WEEKLY FOCUS
Striving for “Peak Performance”
Ordinary or extraordinary? Only one answer!
No matter what we do in life it’s important to do it to the best of our ability. Why would we want to be ordinary? Think of a student at school…Consider an employee in the workplace…Picture a parent wanting to be ordinary in their parenting skills…Or how about a sports person about to take part in their chosen activity! Clearly, the answer will always be “I want to be extraordinary”.
The Institute of Management Services describe “Peak Performance” as…
Peak Performance is used to describe an individually-based development and mentoring approach that attempts to raise the performance of individuals as sports coaching does for athletes. It has been used extensively in sales, which is often an individual, rather than team activity, but the concept has been extended to team-based working, and even to organisational development.
So how do we start to develop “Peak Performance”? In a few short lines, what a challenge!
How we feel about ourselves is a major factor…While self-belief is vital, this stems from our self-talk, the thoughts that go through our mind and the way that we start to think about ourselves. A great example is allowing hindering thoughts to prevent us from having the confidence and belief to start to develop “Peak Performance”. Our internal chatter box of self-doubt.
Much is purely our own perception of reality…And not the reality. Most weeks you will be great in all that you do, yet we dwell on the occasional mistake, rather than celebrate our successes, thus creating a downward spiral of self-talk.
To succeed in all that we do, we need to set goals for ourselves. Something that we want to achieve and that is both personal to us and that can be achieved with a little bit of stretch…Measurable and not too distant. It is only creating goals for ourselves, that we create the motivation to get out there, to challenge ourselves and to develop “Peak Performance”.
Affirmations are very important to this. These are statements, or almost a mantra, of picturing success, visualizing the goal being achieved. The affirmation describes how you feel on achievement of the goal. By repeating the affirmation and picturing the success, this will feed into your own self talk, changing your beliefs and thinking in such a way that you are for more likely to achieve whatever you set out to…New and improved performance.
As a rule of thumb, your affirmations should be reflected upon and pictured twice daily…Morning and night. Within 28 days, this new and improved thinking, will become a new and improved behavior.
The key is to start today. A personal journey to “Peak Performance”, and that never ends!!
Imagine the possibility of unlimited possibilities.
Unknown
