Dress vs Strategy | How a good frock can change your world

Let’s talk about strategy. Bear with me here, this is important.

Imagine you have a big event 6 months from now and you’ve decided that to look fabulous you’ll wear a big fancy dress on the day.

There are lots of ways you can achieve feeling good in your fancy frock - but let’s simplify this down to two strategies:

• You can starve yourself for the next 6 months and on Dress Day be thin as a rail and sucked into a dress 3 sizes smaller than your current size.
• You can spend the next 6 months in therapy getting your head rearranged so you love your current size and feel fabulous in whatever you wear.

No judgement here on which is better - let's just consider the two different mind states on Dress Day:

In the first one, on the day you’re strapped into uncomfortable suck-you-in undergarments and might be just a tad crotchety after 6 months of eating almost nothing. Your loved ones might love how you look but hate how mean you’ve been getting there.?

In the second one - on Dress Day you’re relaxed and easy and the belle-of-the-ball as you?know?you look fabulous in whatever you wear. Everyone around you is smiley and compliments you on your easy manner.?Plus you'll look amazing and have a good run at the buffet.

Now, I’m not saying one strategy is better than the other - they both reach the 'look fabulous on Dress Day' goal. But they answer different questions - one is about looking fabulous at any cost on Dress Day. And one is about?feeling?fabulous on Dress Day.

So when setting up a goal, you need to consider how you want to feel about the goal on the day you achieve it and going forwards.

Choosing to change your entire mindset about what looking good sets you up for the years after Dress Day. You'll?always?look good at any event, because you actually like yourself. And you’ll probably feel fabulous all the time whatever you’re doing - and more importantly whatever you’re wearing - because on the inside you're happy.

Starving yourself will give you the exterior result - but your Dress Day is probably still quite stressful (you still can't actually eat in that outfit you’ve been strapped into, let alone twirl round the dance floor). Worse on Dress Day +1 you're very likely to fall face first into the nearest carbs. We’ve all seen those stats that most dieters gain back all the weight within the year.

So your Dress Day looked great, but you’ve moved nothing forwards long term. Plus you have those pics of you being rail-thin to torture yourself as you lie on the sofa eating chips.

And yes, of course, some people don’t have this happen and fall in love with exercise and?carry that forwards. But that’s also a different Dress Day goal - 'use this event to fall in love with exercise'.

So, the takeaway here is this - consider your goal in detail. Not just the exterior result, but the interior feelings around it. Also consider how it can be built upon as one step on a long chain of goals.?

Obviously 6 months of intensive therapy work is going to set you up for a lifetime of good results down the line.?

Likewise, being really fit and healthy will set you up for life long health and positive mind states, plus you’ll look good in a dress.

But simply going for a goal that looks good, with no consequence for yourself or those around you - you may reach the goal, but you’ve got nowhere to go but down.

Also consider this - you can use Dress Day to change your life. Witness the pic top of the page of Billy Porter in that gorgeous velvet gown at the 2019 Oscars.?

He won the red carpet that year - arguably he won the Oscars overall. No-one who saw him talked of anything else. It changed his career, catapulted him into super stardom, set him up for life.?

Thing is - he couldn’t possibly have won an Oscar that year - he wasn’t even nominated. Winning an Oscar changes an actors life. They get better roles, more money, more exposure, become beloved by the audience. And in every way - that frock did all that for Billy Porter without as-yet winning an Oscar.

Billy porters said about this dress:

“My goal is to be a walking piece of political art every time I show up. To challenge expectations. What is masculinity? What does that mean? Women show up every day in pants, but the minute a man wears a dress, the seas part,”

That’s not a dress - that’s a whole political agenda. And it’s helped his career. Did he get gym toned to get in that dress? Oh I’m sure. Did he fly in his stylist and his designer Christian Siriano? Indeed. Did he want more than just a good night out in a nice outfit? Oh hells yes.?

This is the difference between a goal (get a dress) and a strategy (change the conversation, grow my brand, get better roles, and look stunning on the red carper).

Sure you can cut back on the carbs and shimmy into a frock from H&M. You’ll look great. Or you can work out what you really want, get your head straight and change the world any damn way you want.?

You just need a strategy to do it.

Goals matter.??How each goal stacks on another matters. Strategy matters.?

This is why you need to learn strategy.?

If you run a business you need more than a vague plan - you need clear goals and a long term strategy. Handy then that my learn strategy course launches on Halloween.

It's called the Evil Plan. Start by reading this essay on Evil Coach.

It's strategy as you've never seen it before.