Peak performance is a hot bed topic in a world where efficiency and results are prized. However, there lies a thin balance between someone that’s a peak performer versus someone that is just average.

Peak performance does not occur naturally, because our mind is risk averse by nature, yet it’s risk that is what helps us become successful. How do you develop a mindset of risk-taking, that go-getter kind of attitude? It’s through training our mind.

If our mindset is what dictates our actions and habits, then I believe it’s important to develop a concrete mindset. In this article I would like to explore how to develop a mindset for peak performance.

Feeding your mind

Feeding your mind is an important part of developing a success routine. As you know, success is 80% psychology and 20% action. If your mindset, the software that runs your mind is messed up, that will inadvertently result in you being messed up.

What are some things you can do to feed your mind? One is to consume inspiring content on the internet, in the form of podcasts, interviews, guides. Personal development content is one of the best ways to upgrade your mindset. An added bonus is to take notes while listening to the podcasts.

Another way of feeding your mind I recommend is meditation, carving out a set amount of time per day to meditate on the challenges you’re having in your life. Your mind will be able to come up with innovative solutions to them. While your mind is at a still place, you’re able to self-introspect and discover what’s good and what’s bad for you.

Fear of action

Fear of action is what prevents people from achieving success, they are afraid of taking the first step. They believe they have to be ready before they do something. The truth is, you have to take action to be ready. You’ll never be truly ready to do anything until you go in and get your feet wet.

Without any action – there’ll be no results. Your sales, you need to take action in order to get leads. Same with marketing. Same with product.

Action is what cures everything, action creates momentum and momentum wins championships. But don’t start off with massive action, that may not be a possibility for you. Take one small step towards your dream.

Perfectionism

Perfectionists are so worried about getting everything correct, that they don’t take action because they’re scared of failure. Whereas a perfectionist will miss out on many learning opportunities, because they just don’t get started. They don’t expand their comfort zone. They don’t get into the game.

They don’t want things to be messy, they don’t want things to be chaotic. But above all, a perfectionist doesn’t want things to not go astray.

The truth is, life is inherently messy, life is inherently chaotic and life sometimes does not go the way you want it to, but despite of this you must still act. Learning the skill of acting despite the obstacles, despite the uncertainty is a truly underrated skill.

When you can overcome the inner perfectionist, and just learn how to act, this is the first step into upgrading your mindset.

Good enough is okay

Sometimes your efforts fall short just of the goal. You’ve done your best, you’ve given your all. But delivered a result that’s not perfect. You didn’t exactly fail, but you didn’t succeed.

Sometimes you need to know that this is enough. You need to accept the result and move on.

It’s not that you accept this result and this is your destiny forever, as you’ll learn from it. But sometimes you’ve to accept that you’ve done your best and to move on, train to become better next time and you’ll get it.

Unfortunately, most people out there don’t even get to “good enough”, in fact they don’t even start because they’re so afraid of failure. So they stay back, they don’t get in the game and hide. This is the ultimate failure. You have to accept the reality that some results are just going to be “average.” But as long as you keep trying, the big results will come, as long as you try, there’s no such thing as failure.

Why pushing yourself too much can be detrimental

If you push yourself too much, there’s a big risk in burnout. Just like if you’re lifting weights and can only lift a 5kg dumbbell, you wouldn’t start with a 25kg dumbbell. You will damage your body beyond repair.

This is the same with work, if you PUSH yourself too much beyond what your mental capability is able to handle, you’ll end up in burnout and may wreck your health.

Adam Grant, a professor at Wharton school said that based on his research, working more hours does not necessarily lead to getting more done,  too much world can lead to burnout. It’s the top performers that have long hours of work followed by space for self care and rest.

This is why you want to be realistic in what you can and cannot achieve at your current capabilities and work your way up. Take frequent breaks, enjoy yourself, and most of all don’t add too much stress into your life. Your work constitutes 1/3 of your life, so it should be something you enjoy most of the time.

Rest and run cycle

The rest and run cycle is just about that, for every period of run, you must have a period of rest. This was why the Pomodoro method was developed, for every 25 minutes of action you must take 5 minutes of rest.

Without rest, without time for your brain to be away from your task. You’ll inherently lead to burnout. Be very careful with overextending yourself, and don’t over push yourself too much, push yourself to the level necessary, but not over or under.

Self-Belief

Many people around the world suffer from what you would call: “imposter syndrome”, a lack of confidence which causes them to doubt themselves even though what they’re doing is already amazing.

Worst yet, the added attacks from haters and people that doubt them make them believe their non-sensical beliefs.

You need to develop a rock-solid level of self-belief, that you are the man/woman. Well, you actually don’t need to go up to that level just yet. But at the very least, know that you’re competent, if you’ve the results to back things up, you’re putting in the work. You’re already developing that self-confidence within yourself.

You are enough.

Letting go

You plant a seed on the ground, and you’re waiting for it to grow. You check up on the seed every single hour, when you see no progress, you keep going crazy and shouting at the seed, why are you not growing? Why are you not growing?

This impatience is the thing that prevents the seed from growing into a plant, because your impatience ruins everything. Whereas if you’re patient, you take care of the seed, you give it ample sunlight and water. The growth you will see is undeniable.

There’s a relationship between impatience and growth. The more impatient you are about something, the less likely you’re to grow. Whereas if you’re patient about something, you are giving space for yourself or the thing to grow. This relationship is inverse.

Your self-worth is not in your work        

Many times, when we’re working, we tie a lot of our self-esteem into how good or bad our work is. This is true for many of the big “hustlers”, but the truth is. Sometimes your work is going to be good, sometimes your work is going to be bad.

Why would you put your self-esteem into something that’s that unstable.

Learn to do good work, absolutely, but you must learn how to detach yourself from the work you do as well. I think this is a truly underrated thing to do.

The power of being flexible

I believe that you absolutely need to have a plan. But plans change, things change. Your feelings change, you want to be rigid in the goal you want to achieve but flexible in your approach. This is because your environment is constantly changing, everything around you is changing.

You want to adapt to circumstances on a day-to-day basis. What if an emergency comes up, are you going to keep on continuing your day-to-day? You have to deal with the emergency, right? This is called being flexible, to be open to the changes in your life.

Daily Rituals and Habits carry you to the end

Without daily rituals and habits, it can be difficult to persevere when things get tough. When things get tough, you fall down to the level of habits. That’s why you want to master the act of habit building.

How do you build sustainable habits, building habits is as simple as that, changing your action over a period of time. Discipline is all about being able to stick with our habits even when we don’t feel like it. Rituals are things you do daily, for example waking up at a certain time.

End

Those are the mindsets you need in order to succeed. Sometimes a shift in perspective is all we need to move on towards the direction of our dreams. Don’t expect to apply everything, if you pick just one concept and work on it for the next month, that’s already very good.

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