Performing at your best is difficult without establishing healthy habits that contribute to your success. Fortunately, this book reveals the habits and characteristics of some of the highest performing individuals on the planet. Filled with a backlog of high achieving stories, this book pulls from various interviews on The High Performance Podcast covering responsibility, motivation, leadership and much more.
If you want to level up your performance, then this book might have something for you.
Keep reading my key three lessons!
Lesson 1: Responsibility
This is the first chapter covered in the book and, in my opinion, the most crucial lesson.
You can’t control everything that happens in your life, but you can control how you respond.
Believing that you have no influence over what happens in your life can leave you with an overwhelming feeling of helplessness.
To combat this, look at what areas of the situation you can control. If there are none, accept it and move on. Nothing will change with worry and stress.
Martin Seligman says that people who view their problems are pervasive, permanent, and personal tend to end up with worse life outcomes.
Your problems are not permanent and they don’t have to hold you back.
Look at the facts instead of allowing your emotions to tell you a different story to what is actually going on.
If you fail, do you look at what you could have done better and how you can improve or do you look for someone/something to blame?
Most people choose the latter and that is where the problem lies.
Take control of your life.
Lesson 2: Growth Mindset
This leads on from the end of the last section.
If you think with a fixed mindset you will diminish the power you have over your life. You will blame the world for your problems and fail to look for new avenues or angles to solve a problem in a creative way.
A growth mindset allows you to tackle your problems in a flexible way.
See the difficult things in life as an exciting challenge. Instead of thinking “what if I fail?” ask yourself “what if I succeed?”
The old saying is that great minds think alike, but in reality they think differently. If great minds thought alike then there would be no innovation, no creative work, and nothing new or exciting in life.
You don’t have to do things the way that they have always been done.
Explore new avenues and experiment with what works. You will fail occasionally, but so has every other high performer.
Add the word ‘yet’ to the end of your negative thoughts. This allows you to see past your problems and see your life on a scale of improvement.
Lesson 3: Consistency
You must be consistent with your new habits in order to reap their rewards.
If you quit too early, it will be for nothing.
Consistency is what separates the high performers from the rest of the pack.
Do the simple things well. Show up early, plan your days, and focus on the task at hand.
“The stronger the organisation, the better they do the real simple, basic things”, says Shaun Wane.
The standards you hold for yourself become your habits. If you allow for a low work rate, low quality of work, and a lack of discipline, then this is what you will become. Your actions show who you are.
Decide who you want to be in the future, identify with the characteristics they have, and then practice them.
This will show you what you need to do to get to where you want to be.
Make a commitment to becoming a high performer and take action. You need to be consistent because you never know when your opportunity will show up.
Conclusion
If you want to be a high performer, why not take on the advice from some of the best. This book allows you to do that. It is filled with extracts from guests on The High Performance Podcast and examples on how these principles can be applied.