High-Performance Lifestyle
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by Geoff Colvin | Link to book
Many would say that great performers are gifted with “talent”— a form of innate skill possessed from childhood that enables these great performers to truly excel.
The talent myth is just that: a myth. Colvin’s work truly aims to dispel the lie about talent and instead charters a more realistic path to greatness — one that involves a concept called deliberate practice and a lot of time spent working on a skill.
There is no better example of a champion’s mindset than that of the legendary bodybuilder, Arnold Schwarzenegger. His first published book, Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder is one of the most motivating books I have ever read, and I have read it many times over.
My last experience was on a cruise ship sailing through the Caribbean islands. I purposely took the book with me because I wanted to read something that would keep me motivated and hungry, staying keen to the idea of physicality in an environment keen to the idea of excess.
The thing about cruise ships is that they are fertile grounds for the mediocre and are essentially full of those lost souls that have all but ceded to a life of absolute emptiness. Many are old, at the twilight of their lives, but many are young, hellbent on endless hedonistic pursuits.
Carrying Arnold’s book helped to keep me focused because Arnold was perhaps the most focused person that anyone could ever read about. Even at a young age, he maintained a steadfast vision for greatness:
I knew I was going to be a bodybuilder. It wasn’t simply that either. I would be the best bodybuilder in the world, the greatest, the best-built man. – Arnold Schwarzenegger
Disclaimer: The article was originally taken from Mountain Athlete which is now the Mountain Tactical Institute.
I read the following article many years ago when I was training for an elite Army school. I knew that it would be important to cultivate a strong mindset prior to the training but I vaguely knew how to get there.
I knew that it would take an immense amount of physical effort to peak for the training and the physical catalyst would inherently forge a tougher mental state. But that’s all that I knew.
The following article helped me to understand Mental Toughness beyond the ability to endure. That “it” also involved an ability to think clearly in times when you only want to think of surviving. It involves the ability to reason, to critically maneuver when you are dead tired. When you are in the middle of a mission, in the darkest of hours, and when all hope appears to be lost, that is when “it” matters most.
Those are the times when you must be mentally tough. But how do you get there? [Read more…]
I’ve been suspicious of The Secret for a long time. My quest for personal and professional development has taught me one thing: action towards a goal is the key factor of success.
That is why the idea of The Secret seemed so implausible to me. It seemed so fake, based on a false premise of hope versus action.
It seemed very much like a prayer. It was a shout into the wind. A prayer and not a call to action, that is how I used to view The Secret.
However, when I took the time to explore the ideas of the Law of Attraction, I became a believer. I took the time to actually read the book and not just explain away what I knew nothing about.
You see, The Secret to the Law of Attraction is about taking action because belief in oneself leads to action.
Question: What can I know? What can I do? Who can I become? What should I hope for?
Answer: Anything & Everything.
We live in the greatest time of human history — a time that allows us to reach for the highest of peaks, to strive to become the best in the world, a chance to chase excellence in all that we do.
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do no act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. – Aristotle
