Pros, like Sabrina Williams, Lebron James, and Tom Brady, among many other elite athletes, perform in life free of lifestyle-induced diseases like constant tiredness and fatigue, weight problems, and health complications such as diabetes and heart disease.
When you see them perform, at some point, you might even think, “wow, they’ve got it, down to a science.” You would be right but not just in training for their sport. They have changed, or more accurately stated, “optimized” many of their lifestyle fundamentals, closing their performance gaps step by step over several years. To the point of having an approach to how they achieve their goals and the quality of life they live, that works well.
They are far from perfect like the rest of us, but still, they have, for the most part, balanced and healthy, performance lifestyles. As I like to say, they live their lives “like a pro,” and therefore, they are because they don’t have any significant performance gaps.
That’s a significant reason why we see them as the pros that they are. It’s also the difference between an athlete with raw talent and someone like Tom Brady. He cultivated his natural talent (which needed a lot of work I might add) through practice and is still healthy and playing top-tier football at 42 to possibly 45 years of age when the average NFL career is just six years. He optimized his lifestyle fundamentals.
Now, it’s likely you are not a pro athlete, neither am I, maybe not into sports or even a fitness enthusiast. But what’s the difference between a pro athlete and you? Sabrina, Lebron, and Tom’s business may be to score aces, baskets, or touchdowns, and your business may be marketing plans, but fundamentally we are not all that different.
For all of us, pros included; its life, family, career/business, and re/creative pursuits; do everything in our power to take care of ourselves, so we can take care of and serve others.
Isn’t that true for you? So why then is excess stress, tiredness, and fatigue (the primary reasons why people go to the doctor) and almost 2 million people a year dying of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer?
Well, the simple and most obvious “not-so-obvious” answer is that the majority of people live vastly different lifestyles than a pro athlete or any otherwise healthy, high-performing/ achieving person who thrives in their domain. So different in fact, that instead of having a lifestyle that yields them the energy, health, and performance capacity they need to succeed and sustain with a desired quality of life, most people have closer to default lifestyles defined by an extraordinarily sick and addicted society.
That status quo is their “normal.” When it yields fatigue, weight, and health problems, they then try to put into action often impotent solutions in parallel that don’t solve the real problem, which is not having a lifestyle built on sound fundamentals.
Intensive lifestyle change has proven not only to reverse heart disease but so many other challenges people face.
As a result, many people succeed, yet, they struggle as they drive themselves into the ground through overwork and coping with stress in ways that create more stress. And these people age fast and wear out far short of the finish line.
Performance is a lifestyle, so when you try to solve any symptoms of a lifestyle gone awry, with a half-baked solution that does not work alone, forever, or at all, rather than optimize your fundamentals, you will have a lot of performance gaps.
Now, I can hear you thinking. I get it; most people don’t have the life structure, lifestyle support, and clear-cut goal alignment that most top athletes have without the worry about money; but the truth is.
pro athletes have other stresses many of us don’t and won’t ever have. The point is, you can structure your life, develop the fundamentals of your lifestyle, and align it all with your goals to live like a pro, just like any athlete, and achieve relevant results.
And it’s becoming an imperative as we live in a performance culture today. You have to close your performance gaps and make sure that every aspect of your lifestyle is down to a science. Meaning, the way you are living is working for you, not against you. Else you will spend a very significant portion of your life, at a high cost of time and money, not engaged in what you enjoy but rather in distractions that hold you back from fulfilling on your service to the world.
Let me give you an easy example of closing a performance gap and getting your lifestyle down to a science.
Food is the one thing everyone does at least three times per day. Eating nutrient-rich food is just one of several lifestyle fundamentals. There is a difference between eating a nutrient-rich (dense) diet and a nutrient-poor diet, and the difference between the two will, no doubt, change your health and life performance.
Eating a nutrient-rich diet is a principle and practice. Pro’s identify these principles and organize their lives around them in ways that give them the results they want, of course, in ways that not only work but that they also enjoy.
Master that one principle, the practices, and strategies experienced people who eat nutrient-rich foods have learned, and you will no longer need to worry about eating. In particular, whether the way you eat will support you—your health, performance, and longevity for the rest of your life.
Free of eating problems, just think about how much time, energy, and attention, you will save to now focus and what you are up to in the world.
There is no rational person in the world who would fight against a nutrient-rich diet, yet only a small percentage of even experts know what it means to eat “nutrient-rich” let alone consumers. Hence, the struggle due to a performance gap.
You need to fill that gap if you are going to be able to get on with your life free of the hidden lifestyle challenges that eating a nutrient-poor diet is bound to cause sooner or later.
And it doesn’t stop there. There is a whole array of lifestyle fundamentals, many of which are way outside the realm of eating and exercise and help you achieve more. And anyone can learn them to become a healthy, high-achieving person who thrives and avoid being one of those health statistics that most of us eventually become.
When it comes to performance, many knowledgeable people attempt to improve “from the neck up.” No doubt, if you are thinking sub-optimally, therein lies another human performance gap, but it’s also just another aspect of your lifestyle that you’ve got to get down to a science.
Doing so will change your life for the better forever. So don’t get scared by the word science, thinking it’s going to steal your pleasures in life. When you master the fundamentals of living, you’ll have a whole lot more pleasure than pain.
The way to think about this is more like how can I have my cake and eat it too? To use my first example, eat a nutrient-rich cake. Who said cake had to be fake? Use real whole food ingredients. When you do, you can feel good while you’re eating and even better after, and get on with your life.
While you’re eating, it’s nice to know that what you’re eating is supported by the best science has to offer, as this nutrient-rich way to eat becomes part of your new, normal way to live. Not only have you closed a human performance gap that so many people suffer from (pain), but you’ve got your lifestyle, at least one aspect of it now, down to a science (pleasure).
Just imagine if you closed the performance gaps across all aspects of your lifestyle. It’s more than diet and exercise, and oh how you would thrive.
John Allen Mollenhauer “JAM” is a Professional Coach and founder of Performance Lifestyle®—a leading-edge training and coaching practice that helps Entrepreneurs and small business owners achieve more through a healthy-driven lifestyle.
He also works with clients at RegenUs Center in Florham Park, NJ, a company he founded to treat, pain and fatigue, recharge, and restore.
You can contact JAM here.
