High Performance: Lessons from the Best on Becoming Your Best

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A fantastic book that will help you think like an Olympic champion - in mind, body and spirit. DAME KELLY HOLMES All of Brendon's 6 habits and 18 practices boil down to this: think about what you're doing before you do it. Wow. Revolutionary. My main takeaways are a few things. The first is "the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing". I've heard that before but I think I had to go through some experiences in life, getting lost from a well-defined path and only sort of finding out just how lost I am when something radical happens in my life. I have problems keeping the main thing the main thing, at least partially because I haven't really defined what the main thing is for me. I've never really had 1 main thing, so it's easy for me to pretend that my main thing is something generalized like "I make stuff" or "I'm good at knowing things other people don't". That's not my main thing and I think I'm in a position to embrace that notion now. My second main takeaway was that all things not envisioned, considered, planned for, measured, monitored, managed, are inherently and inescapably left up to chance. If I want to succeed, I can't just leave all of these things up to random chance. I'm losing out on opportunity, on well-being, and on contribution to the future of the entire species by letting things like my emotional state, my health, my sanity, my ambition, my energy, my career trajectory and my influence be coin flips. Then he goes on to suggest ways to do that. And his insights about youth, some 40 years ago, are still exactly applicable to youth today. The millennial generation has a bad rap for a lot of reasons, but they are reminding us to organise our life more purposefully. To live with greater intent. And the way they’re going about it is stirring up the older generations.

Whenever something positive happens around me, I say ‘What a gift!’ I do this because so many high performers talk about how they felt a sense of reverence or sacredness in everyday life.” Throughout the book, there are high performance pit stops laying out practical activities you can do to put some of the ideas described in the book into action. For example, reflecting on how you manage your time and how to become better at it. It’s time to put what you’ve learned into practice Happier? I am a sexagenarian who has known modest success and far less modest failure. If there is one thing I’ve learned it is that happiness will not give your life meaning or you contentment. Having the world by the tail is not the path to a purposeful life. So, a mark of somebody who has developed their inner capacity, as well as an external skill, is their ability to move freely in the world around them in any condition, any environment. Too many books of this genre are written by people who have been drinking the Kool-Aid and come to believe they have discovered the true essence of water. Burchard, thankfully, is not that author. You may not agree with everything he writes, but you will ultimately conclude that he is authentic, and that’s about the highest compliment I can pay a person.

One of the fundamental questions is: Who am I? That’s an ancient meditation that’s been around for thousands and thousands of years. What is my purpose? That’s also been around for thousands and thousands of years. I can’t say what somebody else’s purpose is. But I can say that one of the mechanisms to help get closer to understanding it is to listen. In an artificial way, it sometimes helps people to say: ‘If you only had a handful of years or months, what would you do? How would you live?’ Because we’ve got this body of life behind us—say 20 or 30 or 40 years, whatever it is. We then think that we’re going to get another 30, 40 years, and build on it.

My perception from first chapters of this book was quite negative (was thinking about 3 or maybe even 2 stars) because it was all about self-appraisal, I could not stand the sales speech on why this book was the best and why he is more entitled that others. This was one of the few books that I actually wanted to stop reading after completing one third. When you are able to ignore this aspect then you will still find interesting insights from it. This book captures so many different lessons from so many remarkable people. It will help every reader apply these insights to their own lives - so they can become high performers themselves. ADAM PEATY This means you don't have to wait for motivation, love, joy, excitement or any other positive emotion… You can choose to generate it, on demand, anytime you want through the power of habit.” Effectiveness in life does not come from focusing on what is automatic, easy, or natural for us. Rather, it is the result of how we consciously strive to meet life’s harder challenges, grow beyond our comforts, and deliberately work to overcome our biases and preferences, so that we may understand, love, serve, and lead others.” demonstrate courage- find someone to fight for, share your truth and ambitions, and honor the struggles and challenges of life. Face them head on!But, I found “High Performance, Lessons from the Best on Becoming Your Best” a very accessible book because of how it is written. To be forced to live in the Nazi concentration camps. To have his wife and family members ripped from his arms. To see and live in those conditions . . . He realised that when people in the most frail conditions had something taken away from them—something that mattered to them, like a cigarette or a shirt—they literally would die. They were that fatigued, that depleted.

Our world is not designed for flourishing. It is hard, and challenging, and difficult. We’ve got real environmental pressures and social pressures to be something special, but at the surface—not at the core. So no, I don’t think it’s about work/life balance. I think that that is a mythical ridgeline that does not exist. We have a limited time to explore purpose and meaning. And we have to do it now. The philosophical ones are the ones that stand up best to the test of time, for the ages, if you will. And it’s been really tough to split between the Tao Te Ching, the Gita, and the Bible. Those three books have shaped more ideas than any other book combined.

You started out in sports psychology, but have expanded your focus to ‘high performance’ psychology more generally. So what do business leaders, Olympic athletes, and performance artists have in common—psychologically speaking? Teamwork won us the Rugby World Cup, and teamwork can transform your life. In this brilliant book Jake and Damian get to the heart of defining, creating, and inspiring the team around you, so you too can achieve high performance. SIR CLIVE WOODWARD Then comes the hook. Every consultant knows the old saying, “Them that can, do; those that can’t, teach.” That’s why they always give you the pièce de résistance, the handful of words that describes why their idea is different. It can normally be shown as a geometric shape or simple graph. In this case, it is, “High performance is not achieved by a specific kind of person, but rather a specific set of practices, which I call high performance habits.”