High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way

by Brendon Burchard

Clearly, if you want a positive life, you would do well to summon as much enthusiasm as possible.

“What can I get excited or enthusiastic about today?” That simple question has changed the way I walk into each day. Try it.

The fourth way that high performers say their efforts have meaning is by making them feel that their life “makes sense.” Psychologists call this coherence.22 It means that the story of your life—or of recent events in your life—is comprehensible to you in some way.

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This sense of coherence seems to be particularly important to high performers.

focus on these things more consistently than you ever have before. That’s what moves the needle. With greater focus will come greater clarity, and with greater clarity will come more consistent action and, ultimately, high performance.

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Here are the big three practices I’ve seen high performers leverage to maintain their edge and their energy.

release all the tension

SET INTENTION. This means think about what you want to feel and achieve in the next activity you’re about to take on when you open your eyes. Ask, “What energy do I want to bring into this next activity? How can I do this next activity with excellence? How can I enjoy the process?”

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It has saved me many times from anxiety and a poor performance:

If you’d like to go to another level of mastery, try a twenty-minute practice called the Release Meditation Technique (RMT).

It turns out that joy, more than anything else, is what gives them capital “E” Energy. If you feel joy, your mind, body, and emotional reality all get a lift.

I chose the first question specifically because so many high performers shared that they enjoyed the anticipation as much as the joyous event itself.

Of course, sometimes I’d stand in the shower and couldn’t think of anything to get excited about. So I would ask, “Well, what could you make up or do today that you could get excited about?”

I chose the second question so I could follow the high performers’ practice of imagining possible stressful situations and how their best self might gracefully handle them. I tend to ask this question out loud, from a second-person standpoint, and then respond to it out loud. That means I stand there in the shower and say, “Brendon, what might stress you out today, buddy, and how would your best self handle it if it came up?”

The first trigger was what I call a “notification trigger.” I put the phrase BRING THE JOY into my phone as an alarm label.

specifically, a spiritual intelligence.23) So if a deal goes through or someone gets good news about a loved one, or anything positive and unexpected happens, you’ll hear me say, “What a gift!”

If you don’t put intention and set up reminders to generate joy in your life, then you’re not experiencing the full range of life’s zest.

If you won’t bring more mindfulness and joy into your life for the sheer personal improvement, then do it for those around you

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Make improving your energy a commitment. Start taking more moments during the day to release the tension in your body and mind. Choose to bring joy to your everyday life experience.

Why? The answer is a phrase that explains one of the most powerful drivers of human motivation and excellence: performance necessity.

Think of these internal forces as an internal guidance system that urges you to stay “who you are” and grow into your best self.

people don’t perform well just because they’re doing tasks they’re satisfied with, but rather because they’re setting challenging goals that mean something to them personally.2 Satisfaction is not the cause of great performance; it’s the result.

High performers are happier than their peers, perceive that they have less stress than their peers, and feel that they’re making a greater difference and are being well rewarded for those efforts. They feel this way because they feel that they’re on the right path. And they feel that they’re on the right path because they frequently check in with themselves.

They don’t fear observing themselves, flaws and all, because they do it so often. The more you do something, the less it stings.

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Go ahead and tie your identity to doing a good job. And remember to set challenging goals. Decades of research involving over forty thousand participants has shown that people who set difficult and specific goals outperform people who set vague and non-challenging goals.

If an internal standard for excellence makes solid performance necessary, then the internal force of curiosity makes it enjoyable.

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You know within minutes of meeting someone whether they have an obsession. If they have it, they’re curious, engaged, excited to learn and talk about something specific and deeply important to them.

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It changes from a desire to feel a particular state of emotion—passion—to a quest to be a particular kind of person. It becomes part of you, something you value more deeply than other things. It becomes necessary for you.

they consciously choose those duties and thus don’t see them as negative pressures to perform. They are not pushed to performance; they are pulled.

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“Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.” —Phillips Brooks

High performers often feel the necessity to perform well out of a sense of duty to someone or something beyond themselves. Someone is counting on them, or they’re trying to fulfill a promise or responsibility.

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If you add to that accountability—when people know that you are responsible for helping them—necessity becomes stronger yet.

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High performers like necessity. In fact, they need it. When it’s gone, their fire is gone.

I wouldn’t let them off the hook until we were clear about the Four Forces.

In addition to choosing a high performance identity, you’ll have to immerse yourself fully in activities that force you to stretch. You can’t just prance around thinking you’re good. You have to put yourself in situations that make you good.

That’s why I ask that you frame this practice as an opportunity to bring your A game for someone else.

When I say affirm your why to yourself, I mean literally talk to yourself using affirmations.

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“clustering.” They found that behaviors, attitudes, and health outcomes tend to form in social clusters.

This dynamic, which has been dubbed “social contagion,” has been shown to have both detriments and benefits.

For all these reasons, high performers spend more time with positive people than with negative people.

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They are more strategic and consistent in seeking to work with others at or above their level of competence, experience, or overall success.

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They seek networking activities or group affiliations with more successful people. At work, they communicate more with people who are more experienced and often “above” them on the organizational chart. In their personal lives, they volunteer more, spend less time in negative or conflict-ridden relatio...

To make a difference in your life, you don’t need dozens of new friends. You need one more positive person who brings out the best in you.

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Then start hanging with them a little more often, just a half hour more per week. One more positive person leads you one more step toward the good life.

Competition can bring out the best in us when we view the process of competing as a striving for excellence, personal bests, and team contributions.

Bring your squad and their standards up. You’ll become a more extraordinary person by having more extraordinary people around you.

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” —Epictetus

As with all high performance habits, you have to be deliberate about raising your level of necessity. You must consistently think it through: “Have I associated the important activities of my day with my identity and my sense of obligation? Why is chasing this dream so important to me? Why must I do this? When must I do it? How can I get around more amazing people who up my game and help me serve at the next level?” These questions, frequently revisited, can be the prompts for an entirely new level of commitment and drive.

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Productivity starts with goals. When you have clear and challenging goals, you tend to be more focused and engaged, which leads to a greater sense of flow and enjoyment in what you’re doing.2 Greater enjoyment gives you that intrinsic motivation that has been correlated with greater productivity in both quantity and quality of output.

Research consistently shows that group goals inspire people to work more quickly and for longer periods, pay more attention to the tasks that matter, become less distracted, and increase their overall effort.4