Performance

Performance 

I get asked a lot for the top 10 ingredients for positive performance. In a nutshell, here they are: 

1) POSITIVE FEEDING 

You simply can't expect any part of you: mind body energy or spirit to be in a good state or function well if you're not going to provide your system with positive food. By that I don't just mean nutritional or healthy, I mean properly programmed for whatever you are undertaking. I get accused of 'eating technically'. Eating technically is what gets you results and it has a strong relationship to directional mindset and emotional state.

2) DIRECTIONAL MINDSET

Correct mindset training takes a 3 stage journey of observation and analysis, current application and altering, and future application and growth. If you don't know where you're going you simply can't get there. If you don't have an awareness of where you've been you don't appreciate your route and miss out on the attributes you've naturally picked up along the way. You must understand the present to correctly extrapolate appropriate lessons from the past and usefully apply those in a strategic way to your present position to benefit the future. All this is 'awareness', vital for driving successfully towards your goal. High performance is more than simply making up your mind to be positive and goal orientated: it starts with arming yourself with the twofold vision of clear perception and observant sight. 

3) SELF DISCIPLINE 

You can have all the wants in the world but the most common attribute which sets those who reach their goals apart from those who don't is self discipline. You have to firstly be committed to yourself and secondly be committed to your goals. If your goal is bettering yourself then your increase in performance will be more rapid. Once the route is chosen, and a good coach can help you with this, the goals are set and you move towards those through personal programming as a mechanism for development. Not a short route. Self discipline is needed to go the distance. This is why its easier to reach goals you are passionate about, because passion is a driver and soars you through the grinds of the self discipline needed for results, more easily. Nothing great comes quickly and without dedication so apply yourself, turn your determination into practical action day to day and you are on your way. I was once asked in an interview for a book what the principle quality for success is: To give one answer = True grit. 

4) EMOTIONAL MASTERY 

Being swayed by others is of no use for high level performance. You need to know your own mind, who to listen to and a good coach will keep you on track. We're constantly surrounded with emotional and energetic interference at some level or another and it's important to know when to get your head down and ignore the outside world in order to lay tracks. Be mindful of taking advice from those who haven't walked the walk, keep your friendship group a positive one and don't get deterred by set-backs. As Mohammed Ali brilliantly put it - it's not the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out but the pebble in your shoe. Get the pebbles out of your shoe, swiftly, without reacting, and climb on. 

If you've got emotional issues in your own life take the time to work them through. Ignoring them creates blocks which impact later no matter how hard you try to push them down. Journaling, meditating, exercising and talking problems through to understand the lessons in them are all critical for self development and building a stronger awareness of yourself. What you uncover or the processes you use will become tools to help you, and hopefully others, later in your life. 

5) FEELING GOOD 

Rest, exercise, time-out, fresh air, nature and fun, are positive requirements to boost the system. Make time for it. Daily ritual to connect you in to your self, bring your energy back to you and keep your vibration high is vital. Establish what keeps you inspired, motivated and joyful and keep it planned in! 

6) AWARENESS

Understanding the way of things is something largely ignored in the west as society mostly focuses on the day to day detail of personal issues and life-reacting. Take time to observe nature, patterns, sequences, human trends and you will learn the rhythm of things, understand how events play out and inform yourself to enable you to play a wiser game. 

Observing and listening requires non-action, stillness and patience. To hone these skills switch off the devices at certain times of the day or week to reduce stimuli and interference and give your intuitive abilities and inner composure a fighting chance. 

7) PHILOSOPHY 

Studying philosophy and applying a philosophical approach to life is a useful mechanism to enable you to sit back and survey without constant emotional reaction. If you can see the bigger picture you can play a longer game. In a modern culture of short attention-spans, the need for immediate gain and personal reward, the individual who can go the distance towards a higher goal with a considered approach to an outcome which benefits others or functions for the greater good, stands out further and will ultimately be a more fulfilled human being. 

Reading how others have questioned, pondered or analyzed aspects of life helps you develop your own viewpoint and set of values. Borrowed cultural thinking is not applicable for high performance, you have to push through to your own truth and use the tools available to you to do that. 

8) SPIRITUAL QUALITY 

Following the heart is the ultimate fuel for success. The more connected you are to your life path the faster the flow towards producing the results you want. 

This comes back to 'knowing' what you want (item 02). Often we can 'think' we know what we want but it's completely off the mark and we wonder why its not happening for us. Connecting to heartspace, finding that which drives you, lifts and inspires you is about giving yourself the freedom to think beyond current limitations, whatever they may be. Think outside the box, dream big and take control. I say this because often people feel powerless to change a situation. It's not about becoming a millionaire over night, it's about identifying what you truly want in your heart at this time. Give yourself a deadline and do it. 

The heart is the navigator and the connection point between you being both a spiritual being and a physical being, the point where spiritual and physical connect for creation of purpose in this lifetime, so do your best to connect to yours to engage in goals on track with the true You. 

9) TOOLBOX

A good coach will help equip you with a thorough toolbox packed with the tools you need. These tools should be physical, mental, emotional, communicative, energetic and spiritual daily practice: not just simply goal setting and throwing ego and willpower at it to get it to work. Increasing performance abilities is about nurturing the system at all levels to create sustainable growth and development underpinned with a solid self knowledge and understanding. Like placing bricks in the wall, abilities must be built up over time with patience, focus and determination. 

10) EYE ON THE TARGET 

Keep focused. "Over, under, sideways or through but never back."

was my personal mantra when training to fight competitively. I ended up applying it to everything. The position of your thinking is categorically the most significant factor to performance. Mantras and affirmations are useful positive linguistic programming which keep you focused towards your target. Thoughts and speech are energetically very powerful so programming them effectively keeps the eye clearly trained on the outcome. I see in the corporate world this focused steeliness often misunderstood for being a tyrant at work. This is not useful. Behaving badly towards others is a short-term approach to creating long-term problems for yourself. You can be a highly motivated, focused and determined individual whilst holding huge compassion and care towards others. It is your job as a human being to fulfil your potential whilst benefiting others. Those who study or coach leadership or performance must emphasise this in their teaching.  There can be a lot of language about personal focus and being strict with your time and energy and this can be mistaken for being selfish and being solely out for personal gain. Approach the job with that mindset and don't expect it to work. Performance results happen when you don't want to be the best in the world at something for personal gain, they happen when you want to be the very best You can be. 

For more information on performance and training visit www.fiveringstraining.com 

For more information on training the human system order "The Body of Your Life" by Kirsty Henderson available for order via www.fiveringstraining.com 

Leadership

With the election coming up its a good time to talk about leadership. What really is leadership and what makes a good leader?

Leadership coaching is all over the Internet, and with many references within that industry to Black Belt programs and leadership Dojos its worth doing an article from the perspective of having trained in real Dojos, having done the black belt curriculums and now running a school with its own. When I say real Dojos I simply mean the old school Japanese samurai ones as opposed to the conceptual business ones and by black belt curriculums I mean the ones you fight through.

It's an interesting process having gone through both experiences of traditional samurai training and a life in corporate business because you do clearly see the relationships from one to another. I certainly began to use "Black Belt tactics" (as others have humorously referred to them) in the conference room and construction site when I came back from my first black belt in Japan, and they work. Is that leadership? I think it's strategy and personal perspective which allows a waiting non reactionary state, which those who don't train much don't know about. 

It's also about reflexes and the fact that all that motor training has developed your grey matter into a state of razor sharp thinking. When you are presented with 'matters' at work you apply a fighter's mentality. For those only versed with popular media depiction of modern day martial arts, to explain, no that's not aggression or throwing your weight around, it's paying attention to the detail then looking beyond it, about 3 steps ahead beyond it, and deciding which parts to respond or react to out of the instant analysis you've just made of which ones are beneficial to you, what are the possibilities and what are the consequences and outcomes of the potential courses of action.

This is all the functioning of a big highly processing super charged computer. That computer is after all available to everyone. The reason why you can do it is because you spent the last decade or two training to do it. Those skills set you apart, because most people react, can't control their emotions, don't dispassionately view a situation and analyse it with a strategic mindset, and have no idea of patterns sequences and consequences. Time and energy are two factors you learn a lot about in traditional fight training, how things play-out, the sequences and the weight of decisions as they carry energy on through time changing state, impacting. 

The other thing you learn about is problems. I sat in the back of a taxi once with one of my bosses, sharing the return journey from a particularly excruciating meeting. He made a comment about my calmness. He later turned round and said to me "what do you think you get from all this fight training you do at the end of the day?" How could I sum it all up in one single sentence for him? I replied "my idea of a problem is not your idea of a problem." He nodded and looked out the window. Soon after that I received a promotion. 

These abilities naturally get you promotions because you're performing beyond the rest and making informed well considered decisions.

So what 'makes' a leader, how do you become one if you want to be one, and when we have to select one how can we choose? 

From what I've seen you can't become a leader just because you want to. In fact most people who become leaders at work, by that I mean true leaders, were busy doing something else. That is precisely it, the qualities that 'make a leader' come out of doing something else: advancing yourself. Advancing yourself normally commences with focusing on what you are passionate about, what you enjoy. Find that inner flame to fuel your fire energy of action and away you go...

All the Dojos I've trained in and the ones I run today are all about that: advancing the individual. That is the Budo concept. I watch as the students graduate up through their belts, they naturally become humans with leadership qualities. What they are focusing on is having fun, getting better at what they like doing. What I'm focusing on is their personal development, getting them to go beyond what they think is possible to become themselves. The process naturally creates a flourishing. Appointments of responsibility amongst a tightly bonded team with a common cause and good positive communication and respectful manners develop naturally. 

It's not just Dojos however, which make leaders. I was once in a Tender reading for a construction project to build a particular school and anyone who's ever done this knows it involves sitting in a small cupboard-like room in your local government authority offices with a waist high pile of documentation folders x 3 with 2 or 3 other 'readers' and a 7 hour deadline. That means you each have to read through every page of your 3 piles without speaking to each other and be complete within 7 hours. For most people it's a near impossible task because the mind wanders, it's unbelievably boring, you have others in the room you're not supposed to talk to and the conditions lead to the mind breaking the simple task of reading one word after another until it's done. 

Fresh back from another black belt in Japan and I was finished 3 hours early, but so was the guy next to me! We left the room. I looked at him, now interested. How did you do that? I had worked on a project with this guy for months but underneath the pink shirt and breezy persona here was a former operative who had carried out serious service in Ireland and Bosnia and more. It turned out he couldn't make the next project meeting because he was receiving an award for his heroic setting up of the incident room for part of the London bombings when a bomb went off outside an office he was having a meeting in. I can't do the account of his actions justice. Perhaps I will ask him to write it if he hasn't already, but he would probably be too modest. 

So there next to me was a leader. I knew he was a leader at work because of his position, but his true leadership qualities lay deep within and as applicable to project managing a school construction project as to instantly responding to a bomb in the street, barricading the front of the building and setting up an incident room outside appointing the company secretaries (the only ones ensured to have first aid certificates) to assist him. I was told those women did that, following his instruction, without flinching. 

You see a lot of this in the private sector. Under the sharp suits and colourful ties people who have gone beyond the normal limitations of what is expected from them to be able to offer more. Those are the ones who naturally take positions of leading others because they can do it without personal agenda. They're doing it not because they are trying to do it, they're doing it because simply they can.

Unfortunately those types of people don't often become available in the public sector arena of candidacy. Not to sweep too broad a brush across our politics today but the heckling of other parties and slamming of tactics diverts from the true integrity needed for a position in which other people rely on you to do something they can't do or won't. 

At the end of the day a true "leader" is another human being who ideally can brilliantly do what some of the others can't and therefore paves the way in front, inspiring and looking after those they 'are', or they 'feel',  responsible for. 

For more information on leadership and training opportunities visit www.fiveringstraining.com