How To Develop The Mindset Of High Achievers

High achievers think differently than the average person. Their mindset is geared towards achieving a goal at all costs as long as they do not hurt others.

Being successful means the achievement of desired visions and planned goals.

As you work on developing your mindset, do not try to motivate yourself to avoid failing to achieve your dreams. You need to banish the word “failure” from your vocabulary.

Focus on achievement tasks and reward each achievement as you earn it. Understand the thought process of doing it until you achieve it.

When you banish thoughts of failure or how long it will take from your mind, you are on your way to being a high achiever. Study those who came before you and notice that they had a plan, and they worked it until it happened.

Your beliefs are what will make you or break you. If you have limiting beliefs, now is the time to change them. All high achievers have opinions that serve them. While affirmations are good, they cannot replace the value of your beliefs. Step up your expectations as they are core to your fulfilling life.

Here is a list of the beliefs that you need to have now:

• Demanding tasks are essential to growth. You need to see the pleasure in doing these tasks every day. Understand that when you commit to a task with full concentration until it’s done, you are then moving into the winners circle.
• Patience and persistence go together, and they are essential to long term success. All high achievers excel at this. Centuries of achievement by people have been studied and put into practise by today’s high achievers. Build the belief that you need both patience and persistence and adopt it fully. Think of Jeff Bezos of Amazon. He built one of the largest companies in the world, starting with one desk. Above that desk, he had a sign, which read, “Amazon.com.” He built that company by pure persistence and a belief that it would happen.
• High achievers believe that skills can be learned and built upon. They can learn new skills, whether it is computer related or engineering tasks. In some cases, they may need to develop sales or marketing skills to bring their ideas to market. They also understand that there is nothing wrong with hiring the person with the right skill to fill that spot. They don’t have to do it all; they just have to know what will bring them to the end goal.
• Believe that hard work will not hurt you. It is and should be fun and enjoyable as you build out your dream. If you do not have fun while working hard, step back and ask yourself a series of questions. Discover why you feel the way you do and perhaps look at how to inject passion into the hard work you need to do.
  You can look to Elon Musk of Tesla as someone who just grinds it out for hours on end. When someone works long hours that Elon does, it means they seriously enjoy what they do and the hours fly by. To be a high achiever, find the balance between what Elon does and what makes sense for you. Rest time is super important, so believe in hard work combined with proper rest time.
• To be a high achiever, believe that you are responsible for your success. There are no outside sources that affect your outcome. High achievers do not blame others when things are not going their way. Instead, they own the situation and find the solution.

Improving Performance With Mental Rehearsal

To really up your performance, you need to do a mental rehearsal with dynamic movements. Mental rehearsal is similar to visualizing and Theatre of The Mind. With visualizing/Theatre of the mind, you sit in a quiet spot, close your eyes and begin. Doing mental rehearsal with movements adds to not only your visualization but your muscle memory as well.

Let’s look at examples from business and the sports world. When a speaker is preparing for a significant speech, they can improve their performance two-fold. They start by visualizing they are walking up to the podium. By standing while doing this, they can add in dynamic hand movements and using the upper body/face and shoulders. Power movements with the hands, trigger emotions and aid to install memories that can be recalled when acted upon.

In the sports world, let’s look at field goal kickers in the NFL. Just practicing kicking the ball is insufficient. They need to do mental rehearsal and make the motion of kicking the ball. Once they follow through with the leg kick, they can continue to visualize the ball going deep through the center of the upright posts.

Now that we have discussed the basics of mental rehearsal let’s break it down.

The brain plays different roles in mental rehearsal, from seeing and hearing the performance, to providing natural energy chemicals to make you feel great while doing an awesome job.

There are many different sections in the brain and for muscle memory, we use the cerebellum. Although it is tiny, it holds approximately 50% of your brain’s neurons. Studies have shown that visualizing with actual movement, fires up the cerebellum. From there, different connections are made and muscle memory is engaged for later peak performances.

Before starting a mental rehearsal, think about what could go wrong before your next performance. By listing out possible issues and identifying solutions, it slows down the chance of having a bad performance because something went wrong.

In our example of making a speech, the microphone may stop working or you get too hot and uncomfortable. Do you have a 2nd microphone available and do you have the option of taking off an outer layer of clothes like your coat, or a quick break for a change of clothes?

Emotions are a huge part of mental rehearsal. To mentally rehearsal for peak performance while having neutral emotions, would lead to very poor performance. Before you begin a rehearsal, start seeing in your mind’s eye, where you are? How many people are there and in what timeframe you need to complete your performance?

If you mentally hear the crowd clapping at the end of your speech or the screams of the fans as you line up and punt a 50 yard field goal, it will be as if it actually happened. It is necessary to understand what emotions will serve you during a peak performance and call them up instantly.

Go through your first mental rehearsal and remember what went well and what went wrong. If you were using dynamic hand movements and it didn’t help trigger the right emotion, rehearse again using a different hand movement. For example, many people use the “jabbing finger” movement to help make their point. If that is not working, then try again using the right hand, striking the palm of the left-hand movement.

Go through the mental rehearsal repeatedly, changing and tweaking until you can give yourself high marks for a great performance. Studies have shown that mental rehearsal is not an instant fix it button. Just like learning to play the piano, you must practice, practice and do more exercise. It is never-ending but will pay huge dividends in your overall success.

7 Morning Routines for Peak Performance

Peak performance and how to achieve it is not a secret. You just need to follow and model how the super peak performers, achieve the success that you also desire. This means sacrifice and being more than willing to step up and do things you never thought possible. Here are 7 morning routines in an order that will serve you.

1. Take a cold shower once you wake up. This will shake the cobwebs out of your head. Besides the alertness factor, you will be boosting your metabolism. If you lack energy, then having a cold shower first thing in the morning will fix that. Start with lukewarm water and gradually head to a full cold shower. It would be best if you built up this practice by slowly increasing the time under the cold spray. Perhaps start at 2 minutes the first day and go to 3 minutes the second day. Work on your tolerance at your pace rather than someone else’s. Note: If you have health issues such as high blood pressure, check with your GP first to make sure cold showers aren’t going to affect you adversely.
2. Exercise right after your cold shower. If you are in the martial arts, chances are you already do the cold showers and know how it improves your performance. Pick an exercise that makes you sweat. You want to work on your heart rate, flexibility and strength. This means having some equipment at home or doing bodyweight exercises. You can also hit the gym if you don’t mind the fees and other issues. Doing exercise before you start the workday, helps with your energy levels, avoiding procrastination on work, and elevating your mood. When you get your exercise done first thing in the morning, you get a “happy” blast of feel-good natural chemicals coursing through your veins. People who suffer from depression or low moods can use exercise to change how they feel. Getting a good dose of oxygen from vigorous exercise works marvels for your mental health and ability to perform at peak levels.
3. Write in your journal, while you relax for a bit after a workout. Write down how you are feeling at the moment and what you may need to do to keep your brain activated for peak performance.
4. Meditate on what you have written today for 5 to 10 minutes. Just be calm and let your mind flow. Inner calmness is what makes peak performers great. As they get hit with adversity during the day, it flows off them, and they do not allow it to affect how they feel or perform.
5. State what you are grateful for today. It would be best if you were grateful every day you wake up and have a new chance to make it happen. Start by being grateful for the breakfast you are about to eat for nourishment and work your way through everything else. Be grateful for the people in your life and the ability to perform and contribute to others.
6. Review your goals each day. Those goals must be firmly implanted in your mind. With the daily review, your subconscious mind will get involved and work to make things happen. Your subconscious mind will be driven to help you succeed and become a peak performer. Remember the saying, “You are, what you think about all day long.”
7. Visualizing achieving those goals is another way of firmly implanting what you desire and then allowing the universe to understand how much you want to succeed completely. When you have goals centered on peak performance, visualizing them helps to make them real.