Feb. 12, 2024
(8-min read)
I’ve been an athlete my entire life. I’ve been captivated by high-performance for as long as I can remember. Relentlessly pursuing it with myself, my various teammates, and with my students willing and daring to embark on a journey of greatness.
I’ve been an athlete my entire life. I’ve been captivated by high-performance for as long as I can remember. Relentlessly pursuing it with myself, my various teammates, and with my students willing and daring to embark on a journey of greatness.
I’m grateful to have been exposed to true professional level dedication at a very young age. I did my best to integrate it totally, and I mostly fell horribly short. At times I felt horribly small. It seemed the dedication required to do something great, something excellent was too monumental, and the arena of competition too vast. Like a fish swimming up-stream through a river with no source. Endless effort amounting to nothing but an endless pursuit.
The truth is, the dedication required is monumental, and the arena of competition is vast. In fact, it’s too monumental and too vast to be dependent on willpower alone. I’ve found that high-performing individuals rarely struggle with work ethic, dreaming big, or competing hard. No, they create a very particular and peculiar problem. 
High performance in any arena often becomes a box you put yourself in as “someone who is working to bring about a future outcome”. From the outside you’re praised and labeled “dedicated”, “ambitious”, “going somewhere”, “driven”. All nice qualities but often inwardly intertwined with one subtle issue. You do not perform in the future. You cannot. That’s not performing, that’s pretending.
Their problem is they “think” they know what it takes.
It’s these very preconceived notions of how it’s going to happen that sabotage our innate ability to respond, adapt, be flexible, open to growth, open to learning, open to making a mistake, open to evolve, pick a new path, trial and error, trial and invent, and ultimately, ultimately, ultimately… create and play OUR game. Every human is a high-performer, because every human is meant to create freely in the moment.
It took me decades to understand that high-performance had nothing to do with achievement, and everything to do with being my best self, now, however that appeared. It’s this sacrificial mindset, which is often glorified, that disconnected us from the present. It‘s put on a pedestal and keeps us chasing the future, a trap where we sacrifice nothing but our very own creative potential that’s always and only accessible in The Moment.
The present and vulnerable you, the one that feels not ready, the one who doubts and shakes, that’s the you that holds every ounce of power, all potential only flows, and is ready to flow, through that version of yourself. The one reading these words. Your present self that so often mistakenly sees the present moment as a means to an end, when in truth this moment is the gift, it is the end of the fear that continues to push you harder into an imagined future you were taught to believe is better than a fully lived present. Which is undoubtably the gateway to living your dreams.
Real peak performance, is the eradication of a sacrificial mindset. It’s at this present moment you’re at your peak. It’s in THIS moment that performance can and will ensue. How much of you is here for that magic to flow through? Learn to respect the moment’s unknown flow of change, or it’ll pass you and “your hard-work” by without a second take. 
If there were High Performance gods, there would be only one, and it would be The Moment. The god of tennis is “The Point”. All is played through “The Point”, and no two have ever been the same. I am here. You are here. We are here. And that fact is what makes true competition, each point an absolute novel miracle in disguise. The full force of an individuals unlimited potential is available to find expression through seemingly separate momentary decisions. Yet, when this truth is brought into awareness, the sense of unlimited creative potential is so undeniably tangible, a single experience of it can have an athlete convinced of its significance for life.
The Moment is undeniable, incorruptible, uncontainable, unstoppable, unlimited. The possibilities within are infinite. And when you cease to be ahead or behind of it, when you simply rise to it and remain aligned with it, every action you take is empowered with those unimaginable qualities. Pride is believing you can “cause” success, keeping you in patterns of proving, trying to re-create what was, seeking to reverse engineer when you were meant to create.
Cease to use yourself to achieve something, and realize you’re at the Peak. This Moment, every moment, is the opportunity to be yourself. That’s the highest kind of performance. That’s the Point.
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