High Performance Habits: How High Performers Operate

What would it look like if high performance was easy? What's good? It's Rob Cressy and welcome to Built For The Game. And I wanted to share a simple formula for high performance that can help you grow your business and life together and elevate your game. And the formula, oh so simple. Intention plus consistency equals standard of excellence. And let's break this down component by component.

So when I look at high performance, the first part of this is all around intention, setting your intention. And there's three ways that you can do this very simply. Number one, clarity. Get clear on what you want. So many people are struggle with or challenged by performing at a higher level because they are not clear on what it is that they want to create or who they want to be. So this starts with getting clear.

And the way that you get clear, number two, is to focus on your vision and anchor in your vision. Because when you've got a clear vision, you can work backwards and say, I want to create X or I want to be X. Who do I get to be? Or what are the things that I am going to do every single day to make that happen?

And the last part of this, number three, is all around commitment. So when you've got clarity and you're anchoring your vision, now it's time to commit. And so often this is another area where people struggle because they like an idea of something but they don't commit to it.

There's a very simple framework that I created for myself. It's a self auditing framework. And it's know, K-N-O-W, believe, live. What do I know to be true? What do I believe to be true? And am I living it? And so often we know the first two. We know something and we believe something, but we are not living it. And the bridge between believing and living oftentimes is commitment.

And there's two levels to this. Beginning levels of commitment, which says, alright, maybe I want to make a public declaration that I'm going to do something, where you have an idea that you want to launch a podcast or run a marathon. Well, one of the things that you can do to create commitment in yourself is share that on social media, public accountability, where you say, this is what I'm going to do. Maybe you want an accountability partner to help you along on your journey. I know that when I was going through 75 Hard, that was something that really served me well as having somebody else there doing it with me.

But the mastery level of all of this from commitment is self commitment. Your ability to set the intention for something, be clear on your vision and commit to it yourself without needing another person. And once you do this, you can create an endless amount of commitments for yourself. And when you do so, this will elevate your performance on its own.

So number one, setting the intention. Once you do this, you're clear, you've got a vision and you've created the commitment. Because number two is all about consistency. The power of consistency. And I've mentioned this multiple times, go and read Weldon Long's book, The Power of Consistency. And one of the things he says, the reason why most people don't achieve their dreams is they just don't spend enough time going over them. And this is very simple. The person who reads their goals once a year versus the person who reads their goals once a day and they see it 365 times over the year.

And once again for this, there's three levels to how I see consistency. Number one, stacking ones over zeros. So often we overdramatize what it actually takes to perform at a higher level. Well, the simplest way of thinking about this is just don't take a zero in that bucket. So if you've set the intention that you want to go to the gym or you want to meditate or you want to journal or you want to create more content, great. Just don't get a zero in that bucket for that day.

So start stacking those ones, because what you quickly realize in high performance is that it is a series of one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one, one. You're stacking ones, not stacking zeros, because zeros aren't going to get you the growth that you're looking for, but ones will.

Because the next level of this, number two, is all about the micro mindset and focusing on the smallest action you can take possible, not the big monster that you need to achieve. And I think back to my very first coaching client, and I was coaching an ad sales team to help make them better at business by being better at life. And there was either 10 or 11 of them in that ad sales team.

And I started off by auditing them and asking them where they were in certain areas of the life. Hey, how many of you meditate? How many of you struggle with finances? And then I got to the fitness side and it was like, how many of you struggle with fitness? And it was like nine out of 10 of them. And the overlying subtext of all of them was, if I don't have an hour to work out, I don't work out at all. Therefore they kept on stacking zeros in the fitness buckets and their fitness suffered. Crazy how that works.

So the first thing that I had them do is to understand what I call the micro fitness mindset, where you say, all right, well, any of you right now could do six pushups or 12 jumping jacks. So this week I want each of you to choose one thing is an air squats, jumping jacks, pushups. And I want you to do whatever number you want, make it nice and easy. And what you quickly realize is we all have the ability to do five pushups.

But Rob, how in the world does that contribute to me and my fitness? Well, five pushups every single day for an entire year is over 1500 pushups. So do you think that 1500 pushups in a year is better than zero pushups in a year? Well, of course it is. Well, the only way that you have to do that is five pushups a day every single day. And how long does that take? Maybe 10 seconds.

And of course, once you see that you have the ability to create five pushups in a day, then you might say, you know what, I'm going to try and do 11 today. And then maybe I'm going to do 25. You know what? I'm now going to go for a 10 minute run. I'm going to work out for 15 minutes. And this micro mindset opens up your aperture to consistency, because consistency doesn't mean you need to work out for an hour. What consistency is, is taking the smallest action possible and keeping that momentum going.

Because you know, some days you might work out for an hour. Some days you might work out for 10 minutes. Some days you might just do five pushups. But the key is the consistency isn't how much, it is continuing to have the floor of not zero, but we have something. And this is something that will serve you in all areas of your life.

If you think about the micro mindset, I know with me in meditating, I usually meditate in either five or 10 minutes when I do it. So often you'll hear like, oh, give yourself the gift of an hour or 30 minutes. And I get it. But for me, what works is just that little drip of five minutes of meditation. Boom, I got that, moving on.

Because the third level of consistency with all this, when you're stacking ones over zeros and you've got your micro mindset, is you build habits. And this is your ability to do the same things over and over every single day. And the power of consistency is literally the key that unlocks everything to higher performance, because I don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that if I read a book every single day for 30 minutes by design, I am going to get better today than I was yesterday.

So then you start to think about this and you're like, all right. Well, what are the simple habits that I enjoy that will generate growth in my life that I can do every single day that will help create more of what I want in my life? And you start with one. Once again, ones over zero. So you're sitting here like, Rob, I've got none of this in my life. Great. Let's do one thing. And maybe you say, I'm going to do the five pushups. Cool. What's the next thing I want to add? I want to start reading books. Cool. Let's do five minutes of reading a book.

And you could literally just sit there one by one by one and start creating those ones in your life to where you realize, wow, the first hour of my day, I'm stacking like four or five things in the morning all related to my personal growth. That'll help me operate on a higher level.

And of course this is completely scalable in both your business and your life, because this is a system and a process and a way of thinking about all of this. Because ultimately the equation is the equation. Intention plus consistency equals standard of excellence. Because the way that high performance is created is by you having a system and a process for how you execute as a high performer.

And for me, once you start doing this, systems scale, and this becomes your standard of excellence, where this is how you operate in everything that you do. And this is something that is actually effortless and very easy, because at no point have I shared anything where it's like, oh my God, Rob, I've got to do one of something. That is, Rob, I've got to commit to my vision. I've got to be consistent at doing more of the things that I want in my life. Like these are all very simple concepts of like, of course this is what I would want in my life.

So you start to build these structures that serve you to where you can ultimately create what I call effortless effort, where you're doing things habitually that are so easy that you don't even have to think about this. And this is where your standard of excellence comes, because as you move forward in business or life, this is how you do everything. We've heard the quote, how you do one thing is how you do everything. Well, guess what? This is the formula for how you can do that one thing so that you can do this across all areas of your life.

And for me, I love the term standard of excellence, and actually came up yesterday in a conversation I was having with a business friend where we were talking about some of the challenges that we had seen or experienced in working with some others. And he'd shared a story about this high end video project that he was working on for a luxury client, and all of a sudden the production team just didn't bring the level of quality that you think a high level production team would do.

And after talking about this, we were both like, yeah, there's a certain standard of excellence that you and I both bring to the table. If we are doing something, you are always going to get the best version from us, because we have a system and a process which creates the standard of excellence for this.

So I share all of this because growth is so much more accessible to us than we realize. Growth doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be grinding. It doesn't have to be something that takes more time out of your day. All it takes is being intentional about what you want to create, what's that vision, committing to it, and then creating consistency in your life, stacking ones over zeros, having a micro mindset and creating these simple habits that create this growth for you and ultimately becomes the standard of excellence.

And of course, once you're about this life, then you'll continually be sharpening your sword, because you see how much more is possible for yourself in all areas of your life. And I would love to hear from you. What does your standard of excellence look like? Could you teach it? Could you share your formula with me or someone else?

Transcript cleaned up for reading.