What are you attributing your success towards?

The Health Growth Letters is a weekly publication of tips, frameworks, and lessons to help you build a more balanced life based on faith, health, and wellness. If you’ve been forwarded this email, you can subscribe here.

What’s on the agenda:

• Verse: A New Hope

• Lesson: Your stagnation is an attribution problem

A verse:

This past weekend, we closed out “Holy Week”.

Holy week is the week leading up to Easter. It starts with Palm Sunday, which is remembered for Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, where the people laid palm branches down in front of him and praised Him as the next King.

It moves into Maundy Thursday, which was the day of the Last Supper, and Good Friday, the day of His death, and concludes with Easter, the day of His resurrection.

It’s probably the most important time of the year in Christianity, if not second behind Christmas, but there is something that I have to be careful of every year.

I have to be careful not to let it just go by.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has a quote I think about every year around this time. It’s “you can’t hear the gospel and remain unchanged… it either hardens your heart or draws you into deeper repentance.

Growing up in church, I’ve heard the good news of the resurrection my entire life, but if I’m not careful, I can let it pass without letting it restore the faith and hope in my heart.

A new, living hope,

On a macro and spiritual level, the resurrection of Jesus changed everything. It has given us an eternal hope, but I also think it reminds us of a more imminent hope.

A hope that God has a plan for our lives, to bless us, and to use us to let it “be on earth as it is in Heaven”.

What do you need a new hope in?

God laid his life down for you. He did this is to bless you and be with you. I want to encourage you to a new or restored hope - a hope that God is working and doing something wonderful in your life. Even if you don’t see it.

Trust that God is working, and if you aren’t sure how, believe and ask that he show you how he’s working.

I believe He will!

A lesson:
Your lack of growth is an attribution problem

I’m 35,000 feet in the air right now, somewhere between Miami and Nashville.

I’m flying to Nashville to see my best friend and go on a two-day bike ride. The plan is to bike 60-70 miles down the Nachez Trail tomorrow, stay the night somewhere, and bike back on Thursday.

It should be an adventure!

But sitting here, mentally and tangibly trying to close out work for a few days, I’m thinking about the concept of attribution.

How am I getting to Nashville?

If tomorrow you asked me how I got to Nashville, I’d say I took a plane.

The reality is, however, that while I did take a plane, I also took an elevator, a car, an escalator, another car, and walked to get there. I used a phone to plan out the car route and understand what time I needed to leave, I needed my wife to drive me to the airport so that I didn’t have to Uber or pay to leave a car, I”ll also use my phone again to call my friend and let him know when I landed and where I was so that he knew when and where to pick me up.

Yet, when I tell you how I got here, I don’t mention all those other pieces; I simply say “By plane.”

I don’t mention the smaller pieces.

That’s because we discount the value of the smaller steps, despite their importance in our journey

The problem with over-Attribution

The problem with this approach is that it overemphasizes the importance of the plane.

Sure, it might be the most important part, but it’s not the only part.

I couldn’t have gotten to Nashville without it, but there are other steps that I also wouldn’t have been able to get here without.

We do the same thing with our own personal growth. When we reflect on the accomplishments we’ve had or the goals we’ve achieved, we focus on the biggest lever.

The hard work.

The hours invested.

The things we gave up for them.

But we rarely mention the value of a loving and caring support system, the financial security that allowed me to go all in on something big, the mentors who gave us insight and knowledge that others didn’t.

We fixate on the value of bigger pieces and diminish the value of the smaller pieces.

We attribute our success to one lever.

And as a result, we double down on that action and stop investing in the smaller ones.

The problem with doubling down on one lever:

I see this in my career often. Brands will invest millions of dollars into paid advertising to see diminished returns year after year.

They inevitably ask the question, “Why is my performance down?!”

This leads to a series of questions from me, some are about platform performance, but most are about their business and what’s changed. Oftentimes, the realization is that paid media has stayed the same, but something else has changed.

An affiliate program they used to invest in heavily got shut down.

Their organic social has been prioritized

Competitors have come out with similar products and they haven’t innovated to keep up.

They assign blame to the primary lever, but the core issue is with the supportive actions!

It’s an attribution problem!

We do the same thing in our own personal growth journeys. We say things like “I need to work harder” when in reality, in our attempt to work harder, we’ve reduced our effort to build routines, habits, and relationships that enable us to work hard to begin with!

We go all in on something only to pull the rug on from under it.

Give credit where credit is due

My encouragement to you is to identify the most important lever (plane) that’s required to achieve your goals, but also to spend time identifying the tasks and levers that make that possible.

Yes, the plane ride is the most valuable part of my trip to Nashville, and I most certainly could not have gotten here without it, but I couldn’t have taken this plane and reached my destination without other modes of transportation.

If hard work is the most important lever in achieving your goals, ask yourself, “What other things make it possible for me to work hard?”

Typically, it’s things like…

Strong relationships

A healthy body

A clear and calm mind

Spiritual peace.

Though those things don’t often move the needle directly, they have a direct correlation with your ability to do the things of value.

Don’t remove credit from the tasks that make you the most capable version of yourself.

If you do, you’ll ultimately double down on something that pays off significantly less in isolation.