Modern Achievement is an International Best Seller!
Excerpts from the Book & Audiobook and Some of My Favorite Illustrations.
As a thank you for making this wonderful book co-authored with Asheesh Advani an international best seller I wanted to share with you one of my favorite excerpts from Modern Achievement as well as a sample from the audiobook, a video interview and some lovely illustrations by Ayse (Eye-Shay) Birsel. Enjoy this excerpt from Lesson #4 “Go META”.
The Secret to Becoming the Person You Want to Be - By Marshall Goldsmith from Modern Achievement
Once you practice these fixed “self ” lessons from Asheesh, you are likely going to figure out what you like and don’t like about yourself and which behaviors and traits you want to change for the better. But as Asheesh laid out in the last lesson, change like this is often impossible because most of us are so optimistic (and delusional) that we try to change everything at once. We get so overwhelmed with becoming a “New Me” that when it doesn’t happen as quickly or easily as we’d like—and people don’t notice that we made changes—we give up. Discouraged and disheartened, we make excuses for our failure and harbor beliefs that trigger all manner of denial and resistance—and we end up changing nothing. We fail to become the person we want to be.
So, what do you do? When you see your frailties in the face of behavioral change and know what you want to change, you can use the previous lesson (write it down). If you need to decide what to change and where to put your efforts, you can go meta and use this version of a tool from my book Triggers that I’ve taken teams, organizations, friends, peers, and myself through called “The Wheel of Change.”
The Wheel of Change has two axes. The more/positive- to-less/negative axis tracks the elements that either help us or hold us back. The change-to-keep axis tracks the elements that we determine to change or keep in the future. Thus, in pursuing any behavioral change, we have four options: change or keep the positive elements and change or keep the negative. Three of the options are more dynamic, glamorous, and fun, but they’re all equal in importance.
Creating represents the positive elements that we want to create in our future. When we imagine ourselves behaving better, we think of it as an exciting process of self-invention. The challenge is to do it by choice, not as a bystander. Are we creating ourselves or wasting the opportunity and being created by external forces instead?
Preserving represents the positive elements that we want to keep in the future. It requires soul-searching to figure out what serves us well and discipline to refrain from abandoning it for something new and shiny and not necessarily better.
Eliminating represents the negative elements that we want to eliminate in the future. Eliminating is our most liberating, therapeutic action, but we take it reluctantly. Maybe we’ll need it in the future. Maybe it’s the secret of our success. Maybe we like it too much.
Accepting represents the negative elements that we need to accept in the future. Our ineffectuality is precisely the condition that we are most loath to accept. It triggers our finest moments of counterproductive behavior. It may feel like admitting defeat, but it is incredibly valuable when we’re powerless to make a difference.
When you choose to use creating, preserving, eliminating, and accepting to challenge yourself to figure out what you can change and what you can’t, what to lose and what to keep, you can surprise yourself with the bold simplicity of your answers and can thus take significant, real steps toward becoming the person you really want to be.
Listen to Asheesh read about Going META and Marshall talk about the Wheel of Change in this audio book excerpt on Audible below:
You can also watch Asheesh and Marshall discuss Modern Achievement below:
I also want to highlight some of the beautiful illustrations and design elements in the book by Ayse Birsel that bring the ideas to life. This one is on Transformation of Purpose from page 275.
And this is the Fixed-Flexible-Freestyle framework that is profoundly useful for thriving in turbulent times.
And here is a great picture of Asheesh and Ayse!
PRAISE FOR MODERN ACHIEVEMENT
“Modern Achievement is breaking the mold! To be an effective leader for the future, outdated paradigms must be replaced with the kind of innovative approach you’ll find in this book. Asheesh and Marshall have dug deeply into this sea change in work and life, drawing from the collected wisdom of top management thinkers as well as young strivers from around the world to create a revolutionary guidebook to success and leadership for the next generation.”
—MEL ROBBINS, New York Times bestselling author and host of the award-winning Mel Robbins Podcast
“Marshall and Asheesh are the right people at the right time to tackle the important work of modernizing the definition of achievement. They approach the task with humility and ambition in equal measure. This book is a must-read and destined to be a modern classic.”
—DR. JIM YONG KIM, twelfth president, World Bank
“Fixed-Flexible-Freestyle provides a profoundly useful framework for thriving in turbulent times. By embracing the inevitable messiness of achievement, this wise book teaches young leaders how to iterate their way to fuller, more meaningful lives.”
—DANIEL H. PINK, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Drive, When, and The Power of Regret