If you were to think of your transitional moments as miniature battles, would you say that you’re taking, holding, or giving up ground?

If we think of things from a militaristic perspective, and we focus on keeping things as simple as possible, those are really your only three options.

You can take ground. You can hold the ground. Or you can give up ground.

It’s obvious that you don’t ever want to give up ground, unless it provides you with a strategic advantage. Today being Valentine's Day there are times where it makes sense to compromise and “give up some territory” in order to achieve a larger objective.
But generally speaking, we want to hold or take as much ground as possible when it comes to those transitional moments.

If you’ve followed along in the past few Reflections and started to analyze your transitional moments, ask yourself if there are any areas where you’re currently losing ground. If there are Direct, Adapt, and Iterate.

Direct your mind where you want it to go. Ask yourself what adaptations you’d need to make in order to seize control, outflank, out maneuver, and gain fire superiority over that transition. And as always, iterate! Take the action, make the changes, and hold yourself accountable to winning the battle.

Holding ground can be acceptable in some instances also, but remember Ben Franklin’s quote “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, and success have no meaning.”

If we’re holding ground, we have to find ways of challenging ourselves so we avoid becoming complacent.

This is where journaling and keeping a log can be a great practice.

If you notice you’ve been holding ground for too long, it’s likely time to make a change, but if you have no way of measuring that, it’s easy to have it get lost in the noise.

Gaining ground is where it’s at!

As a Marine, we trained to always be on the offensive, and be “default aggressive” as Jocko Willink has popularized.

How do you remain default aggressive?

Direct - Adapt - Iterate

Make that part of your daily thought process. Think of your transitional moments and visualize them on a little map or sand table so you can see yourself moving the pieces around the board.

Are you being outflanked or out maneuvered? Do you have a plan to defeat the enemy? Are you vulnerable to attack? What contingencies do you have in place if shit hits the fan?

It seems silly, but sometimes visualizing your transitions this way can help you to think more strategically about how your approaching them so you can create a different results.

Give it a try, and let me know what you think!
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Death - Before - Dishonor

To your success,

Nate

​P.S. If you’d like to share your reflections with me, feel free to email me at reflections@mindvaultllc.com as I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts. This email goes directly to me and is reserved only for those who read these Reflections.