Is The Chip On Your Shoulder Helping Or Hurting Your Performance? | Elite Performance Podcast #35

00:00 - 02:34
Itamar Marani
Is letting go of the chip on your shoulder a good idea or a bad idea? And I don't mean that just from a holistic perspective. Will you feel better? Will it actually give you better results or worse results if you let go of it? It's an interesting subject. And this past month I've worked with three people specifically on this, and things have clicked for them in a very interesting way. It's what I wanted to share today. So what we're going to be doing today is a bit of a workshop. Where we're going to be covering is first the story of the three of these guys. Are 7 to 8 figure entrepreneurs who are bumping into this question why we develop a chip, and how that actually happen? The number one fear that causes people to hold onto it in an unproductive way sometimes. And then we're going to talk about what's actually harder than simply pushing harder and finally again, how to judge, if you should or should not let go of that chip. What is right for you where you are right now? So that's what we're going to cover today. The main question of should you let go of that chip on your shoulder or not. All right. So here's the deal. We all know the saying of one guy, you hear one necessarily get you there. But we know that logically. But we can understand why we don't let go of a chip or why we can go to the next level. So basically, this is how a chip is developed in eight type individuals. First off, there's something we don't necessarily feel proud of. Maybe it's the life that we have. Maybe it's a regretful decision or action that we've taken, or just our general level of success. So we're not happy that we don't like how it feels. So we decide we're not okay with that. And then we decided we're going to do something about it. And basically we make up our minds that we will go through the necessary pain in order to not feel that painful feeling of shame or dissatisfaction. Then from there, that causes us to push harder with that chip on our shoulder, and that inertia takes us out of our old circumstances into a better one. And we somehow learn from the world that way. When I run away from that feeling of shame or dissatisfaction through aggressive action, good things happen to me. And then we accumulate evidence that, you know what a chip on my shoulder is a really, really good thing, and I should actually have more of this and I should lean into it because got me good results. So let's talk about the three clients. So all of them had challenging times earlier in their life. One of them had a very rough upbringing and also in its early adulthood, he had very, very scarce financial situation and it was very challenging for me, like how was another one was bullied in childhood and he just had a bit of a challenging upbringing. Then the last one, he grew up in a very small town of what he said are below average people, and he absolutely did not want to be a below average individual and that really spurned him. Now, they all wanted to feel better about themselves by improving their situation. They wanted to change something. They did not like it. So they all decided they're going to do something about it, each in their own way.

02:34 - 04:02
Itamar Marani
They each have their own story, so to speak. One of them told himself that if I don't max out on every part of my life all the time, then I'll be average. That was a chip on his shoulder. Another one said that unless he makes $10 million in personal cash, he's not going to be well off. He's always going to have that kind of vulnerability. And the last guy he said to himself, You know what, I need to grind and build. If I'm not hyper vigilant all the time. Show will come crashing down. That was the chip they developed on their shoulders. Now they all pushed hard with that chip on the shoulder, and it actually got them a result. It got them out of their old circumstances. Now they all have at least seven figure businesses. One of them sold for multiple seven. Another one has eight. And they were shown by the world that, hey, when I pushed an extreme out of fear of complacency, of not wanting that old situation, I get a really good outcome. That's what the world showed them. So they bought into it. Now, the reality is also, if all three of these clients these days, they're all exhausted. They're losing some sleep at night because they're stressing out over things and they're putting out a lot of small fires instead of moving the really big rocks in their business. So they're focused on small things because they're afraid of what happens if this small thing happens wrong. Instead of saying, what are the big opportunities that if I capitalize on them, would make this small fire burning completely irrelevant? And as one of them said it very well, He said, I'm kind of hitting my cap with my current beliefs. Now, they all know logically that an effective SEO, the kind of SEO they want to be, is cool and calm, is able to be fully on because you can fully turn off and completely recover.

04:02 - 05:45
Itamar Marani
And it's been a good state of mind. And he focuses on big things which make a big impact. And so the small fires and they recognize the most important thing, he has to have the patience to do that. Then I feel like the world's on fire right now and everything that's happened right now. Now they all recognize logically, again, that that old chip was helpful to get them from 0 to 1, but it could be holding them back from getting from 1 to 10 or from eight figures to nine. Now, they all got it intellectually, but they still struggle to accept it. Now what? Help them all Basically look at this with a new light is when I share with them kind of my story of how it was very difficult for me to get a chip on my shoulder go, but how I went through it. So I want to share with you guys as well. So my chip basically a lot of guys know this through the podcast that I quit in a part of advancing to bootcamp in an elite Special Forces unit because I thought I could coast a little bit. I gave myself that permission and then I got demoted to a lower tier Special Forces unit. And when that happened, I felt a lot of shame and regret. I really, really didn't like it. I was embarrassed. I was regretful. I felt like an asshole for doing it. I felt like a lot of people down and I basically didn't want to feel that anymore. So what I decided was in that spot I moved from now on, become more disciplined than anyone I know. I'm going to go so much harder than anyone. I'm just never, ever going to quit. I'm never going to stop. And that drive and discipline actually led to a lot of success. It helped me overcome a lot of obstacles. But at a certain point, I hit a ceiling. I struggled to employ a lot of leverage and also see the bigger picture at times. I was really, really good at going very fast and very aggressive with my head down, just doing what I know I should be doing and never quitting, even when sometimes it was just not the right thing to be doing from the get go.

05:46 - 08:05
Itamar Marani
Because that chip told me, Hey, if you quit here, you're going to quit everywhere and you're going to feel that shame and regret again. The way I was able to overcome it was because I got called out on it. My mentor, that is, I called you the Mossad, told me the time. Listen, I think this is something you need to let go of. And I respected him in his opinion, but I still didn't want to let it go. And I kept telling him, Hey, listen, man, this fear of me being complacent is what pushed me, got me my current success. And I achieved a lot. I said because of it, I was able to push through a lot of challenging circumstances in the agency, in jiu jitsu, in business, whatever it may be, because I had that kind of fear, like, I don't want to be that guy again. And he asked me a question. He said, Do you think you'll become lazy if that fear isn't there? And at the time, honestly, I looked back at him and I said, like, honestly, I'm not sure. So he looked at me and said, okay, let me ask you this. Do you think you'll become a lazy or complacent person overnight? And when he said it like that, it made sense. I was I okay, there's no way overnight I'm all of a sudden going to shift to that lazy and complacent person who I was when I was 18 years old. That's not me anymore. And the reality is, with a lot of this stuff, like we don't change that quick, it's like it's not possible. Habits are hard to change both good ones and bad ones. Like when you want to change a bad habit into a good one, it takes a lot of time. Whether it's a 28 day, six months or whatever it may be, but it's the same thing, the opposite way around. If you're very disciplined these days and you're doing things that are serving you really well, you have good habits, you have good routines. Just because you lose an emotional aspect, the fear of what's driving you, those routines and habits are not all of a sudden going to get upended in an instant. That's just not going to happen. And recognizing that gave me permission to try putting that chip down a little bit. And I kept thinking little steps until I found a happy balance. I said, okay, let me try saying if I don't think about it this way, but I still succeed what I see succeed with succeed. And what was interesting to me is that it went well. But finally, when you explain to me this one concept, everything kind of fell in place. So you've probably heard this again in the podcast talking about this performance pressure about curve. So for those of you who are listening on the podcast and are watching this on YouTube, imagine there's a graph. So on one axis there's performance, another axis, this pressure. Now what we naturally assume is that the more pressure we put on ourselves, the better performance will be, because pressure makes diamonds and all that jazz. Right now, here's a deal.

08:05 - 09:02
Itamar Marani
It's actually a bell curve. So there is a point where pressure goes up and performance goes up as well. But then there comes a point, a tipping point where the pressure becomes too much and our performance actually starts to dip. Now, the reality is that when I was very young, I did not put a lot of pressure on myself and then my performance suffered. That's what happened in that first unit. So I then decided to put more pressure on myself by holding myself accountable to a higher standard, and my performance got better. So what I learn from there is more pressure, better performance, better results. So therefore, I kept putting more and more pressure on myself by holding myself to higher and more rigid standards. And I kept pushing harder. But then I got to a point where my performance was definitely better than a complacent individuals, but not as good as it could be. I was basically over that tipping point of the bell curve. My performance started to suffer because I put too much pressure onto myself. That chip on my shoulder wasn't helpful anymore.

09:02 - 10:48
Itamar Marani
It was actually counterproductive to me actually being able to perform our best and achieve great results. And that's what a lot of these guys are like. Yes. Performance and pressure, they have an alignment and you do want to put some pressure on yourself. You want to hold yourself accountable. But if you're already a person who puts a lot of pressure on himself, well, that's not a very high standard. You're putting even more pressure on yourself is probably not what's going to help you. It might actually be the thing that's hindering you from being at your best. So here's the deal with the chip on your shoulder. It will help you perform better than if you're a complacent individual. You take a complacent individual. It doesn't put any pressure on himself. Has performances going to be very low? You put a chip on that person's shoulder, they're going to put more pressure on themselves and they're going to perform better. That is true. But the question we need to ask is, will it get you to perform at your very best? And the interesting question on top of that is if it's not helping, you get the best external results as far as performance, is it also improving your quality of life or not? And if it's a no to both of these things, they need to consider letting go of that chip on your shoulder. And if you don't naturally hold yourself accountable, it could serve you very well to put that chip on your shoulder because it will put more pressure on you. Performance arise. But if you already do that to an extreme degree, you hold yourself very accountable. And we're going to cover how to recognize if you do or don't in a minute, it's probably counterproductive and it's not actually helping your performance. Now, you've got to ask yourself, is this chip on your shoulder? Is it causing you to be more effective or less effective? And I asked them, all three of them, that question like, is this actually helping your productivity or not? And they all knew the answer. But before they could say like, no, okay, I'll let it go, whatever it may be, they would say to me, like, dude, but it's scary to let it go. Like, how scary for me. It's like, it's scary. This is what got me here. And to that, I usually tell them like, yes, it absolutely is.

10:48 - 12:40
Itamar Marani
And that's a big thing to recognize that you're trying to grow here. You're not trying to stay in your comfort zone. So this is where you have to display a bit of courage that if you know that logically this is the right thing to do, but it still feels scary and uncomfortable. You need to do it. And this is where you get the opportunity to display courage. It's not going to feel fully comfortable. You're not going to be fully confident doing it. This is where you get the opportunity to display the virtue of courage. And what I always tell them is asking the questions, saying, Hey, guys, do you remember that story you heard growing up about the prince who waited until he was fully 100% confident to rescue the princess? And they all laughed because no one's ever heard of that story. There's no virtue in that. It's all about being able to display courage. And I want to say to anybody here is listening to this and saying, wow, this feels really terrifying to do. It absolutely is. But that's where you get to be the person that you're proud of. And you get to display courage and look back and think, wow, I really grew there and then just wait for it to feel comfortable. And also, again, like what helped them and helped me was the reality that change doesn't happen overnight. And good habits take time to build and to break. So just because you let go of that chip on your shoulder, all of a sudden your habits, routines, they're not going to go to the trash in a minute. It's not going to happen. I think it's very challenging often to complete, upend the way you behave, like your routines will stop you from all of a sudden becoming complacent and unsuccessful. They're going to be your safety net. These routines that you've built up over the years because of that chip on your shoulder, you can keep those routines just without the added emotional stress because of that chip on your shoulder. That's the beautiful part. And on top of that, you can decide, You know what? I don't have to go. All I'm going all in is scary. So I'm just going to run small experiments. I'm not ready to go. That's your shoulder. It's scary. That's okay. So what do you do instead? Try it out in one area of your life or business for a predefined period of time and then assess was a good thing?

12:41 - 15:43
Itamar Marani
Or is this a negative thing? Because if you do that consistently, these small steps can lead to very, very big ones. Now, this is the crux of the work. And what I want to say here is that this is harder and scarier than just mindlessly pushing harder. It's a weird thing, but this if this is hitting home, then don't back down from it. This is the harder work than just going harder. This is the real work here for you. So to recap this one, we set up a cover today where we have covered the story of the three seven, eight figure entrepreneurs who are bumping into this question. And the reason I wanted to bring this up is these are successful individuals and now they're going to get to a whole nother level of success because they're going to keep all the good habits and routines this chip has put on them. But they're going to let go that emotional stress and anxiety. So they're going to get more rest. They're going to be able to think more strategic and think about better things and get better results. And that's why I'm super happy for them. We also covered why we develop a chip. There's a situation we don't like in our lives. What is the decision? We've made an action. We've taken our lives in general, whatever it may be, we say we're going to do something about it. We also talked about the number one fear that causes people to hold on to it in unproductive way. Like, I'm afraid that if I let go of it, I'm going to go back to that person who was complacent and had that feeling of shame or whatever, and B, they don't want to have anymore. And we also said it's not going to happen overnight. Habits don't break overnight. And also, you can run small experiments. You don't have to go all in. If it's too scary, that's perfectly fine. And we also talked about the fact that this is what's harder and then actually pushing harder, changing how you work, how you operate, how you view the world. That is much more difficult than this saying, okay, I'm just going to push, push, push, push, push. And I think that's the real victory here, not victory over a task by pushing harder, but victory over your lower self, over the ways you use to do things that don't actually serve you anymore. That's the real victory. And finally, we covered how to judge, if you should or shouldn't let go of that chip on your shoulder. And again, if you're someone who's naturally very complacent right now, right now, if you look at you say, okay, this is a very complacent person. He's pretty lazy. He's not achieving much. Yes. A chip on your shoulder will probably help you put more pressure on yourself, hold yourself more accountable. You'll perform better. However, if you're a person who naturally holds himself to a high, high standard, very rigid at times the standards and puts a lot of pressure on himself. And that chip is probably not serving you anymore. You're actually having less emotional pressure on yourself will probably help you perform at a better level. And again, kids get better results with less anxiety, less stress, better sleep and all that good stuff. To recap that, how you can ask yourself, is it helpful for me today that chip on my shoulder or not? Again, these days, as you push myself to little or to heart these days, do I put so little pressure on myself that I'm comfortable and apathetic or I put so much pressure on myself that I feel anxiety and stress? And the key word here that I keep repeating is these days, forget about how you felt about yourself in the past or how you feel about yourself.

15:43 - 18:11
Itamar Marani
But these days, objectively, you put too little pressure or too much. Are you naturally apathetic these days or are usually much more on the stress side? Like I still feel sometimes like, Oh man, that 18 year old who is naturally complacent. I'm afraid to go back there. But I have to remind myself that either more of today, these days, as someone who pushes himself to an extreme level, yields extremely high standards and putting more chips on my shoulder today for we tomorrow's today is definitely going to be counterproductive. And this is the big thing you got to forget about how you feel about who you used to be and recognize that you're not that person anymore. If about these questions of if you feel that you push too hard or that you feel that you put so much pressure on yourself that you feel this anxiety and stress, it's probably time to put that chip down step by step. So if all this resonated, hit Home, Here's a six step action plan. First off, figure out what caused you to develop that chip on your shoulder. I think it's so important to understand why this was formed. So you can say yourself, you know what? There was a reason for this and it served me well. And then what did you tell yourself in that story? For example, you could have you told yourself I to always max out or I don't ever want to feel that pain again. I don't ever want to quit again. Whatever it is, maybe. Do you figure that part out? Then tell yourself what good results that actually get from it in the past. This is really important. Recognizing it did serve you. But then what you got to flip on it is assess it honestly. We're going to be possibly holding you back from your bigger future. Say, okay, it's stopping me from being able to employ leverage. I focus on the small things. I don't trust certain people, whatever it may be. And then ask yourself this What small experiment could you run to try putting it down in a small way? And for this figure out, okay, what's that action and what's the timeframe? I think it's really important and you look tool as far as mindset to say, I'm not going to change because that's scary, but I'm just going to run a small experiment. If you can tell it to yourself that convinced yourself, I don't have to change. I don't have to completely restructure how I think, but I'm just going to give myself permission to run this small experiment with this specific task, this specific time frame. It can give you the permission to try it out, and then you can see for yourself if it's helpful for you or not. And number six, you have to choose courage. This will be harder than minus the pushing, harder. You have to recognize that. And this was the workshop I wanted to run you guys through is letting go of the chip on your shoulder.

18:12 - 18:43
Itamar Marani
A good or bad idea? So here's the deal. If you feel that sometimes you have this chip on your shoulder that's causing you anxiety, it's causing you stress, and it's actually not allowing you to not enjoy life and not be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor. But is keeping you up at night and you're able to be productive in your business. You need to strongly reconsider if it's a good thing or if it's a bad thing. Now, if you want to also download all the slides that we have for this presentation along with the question, the six step Action Plan, how to let go the step by step. Not a scary, but in a small steps you can see if it's good for you or not.

18:43 - 19:05
Itamar Marani
You can download it at the links below. It's either more my dot com slash pod 35. You can find it there. And if you guys have any questions, let me know in the comments below. Until then, always question your previous assumptions and ask yourself is this chip on my shoulder still serving me? Or can you get all the benefits you create as far as my habits and routines without the emotional stress anxiety? If I start letting go. I'll see you guys in the next part.