Principle: Confidence and adaptability prevent an inflated ego from stalling progress on your most important work.
The key counterpoint to ego is adaptability. This means cultivating the willingness to confidently bend to your environment while still maintaining a strong sense of self and purpose. To maintain traction and prevent ego from stalling your progress, you must develop the ability to subvert your egocentric needs for the sake of the work, which in the end is often the best thing for you as well.
Get Real with a SWOT Analysis
Self-awareness is an important aspect of consistent performance, and it’s also critical to avoiding the dangers of ego inflation. One way to root yourself in reality is to conduct a regular SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for Strengths (the activities you are naturally good at), Weaknesses (the activities you struggle with), Opportunities (areas where you are likely to perform well if given a chance), and Threats (areas where you are vulnerable). While this exercise is often performed by organizations as a means to explore strategy options, it can also be valuable on an individual basis to help you determine where to place your focus and to help you maintain a realistic sense of your performance.
To perform a personal SWOT analysis, dedicate about thirty minutes to the exercise, and ask yourself the following:
Strengths: What unique value am I able to add consistently? What have I recently discovered I’m good at?
Weaknesses: What activities am I consistently poor at, despite my best effort? Is there a way to improve my skills in the more crucial areas where I’m failing?
Opportunities: Where do I have the most potential to add value over the coming weeks or months? How can I position myself to do so?
Threats: Where am I most vulnerable, and where do I have the most likely chance of failing over the coming term? How can I mitigate the chance of failure?
Once you’ve taken the time to analyze each of these elements, develop a plan of action to help you act based upon what you observe. How can you structure your days so that you can better leverage your strengths and minimize your dependence on areas where you are weakest? How can you cultivate you focus, time, and energy to leverage your upcoming opportunities? How can you decrease the chances you’ll fall prey to threat areas?
Be aggressively confident and stand your ground, and then be willing to adapt when necessary to achieve the results you want. If you do this, you will be far less likely to look back on your work with regret.
* Source: Die Empty by Todd Henry