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- 3 Steps to Perform at Your Best
Hello friends, it’s Michael here!
What is High Performance?
This week I have started listening to Jake Humphrey’s and Prof. Damian Hughes’ High Performance: Lessons from the Best on Becoming Your Best.
After interviewing many of the world’s greatest athletes, entrepreneurs and celebrities on their podcast, they have produced an award-winning book that outlines practical steps that you can take to become your best.
They start every podcast episode with some version of the question:
“What is your definition of High Performance?”
Even though your definition may differ to mine or the next member of the WISER community, it is wise to reflect on what high performance looks like for you.
As such, I wanted to share 3 ingredients to help you to perform at your best, just like how they are helping me to deliver you weekly pieces of wisdom.
🧊 Cool, Calm, Collected
The first step to perform at your best is to recognise the importance of the things that you do when no one is looking.
Sure, you might get the medal for how you perform on the day of the final, but is it not the diet, sleep and exercise routines that help you to make that winning shot?
And I know you' only get the applause when you nail that solo on the stage, but would you even get on the stage if you hadn’t spent hours learning your lines?
To be recognised as a high performer, you have to do the things that no one will recognise you for.
You have to do the boring, unsexy things, and you have to do them well.
One of those things is practice.
🔁 The Power of Persistent Practice
Practice is a funny thing, right?
When I was younger, I didn’t want to practice anything. It felt like another chore to do.
But now that I am older, I recognise that practice is essential to perform at your best.
In fact, without practice, you will never be at the top of any field.
I learned this the hard way.
I use to play the cello, captain a basketball team, enjoy photography and countless other hobbies.
I was never going to become professional at any of them because I didn’t practice enough.
I did practice all of the above, but not with any intentionality or persistence.
If you are going to practice, you need to persist with practice. This visual explains why:
To perform at your best, you need to practice until you can’t do that thing wrong, not until you can do it right.
Don’t leave things up to chance - persistently practice.
😵 Comparison’s a Killer
This tip is close to my heart.
Comparison can be the death of dreams.
Comparing yourself to other is a recipe for self-destructive negativity.
We often find that we compare our day 1 to someone else’s day 500. It’s an unfair comparison that can cause more damage than good.
There is only one form of comparison that high performers take part in.
It’s all about trying to be better than you were yesterday.
Don’t compare yourself to others. Instead, compare yourself to who you were yesterday, last week, last month or even last year.
Have you grown? Are you performing higher than you did back then?
✍️ Journal Prompts
• How would you describe high performance?
• Are you practicing your passion persistently?
• How do you compare to who you were yesterday, last week or last year?
Consider journaling through the above questions yourself.
👍 Recommendations
Here’s a couple of things that we think will complement this week’s newsletter and will help you to get wiser:
1️⃣ The first recommendation is simply to check out Jake Humphrey’s and Prof. Damian Hughes’ High Performance.
Even though I haven’t finished this book, I’ve already got my money’s worth, so I want to encourage you to check it out for yourself!
But before making the financial investment of buying the book, you can listen to their podcast for FREE here:
2️⃣ The second recommendation for this week isn’t a product or service.
Instead, I encourage you to exercise today!
There are countless studies showing the health benefits of elevating your heart rate through exercise, and many of the top performers find time to exercise on a daily basis.
I’m conscious that not everyone enjoys running, but what is something that you can do today to get your blood pumping?
I encourage you to put down your phone, close your laptop or put your tablet on to charge, and go do that thing!
* Please note that these may be affiliate links. Purchasing through these links could support Wisdom Made Easy encourage more people to get wiser.
✍️ What I’m Working On
Now that I’ve finished off a couple of client projects, I’m back making some fresh visuals for Wisdom Made Easy and I’m really enjoying it!
Here’s one I posted earlier this week that is one of my favourites:
And if you read last week’s WISER Newsletter issue, you’ll know that I was heading to Patrick Regan’s book launch for Brighter Days.
It was a great event! A friend and I really enjoyed the evening, and there’s something pretty neat about seeing one of my visuals 20ft+ high!
If you want to learn more about Brighter Days, you can learn more about it here:
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😊 Thank You!
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Catch you in the next issue!
Thanks,
Michael
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