The most successful people never think to themselves, “I’ve made it.”
That’s according to author Ryan Hawk, who has interviewed more than 600 CEOs, businesspeople and other types of leaders for his podcast “The Learning Leader Show.” He’s noticed a common theme across many of those conversations, he says: they never think of themselves as having peaked. Hawk, 44, calls it the “never arrived, always becoming” mindset, after JJ Redick — now the head coach of the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, and an active NBA player at the time — used similar phrasing while talking with Hawk in an August 2017 interview.
It’s “this mindset of, no matter what happens in my life ... I just want to work on getting incrementally better,” says Hawk, author of the upcoming book, “The Price of Becoming.”
The concept is a version of the “growth mindset,” a term coined by psychologist Carol Dweck that essentially means always viewing challenges as opportunities to learn and grow. An array of notable people ranging from retired tennis star Serena Williams to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella have publicly credited their successes — at least in part — to their drive for constant improvement.
Hawk has heard similar versions of the same argument from people like bestselling author James Clear and former Cinnabon CEO Kat Cole. “There’s no moment of arrival,” says Hawk. “The [successful people] I’ve interviewed, they’re just pushing. They’re driving. They’re trying to put a positive dent in the world.”
