After years of working with achievers, there is one thing that holds true. With rare exception, every one of the entrepreneurs, business professionals, business owners, executives or managers that we have worked with, ALL wanted to have more personal energy, and more time to get their energy back after intense outputs of life force.
That is, a universal desire and its the reason why this year, in Performance Lifestyle training, we are including Performance Living 101 – The Secrets of Optimal Energy.
We are also recommending you learn The Energy Blueprint by Performance Lifestyle Advisor Ari Whitten.
There is also a sister truth to that finding, and it reveals the essence of a bad habit and what you’ll want to learn as early as possible in the new year.
All sub-par lifestyle habits are to a significant part “poor” because of a low grade (in some cases high grade) fatigue that creates performance anxiety. Combine that fear and the desire for pleasure to cover it up (usually based on bad habits established by the market) with the lack of a strong, knowledge-based routine that ensures you’ll maintain optimal energy levels, and you have a real challenge.
Poor energy leads to lack of a capacity to process information, to decide and act optimally. This is the etiology of a poor habit.
That making of a bad habit is not surprising, An excellent and typical example is how we see today’s driven, goal or success-oriented person carrying a cup of coffee, almost as if it was a mainstay object on their person, like a watch or an iPhone.
See how the above model holds up and plays.
- Is there a high or low-grade fatigue present? Yes.
- Does the fatigue create a performance anxiety? Yes.
- Does Coffee create a pleasurable cover up? Yes
- Is Mocha Choco-latte a bad habit? Yes. (note, not necessarily a decaf or plain cup of coffee periodically, but once coffee is turned into a dessert, Houston we have a problem.
- Is coffee drinking an education-based solution to more energy? NO.
- Without Coffee, are you left with less capacity (your actual condition?) Yes.
- Does even lower energy mess up your ability to make critical decisions and act optimally? Yes.
Would you consider Coffee Drinking a health and performance promoting habit (not thinking short term)? Of course, it’s not.
Most people are jacked up on fake energy (stimulants) that are giving them the impression of having energy, while unknowingly having their life force sucked out of their bodies one cup of coffee at a time, and it’s just debiting their longevity.
The results of this pattern, a huge, population-wide oversight, is an error in judgment that costs people their quality of life. Their “American Pie-like” cup of Joe trains them to think that their current energy state is normal and natural and that drinking coffee is a necessity to make it through the day. It’s not, drinking coffee is common, but not normal and not natural and it’s not a necessity at all with rare exceptions.
Sure, there are great arguments to make for a nice warm cup of coffee, and there is a huge part of me, that says you can still lose a few battles and still win the war on fatigue so to speak, so this is not about battling having a cup of coffee here and there. If you want a cup of coffee, go ahead, because this isn’t even really the primary issue.
Note: Water, broth, and real juice have practically the same effect, albeit with a lot of upsides.
Coffee drinking is a tactical response to a much bigger issue, an issue so big that there are tens of millions of people talking about energy, but with no real way to talk about it intelligently because they just don’t understand the full breadth and depth of the subject.
What’s at stake here is your energy and all that depends on it, which is everything. Your very understanding of human energy is vital to taking a new approach so that another thing remains true.
You know your actual energy levels. This is essential to increasing, harnessing and maintaining, and managing your energy so that you have the optimal level of energy at the right time.
Only then can you take the actions necessary to experience the optimal power level that corresponds to where you are in your process as you prepare for upcoming events in your life. That last part, you will learn is ultra-important.
In recent years, it has become clear, that sustained performance in life and business, just like in sport, requires you manage to optimal energy levels and not think you’re weak when you’re living at less than peak.
There are reasons why this is not called the high-performance lifestyle, or the peak-performance way of life because I challenge you to find that person who is always in a state of high performance or peak performance. Not even the best athletes in the world can pull that off and stay healthy, so why do you think you can?
So, here’s some of what we’ve confirmed about personal energy in 2016 or before.
- Energy is the subject that so many people are talking about because fatigue is the number 1 reason people land in doctors’ offices (over 50% of Dr visits).
- Fatigue is at the root of manic-depressive states and virtually all addictions, not the least of which is the addiction to performance. In a modern culture that can leave you with so much going on you’re barely hanging on, and many of us get caught up in the trap of staying stimulated because we don’t want to face our real condition. You need to.
- Energy is the leverage point for lifestyle optimization. It opens the door to the greatest, and most important lifestyle change you’ll ever make or even can make, which is living as who you really are; which is the key to flow and residing in the zone.
- Ask even the most enlightened master, and they will tell you that they usually lose their posture when they get tired. Athletes the same. When they don’t have the juice, they don’t have the drive; energy drives all human activity.
- Vitality is the legitimate and primary “key to success” if there ever was one KEY (to use an old term). Everything else, motivations, moods, thinking, decisions and actions depend on, this is it.
- There is no consumable solution (meaning something you drink, eat, or swallow) to low energy or fatigue. Albeit, nutrition among other lifestyle factors, plays a key role.
- The last thing you ever want to do is define yourself or create a self-image or story line for your life based on your energy levels. Believe me; your energy levels will change with the right course of action.
- Last, but by no means least, if you view personal energy only at the physical level, and think it’s merely a matter of better nutrition, exercising, or getting more sleep alone, chances are you could struggle with being tired all the time, for a very long time.
- You must be working in alignment with your biology not against it.
Performance Lifestyle teaches you the principles, the practices and overall strategy for harnessing optimal levels of energy. This vitality is essential to maintaining health and performance, which we all need to succeed in life, business and or sport. And it can dissipate quickly in modern life if you don’t have a lifestyle that supports you and what you are up to in the world.
When you understand the secrets of optimal energy, harnessing and maintaining your vitality for success, is now possible. It will then set you up for success with a performance lifestyle approach that optimizes your lifestyle for maximum energy, with a series of secondary benefits that stand on their own and are truly trans-formative.
In others words as you live for optimal, energy-driven performance, in the balanced and healthy way you hear so much about but so few experience, you will become more and more proficient at living with such great efficacy, whole-life performance becomes possible.
Not a bad thing to have in mind as you start start the New Year, or any time of year; knowing you know how to maintain optimal energy levels here forward in your life.
