ARE YOU INTO INFORMATION…
OR TRANSFORMATION?
We live in an era of information overload. Google answers our questions in an instant. Social media curates a never-ending stream of hacks, tips, and tricks for optimizing our entire existence. Ideas are delivered consistently and conveniently right to our inbox on a regular basis. If information is what we're after? Then it's not hard to find.
And yet, for most of us, all this information hasn't necessarily made success any easier to come by. That’s primarily because even with all the information that’s available, there remains a distinct and powerful difference between gathering information and actually applying it. We are pretty good at knowing what to do, but not nearly as good at actually doing it. It’s worth stopping for a minute today to consider the space that exists in those two important areas of your life and performance, and where it is your very best demands that you move from one to the other.
That space - the one that exists between knowing and doing - is often referred to as the performance gap. You could define it as the distance between our potential (who we could be or who we want to be), and our performance (the sometimes humbling reality of who we actually are). Each of us has a performance gap. There are certain areas - even some really important areas - where we have to admit that just because we know what needs to be done doesn’t mean we do what needs to be done. And let’s be honest, we all know it's the doing that really determines our destiny. Becoming our best in any area of life requires us to take the useful information we’ve been given…and apply it.
That’s what real change requires from us. Transformation isn’t really so much about learning something new as it is about becoming something better. It’s about putting what we learn into practice. Transformation is about changing your mindset, your behavior, and ultimately your identity so that you can become the kind of person that winning requires you to be. It’s on-going evidence you use to validate that you are worthy of the success you say you’re after.
Transformation isn’t really so much about learning something new as it is about becoming something better.
Most of us choose information over transformation because, let’s be honest, it’s the easier option. Information is about consuming, but transformation is about producing. It’s about creating something - a new mindset, a new behavior, a new identity - that wasn't there before. Consuming is a low stakes commitment, but producing - building something new, when nothing previously existed in its place? That involves a lot of effort and a lot of intention. It's a big-time commitment that only happens on purpose.
Producing is a pillar of the champion’s pursuit. High achievers recognize that who they are, how they’ve thought, and what they’ve done previously has gotten them to where they’re at. But they also recognize that success moving forward will require a better and more productive approach. It will require something new. Champions recognize that transformation in the important areas of life and performance is both possible and necessary. So the big question is…do you?
That’s the challenge for each of us here today, to recognize that while information is good, transformation is better. We need to recognize the space that exists between what we know and what we do, and we need to actively and intentionally close that performance gap. That starts with not allowing ourselves to settle for consuming, but instead to keep producing more and more evidence that we are the kind of people winning requires us to be. To keep growing and improving, and to keep earning the success we say we’re after.
