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Xesco Espar: “A good leader discovers the greatness of people before they do and reveals it to them”
personal development
The high performance expert, speaker, trainer and writer Xesco Espar reveals in his book «La libreta» which are the 10 habits that build extraordinary people
You don’t have to have a job title to be a leader. Anyone can work with those around them, helping them and making their life better. This is it, for the high performance expert Xesco Espar, the essence of his latest book “Notepad”, where he tells the story of a promising young soccer player who, despite going through low hours, soon discovers, thanks to the team captain, the changes he needs to become a champion. Through this story, the motivation expert, who is also the author of the best-seller «Playing with the heart», reveals why habits have great power over us both in life and in life.
sport and why they allow us to free our thinking from the basics, allowing us to focus on what is important.
Throughout the story told by “La libreta” we discover each of the “10 habits that build extraordinary people.” But if you had to highlight one, what would it be?
I would say that the habit of healthy ambition, understood as “wanting to be better every day” (wanting to be healthier, wanting to be fitter, wanting to be a better person …) but not in opposition to others to win or surpass the other or to break records but to improve with respect to yourself, to want to do better than last time.
Also important is “accept the fault.” And to explain why I invite you to analyze this phrase: “The opposite of success is not failure, the opposite of success is not trying”. When people believe that the opposite of success is failure, they come to think that it is better to do nothing because they believe that if they try and fail they will get away from what they want. But the opposite is actually the case. When you do nothing or stay still is when you get away from what you want. If you do something about it, you will be closer. For me it is important to see failure or error as part of the way to what you want.
But this does not refer to “knowing how to lose” but rather that attempts are achievements …
Exactly. And then after trying you can win or lose. But even if you lose, you will be closer to your improvement because the ambition is not to beat the other but to want to be better. If I have competed with myself, I am already better.
When you talk about what separates us from what we want or want to be, you are not referring to talent or motivation but to habits. Why?
La motivation It can be a help to get to the places but we cannot always use motivation because it is not possible every day. What a person depends on is their habits. That is why it is so important to push yourself a little more in each of these “habits of extraordinary people” that I refer to in the book. Why? I am going to explain it with a simple and everyday example. Imagine that one Sunday you are going to eat at the house of your parents who live on the other side of the city. You are driving the car, talking with your partner and with the children behind playing or making noise. Shortly before taking the highway that takes you to your parents’ house, you are distracted for a few seconds and instead of taking that road, you take the road that you usually travel to go to work. Has it ever happened to you that as soon as you get lost for a moment, you do what you usually do instead of what you were going to do? Well, this example is the proof that we have two sources of energy. One is the concentration, the focus motivation… But when that source is turned off or does not respond to us at some point we are slaves of our habits. That is why people who are extraordinary in the long run are extraordinary because of the habits they have developed.
Ambition, excellence, being a good person, courage, accepting failure … Do we then need to work on all those habits to be extraordinary?
This is something that many people ask themselves, yes. «Do you have to work so hard? Is it so hard to be good? I’m even lazy! ”They say. But that is why in the book I wanted to highlight that of: «Every day is your life in miniature. As you live one day, so you live your life. What I mean by this is that although changing in the long term is a long process (it is something that I will not deny), you can reproduce your life in a single day. Therefore, the idea is to focus on one day and think that the way you live that day and repeat it the next day and the next and the next will be what will shape your life. Sometimes we think that to change is to make a great transformation. And this is not so. It is the sum of small changes.
It can be seen more clearly with an example that I used in my previous book “Playing with the heart” in which I explained the conversation I had with some students who played golf and who did it wonderfully. When I played several times with them, I told them that I admired them a lot because they were able to hit the ball so hard and so well that it could reach one meter from today while mine was barely 200 meters from the hole. Then they explained to me that the difference between what happened with their ball and mine was barely 2 millimeters. I told them how it was possible that this small distance was the cause of such a big difference. And then they answered me that you only had to look at the ball because while they were hitting the ball exact point, I was hitting two millimeters from that point. The problem was that those 2 mm were converted over a two-kilometer journey into almost 200 meters. By this I mean that the change that needs to be made is very small and that changing a habit is achieved by making minimal changes every day.
Seen like this it is more reassuring and comforting….
Of course. You have to test a day with a habit and score yourself at the end of the day. What sometimes blocks us is thinking in the long term.
We have talked about healthy ambition, and what about excellence? How is it achieved?
I have gotten used to defining the excellence with a phrase: Get it right the first time. It is about trying to do the best you know how and that, as you put yourself, you make an effort to do it well, because if not, you will have to repeat it. It is, therefore, trying in every moment of your life and in everything to do what you have to do the best you know how. In the end, excellence is a habit, but notice one thing: the mediocrity, which can be considered as its antithesis, is also a habit.
How do you learn from mistakes constructively?
As a teacher at INEFC Barcelona, I have always told my students that the game does not educate in itself, that what educates is reflect at the end of the game and use what has been learned in that reflection in the next game. You learn from error if you reflect on what has happened and think about what you should have done and what you shouldn’t have done and then apply it the next time. There you do learn. Sometimes we say that “we have failed, nothing happens” and it does happen. It happens that we have not done well. And that is something that is very clear in sports. When you lose, the first thing you have to do is be humble and think that the other has played better, but you should also analyze what you should have improved. In reflection is the learning.
Is there the “luck factor”?
It does exist, but it is very small. It exists in reality when you have already worked to find yourself in that moment and in that place. Luck appears if you are prepared to capture it. But I would assign only 5% of the result. Therefore, if you have not done the remaining 95%, it will not have been good, because even if you are lucky you will not realize that you have it.
When a team wins the final on penalties, you have to think that out of 100 teams only two reached the final and that the team that won was tied until the end and the same happened to the one that lost. You have to understand that in both cases it is a success.
Look, my daughters are Olympians (Anna and Clara Espar are water polo players with the national team) and in London 2012 they were runners-up, silver medalists. When they finished the competition they said “We are the second best in the world! How can we be sad? ».
It is certainly part of an action family. Just that statement of “Act, act and act” is very present in “La libreta”, but this moment of uncertainty does not seem to be the appropriate moment for action …
From experience I would tell you that sometimes we are lazy to start a project because we think it can’t go well. That, that doesn’t go well, may be true in the current context, but as soon as you get going, as soon as you get going, you start to see more solutions than you think. And one of those solutions is the one that will make your project possible and the one that will allow you to move forward, but that solution you will only be able to see if you get going. If you are standing still and allowing the context to dictate your possibilities, it will be true that your project will not be possible. But if you act, you will realize that there are more possibilities than you think. In addition, movement generates emotion and generates motivation. It is bad for me to see people who live standing up and in fear. Fear paralyzes.
“The reward of being good does not lie in the admiration of others, but in the strength of character” … What a phrase that has been marked. But nowadays it is not a very recognized value that of being a “good person” …
We live in a world where it seems that those who do chores or cheats are doing better than anyone. But this can happen because good people, instead of being a good person, only complain about cheaters and do not act. If you want to win someone, you don’t have to be a cheater like him, you have to defend your truth. Being good is not easy. The easy way to be good is not to be good, it is to be dumb. Being good is not being weak or stupid. It requires effort because you have to defend your truth and say how you see things and why they should change. And that’s when you will beat the cheater.
Teaming up has always been a pillar in your career, how do you build a good team?
There is a phrase that says “if you want to go earlier, go alone and if you want to go further, build a team.” When we want important things in life we need the support of a team. There are two basic points that anyone who wants to create a team should make. First you have to define well the point of arrival (objectives) and that everyone agrees. And then create a team with people who are committed to that goal and to the work that needs to be done to get there. Because sometimes, as a group, you want to reach your goal but you are not individually willing to do the work to achieve it.
And you also have to live the so-called «team values», such as being generous, humble, having confidence in yourself and your teammates, having commitment … About the latter I always say that commitment appears when the fun is over. Those who are worth the most in a team are those who are left bailing the water when the boat is in danger.
Rate courage as the key to the door of our best version, how do you get courage?
Courage occurs when you do not see it clearly and you remember that the other times when you did not see it clearly you had to do it and it also turned out well.
It is the one that takes us out of the comfort zone and when we take it out is when the growth occurs. If you are always putting your goals in your comfort zone, you don’t need to grow. That is why I say that courage is the door to your best version. Your best version only comes when you demand to grow. There are many things that we are capable of doing and we do not do because we do not intend to. To do them requires courage.
What qualities should a good leader have?
The main quality of a good leader is discover the greatness of people before themselves and reveal it to them. That is the true job of a leader because when you do this you already have a lot of work earned. People are better than they think and if a person who acts as a leader makes him see it, he will get everyone to get going.
It is true that being a good leader requires many other things such as defining the vision and helping people, but awakening that flame, the flame of greatness within a person, is fundamental.
Let’s talk about living in the present… How much do all those “if I had done” and “if I had said” weigh on us and how is attention projected towards the “now”?
With three basic and quick reflections. The first is that what has happened has happened and if you stay there it is as if you were driving the car just looking in the rear view mirror. You have to look back to avoid repeating mistakes, but you can’t live in the past, whether it was bad or not. And about the future, the mistake that is made is that it is something that you will do and time passes and in the end you do nothing. The only way you have to change the future is now. And what you do now is what will create the future.
About the Author…
Xesco Espar has a degree in Physical Activity and Sports Sciences and a Master’s in Learning Psychology. He has been a teacher at INEFC Barcelona and a handball coach for FC Barcelona (Barça), where he won four European Cups and four ASOBAL leagues. International speaker, high performance expert, trainer and writer, in recent years he has developed motivational and transformative work in hundreds of companies and sports teams.