To live world class, you must fully commit to the Peak Performance method, giving you the ability to overcome great disappointment and continue moving forward towards your goals. No one ever said it was going to be easy to create greatness. Our minds are filled with self-doubt and cluttered with negative thinking. Every time a negative thought comes to your mind, stop yourself and replace it with a positive. I can’t tell you how many times I had to do this over my major league career. Imagine the thoughts of facing Cal Ripken Jr, Barry Bonds, Derek Jeter, and other major league greats. I had to have a mindset of “I can do this.” You must have that same mindset to reach your peak performance. Let’s continue to move our thinking and mindset away from “I can’t” and into “I can” and climb the mountain of success together.
Setting a goal is just the beginning step of the Peak Performance method. Being around a positive environment is important, but remember that nothing happens until we get into action. A goal without action is nothing more than a fantasy. Talk is cheap; it’s all about doing. As Yoda would say, “There is not try, there is only do.” To live to your greatest potential, it takes everything you have. But don’t you want it with everything you have? Use that! The bottom line is that you will have to work like your life depends on it. Let’s face it; the life you want does depend on it. I can tell you that there were many days that I didn’t feel like going to practice.
This method is not about what you want to do. It’s about what you must do to hit your goals and live out your dreams. During my Major League career, my mantra was very simple, “I am the first one to the ballpark and the last one to leave.” With few exceptions, my actions aligned with this declaration. I might not have the most talent, but I was going to outwork my competition. Whenever I took the mound, I always had the mindset that I deserved to win because I knew I had outworked the guy I was facing at the plate. That work ethic and mindset gave me my edge to success. Another person or company may have more talent or a better product, but nothing wins like hard work and a focused game plan.
In his book, The Five Major Pieces to the Life Puzzle, Jim Rohn gives the following example:
“A tree does not grow to half its potential size and then say, I guess that will do. A tree will drive its roots as deep as possible. It will soak up as much nourishment as it can, stretch as high and as wide as nature will allow, and then look down as if to remind us of how much each of us could become if we would only do all that we can. Why is it that human beings, surely the most intelligent life form on earth, do not strive to achieve their maximum potential? Why is that we allow ourselves to stop halfway? Why are we not constantly striving to become all that we can be? The reason is simple. We have been given the freedom of choice. In most cases choices is a gift. But when it comes to doing all that we can with our abilities and our opportunities, choice can sometimes be more of a curse than a blessing. All too often we choose to do far less than we could do. We would rather relax under the shade of the growing tree than to emulate its struggle for greatness.”
But not you and not now! Make the commitment to work harder than you have ever worked, dream bigger than you have ever dreamed, and live bigger than you have ever lived. Remember that everything is possible; the impossible is just something that hasn’t been done yet. Think about some of the things that we now take for granted that were developed or achieved by big thinkers. Take Roger Bannister, he was the first man to break the four-minute mile in 1954. What was once deemed “impossible” became standard once he achieved that time. Henry Ford created the first affordable automobile in 1910; the famous Ford Model T. Imagine what life would be like for you right now without the automobile. The Wright brothers invented the airplane. It blows my mind how air travel can take you from Los Angeles to New York City in about five hours and people fly every day without thinking of the once “impossible” dream of air flight. Can you imagine how many people told the Wright brothers that they were crazy and that they would never be able to accomplish their dream of air travel? There are miracles all around us of people just like us who have achieved extraordinary dreams because they turned that dream into a goal and decided that it was possible.
One of my all-time favorite stories is about Michael Jordan when he didn’t make his varsity basketball team as a high school sophomore and had to play on the junior varsity team. It’s hard to believe that there were 10 players who made the varsity team over Michael. I’m sure glad that he didn’t give up on his dream because of a minor setback. What would the NBA be like today without the career of arguably the greatest player who has ever lived? Michael set the standard on how to measure greatness in basketball.
What setback in your life is holding you back? What would you consider your junior varsity season? I had many setbacks that threatened to derail my dream of playing Major League Baseball. One of my mentors once told me, “to have success you must plan your work and then work your plan.” Working my plan when setbacks arise helps me not feel stuck. The next step is to make your plan and write your goals down on paper. Writing your goals begins to give them life. It has been proven that people who write down their goals have a much higher chance of success than the people who don’t. I have lived by this philosophy my entire life.
Action Plan
Write out up to 3 of your top goals in each of the 8 main categories of life.
Top Goals
Now go through your goals and pick 3 to 5 that will make the biggest impact in your life by achieving them this year.
Congratulations, you have taken the first step to achieving Peak Performance and Living World Class!
STEP 2: NEW BEHAVIORS
I THINK IT’S safe to assume that if you have picked up this book, you have something in your life that you want to change. The only way to make the Peak Performance method work is by taking what you read and acting on it. That is why Step 2, New Behaviors, is essential to your success. New behaviors become habits that create new skills. If you want to change your life, I guarantee there are new skills that you will need to develop or strengthen. You must identify and prioritize the areas you need to grow and intentionally dedicate time to those skill-building behaviors. This process establishes your fundamentals—the new behaviors that you can build on to develop the big habit changes that are essential to your success.
When you are building your fundamental habits, start small. Find a few smaller new behaviors that will be essential for your end goal, but will give you quick results. These behaviors are just your first step to behavior changes. They need to be small enough to be easily implemented and maintained. They need to give you quick results because you are re-training your brain to crave this type of change. If you don’t see results, you will lose your motivation to change. By making your first step small changes, you start laying the foundation for bigger changes. The little habits developed by small changes will need to be involuntary when it comes time to implement bigger changes.
Being a baseball player with big dreams of reaching the major leagues, I spent countless hours on the field drilling the basics. Practicing the fundamentals and developing skills that were essential to becoming a world-class pitcher. Learning the small techniques enabled me to learn the big pitches. Once you have the basics down, the fundamentals of your discipline are ingrained in you, and they become a part of you. Then when someone explains the method behind the new “pitches,” you inherently know which small pieces and skills will make up the new “pitch” that you are aiming to perfect. You are confident that you have the tools to succeed; you just need to practice the new behaviors.
Think back to when you were a child, and your parents asked you every day if you brushed your teeth. Now fast-forward to today. You brush your teeth