Take the restrictor plate off.

One of my favorite scenes from the movie Old School with Will Ferrell is the scene when his character, Frank “The Tank” is working on his muscle car, “The Red Dragon”

“Took the restrictor plate off to give the Red Dragon a little more juice. But it's not exactly street legal, so keep it on the down low.”

I’m one of those guys that loves to quote movie lines and Old School has too many of them to count. Yesterday I was thinking of self-limiting beliefs and for some reason the quote popped into my head. For those that don’t know, the restrictor plate is a device you install at the automobile engine intake to limit its power. In auto racing they use the restrictor plate to equal the level of competition. Another example would be the “governor” on a riding lawn mower— essentially different technology but the same idea.

Yesterday I found myself in a contemplative mood in the afternoon. I just started a new sales year in my software selling job and I was putting my plan together for the coming year. Like so many people I find myself often fighting a constant battle to overcome the seeds of doubt that fester in my head— essentially those times when I’m restricting my own success through self-limiting beliefs. It dawned on me that all too often I’m letting fear and doubt literally restrict my performance.

How often are we limiting ourselves by putting a restrictor plate on our efforts?

I really is all about what’s in our head. According to elite Sports Psychologist Dr. Stan Beecham, in his book Elite Minds: How Winners Think Differently to Create a Competitive Edge and Maximize Success, our success, or lack thereof, it entirely mental:

“I believe the degree to which one performs and the level of success one achieves is 100 percent mental. Why? Because the mind is in control of the body. It is scientifically verified by those who have studied the brain-mind complex for decades. You brain is software, your body is hardware. Simply put, your body does what your brain tells it do for or what your brain thinks your body is capable of doing.”

I love the concept of the mind being the software that controls the body. It’s really an interesting way to think about our bodies. All the physical gifts in the world mean nothing if we’re losing the mental game. Scott Adams has a similar concept when he refers to humans as “moist robots”.

According to Adams:

“Your brain is wired to continuously analyze your environment, your thoughts, and your health and to use that information to generate a sensation you call your attitude. You know from experience that you do better work, and you more enjoy life, when your attitude is good. If you could control your attitude directly, as opposed to letting the environment dictate how you feel on any given day, it would be like a minor superpower. It turns out you have that superpower. You can control your attitude by manipulating your thoughts, your body, and your environment. Your attitude affects everything you do in your quest for success and happiness. A positive attitude is an important tool. It’s important to get it right.”

Of course it’s often easier said than done. One of the biggest challenges we face every day is controlling our attitude. The point Adams makes with the idea of the “most robot” is that “we can be programmed for happiness as long as we understand the user interface.”

How do we program ourselves for happiness? It starts with the impact of the brain and how our thoughts, and the subsequent mindset our thoughts create, control how we approach our day.

Think of elite athletes. When you reach a certain level of athletic prowess, it’s the mental game that separates the transcendent athletes from the mere stars. Michael Jordan was blessed with incredible physical skills and a dominating work ethic, but what made him the greatest basketball player ever is his ability to consistently perform in the clutch and the advantage he had over his opponents mentally. His killer instinct was a byproduct of his mental edge.

According to Beecham the difference is that players like Jordan have the mental edge:

“Who then performs the best when the advantages of talent and experience are mitigated? The answer is simple: the person whose mind is an asset, not an obstruction. The competitive advantage at the highest level is overwhelmingly mental, not physical. I see this every day.”

I realize none of us are Michael Jordan. The key for the average person is understanding how developing a mental advantage can have great dividends in all areas of our life.

More broadly, we are wrong about who we are. The vast majority of obstacles we face are in fact mental. Fear of a difficult conversation. Fear of applying for a specific job because we don’t feel we would get it. Fear of asking for a raise.

I could go on and list dozens and dozens of fears that I face all the time. These are the fears that we all face that essentially put a restrictor plate on our lives. Those moments of doubt that creep in that stop us from truly putting ourselves out there. Or “leaning in”.

Back to Beecham:

“Fear is your real opponent. ... It’s all about fear. If you kill fear, you win. If you kill fear, you have your best year ever. If you kill fear, you train like a madman. If you kill fear, you go to college for free. If you kill fear, you stand on the podium, you get paid, and you have strangers walk up to you and call you by name. When fear dies, you begin to live.”

One of the biggest individual fears we have as humans is the idea of public speaking, so much that it even has a term, Glossophobia. According to the Washington Post public speaking is the number one fear that humans face, even more than heights and snakes. The fear of public speaking has played a factor in my life, albeit less now. Several years ago it was so bad that it absolutely affected my job. I would go out of my way to avoid the act of public speaking. It was the ultimate self-limiting belief, a literal restrictor plate that I was putting on my success. After avoiding it and obsessing over the times I had to speak in public I finally broke down and joined Toastmasters a decade ago and it changed everything. Toastmasters helped me get up in front of people and literally kill the fear. I still get nervous when I get up in front of groups but now my fears are completely normal “butterflies” that everyone has.

So what am I getting at with all of this?

Understand that the obstacles we face are largely mental. We can get past those obstacles by understanding them, confronting them, and then building systems to actively overcome them. The more self induced obstacles we overcome the more we remove the restrictor plate on our life.

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