3 Stories on Achieving Peak Performance

The content I want to highlight this week is geared towards helping me achieve my own levels of peak performance. It starts with a popular TV series that captivated the sports world:

The Last Dance*: II first came across Michael Jordan’s tenacious mindset in a book called Relentless written by his former trainer Tim Grover. Guys like MJ, Kobe, and Dwayne Wade operate on a different level. The Last Dance further illustrated that to me and gave great insight into the mental makeup that made MJ such a force.

While teammates, and even some fans think that he was a little carried away at times, you can’t argue with the facts, the guy got results. People knock teams like the Patriots and Spurs as “boring” but if you want to win championships you must be willing to do what the competition is not. And that means demanding your very best during every single practice and off-season workout, never settling or compromising on your standards until the championship is secured. And once you do win, it’s time to start all over again.

Siddha Performance*: That leads me to my next highlight of the week. Kapil Gupta is a performance coach who works with some of the top athletes and CEO’s in the world. His teachings are unorthodox. And after spending hours reading his books, blog posts, and listening to podcasts, I still feel a little lost after digesting everything he preaches.

Kapil hates prescriptions. He believes that if you want to become world class, you won’t do so by following “How To” guides or copying your role models. Legends like MJ and Tiger Woods got to where they are because of their obsession and devotedness to their crafts. They were ruthlessly competitive yes, but they were also in a league of their own usually competing with themselves.

As shown in “The Last Dance”, MJ had to create stories in head at times to access that competitive drive because he found it hard to solely by motivated by winning games and breaking records.

Kapil also writes extensively about the mind getting in its own way, and creating problems that prevent us from maximizing our potential. Which is why he says that the ultimate goal is achieving a state of “no mind”, more commonly known as a flow state. Where you’re unconsciously performing at the highest levels your capable of as a human being.

The Sword of No Sword*: Although Kapil claims he doesn’t read books anymore, he did mention one briefly in a blog post he had written. This book tells the story of Tesshu, a master swordsman in Japan who achieved enlightenment when he was 45 years old.

Despite being a statesmen in Japan, his life was dedicated to mastering the art of sword fighting. Practicing all day, every day, he never met an adversary capable of defeating him. Tesshu personifies what Gupta talks about in his writings. Through decades of trial and tribulation he was able to become a legend in his field, not only becoming an expert swordsman, but also achieving the ever elusive “no mind”. This allowed him to destroy his enemies, and even defeat opponents who tried shooting him with guns.

It’s a cliche but it’s true, “when you think, you stink”. In order to achieve the highest levels of success we must train our intuition so that when we’re practicing our crafts we lose ourselves in the process, and finally allow ourselves to be the best we can possibly be.