Performance-Minded People

There are only two things you can do with your time:
spend it or invest it. When you spend your time it’s gone forever;
When you invest it you create a lifetime residual

clock with earth on the center

What are you doing with your time?

You’re either using it powerfully or using it poorly, and there is no middle ground.

A large number of individuals that I coach and mentor either:

  1. Don’t truly understand the value of time, or…
  2. Don’t have the discipline to leverage it consistently.

Time is a vital subject that we could probably build an entire series on, but we’re not going to take the time to do that at this juncture (pun intended).

We could discuss the psychological studies on coping mechanisms here. How we cope with life situations. But I’ve already done that at length so I’ll just refer you to my previous writings.

What I do want to discuss is something that either steals your precious time or leverages it to the hilt.

Your environment is more important than your heredity.
Who and what are you consistently surrounding yourself with?

group of friends laughing

In my Ultimate Performance Coaching program, I discuss what I’ve labeled as “The Seven Environments of Mastery.” While there are obviously seven important factors we could discuss here the one I’d like to invest some time in today is your network.


While networking and socializing may appear
to be similar they’re actually vastly different.
Masters don’t socialize, they network.

group of people in the office talking

Take a quick mental inventory.

Who do you invest the bulk of your time with?

Be honest.

There’s no value in lying to yourself.

Keith Sawyer from Washington University has conducted lengthy and detailed research on what he calls your “community.” Walker has come to the startling conclusion that your community is so incredibly valuable it either “makes you or breaks you.”

Who’s in your network community?

So what does connecting with your community and tribe have to do with your purpose? Learn it here.

Let me tell you from personal experience… when things go sideways (which they will), your “fair-weather socializing friends and buddies” will disappear like mist in the noonday sun. It’s easy to love someone when the sun is shining and the roses smell sweet.

If you’re blessed to have even a handful of people
who will stand with you through your own
Tsunami then you’re truly rare and blessed indeed.

silhouette of 4 people facing sunset

I had a friend once tell me, “James we all hope that our friends will stand with us through the storm—they won’t!”

Cynical?

Maybe.

My experience says realistically.

However, true friends will stand in the storm. Most specifically performance-minded friends in your network.

For performance-minded friends know that the storm is part of the initiation.

Forget so-called “like-minded people.”
People waiting at a bus stop are like-minded.
Find performance-minded people. People who are willing to do
what it takes to access and bring their greatness to the world.

girl in the middle of crowd

If you’re truly committed to mastery and greatness, your own Ultimate Performance, then you absolutely must network with performance-minded people. People going in the same direction. Those willing to make the same sacrifices that you’re making. This is rare to say the least.

Don’t settle for second best.

Your friends and network are either moving you
forward or they’re holding you back. There is no neutral. 

man sitting down with a friend on his side

Hold out and choose to be alone versus choosing to be with someone who just wastes your time and knocks you off your game.

Napoleon Hill

 

Life is a game board. Time is your opponent.
If you procrastinate you will lose the game.
You must make a move to be victorious.

~ Napoleon Hill

Two things you must do with your time. Your greatest resource:

  1. Be vigilant about who you allow into your inner circle.
  2. Invest time with mentors and masters. Stand on the shoulders of giants!

If according to Walker’s research your community either makes or breaks you, then the first point is self-evident.

Secondly, it’s beyond dispute that all masters spent considerable time as apprentices. Even a quick study will bear this out.

While a mentor can’t do the job for you, we all have to do our own work, a mentor can cut your learning curve very conservatively in half.

When you find one follow his or her advice until you find that it doesn’t work. You’ll never know unless you’re willing to follow the advice.

All great leaders were first great students.
You can’t jump to the front of the room until you
first work your way to the head of the class. 

student and teacher in a classroom

To move closer to power you must organize information into knowledge. To get the knowledge you must study, you must specialize, and you must dive deep. But while knowledge is one step closer to power it’s still not power.

Only through putting specialized knowledge into action, big, bold, and consistent will it become an experience. Experience over time turns to wisdom. Wisdom is power.

You can’t get power vicariously. You can get knowledge, but not experience and wisdom. This is why a coach is so invaluable as well as a full apprenticeship. But as already stated a coach cannot do it for you.

You have to get yourself in the ring, you have to fight your own battles, and you have to consistently act, analyze your results, make adjustments; and then act again; and again.

This is why I believe the advocates of 20,000 hours are actually closer to the truth than those of 10,000. My experience is that 10,000 hours minimum is what it takes to go through phases one and two. Once again, Riveted Attention and Observation; and Relentless Practice.

Then the Experience and Wisdom phase kicks in for another 10,000.

To put this into a manageable context 10,000 hours equates to just under 3 hours per day every single day for 10 years.

Too long to become masterful you may say?

What else are you going to do with the rest of your life?

And the journey continues….

Be a Leader. Live Your Purpose, and Take Your Power Back!

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