"Centered" — Ernie Els by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire
Peak performance in business, relationships, and sports requires consistent effort. Having occasional great moments — a big sale, a fabulous date, a high score in a tournament — does not lead to ongoing achievement of excellence.
Why does the tortoise beat the hare?
By establishing certain habits you can achieve consistent results. Knowing what to do is not enough. You have to do it on a consistent basis. While there will always be setbacks, it is the relentless preparation and a focus on the details that generally add up to ongoing success in relationships, business, and sports.
Relationships:
Years of steadfast loyalty, respect, and enjoyment are hallmarks of a great relationship. Peak performance in relationship comes from keeping the passion alive while knowing and understanding a person deeply. The multifaceted love that can emerge in a peak relationship is more powerful than the excitement of occasional wining and dining, the one-night stand, or time spent with charming Casanova types.
Business:
Consistent integrity, hard work, and doing your homework lead to ongoing high performance at work. Landing one great deal rarely makes up for lack of persistence and hard work.
Sports:
Consistent, focused practice and hard work lead to a person’s individual peak performance in sports. Naturally athletic people might play or score well now and then. But to maximize peak performances, consistent dedication to learning, improvement, and repetition are absolutely crucial.
Living in the zone of peak performance comes from putting in heartfelt consistent effort without becoming a slave to routine.
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
~Aristotle
by Alison Poulsen, PhD
Read “Breaking Patterns through Dramatic Practice: ‘I have good intentions, but…’”
