You, an athlete?
Calling all athletes… Yes, you. Who did you think? Stop laughing — you’ll snort coffee all over the paper.
You may not be able to give yourself a nickname or talk about your last race time, but you can declare yourself an athlete — whatever your waist size, bowling average or how much you’d really rather be snoozing; and maybe you should snoozing if you’re fatigued.
Establishing an athletes identity — of any ability — makes it more likely you’ll not only “get enough sleep, eat healthy, keep exercising and live a “healthy lifestyle,” say some experts; it’s also more likely your brain will judge you on what you do and how you do it, not merely on how you look, which some would argue is a road to happiness.
This expert (the one writing this) says it will inspire you to take your life and style of living it to a whole new level. A level that enables you to achieve even your most ambitious goals while living in balance with vibrant health and peace of mind; but not in the way most of us of been taught.
Think of it as the Lifestyle equivalent of “You are what you eat.”
“There is a process of forming an identity as an athlete,” explains Diane Whaley, associate professor of sport and exercise psychology at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education.
“Getting some training, buying the clothes, learning the lingo, eating and hanging out with other participants in a chosen activity or sport makes you more likely to participate in that sport and improve your whole life in the process.
For example; recently my step-son, who identifies more as an Xbox Pro than a lacrosse player (let alone someone who is into exercise, fitness or training) got a hold of a lacrosse uniform and a magazine promoting lacrosse gear, and now he’s started getting into the sport. He’s going to practices, and now he’s beginning to live like a lacrosse player paying more attention to how he eats and sleeps because now he has events to prepare for and his friends are doing the same.
It’s transformational and it works for adults too. I have seen it countless times.
Once you form that athlete-identity mentally, it is more likely that you will come up with strategies to participate in a fitness activity, maybe even participate a sport or another performing art over time.
Having the athlete identity translates into the proactive behavior of thinking and living better than you ever have before in your everyday life.
As the founder of Performance Lifestyle, Inc I was originally inspired by the athletic experiences I’d had earlier in life; the basic lifestyle mindset and skillset I maintained as an athlete and have continued to maintain to overcome challenges and turn my dreams into reality.
Fast forward, after years of expanding, developing and refining this the mindset and skills set inspired by that experience, I can tell you that living with the identity of an athlete has the power to truly transform how you approach life; in a way that traditional wellness, health and fitness training simply falls short of.
In particular, it’s the way that getting “well, “healthy” and “fit,” are often seen “as the goal,” divorced from the life, business or sporting goals that will compel a person to make such changes.
I think it’s one of the reasons why Crossfit became such a successful franchise. Members don’t just show up to train, they often train for the Crossfit Games or in an environment where at least some are. it’s an environment where an athletic lifestyle (mindset and skillset) is learned and lived.
The fact that a person is not well, healthy and fit is a matter of lifestyle, the unresolved life circumstances that are at play in a person’s life, and usually, the lack of needed lifestyle guidance to support the desired results in that persons’ life.
And without a clear link between a person’s lifestyle and their desired results that person has little motivation to sustain changes in their lifestyle. They’ll just eat and drink whatever, sleep whenever, exercise if ever and stay caught up with life forever.
I mean who lives better unless there’s a compelling reason and enough energy to do so?
Which is why the lifestyle mindset and skillset of an athlete is the key to personal and professional transformation.
The sheer act of adopting a new worldview with an approach to preparing for the events in your life— a lacrosse game, a 5k run, life with a new child, the presentation you need to give at your next corporate meeting or wanting to keep up with the younger generations, in as great a capacity as possible— with the mindset and the skills set of an elite athlete you’ll live a more balanced lifestyle (in terms of skills), healthier, with more energy to perform, look and feel your best.
Enter “Performance Lifestyle” and Living Like a Pro.
Performance Lifestyle is an idea that was originally coined in the world of elite athletics where it emerged as a personalized support service designed to enable an athlete’s sporting and non-sporting lives to work together and complement each other, for the benefit of the individual, their sporting performance, health, and wellbeing.
I quickly saw how this idea could help driven, goal and success-oriented people develop lifestyle’s that supported the levels of energy, health and performance they needed to succeed in their life. Just like a Professional athlete. The reason was simple, driven people are susceptible, just like I was and still am, to the hidden lifestyle challenges that distract and hold us back.
In today’s all-out exhausting way of life, everyday people are living more demanding and intensive lives than most elite athletes do who have structured lives and lots of support to do what they do. The more support athletes have, the better they perform. And the admired way they look and feel is a natural byproduct, not the goal.
So why couldn’t that apply to people where aren’t elite athletes?
It could, it has and it will for you.
Challenges such as, feeling tired and constant fatigue and the myriad of complications these depleted conditions give rise to in our lives from poor eating to lack of exercise to emotional and focus issues that detract us from achieving our goals and living with the quality of life we want can all be overcome with Performance Lifestyle support.
That is, lifestyle support for people up to big things in their lives, such a growing a family, rising in a career, starting a business and excelling in it all.
When you approach any and all of these endeavors with the lifestyle mindset and skillset that professional athletes have and that other healthy high achieving people in the performing arts often share (thinks dancers, singers etc), transformation happens.
It doesn’t matter you’re into sports (the arts) or even at fitness enthusiast at the present moment in your life. When you shift to a lifestyle mindset and skillset focused on achieving a performance goal, everything changes.
Eventually, for some sooner than later, it also opens the door to a level of awakening and thriving that most people only dream of. The “zone” and “flow” become the norm, no longer a mystery. And it can happen to you when you begin performance lifestyle training and start approach life with a mindset and skillset similar to a professional athlete.
There are reasons why top athletes perform so well, look and feel so good. They live for performance and have the balanced and healthy lifestyle skill set that ensures it. To live otherwise is not the norm, but an exception.
And it all starts by beginning to think a little different about yourself, so you can begin to approach things in a better way.
The reason we are so passionate about this is because “athletes” are typically the only subset of the population that directly link their lifestyle to their success. And who doesn’t want to be more successful in ways that we individually value and aspire to?
If that’s true for you, you are an athlete.
