“The ice had just been cleaned and flooded. I would be racing the first pair. Will the surface have hardened enough? Will it be harder for the last pairs, giving them an advantage? It didn’t matter; I was ready to skate on jelly or on concrete.” – Clara Hughes, 2010 Vancouver Olympics
It’s always a battle against ourselves.
The path to our greatest work, our moment of highest performance, could be one step away. It could be literally knocking on our door. Deep down we know this is what we were born to do. We have that feeling in our gut that this is exactly who I am and where I need to be.
But so many times we don’t walk through that door – we don’t take the leap.
Why?
Fear.
Fear and doubt materializing as a voice in the back of our head telling us we’re not good enough, that we will be a failure, that laughs at our dream of greatness. This voice is convicting – and we’ve been conditioned to listen to it subconsciously for years. Decades. That time you sang a solo in choir class and someone laughed at you. When you forgot the words to that speech and had to start over – feeling ridiculed by the audience’s whispers. When your friend jokingly said you looked fat, or imperfect, or not good enough.
Every time we choose to go against our gut and intuition and give into that voice of fear – it gets a little bit stronger.
I recently had an opportunity to lead an incredible team building workshop for a successful and fast growing technology organization. It was a huge opportunity and I was thrilled when I landed the business – the session was a GO.
I was equally terrified.
Here was the CEO and executive team putting their entire trust in me. In a few weeks time I would be expected to stand in front of a group of 30 employees and facilitate a meaningful and valuable experience that would enable them to connect, grow and thrive as a team.
The Rabbit Hole of Fear
The fear was already setting in.
On one hand my head was telling me that I was totally out of my league – way over my head – and it would all come crashing down on me in an embarrassing disaster. On the other hand, my gut was telling me this was exactly what I was born to do. The door was right there and I was holding the key.
To be honest at the end of the day both signals were nothing more than soft indicators – points of feedback that ultimately did not directly inform how capable I was deliver a great experience. But which voice I chose to listen to would have a profound influence on everything I did leading up to standing in the room – if I would make it there at all.
Let’s start with what happened directly after I accepted the contract. The voice of fear started trying to convince me that I needed to start planning my escape, what excuse could I come up with to get out of this commitment? I needed to back out so I would save myself the risk of failing – I wouldn’t even give anyone the opportunity to call me inadequate or out of my league.
I would be safe.
Finding flow
On the other hand when I tuned into my gut I got lost in full “Flow visualization” of what it would look like to lead this group through a transformational experience. I pictured the energy in the room and the types of conversations and interactions that would take place. It felt so good to be seeing the “perfect session” play out in my mind.
Over the coming weeks I internally observed the ebbs and flows of moments of anxiety and nervousness as well as total excitement. At a certain point the notion of cancelling was off the table. To my disappointment that voice of fear didn’t disappear – it simply shifted shape, it evolved.
The fear started to attach itself to the content… “Tyrell people will think this introduction is stupid. There will be crickets when you ask this question – you will be standing all alone in awkward silence.”
Shifting energy & visualizing performance
As the weeks turned into days before the session I implemented a critical strategy to help me leverage the energy I was draining into the anxiety and nervousness. I made the commitment that whenever the pang of anxiety hit me I would immediately count it with a long deep and controlled breath. Simple right? Then, I would force myself to visualize a single snapshot of the session where we are flowing as a group. Then I would remind myself this is the reality I am going to create.
Within 30 seconds I was back in the driver seat. It didn’t mean the fear and doubt weren’t there – they just had so little power in this scenario it rendered them ineffective in sucking any energy from me.
There is a compounding effect that takes place here too. By the day of the session I had gone through 100’s of these mini 30 second Flow visualizations.
But as anyone who has given a big speech, had a pitch day, an interview, or a championship game knows – the day of brings with it a whole new problem set of fears and mental challenges.
A strategy for gameday performance
As I began driving to the destination where I was to meet the team I recalled something Dr.Jeff Almon, my movement coach, shared with me a few weeks previous.
“Feel your feet”
“Huh” I replied
“Feel your feet. When your mind is in those downward spirals of suffocating thoughts or overworking problems just focus on feeling your feet.”
What Jeff was telling me wasn’t just some kind of silly trick to get my mind off of whatever I was over-spinning on, there is a powerful neurological impact this cue creates.
It has to do with how we move between sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. Sympathetic, more commonly known as fight or flight, is your bodies natural process of preparing all systems for some kind of intense excursion and survival. Your blood is rerouted away from the skin and to critical organs, your heart rate increases and your mind moves into a “survival at all costs” mentality.
Jeff’s point, when we focus our cognitive energy on the voice of fear and doubt it causes a sympathetic response – we are essentially requesting our body to move into a fight or flight state.
“Tyrell, feel your feet”
This cue is meant to be a trigger. Firstly to get your mind completely off that voice of fear and doubt in your head. It forces our mind and body directly into the present moment. And so as we begin to focus on the physical pulsing and vibrations in our feet, a neurological shift occurs occurs – we start transitioning to a parasympathetic state. Our body begins to open up blood flow to our skin, endorphins and hormones – prerequisites for flow and high performance – begin to be pumped. If you try this you’ll notice even after a couple minutes you feel lighter, more energize and likely in a more positive state of mind.
You have unlocked the door to allow “Flow” to happen.
Without “feeling your feet” the ability to perform at your best simple doesn’t exist. We are incapable of taking the risks required for our greatest performance when everything in our being is focused on surviving the worst case.
Quiet before the dance
Driving to the destination with this in mind I flipped on some music. I started with some incredible jazz. In “Yes to the Mess” Frank Barrett describes the highest level of leadership akin to a great jazz soloist – I didn’t truly grasp what this meant until I was in the car listening to Halsall getting ready for my own leadership performance.
I was starting to feel it.
I literally began feeling my blood being pumped to my skin, gut and heart. I was floating. The voices of fear and doubt were gone. Their role in this story were over. I had done my homework and prepared to the point where I knew there was no story these voices could convince me of. I had fully embraced showing up and leaving everything on the floor. “Let the cards fall where they are”.
My feet were on fire.
High Performance – when time slows down and magic happens
6 hours later I walked out of the 3 hour session buzzing. I texted Tash “Tash I killed it”. I had exceeded my greatest expectations for how the session went – more importantly I had blown the CEO and exec team’s expectations sky high as well.
I took a moment to acknowledge the even more important accomplishment – I stood up to the fear, the voice didn’t win this round. I chuckled as I recalled the feeling of panic and drowning only a week earlier. But despite hindsight being the validation that this was in fact my best work in the world and doing it again would be a breeze – those voices will be back.
There will be another challenge, another opportunity to grow and do my life’s best work. That fear and doubt will do whatever it can to stop me. Sometimes they will. But I will continue to do whatever I can to jump into the deep end where I know the key to Flow and high performance lives.
Where from here?
The application of this story lives in every single one of us – in everything we do. As I think about stepping into the Discus circle to compete at World Championships, and eventually the Olympics, this is the exactly mindset I will need to employ to succeed.
I encourage you to find your door, your ‘I was made for this’ opportunity – if it scares the hell out of you take that as encouragement. Staring at your door, with key in hand – the only thing left to do is ‘feel your feet’ and then bang that thing in like your life depends on it.
Your best life does.
photo: Wendy Shepard
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Living Life by a Simple Hypothesis
Sometimes I think we overcomplicate things in life. I find that when I live in tune with the hypothesis below, I am happy, fulfilled and feeling as if I’m doing my best work in the world.
I am at my best when striving towards a pursuit that intrinsically motivates me, is aligned with my values in life and challenges me beyond my comfort zone.
I refer to this state as “The Deep End” of life and I aspire to access this environment for as long and frequently as possible. Why? Because the opportunity it provides me for deep, paradigm shifting learning and growth is unrivalled.
I believe that over the long game of life — years and decades — this learning and growth compounds to create exponential value and results.
So far so good? Hopefully you can think of an experience in your own life where you have experienced the rich learnings from a dive way out of your comfort zone in the Deep End.
There’s one problem I have encountered with the Deep End, it is not actually where we capture our greatest learning and growth.
Let me explain further.
How We Learn: The Present and the Future
I believe our most significant learnings don’t actually arise when we are immersed in the present experience — but instead come long after, when we are intentionally reflecting back on our adventure in the Deep End. In my experience, 90% of my most valuable learning and growth comes through the act of pausing to reflect after the experience itself is over.
Had I not spent the time to intentionally sit down and think, reflect, journal, meditate and mentally deconstruct my experience – that learning and growth would remain trapped in my subconscious and eventually lost.
In a world that increasingly is too distracted, addicted to devices, ego driven, and without foundational framework or guide for living – we are losing sight of the art of learning.
Now let’s take a look at what we’ve learnt from the science.
Learning and The Conscious Brain
Our brain’s are incredible.
They are the reason we are here, standing upright, talking with others, and the dominant species on this planet. The brain has adapted and evolved over millions of years to help us thrive in this world.
Kevin Simlar and Robert Hanson, authors of “The Elephant in the Brain” make an argument that it is in fact this very ability to learn “post-experience” that has differentiated us from all other species on this planet. As we developed this capability hundreds of thousands of years ago to store and analyze past experiences we could update our set of actions to better optimize for survival. More on this shortly.
The facilitator of this capability for conscious thought and decision making is called our pre-frontal cortex (PFC). Whenever you are engaged in active thought — focusing on a new task, considering a set of decisions — this is your PFC at work. Unbeknownst to us, our brains have already done a lot of work in the milliseconds leading up to us forming a conscious thought. The main task is the parsing and prioritizing of millions of raw data points being collected by our brain via the brain stem at any given point in time. Before that conscious thought takes place our brain has already culled and stored 90% of the data it received and formatted the remaining 10% for our conscious processing in the PFC.
Here lies the gap.
When immersed in the present moment, we only have access to the information our brain deems most important to navigate the immediate decisions at hand.
This results in the “surface level” learnings and insights seen in the iceberg visual.
So, what happens to the 90% of information we don’t consciously get access to?
Accessing the Iceberg of our Subconscious
One of the most simple heuristics that has helped me understand how to access the iceberg of wisdom and knowledge hidden within our own subconscious mind is this:
As long as we are mentally preoccupied with an activity in the present, we cannot access our the iceberg of subconscious knowledge.
In other words, whether we are pursuing a goal in the Deep End of life, drowning in thoughts of stress and anxiety, or immediately jumping from one task to the next without pause — we are forgoing the opportunity to learn and grow from the depths of our subconscious.
Sidenote: Dr.Matthew Walker, author of “Why We Sleep” suggests that this also has a significant negative impact on our ability to fall asleep quickly and get deep restful sleep. By foregoing opportunities to pause and reflect throughout the day, our brain’s are forced to begin this activity just as we are laying our head down on the pillow.
Reflection & Inquiry
While we are only just beginning to understand the neuroscience of our brain’s processing of subconscious information, we have intuitively known the art of reflection tens of thousands of years how to access this information. The answer is simple and as a result is often overlooked.
Pause. Be still.
Quiet the mind.
Find Flow.
Rest. Recover.
Reflect. Inquire.
Slowing down, stillness, a quiet mind
A prerequisite to accessing the wisdom of our subconscious is the quieting of our conscious Pre Frontal Cortex powerhouse. This is one of the incredible benefits to breath-work, mindfulness meditation, and frankly any other activity that causes us to detach from our conscious thought — eg, going for a walk where you are simply focused on the awe of Mother Nature that surrounds you.
Non-Performance Flow States
Finding ‘Flow States’, or more specifically the act of being fully immersed and focused on a task that is intrinsically motivating, engaging, challenging and rewarding is another way to stimulate our subconscious processing. Inherently, Flow States are partially subconscious by nature (to access a Flow State you must have practiced the activity enough for our brain to have laid some “unconsciously competent” neural wiring) and don’t need to be performing a sport at an Olympic level. For example the walk described above (walking and general navigation being two of the activities with “unconsciously competent” wiring — can provide the right person with a Flow state). When it comes to using Flow States as a vehicle for subconscious processing I think it’s important to make the distinction between Performance Flow (intentionally using Flow to access a Peak Performance state) and Non-Performance Flow (fully immersed and engaged in an activity without the intention or requirement of Peak Performance).
Sleep
It turns out that REM sleep, occurring in the latter half of a full 7+ hour of sleep night (not to be confused with 7 hours in bed), is where our brains begin making ‘new’ connections between different streams of raw data that have been captured in the previous day. Compromise on sleep and you automatically lose this super hero power.
Reflection & Inquiry
Iceberg metaphor as it relates to conscious and unconscious learnings
There’s something about the iceberg metaphor that is staying on my mind. The most recent thought is the idea that every experience, adventure and journey we go on in life has the potential to represent significant learning and growth. Whether the outcome is good bad or ugly it actually doesn’t matter. As we walk through the experience we have access to the top half of the iceberg, the 10% of conscious learning that comes from the immediacy and present experience of whatever we’re going through. The problem, however is that it takes longer for our subconscious, which is capturing 90 to 95% of the information that we don’t consciously process to make sense of what we’re going through. This bottom half of the iceberg, the 90%, can only be accessed through intentional reflection, inquiry, And self reflection over time. When we choose to raise from one thing to the other, or to avoid the challenging self reflection that may come with failure, negative stories or deep scary vulnerabilities we lose and forfeit the opportunity to capture the 90% of growth and learning that we could otherwise apply to the long-term trajectory of our lives.
Where to from here?
If you want some help establishing your foundation, upon which you are able to jump into the Deep End, I would recommend taking some time completing this free Human Performance Assessment I have developed as part of the Human Performance Project.
Once your direction is set and you are up the High Dive or off into the Deep End, it’s important to build in intentional reflection time at different periods.
I founded The Human Performance Project to equip humans, teams, and groups with the roadmap and tools required to pursue audacious goals, dreams and aspirations in the Deep End of life.
You can learn more about this work here.
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