5 Ancient Rules to Live by for Modern Day Peak Performance

*This is a guest post article written by High Performance Coach Zack Blakeney

It can be difficult for a high performer to live in the balance of confidence and humility, but therein lies the secret to their long-term success.

Without awareness of this essential need for balance, confidence can easily turn into arrogance, and humility can easily turn into inadequacy.

Interestingly, arrogance and inadequacy will mask themselves in your mind with the belief that they are polar opposite states of being, when in actuality they are intimately connected.

Inadequacy causes arrogance, and arrogance causes inadequacy.

In our modern day world, with the transfer of information happening in mere nanoseconds, our beliefs can be influenced to quickly change by our own perceptions of other people’s ‘instant’ success, programming us to believe instant gratification is valid and that we are for some reason, entitled to our desired success by merely doing the work; virtuous or not, aligned or not, productive or not.

This is the state of flux that the majority of us sit in at one time or another when we feel stuck in the results of our life, and stay in this state until we have the awareness to adopt some self-serving and unshakeable rules, that can become beliefs that begin to transform our perceptions to align more with the intentions of our conscious minds.

But there is information that has been around for centuries that didn’t come from witnessing the success of others, but rather came from an uninfluenced source found within.

In a time of less outside influence creating obnoxious noise that drowns out your inner knowing, it’s time to revisit these rules, and give them the power of belief to guide you into your peak performance.

1. A Disciplined Mind Brings Happiness

Self-discipline is the predicator to self-respect, self-respect is the initiator for courage, and courageous actions will undoubtedly bring your happiness. Think about it. When you say you are going to do something you intend to do, and you do it, how do you feel? Good right? But how about the opposite? When you say you are going to do something you intend to do, and you don’t, how do you feel? Bad right? This is a very simple look at your behavior, and also is the key to the acceleration of your happiness and success.

Right now, you are, and have been, telling yourself you need to start taking action on something you haven’t, and you need to let go of something that you haven't. Both things will level you up your personal and professional growth. The longer you sit knowing this without doing, the more frustration, resentment, anxiety, and apathy occurs.

2. You Have The Right to Your Work. You Have No Right to The Results of Your Work.

Entitlement will prevent you from seeing the truth. You deserve absolutely nothing except for a chance to live, but you can earn absolutely anything you align your being with. Notice I didn’t say ‘anything you want’ as most do, this phrasing only enhances the feeling of entitlement and will send you on a path of unrealistic expectations to the amount of time, work, and energy it will take to reach your definition of success.

You must find purpose. The deep and meaningful calling within you to make the impact your heart intends, not the fickle desires of your ever changing mind. Alignment of your heart, your head, and your habits to your intended impact will fastrack your chance of success, and even then, there is no guarantee you will actually achieve it.

Fall in love with your work, live in the present moment, and let belief drive you to the possibility of something greater than you. 

3. You are made by your beliefs. As you believe, so you are.

Speaking of beliefs, they are the core of who you are, and create the perceptions of the world you live in. I’ve guided and spoken with many people who say they believe one thing, but are living an entirely different way.

Show me what you do in a day, and I will show you what you believe.

I come back to this word again, alignment. In this way, it is the alignment of your subconscious and conscious beliefs that needs to occur for you to live within the beliefs you know to be consciously true.

Your subconscious mind is one million times more powerful than your conscious mind, but your conscious mind can control all of your life experience.

Subconscious reprogramming takes time and energy, but if you choose to take on the challenge, it will unlock your ability to manifest what you consciously believe.

4. There Are No Accidents

This rule can be foundational in eliminating feelings of shame, guilt and regret in your life. Holding these emotions in your being will limit you from reaching your peak performance and true potential.

You can only be where you are in your life right now. There are no other possibilities. Your mind will argue this truth with the ‘I should’ve, would’ve, could’ve’ narrative, but all of that did not happen. What happened, happened, and it has led you to this moment, reading this article.

When you adopt this rule as belief, personal responsibility and accountability for your actions also occurs. Simultaneously eliminating the victim mindset that tricks you to believe that you have no control, and diverts the blame to some outside that only has relation to your current experience because you have allowed it to.

Accept that there are no accidents to unlock your power to create.

5. You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

When you begin to accept that you know very little, it opens your mind to the desire to know more. Learning occurs everyday, even when you don’t consciously seek new knowledge and understanding. Instead of learning something new, you are learning to compound your current belief system over and over as truth into your being, without ever seeking if it could actually be resourceful to your growth and performance.

This is a very dangerous position to take as arrogance is more likely to become the driver for your actions.

Arrogance is defined as an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or in presumptuous claims or assumptions.

And as stated previously, arrogance is the mask for and is rooted in inadequacy, which in turn closes you off from obtaining new knowledge and understanding to actually make you feel as if you are whole, complete, and enough.

Conclusion

Whether you choose to adopt these rules as truth, doesn’t matter. What does matter, is that they serve you to stand in the balance of confidence and humility that is essential for your success.

Too often in this world we argue over truth as this decisive word that either inspires us to change or divides us even further. 

But there is a big difference between the truth, and your truth. Your truth is all that matters, and when you align your truths with beliefs that serve your happiness and performance, your desired success has a greater opportunity to show up as your heart intended. 

Of course you are already successful, you just haven’t recognized it yet.

RLL 81: Coronavirus Crisis and Blended Family Thoughts

RLL 81: Coronavirus Crisis and Blended Family Thoughts

So unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, you know that our world is in a different place than we’ve been in for quite some time. Many places are in lockdown, others are in partial lockdown, and still more are moving that way. This is unusual, and anything unusual also tends to be scary, especially for parents with children and teenagers. However, for those of us in blended families, these times are even more complicated.

For those of us who are old enough to remember 9/11, one of the major aspects of that day was seeing how many parents immediately went to schools or daycare centers to get their kids and bring them home. I was in college at the time, and some students (who were within driving distance) were contacted by their parents about coming home. Understandably, in times of crisis, parents want to be able to see and hug their children to make sure that they’re safe.

Easter a few years ago with my wife and my two girls. They’re 13 and 15 these days…how time flies!

However, for blended families, this isn’t necessarily possible. In one of the blended family Facebook groups I’m part of, I’ve seen multiple posts recently asking how various family groups are handling the current situation. Do you have all the kids in one place? Do they all go to their bio-parents’ house? Do some kids stay with one parent while others go with the other? Do you do regular switch-overs, or do you adjust the time? Do you scratch switch-over altogether, and if so, for how long? What if the bio-parents don’t agree on the answers to these questions?

These are all questions that need to be carefully thought through and considered, and there is no one-size-fits-all answer for blended family questions. However, I want to share with you a few principles that should help shape your thinking when trying to answer these questions for your own blended family.

1. What is best for the children’s health and safety? This is the single biggest question that needs to be a guide for you. It may seem obvious, but often we let our own desires or emotions override what might be best for our children. Now is not the time for egos; now is the time for rational, honest self-assessment and decision-making.

2. What threats are present in various homes that need to be considered? For example, if one home has someone who may still have to go to work and is much more likely to be exposed, and the other home doesn’t, at least consider having the child stay in the ‘more safe’ environment, even if that’s difficult for you.

3. What if the parents disagree? In difficult situations, when parents cannot find a ground for compromise or agreement, my usual suggestion is to default to whichever parent has a more ‘strict’ or protective view. This is difficult and not terribly pleasant, but I do think it’s worth considering. In a time of crisis, we need to be willing to show grace and patience above and beyond what we normally would.

4. What if the children need to stay in one home? If this is the case, then I would strongly encourage you to be flexible regarding communication between homes: increase time available for phone calls, facetime, Skype calls, texting, Google hangouts, or whatever your chosen method of communication is. 

5. Remember that however worried/anxious/scared/nervous you are, the children are feeling these things even more acutely than we are. They are looking to us for guidance and direction, and we need to make sure that we are providing those things for them. This includes setting an example for them in how we relate to the other adults in their world in times of crisis. 

Remember, in times of crisis, our beliefs and our values and our commitments are tested. In the midst of those times we need to make sure that we are continuing to ‘walk the walk’ and not just ‘talk the talk’ in front of our children. 

Show grace, show cooperation show empathy. Display courage, display wisdom, display prudence. Exercise humility, exercise perseverance, exercise patience.

These are difficult times, and our families need us now more than ever before. Let us commit to doing what is best for our families even when it’s difficult; this is important for the short-term, and it also lays good foundations for a better long-term relationship as well.

If you have any questions, or if I can help you with specifics in your blended family, please reach out to me today. Email me at joel@speakerjoel.com or joel@joelwhawbaker.com or through the Contact Joel pages on either of my websites (www.joelwhawbaker.com and www.reallifeleading.com ) .

For more tips and articles on blended family life, be sure to check out my website at www.stepdadding.com . Thanks!!

RLL 80: Choices, Consistency, and Consequences

RLL 80: Choices, Consistency, and Consequences

Recently, my stepfather recommended that I read a book called Rise and Grind: How to Out-perform, Out-work, and Out-hustle the Competition by Daymond John, and so I’ve been reading a chapter or so each day. In the book, one thought, more than any other, has stuck out to me. The author, famous for being on the hit television show Shark Tank and for being a mogul in the fashion industry (as well as for writing the best-selling book The Power of Broke), tells an anecdote about something his mother used to say to him which has to do with productivity. As he tells it, his mother used to say, “The time will pass anyway. Might as well use it productively.”

My wife and I at Covenant College, my alma mater and one of my favorite places on earth

The more I’ve thought about this quote, the more power it seems to have. However, I’ve also been thinking this week about how this quote applies not just to productivity but also to the choices we make, the consistency with which we make them, and the consequences of them. See, we all are faced with myriad choices every single day: what to eat, what to wear, how to spend our free time, as well as less obvious (on the outside) choices such as what to think about, what we listen to, what we read or watch. And it’s those inner choices that I’m more concerned about, because the inner choices shape the outward actions.

As a high school teacher, I spend much of my day encouraging students to read. I try to convince them that reading is much more profitable to them as people in the long run that anything they’re doing on their phones. I want them to read books, magazines, newspapers about topics that they’re already interested in, and I want them to do so consistently. By doing this, they’d be helping themselves as well as the future of our society. It feels like a losing battle, but as teachers it’s our job to do the best we can.

Sometimes these dogs drive me crazy, but most of the time they make my heart happy. As Bill Watterson wrote, “It’s hard to be mad at someone who misses you while you’re asleep.”

Outside the classroom, I want to encourage you, the reader today, to take a few moments and join me in considering the choices that we are consistently making regarding our inner life. What are we choosing to focus on? What are we choosing to dwell on consistently? And what are the consequences of those choices?

Are we choosing to think about things that are loving, kind, encouraging, uplifting?

Are we choosing to think about things that are hopeful, gracious, and inspiring?

Or

Are we choosing to dwell on things that make us angry, sad, and resentful?

Are we choosing to dwell on things that make us full of hatred and bitterness?

I’m not saying we won’t ever have the odd thought that makes us angry or bitter or resentful; what I am saying is that we have the choice of whether or not to dwell on that thought, to allow it to fester within us. We can, instead, choose to re-focus our minds on something else. As Martin Luther once said, ‘You cannot keep birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair.”

What we choose to focus and dwell on shapes how we respond to and treat others. It shapes how we see ourselves and the world around us. The many choices we make every day that no one even sees have a tremendous impact on the way that we interact with those same people. The consequences of the choices we consistently make are tremendous, so let us choose wisely.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Philippians 4:8)

These are wise words from the ancient world, and we would do well to remember them today.