4 minute read

Friday Thoughts & Learnings

This week Brendan Burchard’s High Performance Habits gets my new year’s goals motoring, music producer and author Rick Rubin helps me overcome mental blocks and author Byron Katie boosts my confidence by helping me ‘unbelieve’. Enjoy!

Two factors that lead to high performance

High Performance Habits by Brendan Burchard

Brendan Burchard’s book High Performance Habits is a #1 New York Times best seller and was recommended to me by my partner, who’s a high performer herself.

Brendan and his team conducted research with 30,000 people from 195 countries to arrive at six key habits that had the most influence for people who achieved high performance in their lives.

He defines high performance as succeeding beyond standard norms, consistently over the long term while still maintaining positive well-being and relationships. 

The six key habits are: seek clarity, generate energy, raise the necessity, increase productivity, develop influence and demonstrate courage.  

What I took away from his book was the clarity of his central theme: achieving high performance over the long term comes down to two things:

1. Deliberately and consistently practicing the habits that drive you to be better each day

2. Having confidence that you can learn and master anything, no matter how hard (this confidence he says comes through practicing your deliberate habits)

Perfect for getting my new year’s goals motoring.

How to overcome mental blocks

Andrew Huberman’s interview with Rick Rubin

Andrew Huberman is a neuroscientist and professor of neurobiology at Stanford School of Medicine. He has a super interesting podcast called the Huberman Lab where he discusses how our brain and its connections with the organs of our body control our perceptions, our behaviours, and our health.

In this episode he interviews Rick Rubin, a world-renowned US music producer and author of a best-selling book about the creative process: The Creative Act: A Way of Being.

The key takeaway for me having listened to the podcast was how Rick helps artists overcome mental blocks.

Rick’s experience is that mental blocks are just made-up stories we tell ourselves that create fear.  To overcome these fears, he tells himself that what he’s doing is just for himself right now. 

Like a diary entry.  No one can tell you your diary entry sucks.  It’s just for you.  This removes the block so you can let your creativity flow. 

Worked for me to write this post.

How unbelieving boosts confidence

Starting something new is a lot easier when you feel confident, right?   Recently I’ve been thinking more about how to improve my own confidence. 

What I’m learning is how confidence and beliefs are interconnected and influence each other.  While beliefs can contribute to confidence, confidence can also shape and reinforce our beliefs. 

Positive beliefs about our abilities contribute to higher levels of confidence.  For example, in Brendan Burchard’s research, high performing people shared a belief they could master any task no matter how hard.   This belief led to greater confidence to tackle new challenges.

On the other hand, confidence can also influence and shape our beliefs.  When you experience success, overcome challenges, or demonstrate resilience, it can reinforce positive beliefs about your capabilities.  

The relationship between beliefs and confidence operates in a feedback loop. Positive beliefs tend to lead to higher confidence, which, in turn, reinforces and strengthens these positive beliefs.  

Similarly, low confidence resulting from negative experiences can lead to the reinforcement of limiting or negative beliefs.  Common negative believes include: “I need to be perfect to be successful” and “I can’t start unless I know how it will end”.

The starting place to strengthen confidence is to re-examine core beliefs.  Particularly those central to the confidence you need to accomplish your big goals.

Author Byron Katie has four questions that help examine your beliefs and ‘unbelieve’ them where they are not helpful. 

1.     Is it true?

2.    Can you absolutely know it’s true?

3.    How do you react when you believe that thought?

4.    Who would you be without the thought?

For unhelpful beliefs:  Replace with a ‘turnaround statement’ which is the opposite of the unhelpful belief.

Example

Belief: “I might fail trying to solve this problem and that will be really bad." (Fear of Failure)

1. Is it true? – I believe it is but I guess I can’t be sure.  There was one time that I failed and felt awful.

2. Can you absolutely know it’s true?  I can’t know for sure that I will fail and if it will be bad for me if I do.  I now know that the most successful people have had many failures on their path to success.

3. How do you react when you believe that thought?  I feel scared and it stops me from doing things I want to because I fear I might fail.

4. Who would you be without the thought?   My career and development would accelerate if I tried new things and gained more experience.

New Belief:  "Even if I fail, I will learn more trying than I will from doing nothing." 

So let’s go!

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