High Performance and Your Meaningful Revolution

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Meaningful Revolution podcast. I am your host and certified high performance coach, Sean Butner. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about how your high performance or performance relates to your purpose. And in particular, it's how high performance is in service to your purpose. So if you are a manager or professional working on a worthy cause in an organization or or a business owner striving for financial security and impact in your communities, or you're a high performer in search of a purpose or someone with a mission that needs to up their effectiveness, this episode is for you. Now, before we get into the five outcomes of high performance and how it relates to your purpose, I want to answer a couple of questions. First is what is this thing called high performance? I talk about it a lot on the podcast, so if you're new, welcome. If you've been listening for a while, sometimes address this, sometimes don't. But high performance is the process of beating whatever is consistent results in your life without damaging your relationships or your health, or without burning out. Right? So a lot of times when I'm meeting with clients or when I personally sought personal development and high performance out early on in my career was because I was burning out right there. There's wasn't a sustainable set of habits and practices that allowed me to produce outputs at the way that I needed to and for my job that provide or helped me keep healthy and keep healthy relationships. For instance, when I was first starting out my career as a software engineer at Walmart, years and years ago, that was we were working at least 50 hours a week, often more just doing the job. That's not including times where you'd be on call or you'd have a big project and you'd grind. And what was unique about that environment, especially being young, is there was not a lot of rest in between projects. So you could spend an 80 hour week and be expected to do your normal 50 hours the next week and then some was pretty consistent in there. And what ended up happening after a couple years of this is you spill dog time. And if you've ever felt exhausted, if you've ever felt overwhelmed, you ever felt like there's nothing you could do to make a dent in your work or make a difference in the world. That's where I was at in that part of my career. And I think we all go through this, especially as professionals or business owners earlier on in our careers, because you're still trying to figure out what your value is to the organization or value to the Market, you are not saying no to many things, right? You want the most amount of exposure to most amount of experience, or at least I did. And a lot of my clients have followed this pattern too. But at the end of the day, you can't say yes to everything. Because when you have so many things pulling at you that you can't get the stuff that you was assigned to you to work, either you're going to be there later or you're going to burn out and quit and have a health event that's going to stop you right in your tracks. And so we want to prevent that type of scenario. So how can you really, if you know what your purpose is, you know what your mission is, become hyper effective and a weapon in your space and have that the joy, the confidence and the growth that comes from putting your best out, but also being able to enjoy life, right? And when I say enjoy life, I'm talking about the bare minimum of see your friends and family fairly regularly because it's good for your mental health and really be able to get to the gym, do running or do physical things that move your body so you stay healthy. Cause that also impacts how you feel online. And if we know that high performance is just beating whatever normal in your life and feeling you get when you're in that pocket of high performance where it feels like flow is joy for putting at your best again from the confidence of knowing you're doing your best, then we can start to have the conversation of how does high performance and your high performance relate to your personal meaningful revolution or vice versa, right? And there, there's if you are a high performer without a person or without, without a person, if you're a high performer without a purpose, that means you're doing a lot of busy work, right? That's when you're super excellent, kicking things off of your to do list. But those things don't matter, right? And so you can be really effective without feeling like you're contributing. You're not feeling fulfilled, you're not feeling like you're advancing your life and that is a recipe for disengagement, for burnout, and for disappointment over the long term. So if you've ever felt in your career or your life where you're just like there's something else out there, but you can't nail what it is and you're good at what you do, but it doesn't have that burst of energy or excitement or you don't look forward to doing it every day, that's when you've lost this sense of purpose. And we can talk about how you can get that sense of purpose back. Or if you are very purposeful and you're not effective at getting your message out, at getting people to support you, making a difference in what you do. So you're not effective, you're not performing, you're not productive. That's also a problem. Right. And so each of these two scenarios can be fixed by focusing on the five outcomes of high performance. Right? And I'll tell you how they relate to your purpose too. So whether you're doing busy work and you don't have the purpose, or you have a purpose and you're not effective, these five outcomes will help you. So outcome number one is high performers are constantly seeking a higher level of daily clarity. And what do I mean by daily clarity? That is being very clear on who you are during the day. Right. Knowing your core values. Like what are your three core values? That when you are your best self, you are exemplifying out in the world. Right. So it's an inward value, but shown externally, what are your three values? Think about that as I'm continuing here and jot that down if you can. But what are your three core values and how engaged are you in them each day? Right. You know, for me, I have my core three values. Optimistic, present, purposeful are my current ones. And that shows up on my calendar and on my phone every morning at 8 o' clock in the morning, because I have an alarm to remind me and it's important to. There's one type of quality, let me talk about it in this way, where you see that message every day and eventually your brain gets turned, oh, it's 8 o'. Clock, that's that thing. It's a whole other experience and intention. When you see that and you feel those three words like why are those three words really important to you? And for me, the first one is optimistic, right? And it's not glossing over all the hardship and sorrow of the world. But it's better for my psychology and my productivity if I'm in a problem solving mindset. And optimism to me is where you're looking for solutions to problems. You're not dwelling in how sucky the situation is, right? So you can't feel the weight of the world and still be productive and still be optimistic in solving the problems around you, right? Whether in your job or in your community or in your family, your friendships. If you are the person that's constantly, we can get through this and we can make this Better we can move forward. That's really important to me. That's how I grew up. I'm dealing with a lot of tough situations, like my mom having cancer when I was really young, financial troubles that he had growing up, yada yada, yada. But, and I say yada, yada, yada, not to throw that away, but to emphasize what got us through that was a sense of, okay, this is happening. This doesn't define us as humans. Right. What defines us is how we're going to respond to this. And that's a really powerful and compelling mindset to have. And being acting very clear and like we will do our best in this situation and we will figure out how to move forward. Optimism. So having that queued up and that conversation that took two minutes now for me to explain after a one second alarm on the phone is the type of thing you should be feeling when you see your values or remind yourself of your values every day, and preferably in the morning. Because when you connect with that, you're gearing your mind to look for opportunities to live into those values, right? You'll make more authentic decisions, you'll make more authentic actions in your day because you are cued into your core values. That's the power of this. And so either if you're not feeling purposeful because you're excellent at killing on that to do list, right? If you were to take your core values and be what are the things on my to do list that are aligned with my values that help me advance my life in a way that's meaningful in a way that's great for me, my family and my community, that's where you get that excitement, that joy, that confidence moving forward in your day. And every time you do something on your to do list that is not aligned with your values, like if you are, I'm an honest person. And then your first thing to do is to lie to customer to get sale. As a kind of crazy example I pulled off the top of my head, you are not going to have a good day because it violates your value of being honest. And that'll impact how you feel. And you're going to feel restless or like you're not really living your life. And that's the power of daily clarity. Again, what are the three values that exemplify your best self? Two, when are you going to check in every day on those values? Preferably sometime in the morning before you get into work. And then three, why are each of those words or values meaningful to you and let that Set in and cue yourself to say those out loud every day or to really take a minute to feel those before you start your day. And you will feel more purposeful right now if you have the mission, have the purpose, but you're not feeling like you're effective. Sometimes you can be really clear that you want to solve world hunger as your big, huge ambition. The clarity part is what are you going to do next to further that forward? Right? And so it could be volunteer at the food bank or organize to get food at the food bank. Right? That's an actual thing in alignment to your value, in alignment to your purpose. That is going to be better than to send out a hundred emails saying that world hunger is bad, essentially. Right? So it's taking those abstract ideas for that purpose and walking it back and getting clear on the next steps to be in authentic action, to be very clear on what those actions are every day so that you're feeling your mission versus making decisions based on your values, if that makes sense. Now, the second thing that we need to constantly be doing each day if we're going to, you know, perform higher or feel our purpose more, is to conjure the energy we need every day. This is the second outcome of high performance. And ideally, if you are not feeling connected to your mission so, you know, you have a clear idea of what your values are and that purpose that you're going after and you still are not feeling motivated, it could be that you've physically not set yourself up for success. And there's a bajillion different ways that we could look at this. Definitely, if you're struggling with energy, talk to your health professionals. That can really help you identify problems. But outside of that, the very simple checklist that you could do to, to make sure that you're checking off all the boxes is this. Are you hydrating enough during the day? And in high performance, we say based on your daily activity level, 3 to 6 liters of water each day as the goal will get you enough water so you're hydrated. And when you're dehydrated, you will feel exhausted and tired and sleepy. And we think that we're hungry or we think we need an extra cup of coffee. Really, you just need to drink some more dang water. Eating enough during the day, and again, talk to your doctors to make sure the optimal level's for you. But hydration, are you getting at least seven hours of sleep a night? And there's so much science and neuroscience backing up how essential a solid night's sleep Is and quite honestly it's something I struggle with every week, at least if not nightly of between allergies or waking up in the middle of the night with my head just completely ready to go. And so getting on average five or six hours of sleep, which I notice when I have those nights, it's really hard to make the next step. But take action on the things that I, that really matter to me. Right. Like working on this podcast, getting YouTube videos out for the audience, serving my clients and making sure that I am super present with them because I don't. I can really be with them. Right. And listen and point out the things that need to get pointed out so that they hit their next level of performance. Are you getting enough sleep? You can talk. There's tons, I'm getting tons and tons of resources. Talk with your doctor. But yeah, there's, I'm trying to remember the guy's name off the top of my head. His last name's Walker. He operates a sleep center out of Berkeley. I think it's Matt Walker, if I'm correct. He has, he's actually, he's a neuroscientist that studies sleep and has tons of solid recommendations for that. Do the research that you need to, to make sure you're getting at least seven hours of sleep for a lot of folks too that I've worked with that's been just making sure you have a set bedtime and set wake up time. So you are planning to at least be in bed for that amount of time. And that does a lot to just improve quality of life. Hydration, sleep, nutrition. Are you eating whole foods that are blood local and healthy for you or are you eating things that come in bags and are highly processed in the factory? Right. That's a very easy delineation. And there's so many different ways you could go about eating whole nutritious foods, but that basically if you're eating more things than are fresh produce versus that come in a bag, that's my quick estimation of good nutrition. That'll do you really well. And then the fourth thing is movement. Are you exercising or getting out in the sun every day? Right. So that's a easy four step checklist of hydration, sleep, nutrition and movement. Where if you're getting out for 30 minutes a day to get out in the sun, bare minimum. But it's better than not. And in each of these I'd love for you to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 on how hydrate, how hydrated you are, how much sleep you get at night, your nutrition and your movement. And then the high performance question after that is, why did you assign that number to you? And what are three things that can bump you up? And if you're at a 10, how could you become even more effective? How could you bump it up to a 12 or 15 with three simple short sentence ideas. Right. And you'll find is that as you're able to cultivate better energy or generate energy as you need during the day, which we didn't talk, and I get into my coaching clients with that a little bit more. But as you're able to manage and conjure energy that keeps you on task, so that can help you now move towards your purpose. If you're aware of it or if you need to go find it, you can get some momentum to do some of the extra things that you need to move that forward. Cool. All right. The third outcome in high performance, we are, we call it courage, but really it shows up as bold action in your life. And I'll sum it up with this one simple question. And what are the things you are now avoiding in your life that you need to face? Because sometimes we have the big project, we're going to take a risky career move. It's easier to take that than to sit down and have that conversation with your teenager about, hey, things need to change at home, you need to help do your laundry or whatever the big thing is, right. Those personal conversations where we're afraid of hurting people or hurting relationships but sometimes need to be said are the things that are holding you back. And whether in a work situation, it's having the performance conversation of, hey, you said you're going to do X. You've not done X over time frame. Yes. Do we need to let you go? Do we need to fire you? Or what is preventing you from getting your work done? That can be a very tough conversation for a lot of people. And so we avoid those conversations. And what we need to do is to take the bold action to address it and address it sooner than later. Right. Rip the band aid off and move forward. What are those hard conversations in your life that you're avoiding? What are the projects or things you know you should be doing that will advance you in a quicker way? Is it, are you putting off your workouts because you're too busy at work, or are you too focused on relationships, certain relationships over others, or these types of things? And then third, can you commit to having one of those conversations or doing one of those things that you've been putting off by the end of the day. And I'm pushing you a little bit hard on this, but thinking of if I had to do this today, how would it go? How would I just move forward with it? I think you'll find that it might be painful, but it's very freeing and will help you take more bold actions moving forward. Right. And so sometimes also this is, we're afraid to chase our purposes because we're having the conversation still of I know my purpose, I'm not productive, I, I'm really productive. I don't know my purpose. It can be scary to take bold actions towards things that we really want in life and so that fear holds us back. So taking bold actions with that can really help you. And it could also if you're highly productive, but not really towards your purpose, right. Not towards those big ideas and goals that you have, it can be scary to take bold action to actually work on things more aligned with you. Right. Because maybe you're not going to be as effective and you're going to feel like you're not as effective doing things that are unknown or things you don't have completely defined. It's interesting and I encourage you to do act on one of those bullet actions. Okay. Fourth thing is we focus. High performers are constantly focusing on their productive daily outputs. Right? For a YouTube creator, it's for a digital marketer, it posts maybe and performance of posts. For a doctor, it's healthy patients served. For a programmer, it's lines of code per day per for writer, it's pages written, et cetera, et cetera. But knowing what your productive outputs are. So having clarity on this, making sure you're doing it in a sustainable way where you're not like drinking 50 pots of coffee, writing your book for three days without sleeping. And it meant spending a whole week recovering from your energy is important or making sure that you're actually doing the productive outputs that are going to make a difference that might seem a little bit scary is going to help you here. So what gets in the way of productive outputs? Right. Again, it's being clear on what they are. It's having the motivation to do it. It's taking the bold action to make them happen. And then if all of those are aligned and it's still not popping for you, it distractions, right? It's. I know I should be focusing on making my YouTube video. Instead I'm going to take a extra long walk and then read a book and then it never gets done. Asking yourself your the question of what are Your top distractions each day and how do I plan to overcome them? If it shows up? So if it's Netflix, if it's video games, if it's playing guitar, if it's walking around the office to find people to talk to instead of sitting at your desk and doing the job, what are those habits that you notice in yourselves and can see? And then what's the strategy of. When I've talked to my second person after getting coffee at the office, my action is to sit down in front of my computer, turn off all music and anything and just go for half hour, set a half hour timer and get started. And usually that getting started part kicks me back into productivity. So it's being aware of things like this and what that means for you. So what are your distractions and how can you create a habit to kick you out of them when you notice that they happen? The fifth thing that high performers are constantly looking to increase and will help you find and double down on your purpose and effectiveness is connection and leadership. And we call this like influence or people skills in the high performance world. But really it's how well can you articulate your purpose or how well can you communicate what needs to get done in a group setting? And how are you showing the way to other people? How are you role modeling how to be the best person that fights world hunger or the person that, you know, fights for the best possible code on a particular project or the best type of, of baseline in your band or whatever it is. It's those people skills that are allowed you to influence and be influenced by the people around you, because that is definitely a skill. And when you can do that effectively, then you step into that leadership role. So if you are someone that's I know what my purpose is, but I don't know how to be super effective in it. It's who else is in this industry that can help me and what would it take to lead this cause to the next level? And coaching, it's how can I make sure that I am the best coach in the world? And I do that by contacting peers that have the same high performance certification that I do, people that are coaches in other areas of life, athletics or business. And really the ceiling, what is really working for you as a coach? Like how do you get people to change and transform and level up? And when I was in software, it was looking at other teams that had similar problems, right? If I, when I worked at Walmart, I worked in merchandising, if the logistics tech team had solved A similar problem, it's worth saying, hey, let me buy you coffee. This is what we're dealing with. How did you guys deal with it? How did you deal with releasing code over 400 distribution centers? And how do you do that effectively without pulling your hair out? And in my particular case, when I asked that, it was not well, we were actually doing the release management stuff a lot better than they were on the code side, meaning pushing out code to 400 different locations, to different locations. And we were able to help them out in that particular case years ago as a very small anecdote. But you know that connecting with peers or people that might have solved the problems before you or where you are at, or helping other people solve problems that you solved can help you develop that leadership. And when you feel like you're leading your profession, your job, your team, you will feel more purposeful. Because there's an underlying level of service that I think gets triggered psychologically in us, where we want to help people and we want to help people excel. And when we're able to do that, we will feel more purposeful. So if you're that busy work to do, this type person looking for a purpose, thinking about where you can lead, where you can lead in, lean into your passions, your hobbies, or what you do great and help other people can help maybe get you to feel more connected to your purpose. So with that, these are again the five areas that all high performers consistently try to improve every day. And it can help you with your purpose and with your meaningful revolutions. And that is to find daily clarity, to conjure the energy you need and steward it, to take bold action every day, to know and double down on your productive outputs, and to connect and lead your professions, your teams and your industry. So with that said, these are the five things that we all work on. If you are like, hey, I need to work on these myself and I want a guide through this in a way where there are particular habits and strategies that are world class that you can implement today. Below you'll find a link in the show notes to the episode how you can sign up for a free one hour strategy session with me where we go through these five outcomes for you on that call. Provide habits for each of these points to make sure that you hit the ground running and can jump start your productivity hoard. Frog Leap. I don't know that Frog leap sounds weird. How you can leapfrog your productivity into a higher gear through these habits. So with that, if you're interested in that, hit the link below you fill out a quick application so that when we get on that one hour call, we hit the ground running with what's really going to give you the biggest bang for your buck. Okay. And if you enjoyed this episode and would like to have email updates of new episodes and new topics on high performance, you can join our Meaningful Revolution newsletter linked below@seanbutner.com backslash join us is the link, but again below here in the show notes with that, we'll see you guys next week in the Meaningful Revolution podcast. This is Sean Butner signing off. Sa.