Audiobook Part 9. High Performance Habits: Beware 3 Traps

Section three Sustaining Success. High Performance Killers Beware. Three Traps. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar. This chapter has three Beware Superiority. Beware Dissatisfaction. Beware Neglect. That's him over there, Andre tells me. Dreadful Don. I look across the bar to the well dressed executive Andre is pointing to. Why do you call him that? Andre furrows his brow. We all call him that. They called him that long before I got here. He's the VP of sales. Miserable to work with. Everyone hates him. But I thought you said he's the star performer in your company. For the moment, yes. He's successful, but a total jerk. This party tonight is happening only because he crushed it so hard. The whole sales team made its numbers two months early. When you talk to him tomorrow, I'm sure he'll be delighted to tell you how awesome he is. I'm surprised to hear Andre talk like this. He's a very centered, solid, likable CFO of a major manufacturing company. I coached him at another company for years and never heard him speak ill of anyone. He's been at this job for just six months and it's hard to imagine that someone has gotten under his skin so quickly. Something isn't computing. I see Don surrounded by his co workers and they all seem to be having a good time. I don't get it, I say to Andre. If he's a total jerk, as you say, then how does he keep getting ahead? Won't people stop supporting him at some point and then he'll crash and burn? Andre takes a sip of his single malt and laughs. Oh, oh, they already have. He just doesn't know it yet. The next morning, Andre brings me into the company headquarters. He's getting paid twice what he did at his old job. But as we enter the building, I can sense he isn't happy to be here. You'll see why, he tells me. We walk into the conference room where Don is checking his PowerPoint. Today he's leading the quarterly sales meeting where he sets the tone and path to make the company's goals. His entire sales team of 144 people is here. The C suite, who Andre has brought me in to coach, is also here. CEO, cto, cmo. I've worked with them all for just a few weeks and all of them asked me to work with Don. They've arranged for me to meet with him after his presentation and assess whether I can help. I watch Don give what many would consider a stellar 90 minute presentation. He's strategic, organized and articulate. He has that sort of forward lean and swagger that makes you want to go charge onto the battlefield with him. After the presentation, I meet with Don privately. I ask, how do you think your talk went? It was good enough. You're never really satisfied with his speech. You know, you always think of something else you could tell him. Yeah, I know the feeling. How do you think the audience received it? Most of it probably went over their heads, but. But it's just a meeting. It's my job to stay on top of them and really push them to execute from here. It takes a lot of follow up. You know how it is. It seemed pretty straightforward to me. I say, you think it went over their heads? Hey man, you know it's lonely at the top, so you just hope you can explain your point of view. Well, lonely at the top, you know what I mean. Not everyone gets us, you know the best. I'm sure you've learned that working with so many winners. Maybe you can help me turn these guys into champions. They just don't get it, you know? I say nothing and just wait for him to share more. He looks at me quizzically. You do know what I mean, right? You know, I debate whether we have enough of a relationship that I can tell him the truth. He doesn't know that his attitude and the phrase lonely at the top are reliable omens for every great downfall I've ever seen. Hey man, you can tell me what you're thinking. Say it straight. I don't have a lot of time today. I can handle you, I promise, he says, laughing. Nothing you'll say will hurt my feelings. Promise. Okay, good. I think you have six months tops before you destroy your career. This is a chapter about failure, but not just any kind of failure. It's about the calamitous fall from grace that high performers can experience when they get so good that that they forget what made them successful. This chapter is in effect the anti practices of high performance. It's about how people like Don start thinking they are separate from others, better than others, more capable than others and more important than others, and how those attitudes destroy performance and careers. It's also about the problems that come from the never be satisfied hustle and grind approach that sucks passion and leads to over commitment. This is a chapter about the warning signs, the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that knock high performers out of the sky. Long before I met Don, I had surveyed high performers about what brought an end to previous winning streaks. I surveyed 500 people who had scored in the top 15% looking for clues. I wanted to know how long they felt they had sustained their success, whether they had ever fallen hard and and whether they ever felt they had risen to such heights again. I asked them open ended questions such as when was the time you had initial period of success, say three to five years, then suddenly failed. I asked more questions to find out what caused them to fail, how long they were down, how fast they achieved success again, and what factors led to the bounce back. The stories were astoundingly similar to those I had heard working with high performers from all walks of life. I collected the 500 surveys and stories, then did another 20 interviews to learn more. Then I compared all those findings to my own experience coaching high performers over the past 10 years. Obvious patterns emerged. Number one, when high performers fell from grace, the most frequent culprits, aside from failing to practice the habits you've learned in this book came down to three things. Number two, when high performers rose back up, the habits in this book were the vehicle for that ascension. Number three, when high performers describe such an up and down journey, they clearly never want to make the same mistakes again. The fall was that painful. When you fail at the beginning of a journey, it's frustrating. When you fail hard after making it for so many years, it feels immeasurably worse. So what were the three things that caused high performers to find fallout of prolonged success? Let's start with what didn't cause them to fail. Fear was not the issue to become high performers. People have learned to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. The people I surveyed didn't report failing because of fear, worry, or holding back. Competence was not an issue. To succeed in the first place, you have to be good at your craft. No one said, gosh, Brennan, I just wasn't skilled enough to stay on top of. Other people were not the issue. Of 500 people who responded to my survey, only seven blamed other people for their stumbles. But even in those cases, the respondents ultimately reasoned that it was their own fault. High performers, especially those who have fallen down and got back up, take personal responsibility for their journey. Creativity was not the issue. I had expected some high performers to say they were passed up because they they ran out of good ideas. That didn't happen. Motivation was not the issue. If anything, these high performers were deeply, if not desperately motivated to climb back up. You could say they had extreme performance necessity. Resources were not the issue. Only 38 of 500 people blamed money or insufficient support as the reason they failed. I spoke with 14 of those 38 and certainly lack of money or support was a ready excuse. But behind that excuse, they accepted a colder, harder truth. They messed up. These issues could certainly be fair and understandable reasons for people to fail. But what I've learned from high performers is that these just aren't the real failure points of sustained performance. The real traps are internal negative patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that slowly kill our humanity, zest and well being. The traps are superiority, dissatisfaction, and neglect. If you're going to maintain high performance, you need to maintain your high performance habits and avoid these three traps. Superiority There are two kinds of pride, both good and bad. Good pride represents our dignity and self respect. Bad pride is is the deadly sin of superiority that reeks of conceit and arrogance. John Maxwell High performers face a unique set of character traps because they are, by definition outperforming so many around them. When you are succeeding beyond others, it's easy to get a big head. You can begin to think you're special, separate from, better than, or more important than other people. That was obvious in my conversations with dawn, and it's what others were sharing about him. This is a way of thinking that you must avoid at all costs. Of course, you probably would never say to yourself, one day, I want to start feeling that I'm better than other people. No one wants to join the ranks of the egomaniacs, narcissists, braggarts, or elitists. You sense that this is true because you've likely met someone who truly believed they were superior to you or others. You can probably think of five people like that right now, and I bet you don't have a positive association with any of them. Superiority has no positive connotation in a healthy mind. But I'm not here to talk about those people. I'm here to caution you that as you get more successful, you can quickly fall prey to the same fatal error. In fact, I'm here to suggest that you, like all humans, are already guilty of subtle thoughts and actions that point to feelings of superiority. You might not be demonstrating a bombastic ego, but there are a hundred shades and degrees of superiority. Have you recently thought that some of the people you work with are idiots and that your ideas are always better? Yes, that qualifies. Not asking your team to review your big presentation and and find its errors or omissions because you got this, uh oh, getting cut off in traffic, then racing ahead to cut that guy off just to show him who's boss. Yep, arguing your point over and over to your spouse even though they have been clear about their position and are not budging. Check. Failing to review your work because it's always good enough. Dang. Minimizing someone else so you can look better. Oops. Discounting another person's ideas because they haven't put in the time you have. Anything here seem familiar? See, superiority draws us off track a quarter inch at a time. When it has a firm hold on us, we begin acting out like jerks. We stop asking people for their input or help because we think we're always right. We lose awareness of others contributions and powers. We end up soloing and we destroy the sense of connection and camaraderie that makes high achievement fun and worthwhile. We dismiss people and we speak in tones of condescension. We start falling prey more often to confirmation bias, interpreting what we see as confirmation of our own beliefs while neglecting or discounting the evidence against it. We lose ourselves to thoughts of superiority that ultimately destroy our relationships and our performance. The good news is, you can learn to spot exactly when and how these thoughts arise in your mind. And with that knowledge, you can avoid buying into them. When is the easy part. The roots of superiority always begin to grow in the soil of separateness and certainty. It's that moment when you begin to think you are separate from others or certain about anything that you are in greatest danger. Here's how to know when superiority has infiltrated your mind. Number one, you think you are better than another person or group. Number two, you're so amazingly good at what you do that you don't feel you need feedback, guidance, diverse viewpoints or support. Number three, you feel that you automatically deserve people's admiration or compliance because of who you are, what position you hold, or what you've accomplished. Number four, you feel that people don't understand you, so all those fights and failures are surely not your fault. It's that they just can't appreciate your situation or the demands, obligations or opportunities you have to sort through daily. When any of these realities is a constant in your life, you've begun the decline, even if you don't know it yet. What these thoughts have in common is a sense of separateness. You just feel so much more capable or accomplished than others that in your mind there is you at the top and then everyone else. It's this separateness that fueled Don's belief that that it's lonely at the top. Yet Don isn't alone. A lot of people believe this bizarre idea. People say it because they think others can't possibly comprehend their lives. The problem is this thought is inaccurate and obscenely destructive. If you've ever felt as if the world can't understand you, then and I won't bother looking for a gentler way to say this, it's time to pop the bubble you've been hanging out in. We have thousands of years of recorded human history and over 7 billion people walk this earth today. The odds are pretty good that someone somewhere has gone through what you're going through and can easily understand your situation and advise you through it all isolation is ultimately self imposed. This is a difficult truth to relay to people who feel that no one can understand them or their situation. I can't tell you how many times I've had to kindly tell someone to abandon their sense of separateness in truly difficult situations. You are not the first entrepreneur to face financial ruin. You are not the first parent to lose a child. You are not the first manager to be cheated by an employee. You are not the first lover to be cheated on. You are not the first striver to lose your dream. You are not the first CEO to run a large global company. You are not the first healthy person to find yourself suddenly battling cancer. You are not the first person to deal with depression or addiction in yourself or a loved one. When we're facing any of these difficulties, it's easy to feel that we're the only one going through the struggle. But that feeling is pure illusion. There is no human emotion or situation you are contending with that someone somewhere cannot understand. If you are vulnerable and real and open enough to share your thoughts, feelings and challenges, yes, you can keep telling yourself that your spouse can't possibly understand and if you never try, that will be a self fulfilling prophecy. Their lack of understanding only grows in your silence. Yes, you can tell yourself that no one on your team gets it, but that's just your ego blinding you to the value that others can ultimately add. Discounting others doesn't make you a greater person. You're just choosing to be more separate, ultimately making yourself more vulnerable to failure. I know that when you're trapped in hardship, these statements can feel judgmental or oblivious of your reality. But I respectfully share these ideas with you because I've seen so many good people lose it all, not through ill intent, but through a sense of separateness that soon makes them dismiss others or fail to ask for help. It never hurts to remind strivers that we all are one human family and that there are really only two stories in the human narrative, both of which all can know and connect to you might recall these two stories are struggle and progress. People can understand your struggle, they can understand your wins, and they can understand tough choices, even if they themselves have never had to make them. If you don't believe it, then you are telling yourself a story that is not natural, that is disconnected from the reality of 7 billion people who all have hearts and hurts and dreams. Often when I meet high performers who are so good that they are indeed at the top of their particular food chain, the CEO, the world champion athlete, the most popular person in school, the smartest woman in the room all have to go further than this oneness argument. I'll have to remind them that someone somewhere is smarter, earns more, serves better, trains harder, and positively affects more people than they do. I don't say that to diminish these paragons, but to connect them to another reality that whoever you are, what seems a big issue to you, what might be separating you from others in your circle of influence, might be child's play to a bigger fish in another pond. That perspective can prove hopeful. Someone out there has already solved the dilemma, mastered the thing that you believe makes you so different from others. If you can find them, you can find a mentor, a solution and a path back to reality and and humility. A few more points about the lonely at the top syndrome just because it's just so corrosive. First, I've rarely met a high performer who thinks they're at the top. Most feel like they're just getting started. They understand they're still students of life and no matter how stellar their success, they feel that they're just a few steps in on the path of mastery. This is a widely held attitude which with the top scorers of our assessments who I interviewed. Second, here's a special reminder. If you have begun dismissing other people's capabilities, you can't maximize your potential while minimizing others. What you have attained in life isn't because you're all that special, but because you're all that blessed. The reality is that a large part of the differentiation in performance at your level comes down to the habits we've discussed, which anyone can begin implementing augmented by exposure, training, practice and access to excellence driven mentors, coaches or role models. That's why I often have to remind the superior minded, you are not better than anyone. You likely just got more exposure to your topic, you had more information or opportunity available to you, you got trained better, you had the opportunity to put in more passion or deliberate practice. Over more time, you had the opportunity to receive good feedback and guidance. These things are not inherent to who you are. These things, if given to another person, would help them rise to your level. True. If you don't answer yes, please shake hands with your ego. This isn't just my opinion. In almost all studies on expert performance, the major thing that made the difference was not a person's innate talents, but the hours of exposure and deliberate practice. In the world of talent, expertise or sustained world class performance, there is no longer a debate of nature versus nurture. The myth of the naturally superior human has been deconstructed and obliterated by research across dozens of fields. This warrants the simplest of reminders. Don't judge others as below you or separate from you. Your frustration with people is coming from a forgetfulness that almost everyone could succeed and at a higher level if they had more exposure, training, practice and access to excellence driven mentors, coaches or role models. Remember, everything is trainable. That doesn't mean everyone will request the training, put in the hard work, reach number one or have as much grit as you. But everyone is capable of success. Everyone can win at life. So let's be honest, you were once a mess too. Or did you forget that already? But you improved. Give others that same opportunity. When you remember that you too struggled and you remind yourself that others can dramatically improve themselves, that's when you start to be more compassionate. That's when you start to beat back any hint of a superiority complex. But even knowing this, we haven't won the fight just yet. Thoughts of separateness are just seedlings of superiority. If you want to watch the complex bloom just till those thoughts in the soil of certainty, imagine how much more insufferable a person becomes when they are certain of the things we've discussed so far. Number one, they are certain they are better than another person or a group. Number two, they are certain they are tops at what they do. So they are certain they don't need feedback, guidance, diverse viewpoints or support. Number three, they are certain they deserve people's admiration or compliance because of who they are, where they came from, or what they've earned or accomplished. Number four, they are certain that people don't understand them and any fights and failures are certainly not their fault. My guess is you wouldn't exactly be inspired by working with a person like this. People like this aren't only separate from others and thus dismissive of their ability to understand or help. They also become condescending toward others. You know that your mind has tipped into condescension the moment you you start hearing yourself say what's wrong with these idiots? When someone makes a mistake and you think what a moron. Before asking whether they had sufficient clarity, information or support. When someone doesn't work as hard as you and you think why are they so lazy? What is wrong with them? When you start seeing others as wrong or inadequate for life, then you've fallen so far into the trap of superiority that you are in danger of destroying your connection with others and and your ability to lead. Superior minded people are certain they are better, more capable, more deserving, and it's that certainty that closes their minds to learning, connection with others, and ultimately growth. The more you absolutely believe anything, the more likely you are to become blinded to new perspectives and opportunities. The moment someone becomes absolutely certain is the moment that superiority is has won. For all these reasons, we must beware of separateness and certainty. So what's the solution? I found that the first step is always awareness. You have to be alert and catch yourself when you start thinking you are separate from others for any reason. Second, you need to develop habits that will help you stay humble and open even as you get better at what you do. Humility is a foundational virtue that enables many other virtues to grow. It is associated with positive outcomes like marital fidelity, cooperation, compassion for others, strong social bonds, general group acceptance, optimism, hope, decisiveness, comfort with ambiguity, and openness to experience. It's also tied to our willingness to admit gaps in current knowledge and the tendency to feel guilty after wrongdoing. How do you stay humble? You begin by developing a more open and test oriented mindset by flipping the earlier examples. Number one to avoid thinking you're superior to others, deliberately seek others ideas for improving anything you do. If you could improve on my idea, how would you go about it? Ask this question enough and you'll discover so many holes in your thinking. Any sense of superiority begins to melt away in the harsh light of truth. Learning is the anvil on which humility is forged. Number two if you find that your thinking is not being challenged enough or your growth has topped out, hire a coach, trainer or therapist. Yes, hire someone. Sometimes your immediate peer group can't see beyond their knowledge of you. Sometimes they're not qualified or available to help you through a specific challenge or period of life. Professionals can help you explore issues, find clarity, and leverage proven tools for growth. If you'd like a listing of certified professionals in this topic, visit highperformanceinstitute.com if you can't hire someone, find a mentor and call or meet with them at least twice each month. Consistency in receiving feedback is the hallmark of consistent growth. Number three to avoid thinking you automatically deserve people's admiration or compliance just because of who you are, where you're from, or what you've accomplished, remind yourself that trust is earned through caring for others, not bragging about yourself. Challenge yourself to ask people more questions about who they are, where they came from, what they want to achieve. Before interacting with others, tell yourself, I'm starting from scratch with this person. If this were my first date or interaction with them, what questions could I ask to learn more about them? Number four Instead of believing that people don't understand you and that they are to blame for the fights and failures in your life, take ownership of your actions by reflecting on your role after a conflict. Ask Am I distorting the situation in any way to make myself feel like the misunderstood heroes? Am I spinning a story to make myself feel better? Am I trying to make excuses or play the victim to protect my ego? What were my actions that contributed to the issues at hand? What might I not know about this person or their situation? 5. Keep a practice of reminding yourself of your blessings. Gratitude and humility have been shown to be mutually reinforcing, meaning the more grateful you are, the more humble you feel, and the more humble you feel, the more grateful you are. These suggestions will help keep you humble, effective, and respectful. That's how you sustain success, and that's how you build a life you can be proud of. One last point on superiority From a leadership point of view, not all high performers who spoke of failing to maintain their degree of success blamed an internal perception of superiority. They didn't all say they began thinking they were separate from or better than others. The issue for them was that other people started viewing them as acting superior. The high performers got so good they simply disengaged from others because they truly didn't think they needed help. They didn't engage, and an assumption of aloofness and superiority grew to fill that attention vacuum. Never forget, people can perceive you to be superior minded when you don't engage with them, even if it's not your true intent or spirit. That's just one more way the suggestions I've shared with you will help you maintain the truth and perception of being a humble and engaged leader. Performance prompts of the first trap of superiority can be found on page 306 of High Performance Habits the book, or you can download them all at highperformancehabits Performance Prompts Number one A recent situation where I found myself Being overly critical or dismissive of others was number two. The thoughts I had about myself in that situation and the others involved were number three. Had I reimagined the situation from a more humble and appreciative view, I would probably have realized that number four. The best way I can remind myself that everyone is dealing with difficulties in life and that we're all more alike than we are different is dissatisfaction. Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter and think that even such a result is no trifle. Marcus Aurelius I was standing alone in the dark backstage and a terrible anxiety set in. A famous musician was out front and repeatedly telling the audience of thousands never be satisfied. He said this phrase perhaps 10 times in 15 minutes. He credited his dissatisfaction with giving him the emotional fuel needed to keep dreaming, innovating, outhustling his peers. Oh dear, I thought, my heart racing. What am I going to do? I was the next speaker. The second slide in my presentation, which soon would be projected onto the jumbo monitors, had just two words emblazoned across it. Be satisfied. The musician was literally delivering the antithesis of what I was about to teach. Not that his message was wrong. If he credited his dissatisfaction with his successful career, who was I to argue? However, someone explains that performance is true for them. The issue for me was that he was saying everyone should refuse to be satisfied in life and career because that dissatisfaction will lead to greater success. This, we know, is incorrect. High performers in general aren't dissatisfied with themselves, their lives, or their work. Remember just a few findings I've shared in this book. High performers are, in fact, happier than most people. They feel satisfied and well rewarded in their careers, and they cultivate experiences that are more positive than negative, with joy often at the heart of their endeavors. As I was thinking through this, the event host started introducing me as the next speaker. There was no time to change my presentation. I would have to do what I've had to do many times in my career bust a powerful and popular myth about performance. There is a long standing cultural sensibility that says we should never be satisfied with our work because satisfaction would somehow lead to complacency. But does satisfaction really drain our motivation or weaken our resolve for excellence? Having surveyed and coached so many of the world's top performers, I found the answer is no. Satisfaction must accompany striving for optimal performance. Those who are never satisfied are never at peace. They can't tune in to their zone. The noise of a dissatisfied mind prevents them from finding a rhythm that makes them feel alive and effective. If I cannot sense satisfaction in the moment, then I am not feeling connection or gratitude for the moment. Dissatisfaction is disconnection, so people who feel it do not experience the full levels of engagement and joy that high performers so consistently talk about. Dissatisfaction causes them to obsess about the negative, leading in turn to a habit of missing what's working and failing to praise or appreciate others. This negative focus prevents the kind of gratitude that makes life magical and leadership with others possible. The nothing is good enough, never settle mentality also compels them to discard too quickly with what's in front of them and move on to the next iteration or thing. And with that, no real appreciation or memory of achievement is forged in their mind. And so they are just busy and empty ghosts on a hunt for some dream day when they might have perfection. Ultimately, the dark, exhausting, negative emotional prison that is constant dissatisfaction saps performance. Perennial dissatisfaction is the first step on the path to misery. The never settle, unhappy striver mentality is akin to what researchers call maladaptive perfectionism. This is the kind of perfectionism in which you have high standards, often a good thing, but are always beating yourself up for any imperfection a bad thing. This can cause such high cognitive anxiety over making mistakes that optimal performance is all but impossible. Obsessive concern over making mistakes has been associated with several negative outcomes and including anxiety, low confidence, a failure orientation, and negative reactions to basic mistakes during competition. And the kicker is that no matter what you do or what you achieve, you'll always be dissatisfied. It's a miserable loop to be caught in. And that's why, as the research shows, it is often related to depression. If dissatisfaction is so detrimental to performance, why do so many people think you have to be dissatisfied to succeed? Because it feels natural and automatic. It's easy to be dissatisfied because noticing what's wrong in a situation is a habit of evolution, often called the negativity bias. This never ending scouting for errors and anomalies helps our species survive. When our distant ancestors heard a rustling in the thicket and the crickets stopped chirping, an alarm went up telling them something was off. That's a good thing. But if over applied in modern daily life, this same impulse doesn't help us survive, it causes suffering. Some may argue that our brain defaults to seeking errors. But that isn't the only default setting. Your brain is hardwired just as much for happiness as for negativity or fear. If this were not true, then how to explain the fact that worldwide, most people are moderately happy? Most of the time and our natural tendency is to seek positive emotions and experiences. When we do, it enhances our learning and our ability to see new opportunities. It also leads to flow states that make for superior objective performance outcomes. That tendency should be encouraged and amplified. When it is, life blooms and high performance is more likely the reason I push so hard against the never be satisfied credo is extends beyond the empirical research. Simply, this thinking has little to no practical value because the emphasis is in the wrong area. It's pointing out a negative rather than a positive direction. When you speak to people who often say never be satisfied and you ask them to turn it into a positive takeaway, they say such things as stay motivated, notice what's not working and improve it. Care about perfecting the details. Set your sights on bigger goals as you grow, keep moving forward. The truth is, you can do all these things and still be satisfied. Seeking excellence and experiencing satisfaction are not mutually exclusive. Being satisfied, then, doesn't mean settling. It simply means accepting and taking pleasure in what is. It's allowing yourself to feel contentment whether or not a thing is complete or perfect. For example, as I write this book, I'm satisfied even though I'm trying to make it better, even though I'm just weeks from deadline, even though I'm not sure how it will turn out. As I shoot my videos, I'm satisfied even though I know I could do better with more time, more practice, and that no matter what I do, plenty of people won't like the result. As I serve my clients, I'm satisfied even though we might not get a perfect solution. This sense of satisfaction doesn't mean I have everything figured out. It doesn't mean I don't care about the details or push the boundaries and cheer everyone on to get better and better. I've just made what I consider a simple choice in life to be a satisfied striver rather than a dissatisfied curmudgeon. Whistle while you work, or grit your teeth and huff and puff. It's your choice. But how to respond to those who say, brendan, I've become pretty successful even though I'm pretty perennially dissatisfied? I say simply this. Your path ahead doesn't have to feel so negative anymore. And if you allow dissatisfaction to be your approach, your cross, your brand, then the odds are you will soon see your performance lag. We all need the payoff of satisfaction and fulfillment at some point. If you keep cheating yourself of it, then that neglect will be your Achilles heel. And let's be honest, perhaps dissatisfaction wasn't really what what made you good in the first place? What you are correlating with your success may not be the cause. What if it was an eye toward detail, a deep passion, or a hunger to inspire others to grow that really drove you all those years? What if you were simply practicing one of the high performance habits without knowing it? I ask this because too often we give credit to the forefront negative emotions and experiences in life and miss the real causes of success. It's like when someone says, I'm successful because I sleep only four hours a night. No, the lack of sleep isn't what made you successful. 50 years of sleep science proves that you were cognitively impaired, not optimized. You succeeded despite being sleep deprived because other positive attributes compensated for the deficit. In the same vein, I suggest that dissatisfaction was not the strength that helped you climb. I know that no matter what I do, I can't win an argument here if you believe that dissatisfaction has helped you succeed. But maybe I can invite you to consider the possibility that it might feel better if once in a while you let yourself enjoy more moments. Pat yourself on the back, high five the team for good effort. Recognize that you're okay and things are going your way. When you can be in the moment and satisfied with what you're doing, you can access greater flow and potential. People around you will enjoy and appreciate and recommend you more. Soon, in the place of all that dissatisfaction will be a sense of real connection and play. And when that happens, you'll reach an entirely new level of mastery and performance. People who feel a sense of play, not dissatisfaction, perform better in almost every field of endeavor. Play is not indulgent. It's crucial to creativity, health, healing and happiness. Flow and play are gateways to mastery. So don't fret. You won't lose passion by feeling better. All these points are even more important if you are a leader. Allowing greater satisfaction as you strive isn't just about how much better you can feel. It's also about how others feel around you. No one wants to work with someone who is perennially dissatisfied with themselves or others. We found that leaders who are always stuck in error detection mode and forget to celebrate the small wins also consistently fail to acknowledge progress, praise the team, encourage reflection, and champion other people's ideas. In other words, they're not exactly a joy to be around. That's why I warn high performers, if you become habitually dissatisfied, it's going to destroy your influence with others. And as you now know, influence is critical to your long term success. So how can you avoid performance sapping dissatisfaction. I suggest a big picture reminder. Life is short, so decide to enjoy it. Instead of discontent, bring joy and honor to what you do. I promise you'll start feeling more alive, motivated and fulfilled. If it's hard to imagine a life free from dissatisfaction, you can at least start edging it out with tactical daily and weekly practices that help you appreciate life's blessings more often. This is especially true if you slid from performance dissatisfaction into self loathing. If that's the case, it's time to make peace with yourself. You've been through enough. Yesterday did not make it through last night, and this morning's sunlight belongs to a fresh new day. In this moment now, you can breathe deep and finally, after all this time, give yourself love and appreciation. To help you on this journey, try this. Start journaling at the end of each day. Write down three things that went well or better than expected that day. Write. Write about any progress or blessings that you feel grateful for. It's such simple but essential advice to keep a high performer performing high. Start noticing what's going well. Appreciate your blessings, enjoy the journey and record your wins. Get your family or team together once a week for no other reason than to talk about what's working, what people are excited about, what difference your efforts are making in real people's lives. Start meetings by asking others to share one great thing that has happened that can give the team a sense of joy, pride and fulfillment. These are simple steps, but they will matter to the people you love and lead. I remember finishing my presentation that day, the one where I had to carefully correct the famous musician's assertion that never be satisfied was a mentality the entire audience should adopt. I cautiously walked backstage, imagining that if he was still there, he would be upset. And he was there. The musician stood, arms crossed. He said, I heard your talk. I'm sure you're quite satisfied. Then I laughed sheepishly. Yes, I try to be, but I hope that doesn't upset you. I tried not to negate your message about how it's so important to always strive to keep getting better. Were you at least satisfied with your talk? The audience seemed to like it. No, he huffed. I'm not satisfied, and I don't think I should be. Or you should be. I have the humility to know I can do better. I replied, I agree. We all can do better. The only path I've seen that works long term is to begin enjoying what you are doing, which you seem to you love what you do, right? Yes, I do. And you told the audience that you feel you're on the path you were meant to walk in life? Yes. Okay, then. Don't you feel fulfilled? He thought about it for a moment and said, I suppose not yet. Then when I asked if you love what you're doing and you feel you're on the right path, when do you get to just feel good about that? For a moment, he unfolded his arms. Good question. Who knows? Soon, maybe three months later, the tabloids reported he had checked himself into a depression treatment center. If your aim is to maintain high performance, please allow yourself to feel the wins again. Don't just hope to arrive somewhere someday and finally feel satisfied. Strive satisfied. Performance Prompts for trap number two on dissatisfaction is on page 314 of High Performance Habits. Performance prompt number one the areas of my life I felt consistently dissatisfied with include Number two, some good things that have also happened in those areas. Number three, Something I can say to myself the next time I feel dissatisfied. To get me to notice the good things and continue moving forward is number four. Someone who probably sees me dissatisfied more than I want them to is number five. If I were going to inspire that person to believe you can enjoy life as you work hard and succeed, I would have to change these behaviors. Neglect if things are not going well for you, begin your effort at correcting the situation by carefully examining the service you are rendering and especially the spirit in which you are rendering it. Roger Babson Neglect, like the other traps of superiority and disappointment, sneaks up on you. You don't say to yourself, I I'm going to neglect my health, my family, my team, my responsibilities, my real passions and dreams. It's more that passion or busyness blinds you to what's important just long enough for things to fall apart. Often, then, it's not what you do that unseats you from high performance, but what you don't do. In single minded pursuit of achievement and mastery in one area of life, you take your eyes off the other areas. Soon those areas fight back for more attention. This is the story of those who work so hard in their career that they keep forgetting their spouse's needs. Soon the marriage is in turmoil, the high performer feels awful, and performance declines. Switch this example out with neglect of one's health, children, friendships, spirituality, or finances, and you still have the same story. Obsession in one area of life hurts another area, setting off a negative cascade of events and feelings that eventually unseats the high performer. Again, no one intends to neglect important parts of their life over the long term, at least not the high performers. I've interviewed who failed to maintain progress. In fact, most shared a sense of surprise that things ever got so out of hand. I knew I was juggling too many balls, they'll often say. But I hadn't realized it was so bad until it's that last word. Until. I can't describe how many times I've heard that word emphasized with a tone of pain and regret. I want you to avoid this fate. The good news is it's tactically easy to avoid neglect. The bad news is it requires a difficult and often dramatic mental shift. Before I share the how part, let me share two distinctions about why high performers neglect something important to them in the first place. In conducting my interviews, what I found fascinating was that high performers don't blame their neglect on the same things as under performers. Under performers often blame other people or lack of time. I didn't have enough support, so I couldn't do everything and something had to give. Or there just aren't enough hours in the day to do it all. No doubt we could all justify neglecting parts of our lives for these reasons. It's just that high performers rarely do. Instead, when they reflect on a time when they neglected something and it hurt their performance, they place most of the blame on their own shoulders. They take personal responsibility. Neglect was a shortcoming of their own. Their explanations for neglect, I found, can be categorized into two obliviousness and overreaching obliviousness. Obliviousness is the less used excuse of the two, but a destructive culprit nonetheless. It means you are so focused in one area that you are completely unaware of the growing problems in another. High performers who started losing explain it by saying, I was so obsessed with work I honestly didn't realize I was getting so fat. Or she just up and left one day. I was blindsided and hated myself for it. Or that's when I realized my team had been telling me the same things for months, but I was too busy to pay attention. To hear high performers describe neglect due to obliviousness is always painful. They have an unmistakable tone. They hate that they took their eye off other things that mattered. Hindsight is painfully clear, especially for a neglectful former high performer staring into self loathing and regret. Part of the reason it's so painful is that the things that they believe helped them climb to success, hard work, focus and persistence became the very things that caused their demise. Researchers have noted how sometimes tenacity and grit held for too long can actually undermine well being and good health, make us miss alternative paths to a goal and and even cause us to neglect opportunities for collaboration. Intense hard work sustained for too long becomes workaholism. Creating work home conflict which hurts the well being of the workaholic and the family members. That's why I'm so passionate about alerting you so you don't fall prey to obliviousness. You don't want to be that person who is blindsided by what should have been obvious. There are always warning signs along the road to disaster. We just have to pay attention. The chapters on clarity and influence will help you avoid obliviousness. Also, you might want to recall and implement the Life arenas activity from the chapter on productivity. The solution is to keep perspective in life by keeping an eye on the quality or progress of the major life arenas. A simple weekly review of what we're after in the major areas of our life helps us rebalance or at least plan for more. Balance I found it useful to organize life into 10 distinct health, family, friends, intimate relationship, Mission and work, Finances, adventure, Hobby, Spirituality and Emotion. When I'm working with clients, I often have them rate their happiness on a scale of 1 through 10 and also write their goals in each of these 10 arenas every Sunday night. There may be other areas you want to self monitor or different descriptions or goals you are aiming for, so I encourage you to create your own categories, scoring and thinking prompts. The goal is to review consistently at least once a week. Our clients have found it enormously helpful not only in avoiding neglect in one area but but in achieving greater overall life balance as well. Overreaching now you have a new tool to avoid becoming oblivious as you continue to rise the next issue Overreaching is a little trickier to deal with. One reason high performers become so effective is that they are more disciplined at setting priorities for what to focus on. As you learned in the productivity chapter, they discern their primary field of interest and and then focus on prolific quality output. That's what gets them to the next level and keeps them growing and adding value. But when that focus wanes due to overreaching, so too does their performance. According to the high performers who failed to maintain their success, overreaching was a problem that stemmed from an insatiable desire for more coupled with an unrealistic sense of what what is possible in a short time frame, which led to over commitment. In other words, it was an issue of going for too much too fast in too many domains. Their lesson learned was clear. When you're good, you want to take on more, but beware the impulse. High performance isn't about more for the sake of more. Just because you can. It's often about less zeroing in on just those few things that matter and protecting your time and well being so you can truly engage those around you. Enjoy your craft and confidently handle your responsibilities. Focus on just a few things and the people and priorities you really care about and you won't fall prey to overreaching. Broaden your ambitions too widely and your appetite soon outstrips your abilities. Hence the importance of reminding yourself that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing I can usually tell whether someone is about to fail by asking a simple do you feel seriously over committed right now? New achievers, I found, almost always agree. Their initial success came from saying yes to almost everything that came across the plate because they were still testing their capabilities, learning their strengths, trying to find the right thing, hoping to strike while the iron was hot. They feared they would miss out on something, and at some point they overestimated their ability to handle things. The other group who say yes to the question High Performers on the Decline Here's a difficult mindset shift you'll have to make once you hit high performance. It will feel in some ways like the antithesis of what you've been doing, like a dangerous and opposite approach. But it's vitally important. Slow down, be more strategic and say no more often. I know telling someone with the wind at their back to slow down seems disempowering, but do yourself a favor and listen to this sentence again. Slow down, be more strategic and say no more often. Then give yourself a gift and listen again. Listen again. It's important that that line really land for you. Naturally. There's a wonderful lift and momentum that comes with high performance. You can start to feel as though you've got it all going for you, especially when all the new attention and opportunities propel new ambitions and confer new freedoms. The hustle and grind that enabled your hard earned success feels rewarding and still necessary. But the hustle and grind mentality will burn you out and if you continue taking on too much, you risk losing it all. Yes, you can do amazing things. Yes, you want to take on the world. Yes, you are a badass. But don't over commit yourself just because you're good at what you do. It's a short hop from badass to burnout. So slow down. Be patient. You have plenty of skill and plenty of time to keep building. Adding value. Innovating. You can scale up in your primary field of interest deliberately and patiently play the long game and life feels less like a slog and more like play while slowing down sounds less sexy than don't settle or strike while the iron is hot. It is nonetheless. The advice of over three quarters of the former high performers I spoke to Trying to go faster and do more things seems so right when you're good and you're certain, but it can knock you for a serious tumble so what exactly do we mean by slow down? First, rather than live a reactive lifestyle, you take ownership of your day. When the successes pile up, it's easy to spend time responding to invitations and calls and well wishers requests. Suddenly the day has cruised by and you haven't done anything. You feel successful, but nothing is really happening except new meetings. Slowing down means taking the time to care about your schedule, doing what you've learned in this book about reviewing your calendar, and to dos each night, each morning, each week. If a good opportunity comes up but it's going to rob you of a few nights sleep, force you to cancel strategic moves you planned long ago or knock you out of time with your family, then just say no. Cramming your day so full that you have no time for thought or rejuvenation or just makes you tired and irritable. And no one credits fatigue and a bad mood for their world class performance. That's why I encourage all high performers who want to keep rising to say no to almost every opportunity in their mind first, then force themselves to justify it before ever giving a yes. Yes got you into the game. Taking on a lot and pursuing a lot of interests helped you figure out your your thing. But now that you're succeeding, more yeses can start hurting you. No keeps you focused. To help you discern between the yeses and nos, you have to start thinking much more strategically. Strategic thinking means stripping things down to the essentials and planning their accomplishment out over months and years. This is hard, but you have to weigh opportunities differently now, measuring them against a much longer horizon. You can't think just about how flashy something is this month. You have to be executing against a plan your five moves that's already in place for the next several months. If the new thing you want to commit to doesn't strategically move you toward your end goals, it must be delayed. Most opportunities in life that are really worthwhile and meaningful will still be here six months from now. If that's hard to believe, it's just because you're new to success. So slow down. Say no more. Often. Be more strategic. Don't let obliviousness to what really matters or reaching for what doesn't slow down all your hard won momentum. Don't forget what got you here. Sometimes we're so concerned about giving our children what we never had growing up, we neglect to give them what we did have growing up. James Dobson One last simple reminder. Don't forget the positive habits that brought you to this level of success, and do not neglect the habits that you now know will take you to the next level. Too often we think of neglect as overlooking our problems, but it's also forgetting to continue what was working for us. You might find it useful to ask what are the five main reasons I I've succeeded so far in life? Put those five things on your Sunday review list too. Ask Am I continuing to do the things that have made me successful? One eye performer told me that the best way to avoid neglecting something important to us is to teach others to value that very thing. If you are teaching your children the value of patience, for example, then you tend not to neglect that virtue or your children. What might you begin teaching others so they keep you accountable for it? Performance Prompts for trap number three on neglect is on page 322 of High Performance Habits. The book Performance Prompt 1. An area where I'm neglecting someone or something important in my life is an area where that neglect will cause me regret later on is number three an area where I can now return my focus, reallocating my attention to things that matter. 4. Some areas in my life where I feel over committed right now. 5. The things I need to learn to say no to more often. Number six an opportunity I really want to chase right now that I could schedule to revisit in a few months is number seven. The main things moving the needle toward my success that I should be focused on right now despite all the other exciting interests and opportunities I could chase. The way I'll remind myself not to take on too much tough truths the culprits that steal your success are not lack of values or intelligence, but the culprits are ultimately allocations of attention. You feel separate from others, so you stop paying attention to feedback, diverse viewpoints, new ways of doing things. You get so good that you start noticing only what's wrong and a constant state of disappointment drains your passion. You rationalize neglecting one area of life so you can get ahead, saying it will be worth it, so you stop focusing on what really matters in life. None of these things has to be your reality. Superiority, dissatisfaction and neglect are your enemies. Let them invade your life and you lose. Be vigilant. Avoid them and practice your HP6 and all will be well. It's always a difficult truth when we notice ourselves behaving in the negative ways we've discussed in this chapter. But if sustaining success is important to you, I encourage you to revisit this chapter often. It will keep you humble, satisfied and focused, and it will allow you and others to enjoy what should be an extraordinary life and a joyous ascent to high performance.