Building a New Routine to Embrace Change

The first step was to evaluate every aspect of his life, starting with how he was supporting his physical health. He had to take a close look at his sleep habits, his exercise routine, and his diet. Failing to take care of his body would hold him back.

The next thing David had to do was look at his daily schedule. Was he giving himself enough time to take care of himself physically? With a new baby on the way, sleep and spare time were going to be at a premium. David had to make sure that he was organizing his schedule to focus on his true priorities. Physical health had to come first; then, supporting his wife and his new child; then, excelling at his job and completing his course work. David had always been a type A guy who made careful schedules to map out his time, but he would need to rely on this skill more than ever now.

Of course, it's one thing to make a schedule and another thing to stick to it. The next step in David's overhaul was to set up support structures that would help him achieve his goals. Support structures can be physical. David could get some new equipment, like an activity tracker to help him keep up with his exercise regimen, or a blender to make some healthy green smoothies to keep his diet on track, for example. Support structures can also be organizational. David could keep his running shoes right next to the door to make rolling out of bed for a run as easy as possible, or reorganize his desk to make sure his class materials were always easy to find.

Support structures can also be interpersonal. David had to have some honest conversations with his wife, his friends and family, and his colleagues. Even the most powerful of us need help at times. This was a moment when David needed to make sure the people in his life knew what kind of challenge he was facing and were on board, ready to support him. He'd need a whole team behind him to make this all work.

High achievers like David are like Formula One race cars—high-performance machines. An elite race car is beautifully built. Every inch of it is designed with an eye to speed. But even the best car can't win a race without high-quality fuel in its tank. And the faster the car, the harder the pit crew has to work to keep it running.

In aikido, we talk a lot about something called ki—that's the energy that drives your every movement. It's the fuel in your tank. It's your life force, your power. It is a “multiplier.” It's crucial—but it's not enough on its own. You still need your pit crew. You need to refuel periodically, change your tires, and you need that guy standing by with the fire extinguisher in case something goes wrong. You can't achieve anything without your ki, but you also can't achieve anything on ki alone.

It's All about Energy

What exactly is ki? It's an elusive concept, at best. Understanding it is experiential—ki is a physical and spiritual energy that flows through your body. To truly understand it, you're going to have to get on your feet and move a little. We'll get to that in a moment.

Ki can be defined as “inner energy,” “life force,” or “energy flow.” It's the middle character in the word ai-ki-do—the center of everything we do in the martial art of peace. One way of describing ki is “to be in the zone.” You know what I mean—when everything is just going your way, working out perfectly for you. You wake up in the morning full of energy, excited to start your day. You smile at everyone you meet, and they can't help but smile back. You effortlessly move from project to project. Your deadlines are met with ease and creativity. You lead your team with a level of grace and clarity that draws the admiration of everyone around you. Life is easy. That is an example of ki.

Ki can also be described as “self-confidence” and “charisma.” In the Marine Corps we called it “command presence.” When someone else has a powerful ki, you can sense it. For example, you can actually feel the ki energy flowing from Martin Luther King, Jr. when you listen to his “I Have a Dream” speech. You feel that tingle going up your spine? That is ki.

My Own Encounters with Ki

My drill instructors at Marine Corps boot camp had powerful ki. The armed forces would refer to that ki as “command presence,” but the idea is the same. I remember the first time I met my drill instructors. There were three of them and 60 new, untrained recruits—a bunch of teenagers, eager to please, nervous, unsure of what they had gotten themselves into—emotionally, all over the map. It was the powerful, focused, and directed ki of our drill instructors that got us through those first difficult days.

You could sense their energy as they were standing there in front of the group. Ki can't be faked. We can sense it in others because we unconsciously pick up on the nonverbal cues signaling that this person is fully present in this moment and fully committed to what they're doing. Think about the weary, seen-it-all high school teacher who's marking time until summer vacation, or the boss who's clearly more worried about protecting his turf than getting good work done. You can feel when there's a disconnect between the person's spirit and their actions. It makes everyone in the room uncomfortable. But when spirit and action are aligned, it's powerful. It's compelling. All eyes are drawn to that person. That's ki.

Ki doesn't have to be loud or domineering. My drill instructors were—but that was the natural expression of their focused energy. For other people, focused and directed ki can be as soft as a whisper—but it's still just as powerful. I remember an influential lobbyist I met when I first moved back to Washington, DC after leaving Japan. This woman, Ann, was very soft-spoken and reserved in her demeanor, but in her own way she was at least as intimidating as my drill instructors. She wasn't harsh or aggressive at all, but she was a formidable person to face in a meeting, because she was so supremely focused and present. She was confident without being arrogant. When she listened, you could feel that she was listening with her whole self.

Ann and my drill instructors were totally different in most ways, but what they had in common was a sense that they were in exactly the right place at exactly the right time—that they were passionately committed to what they were doing. That feeling radiated off of them, drawing people to them. You instinctively wanted to be close to them, wanted to join in whatever they were doing. Their belief was so powerful that it was infectious. That's the power of ki when it's properly channeled.

Ki is both spiritual and physical. You feel it in your body. In Western cultures, the closest equivalent to ki is something personal trainers call proprioception. The term proprioception comes from the Latin word proprius, meaning “individual,” and “perception.” So it's about perception of yourself—of your body. It's an awareness of where your body is in space and how it's moving. Proprioception can be defined as developing a “sixth sense” that allows you to constantly monitor the stimuli in your body regarding position, motion, and balance, which keeps you aware and in control of the way your life force is propelling your body through space.

In aikido, we develop our ki through specific physical exercises designed to make you aware of how your energy is flowing through your body. All these exercises begin with three principles: relax, extend, and center. Keep your body relaxed—not floppy, but loose, ready to move. Extend your limbs, directing your energy purposefully. And center yourself—find your center of gravity and stay grounded in it.

When It Feels Like Ki Deserts You

My battle with cancer seemed to go well at first. But then, a few months after my first successful surgery, my doctor told me my cancer had returned and spread to my lung. Just when I thought I was done with cancer, my fight was actually kicking into high gear. I worked with my doctors to attack the problem the way I would attack anything else in my life: with everything I had. My chemo treatments were particularly brutal. Five days a week, Monday to Friday, 8 AM to 2 PM. Practically a full-time job. And believe me, this is not a job you want to have.

My doctor told me chemo would “make me feel a little blah.” He said that because he didn't want to tell me I was going to feel like I was dying. And in a way, I was. That's how you kill cancer cells—you reduce the entire body to near-death, hope you destroy all the cancer cells, and then, hopefully, bring the rest of the body back to life.

At that moment, life felt like it was slipping away. I thought my ki had completely abandoned me. I could barely drag myself out of bed in the morning. I felt like a zombie—like I was wrapped in cotton, cut off from the world. I couldn't eat. The power went out for a week and it hardly mattered—there was nothing in my fridge but the hypodermic needles I had to use to inject myself with medicine every night before I went to sleep.

Of course, my ki hadn't abandoned me—it was the only thing keeping me going. But I had lost the physical power I was used to having. Even after the chemo was over, I had to have a piece of my lung removed. I left the hospital in a wheelchair after that surgery because I didn't have the lung capacity to walk yet. I suddenly knew what it was going to be like to age. I couldn't go anywhere without an elevator. My mom had to help me with everything. I literally couldn't get out of bed or eat or go to the bathroom without help. It was humbling. It was terrifying.

Ki Alone Is Not Enough

It was months until I was able to go for a run again. (And a few years before I ran my first marathon—with only one and a half lungs. But that's a story for another time.) And when I did start to exercise again, I realized my whole sense of my body—my proprioception—had changed. I had to relearn all sorts of things I had taken for granted.

This was the moment when I finally learned, in a physical, visceral way, one of the central lessons of aikido: that ki is crucial, but ki alone is not enough. My life force carried me through my cancer treatments, but it wouldn't have been enough on its own. I couldn't have made it through my recovery without my mom and my doctors and nurses. And when I began to practice aikido again, I couldn't rely on my ki or my physical strength alone to power me through the movements. I couldn't do the exercises the way I used to—I had to relearn the techniques with my new, weaker body. Without that missing piece of lung, I couldn't do the exercises wrong anymore.

Aikido teaches us that physical strength is never enough on its own. You might be the strongest fighter in your class, or your country, or even the world. But even that kind of strength can be overcome. Say you're facing one opponent, and then his buddy shows up. If you try to use your strength alone to defeat both of them, you're going to lose. But if you channel your ki into the right structure, you can find a way to win—say, by pushing one of your opponents into the other, giving you the moment you need to retreat (yes, an honorable retreat can be a victory, if it means you live to fight another day).

Aikido is about harnessing your strength, your ki, into the forms and structures that will lead to success. Aikido teaches that relying on strength alone can be dangerously seductive—it can lead you to forget to follow the proper forms. And if you do, when you reach a moment when strength alone is not enough, you will undoubtedly fail.

When Strength Seduces You

Relying too heavily on your strength can lead to defeat in many different ways. Maybe you'll finally come up against an opponent who's even stronger than you. Maybe you'll lose your strength, like I did after chemo. Or maybe you'll simply defeat yourself.

Today, Facebook is one of the most powerful and influential companies out there. It's grown enormously since Mark Zuckerberg launched TheFacebook.com in 2004. By 2008, the site had 100 million users. By 2012, the site could boast 1 billion users—tenfold growth in just four years.¹ But even as the site has grown exponentially, rapidly becoming a part of the landscape of our everyday lives, it's been criticized again and again.

Over the years, the ubiquitous social network has repeatedly changed its privacy policies.² Most of these changes have eroded users' control over their own information—and most of them have been made without consulting users. A couple of high-profile missteps have dented the company's reputation. For example, in 2007 the company imposed a new service for advertisers called Beacon, which automatically shared users' purchases with their friends.³ Facebook had to apologize and ultimately scrap the program after huge outcry from users. In 2010, when Facebook introduced a location-based check-in function called Places, it again had to apologize to users over privacy concerns.

This pattern has been repeated multiple times. It's easy to imagine how this happened. The company was growing so quickly; its founder was a new kind of celebrity; it suddenly seemed like literally everyone and their mother was a member. That kind of strength can be intoxicating. It's easy to imagine how the company's powerful ki could have seduced it into attempting to move forward on brute strength—to force users to advertise the products they bought to their friends, or to push forward a change that would allow users to share their friends' physical locations without first getting permission.

The lesson Facebook needs to learn is one of the key lessons of aikido: that strength unchecked can be dangerous. Strength harnessed to a sensible, supportive structure is the key to success.

Understanding Ki Means Understanding Your Own Limits

In 2015, Jessica Williams was a rising star. As a popular correspondent on the hugely influential Daily Show, clips and GIFs of her sharpest moments were all over the Internet. And then Jon Stewart announced that he was stepping down from his job as host. The world immediately started speculating about who would replace him—and Williams's name kept coming up.⁴

The idea of Williams as the new host of the show was popular with fans online. Some even started a petition asking Comedy Central to give her the job.⁵ The petition got 14,000 signatures. A clip from the movie Hot Tub Time Machine 2 showed Williams hosting the show in the future.⁶ It seemed like the whole world was on board with the idea of Williams taking the host's chair.

Except, it turned out, Williams herself. Taking to Twitter, she explained that she was “underqualified for the job.” She said, “At this age (25) if something happens politically that I don't agree with, I need to go to my room and like not come out for, like, 7 days.” She noted that she was only beginning her career and wasn't planning on going anywhere. With grace, and gratitude for her fans' support, Williams made it clear that she didn't feel ready to take on this high-profile job. After all, she was only 25 years old. She had plenty of time to build her career in a more steady, sustainable way.

Her tweets also revealed a clear-eyed awareness of her own strengths and weaknesses. She said that, at that moment, she felt too personally and emotionally invested in politics to take on the job of running a show that would make jokes about it day in and day out, no matter what happened.

Do you have that kind of self-awareness? If you had a chance to take a huge promotion, one that would land you in a high-profile, high-pressure role, would you take the time to think carefully about whether it was the right choice? Or would you jump straight in, seduced by the idea that someone saw you in such a flattering light? In Chapter 1, I talked about a time when my student Daniel faced a similar dilemma. Like Daniel, Jessica Williams also needed to draw on calm energy—heiki—in order to make the right decision.

If you were relying on your strength and energy alone, you would leap into a new role without thinking through all the possible outcomes. Strength can be seductive. It has to be married to the proper forms and structures in order to create success. Ki, in aikido, is about that powerful life energy that pushes us all forward; but it's also about that awareness of yourself and where you are in space, that sixth sense that trainers call proprioception. When it comes to your career, this kind of awareness will help you see which opportunities are right for you—and which aren't.

Learning Self-Awareness As an Entrepreneur

Several years ago, I followed the common business advice of the day to “pursue your passion.” I left a very safe, secure, and well-paying job in corporate America to start a business doing something I was truly passionate about and very good at doing. That's the American dream, right? Find something you're truly passionate about, pursue it obsessively, and become wildly successful and wealthy, right?

All you have to do is work harder and longer than anyone else. Be smarter and stronger than everyone. Sacrifice everything to achieve your dream. And that is what I did. And I promptly started working longer and harder—and producing more mediocre results than I had ever produced before that led nowhere. It was a horrible experience. From the outside, I appeared successful—but in reality, I was successfully miserable.

Where did I go wrong?

I wasn't good at delegating. I didn't play well with others. I was afraid to let go. I cut myself off from the world, built a wall of to-do lists, and tried to use brute force to get through all the tasks necessary to run a new business. My biggest strength—my indomitable work ethic—had become a huge, crippling weakness.

I had to remember to practice what I preach. I had to remember the elegant principles I've spent my life studying. Once I started applying the principles of aikido to my business life—using ki as the game-changer, as a multiplier—the difference was almost instantaneous. I became better at hiring and training staff, learned to delegate efficiently, and learned to let go to achieve more. I worked on not letting my ego get in the way of my success. And it worked.

I've seen a lot of other entrepreneurs struggle with the same kinds of problems. They are killing themselves, working as hard as they possibly can, but they're not setting themselves up for success. They're setting themselves up to be successfully miserable. For example, I've seen a lot of entrepreneurs try to get a business off the ground while maintaining a “day job” that pays the bills, or even try to run two businesses at the same time—one that makes steady money and one that's more of a passion project. Trying to split your energy—your ki—between two projects is a way to set yourself up to fail. You won't be fully committed to either project. Of course, you have to be financially responsible, but there comes a point when you have to commit and find ways to build support structures and channel your ki in a way that sets you up to truly succeed.

Channel Your Ki to Succeed

On one of my recent trips to Japan, I was viscerally reminded of the way aikido teaches that strength alone is not enough to win when I worked out with my aikido master. I'm more than 20 years younger than him—stronger, faster, bigger. If we were arm wrestling, I would definitely win. But in our aikido bout, when I grabbed him, it was like trying to grab water—he flowed, relaxed, and moved effortlessly. Without his strength holding him back, he performed his aikido technique perfectly and tossed me about like a rag-doll. I was using too much strength, force, and effort, while my aikido teacher was channeling his energy through the proper forms—and he was far more successful as a result.

The more strength I used, the more tired I became. The more effort I exerted, the less successful I was. Does this sound familiar? Have you ever run into a situation, at work or at home, where the harder you try, the worse you do?

Sustainable success requires a huge sacrifice but not the sacrifice you might think. It's not about simply trying harder, applying more force to the problem, and pushing through on ki alone. Success requires the sacrifice of kicking our fears and ego to the curb to disrupt those weaknesses that are masquerading as strengths. And how do you get those fears and ego under control? Easy. You need inspiring support structures sufficient to ensure your success. You need to channel your ki in the most productive direction. You cannot succeed alone.

Let me repeat that: You cannot succeed alone.

Building Elegant Support Structures

There are two types of support structures—systems and people. Tony Robbins's mentor, Jim Rohn, was fond of saying, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Who are the five people you spend the most time with? And how can they help you overcome your fears, balance your ego, and help you see where your strengths are actually holding you back?

If these five people can't help you see yourself more clearly, you need to find the right people who will reflect your ki back to you. That doesn't necessarily mean cutting people out of your life, but it may mean reorganizing the way you spend your time in order to better reflect your true priorities.

Aside from people, what systems do you have in place to help you ensure you are able to clearly see where your strengths are holding you back, where you're trying to push through on ki alone? There are many types of systems. For example, your office is a system. If you don't like the environment of your office—the lighting, location, or layout—you are going to exert more effort to produce the same results. You may need to reorganize the system of your office to direct and support your ki in the most productive directions possible.

Technology is also a system—do you use technology, or does it use you? Are you constantly distracted by looking at your phone for that next ping? If so, again, your fear and ego are forcing you to work harder, with more effort, producing less satisfying results—all because your system is off kilter. If this sounds familiar, consider deleting e-mail and social media apps from your phone to cut down on distractions and create a system that channels your ki in a better direction.

The Payoff

When you have the proper support system, life feels easy, even if you're facing enormous challenges. You get into that state of flow that I talked about earlier in this chapter, where ki is flowing through you in perfect harmony instead of being blocked or misdirected. Instead of watching the clock, waiting for the end of the workday, you'll find you check the time and realize that hours have passed without your even noticing. And because your energy and your work are aligned, you'll find that you draw people to you more effortlessly than ever. People will sense the energy crackling through you, and they'll want to join your mission.

I've been lucky enough to feel this way a number of times throughout my life. For example, when I was in boot camp, life felt easy to me, in part because the proper structures were there to support and direct my energy in the right directions. Reveille woke me up every morning. Everyone around me was getting up at the same time, working as hard as I was. My day was structured for me. I knew exactly where I needed to be and what I needed to be doing at all times. My instructors and my comrades were all working together on the same project—the project of transforming all of us into Marines. My energy and my work were aligned, and the people around me were supporting me in my efforts. My ki was directed and channeled exactly as it needed to be.

You may not be in boot camp, but you can still set up your life to support and direct your energies in the directions that will help you achieve your goals. For example, say your goal is to lose weight. You'll need the support of the people around you, especially the people you live with. If your spouse keeps bringing home burgers and fries for dinner, or your roommate keeps baking brownies, it's going to be that much harder for you to meet your goal. You'll also need to create some support systems that will help channel your ki in the right directions—like joining a running group to keep you accountable to showing up to exercise regularly, or setting your workout clothes in a gym bag at the end of your bed so it's easy to get up and get going in the morning.

No matter what your goal is, you can and should create systems that will support you in achieving it. If you're building a business, find a mentor and join your local chamber of commerce. Enlist your friends and family to help you network, so they feel invested in your success. Or have them help you to relax, blow off steam, and de-stress. You can't power through to success on strength alone—you need support. You need to harness your ki so that you don't exhaust yourself and burn yourself out. That means understanding your limits, making sure to put yourself in the right places at the right times, and creating systems that will help channel your energy toward your goal.