I got home recently from one of the best weekends of my life. For four days straight I was motivated, challenged, inspired, and taught high performance techniques to level up my life. But what really made this an awesome experience was meeting other highly ambitious, motivated entrepreneurs, leaders, and high achievers from all over the world. I feel blessed to have had this profound experience!
When I was deciding whether or not to make the 5,600 mile round trip to attend High Performance Academy (HPA) Live, I poked around online for reviews. I found a few, which were all positive, but none that described exactly why you should go and what you should expect.
Let me begin by saying that I highly recommend to everyone with grand ambitions who feels frustrated, stuck and out of balance that they should make every effort to attend. The connections that I made with other attendees were worth the trip alone for me.
Brendon put a lot of effort into making the event great. Others I spoke with who had attended previous events confirmed that they keep coming back to meet more amazing people and because Brendon keeps adding incredible new stuff.
Here’s a brief summary of the things Brendon covered at HPA:
How to be a better leader who is persuasive, influential, productive, and disciplined.
How to have more time for your family, friends, and hobbies while accomplishing more.
How to improve your health, both body and mind.
How to bring the joy in your life and the lives of others.
So, what is High Performance?
Brendon defines High Performance Living as “the feeling of full engagement and joy that allows us to out-perform our past selves and consistently live from and into our full potential.”
High Performance Living sounds pretty great, right?! According to Brendon, there are five areas of life through which we can define High Performers: Productivity, Persuasion, Psychology, Physiology, and Purpose. Let’s learn what separates High Performers from everyone else by exploring these five areas in greater detail…
Anybody who can master these five areas will dramatically improve their life. Don’t be fooled by our society’s belief in inborn gifts and genetic luck. High Performers have no innate talent, genius, or giftedness. Their incredible achievement is fueled by their drive to continually improve their skills, performance, and outcomes. They are simply obsessed about what they do and they have an unrelenting desire to get better and better.
Whether you are crushing it in these 5 areas or dedicating yourself to mastering the art of High Performance, I think you’ll benefit from learning my 4 takeaways from Brendon Burchard’s High Performance Academy.
My 4 Key Takeaways From HPA:
#1: Life balance creates happiness.
It is easy to push aside the things that matter most, the things that make us happiest. At HPA, I realized that I desperately need more balance in my life.
Life is a balancing act, so work to understand your true priorities and don’t live to work. I found an effective way to accomplish this asking myself, “What am I working for?” I think you’ll find, like I did, that you’re working to create a life of abundant experiences; love, joy, peace, fulfillment and meaning. But perhaps you can have more of these things now, not someday. I challenge you to spend more time living your dreamed about reality…now.
Balancing the 7 areas of your life
According to Brendon, there are 7 major areas of our lives:
Health: How well do you take care of your body and mind? Do you fill your mind with positive, uplifting, educational material? Do you nourish your body with wholesome food, get plenty of sleep, and exercise regularly?
Friends: Are you surrounded with growth friends? Friends that you enjoy doing life with? Or are you stuck with maintenance friends or downer friends who you aren’t excited to hang out with? How much effort do you put forth in your friendships?
Love: If you are in a relationship, how much love are you giving to your significant other? How much love are you giving to others, even if you aren’t in a relationship?
Finances: Does your current financial situation provide for the life you want to live?
Mission: what is it that you are trying to do in the world? This is what many people would call their “purpose,” and might be your career, business, or charitable initiative.
Hobbies: Are you spending time pursuing your hobbies? Your hobbies don’t have to change the world, but they do need to change your state.
Spirituality: How is your relationship with your Creator or, if you prefer, how in tune are you with the spirit of life?
At HPA, Brendon asked us to score ourselves in each of these 7 life areas on a scale from 1 to 10. Through this exercise, I realized that I’ve allowed my life to become quite unbalanced. I had been prioritizing my mission and my health at the expense of my relationships, hobbies, and spirituality. It kinda looked like this…
My post-HPA life-balancing act is not much better (yet), but I’m working on it! Even though I don’t have it all figured out, I know things need to change, and I will continue to put in the effort.
So what am I doing to rebalance?
Friends: I am spending more time with my friends. Hanging out on Saturday mornings, cooking and eating meals together, and making time for weekly Skype calls.
Love: I am being more purposeful in loving others. I am smiling more, engaging in conversation with strangers I used to pass by, and treating all people as if they have a sign on their forehead that says, “Please acknowledge and care about me.” It is amazing what a difference these simple acts make in my life.
Finances: I consolidated most of my student debt into a low interest rate loan and I am paying myself first. From now on, I’m paying myself 15% of my income right off the top before paying any bills. I will work to increase this percentage over time.
Spirituality: I decided to get involved at my church by playing the drums in my church’s band. I’ve also committed to financially supporting my church’s expansion efforts. Beyond religion, I’ve also taken up morning meditation (just 10 minutes every morning as part of my morning routine), which I would categorize within the “spirituality” area of my life.
Hobbies: Playing the drums is one of my favorite things to do. I have blocked out four 45-minute periods during the week to spend drumming (and I’ll soon add drum time by practicing and performing with my church’s band).
Perhaps it is time you took inventory of these 7 areas in your life and make the necessary adjustments to regain balance.
#2: Honor the struggle.
This goes along well with #1. Life isn’t about the destination, it is all about the journey. We are at our very best and we are happiest when we are fully engaged in work that we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we have established for ourselves.
I know that it can be hard to enjoy life when you don’t feel like things are going your way. But as Brendon says, we must “honor the struggle.”
Living out your dreams and potential is going to be difficult. If it wasn’t difficult, the destination would not be worth the treacherous journey. Honor the struggle and welcome hardship. Don’t settle for instant gratification.
Do you think I enjoy waking up at 4:45AM every morning to lace up my running shoes and jog over to the gym for a killer workout? No way! Especially not in the rain, sleet, or snow.
Do you think I enjoy spending most of my weekends working on a start-up with no immediate hope of compensation, locked away in my office with only a raw broccoli and red cabbage salad to keep me company? Blah, no way!
So what keeps me going? I have learned to honor, even appreciate, the struggle.
In Tony Robbins’ book, Awaken the Giant Within, he writes…
What gives you short-term pleasure, creates long-term pain.
What gives you short-term pain, creates long-term pleasure.
The bottom line? There are no shortcuts and the journey often sucks. You must learn to push through the struggle and short-term pain.
BUT, to avoid getting burned out and feeling defeated along the way, you must make time to celebrate the fruits of your labor. You can’t become an effective high performer by sacrificing yourself with no benefit.
You must recognize progress and savor your achievements. Find little rewards to give yourself every day, week, month, and year. Even if it is something small, acknowledge that you’ve held yourself to a new behavior, achieved a new milestone in your business, learned to play your first song on an instrument, or whatever else is a meaningful personal victory to you.
I suggest you create both “macro” rewards for your long-term goals and "micro" rewards for your short-term goals. For the achievement of micro goals, spend an evening reading a good book, going to see a movie with your significant other or a close friend, or grabbing lunch at your favorite café. For the achievement of macro goals, book a massage, grab tickets to see your favorite music group, or get away for the weekend!
#3: Power plants do not have energy, they GENERATE IT!
To my fellow HPA-ers, it’s totally okay if you just yelled that in your head or aloud :)
I always thought that Brendon Burchard just had energy.
What I learned during HPA is that he works hard to generate that energy. Before every video he shoots, live seminar he conducts, and one-on-one coaching call he makes, Brendon puts himself in a peak state by generating the energy, excitement, and focus that he needs to perform at his highest level.
Just because you and I are not multi-millionaires, #1 New York Times bestselling authors, or online marketing gurus doesn’t mean we don’t need to follow Brendon’s lead to make massive leaps in our personal growth.
We must all generate the positive energies that we want in life (happiness, love, kindness, abundance, etc.). Don’t expect others to create it for you.
You don’t have happiness, you GENERATE it.
You don’t have love, you GENERATE it.
You don’t have kindness, you GENERATE it.
You don’t have abundance, you GENERATE it.
You are THE ONLY one in control of your life while you traverse the planet.
So bring your highest levels of presence and energy to everything you do, from your early morning jog before work, to the first sales call of the day, to time with your friends and family in the evening. Not the over-the-top annoying kind of energy, but a genuine fascination, appreciation, and joy for the work you do and abundant life you are blessed with.
#4: It doesn’t matter what has happened up to this point, we all have a second (or third, or fourth) chance.
Maybe things haven’t been going your way. Every day you get another chance. Decide things are going to be different.
I challenge you to hold yourself to a higher standard. To take control of your life.
Let’s listen to the best 1 minute and 19 second motivational speech you have ever heard, courtesy of Joe Rogan. It’s been my alarm clock for the past two months, I think you’ll understand why...
JOE IS RIGHT. NOW IS YOUR TIME.
Decide to take action today. Not next year. Not tomorrow. RIGHT NOW.
I don't care how small or seemingly insignificant the first step seems. The only thing that matters is getting started. It will never get easier. Things will never happen someday.
TAKE MASSIVE ACTION NOW
Do you feel like there is more to life than what you are currently living?
If you answered yes, subscribe to this blog (using the form at the bottom of this page) for strategies to create the life of your dreams and consider signing up for Brendon Burchard’s High Performance Academy or Expert’s Academy (click HERE for more information – I am not affiliated with Brendon in any way).
So, what are you going to commit to TODAY that will bring you closer to living a high performance life?
Here’s my commitment:
“I, Leif Arnesen, believe my future will be better than my present and I have the power to make it so. I know that I have the ability to achieve my goals and I demand of myself persistent, continuous action towards their attainment. I am working to become an example of what's possible in life to inspire others and create lasting spiritual, emotional, and financial abundance. I will BRING THE JOY and accept nothing less than my best, every day.”
Now it’s your turn. What are you going to commit to doing and becoming TODAY? Make a public declaration to hold yourself accountable by posting your commitment in the comment section below.
We’re in this together. It is time we chase our full potential.
Have you been to Brendon Burchard’s High Performance Academy?
If you have been to High Performance Academy I would love to hear what you thought of it! Please comment below and tell our community about the greatest lesson you learned from Brendon!