An Insatiable Desire To Be A High Performer

As part of the Self Improvement Fast Track series, today I want to elaborate on the fifth and final reason why people like you choose to invest time in their self-improvement, which is to to meet their insatiable desire for self-growth, taste their fullest potential, and be a high-performer.

These are people who want to be in incredible shape and physically be able to do things very few are capable of at their age. They want to excel in their career and be a part of extraordinary projects that make a real difference to improve lives and change the world. And they want to share incredible experiences with loved ones to cultivate a deep sense of connection and joy for life. 

The challenge is many people go about ‘scratching this itch’ by consuming more content - reading more books, listening to podcasts, watching Ted Talks. They figure that if they’re a sponge for self-improvement material their life will change as a result. But it leads a lot of people astray because they’re spending so much time learning and active "doing all of the right things”, yet they’re not getting out anywhere near as much as they put in. 

It’s people who’ve read ‘Atomic Habits’ and know all about habit formation, but still struggle to be consistent with their health routines. They’ve heard on a podcast that it’s not healthy to be driven by achievement or compare themselves to others, yet they unconsciously seek out opportunities for external validation and feel insecure that they’re not doing enough. People who pick up “Essentialism” and learn the value of focusing efforts on the critical few, yet find themselves still overstretched with too many things on their plate. Someone who knows the benefits of cold exposure, or intermittent fasting, but hasn’t implemented it as a consistent practice, or if they have it’s just because they think they should and they don’t really know if it’s doing anything for them.

It’s not uncommon for people to learn about a new idea, recognize that it addresses a problem that they’re facing, yet nothing changes about it.

A high-performer knows that taking consistent action and integrating feedback is the path to improvement. But just because they’ve learned that doesn’t mean they have the structures and systems in place to actually optimize their life... And because of it they feel like they’re not good enough and constantly falling short of being the person they know they’re capable of.

Knowledge and information is like fuel for a car, you need some to go but if you want to go further, go faster, or be better, it’s probably not going to do much. Instead what you need is a new system that utilizes the fuel, a new engine, that takes what you’re learning and turns it into real tangible growth.

Once you get in the process of observing your growth every single day, and use feedback to make adjustments that improve your health, productivity, and level of intentionality in everything you do, that’s when you become capable of accomplishing extraordinary things and living an extraordinary life.