Meet Peak Performance PT II | Maximization of existence

This is the second part of a three part presentation. It will be useful to read the previous parts first for better understand.

Performance is the evidence of existence. It represents activity. Without Activity this universe will be a dead place. When something exists, it serves a purpose. Life is in constant motion - nothing stays the same. Change is guaranteed even if it is cyclical. This is the very nature of things. The cells in your body are active doing something or serving a purpose. The various organs in your body are serving one purpose or another. This is beautifully evident when you take a close look at the human anatomy. The sheer organization of the body alone is astounding. To understand the importance of each of the purpose being served by the components that make up your body, you just need to stop your nose form serving its purpose for five minutes. You will soon see that life begins to travel the opposite direction.

The ecology of the earth itself is a remarkable example of how everything serves a purpose and how the various elements of nature interact with each other in order to maintain the balance that keeps us all alive. Nature’s food chain is carefully designed to maintain this extremely important balance. As human beings you are a part of the grand system that is constantly in motion and serving a purpose –  you are involved in one activity or the other “Being of use”. By the nose hypothesis, I have established that to stop being of use sends life in the opposite direction. The degree to which you can serve your purpose or “be of use” depends on performance. Peak Performance is when you serve the purpose to the best of your ability.  Performance is what determines whether you are successes or failures. One would think therefore that performance will be a major subject of study but unfortunately this is not the case as very few daring psychologist and others in related fields have peeked under the hood to see what it is that causes high performance and low performance alike. Notice I have pointed us to performance as separate subject from the matter concerning how an entity can be of use- the manner in which they will engage. This is a crucial point you have to understand clearly.

In a family setting everyone has a role to play or to put it another way, everyone serves a purpose in the system. Not all families are set up the same way of course; in fact it differs from family to family as it differs from nation to nation. However, every single member has a purpose to serve. Some of the roles are constant regardless of location or culture whiles others can differ. Let me illustrate this:

there has to be a source of income for every family. In many places, that will be the job of the father. Sometimes it is both father and mother whiles other cases differ completely. A child could be handed that role from an early age depending on the family’s unique circumstance. Regardless of the setting, a successful family will depend on how effective the players are performing or serving their purpose in order to meet the individual and collective goals. When the income earner fails to perform, the whole family suffers. This affects growth and as we have seen, growth gives way to decay per the laws of nature.

In the grand scheme of things, man was made by God to serve a purpose. The Bible insists that he has a grand plan and you are playing a role in it. For this grand plan to succeed, you have to succeed (be the best that’s possible for you to be) as individuals, organizations, nations, continents and planets etc.  He has for the purpose of our success, equipped all of us with the tools with which to serve this purpose. Just as the nose is the only organ capable of performing in the breathing role.

We each have a unique combination of things that makes us the only one qualified to be us. To under-perform is therefore to undermine Gods plan and the result cannot be positive. Consider the organs in your body; if your lung fails to perform its duty at its best, your whole body suffers. When cells stop functioning, tiny as they are they become a cancer? Permit me to say then that non-performing individuals are the cancers of any organization or group. Non-performing cells can continue to increase until they disable the whole body and no performing people can do the same with an organization and a nation.

The principle is therefore the same no matter how you look at it and where you look at it from. Individuals must perform at a high level in order to obtain personal success that contributes to the grand success of the whole. The individual’s success is the micro component that powers the macro. Just as the successful heart contributes immensely to a successful body. True success is but a product of high performance.

In the first part of this article we encountered the peak performance phenomenon by way of one time experience.  Now we have seen that it can influence the manner in which an entity is of use in the larger system. In Uptimetrics® this is referred to as the micro- level and the macro-level. The two terms are used interchangeably as per the context. So that we see that the macro is dependent on the micro. A person’s way to maximization of their existence (performing at their peak over a lifetime (macro)) is dependent on their occupation (what occupies them now, the job (micro)). Apostle Paul and King Solomon understood this quite well. Solomon admonishes out of his disdain of vanity in ecclesiastics 9:10

 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom. NIV

Paul proposes in Colossians 6:5

 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. NIV

To solve a failing life therefore, a careful examination of the occupation (current job) is required. It must then be related to the entire life of the subject and it is then that a solution will begin to emerge of its own accord. Uptimetrics® graduates are equipped with the tools to do this effectively making them coaches and motivators who impact any group they find themselves.

I shallproceed to the concluding part of this series. Please continue here

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People Dynamics Vrs. People-centrism

If you have read my two part post on why you work hard to underachieve, then you have run into these words. In this post I will try to explain the difference between the two and their relevant to the maximization of your existence.

People-centrism is about functioning with people as the center of your existence. You live because of others; your life is about other people. Whiles I am aware of some of the counter-worldviews presented by some titans of philosophy, I am convinced by the superior example of Jesus. I submit that he is the single most accomplished individual to ever walk the earth. This is evident in his legacy which has not stopped growing thousand years after his departure. Scripture teaches that the period of his engagement was only three years. In that period he achieved more than any other individual in the history of the world. The reason is simple; his objective was to save the whole world. For this, the world owes him some attention and that includes his critics. It is impossible to ignore him. His is the perfect example of a maximized existence.

Those who understand the power of living for others have been able to use it to achieve great things. Such men as Mahatma Ghandi, Kwame Nkrumah, Rev. Martin Luther King Jnr. Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela and many others literally followed this Christ example of sacrificing their lives for others and the result of that life is clear for everyone to see. People-centrism in born out of altruism and it has been proven to be the most effective way to perpetuate the existence of any group. The existence of any group is dependent on the survival of its individuals and therefore the group will cease to exist if it starts to destroy its individuals ceteris paribus.

People dynamics whiles related to people-centrism is a more complex matter in practice than in theory. The complexity stems from the fact that whiles people are tools in our hands; they are not to be used as the means to ends but must be treated as the end itself- people centeredness. It is concerned with how to deal with people in our world in order to reach our objectives. It deals with issues of converting liability to asset by repositioning ourselves- socio-emotional competence. The books of proverbs and ecclesiastics are loaded with people dynamics wisdom. Perhaps it will be very useful to have an example here:

Everybody likes to receive or get. It assures them of their continuous existence. For this reason they will love and protect the source of this assurance. To understand this one must pay attention to the person they give to very often and how they treat the person who gives to them. When compared to how we feel about those whose action challenges our continuous very existence, we begin to get a better understanding of this idea. However, there are instances when elimination becomes the useful option for both the eliminator and eliminatee. A typical example is one we hear from most success crusaders;

Do not hang with the wrong people,
who you associate with will determine who you become,
show me your friends and I will tell you who you are.

Often it is in the interest of both parties to not be together as their acquiescence with each other has negative impact on both parties. Important questions arise concerning what the best way of dealing with such situation is. People dynamics is called into action at this point. So that people dynamics compliments people-centrism, although the two have very different concerns. In Uptimetrics® the two are treated under the topic of socio-emotional competence (a Hegelian-dialectical product of emotional and social intelligence). I shall soon start publishing papers on Uptimetrics® in order to present some of these topics in their more technical manifestations for deeper understanding.  Please feel free to ask questions if you have any. 

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Why you work hard to underachieve Pt. 2

There were a few questions that arose from my last post regarding the assets and liability idea. So I decided to do another post to bring some clarification to the matter. I believe these posts are going to lead us in a whole new direction forcing me to bring up topics that I had not planned to treat. It appears a discussion on people dynamics and people-centrism is will make an apt top up.

I said in my last post that anything you can prefix with the word “MY” will automatically fall in one category- asset or liability. This means literally everything you can claim any degree of ownership to. We already know that assets fire you towards your goal and liabilities do the very opposite in more than one way. My plan is to clarify the idea better by providing some examples.

The things you own includes people in a sense and I am not challenging the notion that people have their personal freedoms which must it must be respected at all cost. But you do refer to your parents as My parents and your pastor as MY pastor as you will refer to your shoes as MY shoes. The word MY therefore attempts (no matter how feeble) to shave off the sovereignty of the people in your life. They are a part of your world and to some extent tools in your hand. How you use these tools and the outcomes of that usage will either push you towards your goal or hinder your progress. This of course makes people-centrism and people dynamics important topics and I shall treat them in my next post.

Spouses are major elements in any person’s life or world. This means that your spouse plays a key role in your attempt to maximize your existence. If the spouse turns out to be an asset person then you function with double power. This gives meaning to the point made in the book of proverbs; “he who finds a wife finds a good thing” (Proverbs 18:22). Now without digressing to far I should clarify that a wife is only a wife is she is an asset person. This is because a wife is supposed to be a helpmeet. Being supportive to a husband is really what makes a woman into a wife. For this reason a woman is not a wife until there is a husband to help. This is reversible to for husbands as there is such a thing as an asset man or husband.

For this reason no one person is functioning at full power unless united with a spouse who fires them towards their goal. Regardless of how successful a person is, they can always be more with the support of a wife. As we all know two heads are better than one. The upshot of this is that, the one who intends to maximize their existence is careful in their choice of a spouse. There must be a common interest between one’s life enterprise and the choice of a spouse. As Benny Hinn said to a group of young leaders, “find the calling before you choose the spouse”. Where there is a mismatch, one cannot maximize their occupation and therefore cannot maximize their existence.

So people in your life can be assets or liabilities. Your parents, children, friends, siblings, colleagues will all fall into one group or the other. What is an asset to one person might actually be a liability to another. If you drive one of those cars that take more out of you than it gives you; liability. Project the assets and loose or minimize the liabilities and you will gain more power.

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Why you work hard to underachieve

Following my post about the success of Yvonne Nelson’s movie premier, I feel compelled to share with you what I meant by assets and why they influence performance. The idea was borrowed from the Uptimetrics® foundation training program.

Gaining full performance is possible when you identify all your assets and aligned them all into a working unit in your favor. This is based on the presupposition that all entities or people if you like, have assets and liabilities. Assets fire you forward whiles liabilities obstruct you, weigh you down and set you back. To gain full speed in your performance therefore, it is important not only align your assets but also to either eliminate, convert or minimize your liabilities (the things that fight your performance).

Often when people become aware of their assets, there is an enthusiasm to engage and the feeling is fantastic. Soon however, it becomes evident that the individual is not peaking. This will happen when the liability factor has not been dealt with. Liabilities often manifest as leakages that keeps you in the same place no matter how much power you are generating from your assets. What is liability or asset is not the same for everyone. Remember; one of my favorite mantras; there is no-one-size-fits-all solution to anything.  Perhaps you have seen one of those vehicles that make all the noise yet don’t move much. In the same manner there are people who work really hard but achieve very little.

In truth many of us are at this stage as we are not clear about what our assets and liabilities are. This is not so easy to figure out with the number of things we have to deal with these days. This is where a performance coach can help. If athletes need  coaches to ensure they get the right results then so do you. Some of the most successful people around the world have personal coaches who work with them on very regular basis. Some have coaches without really knowing they have one. A person who is not in your situation may see things about you that you don’t see about yourself. He might also be able to assess your condition in a more dispassionate manner than you can. And if he has experience he will be able to share with you how to deal with some issues.

This idea brings structure to your engagement which transforms your chaotic situation into an orderly one. Order is one of the beautiful attributes of structure as it brings clarity. Clarity doesn’t mean your problems are solved. It just simply allows you to easily identify trouble spots and deal with them with an improved degree of ease. Of course there is more to the idea than what I can tell you in one blog post. It is better captured in my second book of the SPiD-UP book series which will be available soon.

So there it, you have been given a sample helping of the philosophy of peak performance. To increase your performance, take stock of everything you can prefix with My. Analyze them all through and decide which one pushes you towards your goal and which one does the opposite. Eliminate and align accordingly and be a superman …erm woman too.

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The cycles that influence your performance

God in his infinite wisdom created the cycles of time as the structure within which we must function. He knew that for something to exist it needs a structure within which it can exist. We will need a sense of beginning in order to have a sense of direction. Because of his first command (let there be light—the installation of the time structure) we now have day and night that expands its way to years and eons. It also stretches towards seconds and nanoseconds and all of these are cyclical.

It is the sixty cycles of the seconds that makes the minute and the sixty cycles of the minute makes an hour. Twenty for cycles of the hour will make a day before it all starts over again. These are so important to the very structure of life that, it appears as if the misplacement of one cycle can lead to a cosmic disaster. When one of the seconds goes missing a minute cannot be complete. When this happens even the year cannot be complete. It is one second short and hence not be what it is supposed to be. The maximization of any existence is the result of a maximization of the cycles.

I have said that the cycles are at the very foundation of the universe itself. This means that they play a significant part of our lives as humans just as it does in the existence of everything that exists. This means that we must function in cycles to if we are going to follow God’s order. Man has a set of activities that must be performed at certain times of the day routinely. At night we go to sleep, in the morning we wake up. This is repeated every day and forms a cycle that is responding to the larger cycle that we are a part of. Periodically we eat and the food goes through a cycle—this we must continue to do if we are going to exist. The one who breaks the cycle soon will find himself slowly falling out of the larger cycle unless he restores himself back to the cycle. Once in a month, a woman will have her period over a certain number of days. When this doesn't happen we know something is wrong.

There are cycles that we all go through in your occupations. This daily engagement in a cyclical manner is what accumulates into your overall existence. So that your performance within the seconds determines your performance in the minutes and hours. How much you accomplish daily will influence how much you accomplish in a year and ultimately your entire life. The students maximize his learning opportunity by attending the set classes completely. One class missed makes him one lesson short and he is not the best student it can be. Those who seek to maximize their lives must therefore pay attention to the endless number of cycles around him. He must understand these cycles enough to find his perfect place within it and learn the ways in which it can be maximized.

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Structure Everywhere

Creativity demands the ability to unshackle ourselves from conventional ways of thinking, to "think outside the box". But we need to go a step further. Once outside the box, we need to construct a new box or boxes (that is, new intellectual frameworks or models) to help us structure our thinking. Only once we have done so can we generate truly game-changing ideas - That came from a strategy course I am taking.

Why I found this interesting; I have met too many people who seem to think being creative means throwing out procedures and systems- structure for that matter. I have always maintained to the infuriation of some colleagues that you cannot function without structure. Creativity must champion the march towards order and structure is the only vehicle that can achieve that. Things are the way they are because of what is holding them in place. The human face has a certain order to it i.e. it is structured in a certain way. The more we perceive this order the more we see beauty. The opposite is what we might call ugly simply because it is moving away from the order (if a person’s nose is above their eyes, we will see something wrong). If God decides at any point that he is going to rearrange the human face, he is going to need a way in which it must be- a new structure. Others are going to need something that will make it possible to recognize what a human face is.

From your daily priority list to the Fibonacci numbers, from running your life to your business, from building a house to planning an economy, structure is key if things are going to work. Those who ignore it at any point in time only end up in chaos. Recently we have seen the difference a simple contract can make in the life of a business.

Goals setting and the many tools motivational speakers teach all come together to form a structure that must lead to predictable results depending on content. In other words it doesn't matter what you are doing, you still need a goal and a method via which you can reach it. When we lay pipes, whether we run water or milk through it, it is going to have to flow in the direction of the pipe. There is no other known way around this. In buildings it is the pillars, in writing it is introduction body and conclusions, it is not possible to exhaust the list.

Take a walk in the bush one of these days. Pick a tree in the distance you want to reach. Notice how difficult it is with all the bush in the way. On your way back, cut your way through the bush with a machete to create a path. You will find on your next journey to the tree that it has become significantly easier. This ease will be enjoyed by anyone else who finds your tree interesting enough to visit it. Now you know why cars have roads and trains have rails. The box is always needed.

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A pint of Feedback please!

If you have ever been at a concert where the artist’s performance intensified as the applause grew, you have seen the effect of feedback. This is a very common phenomenon in fact and speakers are very familiar with it. In Ghana it is very common to see a very still and expressionless audience literally cold-staring a performer who is trying very hard to force out a drop of positive feedback. Such situations have the capability to steal the performer’s confidence and render him powerless even with a great talent at their disposal. This is when you hear, 

“they don’t like me no matter how hard I try”. “Why is there always something wrong with everything I do”? “Nobody appreciate me even though I am doing my best”.

When we engage in an activity there is always feedback except and it is not always positive. When it happens to be positive however, we are empowered to do more and the effects appears automatic. Positive feedback is nitro-octane 5 fuel for performance and this makes a strong case for the reward and punishment system. If you reward people for doing something they are likely to do more of it; perhaps even better—they want more reward. Negative feedback is however, only the opposite in a conditional manner. It is crude oil that can be refined into a variety of products that can either fire or dampen performance. It is a question of how it is processed. The high performer is in the habit, according to experts like Czickzentmihalyi, of consistently monitoring feedback. They need it as it is the signal on the dashboard that tells us when we are doing the right thing or not. Guys, when the ladies say NO, they mean it. Trust me, I have five sisters.

Anthony Robbins’ success cycle also illustrates this idea quite well. When the feedback is success, it engenders more success. If you have been reading my work you probably already know that it is the small cycles of success that culminate into the larger success. This develops the ever valuable success mentality. The person who wins all the time is used to winning; because of feedback. She enters an activity expecting nothing less than winning. And we all know what roles expectation, confidence and goals play in the quest for success.

The opposite is the failure mentality that results from the same method. When one is told all the time that he is a failure and hears the words fail and you in one sentence after an initial attempt at something, he develops a failure mentality. He then approaches everything with fear and the expectation to fail though he may not show this. Parents and teachers are especially guilty of this when they are unable to determine what the strengths of a child. In my part of the world it appears such negative statements; “you can’t even do simple things, you will suffer in life” are very often used if not abused on young people.

It is not an easy feat for the untrained mind to rise above negative feedback which I should mention is not always authentic. Because of this, many talents are rendered powerless. This is the reason why it is extremely useful for one to build a career in an area they are naturally gifted for. It is unwise to disconnect goals and occupation from purpose must be the result of self-knowledge. Because once the feedback is positive, one builds the confidence to step further and build the reputation of a high performer. This then can serve as the platform from which they can use the winners’ mentality to reach other areas.

Monitoring and dealing with feedback lies within the realm of information processing in the Uptimetrics® training program. Read more of my work and you will know that things, events, circumstances have meaning and purpose only because we gave them one. One statement that I abuse almost on a daily basis; we are the most active participants in the creation of our circumstances. Such tools as the PSR™ (Positive Speculative Reasoning) are of great value in this regard. It is possible to turn negative feedback into something useful when you know how to process information. This is what I meant earlier by crude oil needing refinement. At the same time it is possible to receive positive feedback and indulge in complacency and this is not as rare as you might think.

When a person tells you consistently that you cannot do something or you are not good enough, you have two things to do. The first is to verify the authenticity of the statement itself—people talk crap for their own reasons. Yet they are a great source of feedback and this is the reason why you cannot hang with the “I will do only what I like and others do not matter” folks. The teacher or the parent cannot tell the child they are right when they are wrong. The second is to investigate how and why you have arrived at the decision to engage in that activity in the first place—but that is when you are sure the comment was authentic. In short if you are going to be involved in something ensure you are gifted for it. It will ensure you have positive initial feedback-- Nitro-Octane 5 for your performance; remember? Those with natural capability will always be ahead because they have positive feedback.

I just realized I cannot possibly exhaust the idea in one article look out for the launch of the SPiD-UP® book series. 

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The Love-Logic of performance

Regardless of what we are involved in, it is the quality of your relationship with it that determines the quality of the outcome. When a person has a bad relationship with their spouse, it reflects in how they treat them. A bad treatment from a spouse might affect the entire family. In the same manner, a bad relationship with an item you possess is reflected in the state of the item itself. The principle applies to an occupation as well. Give your work the best you can give it and it will return the love. However this might seem an impossible thing to do if you don’t love it enough.

When a man does not treat his car very well, it is only a matter of time before the car registers its displeasure. It is a simple question of not servicing your car as regularly as is required to keep it in shape. When this becomes something you forget and or cannot be bothered with because you have more important things to do, the quality of your relationship can be called into question and the state of the car will reveal the real state of affairs. Cars do not understand excuses. Not giving your car the best you can give it then forces the car to not give you the best it can give you. This is all based on your input and when your car begins to fail you, all other aspects of your life begins to suffer.

The role of relationship in performance is great indeed. There is a relationship between you and the occupation you are involved in just as there is with your spouse. The nature of this relationship is reflected in how you think about the occupation. How you think about anything determines your behavior towards that thing. This is true even for your spouse. It will in the long run determine if they love you back or not. To get the best out of an occupation it must see that you truly love it and not just pretending because of what you can get out of it. It then chooses you. YES chooses you! To get involved in an occupation, you must register your interest and when it sees that the interest is genuine and that you indeed have what it needs, it accepts your application. The unity is then created and the performance is high because you have the double impact of you and the occupation working in harmony. After that you must maintain and service this relationship by continuous improvement- finding better ways in which you can show your more love. You must contribute to the industry and not just take from it. You must profess it and show others its beauty. You must genuinely love it with all your heart. 

It then continuous to give you better rewards in return. Remember the more you put in, the more you will get out of it and when the love is true, this will require very little effort. A person who is the best at something has a deep relationship with that thing and understands it in a way that nobody else does. They can tell you things about it that you would never have found out for yourself. They spend more time with that thing than anybody else does. But it must be a mutual relationship.  If you have seen the relationship between a master craftsman and his tools, you already know what I am trying to say.

I woke up one day and realized that a shirt has been lying on the floor for a few days. I asked myself what will happen if it stayed there much longer. How does the shirt feel about the whole situation? How would I feel if I was lying on the floor for a few days and being stepped on occasionally? What will it take for me to pick up the shirt and put it in a place where it will be happier? Can an unhappy shirt make me happy? Does this explain why I am always badly dressed? Will I eventually lose my shirt because I didn’t treat it well? Should I do something before the shirt leaves the realm of usability? Truth; I was not loving the shirt enough…. I began to think about how this shirt came from the best shirt I had and to the one the spends days on the floor

I remember the woman I used to love telling me that I did not move heaven and earth for her. I think she meant that I was not sacrificing enough for her and that obviously brought my so called love for her under scrutiny. A few months down the line, she had left me. I used write computer software until a few years ago. In those days I spent a lot of time learning other people’s methods and even occasionally copying codes which I modified to create my own applications getting some applause here and there. I made some money whiles I was at it but not like Bill Gates. The quality of my relationship with programming was nowhere near what bill had. There are programmers out there writing codes for the fun of it; posting them on the internet for people like me to copy. They wrote tutorials and post them for others to learn and be better. The industry loves these guys because they are contributors. They are the chosen ones. Not surprising they know all the secrets. Me I just took from it and gave very little back. I learnt only what others taught me and never really discovered much on my own.  But don’t just take from it, contribute to it. If you find in your occupation that you are unable to do so… something is wrong.

In my software writing days some thought I was a genius; I did not feel that way about myself. In time I did not want to do it anymore. It was not true love and like all false things, they don’t last forever. The countless seemingly impressive hours I had spent with her was all for taking and my personal gratification. So I can look like a genius. So I can make money. So I can get all the applause and I did get some but only for a while. When I finally broke down, it was other people’s fault. It will take three years before I will find my true love. When it happened, I just knew everything was right. In a short period I am contributing more to her than many who have been on the road longer than me. I don’t even have to try. And even though she continues to test my commitment, I have no problem passing the test all as I genuinely love her. When I get applause now no matter how small, it feels incredibly right! This is not an unusual case. Most people are caught in such situations with many doing jobs they should not be doing out fear of losing security. Some just want to belong and they work very hard at this.  The lack of real love make living their life a great challenge and they are never really above average in the things they work so hard at. They have not developed the right relationship with their occupation or I should say they are not a match made in heaven. 

Take any aspect of your life you are not happy with. Or even a possession that is in a bad state. Take a close look and you will realize it is in a bad state because of your treatment of it. Love cannot be faked for long. In fact hate often masquerades as love- fake love. So if you are pretending to love your occupation, you actually hate it and it knows. To find and do what you love is a blessing to your performance. A good relationship with your occupation is very efficient fuel for your performance. This idea is based on LOVE-LOGIC.

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“DO” less “BE” more

Often when people want to know how we earn our living they will ask; what do you do? This is because most people see earning a living as work and work is supposed to be hard and painful. It is something that you must put a lot of effort into and still produce average. They do not believe it must be easy, yet those who are the best at what they do are said to make look easy what others struggle to do. There is a difference between being and doing besides the obvious.

Being refers to allowing what one already is-- it is freedom in performance. Doing is trying to be- it is an attempt at the real thing. Doing is therefore a struggle. This is why the better question to ask when you want to know how a person earns their living will be, What are you? But then again, you might confuse the situation with that because most people are doing which is why we have more average performers than high performers. This idea is better explained by my favorite performance theorist Abraham Maslow with his self-actualization idea;

“Self-actualization is the intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately, of what the organism is”. (Psychological Review, 1949)

“A musician must make music, an artist must paint, and a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be.” (Motivation and Personality, 1954.)

When a person is endowed with natural skills and naturally gravitates towards something, all his resources both internal and external must be directed at that specific activity. This gives him a head start when others have to struggle to pick up the basics. This when polished by training intensifies the level of skills so that a task becomes effortless. This is the difference between peak performance and what some refer to as hard work with the former being the most potent. Being also means to be united with something-- an occupation for our purpose. It is when a person is so good at something he becomes an icon for that activity. This comes about because of the depth of his involvement in that activity.  When one unites with the task he begins to access a new level of intelligence as the task begins to reveal its secrets to him. His love for that vocation is rewarded with the love of the vocation and they are united as in a kind of performance intercourse. As a general rule, love begets love and lover is likely to divulge her secrets only to the love of her life.

So that Lionel Messi is an icon of football because of the depth of his involvement and the quality of his output. This depth has a lot to do with love. For this he receives the best reward football can give. Such persons when undertaking the tasks, sheds all their physiological needs and travels to a place in the mind where there is total bliss as the task tends to be the only thing that matters. A sense of security and happiness also creeps in; so much so that working for the sheer enjoyment is primary and monetary gains become secondary. It is a kind of Occupational orgasm that is experienced by so few people, it is a rarity.

A person in the being state enjoys focus, persistence and determination all by default and never by effort. When a person is doing, they need to create focus. Creating focus becomes a task in itself as it needs to be cultivated with effort. Whiles this can be really difficult, it also reduces the amount of energy actually spent on performing the task itself. The effort to create focus could have been better spent on performing the task itself. This can be compared to putting some task on autopilot so you can direct all your energy into what you are really about. The feeling is similar to spending time with someone you don’t really like and having to tolerate them. You struggle to maintain a conversation. The conversation itself becomes stressful and may often lead to conflict.

Words like determination and persistence imply friction. It means forcing oneself to do something they are not made for. Any kind of friction leads to faster wear and tear which equals stress in humans. Stress on the other hand is known to be responsible for most diseases and an unhappy life. One’s life becomes difficult and going to work or undertaking a task requires a lot of effort in the middle of pain and reluctance. Even the people at work are not friendly and the world becomes a burden. All things being equal a person who performs the same task effortlessly will always be ahead while a persistent person may think of himself as working hard with little or no results. When one experiences this feeling, it will be time to re-examine the motives behind one’s involvement in the specific task or vocation. From the above we must see that a person who has identified his or her life purpose is a more likely to attain peak performance.

Being also has spiritual dimension. In his book “the Tao of Jeet Kune Do” Bruce Lee the world famous martial artist wrote about a psychological state: where actions become effortless. In martial arts, students are taught to be united with a punch in order to produce maximum impact. They are encouraged to pack every inch of energy (ki or spirit) in their very being into one punch so that for a split second, the whole being is concentrated in the one punch- unity. This makes possible the breaking of bricks and the other seemingly impossible things they do.  The potential of a punch then goes beyond what can be seen and it is at its best when it is united with that which cannot be seen. When one’s energies (both physical and non-physical) are disconnected, the impact of the punch is reduced to the amount of physical strength exerted and the effect is minimal. Because of this the student must first clear their minds of everything else in order to focus on that which matters. It is a mastery over the various dimensions of one’s very being. It is a complete control over internal and external resources in a determined direction. It is therefore the unity of the two- the tangible and the intangible that ensures maximum impact. When the balance is right one requires little or no effort at all to create miracles. This is what happens with those we call geniuses. In this state one is inseparable with the task at hand. It is the state where something greater has taken over the operation of the person and he does not know where the information, creativity and performance is coming from. It is when one finds it difficult to stop even to meet bodily needs. Actions become effortless and output surpasses normal and one beats their personal best.

Eastern philosophers refer is to a state of mind as the "action of inaction" or "doing without doing". This is the same state referred to as flow by Czicksentmihalyi. Many high performers have described this state as having occurred to them in various disciplines including athletics.

"No longer conscious of my movement, I discovered a new unity with nature. I had found a new source of power and beauty, a source I never dreamt existed."

Those were the words of Roger Banister in description of the state he was in when he first achieved the four minute mile record. He tells us what he is

I was always a great bundle of energy. As a child, instead of walking, I would run. And so running, which is a pain to a lot of people, was always a pleasure to me because it was so easy.

In running therefore he was being. The expression be yourself is therefore well placed. It must be clear at this point that it is in this state of mind that one is able to go what is described as the extra mile and explains why it is very difficult for others to achieve this no matter how well known the idea itself is. Being the best we can be is therefore not a matter of just knowing and practicing a trade. It is about being the trade. It is perfect unity only found in the action of inaction. Scientifically this has been proven.

The following questions help you make a valuable assessment.

Re examine the reasons why you are involved in your current occupation and clearly explain how it makes you feel.

Does it allow you to be your best consistently?

Is there another occupation you think you can be better at and why?

Do you have trouble focusing on your work?
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