Want High Performance? Get Ready to Embrace the Mundane
High-performance feels aspirational, exciting and identity-affirming. It suggests an entry ticket into some Hall of Fame, or rockstar status among industry peers, friends and family. Yet, what’s behind the successes and high points doesn’t feel so attractive – the hard work and discipline that goes into the shiny outcome.
Implementing a high-performance strategy requires dedication and persistence. But simply telling ourselves that we WANT the outcome will not guarantee that we naturally embrace the work required to get there.
The missing link is the WHY. Why do we want to achieve this? Why is it so important to us? What will it give us? What will it look like once we’ve achieved it, what happens then?
Exploring the motivation behind our aspirations helps us to establish how genuine the desire to high perform actually is. Do we really want, really need this, or are we simply attracted to the idea?
If it’s mission-critical that we move towards achieving high-performance, then we go to work
Every high performer we have met, from any industry sector or sporting discipline, says the same thing: the only way to high-perform is to be obsessive about (and normalise) the process and put in the work:
- Define your performance objectives, broken down into small, specific tasks
- Maintain a growth mindset – embrace challenge and learn from feedback
- Prioritise and manage time effectively – use planning tools, focus on high-impact activities and avoid procrastination
- Set the platform for continuous learning
- Maintain a healthy lifestyle and actively regulate emotions
- Leverage support technology and automate processes where possible
- Cultivate habits and deploy consistency and focus
- Implement regular practice to embed actions into automated muscle memory
- Build a strong support community, use your network and collaborate with others
- Monitor and evaluate progress regularly and develop personal performance metrics
- Acknowledge, celebrate and reward successes, however small
- Extract the learning from failures and mis-steps, it’s valuable data and helps refine performance
- Stay agile, be open to change and be ready to adapt
- Deploy resilience to bounce back from setbacks
- Incorporate variety and mix-up the environment
By getting comfortable with constantly applying these principles, we can significantly enhance our performance, in any area.
BUT, it can feel boring, mundane, and lacking in excitement to simply focus on discipline and practice. And that’s the differentiator between those that high-perform and those that ‘like the idea’ but don’t move closer to the outcome.
EMBRACE THE MUNDANE
It’s always the journey, never the destination. The process itself is over 90% of the final achievement, if we don’t embrace this part as the critical component of our high-performance objective, we are unlikely to get to the rockstar bit. It helps to reframe how we view this part of the pathway:
Remember, it’s supposed to be:
- Repetitive and monotonous – repetition builds efficient routine and habit
- Lacking in instant gratification – the fruits of practice come from prolonged effort
- Fatiguing and tiresome – cognitive, physical or emotional load demonstrates stretch
- Hard to notice immediate progress – honing a skill or practice is incremental
- Full of distraction and temptation – immediate enjoyment is short-lived
- Full of failures – failures are simply attempts
The skill is being able to notice these feelings and recognise them for what they are: totally normal. Consider these derailers and detractors as tests, to check if this is still the preferred path for you.
Then, if you still feel positive about the outcome, get back on the pathway and re-attach to the process. You invested a great deal of time and energy in creating the process for yourself, now it’s time to make good on your investment. There’s also a real sense of safety in certainty, knowing what you need to do.
Find the love for the process, engage with the enjoyment of being able to engage in this practice. The more we can reframe the process from ‘mundane and boring’ to ‘a value-filled privilege’, the more likely we are to remain consistent and stay the distance.
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
His Airness: Michael Jordan
Talk to us today about High-Performance Coaching, you’re In Cool Company!
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