6 Keys to Becoming an Elite Performer Who Thrives Under Pressure

welcome back to the daily mastermind George Wright the third with your daily dose of inspiration motivation and education I am excited to be here with you today I'm down in Phoenix Arizona doing some work doing some business soaking up some Sun but I'll tell you what I am excited every day to be able to give messages for you on the daily mastermind as many of you know I have had about 25 years of growing brands and businesses for some of the biggest thought leaders, celebrities, and experts in the world. And the reason I do the Daily Mastermind is so that you can get some of these lessons that I've learned and I can give you some of that mindset that you can use to take your life to the next level. I mean, that's going to take all areas of your life, right? Mind, body, money, business, lifestyle. So that's what we do. We do that every single day, weekdays. And I'll usually give you a five to ten minute episode but sometimes we'll do some some key interviews now what I want to do I'm gonna do something a little different over the next few days if you're an avid reader or a student of success then you've probably come across the Harvard Business Review books you know I've gone through a lot of those over the years and they publish books like like for example they have a series called the HBR 10 must-reads these will usually be like 10 must-read articles on topics like leadership, communication, innovation, strategy, sales, teams, all that kind of stuff. And one of my favorite of these series is one on mental toughness. And I'll kind of go back to that every once in a while. I'll go back to it and just pick out topics or ideas that can help me in my life because I'm extremely focused on mental toughness in my own life right now, as many of you know, and I've been very impressed by the topics and things that are in this book that they did, the 10 must-reads on mental toughness. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to drill down into that over the next 10 days. You know, I really want to give you a lot of information and materials, you know, tactics, strategies, things you can do to build mental toughness, because mental toughness is something that you absolutely must develop. You know, if you're going to be a leader, if you're going to have any kind of success in your life. I mean, you can't just go through life without mental toughness if you want to get to the levels that we want to get to. And so in order for you to overcome setbacks and be even stronger, then you're going to have to have mental toughness. If you want to be a leader, a parent, a partner, you know, any kind of success. so this particular book that I'm talking about it's called the HBR 10 must reads for mental toughness and it got amazing strategies and things so I going to kind of go through some of these today I want to talk to you about an article done by Graham Jones and it how the best of the best get better and better And I hadn been too familiar with Graham Jones, but I know he's a best-selling author and a top performance consultant for businesses, military, athletes for like 20 years. But he wrote a book called Thrive on Pressure, which is actually a bestseller, and it's a great, great, great place for us to start. So let me kind of take you through some of these characteristics. Ultimately, what it boils down to is this. Elite performers learn to thrive under pressure. You know, not just under pressure, but on pressure. And I want to focus and point out to you six specific characteristics that, you know, he kind of points out in his article on peak performers that thrive on pressure. And if you can learn to, you know, adopt these traits and these strategies, you're going to definitely increase your mental toughness and your results overall. So let's go through these relatively quickly and I'll get you on with your day. The first trait of elite performers that thrive on pressure is that they love pressure. They love pressure. So you have to learn to remain cool under pressure, but you have to love the pressure and use it to drive your actual performance. And so he talks about how managing pressure is easier if you focus on your own excellence. I really love this because if you can focus on your own excellence, this helps you to be kind of inner focused and self-directed and get out of the need to impress other people. Learn to compartmentalize things that are going on in your life and just work on your own personal growth because when you work on your own personal growth, you're not caught up by all the distractions of everybody else. And he talks also about adding secondary passions because elite performers have that ability to kind of shut off, turn on and off endeavors that they're working on so that they can focus on other areas of their life. And the best way to do that is to have a secondary passion. Like maybe you have a hobby or something you love to do, something that's more creative, or maybe some other deal. Like for me, outside of business, I love to go to the gym. I love to work out and focus on fitness. You might have other types of passions, but in order to truly love the pressure and use it to drive you, you've got to also be able to learn to switch that off. Then the second trait that he talks about is that high achievers or elite performers, they fixate on the long-term. They fixate on the long-term. Now they have the ability to rebound and this is really attributed to the fact that they have a long-term vision, right those small you know little setbacks don't affect them as much because they have a long vision if you you know like Olympic athletes that plan for years and years and years of their life but yet they compete in nationals and things on a yearly basis So you have to learn to fixate on the long term and pave that road with short wins and achievements and short-term goals. Because elite performers are very meticulous with their short-term planning. And what that does ultimately is it helps them to not only have clarity of the vision, of the future, but also be very specific with the actions they need to take. But that fixation on the long term is definitely something that can help you with mental toughness because you don't get caught up in the smaller things, right? Now, the third characteristic is this idea of using the competition. And I love this idea because I've done this a lot during my life, but the principle is pretty simple. Train with people that push you the hardest. Because pushing yourself is good, But the competition, people that are at elite levels will push you far greater and outside your performance comfort zone. So use the competition. Find ways to grow by surrounding yourself with other elite performers. That would be like mastermind groups and programs and environments that will put you there. If you're not in an environment, you can get in one. You just got to make the decision. And there's so many examples of people that are pushing themselves. I mean, you could take actors like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They pushed each other. You could take, you know, NBA basketball players. You could take professional athletes and Olympians. In fact, they talk about how some Olympians will train from their competitors on different teams just to push themselves. So using that competition is something that's huge if you want to be an elite performer and gain mental toughness. Think about the toughness you're going to need to compete at that level. Then the fourth characteristic is learning to reinvent yourself. If you're a high achiever, you've got to learn to reinvent yourself. And the only way to do that truly is to desire feedback. I've had many times in my business career, in my life, that I've wanted to reinvent myself. But unless you have that insatiable desire to get feedback or advice or learn and grow, it's going to be really hard for you to reinvent yourself. but the advice, the training, the lessons and the growth that you can gain will help you to change and to grow and to develop because when you achieve levels of success you have to be able to motivate yourself to go to the next level and the only way to do that is to analyze what you did right, what you did wrong get the feedback and go to the next level and so learning to reinvent yourself is a key, key factor Then he talks about celebrities or celebrations you know that you would use as a key characteristic So let me break this down for you Elite performers know how to celebrate They know how to party. They work hard. They play hard. And it's not just like an emotional release after you have a big moment. I think any of you that have hit the milestones that, you know, you have over your life like I have. I mean if you don't learn to celebrate what happens is you don't truly acknowledge your win so a lot of us that are high performers we tend to hit a benchmark and the next thing we do is set another goal but if you don't stop and celebrate you don't have the ability to bring a little bit of analysis and awareness of what it took you to get there the gratitude to get you there and and so you have to celebrate those victories if you want to continue to motivate and inspire yourself to continue to grow. So high performers learn how to celebrate. And then the last characteristic that I really liked, and this is one for mental toughness 101, is you have to foster and build that desire for basically the process of winning. And what I mean by that is all elite performers have this fierce desire not just to win but to compete. You have to foster that inner desire and persistence to compete, not just win, because it's not just about getting first place. For high performers and mentally disciplined people, it's about competing because it takes grit and courage to get back in the ring, especially if you've had a defeat. But if you want to have mental toughness, it's about getting in the ring. It's about getting in the game. It's about being present and it's about the process because high performers that develop mental toughness, they enjoy the process. They enjoy competing generally. So those are some characteristics that if you want to build mental toughness, I'll just review them again with you real quick. You got to love the pressure and fixate on long term, use the competition, reinvent yourself, celebrate your victories, and foster that desire to compete as well as win. And those are some things I think will help you to develop some mental toughness. I'm really excited this week to give you some ideas and stories and strategies. I wanna be able to relate a little bit more to what you might be going through. So please hit me up, share this show at The Daily Mastermind on Facebook or Instagram. You can tag me in your stories, but I look forward to talking with you a little bit more. Reach out, let me know what you're working on, and let's work together to help you to create your best life. It's never too late to start winning and developing that attitude you need to go to the next level. I'll talk with you soon.