Improve

Picture this… You are a fully engaged performer. You have a Dream. You have a Vision... and it strangely makes you anxious...

• You might be satisfied with your level of achievement, but you wonder about how far you can go in life ("Is this all there is?").

• You might be doing great, but you know that you need to learn more or change the way you do things - because otherwise factors outside your control could change your world forever ("When will I max out or lose my edge?").

• Often times, competitors, market variations (or a pandemic) force you to go after a new dimension, a new set of possibilities if you are to survive in the market ("Time to jump off... I'm traveling on the Titanic!")

As the owner of your Vision, you are committed to go “beyond personal best."

• You make your Vision big, at least 300% bigger than where you are today.

• You work on refining your Focus, on making your Vision a vivid reality in your mind.

• You work hard at understanding how you can connect where you are today with your "moonshot," with the new reality that represents what you most desire.

• You intuitively "feel" your new reality. In your imagination, "you are what you want to be.”

• You can feel the emotions, think the thoughts and act the behaviors of your Ideal Performance State, when you are "in flow," in the zone.

Now, how can you make things happen for real?

While you "live" your Vision, your job is to design the stepping-stones that will get you there. This is a process of transformation, as when a professional athlete decides to be the best or a business executive commits to implement a growth plan.

I call this process "The Breakthrough Blueprint."

When you start your planning process, you enter the IMPROVE stage of your journey towards Breakthrough Performance. You are now "in training," systematically sharpening your skills. You are “in training” for life.

Here is the fundamental concept of lifelong training to achieve results:

To realize your Vision, you need to manage Energy, not Time.

• You must train to increase our physical, emotional and intellectual capacity to deal with pressure.

• If you don't learn to create stress and recovery energy waves, you risk burning out before you reach your goal.

• You must learn the strategies, skills, and behaviors that will transform you into the leader that your Vision requires.

• You commit to training to become a Peak Performer for life.

A Peak Performer is a versatile, creative, resilient and situational Thinker who designs extraordinary results.

The goal of IMPROVE is to become a Peak Performer and operate in your Ideal Performance State (IPS).

In my work with Peak Performers in sports, business and the arts, I assist them in the development of their personal Breakthrough Blueprint by improving their capacity to sustain their Ideal Performance State - the physical, emotional and intellectual factors that allow them to operate at their best on cue, on demand, under pressure.

In your IPS, you are relaxed, focused, energized, in the moment, joyful, resourceful, regardless of the pressure, because you manage how you perceive it and respond with High, Positive emotions.

• A senior healthcare executive at a multinational company consulted me before taking a promotion that would keep him traveling internationally for approximately 80% of the year. He had no way out: that was the requirement of the new position. In addition to such demands, he would have to learn an inordinate amount of technical content within the first three months.

• My suggestion was to go into training to improve his physical conditioning, as well as his speed-reading, visual thinking and creative skills. The advice paid off, as he was able to thrive under extreme pressure, delivering the results his position demanded and finding joy in the challenge.

That's the key test: Are you able to "love the challenge" while you are improving your skills in the performance arena?

IMPROVE requires a commitment to simultaneously analyze "what is" and engage in "what can be."

• It involves dealing with our inertia and resistance to change by understanding the new value that the process will yield as well as its emotional (and monetary) cost.

• The way to overcome resistance is to learn to "love the battle" through training. We start by accepting our decision to "go beyond personal best" and breaking down the steps into small tasks, as well as creating enjoyment and rewards along the way.

IMPROVE provides you with the endurance, flexibility, strength, speed and resiliency you need to transform yourself and achieve your Vision.

IMPROVE and The Peak Performance Mindset

We are all performers: we are judged by how we deliver results under pressure. However, corporate life can be a never-ending cycle of pressure, haste and fatigue due to the global economy. An executive's body and mind face unique performance challenges and are constantly threatened by burnout.

Billie Jean King, one of the greatest female tennis players in history, says: "Champions believe pressure is a privilege and they learn to adapt."

Regardless of our profession or activity, adaptation is what separates peak performers from the rest. The way we think about pressure influences the way we feel and the way we react.

Conversely, acting is adapting. If we act confidently with our body, we start feeling calm and controlled. The better we become at acting out the emotions we need to feel, the better we can adapt to pressure.

Peak performance is a psychological state commonly described as flow, excellence, personal best, concentration, the zone, full engagement, synergy, or the ideal performance state.

My work with Dr. Loehr helped me understand what is common to all definitions of peak performance:

Peak Performance is the ability to access empowering emotions on demand, under pressure and consistently.

It is a learned response to a physical or emotional challenge, which you can train like other skills.

• Peak Performance Thinking is about drawing out high energy when it counts: it is about Responsiveness - and it applies to any area of life.

• Peak performers can reproduce the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that lead to a state of high, positive emotion or the "Ideal Performance State" (IPS), as defined by Dr. Loehr.

• We all have the ability to access IPS and cultivate it towards greater achievement.

Opera singer Renée Fleming writes in her autobiography The Inner Voice - The Making of a Singer: "Stepping into a role should be like getting into a car: you no longer have to be conscious of how to drive at this point, but only of where you're going. I expect it's the same kind of experience for an athlete--in that case, it's the concept of going into the zone. There is a kind of suspension of thinking involved, as though there is so much inspiration and ease that it feels as if you're channeling the music rather than singing it. Reaching that place allows me, in a sense, to step out of the music's way and leave my mind free to discover new shadings in the role that I might have missed in the past."

Peak performers describe IPS as a feeling of calmness, relaxation, enjoyment, energy, optimism, effortlessness, mental focus, confidence, control and being in the present, in the moment.

Among all of them, enjoyment under pressure is a critical measure: peak performers embrace challenges and have fun "solving the puzzle," interpreting the struggle as "learning" to discover what works and how to reach their goals.

Defining Your "Peak Performance” moment:

• Recall a peak event in your life or in your profession when you felt you were in your Ideal Performance State, in the flow, in the moment, where you felt that everything was going your way.

• What made it so powerful? What were you thinking? How did you feel? What were you doing? How did you handle pressure? What did you learn about yourself?

Take the Peak Performance Test

Click on the button to take a short Self-Evaluation on your Peak Performance Skills. You will be able to increase your capacity by using the content and the exercises in this book.

INTERVIEWS on The Peak Performance Mindset

Since 2003, I’ve conducted dozens of interviews about the Peak Performance Mindset with high achievers from a variety of industries and backgrounds. This is a selection of their expert viewpoints:

"The exploration of what Peak Performance is has really been the core of my life and it's been a very interesting adventure. I initially came to understand that it was a very special feeling climate that people had inside themselves that enabled their genius to surface to be able to be their best in those moments of high, critical stress, or in those moments when it's most important. As I began to understand the physiology involved, I began to realize that performing at your best is fundamentally an energy management issue. It's bringing the best and full energy that you have, that's multidimensional, physical, emotional, mental and even spiritual to wherever you are doing in this moment, right now. It's an acquired skill set and I even come to refer to it now as this 'engagement' space. It's the space where your Ideal Performance State really takes hold and you can immerse yourself so completely in what you are doing that you can do and what you do are fundamentally one and the same. It's acquired, it takes a lot of hard work and many years to hone the ability to enter that space, but it's definitely controllable, yet you never get complete control over it. There are lots of feelings that surface around it. There's the feeling of calmness, the feeling of focus, of being very automatic and instinctive, but really what comes out of it is this merging of energy and awareness and what I refer to as 'discretionary effort' in the pursuit of igniting what you are capable of in the moment in which you are right here, right now, in spite of the brutality of whatever conditions you might face. You have to train physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually, which is the energy associated with purpose. You have to have your purpose aligned with your emotions, your thinking and your body with what it is you want. The more you do that, the more likely you are to access that space and enter that special place where your talent and skill become accessible. It's kind of what we are all trying to do in the course of our lives. It's a very exciting place to go. It's not easy to get there, but you can get there with practice and training." - Dr. Jim Loehr, Sport Psychologist, Author, Chairman, The Human Performance Institute

"Peak performance is being in a flow. That's the inward feeling, and then the overall description would be to be on my mission." - Philipp Johner, Managing Director of Manres AG, Executive Consultant, former Swiss Kickboxing Champion.

"It's one of those abstract words... 'peak.' People think different things about it, but in my mind is being able to realize your potential. Everybody comes with a different sets of skills, physically... intellectually... and, of course, when you set some kind of goal or objective, whatever your potential happens to be, when you meet it, in my mind that would be Peak Performance." - Steve Sullivan, Author, Motivational Speaker, former Army Ranger and Sales Superstar.

"Peak Performance to me is the ability to deliver toward objectives with the maximum energy that you have available in a focused fashion to meet the objectives at hand." - Bob Alexander, IT Project Manager

"Peak Performance to me has an elegance to it. Peak Performers are people who seem to have the ability to produce things that have a symmetry to it. It might be totally out of balance but it's out of balance in a way that it makes it very compelling to watch. So, things that seem to me fitting in that category have that elegant, compelling aspect to them." - Dudley Lynch, Author, Breakthrough Thinking Expert

"Peak Performance can mean doing whatever you are doing in a very good way, strong way, and with complete confidence. The question is then, if what you are now doing, the routine of what you are doing, doing it well, is that enough for Peak Performance, or should we sometimes try to improve or change what we are doing to get, in a sense, Peak Effect, as well as Peak Performance." – Dr. Edward de Bono, Author, Thinking Expert, Creator of Lateral Thinking

"Performance in sport is like in business: the first thing is to get pleasure in what you do. In sailing, you create a team and if you want it to perform, first you need the pleasure and to have pleasure you have to practice. And when you practice, you are very aware of what you have to do, everybody needs to know what to do, and when you really want to have the mastery, when you really can do what you want with your boat, you start to have pleasure, and when you have pleasure you start to be good." - Philippe Cardis, Real Estate Entrepreneur, Skipper, Julius Baer Trimaran Decision 35

"I think Peak Performance is embodied in four components which have to be in balance. The first one is to be physically fit. You have to be able to be physically fit to be able to do whatever job you are doing. Second, you have to be mentally prepared. You have to have the competence to do the job or task that you have at hand. Thirdly, is emotion. Your emotions play a lot in any job that you do and I think that you have to be emotionally stable and positive. And, lastly, whatever faith you are, I think you have to have some spiritual background. In other words, you have to believe in some kind of higher power. And each one of these have to be in balance; you have to be steady so you can perform at your peak. If you don't have this foundation, these four fundamentals: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, I don't believe you perform at your peak." – Maj. Gen. (Ret.) Charles Swannack, Commanding General 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq

"Peak Performance is when you are one with what's coming out of you. It's almost, like I call it, it's almost like 'automatic writing.' You lose a sense of self-consciousness and the words are right coming through you, like you are a medium. Time doesn't mean anything. You don't know almost where you are. You are just sort of one with what you are doing. Joseph Campbell called it 'the bliss state.' Different people have described it in different ways, but that sort of what it is. For me, and certainly for most of the writers I know, what we would call Peak Performance is just flowing through you and you are just completely trusting your intuitive sense of where you are going or what you are doing." – Gloria Nagy, Writer and Playwright

"I think my personal definition of Peak Performance is not only achieving the highest level that you can in a particular skill that you may be working on, but achieving that level in something you have a passion for. I think many people work and they train on a skill, for example in coaching a stroke in tennis, and with a certain amount of repetition they can gain a very high level at a particular stroke. But the players that have a passion developing that stroke are the ones who achieve what I consider Peak Performance. There's high level and there's Peak Performance, and without the passion, without that intrinsic satisfaction, that comes from whatever it is, whatever skill you are working on, I don't think you achieve your Peak Performance." - Fred Robinson, Entrepreneur and U.S. Seniors Tennis Champion

"Peak Performance is a method to help people act at their best, at their personal hundred percent, and to use their whole capacity, their whole potential. When I perform at my best, let's say during a speech, I got prepared, I have all the points in my mind that are important for the issue I'm speaking about, and at my peak performance moment, I never think about what I thought in the beginning, which could have been very important, tt comes out by itself. It's like somebody runs you. I don't have to take care about anything anymore. I'm so prepared, I'm so deep in the issue that everything goes very easy and it's very easy to pick up by those who are listening." – Klaus Regnault, Executive Coach, Complex Coaching and Consulting

"Peak Performance to me means achieving a person's potential. It could be in any industry, even if it's in sports, business or even personal life. There are probably two components by which a person can reach their potential. One, is preparation, whether it is a sporting event for which they need to get in shape or whether it's a corporate strategy or some goal that's been set, to prepare, to make sure that the right people are in place, and make sure the right strategy is in place. The second component is the actual execution. It's being in the present, not thinking about other things that will cause your mind to deviate away from what your goal was." - Dr. Hemanth Rao, Neurologist, Serial Entrepreneur, Former India Davis Cup Team Member

"To me, Peak Performance is when my mind and my thoughts really kick in to do the job that I need to get done: to fly an aircraft. One of the amazing things with our training is that they try to expose us to almost everything that could happen, whether it is weather or aircraft related, such as aircraft malfunctions, so we get used to the experience of dealing with problems may arise. So, through our training, it almost becomes like walking or riding a bike, things become natural. What does that for us is that allow us to almost remain restful while we are performing our jobs so when something does arise and the adrenaline kicks in, our minds and our actions are ready to perform. That's how we apply peak performance to flying and in aviation." - Maj. David Higginbotham, USAF Pilot, USAFA National Center for Leadership and Character Development Director

"Peak Performance is being totally engrossed in something and yet being able to access physical, mental and emotional resources. I think that one of the reasons it's so difficult is that it's easy to be engrossed in something but it's not so easy while having to access all those skills that you've built over the years. It's easier to live in the moment and forget all those things that you were working on yesterday that you wanted to incorporate today. So, part of that is how you access those skills and abilities that you have, and for so many people with so many competing priorities in their life, you want to give yourself permission to only focus yourself on this activity. There are so many activities in which I want to have peak performance or to do well in that I have to have permission to say: 'This is all I'm going to work on right now. For this period right now, this is it, nothing else is part of my thought process.' I've given myself permission to focus just on this one area." - Mike Walker, Investment Banker, Goal Cultivator and Strategic Coach

"I can take two tributaries, as it were. One, a Peak Performance can be when I played my best when I didn't feel my best, and then, when I played my best when I was feeling really good. They are both satisfying, but sometimes when you are not feeling physically at your best and you still manage to perform your best, that's more satisfying because you've overcome things that would stand in your way, such as if you were more experienced, perhaps, or if you had been more prepared. I had a teacher who said: 'If you wait for your lip to feel really great to play a concert, you'll never play a concert.' So, quite often we are tired because we have lots of rehearsals leading up to a concert, five or six in a week. At my age, especially, I'm a little more tired that I used to be. But, then again, when you are feeling really good and strong, then you maybe even able to do more with the performance, and that's fun too. Either way, it's a Peak Performance. It's when you don't make mistakes, when you've made great music and everything comes out good. It also has a lot to do with your colleagues, with what's going on around you. When they are having their Peak Performance it's magical, so you feel even better about your performance." – Frank Portone, former Principal Horn, Charlotte Symphony, Dramatic Tenor

"My concept of Peak Performance would be 'getting out of yourself.' You have what your limits are, what you think your limits are, and going beyond those limits. I think I got that concept in basic training as a cadet. You think you can go so hard, and you are used to going hard, you know, high school track, cross country... a lot of athletes come to the Academy and they think they know what their Peak Performance is, but you find yourself in a different environment and that gets redefined. You have to go beyond you thought you could to succeed in that environment. That's what it means to me. I have worn a lots of hats in my life, so that concept has change a lot for me. Having kids, for example. When you have a child, that Peak Performance is entirely different. You are in labor, you are a mom, or as an entrepreneur or bringing a team together. Some things you do on your own, the labor, or physical things like basic training, but for a team the concept differs. Being in the Air Force, I come across a lot of pilots and they do a lot of their work by themselves. Their Peak Performance might be more of an individual thing, which I think might be a little easier to regulate. But, in my experience as an entrepreneur, in sales and in marketing, you have a team; it's not just about you, it's about you can help other people in your team reach their Peak Performance. You cannot reach your peak until they reach theirs. That's similar to what I've seen here at the Center for Character Development. We, as a Center, cannot reach our peak for the Symposium or the other major events we have, when we all have to be on the same sheet of music, unless each of the individual parts are able to do that." – Maj. Sheilagh Carpenter – USAFA National Center for Leadership and Character Development

"Peak Performance to me is being able to produce results at a very high level, when you need to, when it's important, to be able to be "on," to be able to have confidence, to be calm and "know," that you are going to perform at a very high level regardless of the outcome. Obviously, you have a goal and you want the outcome to be great, but Peak Performance is letting go of the outcome but be completely prepared to be at your best when you need to be, and to be able to turn it on when it's important. In sports, in a big match, being completely prepared and ready, regardless whether you win or lose, you are going to perform at a very high level." - Karin Buchholz, Senior VP Development National Kidney Foundation; former VP of Community Relations and Fan Development, New York Knicks NBA Basketball Team

“Peak performance for me is when I feel I am at my best physically and mentally and I can take on anything that is thrown my way.” - William Cox III, Race Car Driver

“Peak performance for me is when I can perform at my best and deliver in the most high pressure situations. The best example would be when we won the championship in 2017 in the last race under a lot of pressure to do so. We were able to turn the pressure into a positive, I was able to embrace it and deliver. Another example was also when I was racing with my legs broken, we created a routine that even in that situation I was able to get in my peak performance state and drive at my best.” - Pietro Fittipaldi, Formula One Team Haas Reserve and Test Driver

The IMPROVE Four Key Questions:

• What knowledge, skills, attitudes and habits do you need to IMPROVE to achieve your Vision?

• How can you increase your capacity and sustain your Ideal Performance State under pressure?

• Who will support you and guide you through your transformation process?

• What are your Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Measures that will define your 300% achievement, fulfillment and sense of meaning?

IMPROVE: The Loehr Peak Performance Training Model

Peak Performance is Full Engagement

Dr. James Loehr, author of Mentally Tough and The Power of Full Engagement, developed a model that aligns the key factors that lead to Peak Performance. I had the privilege of working closely with Dr. Loehr from 1988 through 1993, assisting in the application, validation and expansion of his model, which focuses on his definition of the Ideal Performance State or IPS - and how it leads to Full Engagement.

"The power of Full Engagement is the power of human energy when it's properly managed, which means: we summon all the physical energy we can in the service of what matters, we summon the right emotions, a sense of hope, the sense of belief in ourselves, we summon the right way of thinking to ensure that this mission is going to be successful and then we connect to the values. That's the force that makes us powerful as human beings. And when all those are lined up, that's when we really have a chance of completing the mission we are on in life and of being extraordinary in every single thing we put our energy into." - Dr. Jim Loehr

• Peak Performance is the ability to access your Ideal Performance State consistently to design solutions and lead effectively. It's a learned response to life's challenges which you can train like other fundamental skills. Resilience is the result of such training.

• The vast majority of world-class athletes, artists and high achievers in business use the same vocabulary to define how they feel, think and act under pressure when everything is going their way. When we perform at our best, we are in a state of flow, in the zone, and everything we do seems natural, comfortable and within our skills set.

Key Markers of Peak Performance:

• Purpose fuels performance: we must know why we do what we do at all times. It helps to invest the appropriate amount of energy and achieve our Ideal Performance State.

• Energy, not time, is the fundamental currency of Peak Performance. Performance, health and happiness are grounded in the skillful management of energy. When you operate in High Positive Energy, you are fully engaged.

• Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.

• There are four ways to deal with competitive pressure: Withdrawal, Anger, Choking and Loving the Challenge.

Withdrawal:

• to walk away from the pressure (to quit, to avoid commitment)

• to pretend not to care to preserve one's self-esteem

Anger:

• to blame external factors for bad performance

• to show negative emotions under pressure

Choking:

• to become anxious and confused under pressure (anticipation)

• to show fear and lose track of the strategy (paralysis by analysis)

Loving the Challenge:

• to embrace the pressure and face each and every one of the obstacles that appear in competition or in project

• to "love the battle" and summon positive emotions to carry out the winning strategy

• most desirable response that sustains the Ideal Performance State

Key Factors in Peak Performance Training

Making lasting changes requires a three-step process: Awareness, Commitment and Transformational Work. Wishful, willful or positive thinking alone cannot yield consistent results.

We need to summon our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual resources to engage ourselves fully into our Ideal Performance State, on demand and under pressure. We need to train to increase our capacity in these areas.

Physical Skills Training

1. to Seek Stress;

2. to make Stress and Recovery waves, and

3. to Train Recovery.

Your Physical Peak Performance depends on increasing your capacity to handle Stress and balancing your energy expenditure with waves of Recovery.

• To build capacity, we must push beyond our normal limits, training in the same systematic way that elite athletes do (a process called Periodization).

• If you exceed your energy expenditure from Stress without Recovery, you typically show signs of Burnout (imbalance) and your performance decreases.

• Downtime is productive time: we must "train" recovery to balance our workload and to grow in different areas of our lives, rather than just in the work dimension.

Emotional Skills Training

1. Acting "as if" under pressure;

2. Mental and Emotional Training (shift and adapt)

3. the creation of positive Rituals.

Acting “as if” under pressure:

• When we act the way we want to feel, the brain interprets such behavior literally and reacts accordingly. You use your body to act the emotions you want to feel.

• Rehearse and display the behaviors that make you feel confident (such as your Confident Fighter Walk).

Mental and Emotional Training (shift and adapt):

• We need to train mentally in a consistent and systematic way, becoming flexible, versatile, adaptable, creative and situational thinkers. Clarify your values (what drives you), focus on the big picture (your 300% Vision) and visualize Success.

• Perspective shifting, creative thinking skills and humor are the tools to move from how we really feel to how we need to feel on demand, under pressure. Maintain an “I love the battle” attitude, enjoy and practice humor, be comfortable being uncomfortable, learn creative thinking skills and always look for alternatives for what’s taken for granted.

Creation of Positive Rituals:

• Positive energy rituals - highly specific routines or habits for managing energy - are essential to full engagement and sustained high performance. Monitor the Quantity and Quality of Sleep, Diet, Exercise, Relaxation, Intellectual Stimulation, Humor and Relationships.

• Keep a routine of time and place: commit to implementing and tracking your rituals and habits so they become automatic. Challenge yourself to perform them better, more precisely every time. Reward yourself for a job well done.

VIDEOS - Positive Energy Rituals - Examples of My Exercise Routines

My trainer has designed a platform for efficiency and longevity, to enjoy a tennis match at any given time at my best. If I can be strong, flexible, fast and resilient, I can play in High Positive emotion and design solutions for each instance of the score. The YouTube Video Playlist shows combined exercises for full-body workouts I can complete in one hour or less four to six times a week. What's the point? Persistence. What's the goal? To train the "Trigger x Craving x Response x Reward" chain of positive habits in service of playing tennis for a lifetime. What are the results? Alignment of health parameters and living in my Ideal Performance State. The reward is to love the challenge every day, injury and pain free, joyfully achieving new goals and becoming a better solution designer. Movement first, enjoyment always.

Watch some of my Exercise Routines in my YouTube Playlist. Click on the Image to View.

Making Waves: The Key to Sustain Peak Performance

Tennis offers an in-built sequence for managing pressure within each point and throughout the match which is a perfect example of what “Making Waves” means and how it impacts the “toughness training” of our physiology and psychology.

In tennis, between every point in tennis there is a 25-second maximum recovery period, during which competitors precisely manage their physiology and emotions by performing four distinct behaviors or stages:

STAGE ONE (3 to 5 seconds): Positive Physical Response

End of the point. The heart rate is elevated. The player turns away from the opponent.

STAGE TWO (6 to 15 seconds): Relaxation

Recovery phase. The heart rate goes down. Eye control. High Energy walk.

STAGE THREE (3 to 5 seconds): Preparation

Announce the score. Logical planning of the next point. The heart rate rises slightly.

STAGE FOUR (3 to 5 seconds): Rituals

Relaxing rituals. Visualization of the next point. The heart rate is optimal to play.

The four stages represent "a wave" of physical and emotional control, determined by the heart rate and the transition from "fighting" to "relaxing" to "planning" and "visualizing." They are a rhythm for the player to feel, think and operate within their Ideal Performance State. All great competitors do them, unfailingly, every match.

The discovery of The Four Stages of the in-between-point time is one of Dr. Loehr's greatest contribution to tennis, from which he elaborated his approach to develop mental toughness and full engagement training for all skill levels.

Doctors Jim Loehr, Irving Dardik and Nicholas Hall have studied the impact of stress and recovery heart rate waves in sports performance and their effect on the immune system. The results show that a healthy individual is able to produce a robust wave (higher heart rate maximum, greater heart rate variability) when exercising and recovering, while in people with chronic disease, the wave is much flatter (lower maximum heart rate, lower heart rate variability). This factor is evidence of "quick stress response/quick recovery" and leads to immune and emotional responsiveness and improved overall health.

Making physical and emotional stress/recovery waves every hour of every day, week and month helps you live within "coping zone," balancing stress by increasing the efficiency of your recovery, therefore making you more responsive to challenges (you can adapt instead of burning out).

Rituals, habits and routines provide you with a rhythm. Understand how your rituals become your daily life’s rhythm and enjoy the results and rewards you achieve. Manage your energy rhythm rather than duty and time.

Key Performance Management Questions

• How do you manage your stress and recovery waves through the day and week?

• How do you recover from your daily and weekly workload?

• How effective are you at connecting with the emotions you need to feel? Do you “act as if?”

• Are you aware of how you shift your emotions when you face obstacles or disappointment?

• Have you identified what rituals enable you to operate in your Ideal Performance State?

• Do you monitor your performance through technology (apps and wearables) or charts?

IMPROVE - Resilience and Failing Forward

Resilience - the capacity to bounce back and recover from setbacks - is a word inevitably connected to survival, peak performance and leadership.

I often hear the term from the lips of leaders and authors who understand the process of Transformation in the individual, business and socio-economic realms. In the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous world of today, resilience is what separates those still climbing from those who collapsed along the way.

• Resilience is a key condition for achievement, as it represents the ability to navigate disruptions, to sort out obstacles and limitations and to increase capacity to deal with new levels of complexity.

• Resilience is an acquired skill and part of the learning process of forward-thinking individuals. They are focused on understanding "what is" (learning from challenges and failure) and on designing "what can be" (identifying what works, envisioning the future and living today as they want to be tomorrow).

• Resilience is a way of “failing forward.” The results of your efforts might have not turned out as you expected, so you analyze what happened. I have failed often and hard, but I learned the lessons and tried again. A way to avoid beating yourself up and quitting is to look at the Positive aspects, the Improvements needed and the Lessons learned. Looking back at your experience, what’s interesting or valuable? Where was the thinking or the decision ineffective? What assumptions were unchallenged? What gaps did you overlook? Where did you take a shortcut? What could be a Breakthrough? You can then analyze the issues deeper with valuable thinking tools such as Fishbone Diagram, Force Field Analysis, Six Thinking Hats and Action Map.

• Resilience leads to understanding and the emergence of a sense of meaning, of the significance of both the vision and the tasks. Such understanding leads to discovering what matters most (What's my mission? Is it worth the sacrifice? Does someone care? How am I a contribution? How does my achievement improve my community?).

How do you feel, think and act when in a "good day," when you feel positive and energized? What can interfere with that? How do you recover when things go wrong?

A Peak Performer is Resilient.

• How do you react to pressure?

• What habits empower you?

• What holds you back?

Peak Performers embrace the Challenge. This is what separates Mentally Tough leaders from the rest.

Peak Performance training leads to Full Engagement by allowing you to operate in your Ideal Performance State under pressure, taking on challenges and motivating yourself from High Positive Emotion. Over time, you become Resilient and Mentally Tough, just as a well-trained muscles do.

Stories of Resilience

Dan Jansen - Olympic Gold Medal Winner - Speedskating - 1994 Lillehammer

If there was ever a poster boy for mental toughness, it's Dan Jansen. When I watched him compete in the 1,000-meter speed skating event at the 1994 Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway, I was aware that it would be his last race and knew the weight on his shoulders. Since 1992, Dan had been a client at LGE Saddlebrook Sport Science, working closely with Dr. Jim Loehr on his mental toughness. He'd lost chances to win medals at both the 1988 and 1992 Olympics. In 1988, he was the World Record holder and had aligned every factor to win Gold, but his sister had died the night before of the race. He fell on the ice dramatically and from that point forward, he tried to find an explanation and a solution. In 1992, he fell again and as soon as he came off the ice he told his coach: “I quit.” Instead, his coach persuaded him to come to see us and get help. He slipped again in the 500-meter at Lillehammer, in his favorite race, the one he was supposed to win. He only had to go around the oval a few times, but the world was holding its breath: could he do it, considering his history of disappointments? Would he choke?

I met Dan several times at our offices and for dinner with friends. He’s a calm, measured and kind man. He’s eloquent but not boisterous. That day in Norway, he performed with the same grace and balance to break the world record and win the Gold medal for the U.S., celebrating with a victory lap with his young daughter in his arms and looking up to the sky to recognize his sister. It was a unique and memorable Olympic moment, etched in history. I remember Dan being one of the most disciplined athletes we ever worked with. All athletes were required to send us their Weekly Monitoring Chart so we could interpret their key training parameters in relation to their mental training. Dan never missed a week; the fax would always come in on time.

According to Jim, he broke through when he was able to finish the race his mind. At the start of the process, he couldn’t do it. Only when he finished and won the race, visualizing vividly every detail, his body and mind felt whole - and he was ready to engage in his Ideal Performance State to win Gold. As the saying goes: “It doesn’t matter how you start and how many times you fall along the way, what matters is how you finish.” That’s the goal of resilience. Dan Jansen finished strong, thanks to his courage to face his fears, train to overcome them, rely on a trustworthy team and get it done, for history and for himself. Dan finally won Gold, but he’s a legend because he didn’t quit until he got it.

Philipp Johner has a remarkable life story of resilience. He grew up as the son of a Protestant minister in Switzerland and went to a boarding school where his wealthy peers harassed him. He found the support of a Bulgarian math teacher who introduced him to weight lifting, which gave him self-confidence. A few years later, he became Taekwondo Swiss National Champion and #5 in the world. To pay for his university studies, he worked nights as a doorman for the Hell’s Angels and at an insurance company. He studied physics and psychology and became a successful stockbroker. Ultimately, he decided to focus on corporate psychology and founded Manres AG in 1990. The company assists CEOs and their teams in leadership transformation and development. I’ve had the fortune to collaborate with Philipp and his staff regularly since 2003 for a variety of clients and rewarding projects.

"I think there are two kinds of challenges, external and internal ones. Externally, I can say my life has been a challenge from the very beginning. I was born with the umbilical cord around my neck, I was blue when I arrived, it as a matter of minutes, so... I think that in systemic psychology we say everything is already comprised in the beginning. In fairy tales, for example, the first two or three sentences tell you the whole story. Objectively, I had the challenge that I never felt quite right among the people I grew up. I was an outsider. I was always very sick, so I was pushed and marginalized all the time. Through sports, me being different switched from negative to positive, because being different was then to be strong, to be better.

Then, a huge challenge was my accident when I was paralyzed for five years. The internal challenge was to discover myself or what stands against that. I think is self-pity, being locked up with egotistical questions. 'Why does this happen to me?' 'How come others do and I don't?' and so on. Being overwhelmed at certain times or having no orientation, which is quite alike. One time you don't do anything, another time you overdo, but in both you don't focus, you have no mission, and you are not in the middle of the river where the thrust of the river is strong. You watch life going by. That was the inner challenge, the experience and belief that I was here for a purpose, that this would be a positive world to me. My advice to others is: Discover your passion, define your mission, and then link with your destiny. Don't ever be deflected from your mission. Also, connect with people who are on their quest, because we need each other to develop energy."

Anthony Lee Ervin (born May 26, 1981) is an American competition swimmer who has won four Olympic medals and two World Championship golds. At the 2000 Summer Olympics, he won a gold medal in the men's 50-meter freestyle, and earned a silver medal as a member of the second-place United States relay team in the 4×100-meter freestyle event. He was the second swimmer of African descent after Anthony Nesty of Suriname to win an individual gold medal in Olympic swimming.

He is the first United States citizen of African descent to medal gold in an individual Olympic swimming event. Ervin is African-American and Jewish and was born in Hollywood, CA. He is of Ashkenazi Jewish descent on his mother's side and African-American descent on his father's. Ervin has described himself as a "practicing Zen Buddhist". In July 2017, he said, "I’m proud to be a Jew."

Ervin stopped swimming competitively at the age of 22 in 2003 and auctioned off his 2000 Olympic gold medal on eBay to aid survivors of the 2004 tsunami, but he began to train again in 2011.

Ervin competed in the 50-meter freestyle event at the 2012 Summer Olympics where he placed fifth. In the spring of 2016, Akashic Books released Ervin's memoir, Chasing Water, co-authored by Ervin and Constantine Markides. At the 2016 Summer Olympics, 16 years after his first Olympic gold medal, he won the event for the second time, at the age of 35, becoming the oldest individual Olympic gold medal winner in swimming.

I met Anthony prior to the 2016 Olympics through his coach, David Marsh and his assistant coach, Kajo Kajevic. Both asked me to organize a promotional event at their training site in Queens University and attract media attention. I invited my regular guests at TheSircle Executive Club and their friends. The event was scheduled at the same time the swimmers would compete at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and David Marsh provided a description of each swimming competition. It was a fantastic opportunity to witness greatness in the making and appreciate each athlete’s personality up-close. At the Olympic Trials, Marsh helped coach six swimmers to the U.S. team including Kathleen Baker, Cammile Adams, Ryan Lochte, Katie Meili, Anthony Ervin and Jimmy Feigen. Three of those six went on to win individual medals on one of the most successful U.S. Olympic swim teams in recent memory.

I read Ervin’s book, "Chasing Water,” where he shares his struggle with Tourette syndrome, which led him to consume drugs and his nihilistic approach to life after winning his first Gold Medal. It’s a Hero’s Journey, a true “to Hell and back” situation with a wonderful outcome and a spiritual lesson. Anthony traveled, became a Buddhist, studied philosophy with a Sufi mystic and got many tattoos. He drove his supercharged motorcycle at insane speeds, sometimes under the influence. He sold his Olympic gold medal on eBay and donating the proceeds to the UNICEF tsunami relief fund and he didn’t swim at all for the next eight years. None of his new friends had any idea he was an Olympic athlete.

In need of money, Anthony started teaching New York kids how to swim. All of a sudden, through service, his love for the sport returns. Amazingly, he qualified for the 2012 London Olympics and swam faster than before, finishing fifth. He’s named Team Captain for Olympic Team USA at 35, the oldest U.S. male swimmer since 1904. Sixteen years after his victory in Sydney, he won gold in the 50-meter freestyle by a margin of .01 seconds. He had done the impossible in the unforgiving world of competitive elite swimming, as a marginal, as a testament to his resilience.

Once Anthony understood himself and defined his "moonshot," he was able to transform his life and re-engage with his Ideal Performance State to conquer a significant and unique achievement. “I’ve always felt the story of my life has been about being normal but on the fringes of abnormality, and it’s the fringes that separate my history from the rest,” he says.

MORE STORIES: You can read the stories of Resilience of world-class sports Champions in the two links provided below