Psychology - Your Mind is Your Greatest Weapon

Psychology: Your Mind is Your Greatest Weapon.

The third action of high-performance psychology. Your mind is your best weapon. To control your thinking is to control your thoughts. To control your thoughts is to control your emotions. The most powerful thing we can do when we are under duress when there is a challenge when we feel overwhelmed, we're fearful, stressed, or anxious is to be able to control our thoughts to be able to de-catastrophize situations, to then allow logic to prevail.

And that is a critical component of the peak pathway performance mindset pillar.

We've discussed how physiology dovetails into the positive changes within psychology and how we cultivate that physiological change, rolling into the change in mindset and the creation of a growth mindset, which is a peak pathway we feel is achievable through the cultivation of the Warrior / Warriors mindset.

Within the performance pillar, we discuss your purpose, where the known purpose is our number one action of a high performer.

Then we need to go through that into a little bit more detail in terms of how to build strong psychology. Once you have a defined purpose and you know exactly the GPS for where you want to go, you then need to look to actualize this as the reflection of your highest potential. Really, to be able to do that, we need to look at your value system and a definition or redefinition of your values is quite closely aligned to the definition of your purpose.

I love the saying, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. And our values are the pillars to which we stand and for what we stand for. So a good redefinition and alignment of your values is going to come in very, very helpful. As you then begin the pursuit of your purpose, that is where your goal set and your goal timeline goals come into play.

When we set our goals, we set smart goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timeline. I'd like to take that one step even further and take that timeline out over phases. So we're looking at the phases of your long-term goals, which we call your macro goals. We then look at your medium-term goals, which we call your meso goals. And then finally we have your short-term goals, which are akin to your micro goals. The micro goals can occur monthly, weekly, and daily.

Goals are a fantastic thing to have. But one thing that needs is it needs some analysis around what it is and necessarily the skills that are required to achieve it. Part of the Peak Pathway goal setting process, is to take you through a specific skills acquisition matrix.

Initially, we take a 360-degree analysis of where you are at currently. And leading the charge with that analysis is the SWOT analysis.

S for strength, W for weakness, O for opportunities, and T for threats.

So once some analysis has gone into where you are strong, where you are weak, what opportunities are afforded to you, and where the threats lie to take you off the pursuit of your purpose, we then can start to craft some meaningful goals around that, but also have some skill acquisitions which will help you to fulfill the actualization of your purpose, framed within a specific goal timeline.

Having a very set, very definitive, very active, and purposeful set of micro goals are a key element to acquiring a very high-performing psychology. The next step is to align your goals to your values.

It's of high importance that whatever energy we're spending in self-development or in growth or acquisitions, it is aligned with what we stand for as a reflection of our values. 

The goal / value of alignment is something that I feel is a little bit that is missed when we are setting goals. By adding this alignment, we immediately create a self-buy-in. It creates intrinsic motivation and makes you accountable to yourself and to your goals each day.

And then finally once your process is complete, you begin to pursue your purpose as reflected in your goal set which are aligned with your values. Derived from introspective analysis, you have your purpose goal, you also have your skill acquisition goals which is put this into a process of routine. 

That's where we see our second high-performing action of physiology crossing into the performance mindset and the development of your performance psychology.

Wellness creates a fantastic foundation of routine because it dials into exercise, it dials into nutrition, it dials into sleep, and therefore it looks at your day from waking up to going to sleep every day, seven days a week.

It's 365 days a year. With a wellness routine in place, this allows a fantastic foundation to be able to then apply your goal sets too. You can then put in your current workflow. And often a lot of the goals that we set, particularly professionally speaking, when we are acquiring performance psychology, it's actually how to set some boundaries and expectations in and around that professional piece. So that immediately will allow your workflow to come into this preexisting wellness routine. 

Now you have three extremely high-performing actions of purpose, physiology, and psychology all working together, synergized and working for you.

Performance psychology comes down to mental toughness. Mental toughness when broken down, comprises of resilience, leadership, accountability self-assuredness, and self-assurance. These pillars are commonalities in characteristics and behavior that I've seen with every high-performing athletes, executives, entrepreneurs, parents, partners, friends, or anyone who you deem exemplary. I've consistently seen resilience, leadership accountability, and self-assurance be key characteristics of that person and organization.

They combine into what it is to be mentally tough. And again, I refer back to the Warrior /Warrioress mindset and the cultivation of that is again, working on your mental toughness through the engagement and embracement of discomfort. So when we're uncomfortable, we have to manage fear, we have to manage anxiety, we have to manage negative self-talk, and we have to manage I can't attitude to then reverse engineer all of that into an I can / I will growth mindset.

And that's where mental toughness comes to the fore.

I live a very privileged life. I live a wonderful life that has been afforded to me, which I'm abundantly grateful for. I've needed resilience in my life, but comparably, I still have a phenomenal life. Even in the toughest of times, I still have a much better set of cards dealt to me than many other people in the world. So for those of us in very privileged positions, we do have to sometimes feign adversity or engage controlled environment adversities when not continually faced with everyday challenges amid discomfort.

So this is again where the physiology then bleeds into the psychology and having difficulty both in the moment and sustainable difficulty allows you to craft the mindset of mental toughness through resilience, leadership, accountability, and self-assuredness.

Within performance psychology, progression is a major component. So in everything you look at, whether it be the warrior warrior mindset, high-performing mindsets, or performance psychology, everything involves and entails evolution and continual improvement, which we at peak pathway deem as progression.

My highest personal value is progression. I can manage failure, I can manage difficulty. I can manage grief, despair, pain, physical, and emotional. But I struggle to manage with a lack of progression. I need to be constantly moving forward if only a very little bit every day towards a higher and overarching objective, which that objective is my purpose, which is reflected in my actualizing my highest potential.

An important part of progression is change management.  As you are on a pathway of actualizing your potential, you are working on a higher goal, a long-term goal, you're breaking it down, you're looking at yourself, and you're creating different expectations for yourself and of yourself. The stone of change is a powerful one and ripples are far reaching. It's hugely empowering for us. And unfortunately, not everyone in your immediate circle when you begin this process of change will necessarily be on board.

It's a choice that you are making and a very powerful personal choice. But sometimes it takes time for other people within your environment and within your ecosystem to buy into that change. And some simply won't because they can't or they don't understand it. And that's fine. But it is really important to manage that change, have respect for those who don't buy into the new beat of your drum, but also to make sure that you are setting the most sustainable expectations of yourself and of others towards you, and maintain very strong and powerful boundaries that are respectful to both you and to others and honoring what it is that you came here to do in terms of your purpose.

Another critical component of progression is acceptance of failure. We referred to that as lessons. Learning the lessons, being accepting of the lessons that have come from your past.

Long-term success is what the pursuit of purpose is all about. Long-term success through the acquisition of continual small goals. So I love all my clients winning at something each day. Some days are harder than other though, so just a small win might be all that you can expect. But that win will lead to the next win, then one after and then regardless of the day, you are actualizing your potential through the collection of these wins over time.

So from that point of view, it's accepting the lessons that have come before, honoring those lessons, taking what you can from them and learning from them, and trying not to have to go back and repeat that too often. Lock it in, move it forward, and understand that the experience you've acquired is going to help you as you continually look to level up moving forward in the future.

Progression is highly reflected in skill acquisitions. Skill acquisitions are the matrix we go through as a result of our 360 self-analysis. However, skill acquisitions are a very powerful cue to building self-confidence and self-esteem. There is a self-discipline element needed to look at yourself, to look under the hood and see what needs help, what needs work, what needs adjustment. It is a very introspective process. It's a very powerful process.

It sometimes can be the epitome of discomfort, but skill acquisitions that come out of that when you define how you can get better and you evolve start you on that a very purposeful pathway. Taking a small step toward you purpose each day is hugely empowering. There's a self-awareness and self-assurance that you can derive from that which stays with you forever. So it makes the most of your experience. It doesn't let you become in any way apathetic to previous successes, continually moving forward with success.

These elements are the embodiment of performance psychology, and I feel anyone can achieve this no matter what you shooting for and or what your goal set is. I think this can be reflected in your profession. It can be reflected in your relationships. It can be reflected in your parenting, and it can be reflected in yourself and within the presence and how you carry yourself.

Performance psychology can be summarized as the development of  mental skills and is the single most important thing when working forward and looking to actualize your potential.

Yours In Performance 

Rich Daly