Master Your Mind

5 The 2-Millimeter Principle and the Recipe for a Breakthrough

It’s our hope that in this part of Master Your Mind, you’ve gained some foundational understanding of why you operate the way you do, along with some of the internal roadblocks you face. We’re about to transition out of foundational understanding and into specific methods and principles, many of which you can implement immediately. Let’s end this first part of Master Your Mind with two concepts that will make you more likely to take action. In this chapter we introduce the 2-millimeter principle, and then the recipe for a breakthrough.

The 2-Millimeter Principle

The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every break of the game, every minute, every second.

—Al Pacino, Any Given Sunday

The 2-millimeter (2 mm) principle, originally taught to me (Roger) as the “Winning Edge Theory,” sets forth the idea that tiny changes, in the right places, can cause a gigantic difference in the end result. I started calling it the 2-millimeter principle when I realized something about golf.

Think about a golf ball, sitting motionless on the tee. Now consider the driver, arcing down to send that ball down the fairway, and you’ll begin to understand how little differences can make a big difference, and also why golf drives people crazy. If the driver strikes the ball dead center and at a perfect 90-degree angle, you get a straight shot directly down the center of the fairway. If you make that shot, you’ll get a feeling ...