How Focused Action Drives Success

US Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell sat alone on the battlefield, surrounded by the haunting silence of loss.

Three of his fellow SEALs were dead, and Luttrell himself was in a dire state: shot eleven times, with a broken back, pelvis, and nose, and both knees blown out. He had even bitten off part of his tongue.

Alone in enemy territory, he needed to travel seven miles to the nearest village for any hope of survival.

In that moment, Luttrell faced a critical decision:

1. He could dwell on the past and pity his situation.
2. He could be overwhelmed by the daunting challenge of survival, staring death in the face.
3. He could just go.

Luttrell chose to just go.

He grabbed a rock, leaned forward, and drew a line in the dirt. Then he crawled. When his feet crossed the line, he drew another line and crawled again. He focused on the line directly in front of him, staying present in each moment. This focus on the present allowed him to survive an ordeal that few could imagine enduring.

While most of us will never face such extreme circumstances, we are all challenged daily to focus on the present moment.

In a world saturated with content and media, staying present has become increasingly difficult. As advisors, we understand that decisions based on past regrets or future anxieties often lead to suboptimal outcomes. This is why I fell in love with and became a huge advocate for Trevor Moawad’s book, It Takes What It Takes. The book teaches neutral thinking, providing insights that make us better humans, leaders, and wealth managers.

Moawad defines neutral thinking as “a high-performance strategy that emphasizes judgment-free thinking, especially in crises and pressure situations.”

Neutral thinking is about minimizing the impact of emotions, not eliminating them. It involves taking action based on facts rather than emotions, which are often tied to the past or future.

The equation to remember is Neutral Thinking = Behavior - Emotions.

The most successful people in sports and business operate with this mindset. They take action and let those actions provide new information, which informs their next steps. Emotions are driven by past events and future uncertainties, but reality lives in the present. Each decision brings new information into our internal algorithm that guides our next actions.

This mentality is often lost today as we focus more on outcomes than processes. A series of positive outcomes can falsely validate a flawed process, while a strong process may sometimes yield undesirable outcomes due to factors beyond our control. Consider the preparation for a NASA rocket launch. Despite robust preparations, launches are often delayed or canceled due to unforeseen variables.

Take Apollo 13, for instance.

The team at NASA meticulously prepared for the crew's launch and safe return.

The launch was successful, but two days later, an oxygen tank exploded, jeopardizing the crew’s lives.

This unforeseen event wasn’t due to any fault in the process; it was an unknown variable that impacted the outcome. The crew and ground team faced a decision:

• They could focus on why something like this happened (the past)
• They could worry about what may happen, death (the future)
• They could take action and focus on each action individually.

Both the crew and ground team chose to deal with the problem at hand with calm and focused action. With the ground team understanding of what the space craft had on board they strategized on the specific problem. And the crew in space didn’t overreact. They trusted the team and acted on each step in the order presented, not looking back or speeding forward. Together they solved problems step by step.

Ultimately, they returned safely to Earth, demonstrating the power of neutral thinking.

Neutral thinking is about replacing emotional reactions with action-based responses. It’s the ability to ask, “What do I do?” instead of “How do I feel?” Moawad emphasizes that we control two elements:

• Perception (how we view what has happened)
• Interpretation (what we do with this information).

Successful individuals focus on facts, the present, and the next action, while those who struggle dwell on past regrets and future worries.

Moawad’s book also highlights the importance of consumption patterns. What we consume influences our perception and interpretation of the world. In a world filled with negativity, it’s crucial for us as advisors to provide our clients with content that counterbalances what is being shoved in their faces each and every day.

One of Moawad’s experiments involved him consuming negative content—news and sad country music—for 30 days. Initially, he noticed little change, but after a week, he felt more depressed, and by 20 days, he was making decisions he wouldn’t have previously considered.

This experiment showed how consumption shapes our choices and behaviors, much like how diet affects our physical health.

As advisors, our role isn’t to change what our clients consume but to feed them more positive content to balance the negativity. Moawad’s insights on choices and behaviors are crucial here: choices determine behaviors and behaviors determine outcomes.

Moawad also discusses how opinions are choices that don’t have real consequences.

I absolutely loved this concept. In the world of wealth management and financial advising, our clients constantly hear opinions from the “pundits” on TV and in the media. What we all need to remember is that what they are saying has no consequence.

If they tell the world to buy a stock, there is no consequence if that stock underperforms. Another great quote from the book explains why this is so key: “You are defined by your own behaviors, not by anyone else’s opinions of them.”

The core of It Takes What It Takes is about being present. The past is done, and the future is unknown. What we control is the present, and with each new situation, we have the power to choose our actions based on facts, not emotions. Each choice we make doesn’t have a “right” or “wrong”; rather, it provides us with more information for the next choice we must make.

Moawad trained many elite athletes with this philosophy, stating, “Each play has a history and life of its own. It’s important. It matters. You are responsible for it. But it has nothing to do with what happens next.”

Neutral thinking isn’t about blind optimism but about building a foundation based on facts. It’s about having pillars of truth that guide us through good and bad times. “The actual truth is not negative or positive when you remove judgment from it. It simply is. Neutral is the harmony between two extremes, negative and positive.”

Our value as advisors grows as we understand and train the human brain. While access to financial advice is expanding, our role in keeping clients on track and avoiding poor decisions remains crucial. Neutral thinking benefits both us and our clients by focusing on present actions.

For those seeking a recipe for success, Moawad’s approach is simple:

1. Define your North Star (visualization provides direction).
2. Gain self-awareness of your choices.
3. Make choices aligned with your North Star.
4. Disregard others’ opinions of your choices.

This simple yet profound approach inspired a radical change in me, helping me be better as an advisor, person and leader. It Takes What It Takes is more than a book; it’s a guide to living a life driven by neutral thinking and being present.