Transform Your Career With a Spartan Mindset

Transform Your Career With a Spartan Mindset Have you ever walked in to work and been handed the assignment no one else wanted? Thats how I was feeling when Bryce told me, I told them wed  review this new booksomething about  Spartans. Its on your desk. I knew about the Spartans. Or I thought I knew. Theyre the crazy mud racing people, right? Historically, Spartans come  from the prominent city-state in ancient Greece. They were  unique for their  social system and constitution, which focused on military training and excellence. Hard-core training began young, and  Sparta was  recognized as the overall leader of the combined Greek forces. Even Alexander the Great steered clear of Sparta, and he attacked everyone. Thanks for the assignment, guys. Sigh. Time to  Spartan Up! Well, once I finally stopped procrastinating, I picked up Spartan Race Founder Joe De Senas book, prepared myself for some rehashed rah-rah life lesson motivational stuff, and began reading. By page two I was hooked. I stayed up waaaay too late that night, being entertained, enlightened, and inspired by his  Spartan journey message. And I quickly discovered that the subtitle, A Take-No-Prisoners Guide to Overcoming Obstacles and Achieving Peak Performance in Life is a spot-on  description. No fluff. De Sena skillfully integrates his riveting  personal background story with the tale  of how Spartan Race came to be, weaving  in a historical recap leading to  societys current focus on immediate gratification and discomfort-avoidance. And throughout, he contrasts it all  against the Spartan code. Spartan Up Highlights If youre completely happy with every aspect of your life right now including your career then click back over to email or Facebook right now. But, if you have any intent to continue to increase  your skillset  grow  throughout the rest of your life, read this book. I promise not to nag  any more than that. But I will list a few of De Senas points that resonated with me most: On lifes unpredictablity: The whole race is unpredictable from start to finish, whenever  that might be.  This can be maddening for the type A personalities who need to prepare for and control  everything. They can’t, just like they can’t in life. There are too many variables, too many  unknowns, too many twists and turns that cannot be anticipated. In contrast to Ironman, Spartan  Race is much more a reflection of life as most of us live it. Discipline is one thing, but another  aspect is the complete fluidity. In life, one doesn’t know where the start or finish line is. You  need a different mindset out on the Spartan course. The rules of the game are constantly shifting,  so your frame of reference has to shift along with them. Responding to lifes obstacles: In a Spartan Race we always confront competitors with mud puddles and swamps, things  you only run through out of necessity. These obstacles help condition them for the mud of  everyday life, the stuff that drags us down, or at least tries to. Maybe you didn’t get that  promotion, but we teach you to persevere in your job anyway. Maybe you got dumped, but we  still want you to seek a new partner with a positive attitude. When you’re already fatigued and  struggling, the addition of mud can make for a toxic mix, exacerbating the desire to surrender. So  every course has at least one mud trap somewhere along the way. It wouldn’t be a Spartan Race  without one. Regarding societys definition of stress:  The easiest  way to convince your body that sitting in traffic is not worthy of a stress-induced freakout is by  showing your body what real stress feels like, in the controlled setting of your daily workout. What are we  focusing on? How is it limiting us? If you don’t shift your frame of reference, if it becomes fixed and immutable, you become  closed off to the magic and joy life has to offer, focusing instead on the trivial and  inconsequential, inflating their significance to outlandish proportions because, after all, that’s  how you view the world. Getting what you want out of life what it requires: Spartan racers subject themselves to a hellish test of will and  physical strength rather than sleeping in on a Saturday morning. They do this because they want  something more out of life than comfort, mediocrity, and a fancy toilet bowl brush. Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is As I read this book, I discovered  that many of De Senas points are concepts that Ive been  teaching my 11 year-old daughter. Really good stuff. But I realized she may be  seeing these ideas as  merely lip service. You see, I stated above that Ive been teaching it. But I havent exactly been modeling it. So its time. Time to stop reminiscing about the high school runner I once was, or that triathlon I did before my kid was even BORN. Its time to get off the couch. And away from this screen more often. After last Sundays breakfast conversation, my daughter and I are registered for the SoCal Spartan Sprint at the end of the summer. Wish us luck Im told there will be mud.