8 Ways to Great: Peak Performance on the Job and in Your Life (Part 2)

Why is losing sometimes better than winning? What does it mean to live on the left side of your but? And why would workers far from Wall Street listen to an adviser to traders about the importance of "accountability"?

In 8 Ways to Great: Peak Performance on the Job and in Your Life, Dr. Doug Hirschhorn shares career advice he's given to elite Wall Street traders. "This book", the performance coach and TV personality explains, "is about how super-successful people think".

Critics will complain, as Dr. Doug notes, that these traders are "the same guys who blew up and lost billions of dollars in the recent stock market meltdown." Hirschhorn's clients are "coming straight through the eye of the storm", however, he says, and the lessons of 8 Ways to Great aren't limited to one occupation. In fact, for almost a year now, Dr. Doug has been part of our engineering community here at CR4.

Yesterday, Part 1 of this series described the first four principles of 8 Ways to Great. Today's installment reviews the final four lessons.

Principle #5: Be All That You Can Be

What does an old recruiting slogan for the U.S. Army have to do with career success during the Great Recession? Plenty. "Confidence," Dr. Doug explains, "should come from within". Today's headlines may be filled with news about layoffs and Wall Street bonuses, but worry is no more productive than envy – or anger.

Don't compare yourself to your colleagues, Hirschhorn recommends, and remember that "the elite in any field are independent thinkers." Stay positive in the face of adversity, but don't rest on your laurels either. Outcomes are important, but "how well you performed" during the process matters, too.

Principle #6: Keep Your Cool

"When you're making any kind of decision," Hirschhorn advises, "the most dangerous thing you can do is to allow yourself to become emotional or to get overly invested in the need to be right". In a sense then, ego and emotions are a double-edged sword that rivals the one forged of skills and knowledge in Principle #4: Sharpen Your Edge.

Principle #6 also explains how losing is sometimes better than winning. To win when you're losing, "you make the decision you need to make instead of the one you might want to make," Dr. Doug writes. For example, consider the case of a seller who needs to unload a home for a job-related move out-of-state. No one wants to sell a home at a loss, but a wise worker might conclude that in a down market, such a sale is part of the price of making a fresh start.

Principle #7: Get Comfortable With Being Uncomfortable

"Traders know they're operating in a world with erratic highs and lows," Hirschhorn writes, but who likes to be uncomfortable? In this chapter then, Dr. Doug dismisses the illusion of "the perfect moment" in life. "Success is a game of probabilities," he explains, and anything worth doing is worth doing now. After all, you can't succeed if you don't try.

The left side of the brain is your logical one, so don't let irrational fears lead to inaction. "All those 'buts'," Hirschhorn writes about excuses, "are what keep people sitting on their butts instead of getting up and doing something to get themselves where they say they really want to be". Learning from your mistakes and using volatility to create opportunities are keys to professional success. The career of Warren Buffet, one of the world's best-known and most successful investors, illustrates Dr. Doug's point.

Principle #8: Make Yourself Accountable

Accountability and discipline aren't words that many readers associate with Wall Street these days, but both principles are paramount for Dr. Doug Hirschhorn and his clients. "Word without action are just philosophy", this holder of a Ph.D. in psychology explains, and mere goal-setting is not enough.

"What if you can't find a compellingly positive reason to change?," Hirschhorn then asks. "You may need to find your motivation in the unpleasant consequence of not changing," he answers. All of Wall Street won't learn Dr. Doug Hirschhorn's lessons, of course, but now workers in other walks of life can.