30 Aug, 2022

Pete Cohen  0:00

Happy, beautiful, amazing day. It is Pete Cohen. It is the Future Self podcast. Today's podcast is called 7 Habits of High Performers. I'll see you after the theme tune.

Pete Cohen  0:38

Hey, happy beautiful, amazing day it's Pete Cohen here thank you for joining me for the podcast 7 Habits of High Performers. This is a subject I'm extremely passionate about because you know what I love to help people improve. I love to help people advance I love to see things grow. Right now it's spring here in the United Kingdom and we're seeing a daffodils coming up and all other flowers. They are blooming and blossoming and I always think to myself, what they had to go through to get here, you know, because it ain't gonna last and before you know it, they'll be gone. And then before you know it, something else will come and then it will go just like us in our life. We will come and we will go. And when we go, where will we go? Nobody knows. Well, maybe somebody knows but I'm not talking about where we go. When we go. I want to know where are we going when we're here? Because this is the Future Self podcast. So everything we do is about your future. And how is your future looking? I mean, I do have a crystal ball. In fact, I burn a house down that I lived in with a crystal ball. But that's another story. Maybe we'll save that story for another day. But if I could look into a crystal ball and see your future, what would I see? If I saw your future? All of you that are listening if I could look into the ball and see your future what if I could see the future that only you can see? This is where it starts to get really interesting. But how many times in your life have you read a horoscope? Or how many times have you heard someone tell you what their horoscope said or they saw a clairvoyant and the Clairvoyant told them something about themselves. And it's funny how lots of people want that they want someone else to tell them how their future is going to look. Is that not fascinating to you? It's a big business around the world. I used to work with a lady who had an addiction to speaking to psychics, she must have spent hundreds I mean hundreds of 1000s of pounds on this addiction. It became something every single day these phone lines who would be speaking to someone looking for someone to tell her? Do you want someone to tell you how your future is going to turn out? Or do you want to be the person that wants to decide where you're going, why you're going there and who ultimately you want to be because we're going to talk about high performance. And I think that what's really interesting is that we know that human beings we don't really change. When we're told what to do human beings as a generalization. I don't really like being told what to do and I can prove it to you, you know, right now, go and tidy up your house or go and tidy your bedroom. Most people will immediately feel some form of inner resistance to go I'm not doing that. I want to do it my way. But what is your way and if I could see in a crystal ball and see the future that you can see what would I see? And this is for me fascinating because we talk about this a lot on the Future Self podcast. But what we know is most people are living a future they don't want if you took someone into the future and you showed them the result of what they're continuing to do every single day, in many cases to get out of pain that they're in, they're bored, they're tired, they're lonely, they're uncertain, or even the fact that they're just that they want to feel better and they want to do something that by doing it like eating excess or drinking to excess or just living life to an excess knowing somewhere deep down inside that that's going to lead to a place they don't want to go but they don't know that place. They haven't been there yet. I mean, we all could go to that place. Just go to a hospital if you want to. That's why a lot of people don't like hospitals, because they see a lot of people suffering and we don't like to see that. But we also see a lot of people there, that if they had made different choices, they wouldn't be there. 97.3% of Americans are not high performance depends what you classify as a high performer. But 97.3% of Americans are unhealthy by four basic measures. And one of the things we're going to be talking about as we get stuck into the seven habits of high performance for them. Number one is health first and foremost health and energy number one and this is a new dawn of high performance. To me this isn't the high performers of all look how much money I've got fame, power, and you know, all of that kind of the trappings of life.

Pete Cohen  5:14

You know, fame, power and a fortune that I'm not talking about that that to me is not a high performance that ultimately it's your definition it's up to you to decide. I think of life as a competitive event. Right? We're all competing every day, competing at what? Well, that's up to you. I believe that most people if you're a proper high performer in life, you realize there are three areas that are important three areas. I think we would all agree right, that healthy energy is important. Would you not agree? health and energy is especially if you didn't have to do anything. If I could look in your crystal ball or my crystal ball and look at your future. What we would see for about 98% of people is their view of the future doesn't go very far. So I could see you tonight I could see you tomorrow. I could see you next week. I could probably see you next month. But beyond that. I wouldn't see it we'd all be unclear. And that's the fascinating thing about human beings is we don't actually have a relationship to our future self that expands beyond a few weeks or months. And I know when we're not encouraged to do that. Imagine when you were at school if anyone asks you to think about what you want to do when you grow up. Maybe when you were a certain age you would know but then you went to school and then you had to learn to put your head down Stop daydreaming start retaining information that you would never really ever use so that you could regurgitate the information and then go and get a job that you thought you were supposed to do as opposed to a job that you really wanted to do that really made you come alive. Maybe I'm just talking about myself here but I'm not sure about that because there's always been a rebel in me that never wanted to do as I was told and always wanted to do things my way but I never had a relationship to the future because all I did but it wasn't very far it was the weekend or the end of school so that holidays, but now I've learned to be a visionary. Now I've learned to see bigger, and I only learned to do this by facing myself as a high performer. As a playing high performer. You know, I was driven very driven to move away from where I was but a real high performer is very driven by who they want to become. And let me ask you the question, Who do you actually want to become? Do you want to be who you are? Right now? Who you choosing to become? So let's get stuck in what is a high performer? I mean, for me, the definition of a high performer is quite simple. It's someone who excels someone who performs beyond what people would expect of them. It's someone who goes the extra mile. That to me is what a high performer is. That's my definition of it. Someone who excels. They outperform their previous best. They go beyond their own expectations, other people's expectations. They always go the extra mile with everything. They leave no stone unturned. They're like warriors or soldiers of life, athletes of life. We used to run a whole series of programs around the business athlete and training people in business to become athletic minded. Athletes strong like the Greeks, the Greeks prided themselves on Learn becoming great learners but great physical specimens as well. Strong flexible, and we can all do that. But there's a price for paying that and the one of the biggest prices, most of the world isn't doing that. So if you decide to do it, it's going to be different, and you're probably going to need a few elements to it. And the last thing I'm going to say on this is that it's for me, this is the second mountain. You know this, I'm probably talking to people here who are probably late 30s, early 40s 50s 60s 70s People who have just, you know, they've tried to climb that first mountain, maybe they've climbed it, you know, they've got they've got I've worked with so many people who I've coached who have got an abundance of money and everything that you think anyone would want, but they ain't happy, because they don't have the fulfillment. And what I'm talking about with high performers is that it's not about fame, power, money. It's about connection. It's about intrinsic growing, of just knowing that the more they grow, the more they are making a difference to the people around them. So the first areas I mentioned was health. The second is relationships with yourself with others and your wealth and your work and I'm not just talking about wealth, in terms of money.

Pete Cohen  9:35

But it's climbing that second mountain which is really about giving. It's about contributing and giving. These are the high performers that I love to work with people who already are in the performing achieving habit or the ones who just want to, and I'm seeing more and more of those people come to the fore as we teach people how to build a relationship to their future self. So the high performers I'm talking about they love to succeed. What is succeeding? Well, it's basically the accomplishment of an aim or a purpose or a mission. What is the only way in life? I think it's your way, right? And these people are driven, as I said, by an intrinsic motivation more than anything else. It's not about fame and fortune and power. It's about making a difference. It's about autonomy, being themselves writing their own story. It's about mastery getting better and it's about purpose. So why do very few people in the world go down this road? Or if they do it, they do it for a few days or weeks or months? That's a good question, isn't it? That you think that's a great question. That Sanskrit word, and Broomberg Assura that means hero in the beginning a Sanskrit word that we start off with great intentions, but the greatest of all people are people that do what I believe that the greatest of all the people are people who are driven by a dissatisfaction with what they see, and an inspiration of making things better. That way when they move out of pain, they still continue to move into growth because there's something in front of them. So let's begin what is Habit number one? Well the Habit number one is recognizing the thin line the thin line between success and failure. What does that mean? high performers are extremely aware hyper aware of the thin line between success and failure in terms of that what it actually takes. They know that when they look into the future, when they look at their lens into the future, they become increasingly aware that the only way that they've created that future is by process is by but by being very vigilant and super aware of the consequences of all of their actions. And something that we talk about a lot, which is something called habit suicide, which is if you're in the habit of doing something and you stop and you stop it for a day. Good luck two days later, 40% chance that you're done. Three days. Well, you might as well start again now, of course, this doesn't apply to everything. But if you're someone who meditates and you stop doing it for three days, see what happens on the fourth day. It's not it's not just that you've stopped. It's the fact that you've got something in motion. And I think the only reason to get something in motion is that you get to keep it moving. What's Habit number two? Well, habit number two is they know the person they want to be they actually know that person, again is does this apply to everybody? I don't know. I don't know everybody. But having spent so many years working with such high achievers, having coached and mentored top MDS and CEOs, for athletes that are performed in front of hundreds of 1000s Millions of people. The one thing I see that distinguishes all of them, they are inspired by who they becoming. They've built a relationship with that person. And when they become more aware of that it changes everything. They're inspired by who they're becoming. Because we know in business just for an example, that where there's no vision, there's no engagement if people don't see the vision of where the business is. Going and they don't see themselves in it. There's no engagement. But if a leader is engaged in who he's becoming, and sees the vision as the result of who he is become, it's much easier for him to get other people to come play. So they not only this is number two, habit number two they know the person they want to be they practice being this person, they know the role they were aligned to do. They use something called prospection. And we'll talk about another element of this prospection is just like digging for gold. You know, you're digging for the thing. You know you're carving the person out that you want to be you know, that's what it's all about. The word character comes from the Greek word, which means to chisel. So they're chiseling away. They love to do the work as animals that we are what are we designed to do?

Pete Cohen  14:21

I think we're designed to evolve. Basically, we have the ability to continuously evolve. Look how we evolved. But can we not see that now is the time for a revolution. Like never before our world needs revolution. You see what's going on in different parts of the world. We need a revolution of people taking responsibility for their health. We need a revolution in leadership. We need many revolutions. But what about you I think the revolution that most people need to have is knowing the role they were they were assigned to play or knowing the role that they want to play and walking that path. The Greeks call it you Semia you send me a tranquility, of walking the path that you were put on this earth to go down. It's a challenging road to go down anyway. But if you don't choose a path to go down, you don't know what you stand for. You'll fall for everything and that's what social media and that's what advertising is all about. get you to do something that you don't need to do. What do you need to do and who do you need to become? That's what high performers do Habit number three, they build self control. They're building it. They build that self control muscle my good friend Joe disana, who's the founder of Spartan Races is over in Slovakia at the moment, helping and I was speaking to someone yesterday on the ground on the Polish border helping supporting and Joe and I he's one of my mentors. He is my self control. Mentor. He is the one who has taught me how to delay gratification how to say no to things. Someone offers me chocolate. I say no. Why am I saying no to it? Because everything I'm doing today is investing in tomorrow tomorrow. It's not that I don't enjoy today is I want to make sure tomorrow is as good as it could be by what I'm doing today. And the next day and the next day. They build self control. They say NO to temptation and yes to growth. And the best way to build self control. It's like a muscle. You know is when you meditate and you're feeling that your body's going I don't want to be here anymore. Let's get up. You tell your body now you sit here. You do let's do another minute. You're exercising you feel like stopping you go No no no, no, no, no, no no. I'm going to go a bit further. You're listening talking to someone and you find your what your attention wandering now you can sit there and you're going to listen. You're going to build self control. Self control is the queen of all virtues. There's different schools of thought about this, you know, willpower, blah, blah. I mean, willpower is extremely, extremely powerful. But environment also kind of can almost Trump willpower. Because I think our environment seriously can affect the decisions that we make. That's why it's so important to be around people. And in so many cases if you want to become a high performer it's important to stop, stop, stop. Look at what you need to stop doing and to do what we do with people, when we coach people, we audit them that's audit you. And that's a challenge for people. It's like when people are given feedback how many times when you're giving feedback you go oh, oh, hello. He take it personally. Rather than personal responsibility to decide to get better, and stop what do you need to stop doing right now that if you stopped doing it and you stopped doing it for a few days, weeks, months for the rest of your life? What impact would that have? For me? There's there's a few things I'm working on with a Stop One Start One challenge that we have created. That is just blowing all self development out of the water and it will become a global movement where people are just taking control getting excited about stopping as they build. And Chick, who's the word, they chisel away at the person they begin to get to become. So Habit number three, they build self control as what high performers do. And they want to push themselves every single day just have a little bit more self control. They say NO to temptation, and they say yes to growth. Number four, is basically they set big goals. Now, goal setting is a fascinating area because again, lots of different

Pete Cohen  18:47

schools of thoughts around it, but there's over 1000 studies that show that when you set big goals, increases your effort, your commitment, your persistence. You know, I really like what Grant Cardone has to say on this. I introduced his wife at an event. The other day, Elena Cardone, this whole 10x movement, and I like it and I've spoken to grant and I really loved what he said about it because I didn't understand it. I just thought it was just like, you know, Guru talk 10x your life but really what he means is 10x what it is that you want to see. Now, this is where it gets really interesting for me. This isn't something I talk about a lot. I'm not a big fan of vision boarding I don't know whether you've got a vision board and if you look at it, what's on it. For some people, they'll see the things that relate to fame or power or money. And again, I'm not here to say that there's anything wrong with that. But studies shown that when people seek that and get that it doesn't make them necessarily psychologically stable. In fact, they'll make them less psychologically psychologically stable, because they've never got enough. I'm talking about the golden the mission of who you actually want to be. Like the goal and the mission that Ghandi said of who He who he chose to be resulted in the resulting of probably hundreds of 1000s Maybe millions of people not dying. But when we 10x we 10x who were going to be I think it will increase our effort, our commitment and our persistence. So we have this dynamic tension. I'm a big fan of dynamic tension feeling pulled towards doing something. It's made the biggest single difference in my life. That when I woke up this morning at 333. I could have gone back for 20 back to sleep for 25 minutes because I set my alarm for four. Even though I very rarely get up. I'm sorry, very rarely the alarm goes off. I normally wake up a few minutes before Isn't that fascinating? The internal alarm clock in my head. But basically, the reason that I don't go back to sleep is I know if I go back to sleep when I do wake up, I'm going to wake my wife up with the alarm. But I also know I'll still be asleep because I know that we sleep in 60 to 90 minute cycles. So I'm up and it's easier to get up because I feel the tension of being pulled towards my vision and my mission. That's much more than a goal. And I feel tension towards it positive tension. And these are what some people might call stretch goals. So what's Habit number five? Habit number five is highly high performance, they practice confidence. It's so important to get your head around this and again, people don't talk about this very often. What is confidence? What does it mean? What it means intense trust if you look at the origin, it comes from a Greek word, confidence Ray.

Pete Cohen  21:44

And really confidence is two types, believing in your future believing that you will achieve what you want to achieve. But I would say believing that you can become the person that you want to become knowing exactly what to do knowing the processes. And then basically it's doing what you say you're going to do. How many times in your life if you want to build confidence is such an easy thing to do such an easy thing to not to do. Do what you say you are going to do DWYSYAG d t d t d do what you say you're going to do. Such a fascinating thing when you see people do this Wow. They can outperform anything they've done before. They just keep going regardless of how they feel because high performers think greater than they feel. They're not a victim of how they feel. Oh, I don't feel like it. No, no they don't care in many cases how they feel. Because they know the feelings they want to get anywhere gonna come from the result of doing something that's difficult. You see, when you practice confidence, basically you know that something's coming. Obstacles are coming. Crisis are coming, but you're ready. Something again I learned from Joe dishonor we train when COVID came his business was crippled. Part of our business was crippled as well as a speaker traveling all over the place, you know in person engagements gone finished to crisis and the Japanese word for crisis means danger and opportunity. So we can all do these things Habit number six is health comes first. You know for us in what we teach people it's all about the Magnificent Seven eat right drink right talk right think right move like sleep right? Poop or poop. Right? Health comes first let me ask you on a scale of one to 10 How is your health right now? There's probably some work in progress. Right? There's always work in progress. This is what we show people how to do. People say we are what we eat. We are what we absorb. I say no, no, no, no, no, we are what we eliminate. We are what comes out of our well I don't want to give too much inflammation. Their health comes first energy comes first. They take responsibility for that. In our in our journal. We show people how to start measuring this every day. How are you performing? You're a high performer, ie how you eat how you drink how you talk how you think how you move how you sleep. Now you're poor. That's your health in a nutshell. Let's take a look. I don't want to do that. Because if you take a look at that, then you're asking yourself to maybe looking at what you're doing it doesn't serve you. Because if you're not talking right and you're not thinking right and you're not moving right and you're not sleeping and you're not drinking lots of water, and you're not eating well you're not going to the toilet, you've got diarrhea or constipation. A lot of people don't want to they don't want to accept what's going on. They'd rather ignore it. But are you ready to become a high performer because number seven is your anti fragile you know you like if a package came in a mail and it was you. You're not fragile. You're not robust. Robust means you're strong, but you break you're like anti fragile, nothing breaks me. And again, I know that this is maybe something that we could all strive towards. But I'm sure deep down most people want this if I could wave a magic wand and install the seven habits in you how many of you would say Pete do it now? Pete right now, Pete now Go Go Pete. Or how many of you would say Pete, I don't want you to do it for me. But can can you support me on the journey? I'd say yeah, of course. I'll support you on the journey. That's what gets me out of bed. Every single day is to support people just like you because there's nothing better than seeing people get better. Nothing more excites me than seeing people outperform their previous best people reinventing themselves people that don't buy into whatever you want to call it of when you get to a certain age or this is the type of person you are, this is your personality. There's nothing you can do about it. I just think it's all well, again, you can fill in the gap. So number seven is about becoming anti fragile. And really, it's about OMPS it's um, it's knowing that obstacles make you stronger, is welcoming obstacles is wanting obstacles. It's having that winning mentality of you know, what's important. Now, how do I deal with this wanting difficulty? And again, that's not something that we're encouraged to do, and we can understand all of that right. And then what they also do is this is something similar to prospecting is called mental contrasting. All mental contrasting means is that you see the outcomes that you're looking for, but then you rub it up against reality of okay, what's the obstacles I'm going to face as I'm moving towards whatever it is I want to and there can be many things but goal setting and visualization, I think is a waste of time unless you rub up the fact that if you're going to grow, you're coming up against resistance. And that resistance is only designed to do one thing. Right? What is that resistance designed to do?

Pete Cohen  26:50

is designed to challenge your growth, and that's what I'm here to do. So that's the Seven I'm going to do a quick recap, but the bonus one is that there is no destination. There is no destination apart from the end. Right. And the only what, to me what this is all about is about the ongoing pursuit of the practice of getting better. You know, in Japan, they call it the E key guy you know what gets you out of bed in the morning or you Semia walking your path. And maybe this isn't for everyone and maybe it's just too much and that's why maybe most people just don't do it you know, at the end of the line when this all kind of just finishes you know, how do you want to check out this place? What do you want to leave behind? Freeze the best you can as long as you as long as you lend a hand. So that song is by the Traveling Wilburys. And it's a beautiful song because great people, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, these people coming together. And that's what I love. Is when people come together and ask that question, how can I help you? As we all traveled down the road? We need a revolution to think this ain't about you. This is more than you and that's why you are so important. And that might sound like an oxymoron. But what is the impact that you want to have on this earth? So let's quickly do a recap of what these seven habits are. Look, what we're talking about here is you becoming a high performer someone who excels someone who performs beyond others expectations. You basically go the extra mile, you're climbing the second mountain you want impact you want to leave if you want to leave a mark, you want to succeed, which is the accomplishment of an aim or a purpose. What that is that's up to you. You're driven by intrinsic things you want to grow inside you want to feel like you're just evolving and you want autonomy. You want mastery and you want purpose in your life. Not Habit number one is you recognize the thin line between success and failure and that brings into crystal clear awareness of your habits. Number two, you know the person you want to be and you're practicing being that person every day. You and you know the role that you're aligned to play. Number three, you're building self control Everyday everyday you're pushing this up just a little bit, not too much do you snap, but there is tension, and you know that you want more willpower, which is really your ability to control how you think and how you feel. Number four is you set big goals, you know, you're aware but it's not just goals. It might be the mission, you set the big goal of you know who you're committed to becoming, but you know, it's a journey. It's not a destination you practice competence. You practice doing what you say you're going to do. And number six is health always comes first. You know you're looking to eat, drink, talk, think move sleep, boo, right. And number seven is you develop anti fragility. You know that obstacles make you stronger. You have that winning mentality of winning is striving and struggling as opposed to a destination as well. And number number while a bonus is you know that this there's no destination. There's only an ongoing pursuit of the practice of getting better. So in everything that we do and everything that we teach, this really is for people that want to become a high performer. People that want to stop some things that don't serve them and start doing things that do that is why we created to Stop One Start One as I already mentioned, what's going to happen with that is it is going to become a global movement of people all around the world who are growing through their own ability, their own power. I'm just going to play you this very quickly. Before we end the podcast I I love to feature people that are using what we have created because you know facts tell and stories sell. Anyone can do the Stop One Start One challenge. It's absolutely free for two weeks and then it's seven pounds a month and then you also get you get access to my 30 Day Program, the Kickstart program which has revolutionized so many people's life. You get we have a telegram group we have meditations we have some master classes, and it's all about one thing. It's all about you becoming a high achiever.

Georgie  31:50

This is Georgie so Start One Stop One is an incredibly laser focused way of doing small steps every day and keeping the work done to achieve your next level the accountability of Start One Stop One and also the gamification piece. So knowing that there's lots of other people really focused on what they're doing. So not necessarily the same as me, but I need to make sure I'm focused on what I'm doing. So there's no excuses. So from our Start One Stop One just even drinking a glass of water before I go to bed and when I wake up in the morning. I know that if I don't do that, you know I'm letting myself down anyway, but also it's bringing

Pete Cohen  32:36

into our awareness very, very clearly what we can do with what we have. Because we do have this ability to change and I believe that habits are our True, true superpower. I want to thank you for listening to the podcast. Get involved. Let us know what you'd What's your biggest takeaway. From this because the Future Self podcast exists for one reason is to help you close the gaps between where you are and where you want to be helping you get your mind right my intentions now delivered. Thank you so much, and we'll see you next time.