busy?”
Slow down and remember this: Most things make no difference. Being busy is a form of mental laziness— lazy thinking and indiscriminate action. Timothy Ferriss
Busy people fill their days with unreal conversations—conversations about things that they know will never be made to happen. Unreal conversations are expensive. People will waste precious time—time that could have been used productively—asking questions about things that they have no intention of doing.
The reason people don’t do “what’s required” is because they really don’t want to. Otherwise they would be doing it instead of talking about it.
“What’s the most powerful action that I can take right now?” (It’s always an action that you aren’t willing to take that stops you from your desired result.)
And once you’ve identified the next powerful action to take, don’t let what you don’t know or don’t feel stop you. You may not know exactly how to do something. Just get busy doing it. You’ll find out how to do it by what fails and what doesn’t. You may not feel the right feelings, like being psyched to do it, but do it anyway. There will be plenty of time for good feelings later.
Many people try to infuse their unproductive busyness with positive talk and positive thinking. This is what we’ve identified as optimistic denial. You are denying reality and hiding behind false optimism. And even though it has a positive tone to it, it’s no more effective than ignoring the undesired situation entirely. Positive thinking ends up in frustration.
Unproductively busy people sometimes identify truly productive actions to be taken, but they put them off until tomorrow. But then tomorrow becomes never.
Busy people run out of time for what’s important. But lack of time is not the true issue. The issue is a lack of priority setting.
Effectiveness is doing only the necessary required actions well that will get your goal achieved. Efficiency is doing things well no matter what they are.
PRODUCTIVITY = doing what’s in front of you that will lead to the attainment of your desired outcome. BUSYNESS = activity driven out of desperation because you didn’t handle what was in front of you and don’t want to appear as if you have quit trying.
Check in with yourself throughout the day: Are you just inventing things to do to avoid necessary required actions?

CHAPTER 23 COMMITMENT VERSUS TRYING
Trying is a victim concept. Notice how you feel when someone tells you that they are trying. You might ask, “Will you pay my loan back by next month?” and they say, “I’ll try.” Are you now counting on getting the money? No. Because “I’ll try” is code for “Don’t count on it.”
A commitment is a move that announces to the world what it is that you will accomplish. A commitment means that you will alter yourself and your actions to match what is required to get the intended result that you are after.
Commitment is the means by which you measure your intention and focus your will.
What you have been committed to up to now is revealed by what you have produced or have failed to produce.
A real commitment is a powerful declaration that functions to alter behavior.
If performance is the capacity to generate results, then commitment is a promise to do what’s required to get those results you are after. It is the fuel that runs the engine.
But doing what’s required, by definition, is doing what gets the result. Doing whatever gets the result. And not knowing what that is, is not an impediment. It’s not a reason to quit. It’s a reason to keep going until you find, through experiment and/or inquiry, what the necessary required action is.
People don’t make commitments because they think it would be a drain or a burden. The opposite is true. Failing to make a commitment will dissipate your energies rather than focusing them.
Commitment isn’t about how much time you spend doing things—it’s a line you cross within yourself. You might describe that line as being, “I’m doing this regardless of what it takes.”
Are you really committed to doing something about the items in those areas of your life? When the answer is yes, it’s now time to define the necessary required actions to be engaged and the timelines for completion. Without those, a commitment dies on the vine.
TAKE INVENTORY: 1) Where have you been going through the motions? (List them out.) 2) Are you really committed to each and every item on the list? Yes/No. 3) If you are not committed to an item clean it up. If yes go to #4. 4) List the necessary required actions for each item. 5) Create a timeline for the completion of each item.
What new commitments do you need to create to get the future you choose? What results will you produce as a measure of your commitment?
And when your days take you into overwhelm, remember this: it’s not time management that has you confused; it’s commitment management.
Because when we aren’t clear about what we are committed to, we tend to get over-involved, and this is what produces what we call “the mess” of not having enough time. Remember: involvement and commitment are not the same thing.
There may be many things you are involved with but are not committed to. Keep the difference clear. Because a lack of clearly-defined commitments opens the door to you saying “yes” way too much and “no” not nearly enough.
Once you’ve made your commitments, and made them as strong declarations, stay clear on what they are. A human can carry from five to seven authentic commitments at any given time. And your success in keeping them relies on your practice of keeping them straight and not confusing your true commitments with things you are merely involved with.
When I am unclear about my commitment, I procrastinate. When I am clear about my commitment, I act. When I am unclear about my commitment, I talk about my job. When I am clear about my commitment, I do my job. When I am unclear about my commitment, I maintain my image. When I am clear about my commitment, I maintain my integrity. When I am unclear about my commitment, I play it safe. When I am clear about my commitment, I empower others. When I am unclear about my commitment, I am dull and confused. When I am clear about my commitment, I am intentional and direct.

CHAPTER 24 OWNER VERSUS VICTIM
Ownership is a created state of mind. It’s a distinct place to come from. Once I’m there, I’m an owner of my life. I’ve taken over. I’m no longer a mere victim of circumstances. I will now create the circumstances in my life.
Even while taking the stance of ownership, victim thoughts can happen. But as an owner I am aware of a fundamental choice I always have, either to 1) latch onto the thought, believe it, and identify with it or 2) challenge the thought and let it go.
Victim thoughts happen. Do I want to identify with them? Do I want to believe them? Not when I’m being an owner. As an owner I take over my life right now. Now means everything to me. I realize right now that I don’t have to solve things in my past to be effective. Victims are fixated on solving the past. They nurture past hurts and memories.
The owner “gives himself permission” to live the life that he chooses. The victim is still trying to “get permission from someone or something” outside of himself.
Refusing to be a “victim” is not about trying to deny reality. It’s about addressing a “way of being” that creates artificial hardships that are totally unnecessary.
When you find yourself in a difficult situation ask, “How do I empower myself with this situation?” That’s ownership. That very question shifts who you are being from victim to owner. Distinguish who you are being whenever you feel stuck. Soon you’ll see that “who you be” is “what you do.”
When I meet with a new client who is stuck with a huge challenge, we will first look at what he has created that resulted in him being stuck. When he sees the creation he sees he has the power to change it. Now he can own it instead of being a victim of it.
How a victim behave
s is perfect for how the world looks to him. From where he’s standing (his stance) it’s all he can see. All he can see are people not appreciating him, not treating him with respect, and not giving him a fair chance. He lives in a world of no opportunity. When he sits across from me in our first straight-line session, I may tell him, “It’s about who you are—not who they are.”
But being a victim about being a victim won’t work either. It’s in the past. It’s over. And the past doesn’t exist unless he wants to go dig it up and give it newly nurtured life.
Owners are thinking, “It’s okay for others to have their stories about me,” while victims are obsessed with, “What are they thinking about me?”Owners do what they are doing while they are doing it. Owners do one thing at a time. Owners are focused (while victims are scattered).
Owners are always looking for and finding how it can be done. Victims are always explaining to themselves and others why it can’t be done. Owners realize: Given who we are, we get the world we live in.
Owners tend to deliver well-compensated service. That’s because owners are always looking for “How can I serve them?” While victims are trying desperately to find out “Do they like me?”
Are you way down in victim gear asking, “How do I get through this?” or are you up in owner’s gear asking, “How do I give 100% regardless of the circumstances and enjoy the process?”
Don’t make excuses. Say what it is that you are going to do and then go do it.
Victims talk about what they will do someday. Owners create the future today.
When you create a position of ownership to come from, know that it won’t last. It won’t hold. It has to be constantly created. You have to create it and then live what you create over and over again. Distinctions have a shelf life. They are living things. Every living thing has a shelf life. But that’s the good news. Because there’s no lasting permanence, you know that it’s open to being created at any moment you choose. You can always bring it into existence yourself. You don’t have to worry about whether it’s there or not. You’ll know to create it.
Victims believe the opposite. They believe in permanent personalities that never change. They hide inside, “That’s just the way I am!”
Victims are a collection of injustices and shortcomings functioning out of childhood personalities that may have worked at one time but not anymore. All remembered from the dead past.
You can choose right now to live as an invented you or a default you. It’s all the story of you anyway. What do you want the story to be based on? What you are creating today? That’s you at your very best. Or do you want the story of you to be based on past hurts and injuries to your ego? That’s where most people live. No wonder they are always so overly careful and cautious. No wonder they are always playing it safe and never really risking doing anything extraordinary.
Ownership is not a version of positive thinking. It is very radical, potent material that changes cultures. When you are a straight-line leader delivering the distinction of ownership to others, it moves your people and empowers your culture. You can see that these are powerful distinctions that people can use the moment they grasp them. They won’t have to struggle to remember them. They will own them.
“Who you create yourself to be determines the actions that you take and the results you achieve. And ‘Now’ is the only time that you can produce results. When it comes to producing results, the past and the future do not exist.”
A distinction returns you to the level of choice. Most people do not live at the level of choice. They live at foggier, weaker levels of victimization and circumstance. But ownership returns them to the level of choice.
An owner’s life is based on what he is here to do. A victim’s life is based on what he seeks to avoid.
An owner comes from the language of intention (what he declares that he will do). A victim comes from the language of obligation (what he believes that he should do, as if it were a burden).
Our coaching is performance and productivity focused. It’s not mood work. Motivators who come to sales meetings and pump people up with positive thinking can actually make things worse. Because when you don’t have ownership deep down at the level of choice, it doesn’t matter what you try to put on top of it as a positive thought. The true inner you will argue back. If you keep lying to yourself with false positives you’ll get a riot going in your mind. Your people only do two things. They either take ownership of their mindset or they default into a victim mindset.
happiness is a natural by-product of growth, so we put our focus there.
People soon see that it’s a victim mindset that leads to distraction, procrastination, office politics, low productivity, and secret sabotage.
Owners function from the viewpoint that no matter what they are faced with, they are going to get something good out of it—that it will be a learning experience—they will always live more powerfully thereafter. They grow stronger.
Owners challenge that voice whenever it comes up. They neutralize it. They create their own voice. They take charge of situations. They, therefore, become more rational, realistic, scientific, and tough-minded. They know that if there is no solution, then there is no problem. They don’t dwell on the injustice of it all. They don’t think about things in terms of shoulds and should-nots.
When a problem cannot be changed, then it is a fact of life and it’s time to move on.
An owner will assume any personality in order to keep his commitments. He will be who he needs to be. A victim will break any commitment to keep his personality intact. They live in the “I’ve got to be me” syndrome.
Owners convert problems into projects. Living with exciting projects is more fun and empowering than living with depressing problems.
Being an owner is not a permanent personality or characteristic that you have or don’t have. It’s a state of being you enter or don’t enter.
You can start by relating to your current problem as a project that you’re happy to be engaged with. You will have a totally different experience.
Ownership is not something you learn; it’s something you practice.
everything you encounter today is an opportunity for practice. By choosing to take ownership and responsibility, you’ll break out of the victim’s circle and get on the fast track to the results you want. You will thrill to the power of a truly straight line.

CHAPTER 25 THE SAME VERSUS SEPARATE
What you are going through and your commitment to change your life are two separate things! People keep recycling themselves like tossed laundry inside the complaints of what they are going through, and when it is suggested that they have the option to commit to something bigger and better, they try to put the commitment inside of what they are going through and it doesn’t go there!
Once you see something as separate, that’s it. You can’t go back to confusing it for something else. There’s clarity and freedom in that.
The ancient sages of India talked of enlightenment in terms of the snake and the rope. If you are walking along a road at night and the lighting is bad, you might come upon a rope and believe it to be a snake. You are filled with fear and panic. But as you look more closely you see that it is only a rope. Once you see it clearly as a rope, you cannot ever fear it again. You can’t feel any panic. Once you see that the trouble you are going through is merely a separate set of circumstances that has no relationship to your commitment to change yourself and your life, it will no longer panic you.
You will not confuse the circumstance with the commitment ever again, which leaves you free to focus on and enjoy the fruits of your commitment. Once you see that the snake is a rope, it cannot return to being a snake.

CHAPTER 26 AGREEMENTS VERSUS EXPECTATIONS
Expectations lead to poor time management. Expectations also encourage employees to take a more immature position in their communication with management; almost an attempt to be re-parented by a supervisor rather than having an adult-to-adult relationship based on agreements.
Once agreements are made on an adult-to-adult basis, people don’t have to be managed anymore. What gets managed is the agreement. It is more mature and respectful to interact in this manner, and both sides enjoy more open and trusting communication.
The biggest beneficial impact of managing agreements is on communication. It frees communication up to be more honest, open, and complete.

The problem with having your relationships held together by expectations is that the person you expect things from does not feel respected in that exchange. And the most important, the most powerful precondition to good performance is trust and respect.
A straight-line leader does not run around trying to anticipate and navigate around people’s emotions and personalities. He is not engaged in setting up new expectations and always being disappointed. Expectation almost always leads to disappointment. While agreements, made voluntarily and creatively by both people, are almost always kept.
A straight-line leader manages commitments and agreements. He creates agreements with team members and enters into those agreements on an adult-to-adult basis. All communication is done with mutual respect. There is no giving in to the temptation to be intimidating, bossy, or all-knowing, which comes from having expectations and no courage to make an agreement.
If I spend all my time trying to guess and then live up to others’ expectations, it’s a no-win situation. It simply cannot be accomplished. They’ll just keep adding more expectations. Not only that—if I’m living my life based on guessing what other people’s expectations are, I will sink down into confusion and resentment.
The creation of an agreement takes courage, bold requests, and promises.
It always contains specific measurable timelines and deadlines. It asks that we give and keep our word. It asks of us that we take the appropriate action required to keep the agreement.
CHAPTER 27 RADICAL SELF-HONESTY VERSUS BEING INSINCERE
One of the most effective ways to enliven your life is to make a declarative statement and then live consistent with what you’ve stated.
You will notice that the people you respect the most in life are the ones who say what it is that they are going to do and then follow up and do what they said that they would do.
Being real is saying what you mean and doing what you say. Being insincere is saying one thing and doing something else.
Being insincere is rarely following up on your promises unless it’s convenient. Being insincere is damaging to relationships. Insincere people tend to be available for every sure thing and absent when it counts.
People want to be around someone who is stable. They want to be around someone who will be direct and honest with them. They want to be around someone that they can count on.
There’s another form of insincerity that is even more damaging to a purpose or a project, and that’s internal insincerity. It’s the insincerity with yourself about what you’re doing throughout the day.
When I look at my activities on any given day, I want to employ radical self-honesty: “Am I just inventing things to do to avoid or put off the necessary required actions?”
Martin confessed that most of his time had been spent on re-designing his website again and again, playing around with social and professional networking groups, and meeting with people who gave him no business “but might do so some day down the road.” Each day he would invent more things like this to do, but his world had become a circle. He was going around and around, getting no results.
Armed with radical honesty as a distinction, Martin began to perform more effectively. He blocked out hours of sales-conversation time as his first daily priority. He was honest enough to see that only through scheduled conversations could his business grow. And grow it did. Soon Martin had a thriving client list, and he was even more effective at consulting with his own clients to engage in a more radically honest approach to their own business—to identifying what works and then ruthlessly prioritizing that activity each day.
Martin had been telling his peers and his family that he couldn’t figure out why his business wasn’t growing. He always said to them that he was “doing everything he knew to do.” But doing everything you know to do doesn’t count—you have to do what is going to make a real difference.
As we surveyed his unproductive business we helped him to see that allowing his thoughts and feelings to determine his actions didn’t make a lot of sense. That’s because your thoughts and feelings come and go. They ride in on the breeze and change every hour. They are nothing with which to base a businesses’ success.
And the best way to know when you are actually on the straight line is to look at your results. Are they showing up yet? If they are not, you are still in the circle.
“I don’t always like doing the required actions on my daily list,” he said. “You don’t have to like it. You just have to do what’s necessary. You don’t have to like performing certain required actions; but when you keep doing them, you will be amazed with the results that you get.”
It confronts the insincerity in statements like, “I’ll do that tomorrow.” Radical self-honesty acknowledges that tomorrow never comes.
Radical self-honesty is not easy. It wasn’t easy for Martin. But once he began using it and then actually living from it as an inner stance, his whole life got easier. Growing his business got easier, too.
He finally realized: The easier you are on yourself, the harder life is on you. But the more honest you get with yourself, the easier life is.

CHAPTER 28 REALISTIC OPTIMISM VERSUS UNREALISTIC PESSIMISM
optimists are realists. Pessimists are unrealistic because of what they see and don’t see.
Optimism is the practice of focusing on opportunities and possibilities rather than complaints and regrets.
It also turns out (and you can logically verify this) that optimists are healthier than pessimists, they’re financially more successful than pessimists, and they perform better in learning institutions than pessimists. Not only that, optimists have more fulfilling relationships than pessimists.
All of that comes from focusing and acting on possibilities.
The best news in Seligman’s research studies is that optimism and pessimism are learned habits. They are not inherited. There is no gene for optimism. We create it as a deliberate habit.
The habit of being realistic is the habit of seeing all possibilities. It ’s what an optimist does. The pessimist does the opposite. The pessimist quits too soon. The pessimist shuts out even the possibility of possibility. His artificially limited thinking is often used as a misguided protection mechanism for dealing with future disappointment.
The problem with that habitual mechanism is that the practice of avoiding disappointment has all of one’s life ending up being a total disappointment.
Optimism is programming. It’s not a character trait, even though we usually think and speak of it that way. “She’s such an optimistic person. He’s a born pessimist!” Optimism can be learned. It’s a habit caused by repetition.
Optimism repeats proactive, creative, accepting thoughts. When problems arise the optimist asks, “Considering what I’m up to, what do I want to create with this situation?”
Optimists interrupt their negative trains of thought. They watch over their thoughts and know that they do not have to believe any of them. Pessimists believe almost everything they think. Once a gloomy thought occurs to a pessimist, he latches onto it and believes it as if it were the truth.
Optimists challenge negative thoughts. They do not believe in them. They use their minds optimally and actively and guard their potent mindset with everything they’ve got. Pessimists unrealistically take the first thought they think and never question it. They shut down the act of inquiry, and thereby they preclude any chance that they might have had at finding inspired ideas and innovative action.
Optimists know that their feelings come from their thinking. They also know that they are in charge of whether they challenge or accept any line of thought that appears. Therefore they end up being in charge of how they feel.

CHAPTER 29 BEING BOLD VERSUS BEING ARROGANT
Being bold takes courage. It’s stepping up when you don’t feel like stepping up. It’s taking appropriate action when you’d rather not.
Insecure bullies are arrogant. Even when people give in and let them have their way, they usually want nothing to do with the bully after that.

CHAPTER 30 DISCOMFORT AND PAIN VERSUS CHAOS
Without a sincere respect for focus, we tend to escalate whatever it is that we are feeling uncomfortable about.
most people do is escalate the discomfort and pain to chaos. That’s not where you want to go.
Chaos is that irrational, emotional place in your mind where you’ve melted down and can no longer think or make sense of the world. We usually go there by catastrophizing a situation and exaggerating the drama of it.
From chaos, you cannot focus on what may save you in an attack. Also, from chaos (an irrational inner wailing like, “I’ve been a good honorable person all my life; how did I deserve this attack on me; I will never make it; life will never be the same, etc.”), you are likely to scare the assailants themselves into escalating to their own chaos (“This person is freaking out; now I’ve got to silence them forever”) and bring you even greater harm.
Staying focused simply gives you the best chance of being effective and surviving. Security cameras have recorded little old ladies fighting off big male attackers in their twenties simply by remaining focused and being intentional.
The straight-line practice that eliminates all this emotional escalation is this: when you are in discomfort keep it there with focus. Do not go to pain when you can help it (emotional pain is created by judgment alone) and never go to chaos. And what do you focus on? You focus on the next thing to do in the moment.
Accept the discomfort and then focus on what’s required to get the job done and start taking action. Once you are in action that will be enough to keep the condition at discomfort. And after a little more productive action, even the discomfort will start to subside as you start getting desired results.

CHAPTER 31 PURPOSE MANAGEMENT VERSUS TIME MANAGEMENT
We use the term “sawing sawdust” to describe performing unproductive activities over and over and generating what looks like a “time management” problem in the process.
If you have a time-management problem, you’ll want to ask, “What’s beneath the time management problem?” In almost every case it will be a dysfunctional inner stance. It’s not what you are doing so much as who you are being right now.
So look at the problem again and ask a weird question: “HOW COULD I BE IN THE FACE OF THIS?” And to get you there you might have to backtrack a bit and ask, “What is my basic purpose in life?” Once you connect to that, it will allow you to always know what to say YES to and what to say NO to.
When you are not sure what to say yes to and what to say no to, you will always appear to have a time-management problem. Having no committed stance throughout the day looks like a time-management problem but it’s not.
It’s actually more of a bold communication problem. Remember your purpose, and you solve time management forever: • Who am I? • Why am I here? • What do I choose to create?
A really dysfunctional way of living life is to check in with your feelings all day: “What do I feel like doing now?” By choosing to obey your feelings you run a huge risk of wrecking your life. When you just start doing what’s required and ignore your feelings, you will develop a muscle that will change your life.
• What do I really intend to achieve? • Am I willing to get it? • What would guarantee it? • How can I ratchet up my accountability level?
Maybe what’s missing on my road to the result I want is a necessary required action that I am not willing to do!
You can do what you’re not willing to do by fooling yourself and doing it anyway before your willingness can figure out what happened.
Just do the things you are procrastinating on. That’s ultimately how you outwit procrastination. As the great philosopher Emerson used to say, “Do the thing and you shall have the power.”
Notice the order Emerson has it in. He does not advise that we find the power or even the willingness to do it before doing it. He says to do the thing first and experience the power after that.
People assume that they have to wait for things that they don’t have to wait for. They think they need certain qualities that they don’t have. So they spend their day sawing sawdust, doing all the easy, non-productive activities they’ve already done enough of.
It’s just that you’re not doing what’s required. That’s all. All that’s keeping you from doing it is that you’re not doing it.
We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
You don’t have to be a disciplined person. There’s no such thing as a permanently, genetically disciplined person. You choose discipline or you don’t. Discipline is simply remembering what you intend to do and refusing to get sidetracked. Are you not doing something that you say you want to do? You are not doing it because you have not chosen to. Willpower has nothing to do with it. Willpower is not necessary. It’s all about choice.

CHAPTER 32 EXTREME SELF-CARE VERSUS SELFISHNESS
Buddha said you’ve got to take care of yourself before you take care of other people. That is why, in an airplane, you put the oxygen mask on yourself first before you put it on your kids.
Selfishness is small-minded and greedy—but self-care is wise and benefits every life you touch. When you engage in extreme self-care, you are supporting your own well-being so that you can better contribute to others.
Extreme self-care and generosity can exist simultaneously. It’s not self-absorbed, because practicing extreme self-care makes you more effective at serving other people.
Somewhere in the process of marriage and children she gave up on her goals and dreams thinking this would create harmony. BIG MISTAKE! Instead, she numbed herself to her inner wisdom and was robotically going through the motions of each day unaware of the brewing resentment and rage just below the surface, and her husband was willing to act that out. But when she finally put herself back in the equation, breathed life into her aspirations, and transformed her dream into a project, she awoke to her true passion, and as if by magic her husband became the man she fell in love with all over again.
Rohini Ross has become a recognized expert in helping women to transform their lives. She is a relationship empowerment coach in Los Angeles and received her MA in Counseling Psychology from the University of Santa Monica.

CHAPTER 33 HOW TO VERSUS CHOOSE TO
This shift, when people make it, when they see it—when they can really see it clearly—allows them to participate in a future that offers a much higher level of performance. They start getting their intended outcomes. And it works in any field where they would like to have greater productivity—greater results. It can be weight loss, it can be sales, it can be income, it can be relationships—anything that they want to go out and bring into their lives, and then measure the result.
That’s what happens when they get this distinction and begin to live from it: moving from an obsession with knowing how to do something to simply choosing to do it.
It needs to shift from knowing as an inner stance. There’s a big problem with the stance of knowing. It’s the idea that I need to know something before I can take action. And here’s how it shows up: “I don’t know how to do this” or “I don’t know what to do. I want to do this but I don’t know how to do it.” It also shows up this way: “I would like to reach out and connect with people and let them know about my service, but I don’t know who to call.”
So those are the three ways this dysfunction shows up. A. I don’t know how to… B. I don’t know what to… C. I don’t know who to…
And if there is specific information which is truly needed, your “choose to” will provide it. A powerful “choose to” will cure ignorance and an inadequate skill set every time. You can find out how to do anything. The how to is never really what’s missing.
The choosing to is what’s missing. It’s simply not true that you don’t know how to do this. Here’s what’s missing—you have not chosen to. And that’s the whole point here and that’s the major mind shift. It’s a shift from knowing to choosing. The person who is not performing is not choosing.
Choosing puts you in action because even when you make the wrong choice, you are normally better off than you were.
People get so hung up in what would be the right thing and then they tell themselves “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know what would be the right thing to do. I don’t know how to decide. I don’t know how to know. It’s not just that I don’t know what to do, I don’t even know how to know what to do.” That stops people. Can you see where that stops people?
And I say to my client, “What if I told you I would give you one million dollars if I left the room for an hour, and when I returned you had twenty good people to call listed on a sheet of paper? You can get the names anywhere. You can get them from your computer, from calling others, anywhere you wish; but I want you to come up with twenty really good people to call and I’ll give you a million dollars when you do it. You have one hour. Would you do it?” The answer is always yes. They can see right away, “Yeah, I’d come up with twenty good people. I’d collect my million dollars; you bet.” They can see that once they began calling their original twenty people, the list would expand with references, the ball would be rolling, and everything would be on its way to the result. We do know how to get our result. We are simply choosing not to.
So people are not stuck in not knowing “how to.” They are stuck in not “choosing.”
When I dangle a million dollars in front of someone, they wake up and start to see what they are normally unaware of.

CHAPTER 34 NICE VERSUS KIND
The vast majority of the most effective people I have ever met in life have been direct, gracious, generous, caring, and somewhere between moderately and brutally honest with themselves and others.
They were demonstrations of sincerity and kindness. Very few were ever “nice.”
Nice stops you from being effective. Nice is not respectful. Nice is a stance you take to protect your own feelings. It’s insincere. Being nice is manipulative and wastes a lot of time. Individuals operating out of an inner stance of being nice have trouble choosing “in” or choosing “out.” They tend to stumble around and produce very little.
If you have been coming from a stance that people have the power to hurt your feelings, you’ll want to shift your position immediately and forever (because they simply don’t). This book doesn’t go into detail on that subject, but Byron Katie’s Loving What Is does. If you care to explore the subject further, that’s the book that I would want you to read.
Being kind is simply being truthful with other people. It is not telling other people what you think that they want to hear so that you can personally feel better.
CHAPTER 35 POSITIVE NO VERSUS REJECTION
No-purpose people become a victim of the unlimited amount of requests that they get throughout the day to do things that have nothing to do with their real goals or purposes. This and this alone creates the illusion that they don’t have any time.
What looks like a time-management problem is not that at all. It is a problem of purposeless living. We sometimes call it intention deficit disorder. You are not intending anything; you’re frequently just dealing with your fear of other people’s judgment.
You only feel like you don’t “have enough time” to do what’s important because you leave your bedroom in the morning without choosing your purpose for the day. What do you choose instead? Well, it’s not exactly an active choice. It’s more like a passive default collapse into worry and anticipating.
You are guiding yourself by trying to anticipate what others will accept you for and what they will reject you for.
So, in a way, you’re right to think that you don’t have time, but it’s because you’re off doing all these people-pleasing things that have nothing to do with your basic purpose. People ask you to do things and you respond quickly to their every text and email, take their calls, do things to please them. You can’t say no.
But, why can’t you? It’s because you’ve not yet generated a strong enough YES to what you want to do with your own precious time.
But when you set your purpose at the beginning of the day, you are creating a straight line. People trying to pull you off your line will get a polite, positive NO.
Notice that when your mission is clear and committed, the positive no comes easily. If you are on your way to the airport and your best customer asks you to come by for coffee, you easily say, “No thank you; I am on the way to catch a plane.” That’s what purpose does for you.
Your inner stance can always be a commitment to fulfilling your purpose today—airport or not. You can know where you stand and what you can decide to say yes and no to. You know what pulls you off the straight line and what doesn’t. You are no longer afraid to say no. You even learn to turn the dreaded no into a positive no.
A positive no is something you utilize to create time. You know what to say no to based upon what your purpose is. So when somebody asks you to do something that’s totally out of line with your purpose, you can easily say no to that. You do that in a strong, polite, considerate, positive way. No apology.
You’d much rather hear an honest “no” than have to decode, interpret, and translate all the socially correct fabrications that come your way. It’s more effective for your productivity to deal with an honest “no” than to have to listen to people pretending that they are interested in doing something that they are never going to do.
So rather than seeing someone’s “no” as a personal rejection, you can use it as a positive piece of information. Honesty saves you a lot of time.
When your time is consumed by always saying yes, and pleasing people unnecessarily, you’re not doing the necessary actions that you need to achieve your goals. By mastering (through practice) a positive no you’re simply remaining true to yourself and what you are committed to.
It’s been said that there are two pains in life: the pain of discipline and the pain of regret. In the long run the pain of discipline weighs ounces while the pain of regret weighs tons.
The pain of discipline disappears quickly while the pain of regret lasts forever. You may experience some mild pains in the beginning when you first practice handing out your positive nos. But in the long run it will save you tons of everlasting regret.
CHAPTER 36 TOLERANCE VERSUS CONFRONTATION
He respectfully confronts people and situations. He wants the truth and challenges himself and others to get to the bottom of things.
Do you want to measure your straight-line leadership? Once a week stop what you are doing. Observe the activities that you are engaged in, and really challenge yourself by asking, “Are these activities taking me toward my goal or are they just making my life more complex?”
Most people really don’t want to confront anything—whatever it might be. Therefore, that thing, person, or situation they don’t confront gets very difficult to deal with.
Let’s say that they don’t want to confront their reluctance to go into the world and make a big sale. Now they think they need to read thirty-four sales books before they call on some potential prospects. Or if they are unwilling to confront their fear of public speaking, they think they need to go to Dale Carnegie six times before they go out and give a talk. Then they think they need to take additional public speaking courses after that.
The things that they don’t want to face get bigger and bigger. Life and its difficulties grow very complex out of non-confront. Unfinished jobs pile up. Promises are now broken. We could have just gone out and done what was required at the time but we didn’t.
You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Paulo Coelho
Tolerations are the things that you’re putting up with that you actually have the ability to resolve and yet you still choose to ignore. Tolerations are things that literally suck and drain your attention and your energy. They always live in the back of your mind from the minute you get up in the morning to the moment you fall asleep. They sometimes live after that in bad dreams. They are like mind parasites. It is now time to confront them. Are you willing to risk the unexpected?
Your straight-line confrontations could be anything from having a conversation with a friend who is bugging you to cleaning up your messy desk, to washing your car, to sending a bold proposal to someone you know you want to do business with. Without being willing to confront these tolerations, they will drain your energy whenever you think about them.
Now notice that there’s a difference between tolerating and coping. When people are coping they usually feel that whatever they are coping with can’t really be changed. So they cope. They relax a bit about it and do their best to deal with it. But whatever you are tolerating, you know you can change; and that is why your tolerations drain you.
So now list those things that you have been tolerating—both in your personal life and business life. Put them on two separate lists. Got them down on paper? Good. Your next step is to write out the downside of keeping the tolerations in your life. What is the negative impact on your psyche? How about your relationships? What’s the impact on your bank account? Got all that down? Good and now for the fun part. It’s time to write out the upside of letting these tolerations go out of your life. What are all the positive benefits (list these in detail) of removing these things? On your peace of mind? On your relationships? On your pocketbook? Finally, you are going to list out the actions that must be completed to eliminate each and every toleration. Put the actions down next to absolutely every item that you have on your list.
I like to look at three choices I have in every matter: 1) Do, 2) Drop, or 3) Delegate.
If I look out the window from my home office and see that the swimming pool has not been attended to and is turning to an unsettling shade of pale green, I can apply my three options. 1) I can go DO something now, like spend a couple of hours cleaning it, going to the pool supply store, putting in chlorine, etc. That’s always an option. Or, 2) I can just DROP it as a concern. As a toleration, I can choose to have it be a total non-issue for me and cope with the consequences (smell, mosquitoes, new forms of reptilian life, health inspectors, etc.). Or, 3) I can DELEGATE it and give the job to the local pool service company and probably be done with it.
It’s always a refreshing experience to ask myself, “What am I tolerating right now?” And then list those tolerations. Am I ready to confront what’s on the list? If so, I look at each item and either do, drop, or delegate. It’s always an action that someone isn’t willing to take that stops him from succeeding but only every time.
CHAPTER 37 LANGUAGE THAT DESCRIBES REALITY VERSUS LANGUAGE THAT CREATES REALITY
Some people use language to describe the lives they lead while other people use language to create the lives they lead. These are the two types of language: descriptive and generative. One type describes; the other generates.
Notice that when you say, “It’s a beautiful day,” nothing happens to the day. That’s descriptive language. But when you say to someone, “I promise to deliver your order by five o’clock today” and you’re sincere about it, you’ve altered that person’s day. Because of what you said, life has been influenced.
That’s because a declarative promise is a generative speech act. It produces real-life action and results.
As is so well explained in Tracy Goss’s powerful book, The Last Word on Power, the major components of generative language are declarations, promises, and requests. When you continue to make enough sincere requests and promises, without stopping, you can get almost anything accomplished.
We can use our lives for creating or we can use them for reacting. While creating, we are engaging a higher bicameral creative brain activity versus fearful lower reptile brain activity that centers on reaction.
A dog looks out into the environment for a new stimulus and reacts to it. That’s all the dog’s brain can really do. It can’t create reality like we can because it doesn’t possess the language we have. So why do we still live like dogs? Why do we just react to things all day? Why do we only use language to describe the things we react to? Why do we live these lives of reacting to everything instead of creating the life we choose? ANSWER: We do it out of habit. When you do something long enough, it begins to feel natural and normal. Dysfunction becomes the comfortable norm.
You can shift from reaction to creation by utilizing the “law of creation.”
The law of creation goes beyond the law of attraction. Once you have the picture clearly in your head of what you want and what it feels like to have that, you then become proactive. You produce the life you get. And you produce the life you get by declaring it and promising it and implementing the necessary required actions.
As Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan write in The Three Laws of Performance, “Future-based language, also called generative language, has the power to create new futures, to craft vision, and to eliminate the blinders that are preventing people from seeing possibilities. It doesn’t describe how a situation occurs; it transforms how it occurs. It does this by re-writing the future.”
Fear causes reaction. Shifting out of fear allows creation to occur. Fearful business owners are simply “locked in” out of habit and are just reacting to things.
Reacting is the lowest form of reptile living. There is no bad news. There is only information with which I choose to work with. We are talking about deliberately shifting the mind. We are not talking about waiting. Waiting is reacting.
CHAPTER 38 COMMITMENT VERSUS INVOLVEMENT
People think that being involved in something is enough. They are involved in their job. But to them, that may mean simply doing enough to not get fired.
Commitment is much different. To hear the sound of commitment, listen to my friend, Bijan, one of the world’s most famous men’s clothing designers: “The world said conform, the world said settle for less, the world said compromise and no one will know… so I made my own world.”
If you are enrolling people into a project, or selling them a service, your commitment to truly serve them will be the deciding factor in your success. You don’t have to always have your sales act together. You don’t always need a polished technique or script. Just trust the basic childlike innocence of authentic commitment to serve. Know that a deep desire to serve someone will always connect, no matter how you say things.
It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through. Zig Ziglar
One of the first signs of commitment is a request for assistance. It demonstrates that the person requesting assistance is more committed to getting a result than they are worried about how it looks to ask for help. It all starts with your commitment to the result. Anyone really committed requests assistance.
Some people feel that making requests is a form of begging. It is not. When you make a request based on a worthy cause, to which you are committed, you also provide that individual with an opportunity to contribute and grow. When you’re not committed, you worry about losing face and what people will think of you needing assistance. When you are committed you don’t care what anyone thinks; you get someone to assist you in achieving the result.
Unsuccessful individuals are always trying to decide if they feel like doing the things that are required to get the job done. How involved do they feel like being? There’s no commitment in that.
There are people who hate the life that they have. The problem is that they don’t hate it enough to change. So they just drift along either living a life of quiet desperation or making a lot of noise constantly complaining about it. It’s called “living in no-person’s land.” You hate where you are at but you don’t hate it bad enough to do anything about it. This is exactly what commitment is not.
Commitment is relentless. A professional doesn’t quit until the job is done. A true commitment alters behaviors and actions. When a person says he’s committed and his behaviors and actions remain the same—he’s not committed.
A person functioning from a relentless, direct, upbeat inner stance will out-produce a person operating out of a tentative, over-analyzing inner stance eleven out of ten times.
CHAPTER 39 I CONTRIBUTE VERSUS I DESERVE
It’s impossible to be a creative, thriving straight-line leader if you are focused on what you think you deserve.
Obsessing about the concepts of fairness and what others owe you will put you in a victim’s mindset in no time, which is the most disempowering inner stance that you can ever assume.
To be an effective leader you must assume the stance of contribution. You will always ask yourself, inside every encounter and conversation, “How can I serve this person? What can I contribute?”
As a straight-line leader your mission is to encourage and empower others, and let them get the credit. Straight-line leaders don’t call attention to themselves. They grow leaders all around them.
The worst, least effective coaches and leaders are those who are always dispensing short-term, quick fix-it advice. People receiving the advice never grow. In fact, they become even more dependent on outside influences to have their life get better, instead of creating empowering inner stances, which are the source of lasting change.
We let Jeanette know that her so-called nature was non-existent. What was at play was her inner stance—the operating position she was habitually coming from. When she was willing to change that, she would solve her problem.
It’s the same idea exactly, we told her. The position you choose to operate from in life has you be who you are. Who you are in life determines how you function in life (the actions you take and don’t take). How you function in life determines the results you get.
Willingness to accept being uncomfortable is a major skill cultivated by the straight-line leader because all growth is accompanied by discomfort. A true master is soon comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Jeanette saw that quick advice and obsessive control of the conversation was not a contribution. A true contribution would be anything that grew the person that she was speaking with. Her true power as a leader would be in her ability to bring out the best in others rather than trying to fix them and control them.
CHAPTER 40 CORRECTIVE ACTIONS VERSUS PROTECTIVE ACTIONS
When things start to get difficult people start to avoid reality. They don’t see that reality is always on their side. They get lost in explaining away their part in the story about difficulty.
In his breakthrough book Actualizations, Stewart Emery draws a very valuable distinction between correction and protection.
Any boat or plane on a journey is in a constant state of correction. It is always off course the majority of time until it arrives. The corrections it makes are what get the desired result.
However, we get upset when we are off course. We think we have failed, or are making a mistake and need to protect ourselves from criticism and low self-esteem. So we come up with stories about why we went off course. It wasn’t our fault. It was someone else! And as we tell these stories, we get further and further away from the destination. By always trying to protect our feelings, our ego, or our image, we miss the available correction.
“Somehow people have the notion that they are going to get away from failure, that they are going to succeed enough to never fail again,” says Emery. “That option is simply not available; it’s like trying to eat once and for all.”
Otherwise, the human tendency is to protect against failure and get defensive and self-serving. Meanwhile the plane veers further off course.
CHAPTER 41 NOW VERSUS LATER
The only time you can ever do something about anything is now.
The problem with individuals who tolerate mediocrity in their lives is that no matter what good idea for taking action comes up, it’s never going to happen now. It’s an idea for some distant future. People who struggle have great ideas that they will implement “some day in the future.”
Almost everyone, deep down, knows what to do to get whatever result they truly want. It’s just that they are not choosing to do it right now. “Getting around to it” is not leadership.
The future is a terrible place to put an action plan because the future does not exist. Literally.
The pattern of a low achiever is, “Next week,” “Next month,” “After I save up enough money,” “After I…” and “As soon as I…” But any time but now won’t get you the results that you are after.
The only real question you face regarding your goals in life is “Now or later?” And realize that later is code for never. We speak in code because it’s too painful to really confront how passive we have been.
While indulging this passivity, our mind turns to wanting. We think we want things. But while we are wanting, we are not creating. And, therefore, the very wanting of something forestalls its creation.
Pause here and ask yourself: “What’s the most powerful action that I can take right now to resolve this challenge?” Do this many times throughout your day and watch how your life leaves the vicious circle and gets on the straight line to results. We are talking about velocity.
People go to psychologists to find out why they stop. They study past patterns, old wounds. They begin to construct a personality, a solid story worthy of absolute belief. They go down on their knees to their own identity, falsely thinking that various traits, tendencies, and characteristics have stopped them. They study their past. They work their cleansing processes. But they still stop. They still don’t know what stops them.
Let’s reveal, in a very straight way, what stops them, so that there can be no more confusion. You were not willing to do what was required to get the result that you were after. That’s it in a nutshell. So, from now on, don’t let what you don’t know or what you don’t feel stop you. Ever. Because those are false obstacles.
Clients have said to me in coaching sessions, “I wanted to do that, but a lot got in the way. My daughter got sick. My car needed repair. My board of directors isn’t convinced that our business plan is good enough. I had to replace our sales manager. Our best customer had a horrendous problem. I had to fly to Dubai to hold my client’s hand in a negotiation. Our pool was hit by lightning. My plastic surgery didn’t turn out well, and I couldn’t go out for a week or two. My computer was down. I lost the backup files. I wanted to do it, but a lot got in the way.”
WHAT GETS IN THE WAY IS NOT DOING IT. You simply didn’t do what was required. That is all. Put that on your wall.

CHAPTER 42 CHILDLIKE VERSUS CHILDISH
The great philosopher Immanuel Kant said that enlightenment occurs “when a person grows out of his self-imposed immaturity.” We call these unenlightened and immature people childish. They are often quite rigid and inflexible in their immature and stubborn approach to life.
Whereas childlike people are quite flexible in life and are usually much more successful than childish people.
Childish people are usually stuck in childhood survival strategies that although they may have worked at one time early in life no longer work now.
Childlike people are commonly referred to as adult adults. Childish people are referred to as adult children.

CHAPTER 43 PLAYING TO WIN VERSUS PLAYING NOT TO LOSE
Many times in business we get a big win and then we coast. Instead of continuing to play to win, we are now simply playing not to lose. We get cautious and lose our energy and our drive. Creativity and innovation soon disappear. And by trying not to lose, we find we are losing even more. We lose our fire. We’ve lost the innovative spirit. We begin to doubt ourselves.
Many times this weak playing not to lose mentality shows up at the negotiating table where people enter a conversation already seeking a “win-win.” This is soft, conciliatory negotiating that always ends up with you giving too much away and not being fair to your own side.
This comes from needing to be liked, thinking we need the relationship and not advancing our own mission or not acting from what we are committed to. We always lose by playing not to lose.
Jim Harrison focused on one thing: winning. He always did what was core. My relationship with Harrison changed my life. I learned from him that winning comes from going deep with what it is that you are committed to do… that, and not backing off until you are finished.

CHAPTER 44 INVESTMENT VERSUS COST
When straight-line individuals are confronted with a potential opportunity, they will look at the opportunity in terms of an investment. If they are going to participate, they look at the potential return for the time, money, and energy that they will expend.
Unfortunately, most people who struggle on a consistent basis look at only one thing: cost. They usually never get past their obsession with how much they will have to pay. They end up sitting there.
They remind me of the following story, the author of which is anonymous: HELP! I walked through the wildwood, and what did I see but a unicorn with his horn stuck in a tree, crying “Someone please help me before it’s too late.” I hollered, “I’ll free you.” He hollered back, “Wait, how much will it hurt? How long will it take? Are you sure that my horn will not scratch, bend, or break? How hard will you pull? How much must I pay? Must you do it right now or is Wednesday okay? Have you done this before? Do you have the right tools? Have you graduated from horn-saving school? Will I owe you a favor? And what will it be? Do you promise that you will not damage the tree? Should I close my eyes? Should I sit down or stand? Do you have insurance? Have you washed your hands? “And after you free me, tell me, what then? Can you guarantee I won’t get stuck again? Tell me when, tell me how, tell me why, tell me where.” I guess he’s still standing there.
You can see all of the circles and the zigzags in the mind of the unicorn as the opportunity fades away. Once again, a straight-line individual will look at potential opportunities as investments in their future. They will make a decision and live with the decision. Circle and zigzag people have a tendency to look gift Rolls Royces under the hood and always wonder why life is so hard.

CHAPTER 45 CORE ACTIONS VERSUS SURFACE ACTIONS
Core actions are actions that will make a real difference in producing what you intend to achieve in life. They are a very straight line to desired results.
Surface actions can keep you busy but they don’t produce much, if anything at all, in terms of real results.
Think back to the people you know who are on a continuous diet and exercise regime but hardly ever lose weight. You are looking at surface actions.
Many times people engage in surface actions to look good to others and to show that they are somehow committed… but what they are really committed to is staying comfortable.
Core actions are commonly referred to as “necessary required actions.” People who are sincere about their desired results engage in core actions because they know that they are the only things that matter.
For a fulfilling life: 1) Define what you choose to produce. 2) Define the necessary required actions. 3) Do the necessary required actions. Doing “what matters” will save you enormous amounts of time and energy.
At least fifty times a day ask yourself if you are doing the necessary required action for what you are up to in life.

CHAPTER 46 FOCUS VERSUS SPRAY
There is an old saying in the halls of business and sports: “Winners focus. Losers spray.”
One of the greatest challenges of our high tech, massively informational world is that spraying is easier to do than ever before. And focus is more difficult than ever. Focus requires an active, conscious commitment.
The great martial artist and actor Bruce Lee once said that a warrior was “an average person with laser-like focus.”
It’s logically clear that a focused mind will be far more effective than a mind scattered by emails, texts, and voice messages. So, why is this even a problem? Why would people not be ruthless about cultivating their focus and eliminating the behavior that sprays?
Because of the payoff. Every bad habit has a big payoff, no matter how dysfunctional it looks on the surface. Before eliminating that habit, we want to identify and acknowledge the payoff it gives. There is always a payoff to someone engaging in unworkable behavior. No matter how costly the behavior is to the individual, there is always a perceived upside for engaging in that behavior. Payoffs are nothing more than expensive benefits that people receive for engaging in unworkable behaviors or tolerating unwanted situations.
There is also a perceived downside for letting go of the behavior. If I stop checking my email every ten minutes I might miss something. I might miss an opportunity that’s time-sensitive. I might lose that sense of reassurance I get that people want me and need me. “Look! My cell phone says I have a text! People like me!”
Focus requires that the anxious people-pleasing and instant-gratification behaviors be set aside for the higher good. It also requires that we are willing to engage our minds in the one thing that matters at the time. Life moves forward with greater velocity and power after this.
It may seem strange to note that so many of our nation’s best and brightest executives and company leaders can get swept into the low-return activities of the day that lead nowhere.
“If my clients’ activities aren’t focused on necessary required actions,” says Leung, “the results just won’t happen and soon people are content all day long with trying, and then they become totally disenchanted with the company.”
Some people are “feedback sensitive” and want to continue to use the same unworkable actions despite a lack of results. But it’s like repeatedly trying to put a square peg in a round hole. They choose to protect (their feelings) instead of correct (their actions). Soon they become defensive, but Andrew does not let them get away with that.
He is effective at getting the client to confront and do core activities and always stay away from the surface activities that only feel like work, but don’t really produce results.
Leung is fond of reminding his clients that any organization—no matter how big or how small—is composed of individual people.
More often than not, performance blockages are due to how people communicate to themselves about one of two things. It’s usually a disempowering conversation that they have about a particular situation they are up against or a disempowering conversation that they are having about themselves and their abilities.

CHAPTER 47 HOW IT CAN BE DONE VERSUS WHY IT CAN’T BE DONE
The human mind is a very creative bio-computer. It can be used to create results in amazing ways. But it can also be used to justify failure, in equally inventive ways.
Most people in the world of sales and business use their minds to build elaborate stories and theories around “Why it can’t be done.” They talk constantly about how difficult working in sales is, how volatile the market is, how hard clients are to persuade, and why the economy is the problem.
Once the “why it can’t be done” mind is finished with the outer environment and circumstances, it turns inward. It turns on itself. It talks about why “I’m not cut out for sales. My personality is not appropriate. I’m not one of those sales types. I have severe introverted tendencies. My parents never gave me social skills,” and the list goes on, very creatively, to explain, justify, verify, and anchor the belief system to “why it can’t be done.”
These people don’t see that they are wasting a precious resource. They don’t realize that the mind can just as easily be used the opposite way—to discover “how it can be done.” And when the mind is used in that direction, a straight line to your intended result has begun.
McGovern does not waste his time thinking things to death. He chooses his next action and moves. His competitors spend huge amounts of time obsessing about things. Tom doesn’t over-think anything. He just acts decisively.
Note that McGovern’s quest was always for information he could immediately and usefully apply to his profession, as contrasted with the people we identified earlier who use the acquisition of knowledge as a substitute for required action.
McGovern remembers, “I knew I wasn’t going to compete on just my pure sales ability. So it was intuitive to me that I needed to compete some other way. I needed to be more technically competent than others—to offer service in a way that other brokers were not offering.
He also practiced his craft more than anyone. He learned more. He went to greater knowledge depths than others. He was better prepared for client meetings. While other sales types relied on winging it with charm and aggressive closing techniques to make a sale, McGovern demonstrated a well-practiced craft of useful consultation.
Clients hire McGovern because he can add more value than others—because he has more business and real estate knowledge. Outsiders get confused and think his success is due to the fact that he’s been around so long that he has “old boy” relationships.
When McGovern first met with Yahoo!, they had fifty people. The CFO had a relationship with a competing broker who was referred to them by their investors. But the CFO also agreed to meet McGovern. The CFO was immediately impressed with McGovern’s immense knowledge of his industry and Yahoo’s situation as well. It wasn’t long afterward that McGovern was awarded the Yahoo! account.
Nobody said you couldn’t go out of the box. You assumed there was a box, and you assumed there was a rule. Bob Koether
Notice that the advantages straight-line performers have in the marketplace are advantages they take responsibility for creating and maintaining. They are not handed to them.
Another straight-line distinction that McGovern has utilized to his benefit is “I contribute” versus “I deserve.”
“You’ve really got to help somebody before they are going to help you,” he says. “I’ve always looked at becoming valuable to others first, and then they would be of value to me. Be good at something yourself—be really good at something—so you can be valuable to somebody else; and then they’ll include you in their business and their life in a way that they wouldn’t have included you otherwise.”
McGovern sees that focusing on always making a contribution pays off.
Whereas focusing on what you deserve is a futile activity that never leads anywhere but to low energy and low creativity.
McGovern has learned that coming from these powerful inner stances and operating principles consistently holds his focus on how it can be done. He wastes no precious mental energy on why it can’t be done.

CHAPTER 48 STRESSING VERSUS CARING
Most people stress themselves out as a form (or a show) of really caring about getting a result. But it’s not caring; it’s just stressing out.
Caring is relaxing, focusing, and calling on all the resources that you bring to bear when you pay full attention with peace of mind. No one performs better than when they are relaxed and focused.
“Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth,” says the great creativity teacher Natalie Goldberg. “It’s a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.” Most circular managers unconsciously try to use stress as a way to motivate others. First, they intentionally upset themselves over the prospect of not completing a project or getting a desired result, and then they use the upset as negative energy to fire up the team. It doesn’t work.
Stressing out over our team’s goals is not the same as caring about them. Stressing out is not a useful form of motivation.
No performer, when tense, or stressed, performs well. No leader does as well. No sales person. No athlete. No fundraiser. No field-goal kicker. No free-throw shooter. No parent.
A stressed-out, tense performer only has access to a small percent of his or her skill and intelligence.
“Many of my clients spend their days racing around fire fighting and trying to do everything at once,” says Ron. “They think it’s because they care so much about their business that they stress themselves out every day, but stressing is not caring; stressing is stressing.”
The exaggerated sense of urgency that leads to frenzied fire fighting often exists in confusion about true obstacles interfering with intended results, and simple conditions of the game.
A stressed-out performer is always a poor performer. In football, the opposing team will often call a time out just as a field-goal kicker is lining up to kick. They want him to go back to the sidelines and think more about the kick. They want him to consider the downside of missing the kick. What will his teammates think of him? What will it do to his career? And it’s proven statistically, field-goal attempts made after the opponents call a time out have a lower rate of success than field goals kicked right away, before the kicker has a chance to stress out.
“I like to introduce them to reality,” he says. “The reality of the problem is always less dramatic than the story people have made up about the problem. These catastrophic, panicky stories soon become the problem. When the client looks at reality with me, he usually sees an easy solution.”
Ron wants them to see the distinction between waiting and creating. All the time waiting for circumstances to be perfect is time that you are not creating. And creating is what drives business success.

CHAPTER 49 MAKING A LIVING VERSUS CREATING PERFECTION
Bijan once told me that he lives for every detail in each of his creations. He intentionally puts his life into each button, each stitch, and each seam. When you look into his eyes you don’t doubt him.
Bijan does not concern himself with what other well-known designers are doing. He doesn’t seek greatness in comparison to his competitors. He seeks to be a world apart. He is the only one doing what he does. If you say the others are designers, then he is not a designer. He is the creator of perfection. Intuitively, he always knew that limitation created value. It’s a straight-line principle we teach every one of our clients in business. However, with Bijan it is being lived. He does not dilute his line. You may see Brioni agree to put some of their clothing lines in Neiman Marcus or Saks, but never Bijan.
To this day, the media still doesn’t understand Bijan. They always end up talking about the $20,000 suits or the $150,000 and up watches or a $200,000 chinchilla bedspread. They don’t see the inner stance of the man behind it all. They don’t see Bijan’s commitment to perfection.
When you purchase a Bijan product you buy a piece of his soul. He insists on living that way. And Bijan is all about service. Extreme service. He is the only one I have ever known who makes house calls in his own private jet.
Bijan’s store could best be described as “opulence on steroids.” He has created it to make a dramatic declaration of his respect for perfection. His store literally communicates the moment you walk in the door that this man has perfection as an inner stance.
The inside of the card read, “Life imitates art; Bijan imitates no one.”
Although Bijan speaks with a pronounced accent, his complete attention and communications are so focused that I have never failed to understand a word he has ever said to me.
Bijan treats each individual he speaks to as if that person was the only person in the world. It’s a part of coming from perfection. And because it radiates from his inner stance, he never has to think about how to treat people.
He has shown the world that when your inner stance is clear, you can create any result you choose.

CHAPTER 50 WAKING UP TO THE CONTRASTS
INNER STANCES (CONTRASTS) EMPOWERING DISEMPOWERING What I live What I know Choose to Want to Creating Waiting Concern Worry Project Dream Must Should Growth choice Safe choice Choosing “what is” Dread How it can be done Why it can’t be done Serving Pleasing Notice and alter behavior Notice and justify behavior Only results count Content with insight Productivity Busyness Commitment Trying Radical self-honesty Insincere Conditions of the game Obstacles Doing what’s in front of you Sawing sawdust Invented Future Default Future Separate The same Optimism Pessimism Bold Arrogant Over-respond Over-think Extreme self-care Selfishness Choose to How to Kind Nice Results goals Activity goals Honest thinking Positive thinking Commitment Involvement Contribute Deserve Willing to deal with Dabbling
Long-term satisfaction Immediate gratification Straight talk Verbal manipulation Feedback tolerant Feedback sensitive Proactive acceptance Surrendering Stop stopping Stopping Start starting Wanting to start Owner Victim Choosing to be effective Needing approval Focus Chaos I’m responsible It’s their fault Now Later
Powerful result Non-powerful result This will be We shall see Choosing powerfully Choosing weakly Acknowledges mistakes Optimistic denial Flexible Rigid Grounded Unstable Take on Avoid Well practiced Winging it Active relaxation Passive relaxation Learn Understand On track Off track Choosing deliberately Choosing from feelings
Intelligence Information collector
RECOMMENDED READING The Three Laws of Performance by Steve Zaffron & Dave Logan Reinventing Yourself by Steve Chandler Time Warrior by Steve Chandler The Last Word on Power by Tracy Goss As the Pendulum Swings by Lindsay A. Brady The Art of Possibility by Benjamin Zander & Rosamund Stone Zander Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton Loving What Is by Byron Katie The Power to Transform by Chris Majer The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho The 14 Day Stress Cure by Mort Orman, M.D. Mastery by George Leonard It’s Called Work for a Reason by Larry Winget A Message to Garcia by Elbert Hubbard Will by G. Gordon Liddy Learned Helplessness by Peterson, Maier & Seligman The Will to Meaning by Viktor Frankl You Are What You Say by Matthew Budd, M.D. Inventing Reality: Physics As Language by Bruce Gregory Understanding Computers and Cognition by Flores & Winograd Living Awake by Landon Carter

Book Notes Straight-Line Leadership: Tools for Living with Velocity and Power in Turbulent Times by Dusan Djukich

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