Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

It’s not that hard to do research to identify what it takes to rise from good to great. There are books like Peak by Anders Ericsson, Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin, Developing Talent in Young People by Benjamin S. Bloom, and of course I can’t forget to mention the famous Jim Collins’ book that goes by the name Good to Great.

While the Collins book is from a corporate perspective while the other books are from the perspective of individual performance, there is a common thread between them all. Going from good to great doesn’t happen by chance. Instead, it takes a deliberate strategy facilitated by the right team who know how to do the right things the right way consistently.

It’s this combination that creates the defining mindset one needs to rise from good to great. That is the mindset of process.

Rising from Good to Great with the Process Mindset

A person with a process mindset is one that is keenly aware that small wins matter and that both bad and good habits compound overtime. This mindset is one that puts extreme focus on winning the day, each and every day.

This simply means that the principle that governs this mindset is that the small things one does each day will total up into big things one day. We don’t control the date of one day, but we do control the small things we do every day.

Ultimately, this is the defining characteristic of this mindset. One must accept the fact that they don’t control how much time it will take to go from good to great. While others may make the mistake of skipping steps and taking shortcuts to try to force the day of greatness to come sooner, those with this mindset never take shortcuts. Shortcutting the process is far more likely to delay greatness rather than to accelerate it.

History shows that you can’t control the outcome, but you can control the process. So, it’s always best to error on the side of staying persistent and verifying the process over running out of patience. This is how you go from good to great.