Brian Johnson outlines ten core ideas for peak performance: pick one goal, use purposeful practice, build grit, stay present, breathe and reframe nerves as excitement, strengthen self-confidence, avoid choking, visualize your performance, adopt a "let it rip, reload, win or learn" mindset, and rely on systems and fundamentals.
Chapters
You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living 101 Masterclass Series. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting About Peak Performance 101. How to reach your potential and do your best when it matters most. I'm really excited about this class. It was super fun to prepare for. Peak Performance is one of my favorite subjects. We have a ton of philosopher's notes on peak performance, mental toughness, etc. And I see this class as kind of a combination of purpose 101 and confidence 101. So identifying your ultimate purpose, what are you here to do? What is it that you and only you can give to the world? And then confidence 101, knowing you have what it takes to bring that vision to life. To me, that's what Peak Performance is all about. It's not just one episode or one instant in your life where you crush it. It's your life and this ultimate peak, this ultimate potential that you are capable of. And how do we get to that destination? That's what this class is all about. We'll start, as always, with a quick look at our top 10 big ideas and then jump in. Alright, so our first big idea is you need to pick your peak. Then you need to make your plan, Then you need to go all in. Peak plan, all in. Obviously you need to know where you're headed. If you don't know what your ultimate peak is, then how are you going to get there? Answer, you're not. And you can't pick 10 peaks. You got to pick one. You got to be willing to make trade offs and go all in on one particular end goal. Then you need to make your plan. You need to figure out how you're going to systematically go from where you are to where you want to go. Going to unpack all of that, then we're going to talk about going all in. The intensity of people who truly achieve greatness in the world, they're not kind of sort of going for it. They're all in. The second big idea is the gift plus purposeful practice. Anders Erickson is the world's leading expert on expert performance, on what makes great people great. His book is called Peak right, peak performance 101 peak. And he says a lot of times we look at people who do great things and we think they just have the gift. He says, no, no, no, we all have the gift. And the gift is our ability to get better via purposeful practice. We're going to talk about how to go about doing that. The third big idea is to get gritty. Peak performance isn't a fireworks display once in your life. It's a compass that's driving you toward your highest potential. You need grit to sustain yourself over that long vision. We're going to talk about Angela Duckworth's amazing research in her book Grit. Intense passion plus intense perseverance. There are four psychological assets she says you need to build if you want to have grit. We're going to talk about how to go about building grit and getting gritty. Fourth big idea is presence. This is inspired by Amy Cuddy and her great book and her great research. We're going to have three aspects to presence. Priming affirmations, self affirmation theory. We're going to juxtapose that with normal affirmations. We're not going to talk about lying to ourselves here. We're going to talk about affirming the deepest values we have and then expanding into power poses. Being what we want to see and knowing that how we hold ourselves affects how we feel and how we perform. The fifth big idea is to breathe and to say to yourself, I'm excited. When you are stepping up to a big event in your life. Taking a deep breath and is the number one tip recommended by all experts from Navy seals in their peak performance to sports consultants to psychologists, et cetera. Drop in via deep breaths but don't try to get calm. Say to yourself, I'm excited. There's a big difference between moving from anxious to excited and moving from anxious to calm. You want to move from one high arousal state to another, not try to drop into a calm state. We're going to talk about why calm down when you're feeling that burst of energy before performance. Someone telling you to calm down is literally the worst advice you can get. We're talking about why and how I'm excited is much, much, much better advice. Again based on research. The sixth big idea is self confidence plus self image plus self consciousness. Again, you need to have confidence confidere. You need to believe in yourself. You need to know that you can achieve that ultimate peak. You need to boost your self image not by lying to yourself, but by becoming that best version of yourself. Letting your identity drive your actions which drives your feelings rather than the other way around. And then you need to reduce your self consciousness. If you want to predict who's going to choke in a big event, you can look at who's the most self conscious. That's actually one of the best predictors we need to reduce our self consciousness. We'll talk about how and why before we talk about our seventh big idea, which is the choke vacuum. Sian Beilock is one of the world's leading researchers on the science of peak performance and its opposite, choking. In her book Choke, she tells us what the number one cause of choking is. We're going to talk about that and how to take a vacuum to that. It will be fun. 8th big idea is to visualize the three P's to. Too often people look at visualization, they think about imagining how they're going to feel after they achieve that peak, right? Oh man, my life's going to be so awesome. They fantasize about all that stuff. Research says that's not what you want to visualize. Our three P's are. You want to visualize your plan to get to that peak, your practice and how you're going to get there, and then your performance. Let that outcome be a byproduct of your focus and obsession on those three Ps. The ninth big idea is to let it rip, reload, win or learn. So you show up for your big event. Whatever you brought is what you've got. That's not the time to start thinking about what you need to work on. You need to let it rip. Whoever you are in that moment is the best you're going to be for that moment. So you might as well roll with it. Then, when things inevitably don't go quite the way you want, you need to reload. We've talked about this in different contexts, but when mistakes happen, you say, okay, needs work. You don't get emotional about it. You imagine the ideal and you get back to the present. And then after the event, you either win or you learn. There's no such thing as losing or failing. You're in this for the long haul, so you're just collecting data, getting a little bit better each event of your life, each day, in each event of your life. The tenth big idea is systems plus fundees plus marginal gains plus arete. Ultimately, this all comes down to systems. You, you've got to figure out what works and do that again and again and again and then find little marginal gains, little tiny ways to get a little bit better day in and day out. Rituals rightis means a proven way of doing something. The best among us have figured out what they do when they're most on and they do that consistently. We want to do that. We'll talk about fundamentals. Eat, move, sleep, train your mind. And then ultimately arete at the end of the day, if you want to perform at your best when it matters most, you you need to practice by performing at your best, moment to moment to moment. You can't suddenly pull that type of performance out of thin air. You've got to cultivate it in the smallest, most mundane moments of your life. We have a word for that in these classes. It's arete. That is a quick look at peak performance. Let's jump in. So if you enjoyed that quick overview, I think you'll love the full class. Become a member and get instant access to this class. 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