1: You’ve got it all wrong.

You’ve been taught that stress is bad for you.

This belief is harmful, Kelly McGonigal argues in The Upside of Stress.

“The best way to manage stress isn’t to reduce or avoid it, but rather to rethink and even embrace it.”

The fight-or-flight survival instinct is part of your stress response.  When something major happens, your sympathetic nervous system mobilizes your entire body.… continue reading

1: “Have you ever looked up at the clock after working intensely on a project and been amazed at how quickly the time has flown by?” Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram ask in their book The 5 Gears: How to Be Present and Productive When There is Never Enough Time.

“That is 5th gear,” they note.

Also called “in the zone” or “in flow,” 5th gear is your ability … continue reading

“Many of the opportunities you have in your life are generated by the energy you create around you.” —Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica

1: It’s Tuesday.  Time to take on the day.

There is, however, a hidden enemy working against us.

“Every time we switch tasks,” Dan Martell writes in his book Buy Back Your Time, our “brains have to switch focus.”

The technical term for this is “context … continue reading

1: Sometimes, entrepreneur and author Dan Martell plays a little game with his coaching clients.

“It’s a mini-test disguised as a simple question,” he writes in his book Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire.

He sends a text: “Do you have time for a quick call in the next hour?”

How they answer gives Dan insight into how that coaching client is … continue reading

1: We are chasing the impossible. Peak performance is our goal.

Step one: Align our intrinsic motivators: curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, and mastery.

Step two: Layer in our goals.  

The final piece of the puzzle? Seven daily practices and six weekly practices. These are our non-negotiables. 

“If we want to sustain peak performance long enough to accomplish the impossible—whatever that is for us—we’re going to need to weave these items … continue reading

1: We’ve just had an intense “flow state” experience. 

We’ve been completely absorbed in the activity, losing our sense of time. Our actions and awareness have melded together, and we’ve felt a powerful sense of being in control. 

We’ve successfully traveled through the first three stages of the flow cycle: Struggle, release, and then flow.

How do we feel?

Likely, we’re wiped out. “Even the extra energy … continue reading

1: Psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s believed he discovered the “secret to happiness.”

He labeled it “the flow state.” It’s when we are completely absorbed in an activity. Also known as being “in the zone,” we lose our sense of time. Our actions and awareness become one in which we have a heightened sense of control. 

We enter the flow state through as part of a four-step process. So far this week, … continue reading

1: We come home from work tired.  We’ve struggled to solve a problem.  We decide to take a shower.  To wash away all our frustrations. 

Standing there, we feel the water beating against our bodies.  We relax.  Our mind wanders.

Boom.  An idea hits us like a flash of lightning. 

What just happened?  We’ve moved through three of the four stages of the flow cycle: from “struggle” to … continue reading

1: We’ve all experienced the joy of “being in the zone.” 

We’re entirely focused on the task at hand. We have a heightened sense of clarity and creativity. We’re focused, deliberate, intentional. Time slows down. There’s a sense of peace and a feeling of being in control. 

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi first coined the phrase “flow state” in 1975. Mihaly, known as the “father of flow,” defines it as “a … continue reading

1: This week, we’ve been doing a deep dive into peak performance. We must get into a flow state to perform at the highest levels.

We do so by engaging flow triggers, including autonomy, the curiosity-passion-purpose triad, complete concentration, the challenge-skills balance, clear goals, and immediate feedback.

All of these are internal flow triggers. They arise from within us.

However, there are also external flow triggers, Steven Kotler writes in … continue reading