You vs You: 12 Ways to Kick Your Own Ass and Win

Cohn

INTRODUCTION

There are two things you should know before you begin reading.

One: Ultimately, I have the movie Any Given Sunday to thank for this book. Have you seen it? A once-great pro football team is struggling to make their way to the playoffs, but they’re plagued with injuries, narcissism, and leadership issues. Al Pacino plays the head coach, and he gives a locker room speech right before the big game that will determine their playoff fate. He says, The biggest battle of our professional lives all comes down to today . . . inch by inch, play by play. We’re in hell right now . . . and we can stay here and get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way into the light . . . one inch at a time.

I’m a fan of the word battle, which is what immediately grabbed my attention at the beginning of the speech. I feel I’ve battled my entire life—mentally, physically, spiritually, financially, romantically, emotionally, professionally. We all have, haven’t we? That’s what life is—a huge battle, one right after the other.

The speech also resonated with me because of the idea that while they would win or lose as a team, it would come down to each player making a conscious decision to take ownership of their own shortcomings, which meant admitting they weren’t invincible and being willing to kick their own ass in order to have a fighting chance to win.

My wheels started turning and I thought about how awesome it would be to isolate the specific battles we all face—the inevitable ones that magnify our personal shortcomings—and then shed light on how we can practically overcome them. Overcoming them doesn’t mean becoming invincible; it means having the wherewithal to kick our own ass when needed. And so the book’s premise was born: as you strive for any improvement in life—whether it’s more income, a better relationship, a promotion, a bigger business, or a better body—the most important battles you will face are the battles against yourself.

We all face tough circumstances that are outside our control. And we have to overcome them somehow in order to keep making progress. Yes, unexpected and undeserved adversity is no joke. My objective here is not to diminish that. My objective is to tell the whole truth—that while we all face battles we didn’t bring on ourselves, the majority of our problems are just that: our problems. We invited them into our lives through poor choices, apathy, indecision, arrogance, anxiety, selfishness, and other traits we’d rather not discuss.

Even though I have made great strides in my life and have reached a level that society may consider successful, I still fight these battles on a regular basis. So do you, if you strive to continue growing, improving, and achieving. Many of them weren’t even on my radar until I realized what was holding me back from the next level. Namely, until I realized how I was holding myself back.

Two: I believe there are 12 personal battles in all. Don’t be overwhelmed by that number. As you will see, we don’t struggle through all of them all of the time. Certain battles come primarily at the moment we first take action toward improvement, and other battles occur primarily after we’ve experienced some success. And a select group of battles occur when we least expect them; they are more like personal ambushes.

In this book, I want to show you what I’ve learned about these 12 important battles that either keep us from success and significance, or usher us to them through victory. I’ve taught many of the lessons to the thousands of people I get to lead each week. Many of them are experiencing a level of personal achievement, relational abundance, and financial freedom they never thought possible. They got there the same way I got where I am—by understanding and winning the most important personal battles in their lives on a regular basis. The beauty of victory in these battles is that the more you win them, the more confident you can be in victory the next time. Eventually, we learn to operate in victory.

I don’t profess to be undefeated. None of us are. Not even close. In fact, some of the lessons I’ve learned came from weeks, months, and in some cases years of failing to overcome poor habits or harmful traits in myself. I’ve also learned them from watching the people I lead get started, experience growth, and then struggle to take another step. I’ve even learned them from people I watched reach astronomical success and then crash and burn.

I want you to read this book and walk away knowing who you want to be, and feel equipped to become that person. I want you to divide and conquer the ultimate battle between your ears and win the head game. I believe the easiest way to do that is through reflection, inspection, and direction, so I break down each battle into three parts: Return, Redefine, and Repeat.

Return isolates the real issue. It requires you to admit where you are in the battle and how fighting it really affects you.

Redefine is exactly how it sounds. How can you think about the battle differently? If you redefine what it means, you can start to relinquish its power.

Repeat is the choice you have to make every day to become the best you. You return to the issue, redefine its meaning, and then repeat the cycle over and over and over in order to keep winning.

The bottom line is this: these bodies, minds, and spirits of ours are extraordinary things, in and of themselves. They are the most important tools we’ve been given. They were made to dream big. They were made to do great things. If we’re paying attention, we can see it happening every day all around us.

But it never just happens. Unfortunately, these tools we call ourselves can self-sabotage if we’re not mindful, wise, and willing. Our core components are always at war with one another. But the beauty of the personal battles we face is that the tide can always be turned—no matter who you are, no matter what you’ve done. That is the ultimate ace card we all hold. We can choose today to fight against who we were and begin becoming who we are made to be. This book is about that choice and the challenging, rewarding quest that ensues.

So put on your armor and let’s do this.

BATTLE 1

YOU

vs

YOUR PERSONA

No man, for any considerable period of time, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the truth.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne

I posted a picture on social media of me at the gym. I took four photos so I could choose the best one, though they all sort of looked the same. I spent about two minutes going back and forth between the X-Pro II and Lo-Fi filter to get the aesthetic right and then took another three minutes to think through how I wanted to word the caption. Then I published.

What was the last photo you posted on your social networks? How many outtakes were there? How many minutes did you spend with the filter and writing (then rewriting) the caption? I’m not trying to shame you. We all do it. It’s a well-known but seldom discussed reality that there is you and then there is the edited persona that you present to the world. You know the one—the more acceptable, more on-trend, more clever, more look-at-me-living-my-best-life-now one.

I spend a lot of time thinking about what I put out into the world. I rationalize this because I have the privilege of getting to lead thousands of people each week and therefore know that they’re looking both at me and to me. I want to share things that are relevant and motivating— words of affirmation, insights into how being driven leads to success, and glimpses into my life that show what I’m doing and how I juggle it all. I want people to see that if I’m doing it, so can they. It’s helpful. Harmless. Or is it?

RETURN

Winning the battle between you and your persona takes, first and foremost, telling yourself the truth about you.

A quick history of the internet and social media for the sake of background—the World Wide Web officially became a thing in 1991, and by the year 2000, the internet was everywhere. Around 100 million people had access to the internet, and it became quite common for people to be engaged socially online. Of course, back then it was looked at as an odd hobby at best. Still, more and more people began to utilize chat rooms for making friends, dating, and discussing topics that they wanted to talk about. Not only would the internet fundamentally change the world as we knew it, but the introduction of social networking would soon embed itself into our culture.

The first surge of social media came in 2003 with MySpace and LinkedIn, followed by Facebook in 2004, Twitter in 2006, Instagram in 2010, and Snapchat in 2012. Today there are countless more. One recent report¹ said the average person has five social media accounts and spends around 1 hour and 40 minutes each day browsing their networks. In-depth interviews with these users reported that 80 percent feel deceived by what others are posting on social media, and 60 percent feel it has impacted their self-esteem in a negative way.

It’s safe to say that most narratives shared and portrayed on social media are positive and celebratory. It’s natural to want to show the upside of life, isn’t it? To show people the good things going on in our lives. There’s certainly enough depressing news out there already. But are we helping or hindering? What if the things we’re projecting in the name of being highly connected are actually making us disconnected?

While the advantages of sharing life with others are many, the pull to win and keep the approval of others can grow with our following. Everyone feels different degrees of this pressure—this hybridized digital version of keeping up with the Joneses—falling somewhere between posting whatever, whenever, to strategically setting up the shot, laboring over touch-ups, writing articulate statements that both inspire and compel, and doing our damnedest to project perfection.

Where do you fall?

The concept of creating the illusion of a perfect life on social media has been around almost as long as social media itself. And by playing into it, we put an increasing demand on ourselves to live out the illusion we’ve created in order to keep up the facade. Are we trying to avoid disappointing others? Or trying to avoid disappointing ourselves? While the illusion might seem fun for a time, it feeds an unbalanced view of reality. Not only does this place a burden on our followers, who might begin to view their lives, by comparison, as inadequate, but it also places a burden on us.

The spirit of today’s age, wrote Wally Phillips, seems to be: ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it. If you do not, pretend.’ Of all the personal battles we face, I see this as one of the toughest and most consistent. Winning this battle is more than being authentic or more real. If we’re being honest, those terms have become clichéd phrases we often use to sell credibility without proof or to justify coarse actions. We must go further beneath the mask so we can not only see what’s under there but also figure out why we feel the need for a mask in the first place.

Have you heard of #realstagram? It’s a hashtag on Instagram that accompanies raw and unfiltered pictures. People use it when they post things that purposefully don’t align with their personal brand, and do so in order to pull back the curtain of perfection. A quick scroll will show a face without makeup, a fat roll, gray hairs, cellulite, a messy living room, or an overdrawn bank account receipt. I laughed out loud the other day seeing someone post themselves sitting there anxiously waiting for their wine delivery. These people are embracing who they are by owning what they’re not. And it’s liberating.

What if you took pictures of your worst moments? Documented the downside of your life? What would it show? Maybe an argument with your significant other. Bags under your eyes after a restless night. A nervous breakdown after your child refused to take a bath (again). Sitting solo on your couch on a Friday night. Piles of laundry, your untweezed eyebrows, the frozen TV dinner thawing on your kitchen counter. There are parts of ourselves we want people to see and then there are other parts we intentionally hide. Why?

Let’s go from 0 to 100 and say we all suffer from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). According to Psychology Today, individuals with that disorder exhibit an inflated sense of self-importance and a lack of ability to empathize with others. People with NPD believe they are superior or special, and often try to associate with other people they believe are unique or gifted in some way. This association enhances their self-esteem, which is typically fragile underneath the surface. People who have high self-esteem are often humble, whereas narcissists rarely are. Instead, they seek excessive admiration and attention in order to know that others