Performance Psychologist Jamil Qureshi is much sought after by those at the very top of their game in both sports and business and I’m not surprised. He said a lot of very important things during his sessions at the OSA Game of Success conference in Birmingham a few years ago. One thing he said that jumped out at me was ‘The only competitive advantage there is today, is that you learn better and faster than your competition.’ Think about it. Things are constantly in a state of flux around you, so the person or business who is better and faster at adapting to change will win. But change isn’t always big. Change is often small and easy to overlook. That means learning about yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses, your patterns. Noticing when you change something that makes things worse, and you need to make a correction. It also means learning about the people you lead on your team and noticing when they are having issues, or when they need coaching to help guide them to better performance and a happier outcome. These are just two examples, but it all involves constantly being aware of everything that is going on around you and making smart decisions.

So the question is what are you paying attention to? Out there, the average practice owner is paying attention to the mainstream news, on loop, as well as social media that tells them they are right and everyone else in the world is wrong. Most of the world buys the story that they are the helpless victim in everything, and that they deserve and have a right to everything they wish, without paying the price that reality demands. In a nutshell, everybody is paying attention to a long list of things they cannot control while the high performers are only paying attention to the long list of things they CAN control. Like everything that happens inside the four walls of their practice. From the décor to the frames you stock and those you don’t stock. From your pricing to the individuals you hire for your team and those you don’t. To how you manage, lead and inspire your team, to your processes and how you market your practice. Believe me, the list of things in your practice and life that are within your control and worthy of your attention is more than long enough to take up all your available bandwidth. For people like you and me, who are interested in making the best of ourselves and making a positive impact on the people around us, worrying about things you cannot control is a luxury you can’t afford.

Here is the biggest thing you can control that will impact your life and happiness and success more than any economy, or any government, or any global disaster. Your MIND. Arnold Palmer said ‘Golf is a game of inches. The most important are the six inches between your ears.” It’s true in golf. It’s true for everything. External stuff happens. But you are always in control of how you respond. And that starts in your mind and what you CHOOSE to think. As Jamil  Qureshi emphasised, your thoughts create your feelings and your feelings drive your actions. Think. Feel. Act. It all begins with what you think. That is too important to leave your thoughts up to chance or up to what the media tells you to think. You are in charge of your thoughts. As you think, so you become. So feed your mind with fuel that creates positive, constructive, useful thoughts. Surround yourself with people who are like-minded, open, positive and ambitious. This is more than half the power of Optical Success Academy. Yes we give you all the strategies but the most important work I do is helping people choose better thinking. As one of my first business mentors taught me twenty years ago, success is 80% mindset and only 20% mechanics. Look after your mindset and watch how everything changes for the better.