Introduction: Called to Greatness
This week’s edition of Momentum is brought to you by Momentum Labs.
For the month of October, if you sign up for 1:1 coaching through Momentum Labs and mention this ad, you’ll also get a signed copy of my book out on November 15, Called to Greatness.
And now, for today’s edition of the newsletter — an excerpt from my book!
Introduction - We’re All Called to Greatness
Welcome to your handbook on high performance.
This book is my endeavor to synthesize two parts of the human experience which have both fascinated me and informed my performance coaching philosophy: what allows humans to perform at their best when it matters most, and what enables humans to reach their full potential.
For the last fifteen years, I’ve spent my career (in various capacities) exploring what enables high performers to deliver consistent results and make meaningful progress toward achieving their full potential. I’ve seen the synergistic benefits of a focus on maximizing what’s possible on performance.
Those benefits play out in critical micro-moments—the game-winning shot, the pitch to investors, the challenging conversations with children—and over a lifetime in terms of well-being and living a meaningful life.
During these fifteen years, I’ve had the opportunity to coach college football, work in the NBA and NFL, provide coaching services to Fortune 5 companies, and attend live demolition training at one of the premier military bases in the United States. I’ve spent time training US Parajumpers how to remain calm and decisive while defusing bombs, coaching professional athletes and Olympians to live out the performance of a lifetime, and helping entrepreneurs build unicorns. Along the way, I completed my Ph.D. in psychology, a field with a focus on human strengths and how to help people answer questions like “What makes for a good life?”
What I’ve come to believe is that to achieve peak performance is to follow a set of principles that maximize the odds of delivering under pressure. All performances are odds-based events. We can make mistakes and still win, do everything right and fall short. The principles introduced here serve as a formula we can use to tilt the odds in our favor.
And, as impressive as these performances can be, the best performers I have worked with do something else that’s significant. They don’t just focus on the biggest moments. They focus on being their best time and again, until, at a certain point they stop being the best and become, to borrow a phrase from Naval Ravikant, “the only.”
This focus is what it means to live a life guided by fulfilling potential. And this formula is not solely the domain of an elite athlete. It is, for all of us, a motivational tool to lead a better life.
But to get to a place where you can consistently perform at your peak, you have to start with a set of practices that raises your overall well-being and puts you in a position to deliver under pressure. You must develop the psychological skills you need so that you don’t walk off your podium wondering if it was worth it. With that strong foundation in place, you’re in a much better position to pursue excellence and work at becoming the best version of yourself.
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In my work as a performance psychologist, I’m constantly thinking about two types of performance. The first type, typical performance, is how you perform in your day-to-day. It’s the way you deliver on the things you’re consistently asked to do. If you’re a parent, your typical performance is how you show up every day when you raise your kid. If you’re a CEO, your typical performance is how you lead on an average Wednesday. If you’re an athlete, your typical performance is how you perform during the regular season.
The five skills (what I call qualities) discussed in part one—capacity, mental toughness, endurance, flexibility, and humility—are all about creating a strong foundation to consistently raise our typical level of performance.
In this section, you’ll uncover ways you can stretch your capabilities, how psychological flexibility can promote your long-term health, and the single skill that separates the best athletes and performers in the world from their slightly less skilled counterparts. You’ll discover how you can steadily and consistently raise your game so that your baseline becomes better and better.
In part two, you’ll be introduced to the second type of performance—peak performance. This is the performance we typically see when we watch our favorite players in action or hear or read about the heroic achievements of medical professionals and volunteers who are literally in the line of fire be it war or a pandemic. It is performance demanded of us under the highest pressure and brightest lights, and it is here we reach the next level and establish a new personal best.
The principles of peak performance are preparation, immersion, adaptability, energy optimization, and self-regulation.
In this section, I will introduce you to the science-backed performance principles I use to coach. We’ll cover things like how to get ready to perform, how to optimize your energy and focus, and how to respond resiliently to adverse conditions and setbacks. You’ll meet some of the world’s best performers and be shown how they use these principles to work toward delivering optimum results. We’ll also uncover performance pitfalls and what you can do to ensure you’re in the right frame of mind to perform when the pressure is on.
This is what psychologists call “maximal performance”: how you deliver under the biggest circumstances and brightest lights.
Because we’re not seeking a particular core set of skills to the exclusion of everything else, we’re free to shift our focus to what’s most important: what works. Elite performers drop the notion of “right” and “wrong,” and look for what works for them. You should look for what works for you too by selecting those skills I will introduce to you, based on your performance needs. Remember, the art of performance psychology lies in applying these skills in a way that is unique to the performance at hand.
I’m confident that the skills that I’ll ask you to try for yourself will help you deliver more consistent, higher-level performances. I’m also confident that this book can help you live a richer, more meaningful, and more engaging life.
This book is based on decades of research and my own experience working with high performers. But don’t just believe me—get started and see the results for yourself.
When you’re ready, there are a couple of ways I can help you:
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