Success in Life and Sports
I love to help people achieve peak performance, and have really done a lot of it in my years as a hypnotherapist. As I have worked with many professional and elite athletes over the years, I have identified some of the best possible ways to make that happen. These tools are applicable to success in your life and in whatever sport you play. One of the ways to start on the path toward achieving peak performance, is by recognizing the success you already have. As you look at your past successes, you need to recognize that they come from three main areas in your life: clarity, balance and energy. Everyone has the ability to identify successes achieved, but we also are given tools that help us be clear, balanced and energetic so that we do achieve success. Thinking about this may seem trivial or silly, but it truly does work in helping you achieve peak performance.
First, you have to be clear about who you are, what your preferences are and your gifts. You need to understand the areas of your personality that you excel in, and those that can use more work. You have a uniqueness all your own. When you become cognizant of this the better able you are to really know your strengths and weaknesses, the better you can all use your gifts to the greatest ability. Clarity is extremely important to achieving peak performance.
Balance means you must care for all areas of your life to ensure you achieve peak performance. You might be surprised at the level of mental, emotional and physical drain on your body if certain areas of your life are not being addressed in a healthy manner. Although you might be clear about who you are and what you want, you must ensure you do not focus more in one area at the expense of others. That is to say, if you put all energy in one area at the sacrifice of others, you will feel it in a negative way.
The ‘get up and go’ feeling you need to take action on things, in putting time and efforts in the areas you prefer (or your priority areas), represents the energy necessary to achieving success. You will find over time that your energy will increase the more clarity you have. The more you are willing to work in certain areas of your life, in line with who you are, the greater your energy will be. So clarity, balance, and energy are all necessary components of achieving success.
Once you understand the basic principle of how to achieve success through clarity, balance and energy, there are some additional things you can do that will help you more easily achieve peak performance. One such way I would like to describe here, is by using a quote from a famous, successful sport coach: Vincent Lombardi. Vincent Lombardi was very successful at whatever he put his mind into. He had great insights that apply to all of us no matter where we are or what line of work we are in. In his quote, he stated: “The difference between a successful person is not the lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather in a lack of will.” I totally agree with Vincent Lombardi’s statement, in order to achieve success. A successful person definitely must have a level of will that will help him/her carry through and persevere no matter what is happening. No matter what challenges come along the way, stumbling blocks or perceived obstacles or speed bumps, it is the level of will that determines how passionate you are about a particular ‘thing’, or what level of determination you have about achieving it. It is your level of will that will help you rise above the challenges, endure through the obstacles and keep moving on no matter what happens in your pursuit of success.
If you think about successful people you know or admire, you might notice some elements about them, their personality or character that are also in you. That goes back to clarity. If you look at people you respect or admire doing great in a particular line of work, you will see an element of yourself in them, almost like a reflection. Take, for example, someone wearing an outfit walking down the street that you think looks smart, classy or professional, or maybe who you think has great fashion sense. That person catches your eye because you share that same style. However, I might see that same person in the same outfit, but it does not really appeal to me. That does not mean I am better than you or you are better than me. It just means our styles differ. So what you admire in another is somewhat a reflection of yourself.
It is the same thing when you admire success in another. Maybe the direction of your life, your clarity and the life you want to be living causes you to be attracted to a certain person living a certain lifestyle. I might have no interest in that person, but that does not mean I am right and you are wrong, or that you are right and I am wrong. It just means we have different clarity or ideas of how we want to be living our lives. So what we see then, when we admire someone we view as successful, is a mirror reflection of ourselves, our preferences, desires, gifts, and how we want to live our lives. We might already be living our lives, in a lot of ways, the same as that successful person.
In order to be successful and achieve peak performance, you want to look towards those you believe are successful that you admire, respect or look up to. As you do, chances are you will see elements of yourself in them. That will then give you a kind of road-map and someone to relate to, who seems to have already achieved the peak performance you desire.
As you look at people you believe are successful, ask yourself ‘what is their level of strength, knowledge or will?’ People can have lots of strengths – move full force or try really hard and put their best foot forward, do best they can and give everything they’ve got – and still be either successful or not in whatever area they chose. You can have all of that force and vision, get-up-and-go energy, momentum and strength, and it might all seem so exciting, up-beet and positive. But without will, you are still going to slow down or maybe even stop when you hit speed bumps, rather than go over them. You will lose the strength necessary to face challenges or obstacles as they come, or if they come at a time that does not fit according to your agenda, if you lack will. You can have all the strength in the world but without will, you lack the ability to persevere or keep moving forward on the road to success.
When you consider your level of knowledge and you place a value on your ability to acquire more and more of it, you might think it is what will help you be really successful and achieve the greatest performance possible. But knowledge, or a lack of it, is not what makes someone successful – or what keeps someone from being successful. This tends to be very surprising for a lot of people. For many generations, people have been raised to believe they must go to college and gain a certain level of education in order to do anything they want; create the life they want. They think that in order to be employable, they must have ‘this amount of education’. Over time, I have seen how that has become less and less important as a factor in achieving great success. I am not saying NOT to go to college. I am just saying that I know many successful people who did not even finish high school, people I personally know, who are extremely successful. As I have sat down to talk with them they have said: “who would’ve thought that a high school drop-out would make it this far?” They had some programming from family or society beliefs that told them they should have gone to college to become a success, in order to be successful. But they achieved great success anyway. How?
Despite failing, the belief in their need for higher levels of education was obviously not very strong or they would still be moping around rather than being successful. So you can see the evidence, that it is not a level of knowledge or strength that will help you achieve great success. It is a level of will. For those people I know who did not graduate high school, it was their will, focus, clarity, energy, determination, perseverance, diligence…all of those characteristics and traits that helped them achieve success. That is possible for you too, to move beyond where you are now and into greater levels of success and peak performance yourself.
As you go about your daily life, I challenge you to look around and find evidence of success for yourself. Look first for clarity, in noticing who you respect, admire and look up to. Those people are the ones who will help you with your own clarity. See what similarities you share with them in some way. Look at what has brought them so far in their pursuit of success. You will undoubtedly see that will, passion, diligence and perseverance played a huge part in their achievement of success and peak performance.
If you start asking people how they achieved their success, you will likely find it is not a level of knowledge or schooling that are the consistent factors in successful people. Nor will you see a level of strength being the only thing that helped them. What you will see, as the consistent factor over and over, is a level of will; a strong will or unbreakable desire to achieve great success.
If you want to take it another step further, look at those people you would say are struggling a bit more in trying to achieve success. Maybe they seem to be spinning their wheels, or you might hear them complain about not having the success they would like in life. I am not saying to look for someone who is unsuccessful, but maybe those people you believe fall short of the level of success you think they could have (or that you would like to have for yourself). Observe them and see if their ‘lack of success’ is a matter of strength, knowledge or will that keeps them in that spot.
Once you have observed others and how they achieved success, then of course you want to turn this on yourself. Gain clarity of who you really are, ensure balance in your life, and tap into your energy, will and passion. Your chances of achieving success will be stronger when you tap into those things that really make your heart sing and define who you are. Find out who you are and allow your natural energy to flow forward. That will contribute to your will that will then help you persevere through challenges on your road to achieving success. Check in on yourself and see where you are at. Identify what areas you need to work on, start working on those areas and make it full speed ahead. If you need any extra assistance, please contact me. No more excuses! Let us move forward and be the best we can be. Thanks for reading. InJoy your day!