The real threat to you not producing the results you want are not external. They are not somewhere “out there on the horizon, looming, lurking, and threatening. You might believe that the risks to your results are your irrational competitor, the government or politics, changes in the general economy, global events, or black swans. While there is no reason not to be aware of what’s going on around you; that still leaves you responsible for doing something.
All the risks to your goals are right here, right now, and internal.
The real danger you face is that you don’t do what you need to do when you need to do it. The danger to reaching your goals is that you allow small things to take your time and attention away for the few, critical, big things you need to do. The real danger is not putting outsized effort into your real priorities.
Knowing what you need to do and not doing it is a failure to execute, one of the most certain factors that will cause you to miss your goals. You are vulnerable not because of your competitor’s irrational pricing model, as much as you are your failure to execute your own strategy. For all intents and purposes, knowing what you need to do and not doing it is the same as not knowing.
The way you fail to generate the outcomes you want is to avoid dealing with the constraints, believing that your strategy and your effort will be enough to reach your goal. Strategy is mostly made up of what you are not going to do, and what you are going to give up. Having what you want often requires that you have less of one thing to have more of something that is going to move you forward.
Looking outside for threats instead of looking inside for obstacles is to spend time and energy on threats that are not going to do as much to harm to you as you are by not doing what you need to do. Awareness of external threats is enough. Turn your attention inwards and do the work you need to do to have what it is that you want.
