Healthy High Achiever Blog

Living a performance lifestyle that yields the health AND success you want is primarily the result of managing your energy, food quality and activity levels in the process of achieving your goals. But what gives you the ability to do this, is the understanding that you have more control than you realize.

Whether you feel like you are in control or not, you are and can be. You also need to be, most of the time.

Recently, I’ve been reading a book called "On the Edge and In Control" by Dr Deborah Bright an 8 Step Program for Taking Charge of Your Life. Initially, I hesitated to read the book, because I felt I was already in charge of my life and given the always looming potential for information overload these days, I am always filtering what I need to read and what I don’t to save time and energy. But given the book was recommended by Eddie Enriquez, President of my company Performance Lifestyle Solutions, I decided it was worth taking a look. WOW!

If I was in charge of my life before, I feel WAY more in control now. For me, knowing the actual dynamics of control is helping me manage my energy better, perform at better levels and make a valuable difference, both in how I take care of myself and serve others.

Learning the dynamics of maintaining control in your life and achieving your goals regardless of constant change, changing priorities, unexpected circumstances and depleted energy from time to time, is absolutely essential for lifestyle performance.

After years of teaching “healthy living” programs, and before the context of the Performance Lifestyle “system” was developed, a good portion of my coaching time with clients was dealing with obstacles and excuses about why something was not possible or too hard, or talking about achieving the desired results, which for some didn’t come; not because the “program” didn’t work, but because they were abdicating their control. The guidance they were getting fell flat.

I changed my teaching to the context of the Performance Lifestyle (which is a healthy lifestyle) and started targeting achievement oriented people; not because I didn’t want to help people get through their obstacles, (even achievers need that support) but because I wanted to cultivate what Dr Bright calls the "Pro Achiever" mindset we need to succeed from the start.

I call this the Performance Mindset, and I found that this mindset was essential for people to take control of their lifestyle, and stop looking for silver bullet answers that may actually be valuable, but don’t reinforce personal “responsibleness” - which Dr Bright sees as the key to control and the heart of taking charge of your life.

Understanding how to achieve your goals successfully.

The Performance Lifestyle System is all about achieving the breakthrough energy you need to achieve your life, and business goals. The people who get the best results are the people who take charge and develop control and know how to achieve their goals without getting caught up with stuff that may matter, but not that much.

Note: In the Performance Lifestyle System, you won’t get caught up debating over the science or sleep, or the difference between Beta Carotene, Retinol – A and your need for it, the ins and outs of Omega 3’s, or “analyzing the perfect exercise routine”. You can be sure that the lifestyle strategies you’ll be learning have already taken all those questions into consideration. You need the right frame of mind first, before you juggle all that stuff.

What we’re focused on first, is getting control of your lifestyle so you can achieve your goals starting with your energy! We are focused on developing a healthy high performing body as the central focus of the message. Once you have your lifestyle reinforcing health and success, THEN, you can go deep and focus on all the ins and outs.

I’ve learned allot of achievement oriented skills over the years, but only recently have I realized just how important “The Performance Mindset” really is to lifestyle success and success in general.

In today’s "moving forward" momentum- oriented world, unless you have the skills of achievement, your life can feel very out of control and actually get out of control, especially when you are giving up control and you don’t even realize you’re doing it.

Dr Bright, in her book, talks about how often we give up control. I was surprised. If you are not living a healthy lifestyle, let alone a Performance Lifestyle, chances are good, that you are giving up a lot of your control and you want to get it back! Focusing on performance inspires that.

I assessed my life, and came to realize that in key areas, I have actually been giving up my control. Of course, poor energy management was the biggest cause. I felt I lacked the capacity to take control in these key areas, and While partially true, I was also giving up control because I didn’t have the right mindset.

When we won’t have the right mindset and give up control that alone can cause poor energy and prevent us from taking steps to reclaim the breakthrough energy we want.

I was not new to the idea of control, matter of fact, I had been promoting the idea behind the title of this post for sometime, particularly as it related to energy management, but I MUST say that Dr Bright expanded my understanding of control significantly and thankfully.

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