Archives for October 2017

People who know me understand I have a single-minded, intense focus on one thing: achieving excellence. Regardless of the field—creative, athletic, business, or otherwise—I work to create champions. I’m not talking about the top five or ten percent. I’m talking top of the top, best in field, highest step on the podium. I teach people the daily habits it takes to become a champion, then reinforce the habits it takes to stay on top.

One thing I tell my clients over and over is this: you never do it alone. It takes a strong support network of people as committed to greatness as you are. Your relationships with the people surrounding you are essential pieces of the championship puzzle – and sometimes those relationships need to be modified to meet your goals. Changing the contours of these relationships can be especially difficult with people you’re close to.

You know things need to change, but you don’t know exactly what, when, or how to say what needs to be said to make those changes. Often, what happens is you choose your words too carefully, dance around the topic, or spend so much time agonizing about how to address the issue you miss the best moment to have that tough conversation.

The Relationship Renovation Blueprint

If you need to have a hard conversation with someone close to you, follow these three steps to make sure you communicate what’s needed with the right words at the right time:

1. Don’t rush. Analyze the situation that needs modification until you’re certain the path forward is crystal clear.
2. Sit with your decision. Let it marinate. Let some time pass to make sure you’ve chosen the right course of action. You’ll know it’s right because your mind, body, and soul will be in harmony. You’ll feel calm and collected. It won’t feel like a cold, calculated intellectual exercise – you’ll feel confident, compassionate, and humane.
3. Wait for the right moment to have the conversation, then engage. You’ll know the time is right because it will feel just like the moment you chose your course of action: your mind, body, and soul will feel calm, and your inner conviction will feel unshakable.

When you present your ideas from a place of sincerity and respect, you dignify both yourself and the person you’re talking to. They’ll understand what you need. They’ll make the changes you request because they’ll feel your strength, intention, and clarity of purpose. Then you’ll both be on the same path—the path to excellence.

When I advise clients seeking to achieve peak performance, I encounter a common theme. As hard as they work, they struggle to find that final one percent that makes the difference between performing at their full potential – meaning at a legitimate, one hundred percent of their capabilities – and performing somewhere in the mid-nineties, well short of their maximum.

Sometimes they get to ninety-eight or ninety-nine percent of their best, but that final one percent eludes them.

It’s frustrating. What most people do in this situation is threefold:

1. They work harder.
2. They tweak, change, and add details to their plan.
3. They make their daily goals – the stepping stones to their ultimate goal – a little bit bigger.

Unfortunately, these three steps almost never work – and sometimes, they’re even counterproductive.

Why?

Because they aren’t specific enough to make a difference. It’s not sufficient to tell a track athlete to run faster, or to tell a cyclist to pedal harder, or to tell a triathlete to swim more. It’s not enough to tell them to change the type of energy gel they use, to consume a certain amount of carbs within thirty minutes of the end of their workout, or get an extra hour of sleep every night.

Optimize the Basics

All those things should already be in place. They probably don’t need to be changed. They simply need to be strengthened. Think of a mountaineer climbing Everest. The mountain itself is 29,000 feet tall. Which means the last one percent of the ascent is mere two-hundred-ninety feet. The way to reach the summit is step-by-step. You trek to a series of base camps, which form the foundation of your journey to the top. The last base camp is at roughly 26,000 feet, about ninety percent of the way to the top.

If you don’t have all your ducks in a row by then, you’ll never make the summit.

I tell my clients who strive to find their top one percent – that last two-hundred-ninety feet, in the language of Everest – to focus on the eighty-five percent of things that must go right to achieve a peak performance. In Everest language, that means making the most of your base camp system. You have to have your oxygen, your food, your gear, and your route working together in unison to have any chance of standing on top of the world.

I don’t ask for perfection. Perfection doesn’t exist. I ask them to solidify their foundation. When the constituent elements of a complex system are optimized, they work in harmony and form a single, synchronized whole that performs at a higher level than the sum of its parts. And when the whole works in unison, that last one percent takes care of itself.

The result?

Peak performance.