Healthy High Achiever Blog

Tonight is one of the most important TelEvents, that I will ever do.

It is with Dr Arthur P Ciaramicoli, Instructor of psychology at Harvard on "Performance Addiction" - The Dangerous New Syndrome and How to Stop It from Ruining Your Life.

I had an extended stay with this condition of the mind and it really took it’s toll on my life.

I can say without exaggeration, learning about Performance Addiction saved the "quality" of my life and I think it will do the same for you.

When you are fully into a Performance Lifestyle, you are liberated from this condition.
It’s pervasive, and you or someone you know right now, is suffering from it.  

Here are the call details

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Date: Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007

Time: 8:30PM  Eastern Time.  

Call in Number: 605-772-3200   

Access Code: 531484#

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Is your time never your own?

Is nothing ever good enough?

If so, it’s likely you’re Performance Addicted, not simply disorganized or under supported and achieving your goals for the wrong reasons.

I look forward to exposing this idea to you tonight.

It will inspire an incredible journey to a new sense of freedom that is just amazing.

Part 1 of 5

As you’ve learned, Performance Lifestyle is not an addiction to performing for the wrong reasons. So let’s begin talking about what Performance Lifestyle is.

For starters, you’ll here me talking about Performing "well" often… that’s a very different term.   

After years of promoting health and fitness information, addressing the common problems we suffer, from low energy, to weight issues and poor health, and seeing people basically stay on the same merry go round, despite short-term success, I began to realize there was something missing…

…a central message that would explain why only a small segment of the population (3% or so) stays on top of their game, looking, feeling and performing "well" and achieving their goals successfully. Meanwhile, the larger majority of the population who may also be succeeding, financially etc, struggles with diet and weight issues, long-term health and well being issues and above all, low energy.

That central message is Performance Lifestyle.

You’d have to be living under a rock not to be seeing (or experiencing) all the buzz about "overwhelm", "multi tasking" and its impact on our performance, "how the pace of life has sped up" and our quality of life is deteriorating, how "obesity and disease rates are climbing", and last but certainly not least, how "we’re so exhausted, we don’t have enough energy left over for our sex lives…" -

Now that is a problem!

The pace of life (if you’re all caught up) is kicking our asses and the way we’re responding to the stress is not making matters better. Yes …we’re not getting enough sleep, eating junk food, and physically inactive. But for starters, it’s the perfect environment for performance addiction to get worse and that’s the villian in this story. 

The solutions have been, "Reduce stress, get more sleep, eat less and exercise more". Yeah, yeah, yeah… yeah. Doing these things on purpose may help you get healthy "er", but unless you arrive there in a normal and natural way, all of these things (which are outcomes), can be traps of epic proportions, guaranteed to keep you chasing your tail.

But you already know that don’t you? Maybe not.

People living Performance Lifestyle’s, whom we call "Healthy High Achievers", don’t buy into impotent solutions. They see things very differently.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of 5

In the last several posts at the Performance Lifestyle blog, I’ve been introducing you to a pervasive condition that many of us are dealing with but have never had a name for, perhaps for decades!

Unfortunately, more of us are afflicted by this than realized. It’s called Performance Addiction.

Not one for selling ‘disease’, this is one of those times where I have to acknowledge what often gets past on with a pat on the back and a raise, but is so destructive it can ruin your health and happiness and put major constrains on success. 

As you learn about it though, let’s first consider what it’s NOT.

You are not performance addicted if you seek an optimal lifestyle.

You are not performance addicted if you want to look and feel better, and perform "well".

You are not performance addicted if you are committed to Healthy High Achievement

You are not performance addicted if you are super enthusiastic about what you’re up to in life. If you could and would want to work at it 16 hours a day (though probably not a good idea) you are no more addicted to performance than you might be a workaholic. What you want to do and what you actually do are two different things.

None of these points, which you’ll learn a great deal about in Performance Lifestyle Training, means you are Performance addicted. Simply put, these values on your part mean you are interested in giving your best in life and getting the most out of life, all in the name of quality of life.

You are performance addicted if you believe that perfecting your appearance and achieving status will secure you love and respect. If you are doing any or all of the above, for these reasons, you are achieving for all the wrong reasons and this is performance addiction.  

Regarding, achieving, for the purpose of seeking love and respect, Dr Ciaramicoli states, (and I paraphrase) "I doubt if any of us is devoid of this completely".

"If we substitute the word performance for drug, this is an almost perfect description of how people talk about their performance addiction. Love is the objective. However if you have performance addiction, winning that love is likely to be, allot of work. That’s because you have the illusion that increased activity and achievement will get you want you want. It’s a grand, misdirected project."  

In the Age of Achievement, we have to be very careful about our reasons for doing things. Everyday, it seems, we are influenced to tuck our tummies, burn fat, build muscle, look younger, be more successful, have more, do more etc. Better, better, better… and most of the time it’s reinforcing this most fundamental description of performance addiction about love and respect. We end up achieving for all the wrong reasons and we’re just not happy.

I’m sure you know someone like this, perhaps intimately.  

As we move forward together, we have to be clear on this, that this is not what Performance Lifestyle is about. Performance Lifestyle is the solution.       

… everything! Especially, when you consider that most people are living a lifestyle addicted to performance…

Are you? Be careful how quickly you answer this question.

In my last post, I mentioned that a Performance Lifestyle is how you live when you are not performance addicted. 

Don’t confuse the two, ever.

When you have an addiction to performance at the core of how you live, you’ve got a big fat problem. Maybe literally, because it can drive you to over-everthing, including eating, drive your body in the ground and your mind a little crazy.

Yes, a little crazy.

"Much has been written about the burden of the 24/7 lifestyle. Phones follow us everywhere. We contantly check e-mails. Work pursues us from office, to home, to car, plane, and trane. It’s sometimes difficult to remember that none of this is being forced on us. We can turn off phones and computers. But many of us can’t turn off the self-voice that says, "You’re being irresponsible", or "You’re missing an opportunity". - Dr Arthur Ciaramicoli Performance Addiction.

There are many aspects of a Performance Lifestyle, what I also like to refer to as new the "training center" of our lives, or the "bridge between health, well being, and our idea of success"… but acknowledging this addiction if it exists, and dealing with it, is at the core.

You may say "I’m not performance addicted, I live a healthy lifestyle." If you are, great, but you can be living a "healthy" lifestyle and still be performance addicted. I have no vested interest in you being performance addicted, I just want you to start seeing the difference between a healthy lifestyle and a true performance lifestyle that is healthy. Performance addiction is not healthy in any way.

If you’re truly not performance addicted, then you’ll benefit from all aspects of Performance Lifestyle Training. But stay open to the idea, because I want you to get the full benefit. I didn’t know what performance addiction was, but I knew something was not right. Read this aspect of my story, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Just knowing about performance addiction will help you stay out of this pervasive "Age of Achievement" way of thinking that can seriously drain your life. I know this first hand.

Of course, there are many aspects of a Performance Lifestyle, including food, fitness, training, goals, vision etc… but the deeper stuff, performance addiction and the lifestyle skills we need to stay out of it are not being talked about, until now. This is the stuff that’s missing, not to mention the need to correct our faulty models of food and fitness. There is so much more, plus, it’s the way you relate the idea’s you know and learn in the context of a Performance Lifestyle, that makes the difference.

I was on the phone with Dr Ciaramicoli earlier today. He’s a new member of the Performance Lifestyle Health and Science Advisory Team. We were talking about how there are people with virtual Ph.D’s on nutrition, fitness, etc, but they are still living  physicallly, mentally, emotionally and or spiritually on a downward trend. Energetically spent!

They are looking for solutions from the outside meanwhile their "inner lifestyle" is driving them crazy.

I have to tell you that when you get out that hell (performance addiction), and really get your life and lifestyle working for YOU, and the achievement of your goals, that’s when life really get’s better.  Whether or not you’re performance addicted, goes a long way in determining how you live and relate to others.

It’s fascinating!  

Hi all,

Get ready to read and then meditate on the following clip about the book, Performance Addiction; the new syndrome that may be ruining your life.

After years of helping achievement oriented people in the prime of their lives learn how to bridge the gap between health and success, and after realizing that it was my suffering from performance addiction for over 20 years, that inspired the me to develop Performance Lifestyle, I am excited to introduce this work to you.

A Performance Lifestyle is how you live when you’re not performance addicted!

Have a read.  

In this intriguing and prescriptive guide, Harvard Medical School instructor Dr. Arthur P. Ciaramicoli explains this new psychological issue, revealing the reasons why the label of success so rarely leads to happiness.

Performance Addiction gives you action steps for freeing yourself from the obligation to excel, finding new meaning in your work and relationships, and going beyond material reqard to obtain genuine, healthy accomplishment throughout your life.

Through illuminating self-evaluations and writing exercises, you’ll gain a stronger sense of self, learn to balance your work and your personal life, and at long last find the satisfaction that comes from breaking your patterns of addictive behavior and finding new, better ways to accept and give love.

 

Do you feel like your life is in crisis? In a lighter sense, a predicament?

Mine was, read on…  

Your time is running you ragged, it’s never your own and nothing is ever good enough, sound familiar? You’re trying to perfect your appearance and achieve status thinking it’s going to secure you love and respect, but it doesn’t feel like your getting it.

Maybe you are achieving your goals and you’re financially successful, but your well-being just isn’t there. There’s something driving you to over-everything yet you’re still not getting what you really want. And for the life of you, you just can’t figure it out.

If you’re an achiever by nature or not, in today’s day in age, chances are good, that "something" or compilation of things is causing performance addiction.

I suffered this fate for years, despite all the outward mask of activity and excellence. Overachieving at the cost of my well- being was a way of life, until about a year ago.

I was at my 20th high school reunion, and while I having a great time (on the outside) I was facing that ill fated, stereotypical story of comparing me to others (on the inside) and it was really upsetting. It was not how I wanted to feel at this once-in a-lifetime event. The reunion was not an isolated case; it was the tip of the iceberg and the last straw. 

It was during that event that I finally decided to listen. Something was wrong and my gut was telling me. Whatever it was, I had enough of it, no more running away from it.  I left that night feeling committed to getting an answer finally.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears. 

The next day, I picked up a book I bought about a week before, only because it had the word "performance" in the title. I had been working on this big idea I discovered, called Performance Lifestyle (which I’ll explain to you more as we move forward together) so it seemed like a good read. It was talking about some syndrome that was "ruining your life." I had no idea what it was about but there was something deeply personal I was trying to solve. 

The book was "Performance Addiction," by Arthur P. Ciaramicoli. Once I started reading, I could hardly put it down. I had finally found my answer, I was performance addicted, and it was ruining my life.

Almost immediately, I admitted that some insatiable feeling of something wrong (even when everything seemed right) had driven my life for decades, since probably junior high school. It drove me to perform at any cost, and get ahead of myself. It prompted me to achieve at higher and higher levels with little satisfaction, and set incredibly high expectations, that far exceeded my abilities… And that it was undermining my health and success, happiness and my relationships.

For decades, I was captain, leader or owner of everything I got involved in, and I was always involved, yet I felt isolated, lonely, self-conscious and fatigued almost all the time… I rarely felt accepted and respected (only my perception) and all it did was drive me to achieve more and more at the cost of my well-being.

I justified it by thinking "this was the price of high achievement". It wasn’t, it was an "addiction" and in the age of achievement we live in, it was reinforced and in control of my life.

Despite a "healthy lifestyle" by all accounts and helping, others live the same; personal energy had always been a problem for me.  Always petal to the metal, the fact is, I was overspending my energy, and getting more sleep was not solving the problem.

Thank god, I knew what I knew about food and fitness. If I hadn’t been a student of healthy living, without exaggeration, the downward energy trend I was in for a long period, could have been a lot worse.  

For reasons, I will save for another time, Performance addiction, lead to a life of ambition that was outpacing my ability to perform "well." It affected me negatively in many ways. When I started getting honest about this, pretty soon I found that other achievers were essentially suffering a similar fate and the healthy lifestyle conversation around sleep, diet and exercise alone wasn’t addressing it.

The reason I’m sharing this with you is that I have little doubt performance addiction sits at the heart of why so many people have so little time, space and energy, why we often don’t take care of ourselves at the level we need to, and why the relentless demands of modern day life can get the best of us. 

When I launched my company as MyTrainer.com four and a half years ago, I wanted to help people "look better", "feel better" and "perform better" through healthy lifestyle. The focus was fitness, nutrition and recuperation however, down deep inside, I wanted to understand lifestyle in a way that improved health AND success.

Year after year of progressively pealing the onion back on lifestyle, and teaching what I learned, when I finally unearthed Performance Addiction, I could see clearly now why most people drive themselves into the ground. The process revealed a truer meaning of lifestyle and what it means today, when I speak of Performance Lifestyle.  

In a Performance Lifestyle, sleep, food and fitness are only part of the answer. Getting free of performance addiction and it’s insidious cascade of costs is where the conversation starts and in between, are the steps that all healthy high achievers know and live by.

I look forward to helping you unleash the full potential of your lifestyle to look, feel and perform better and achieve your goals, successfully, with your health and "wellbeing" intact.

stay tuned…