In this motivational monologue, the speaker outlines five concrete habits that distinguish elite performers—such as Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Tom Brady, and Ernest Hemingway—from ordinary individuals, and explains how viewers can adopt these practices. The first habit is deep hyper‑focus or "deep work," where top athletes block out distractions and dedicate multi‑hour blocks to their most consequential tasks, entering flow states that boost neurochemical reward. The second habit is disciplined recovery: strict nutrition, sleep, cold‑therapy, massages, and boundary‑setting to replenish the body and nervous system, illustrated by the rigorous routines of Jordan, Brady, and LeBron. The third habit is using setbacks as fuel, turning doubt, failure, or criticism into motivational energy, as exemplified by Jordan’s response to being cut from his college team. The fourth habit is extreme present‑moment awareness, staying laser‑focused on the current task without worrying about future outcomes, which enables flow and higher quality work. The fifth habit is leaving space for the subconscious by ending work sessions with open‑ended thoughts, allowing imagination to incubate ideas overnight—a technique Hemingway used. The speaker reinforces these concepts with a client case study ("Janice"), showing how anchoring imagined outcomes before a high‑stakes meeting led to a dramatically successful result. The video concludes with a call to action to like, subscribe, and share.
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Have you ever wondered what the best of the best do differently than the ordinary human beings? And by the best of the best, I mean icons like Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Brady, others like them. What do they do differently that the ordinary individual doesn't? Because they have the same amount of time in their life. Well, today I'm going to break down 5 of the most actionable and easy to optimize or utilize habits of the peak performers, or principles of how they lead their lives. and I can't wait to share with you how you can bring these right into your daily life and maximize the opportunities you have in your life too. So let's go. These are the best of the best, and they have a different focus, they have a different mindset, they have a different energy than the ordinary individual. But actually, it's very easy to mirror and model. In fact, a lot of these guys were not peak performers for much of their life. Tom Brady, he was a 6th-round draft pick. Yeah, he was a college athlete, but he kept getting benched for another athlete, right? He wasn't the best of the best, but he eventually became the best of the best by implementing these things and not— and so you can also look at guys like, you know, Hemingway, who had a world of talent and was at at the pinnacle of his peak at many, many different points, but he could have been even greater if he could have disciplined a few other things. But we're going to talk about one of the things that he did that was amazing, that laid this— laid the foundation for him to become one of the world's best writers during his era. So the first one, the first habit that is very easy for you to mirror and model is this deep focus or hyperfocus. If you look at Michael Jordan or Tom Brady during the peak of their careers, when it was prime time, meaning it was in-season game time and it's time to lock in, they were maniacal about their focus. They were so locked in. And what they would do during the season is they would not do their commercial shoots. They would not do their big sponsorship shoots. They would not appear in movies and commercials and TV shows and all that. They were locked into the season. Everything— they had blinders on. Laser focus, blinders on. This is what I'm doing. This is what my whole career is built on. Hey, whether or not I'm one of the best in the world— and they knew that and they understood that, and they were also just so driven to win, but they were so hyper-focused. So we all can become more hyper-focused on our core needle mover, the thing that is going to drive us up and to the right, the thing that is going to give us notoriety, or the thing that is going to give us impact. It goes beyond our year, beyond our reputation. So, if you get laser-focused on the number 1 or 2 things that are going to really move the needle, and you kind of cut everything else out during that season, guess what might happen? Beautiful things could unfold for you. So, I invite you to develop hyperfocus or deep work. And also, we've talked about in other videos like slow productivity and others, and flow state. I'm going to dive into some of that over time. But one of the things you want to look at is like, How do I create deep focus on a daily or weekly basis where I use my best hours for my best, most consequential work? The stuff that's going to move the needle, the stuff that is going to move you up into the right. And it doesn't have to be burdensome. It can be joy. It can literally incite pleasure. In fact, when you step in the flow state, you release all these positive neurochemical cocktails that allow you to actually enhance your life satisfaction. So, here's what I'm advocating for. Find windows of your day or of your week where you can get in hyperfocus for ideally 3 or 4-hour blocks. No email, no text messaging, no social media, no browsing the internet, and you're just hyperfocused on moving the needle for your most important activity. And then, look at the discipline. Embrace discipline. Like, Tom Brady famously would not drink alcohol, would eat super clean during the season, is not partying. And we know so much more about nutrition than we did 20 years ago. But if Michael Jordan knew that stuff, then I promise you he would have done it as well. Anything that would have given him that extra edge. LeBron James, very disciplined during season right now. Right? That's why he's playing into his 40s at a level that we would have never imagined for a guy his age. Second thing, they are so focused on recovery. Like if you look at the way Tom Brady and LeBron James For example, Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan in his era, like the biggest thing was ice baths. And after every game, and he played 82 games a season, he wasn't taking 4 or 5, 10 games off like a lot of today's stars do. He said, hey, you know what? The fans are paying for me to come. I'm going to show up. I'm paid great money to show up and perform. And I don't want to let those kids down or those fans down. But now they expect me to come. I'm going to come. I can play. And he would ice his knees and his knees were aching after games, like just in massive pain. But he did that. He was so disciplined, right? And if, if he had cryo chambers and, you know, ice baths and, well, he did take ice baths, but cold plunges and saunas and all the science we have of nutrition to reduce inflammation, you know what, he would have been all over it. But LeBron James, for example, and Tom Brady, before he retired was spending close to $1 million a year. LeBron's spending about $1 million a year on his body to maximize his impact, maximize his longevity. But wherever you're at, you can do simple things that might cost $500, $600 a month to maximize your recovery. Or just something simple like great sleep. Great sleep and good food. That is a recovery activity. Or going for a walk after a stressful day or getting some exercise. You don't need a gym membership even. But you recalibrate your body and your energy and your nervous system. For example, I was just in Toronto and I did 3 sessions in 2 days and held space for people. Actually, over 3 days, I held space for people for 21 hours, like doing deep nervous system reset. Well, guess what I did? I got a great workout in Saturday, got a great workout in Thursday, and got a massage. I did other things to reboot my energy. While I was doing this work so that I would come back and not be just toast. Okay. So the second thing is obviously recovery, huge focus on recovery. That's your nutrition. That's your rest. That's your exercise. That's protecting your boundaries for downtime. Like I took a full day off on Saturday as I usually do. There's a reason. That was one of the Ten Commandments. Keep a Sabbath. It renews you. Third thing they did is they used sex as a fuel to for setups, meaning they would take their setbacks and catalyze that and remember the setbacks and remember the slights and remember how people doubted them and then use that as a fuel to drive them forward. You saw that with Jordan getting cut from his, uh, college varsity basketball team as a sophomore, which was pretty common back then. But he said, nope, I'm taking it personal and I'm going to show them the next year and show them my senior year. And sure enough, he did. And crushed it. And every time someone would kind of challenge or doubt him, boom. Like, he came back and won the next 3 championships when he was with the Bulls, the second 3-peat. Partly because the Orlando Magic the previous year, when he was— when he came back halfway through the season, they, they taunted and teased him a little bit in the playoffs. He's not the same Jordan. He doesn't got it anymore. Guess what? He came back with fury. Because he was fired up. He used that, that doubt to fuel himself. So, and he used the, the pain of, of failing that season, of not making it past the second round, as fuel for him to become great and even greater, right? So use the fuel of your setbacks to become your best version, to show up in your best way, right? It's there for you for the taking. They were incredibly present to what's at hand. If you watch The Last Dance, the Netflix documentary, It says, Jordan says in one of the videos, you know what, they asked him, hey, do you, one of the reporters asked him, do you worry about tomorrow's game? And if you might be called on to make a game-winning shot. And Jordan said, you know what, I don't worry about shots I haven't taken yet. He was present to this day. He was laser focused and laser present to the moment. Okay. Yes, he could envision and he could dream and he could expand and he could go beyond. But was also hyper-focused on what's happening right now. When he was engaged, he was engaged. He wasn't distracted. We have a massive problem with being distracted in today's day and age. We're kind of programmed that way with our devices, our cell phones, right? Thanks, Steve Jobs. We're grateful for iPhones, but you know what? They are also distraction machines. But when you're so present, you're able to actually get in a flow state and you're able to do your best work and you're able to bringing your best in a way that doesn't happen when you're distracted and you're texting your girlfriend or boyfriend or husband or whatever, and you're just watching funny cat videos or funny, you know, reels on Instagram, which I get sucked in a little bit every now and then, I must admit. But then when you are laser-focused, it just creates this new way of being. It allows you to get so much more done in less time, and the quality of that work zooms up. It's not, not halfway better. It's dramatically better usually. But the last thing I want to mention that you see with these peak performers that you don't see with the ordinary individual, but it gives them one of the biggest edges of their life, is they leave a little for the imagination for the future. All right. They don't try and figure it all out. They get locked in with imagination for the future. And here's what I mean. Hemingway, famously, you know what he would do at the end of his writing day? He would write an open-ended sentence, meaning he wouldn't complete the sentence because he wanted his subconscious to be working on the story, to be working on the novel for the next day. He would leave it open. We didn't know much about neuroscience back then and the subconscious, but he was on to something. He would leave it open so his subconscious would be working on crafting the next page, the next chapter, the next part of the story, and he didn't even have to ruminate on it in his conscious mind. So what that means for you, the fifth thing is basically, hey, create a space for your subconscious to visualize and anchor into what you want to create, into what you want to become, into the man and the woman you want to be on a daily basis. So what would it look like to leave your evening open-ended? To leave your imagination running wild while you sleep. So, the next day you're waking up fresh and invigorated. Okay, that's why time management experts also say before you go to sleep, you know, before you wrap your workday, write out what you want to create the next day, what you want to do the next day. Because it starts creating this opening for your nervous system to actually envision those things coming to pass. And then create rituals. One of the biggest things I do with a lot of my VIP clients. One of them, we'll call her name Janice. So I'm working on Janice. She's a corporate lobbyist and she's amazing. She, you know, we start working together in April. Now, when we started working together, she was on the edge of burnout, which I have some great videos on burnout, by the way, you should check out if you think you might be there. It's very similar to depression, the feelings. But she was very much on the edge of burnout. She's making great money. But very much working 7 AM open to 11 PM sometimes. And, and as we start working together, I just realized her body is screaming at her, hey, you are wearing me out. And so we start working on that, reverse engineering that. And then we start envisioning what could it look like to have a much better career, much better job. She was very unfulfilled where she was at. She knew she was meant for something more, even though it was a great company and all that. Well, about a month in, she lands an official offer from a company that's going to basically triple her salary plus give her massive upside. She takes that role. Last week or two weeks ago, she has a meeting with the princess of one of the most prominent, uh, Middle Eastern countries. So I'll leave it at that. I'm not going to share other details, but she has a meeting with one of the princesses of one of the most prominent Middle Eastern countries that could catapult her career in a whole different way. She sits down for that meeting. Actually, I should backtrack. Before she has the meeting, we do a session the day before and we spend about 25 minutes anchoring in how she wants that session to go, how she wants to feel, how she wants to show up, what presence she's going to give, how the gravitas of how she's going to show up, right? And she's also going to envision and creating this friendship and this bond with this woman. Well, guess what? I had her do that, that's during our session, and then right before bed, and then right before the meeting started with her. And that meeting that was 30 minutes, supposed to be 30 minutes, lasts almost 2 hours. And it goes incredibly well, goes even better than we imagined. But everything that we imagined, bang, the way we imagined. She felt into it and she had attracted it and she had believed it and she had anchored it and she had shown up in the way that she imagined it to be because we had anchored it into her subconscious mind and she had imagined it so that by the time it shows up, she shows up in that meeting, she's already been there. She's already had the meeting a bunch of times in her head. So it's just natural. And our mind doesn't— our subconscious mind doesn't know the difference between what is reality and what is imagined when it's truly imagined. So hope you guys enjoyed that. Subscribe, like this video, share it with a friend if it— if you think this might be helpful. Got a lot more great videos coming. Give me a like and give me a comment too, if you would, because that helps the algorithm, helps more people see it. And, uh, much love to you. Have a beautiful day.
