Edition #21: Are you living a high performance life?
There’s a reason I don’t call myself a disability advocate. And it’s not because I don’t believe in advocating for people with disabilities.
As I recently told the Female Lead, it’s because
I think there’s a big issue as soon as you start segmenting the population into people with disabilities and people without. What I advocate for is every single person being able to find themselves existing in an environment that allows them to reach their full potential.
High performance is for everyone.
Not everyone’s version looks the same.
Not every version fits into a cookie cutter set of expectations.
So how do you know if your life is high performing?
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”
The Problem: How do I know if I am living a high performance life?
There are the classic high performance markers:
Shiny trophies
Shiny cars
Lots and lots of zeros after your pay cheque
Easy to measure, but pretty useless if you subscribe to this definition
HIGH PERFORMANCE = sustained courageous action in the pursuit of meaningful goals
The classic markers aren’t wrong or bad and many high performers end up with them as a side product. And many high performers don’t.
Which means we need a different test to tell if we’re in the high performance zone.
The Solution: The Rule of Thirds
I can’t tell you what high performance looks like in your life, because everyone’s version is different. But I can tell you how it feels. And this is where the Rule of Thirds comes in.
In a high performance life,
one third of the time, you will feel awesome
one third of the time, you will feel okay
and one third of time you will feel not so good
In a high performance life, the goal is not to be successful all the time. In fact, it may be a sign that you are setting your sights too low.
Equally, if there aren’t a few wins interspersed amongst the “okay” and the “not so good days”, something probably needs to change as well.
So if you find yourself marinating in this mix of consistency, success, and learning, you’re doing it!
The Application:
One of the great things about elementary school is that you realize the world is full of people who do things differently than your family.
We were sitting in Friday traffic on the way home from school. The perfect time to explain to my mum that lots of my friends got money if they did well on their report cards.
Silence.
I asked if it would be helpful if I tallied up the amount of money I would have earned from my latest report card if she followed the same policy as Victoria’s mum.
Silence.
I asked if it would be helpful if I tallied up the back log of payments I was owed from previous report cards based on this scheme.
Finally, she spoke!
“I love that for Victoria. But your education is for your benefit. Not mine. You’re the one who’s going to use it. Do it for yourself. Or not. It’s up to you.”
High performance is nuanced, contextual, and different for everyone. External markers are nice, but unnecessary. The process is always its own reward.
Does your life reflect a mix of success, consistency and learning? Which do you need to lean into more?
I don’t know who came up with Rule of Thirds, but I first heard it from Olympian Alexi Pappas.
It’s always a good thing when wisdom is corroborated across cultures, generations, and professions. It means it works and it’s stood the test of time!
Stay bold, friends!
- Stef
PS. The next edition lands in 3 weeks (not 2 weeks), on Friday June 12th, the second Friday of the month!
Forward this to a friend you want to encourage!
Or forward to someone looking for an inspirational speaker.