Step Into Your Zone by H John Mejia

I have a question for everybody. Where do you get your best work done? I know that for me, it's when I fall into the zone, right? It's when I step into the zone, that place where everything happens seamlessly, time sort of slows down, and you are your best self. But that's pretty hard to cultivate, right? Not if you read the book that I just finished up, which is titled Step Into Your Zone, and it was written by author and entrepreneur H. Jon Mejia. H is a cool guy. We had the opportunity to chat on the phone a little bit. He is a celebrity TV host and producer and also a marketing, media, and sales strategist. So, pretty interesting resume. Also a former football player. I loved reading about the football stories. The subtitle of this book reads, Playbook of Secrets for Peak Performance, which is what we're all trying to achieve, in Business, Sales, and Life. But seriously, this book is for everybody. I actually just finished reading The War of Art prior to this by Steven Pressfield, and I had him on the podcast, and we talked all about procrastination and resistance. One of the ways that you can defeat that, which is like the ultimate evil in the world, is by stepping into your zone, by stepping into the flow state where you can achieve peak performance. Now, rather than try to define this any further, I'd actually like to read the introduction to part 1 because H does a really nice job Describing exactly what the zone is. So check this out. It's always when you're pushed to the limit, challenged the most, and when you think you have no more to give, when you step into that resistance and keep pushing through that, through your obstacles, that is where your growth occurs and your abilities break through to the next level. That is where the realization of your higher-level talents comes to fruition. That special place is called the zone. Now, the zone isn't just for salespeople or business leaders or athletes, which is what you might think of. The zone is for anybody who wants to achieve peak performance in life. Now, I come from a sales world, so I think about the zone in a lot of different sales components, right? If you're ever going back and forth with a prospect and you just know your business so well, and you know exactly what your prospect needs so well that you're just Answering all of their questions, you're objection handling really well, you're negotiating. It just feels great. That is the zone. It's very common for athletes to lock in and focus, right? If you're playing baseball and somebody throws a 90-mile-an-hour fastball at you and you can hit it with a little piece of wood, right? That's the ultimate concentration. That's the zone. Time slows down. You see the stitches on the ball. That's a good representation of the zone. But For anybody, right? A writer who writes for a couple hours with a stream of consciousness, or a painter who can paint for a couple hours straight. It's the zone, right? That's the state that we want to cultivate. Like I said, I come from a sales world, so I always try to audit a process. I always try to think of like, let's break down every aspect of my sale and try to make improvements to each piece to the puzzle. That is what part 2 of this book does. It's the 10 characteristics of the zone, and if you can cultivate more attention to each one of these 10 characteristics, you'll have a better chance at your opportunity to perform really well. And so the second part of this review, I'd like to go through each of these 10 characteristics. I'd like to read you the characteristic and then expand on it for a moment. Now, this is only part 2 of the book. There are many more parts, but by the end of this, you'll know whether or not this book is going to be a good fit for you, which if you're following Book Thinkers, it's probably a good fit for everybody. So check this out. Chapter four, the first characteristic: laser focus. So often we're distracted nowadays. You know, I see people in sales calls checking their phones and paying attention to social media. You need to have 100% laser focus on what you're doing; otherwise, you will not step into your zone. A salesperson who's also checking their phone, or somebody who's evaluating a demo that's also checking their phone, you're not going to step into the zone. An athlete who who is also distracted maybe by a defender who's about to hit them while they're trying to catch the ball in a football game, you're not going to step into the zone, you're going to drop the pass, and you're going to get hit. It's the worst of both worlds, so 100% focus. Number 2, in the moment. I do think a little bit about the attention thing in this one too because social media sucks our attention. It is hard to be present, and so some of the things that I try to do to cultivate awareness and mindfulness and presence in my life Meditation, mindfulness. I even have tattoos that remind me to come back to the present moment. It's very important to stop and breathe. Like right now, I'm looking at my phone and I'm in a living room in Medellín, Colombia, and I'm standing up and I'm wearing shoes and a shirt. Like how often do you even think about those things? You need to be in the ultimate present moment. By the way, I kind of feel like I'm in the zone with this video review. Chapter 6, so number 3 as far as the characteristics. Zone time is not real time. It slows down so you're able to think more efficiently and operate more in the same space of time when you're in the zone. I used to do sensory deprivation float tanks and it would shut off all of your other perceptions. Sensory deprivation deprives you of all of your senses. You couldn't see, you couldn't hear, you couldn't taste, you couldn't feel. All you could do is think. It elevated your ability to think. It slowed time down. I would get in the tank sometimes and I would think hours would pass by and that somebody forgot to wake me up, right? I'd get out of the tank and 3 minutes passed. Like, that is one cool way to alter your state and step into the zone, but that can happen in other ways too. Just, you need to focus on it. So, self-confidence in the absence of self-doubt. This one's great, right? We think of leaders sometimes as people who are loud and obnoxious and scream in the mirror every day like, I'm the greatest, but There's also a quiet confidence that happens when you're in the zone, right? You know, you're not worried about the insecurity stuff. The next one, defining the outcome and why it's important. Break it down. You know, sometimes we think about outcomes in too big of chunks. I love how in this book he says, listen, if you have a goal to sell X amount this year, you need to break it down into quarters and then break those quarters down into months and break those months down into weeks and then into days. That's how you can fulfill, like keep the outcome in mind, otherwise you're directionless. You're not going to step into a zone and achieve a goal if you don't know where you're going. The next one here, it's easy because you've already put in the time. I love this one so much. I read a book called The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin, and he talks about form to leave form or numbers to leave numbers. You need to study something so intensely that it becomes part of your subconscious. Otherwise, you can't step into the zone, right? You can't be super unhealthy, eating junk food, never exercising, and then step into the zone on a football field. It's not gonna happen. And you can't walk into your first sales negotiation never having dealt with objections or learned what they are in the past and just fluently handle those. It's not gonna happen. Study, put in the time, and let your subconscious take over. So I really like that one a lot. Anticipation of the obstacles and adversities. In this chapter, I thought it was cool. John talked about living in Tampa, Florida. Now, I lived in Florida too, so I can sympathize with what he's going to say. He decides to live in Florida, and he knows that it's going to rain really hard every single day at the same time for a certain period of time for a certain part of the year. He knows that hurricanes are going to hit, so he's prepared for those things in advance, right? Adversity, obstacles, they will come, but you need to prepare for them in advance. Otherwise, you will get knocked so far off of your momentum that it is impossible to step into the zone. So those are some of the major ones that I wanted to cover. And actually, we'll go through a couple more. So balance of a skillset and challenge, right? I love the example in this chapter. If a bunch of 12-year-olds were gonna play a college football team, right? They could be the best 12-year-olds in the world, Their skill set could be fantastic, but if the challenge is too great, if they're playing somebody that's just way above their level, it's not gonna happen. The best 12-year-olds in the world will not beat the worst college football team on the planet. It just won't happen. So you need to have a balance there. Like, your skill set is capable of achieving great things in a certain circumstance. Don't overestimate, otherwise you'll get knocked off again and you won't achieve your flow. The real reward is— okay, these next 2 are fantastic. The real reward is the struggle, not the prize. Oftentimes, we think about like, only if I could become a millionaire, only if I can buy that Lamborghini, only if I can sell my business, then I'll be happy. Well, we know that the actual happiness comes from the struggle. Like, you've got to align your passions with what you're doing or cultivate a passion from what you're doing because otherwise, you're not going to hit that peak. Like, people who hike great mountains all the time, right? What's the first thing they say? Well, now I got to go hike a taller one, a better one, a bigger one. It's because they love— The struggle. And then the last one here, it's transitory, is interesting. Like, I haven't thought about this a lot, but you can't always be in a peak state. Once you reach a peak state, your peak performance, well, now you've got to descend the mountain, and then there's that gap time. But then you can fight a bigger mountain, right? Because you've achieved one. So it's transitory. You can't always be in a flow state. That alone is optimistic for me because it, you know, I kind of think like, hey, if you're having an off day or something like that, it's not the end of the world. You can't always be in the flow state. So If you start to focus on those 10 characteristics a little bit more, you can achieve flow more often. Now, the book goes into a bunch more actionable things that you can implement. Check it out.