Finding Peak Performance in The Sea of Life

The Struggle to Be Your Best

Every single day you wake up. You get out of bed and then the world smacks you in the face. There is so damn much to do - so much weighing you down that it’s nearly impossible to do any one thing well.

Is There a Way to Overcome The Little Things?

Some things require your complete focus and attention - For instance:

• Maybe you need to raise your grade in a class with a perfect final exam?
• Maybe you’re nervous about delivering a presentation at work?
• Maybe you need to overcome the yips on the 1st nervous hole of your next round of golf?

Finding Peak Performance

If you’ve read this far, you probably have an activity that you want to excel at. Keep that idea in mind as you continue to read. The following chain of posts is going to take a look at some of the science behind performing at your best or operating at peak performance at whatever you do.

I’m a firm believer in gaining perspective. Consider the times in your life when everything was easy. You just did it - You didn’t edit yourself - Critiques were left outside the door. Think back to that day. Man it felt good!

Contemplate that feeling and ask yourself:

• What was happening?
• Why were you so successful?
• Have you ever been able to recreate that feeling with any consistency? If you’re like most people, probably not. Why?

The Left Brained World

Because it’s a left brain world, your left brain (the part of your mind that edits and reviews and criticizes) is incredibly active. You need your left brain to guide you through life. Your left brain tells you not to invest money into one of those crazy Ponzi scheme emails with a rich relative in Nigeria or invest in swampland in Florida (The exception being all the swampland Walt Disney bought in Florida fifty years ago. Yes, that would have been a good investment).

Your left brain is very active as it guides you through some important decisions. Here’s a few examples of how the left brain helps you:

• Paying your bills on time
• Language syntax and punctuation
• Educated, logical business decisions - Much of what you do at work or at school involves analytic left brain thinking.

The problem is that your left brain also holds you back from utilizing all the power in your right brain.

Right Brain Power

Your right brain is full of fantastic abilities that make you special. Your right brain doesn’t hold judgments. The right brain just performs. When you see athletes like Tiger Woods play, you know he has access to his right brain. Listen to what Tiger says after a big win. He says he played within himself and he felt good. He uses the word “feel.” Feeling is a right brained activity.

Go to an art museum and look at a Picasso. Is it possible that Picasso painted with a great deal of logic? No - Picasso’s paintings are beautiful and inspiring, but heads are displaced onto midsections. Eyes are large and colorful. Cubism is a representation of the world. Picasso’s mind, likely his right brain, saw things in a different way.

I’m sure you can think of famous scientists or politicians that you really connect with or business people you admire - all performing at a different level than the rest of us. There are people in this world who overcome the distractions in life and who reach their G-d given potential. These are the people who get the best grades, get the best jobs, make the most money, hit the golf ball more accurately, write with more emphasis and emotion, give the best presentations, etc. These are the people who are able to rise to the occasion and perform in an extraordinary way.

The Question is Why? To better understand this question, we’re going to look at some of the science behind people who have learned to access both the left and right side of the brain. Stay tuned for my next post - The Science Behind Peak Performance.

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