A human’s brain is probably the most complex machine on this planet. Though just a mention, a woman’s brain is even more complex. (No pun intended here. By every man’s experience!). Though a lot has been understood about how the brain functions, a lot is still a mystery. That mystery is not the topic I am addressing here since both by qualification and expertise, I am simply referring to a known fact that our brains are wired to save energy by default.
Think about how automatically you open the door of your car with your right hand or simply turn left when you exit a door at a new place to find it is not taking you anywhere and you have to turn around to get your way right. Similarly, most of our daily work is literally hard wired in the brain to make quick decisions and call. That hard wiring helps our daily living or else you and I may even struggle to brush our teeth everyday as a new motion would have to be found! But our brains are smart, they pave a way to save energy and advanced thinking.
Hence if that hard-wiring helps us save efforts on the other hand it also brings us certain habits that are not worth the effort of hard-wiring. Say as an example, watching television while eating dinner or simply smoking your lungs out for cancer. Good part is that permanence of hard-wiring can be modified (not permanently changed) with daily practice if you really want to make peak performance to achieve your goal and in that case thinking about your loved one who does not love you back is your goal too.
So when you see Roger Federer taking that forehand massively on his opponent, it is practice of many years that makes him that good at it. No magic here but simply many hours & hours of practice to bring that effort to milliseconds. And so is true for Oprah Winfrey or Ellen DeGeneres when they magically melt into their audience and the individual they are interviewing. It is a combination of a natural inclination for a task combined with daily practice of that task that makes you reach peak at your performance. This also means that if you suddenly forget everything in your final exam or drop a catch in a crucial match for a win-lose situation after endless hours of practice then that really has nothing to do with your skills or talent as you have already put that effort. It just means that in that moment you had a mind glitch or you just simply panicked to let yourself down in that crucial time of your peak performance. Thus it is so wisely said, practice many times your match before you get to the main stage.
To get there follow these two daily rituals to reach the pinnacle of your performance.
Practice without judging the result
Most of the times we do not accomplish goal because we think more about the end result than about the execution and journey towards that goal. Say a sales guy knows that his sales targets are exorbitant and cannot be achieved. So he gives up at the beginning already and starts looking for another job to pass his tenure before he reaches climax of not achieving his targets. And this thinking becomes hard-wired and keeps repeating in all the jobs and tasks he pursues. I am not saying that companies set realistic targets for their sales teams but what I am saying is that the end result is really not that important as the journey towards that goal is. Had Vasco de Gama thought the same way, route to India for spices would have stayed unfolded. Primarily, it is a short life, set your targets higher than yourself without judging the end result or thinking about which other competition is setting similar targets to get a promotion and who else is worse than you so that you could stay at mediocrity.
It is damn Tough
You know that, it is not easy to reach the pinnacle of your area. Yes, that is somewhat true because if it were that easy then every Jack and Jerry would be sitting there smiling at you with a fluff around his face. But that does not happen much or mostly. So the critical feature that sets top performers apart is the daily ritual of self -belief, telling yourself to believe to work-hard, work even harder, and then failing to reach a point when nothing but pure inner conviction plays to get you to the point you want to reach and have targeted. As by this tenure of perseverance, you have already hard-wired your brain to perform at peak.
These are not any two tools but are proven practices that will ascertain your character in your LIFE that matters more than anything else. Go for your life at full guns. (Don’t keep a gun literally like a general American. No pun intended here). The simple idea of mediocrity is a passé and it will eat you from inside until you end your life. Not sure beyond. But live your life with rituals that define your identity.
I will be delighted to hear from you about your goals and stay connected until you reach your pinnacle, your top peak performance.
Connect with me at irachitkapoor on facebook or instagram. Write to me at rachitk27@gmail.com
