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Performance Shift
In all that we do there is an expectation of performance. Whether from your employers, your family, your friends or more importantly from yourself, there is an expectation that you will perform well and ultimately succeed. So, how do you shift to and sustain peak performance.
The first thing to consider something called the Performance Shift Cycle. Having an underlying understanding of the cycle will give you a better understanding of the requirements for peak performance in your life.
The Performance Shift Cycle has three phases:
- Observe
- Understand
- & then Capitalize
The first phase, to Observe, is just that, watching your behavior, your actions and even your emotions over time. The phase is all about being a keen observer of the way that you do things, the rhythms that you create in your life and the priorities that you create over time. While you are observing yourself you may want to keep a log of the things you are noticing. This tends to be very helpful in terms of showing patterns and giving you more insight. This phase can be a truly “eye-opening” experience where you learn a lot about yourself.
The second phase, to Understand, takes what you’ve being observing and trying to put it into some sort of context. You need to understand why you do the things that you do. What priorities do you create? Why are you motivated in some circumstances and not in others? What things do you spend a lot of time on? When do you procrastinate? When do you tend to not procrastinate? None of this understanding can happen without having done the observing in the first place.
The third phase, to Capitalize, is where you take what you’ve learned in the first 2 phases and do something with them. You may make decisions to spend more time doing one thing or less time of something else. You may decide that you want to leverage your experience and time spent in a certain area. You may want to go back and completely redo your priorities or mission statement in life. Here is also where you can build systems to support what you want to accomplish and to support your strengths.
Consider when you are performing your job, creating change within your company, carrying out your roles in life or even just having fun. Often, you will find yourself diving into the Performance Shift Cycle further ahead than you should. How often do you find yourself at work making a business decision without all of the information necessary? The same is true for your life. In fact, it likely happens more frequently and has a greater impact on you than you realize. This is the secret and key to the Performance Shift Cycle that will help you ignite your peak performance. Spend enough time Observing yourself before you then try to Understand the context and finally Capitalize on your situation.
Once you are in the action stage of creating more peak performance in your life what can you do? I suggest following the Performance Shift Model to ignite your success. This model contains 4 Shifts for you to follow.
Shift #1 – Shift Focus to Your Role
Because you are trying to create maximum performance in your life, realize that you need to focus on your role specifically. You need to understand how decisions you make affect your performance. Most importantly, you need to understand how you are the factor in determining your success and your performance. Many people will think of this shift as being scary and overwhelming. The reality is that this is actually meant to be an empowering shift. The result, you are in the driver’s seat. Another analogy comes from the mariner’s world. There is a saying, “When a ship misses its port, it is rarely the port’s fault.” That is true of you as well. You are the ship and it is your responsibility to get to port.
Shift #2 – Shift Control of Your Situation to You
You now understand the importance of your role in determining your outcome. Now, you will want to take that understanding and capitalize on it. You need to pay attention to where you are in control and where you are not. In some aspects of your life you may be in control, for others someone or something else may be in control and in the odd circumstance, there may be no control. What you need to do is to drive all aspects of your life to your control. Often when you think that you are not in control you need to look a little closer and you may find that in reality you can control the situation or at the very least you can control how you react to it.
Shift #3 – Shift to Multiple Perspectives
The third shift that you need to make is to start to look at things from as many different angles as possible. Often you can get stuck looking at problems, opportunities and circumstances that surround you from only one point of view. To truly ignite your performance and capitalize on your opportunities you need to be able to approach life with an openness to view all situations from as many different perspectives as possible.
Shift #4 – Shift to Opportunity Leaps
The final shift is to start to approach your life making bigger leaps forward. When you want to do something personally or professionally consider pushing the limits of what you are comfortable with. Start to be more bold with regard to what you are willing to do. If you are moving forward with your personal or professional goals consider whether or not you can think bigger and skip a step or two. It may be that you are imposing limits on your growth that are not necessary.
With these four shifts implemented in your life you will be well on your way to creating peak performance.
A caution, one thing that should be remembered when dealing with peak performance is that you will not always be able to be running at full tilt. Nor will you always be successful. This leads to one of the most important aspects of creating performance in your life. You will need to understand how to rebound after you have lost your performance edge. How do you recognize that you are no longer running at peak performance? How do you create a system to help you get back to the performance levels that you expect? And, most importantly, how do you do all of this without “beating yourself up”?
Creating peak performance in your life is important and should feel right. If it is too difficult and feels too out of place, then you should look at what you are doing and ask yourself if you’re “pushing” in the right direction.
Peak performance is something everyone can benefit from. Go and enjoy your ability to create real change and to have a dramatic affect on your world and most importantly the people around you.