7 Steps To Bring Out The Absolute Best In Yourself
“The compression of time is not a matter of compounding activities, but the compounding of meaning.” Benjamin P. Hardy
Learning to control emotion, surrender and let go of emotion as it happens is the most important skill to master to bring out the best in yourself.
The level of discipline required to control and watch how you react to your thoughts is immense and the most vital skill for performing in a peak state.
This isn’t about spirituality or metaphysics, it’s about the actual physics of thought, which have proven create real physiological and psychological reactions (stress and more thoughts if you don’t have the ability to sit with and let go of them).
Ownership of this discipline creates the optimal state, the serene physiological and psychological presence required for deliberate acquisition of knowledge, experience and practice.
Thoughts create the physiological and psychological reactions.
Presence must be like breathing — Josh Waitzkin
Reactions affect physiology which affects energy.
Energy is what we need to optimize to best control the quality of our state.
That’s why our diets and supplementation are so important which to me is a huge indicator about a job candidates commitment to peak performance.
This may not be the state of work now but it will be and it’s fair game in my book even today.
Josh Waitzkin is a world chess master, world tai chi push hands champion, and now coaches the world’s leading hedge fund managers with ultra high sakes decision making.
He teaches ‘physiological introspective sensitivity’ which is cultivating inner awareness and physiological intelligence, and the key to connecting with intuition — which for us creates the deepest learning experiences.
Here’s my favorite passage from his book, The Art of Learning about presence in the context of competition (apologies for the small type).
The future of human work will be good for you if you’re a knowledge athlete — which is a culture that’s optimized for state of mind instead of raw skills and ‘gaining experience’ in the way we often think of them today.
State of Mind Vs. Experience — The Nuance
The quality of your state of mind will trounce experience in the future.
Intuition for high stakes decision making wins, yes.
And experience helps build that intuition over time.
But often, that ‘experience’ we cultivated is what created the state of mind that makes the person a leader and top performer (President, VP, Partner, etc.) who can take ownership and responsibility.
Ultimately, it’s that confidence, knowledge and intuition that’s valuable, and what inspires customers and employees.
Less so because they’ve built a sales team twice or been a lawyer for thirty years. See the nuance?
You may say “but the vp has deep industry connections and the lawyer is a master of his field from so much repetition.”
The actual experience comes from affecting people, and being affected by them, and intelligently understanding them.
The leader inspires them with the way they do their work, the way they deliver the communication and the way they write their emails
This emotional intelligence is the true experience rather than the tactical know how of building a sales org or being a lawyer which you can google and learn (manage pipeline, when to hire, CRM, Systems, management etc.).
Yes, you will pick a field like sales or law or design but the experience comes from inside, which you can accelerate.
Here are seven ways to be the absolute best you can and transcend your world.
1. Optimize Living For Your State of Mind
“In words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker.” — Plutarch
This is a big deal.
It requires living a meditative life that’s disciplined.
You have to learn to love this and it can’t be viewed as a ‘thing to do’.
Living in prayer.
I’d live in meditation if I could, but I can’t.
There’s a business to be built, a world to be transcended and art to be made.
Pay attention to your diet and sleep like an elite athlete does.
Understand that every thought you have that creates a reaction is deeply meaningful.
Watch them. Let go.
It’s always on the line and hold yourself accountable for your state, always.
Schedule things that force you to remain in a high state.
It could be an intense workout.
A big meeting.
An important task like writing, reading, art etc.
It could be meditation but reign it down on yourself to create artificial pressure.
The trick to winning at life could be boiled down to mastering that task.
2. Learn How to Act — It’s A Great Way to Understand Emotion To Use It To Your Benefit
Act as if what you do makes a difference, it does. — William James
Acting is becoming what you want to become and we all act in roles whenever we talk to anyone based on who they are.
Acting how we want to be sends our subconscious an order to become it.
Goal achievement’s actually quite simple for human beings.
Visualize what you want yet let go of your desire to acquire it.
Subconscious just takes orders and building this awareness is a critical skill to cultivate.
Often, you ‘act’ like someone else when you talk to your mom vs. your boss vs. your sibling or subordinate.
I’m not saying we treat them differently though our perceived roles subconsciously play a dance with theirs.
The one’s who don’t resist this are the top performers.
Good actors win so learn to act and act like you want to become.
3. Cultivate a Meditation Practice
“When I look back at my life, I am happy to have had what most people would consider a successful life, not only in terms of business, but in my relationships and in lots of ways. More than anything else, I attribute it to meditation — Ray Dalio
Meditation can be so profound for your life if practiced deliberately.
You’ll get hooked.
There’s no way to have a worse day
It’s like a day in prayer vs. a day out of it.
This is why I try and do it twice a day if I can — because the day’s activity get’s me out of meditation so I need to get back in.
It’s not so much the mediation itself, but the meditative state it creates for the rest of your day.
Besides that, it cultivates your inner senses which leads to insight and creativity. Start with 5 minutes a day and take it from there.
You’ll get hooked.
I try and meditate for 60–90 minutes a day and it produces my best performance.
- Decisions will become clear.
- You’ll learn to prime your mind.
- It’s the education for your inner self.
I’m not surprised at all the best thinkers and highest performers meditate.
From the world’s best hedge fund manager, leading chess master to Yuval Noah Harari, the best futurist out there right now.
In fact Harari does 40–60 days a year of mediation retreats.
It’s. A. Must.
4. Exhalt Yourself Into the Hardest Situations Possible.
“A revolution is impossible without a revolutionary situation; furthermore, not every revolutionary situation leads to revolution.” — Vlademir Lenin
The best acting get’s brought out of you by putting yourself in situations that forces you to act like the person you’re trying to become.
Instead of studying fundraising, pitch an investor your real idea.
Make a deck and make it matter.
Get feedback, rinse and repeat. The days of long schooling and job hunting and value of credentials and “getting picked” are long gone.
Don’t believe me, look at the jobs and the market for those jobs.
The fact is, jobs for college grads don’t exist in a way they used to.
Jobs exist for people who can prove themselves in the market. Knowledge is free and cheap now. Get it quick and move on to test the market.
The rest is just building yourself into who you want to become which is free and up to you.
This is why the quality of state wins, especially in the coming world of mature AI and big data where fast adaptability and knowledge acquisition will be transcended and required in a whole new way.
5. Perform All The Time As Though You’re On Stage
It’s always on the line — Josh Waitzkin
You may say “I don’t want to ‘perform’ all the time” or “but I already feel like I need to be on in front of my colleagues”.
It’s not about that.
It’s about being your best, your absolute best, and not being your absolute best is a waste.
Be on for yourself, so the rest of the world can benefit. You owe it to us.
Performing to be good when it matters, is based on how you practice when it doesn’t matter.
You have the choice to act your best or put yourself in a situation that forces you to act your best or you can try to push and hope and dream until it fizzles out which it always does.
Will power never works over long periods of time.
So always perform. Always be on. All the time.
It will become second nature.
6. Give Yourself Zero Retreat To Execute #5
Never keep a line of retreat, it is a wretched invention. — Fridtjof Natjen
There’s no way to bring out the deepest best self when there’s a chance to retreat.
This is why for example, it’s harder for kids who grew up wealthy to stay motivated with a business that isn’t mission driven.
A resilient person with mastery of self who had a ‘hard life’ is actually better setup to succeed than someone who has it all on a platter with endless options but doesn’t have mastery of self.
- They have grit.
- They have a growth mindset.
- They take it all and embrace it.
- They love it.
- Life becomes a riveting game.
And yes, it’s forced.
This is why during war time in the old days the generals would literally burn their boats telling their troops that they win or they perish, but they won’t retreat.
Mission drives so find your mission and be religious about it.
7. Constantly Create and Re-Create Context For Yourself
For me context is the key — from that comes the understanding of everything. — Ken Noland
Context is the mental environment that creates the situation around you.
Therefore it’s ultra powerful.
The context of a deadline brings out the best in us through effective force.
The context of not having retreat is a powerful driver to force one to act with rigor and motivation, which creates the enthusiastic performance to succeed.
This is the new top performance, the new discipline and managing the reaction to your thoughts is the most important part of training yourself to do this.
It is hard, but practice and not only will you gain deep experience much faster, you’ll transcend your world like I did mine.
