Focus on Growth, Embrace the Struggle, and Dominate Under Pressure with Niyi Sobo

Olaniyi “Niyi” Sobomehin is a former American football fullback. He played college football at Portland State. He was signed by the New Orleans Saints as an undrafted free agent in 2008.

After being cut from the NFL due to an injury, Olaniyi decided to begin coaching and from there, in addition to being a full-time firefighter, he has built a coaching company imnotyou.com to help young athletes be successful at an elite level. You can connect with him and learn more here, imnotyou.com

Favorite Success Quote

“People wish to be settled but only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Key Points

1. You Must Have a Vision 

Before you can achieve any goal, you must first set that goal.

Before you can arrive at a destination, you must know what destination you wish to arrive at.

Before you can live the life of your dreams, you must have a vision for what that life looks like.

So many men today walk around aimlessly, without any real vision or purpose to their lives. Maybe they have some arbitrary goals that they set because society told them to, but they lack a visceral purpose and vision that pushes them forward in life.

If you hope to live a great life, a life of meaning, a legendary life, then you must start with your vision.

Who do you want to be? What do you want to achieve? How do you want to show up every day? How many lives do you want to impact?

Until you know the answers to these questions, you cannot achieve the life you were born to achieve.

2. Reverse Engineer Your Vision and Treat Failures as Opportunities 

Once you have a vision, you have just gotten started.

With your vision clearly written down, you must reverse engineer the steps that are required to achieve that vision until you have a long list of small steps that will help you achieve your goals in the coming years.

Once you know what steps you need to take and when you need to take them (this will take you a long time to figure out), you must take daily massive action and learn from everything you do.

You must remember that failure doesn’t mean you’re out of the game, it means you have a chance to learn.

For example, if you sit down to work and have a completely unproductive day, instead of viewing this as a failure, ask yourself “What did I learn?”

Maybe you learned that your phone needs to be on airplane mode throughout the workday. Maybe you learned that you need to have your days planned before you begin them. Or maybe you learned that you just need to get some extra sleep because you’re too damn exhausted to work.

Whatever you learn, write it down, tweak your approach, and continually learn from the process until you achieve your goal.

3. Stay Hungry and Focus on Growth 

One of the biggest traps into which many men fall is the trap of success and complacency.

You see, many of us start with relatively small visions that we achieve early on in life.

Maybe you’ve sold your business, finally earned the 6-figure salary, or married the woman of your dreams. That’s great, but you’re not even close to finished.

In fact, you’re just getting started.

Life is all about expansion, it’s about growth, it’s about constantly striving to be, do, and achieve more.

Instead of resting on your laurels, you must stay hungry.

Even when you are enjoying the fruits of your hard work, you must set your sights on the next milestone, the next goal, and the next vision.

Because if you don’t, if you settle in your current circumstances, you will eventually atrophy and die, leaving this world with so much potential left on the table.

No matter how successful you are or how much success you achieve, you must remember the famous words of Steve Jobs and “Stay hungry, stay foolish”.

4. Commit Yourself to Discipline Every Single Day

Most of you have probably heard our interview with Jocko Willink where he echoes his infamous statement that “Discipline Equals Freedom”.

And most of you treat this statement as a convenient war cry instead of an ethos by which you live your life.

Most men commit to discipline sporadically and as a result, they make great achievements and breakthroughs sporadically as well.

They are disciplined when they need to be but they aren’t disciplined when they should be.

And this reality is clearly reflected in their success and failures.

If you want to be one of the greats, if you want to be a legend, if you want to be the kind of person who people remember, then you must be willing to discipline yourself daily.

You must make a commitment to discipline every day that you wake up, you must stand strong in your values, and take massive action towards your goals even when you don’t need to.

This is the only way to achieve lasting success and it’s the only way that you will leave a dent in this universe.

5. Surround Yourself with the Right People 

When you have created a vision, reverse engineered that vision, committed yourself to discipline, and begin learning from your failures, there is only one final step towards ultimate achievement.

Your network.

Who you surround yourself with is one of the single most important factors in anyone’s journey.

If your five closest friends are millionaires, high achievers, and grounded men, then you will be the sixth.

Conversely, if your five closest friends are slobs, party animals, and lost boys then you will become the sixth.

You are the average of your five closest friends so pay careful attention to the company that you keep… It can literally make or break your success.