Have you ever wondered why some individuals are exceptional and succeed while others cope with their failures and misery?
The difference between the greatest leaders, first-class scholars, high achievers, productive employees, and the average individual is clear:
They exhibit high-performance habits consistently no matter what they do or where they find themselves.
So what’s high-performance?
High-performance is being exceptional, going beyond the limit and succeeding above established norms over a long time.
Brendon Burchard, author of the book High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way reveals these traits about high performers. Here are the attributes:
– They are more exceptional and successful than their colleagues, yet they are not under pressure.
– They exude confidence that they can accomplish their goals against all odds.
– They are productive and have mastered how to generate quality output.
– They are passionate about what they do, regardless of conventional rewards.
– They are admired and can adapt as leaders.
– They are strong and healthier.
– They feel they are making an impact on their work and people love them.
If you want to exhibit these attributes, you must develop the following 6 high performance habits:
Find out what you want from life, where you want to be, how you want to relate with others and what can help you to become significant in life.
Clarity simplifies living, however achieving clarity demands commitment, consistency, and change, especially if you are easily distracted, busy or overwhelmed.
Your mental energy determines your posture and success in life.
Momentum can position you to stay ahead in life. It can also guide you to achieve your goals. Momentum generates a domino effect where everything falls into place in your life.
Necessity is about finding the reasons you must be exceptional. These reasons should include internal standards such as your core values, beliefs, and the requirement for excellence and external standards such as public commitments, competition, social duties, and deadlines.
Productivity is about staying focus as well as getting focused on generating quality output. It is the ability to prioritize what is vital until it is achieved. This is what separates the high performers and productive people from the wannabes.
Nobody attains significance in isolation. High-performance people develop influence with those who surround them.
Influence is the ability to have a significant impact on others intentionally. They understand their success will be limitless when they impact others positively.
Courage is a pathway to a successful life. According to Peter Drucker:
“Anywhere you see a successful business, someone took a courageous decision.”
Courage is the quality of mind or spirit that empowers an individual to confront danger and pain difficulty without being afraid. It is standing up when others are giving up. It is taking action when others losing gut.
How to Cultivate High-Performance Habits
Less than 15 percent of the total population are exceptional and high-performers. I strongly believe there’s a lot you can do to be more productive, successful and exceptional.
Brendon also established 6 practical ways you can exhibit the six high-performance habits of the highly successful individual.
1. Seek Clarity
High performers seek clarity more than the average individuals. If you want to be exceptional, seek clarity and learn how to stay on the true path.
For instance, exceptional individuals don’t wait till the year-end before they assess their performance, they evaluate themselves daily. You need to be clear about your ‘why? what? and how?’. This will help you to sift out distractions and consistently focus on what is relevant to your goals.
Here’s an example:
You can focus on these four: self, social, skills, and service. How can you describe your ‘ideal self’?’ How do you want to socialize? What skills do you aspire to develop and also demonstrate? What problem(service) do you want to solve?
If you can answer these four questions, it will give you an edge over others who lack clarity about life.
2. Generate Momentum
According to Brendon’s research, most individuals are fagged out by 3 pm. They may manage to go through the day but they are completely wiped out by evening.
But do you know that the high performers are not wiped out by 3 pm? They are literarily starting their day.
What then is the secret?
They have gained control of transitions. They can quickly take a break, meditate or close their eyes to release their tension and align their focus on the important activity.
If you want to become creative and energized, as well as retain your efficiency all through the day, learn how to embark on psychological breaks every forty-five to sixty minutes. This might be tough to implement, but try to plan your day in chunks.
3. Raise Necessity
Before they embark on any endeavor, high performers always raise necessity psychologically. They seek to understand why it is crucial to perform exceptionally.
If you want to be exceptional, align your identity with excellence. Refuse to settle for mediocrity. Discharging your duties with excellence is so vital to your identity just like oxygen is essential for your survival.
Several people are afraid of attaching their identity to what they do. High performers can put their names on their performance and put themselves on the line. This is what raising necessity is all about. Excellent performance must be a priority for you.
How then can you raise necessity?
State whom you are doing it for. List the people that are meant to be on your A-game list. Always bring that to focus when you perform.
It could be your wife, children, less privileged, customers, team, end-users. Who are you performing well for?
Your major responsibility is to prime your psychological ability to perform exceptionally. To achieve this, raise a necessity so that you can initiate actions with an improved level of intention. This will enable you to perform excellently.
4. Enhance Your Productivity
Highly exceptional individuals optimize their outputs. When Steve Jobs took back the mantle of leadership at Apple in 1997, he brought the company back from the verge of bankruptcy. He streamlined the product line and focused on optimizing the quality of the remaining products. The iPod, iPod and the iPhone were released under his leadership. 
This is what you have to do:
Focus on the main thing and dismiss the inconsequential.
High-performers are more efficient because they are visionaries. They know what’s ahead and they position themselves to achieve what’s next.
If you want to be productive, you must ask yourself:
– What are my next five moves?
– What are the five greatest moves that brought me here?
– What are not the major moves?
– What are the skills and competencies I need to develop to make those moves?
These questions will help you avoid distractions and focus on success.
For instance, if you want to vlog, you need to hone your speaking and video editing skills, learn how to write a script and how to collaborate for success.
Do you know the interesting thing?
Most high-performers don’t establish their next five moves consciously, they just make it happen.
But now that you know, you can.
5. Develop Influence
High performers teach others how to think and challenge them to take responsibility for their lives. This is how they develop influence.
You can change your life by teaching people how to think smart.
Learn how to cold call people around you. High performers challenge people with thought-provoking questions such as, “What if you addressed it this way?” or “What do you say to this?”. They consistently train the people that surround them on how to think smart.
You can only have an influence when you impact the thought processes and patterns of other people.
Here’s the good news:
“If someone is inspired because you are alive, you are not only a leader, you are a high-performer.”
High performers spur the people around them to grow. This is the secret to becoming influential and exceptional.
6. Demonstrate Courage
Brendon’s extensive research also revealed that high performers exhibit some traits when they face hardship, risk, judgment and the unknown.
First, they stand for themselves. They communicate their vision and ambitions than the average people. They not only speak for themselves, but they also speak for others. They are not afraid to share truths about themselves.
Not only that, they understand that struggle is fundamental to success. They pursue their ambition knowing it wouldn’t be easy.
They knew if it were to be easy, there will be no Steve Jobs, Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Williams Shakespeare, of course, me and you. If it were to be easy, you would not have been born.
I have seen several people complain about struggle. High performers get muddy, they work hard. They show up when others give up. They deliver when others celebrate mediocrity.
They know it’s not going to be easy, but they fight to succeed.
If you want to be a high performer, you must be courageous.
How then do you get the courage to stay focused on your goals?
Focus on who you are doing it for and work hard to achieve your goal. This will inject you with the courage that you need.
The Bottom Line
I would leave you with the words of Denzel Washington, an Outstanding Actor in Motion Picture and a high performer:
‘Without commitment, you’ll never start, but more importantly, without consistency, you’ll never finish.’
Ease is a great threat to becoming a high performer than hardship. Keep learning!