One Of The Hardest Things For Peak Performers To Do
Which Frequently Causes Them To Ruin Their Potential
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One Of The Hardest Things For Peak Performers To Do
Which Frequently Causes Them To Ruin Their Potential
People who call themselves Peak Performers tend to take Great Pride in the Title.
It, in many ways, becomes an Important Aspect to their Identities.
There is often a Hit of Neurochemicals that comes with the Recognition.
It Pushes Them to Go Further.
However, as with Most Identities...
There is a Dark Side to This.
That Constant Need...
The Drive...
The Effort...
Comes with a Real Human Problem.
There are Times in Life Where...
No Matter How Incredible You Are...
You simply Will Not Be Able to Operate at the Same Level You Do on Other Days.
It could be Many Reasons...
Lack of Sleep.
Fighting Off Sickness.
Odd Changes to Your Schedule.
Life Throwing Unexpected Challenges Your Way.
It Happens to All of Us.
But Here's the Question that Peak Performers Struggle With on these Days...
How Will You Approach Them?
Most Peak Performers will Typically Answer One of Two Ways...
One is to Push Through It and Perform Anyways...
The Other is to Take an Off Day.
Now, Assuming Your "Off" Day is Not because of Something Incredibly Serious like being in the Hospital...
Which Approach is Right?
I'd Argue Neither.
This is what is Called a False Dichotomy.
We are Presented with "Seemingly" Opposite Choices...
But the Problem Here is that "Both" Choices are Less than Optimal.
How Do I Mean?
Well, let's Look at the First Option...
What Happens when We have an Off Day...
But Push Ourselves Through It and Attempt to Perform Anyways?
This becomes the Recipe for Burnout.
You "Push Through"...
Which Puts You Into Dis-Stress...
Dis-Stress tends to Require "More" Recovery to Overcome...
Which Most People who call themselves Peak Performers Struggle With Already.
Without Enough Recovery...
Our Stress Threshold, or How Many Stressors We Can Simultaneously Handle, Decreases...
Which Puts Us into the Same Position where we have Another "Off" Day that We Attempt to Push Through.
Then Another "Off" Day...
And Another...
Eventually, Your Stress Threshold becomes So Low...
That You are "Constantly" in Dis-Stress...
Made Worse by Pushing Yourself to Attempt to Perform.
It becomes So Bad that You Actually "Stop" Being a Peak Performer Altogether.
You "Believe" You are Performing Highly...
But the Reality is that You're Only Operating at 5% of Your Productivity Potential.
This is what the Research Reveals...
We Become Significantly Capped at How Much We Can Accomplish in Burnout.
As you can See...
This is Less Than Optimal.
On the Other Side...
You can Take the Off Day...
But what Will Happen?
It, Of Course, Depends on the Person...
But Most "Off" Days for Most People are Fully "Off".
These are the Days Where We Tend to Give Into Our Absolute Worst Habits.
Binge Watch TV...
Eating Junk Food...
We Sleep In Late...
Go through Social Media Constantly...
Barely Move Our Bodies.
Now, Maybe You Do Not Do "All" of These.
But, What is Interesting About these, and How "Most" People Spend Off Days is that...
These Activities End Up Being "Stressors" in How They Are Done.
Passively Watching TV is a Stressor to the Eyes and Mind.
Junk Food is a Stressor to the Gut.
Oversleeping is a Stressor to Multiple Parts of the Body.
Constant Social Media is a Stressor to Our Brains.
Lack of Movement is Also a Stressor.
Boredom tends to be the Result, and by Boredom I mean that "We" are Not Engaged with What We are Doing.
Without Engagement...
Our Psychophysiology Suffers.
It becomes a Recipe for Decay.
In Life, there is No Such Thing as Stagnation.
There is Growth and Decay...
And If You are Not Growing by Choice...
You are Decaying by Default.
This is what is Happening in these Situations, even if "We" as a Society do not "Call" it that.
So, this is also Less than Ideal.
But...
We Now have what you could Call a "Goldilocks" Approach when it Comes to Overcoming this False Dichotomy...
You Need To Do "Some" Things and be "Engaged" in them to Overcome Psychophysiological Decay...
But Not "Too" Much that it Pushes You Into Dis-Stress.
What You Need to Do as a Peak Performer is to "Reduce The Throttle".
This is the Difficulty that Most Peak Performers Have.
There is a Tendency to have an "All or Nothing" Approach...
But Neither Extreme is Beneficial.
The Best Option is to Find the "Current" Spot where You have "Enough" Engagement based on Where You are Psychophysiologically...
Which will Move from Day to Day.
To Accept that "Today's" Best May be "Less" than "Yesterday's" Best is the Hurdle We Must Overcome and Accept.
This is Normal, and Human...
But We Often Attempt to "Deny" Our Humanity in the Pursuit of "Peak Performance."
All for Naught, because in Denying Our Real Human Needs...
We End Up Destroying Our True Human Potential.
What is Incredibly Sad about this is that Our "True" Human Potential is Unknown.
I Study Psychophysiology Constantly...
Read the Research...
Test the Research...
And My Conclusion is that We are Nowhere Near Our True Potential as Humans.
The Further I Seek to Understand...
The Deeper I Dive...
The More Certain I Become that We Lack the Insights to Truly Gauge Our Potential...
Because We Have, as a Society...
At the Supposed "Heights" of Technology and Science...
Done Such a Terribly Poor Job of Understanding Our Potential.
Which is Both Horribly Sad...
But Extremely Exciting.
If We have come "This" Far while being "Nowhere" Near Our Potential...
What Could We Accomplish if We "Truly" Reached Our Potential?
But the Key to Making that a Reality is to Understand How "Human" Potential Works.
It Requires Growth and Cultivation.
It Requires Us to Accept the Cycles of Highs and Lows that We Experience.
It Requires Us to Work "Within" Those Cycles to Maintain Progress.
It Requires Us to Cast Aside Society's Broken Perceptions of How Things are "Supposed" to Work...
And Begin to Live as Things Work in "Reality".
We Must Stop "Calling" Ourselves Peak Performers...
And Begin to "Live" as Peak Performers.
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So the Next Question we have to Consider is “How” We Still Grow…
Even on those Days We “Know” We’re Not at Our Best.
There are a lot of things that we have “Accepted” as True in our Society…
That when we Look at the Psychophysiology…
Do Not Contribute to to Our Peak Performance.
Let’s Dive In…
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