High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 624: 12 Keys to Extraordinary Success and Peak Performance with Dr. Alan Zimmerman, Hall of Fame Speaker, Coach and Author

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

At the age of 7, our guest today was selling greeting cards door-to-door.  By age 14, he owned a small international import business.  By age 21, he was teaching at the University of Minnesota, and during the next 15 years, he was selected as the “Outstanding Faculty Member” by two different universities. At age 36, our speaker retired from teaching and opened his own speaking, training, and executive coaching company.  That position has allowed him to deliver more than 3000 programs around the world.  Of course, you may already be familiar with Dr. Zimmerman.  You may have heard him speak at a conference, or perhaps you’ve seen him on Fox News, CNN, on the CBS Morning Show.  And you may have read his books, several of which have become #1 best-sellers on Amazon.com.  In this episode, Alan and Cindra talk about the: The 12 Keys to Peak Performance and Extraordinary Relationships Why most people live smaller than they should be His LASTING acronym and how it can help you to be your best more often His 3 legged stool to help you understand your purpose more deeply And, his 8 parts of balance.   HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE  LEARN MORE ABOUT DR. Z’S JOURNEY TO THE EXTRAORDINARY – Remember to use the code “CINDRA” for $100 Off FOLLOW SIGN UP FOR THE FREE MENTAL BREAKTHROUGH CALL WITH CINDRA’S TEAM TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MENTALLY STRONG INSTITUTE Love the show? Rate and review the show to help us reach more and more people. We appreciate you!  

Welcome to episode 624. This is your host, Dr. Sindhra Kampoff, and thank you so much for joining me here today on this episode about 12 keys to extraordinary success and peak performance, where I interview Dr. Alan Zimmerman. And this episode is jammed, packed, full of value to help you continue to experience high performance

and use your high performance mindset more often. And I can't wait to hear what you think about this episode. Let me tell you a little bit about Dr. Zimmerman. At age seven, our guest was selling greeting cards door to door. And by age 12, he had owned his own international import business. By age 21, he was teaching at the university and was selected as one of the outstanding faculty members at two different universities. At age 36, our guest today retired from teaching and opened up his own speaking, training, and executive coaching company. That position has now allowed him to deliver more than 3,000 programs around the world. And of course, you might already be familiar with Dr. Zimmerman. You may have heard

him speak at a conference, or perhaps you saw him on Fox News or CNN, or maybe the CBS morning show. And you may have read his books. Several of them have become number one bestsellers on Amazon. In this episode, like I mentioned, jammed, packed, full of value for you and Alan and I talk about 12 keys to experience peak performance and build extraordinary relationships. We talk about why most people live smaller

than they should be. He shares his lasting acronym and how you can use it to help you be your best more often. He shares a three-legged stool concept to help you understand your purpose more deeply. And he shares eight parts of balance. All right, that's just the beginning. He also has an extraordinary offer for us at the end. And you can use the code CINDRA, C-I-N-D-R-A, to get $100 off. So check out that towards the end of this episode and stay

until that. Now, thank you so much for joining me. If you enjoyed today's episode, I'd love for you to leave us a rating and review. This just helps us reach more and more people each and every week. And so to do that, you can just scroll down, let's say if you're listening on an iPhone, just scroll down and leave us a rating and review there. And before we jump into the interview, I want to mention that if you want to achieve your goals quicker, up-level your confidence, and increase your influence, I'm going to invite you today to sign up for a free coaching call with one of my team members. And you can go to the website freementalbreakthroughcall.com. Again, that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com.

And we'll help you create a breakthrough, a moment of more clarity and understanding just to help you practice the high-performance mindset and be your best more often. So that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call. Don't wait. Without further ado, let's bring on Dr. Zimmerman. Welcome to the podcast today, Dr. Alan Zimmerman. I'm really excited that you're here today. And today we're going to be talking about your 12 keys for high performance and peak

performance, which you have taught these 12 keys to extraordinary success in 49 states, 22 countries. And you've taught these keys over 2000 times. And you've taught these 12 keys to people of all walks of life, high profile organizations like IBM, 3M, American Express, FBI, the U.S. Air Force. And so thank you so much for being here to share your 12 keys with us today and to help us keep growing. Well, I've been busy and I've been blessed. I love what I do. Well, that's wonderful. Let's just get started and tell us why we should understand these 12 keys to get started. Well, I think most people live a life that is a

lot smaller than it needs to be. They don't realize how good they are, how much they could accomplish, where they could go personally and professionally. And if you don't realize what strengths you have or how to apply certain skills, you put up with good enough instead of excellence. Isn't that so true? And what do you think is behind that? Like, why do you think we play smaller than we should and kind of settle? Well, we're addicted to a familiarity. I've always done it this way. It feels comfortable. It's what I'm used to and may not even realize there's something beyond where I'm at right now. And so it could be

ignorance and it could be just a lack of understanding what else is out there to make their marriage better, their careers better, their successes higher, that people, if they're okay, fairly happy, that's not so bad, but they don't realize there's a level of joy and success quite a bit beyond that. I also think it's our own self-doubt. You know, we don't give ourselves enough credit and allow ourselves to really believe in ourselves. And we let our own negativity get in the way of what we think is possible or dreaming what's to what's possible. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I call them mind binders. We're telling ourself all these negative comments. I could never learn. I could not stop. I can't accomplish.

And those almost always become self-fulfilling prophecies. Absolutely. So let's dive into these 12 keys. And one of the things that I really appreciate about you, I heard you speak about a year ago now at the NSA Minnesota Gala, where you got the Lifetime Achievement Award. So congratulations on that. And it made me go back to some of the readings and your books. And so I want to talk about those as we get going. But let's just start with the 12 keys. And let's start with the first one, which is something we've already been talking a little bit about. And that your first, you know, key to peak performance is self-esteem. So tell us about the first six we're going to start with

related to peak performance. And then let's just dive into the first one, self-esteem. I think the foundation of success is your self-esteem. And there's one basic sentence that summarizes that, and that is we perform exactly as we see ourselves. If I see myself as mediocre, nothing special, sort of ordinary, that's the level at which we must perform. We perform exactly as we see ourselves. I see myself as gifted, having talents, possibilities, and perform at that level. And so you can't, in a sense, add new skills to an outdated self-concept and expect to succeed. It starts with changing the self-image, change the self-concept. Because you and I both know that people go to program after program, read self-help books,

get all excited, go back, and do nothing. But if you change the self-esteem, see myself differently, that I can do this, you will be able to do it. I agree with that. And I would love, and I know people are listening and they're thinking, okay, well, I might need to level up my self-esteem. And I find that the more you kind of push yourself to the next level, you have to keep on leveling up your own self-esteem. And I find that the more you kind of, you push yourself to the next level, you'd have to keep on, you know, leveling up your own self-esteem. How do you help people do that? Well, I go through a six part program on building and maintaining the self-esteem. It's one thing to get it, another thing to keep it. A person can spend 20 years building up a great self-confidence, a great self-esteem, and some jerk to rip it apart in 20 minutes.

How do you keep it going all the time? And one of the several skills I teach is survey your strengths. The more you're aware of your strengths and talents, the stronger this confidence and the higher the performance. And most people have no idea how many strengths they truly have and could tap into. That's true. Is there any way specifically you think we should look into our strengths? And do you have some advice on that? Well, years ago as a professor and these days as a business consultant, I give people an assignment to write down 50 things you're good at.

And they go, 50? My gosh, I can think of two, but not 50. They struggle, they sweat, and they usually achieve it. And then I say, okay, that's great. Come back next week with another 50. So they get a list of 200 things that they're good at. I did that personally for years. Now, my background, if people have read my books or seen me on TV, my family couldn't give me self-esteem. My father an alcoholic. My mother committed suicide. My brother went to prison.

I grew up in a super difficult family. They couldn't get it to me. But you get it for yourself if you start using that skill. Absolutely. And so I like the idea of really tangible, list 50 things that you're great at, and then the next week or the next month, keep on listing 50 more. You have, like you believe that we should work to have unshakable confidence, which I think is, can be really hard. And, you know, one of the things that I do, Dr. Zimmerman, is work with

professional athletes. And, you know, we think that they are 100% confident all the time, but they're not. Just because like, you know, we're there human, and just like you and me, we're not always 100% confident all the time. Maybe you are, but I'm not. Nobody probably is. And that is, we build so much of our confidence or self-image on our last performance. And that's dangerous because we're going to have up days, down days, challenges, things like that. It should be a more rock solid, unchangeable, unshakable self-esteem that I'm not what I do, but who I am. Yeah. Yeah. Where have you seen that has gone wrong? Where, you know, I know you coach a lot of CEOs and high-level leaders. Have you seen where they connect what they do to who they are and how do you work through that?

It's so easy for a person to be a CEO, a leader, an athlete, a student, and base all of their self-esteem on the grades they got in that class or on the last presentation they gave. You and I are speakers. Hey, you can give, we can give 50 great presentations in a row. The audience gives you standing ovations. They think you're wonderful. You've changed their lives.

The next presentation, you're mediocre, and you think, oh, I've lost it. I'm no good, which is irrational to base all of your self-esteem on one performance instead of the last 51 performances. Yeah. Nobody's perfect. And perfection is not the same thing as self-esteem. In fact, perfectionism is always a sign of as self-esteem. In fact, perfectionism is always a sign of low self-esteem. That people that are perfectionistic are insecure, not sure about their self-confidence. And so if I can be perfect, I can prove to myself that I'm okay.

But it's a dead end game because no one is going to be or can be perfect. That's not the way to go. Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. I think you got people thinking already to get started. So one of the things related to your first pillar of, you know, your key to peak performance is this idea of like the lasting system to help develop unshakable confidence. Tell us a little bit about what that is and how we might be able to use it. We brought that years ago. Lasting is an acronym, L-A-S-T-I-N-G. It stands for the seven key ways you build that lasting, unshakable self-confidence.

L is listen to compliments. When people praise you, say thank you. I appreciate that. So many people will say, oh, don't bother. Just doing my job. It's what I get paid for. They throw it away. You cannot do that. A stands for affirm yourself. Talk to yourself positively. You work with athletes. I don't know one single great athlete who doesn't swear by this technique. Put the right thoughts in to get the right results out. Affirm yourself. S in lasting stands for survey your strengths. Just mentioned that. T is take risks. If you live your whole life in the comfort zone, afraid of trying new things, wimp your way through life, afraid of change, you can't have self-respect. It's taking some risks to push yourself to realize that I can do it. I in lasting stands for injector individuality.

It's standing up for yourself. It's not being a wimp. It's not being passive. N is nurture connectedness. In other words, who do you hang around with? I'm always right. Years ago, choose your friends carefully. They do rub off. Yes. And unfortunately, there's a lot of power in negative people pulling us down. So nurture connectedness with high self-esteeming, respecting people.

And the G of lasting is grant yourself gentleness. It's being able to forgive yourself. I screwed up. What can I learn from this? And I move on. Not I screwed up. I'm a mess and it's over with. Yeah. I appreciate those. And I know that those are really easy to understand things that we can implement into our lives. So lasting, a great acronym for growing your own self-confidence. So let's move on. I know we could dive way deeper into that, but we're going to overview these six keys. So let's move on to practice number two, which is all about purpose. And I also believe purpose is really important. In my 10 practices, purpose is number two, so we have something in common there.

Great. How do you encourage people to understand and discover their purpose? Because I have found it's just this really hard thing for people to sometimes take and put in a tangible way that they could discover their purpose. Good point. Purpose has been a big buzzword the last 10, 15 years. Everybody seems to be talking about it. There are books on it.

But most people really haven't figured out their purpose. They get a general idea what it might mean, but don't know much about it. Yes. A simple cliche I use, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. And purpose is what is that deep driving force inside you? It's a lot stronger than a good attitude, even stronger than perhaps self-esteem. It drives me, this deep meaning. And people will say, well, I don't know what my purpose in life is. I think people are waiting for the heavens to open and the Lord to speak in a deep voice and say, this is your purpose in life. Well, very few people have had that experience, but you can either discover or clarify your purpose. And that's the key.

I teach people a simple little model of a three-legged stool. Each of the legs asks a key question. When you answer all three questions, you get the top of the stool or your purpose. Now, the first leg is, what are you good at? We just talked about that briefly. What are you good at? Whatever just talked about that briefly. What are you good at? Whatever your

purpose in life might be, it will tap into your strengths, your talents, your abilities. The second question is, what excites you? What turns you on? People sometimes think, oh, I might get this calling or purpose to do something dreadful that I hate doing. I don't want to go to some third world country and live in a jungle hut. It may be worthwhile, but not what I want to do. Your purpose will never be something you don't want to do. It will excite you. It may scare you, but it will excite you.

And thirdly, the purpose, third leg, is what difference do you want to make? Purpose is always connected to making something better, making a difference, whether it's someone's lives, our society, whatever. When you figure out those three answers, write them down. What am I good at? What excites me? What difference do I want to make? Look at where they overlap. That's where you find the top of the stool. That's where you find your purpose. Absolutely. And do you encourage people to sort of write a purpose statement or just to look at, okay, and how, I mean, I know that can be a really complicated process, but how might you help people who are listening if they're thinking, okay, I'm going to answer those three questions of the three-legged stool. And then what do I do from there?

I give people a simple template, a simple sentence to start with. My purpose in life is to, I'm putting a verb, to educate, to entertain, to inform, to whatever it is, put in a verb. My purpose in life is, let's say, to educate and then put in what's the target? Everyone, my family, my students, my clients, my person to educate X kinds of people to this reason. And you play around with the verb, play around with your audience and the reason, and you've got a beginning sentence that will frame your purpose and keep tweaking that until it feels right. Yeah. I have found, I don't know if you agree with this, but I have a purpose statement written down.

And I actually have it on my board right over there. And it's like the purpose of my life is to help other people play full out and to help them provide like wisdom and guidance in the truth. Because that's why I think that I'm here. And every couple of years, I kind of look at that statement and rewrite it, right? Or I look at it and is this really what I'm about right now? Is this really what I think I'm here for? And sometimes I rewrite it. Do you think that has your purpose evolved over time or has it always been kind of consistent and the same? It's evolved a bit. You tweak a word here or there. Mine is somewhat similar. My purpose in life is to help people gain the skills and have the inspiration to improve their relationships and achieve their goals. That sounds exactly what you do. Reflective today of the keys that we're talking about. Well, thank you. What a great

tool that people can use to really think about their own purpose. Let's write that down. The way to start making it practical and real is when you have your to-do list, write down one, two or three things you're going to do that day that will be purpose-driven, purpose-fulfilling. Because people think once they get a purpose, everything in life is purpose-driven. No. Take out the garbage. You have to mow the lawn.

That may not be purpose-driven, but there are things you can do. Maybe it's making a phone call. Maybe it's giving someone a little bit of guidance. But what are one, two, three things you can do today that's connected to that purpose? You think we should do that every day? Write that down? Yeah. I could see that would be really powerful.

And you're right that maybe we do have to do things that we don't always want to do. Or could I take out the laundry or take out, yeah, bowl the laundry, take out the trash, do the dishes, right? But I think you could still potentially maybe live your purpose doing those. Yeah. And as you and I know, there are millions of people that have jobs that are just jobs. They're not very exciting, not very meaningful. Doesn't mean they don't have a purpose in life. It may be raising kids in a certain way or contributing in society a certain way. So not all moments of every day are purpose-driven, but you can do something

that is connected to your purpose every day. Absolutely. Thank you. So, so far, the first key that we've talked about is self-esteem, and then number two is purpose. Let's talk about the third key, which is goals and affirmations. And you have a two-part affirmation process, and I know you have a process of goals. Where should we get started on this key? Well, first of all, in terms of goals, that I think most people have not really figured out what they want out of life. And a question I often ask people is, what do you really, really, really want? People don't think much deeper than, well, I want to get some money in my pension plan. I want to get the kids through high school. Well, that's all good and nothing wrong with those. But go deeper. What are the things you really, really, really

want? So I help people discover what that is. Because if you don't know what you really want, the only alternative is to settle for less. And that will burn you out and take away your joy. Once you figure out what you want, the goals, then I teach people a process for affirmations. And that is a simple statement of a goal you want to achieve in the present tense. It might be as simple as instead of saying, I want to lose weight, it might be I weigh 150 pounds. It's a specific statement that you say over and over again. And as you understand brain science like I do, the more you affirm the things that you want to have in your life, to state them in the present tense, the more you say them, the more they go

from your subconscious to your conscious, the more you believe it and achieve it. And people will sometimes walk in and say, well, saying affirmations like, I'm a great listener, or I can give a wonderful presentation, or I can finish a four-minute mile in this amount of time. I can't do that. That's not the relevant point.

The point is, first you say it, then you believe it, then you achieve it. Ooh. There's this great video of a long jumper named Kenesha Burks that she decided she wanted to become an Olympian. And then she said, I am an Olympian and videoed herself doing it. And after the last Olympic trials, the video went viral, as you could imagine, because ultimately that's what she was doing. And I'll put it in the show notes of today's video of our podcast, so you can just scroll down and watch that video. But it's

exactly what you're saying is deciding what you really, really, really want, and then putting some affirmations around that. So do you think our affirmations should be specific and related to our goals? And could you give us a little bit of more guidance on how we might write our affirmations? Well, first of all, I start with the word I or my. You can't have an affirmation that my children will behave. That's a different program. It's your achievement, not somebody else's.

Secondly, they are always present tense. That's a different program. Your achievement, not somebody else's. Secondly, they are always present tense. Not I will do such and such. Not I will finish that paper. Not I will run that marathon. Not I will do such and such. Because the word will always allows procrastination. But if you say I am an Olympic runner, I do weigh 150 pounds,

I earn this amount of money, you say it present tense. Because this is a critical point that most people don't understand. Your subconscious mind is an information processor, not a truth detector. Awesome. And so if you're way 175, for example, you keep saying I weigh 150, your conscious mind says liar, liar, liar. But if you say it long enough, it goes from conscious to subconscious. Subconscious believes that and begins to act accordingly. And pounds begin to shed, for example. What are some of your affirmations that you use related to your goals?

One is that every day I'm growing closer and closer to God in my mind, my spirit, my behavior. I take time to listen carefully to my wife, to tune in when she is speaking, because there are times I'm not too good at that. I have an affirmation for weight. I have it for learning. So yeah, and I put mine on a card, actually. I put them on a four by six card, carry it in my pocket, do them several times a day, and I say it till I no longer need it. Some last 30 days, some have lasted five years. Yeah, because when you say it to yourself every day, you become more of that. So after a while, you don't need to say those things to yourself anymore. Yeah. You cannot keep doing affirmations

without either changing your behavior or you'll stop the affirmations. Otherwise, you live in cognitive dissonance. You'll just give up and say to heck with it you'll stop saying them or you'll change you push yourself to keep doing it even if you don't feel like it feelings are irrelevant at this point it's stating truth you want to become reality in your life. That's true because we do listen to those feelings more than necessary and then we maybe don't get up and work out and that's reflective of our goals and our affirmations because we don't feel like it. Yes, with your work in sports, I'm sure you find many people who don't feel like doing a workout today. Yes.

But I'd also guess that once they do it, they feel great about it. I always feel great after I go for a run. Right. All right. Excellent. That is the third key goals and affirmation. And the fourth key is attitude. And you talk about how attitude drives you and fuels you. How do we keep a good attitude when things are hard or difficult or we're facing some kind of adversity in our lives where, you know, things are just not going perfect?

Well, the first clue is to be an actor, not a reactor. That something may be happening difficult in your life. Someone's treating you poorly. You choose how you're going to act in that situation, not react. React tends to be emotional. It's not thought out. It's quick and often regretted. Yeah.

And so maybe you have someone at work that is a crusty old curmudgeon, and say, good morning, how are you doing? Good to see you. And every day they just grunt and walk by and never even acknowledge your presence. around, forget him. That's being a reactor. Actor is I do it. I greet the person because not because it's the easy thing to do. It's because it's the right thing to do. And so actor, it's slowing yourself down. Don't quickly respond to something. React. Be an actor, not a reactor. And people say, well, Dr. Zimmerman, that's easy for you to say, be an actor. But what if your husband or wife is a nag, or your kids won't listen, or your boss is a jerk, or your customers are unfair? Now, how do you stay an actor? Well, that's the second clue, or second skill, and that is do not catch the other person's disease. Don't catch their disease. And the research shows Dr. David Reisman, a psychiatrist, 85% test out as reactors.

They don't think, they just react. But if you will choose to be an actor, and it is a choice, that 15%, you stay in control. And so don't catch their disease. If, for example, my employees got negative and I caught their negativity as their so-called boss or president, I lose all my power to motivate them. If you've got a husband, wife, spouse, partner, whatever, who gets crabby at you and you get crabby back at them, you've got a fight on your hands. True. Don't catch their disease. And if you will act positively with the right attitude long enough, according to the research, most people will end up following you. They will change and become more positive in response to you.

Excellent, Dr. Z. So does that mean that 85% of the time, generally, we react instead of act, and we're not necessarily intentional with how we respond? Well, it's not so much 85% of the time we react as that's maybe our natural default style. Default style. Perfect. Okay. Thank you. And people say, well, how do I know if I'm an actor or a reactor? I was on CBS Morning News a while ago on national TV and the anchor asked me, well, how do you know, Dr. Z, if you're an actor or a reactor? I said, the answer is very simple. Look, it's your first reaction to any bit of news that you get.

If, for example, you go to your office and there's a note from the boss that says, see me immediately. What is your first reaction? Well, my first reaction is like, oh, crap.'d I do? 85% tend to think that way. Yeah. Threshold, great. The race is coming early this year. I'd love to be the 15%. I got to keep working on that. So that little question will let you know which one you tend to default to. Okay. Super helpful. I was you were describing actor versus reactor. I was thinking about a couple of things. I was thinking about

the great quote by Viktor Frankl, right? Like there's, you can put space in between the stimulus and response and that that that space where you can choose your reaction or, or your response and not just your reaction. And I was thinking about, it's really easy for people to do that with maybe people they don't know or their colleagues or coworkers. It's more difficult to do that at home when, you know, we can easily just let that negativity spiral or when someone says something rude to you, like, you know, your spouse or your kids or your brother or sister. It's easy just to react in the same kind of frustration. So how would you encourage us to gain more control of like the acting part instead of reacting part?

Good question. When I'm coaching CEOs, this will come up where he or she, the CEO, reacts too quickly to the response of employees, et cetera. And they want to jump right in and share their two cents worth. I got a jug right here. I call it the two gulp rule. That's awesome. And that is somebody may be making an inflammatory comment at a staff meeting or a one-to-one with the boss, and he or she, they take two gulps. It slows the whole thing down.

It does two things. First of all, it prevents the immediate reaction. Yeah. Secondly, it lets the person know that I am considering your comments so deeply, I'm actually thinking about it while I take a gulp. So it shows a bit of respect. So that will work very well in slowing down our reactions and still showing respect. Two-gulp rule. I like it. Hi, this is Cyndra Campoff, and thanks for listening to the High Performance Mindset.

Did you know that the ideas we share in the show are things we actually specialize in implementing? If you want to become mentally stronger, lead your team more effectively, and get to your goals quicker, visit freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches. Again, that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you soon.

So we are on key number five and your fifth key is risk. And you mentioned 85% of the people are risk avoiders. And I think how true that is, is that many of us don't take risks and it's so easy to stay in our comfort zone and what we're comfortable with. So what does risks mean to you and how do we take them more often? First of all, you've got to realize that everything you want more of in life, everything, you want a bigger paycheck, a healthier body, a stronger relationship, more energy, more confidence, whatever you want more of always, always requires leaving your comfort zone. You can't do the same thing, same old way, get better results. You've got to get through your head.

Second thing is to realize excuse me, that you only got two choices in life. And that is you take a risk or you get the regret. I take the risk of meeting that new person. Now, they may be responsive and we connect and things are great. But if I don't take the risk of meeting that new person, I regret that I didn't reach out to that contact, that possible new friendship, business client, whatever.

Now, reaching out doesn't guarantee success, but it does prevent regret. So I think that's important. And I'll ask questions when I'm contemplating a risk. Do I really want it? Is it cost effective? Yeah.

Will it work? In other words, does my head say, my gut say, this makes sense? Yeah. If your experience tells you, your gut says, your experience says this is not going to work, let it go. But if I say there's a pretty good chance they might hear me out, I think this has some worthwhile potential to it, some upside. It won't cost that much. I get enough yeses. Go ahead, take the risk. Really helpful. Do I really want it? Is this cost effective? Will it really work?

Yeah. Yeah. There's something I'm contemplating right now that those questions help me. There's somebody that I might help support me in my business. And actually, it's not really cost-effective and maybe it'll work. But number two, it's not very cost-effective. I tell my clients, you need two out of three yeses for it to be a constructive risk. Two out of three yeses to be a constructive risk. I also appreciate what you said about whatever that you want is on the other side of your comfort zone. And so that is so true. When I think about the goals I want, I know I have to push myself to keep reaching them. What do you

think about, what is the number one roadblock or a roadblock that you see that gets in the way of people leaving their comfort zone? Oh, it's fear. Yeah, that's what I thought you were going to say. I'm afraid of what they might think. What if I fail? Yeah. All kinds of imagined catastrophes, most of which never come true. And if they did fail, you wouldn't be all that bad.

It's fear. Usually it's imagined or exaggerated fear. Yes. Not the truth. Yeah. The sixth key that we're going to talk a little bit about today is balance. And I thought, oh boy, this one is so hard for high achievers and high performers who are listening to the episode today.

So what does balance mean to you? How do we find more of it? Well, you're exactly right. Take those first five keys. A person's got to have great self-esteem, a strong sense of purpose. They're doing their affirmations. They've got their goals set. They're taking the risks, all of those things, and could achieve an enormous amount of good things, and their life could be a mess.

In other words, it doesn't even make sense to me to achieve all my goals and ruin my marriage in the process. It doesn't make sense to me to get all the money I want in the bank and my kids won't talk to me. Yeah. So balance to me, it's like a pie, a round circle with eight slices. Okay. And they're very common to all of us, I'm sure. Physical, recreational, occupational, financial, social, spiritual, mental.

Wow. And this is the key. If you want balance in life, you must have something positive in every dimension of life. Right. And what the mistake is that people make is they have a couple, three slices of the pie in great shape and they ignore some others. To me, it's not balanced to physically have my body in great shape and emotionally be a mess.

I have poor self-esteem and I worry too much. It's not balanced to occupationally make a great income and occupationally hate my job. That's far from balance. It has to be something positive in every dimension of life. financially make a great income, not to patiently hate my job. That's far from balance. Yeah. It has to be something positive in every dimension of life. So is balance to you like the definition would be that you have something positive in each of these parts of life? Because I think of- Positive and working. And working. Sometimes I think of the word balance and people maybe confuse that with,

I feel really rushed or overwhelmed or have too many things to do or, you know, because I feel like that type of balance can come and go depending on different seasons or maybe in your work, you're really busy or maybe you're in an athletic season that's really competitive, right? And so what do you think balance is not? In that situation you just described, the antidote is enlarging the frame. So if you're in an athletic season and you know the next three months are going to be a killer, you're working out all the time, doing everything to get your body in shape, ready for the competition. Or it could be a salesperson ready for a new product launch. It could be anything. We have those seasons of life that are crazy. Yes. I don't think it's possible to balance every single day.

Some days are going to be crazy. It may not even be possible to balance a week or a month. We know that part of our career choice, our life, is going to have some crazy moments. But what you can do is enlarge the frame. If I can't balance the whole day, how do I put some balance into the week? If the month is crazy, I want to pull a couple days out, put some refreshment back in. So just enlarge the frame a bit so there's room to put something back in and not just keep taking out that entire time. Really helpful. So, so far we've talked about your six keys to peak performance.

And you have six more that are related to thriving relationships. So these are your 12 keys. Where should we start with those six more? Yeah, as you know, I often do this two-day program, Journey to the Extraordinary, where today is all about the six keys we just talked about, peak performance. The other six keys are thriving relationships. I would begin with this point, that people are people. When I talk about thriving relationships, the skills we talk about are not just with your coworkers, your customers, your employees, your spouse, or kids. People are people.

Now, you may use different topics with all of those people, but the same skills work with all individuals. Okay. So I work on teaching people these are the six things that will make your relationships thrive, personally, professionally. First one, for example, is belief. Do I believe in the person I'm speaking to? Am I showing respect? It doesn't mean you have to like them. It doesn't mean you have to socialize with them. But if I can't believe something good about you, if I can't have some respect for you, then forget the rest of the skills.

Yeah. Because you can have all these wonderful communication skills that you will never use if I don't believe in the other person or respect them to some degree. So it starts with that foundational philosophy of my outlook towards the person with whom I'm interacting. Tell us about the others, because I know you have five others. I use the word belief as the acronym here. B stands for belief, E is engagement. That's about getting people to cooperate.

The biggest question people ask is how do I get people to do what I want them to do? All bosses, coaches, supervisors, spouses, parents ask the same question. How do I get people to do what I want them to do? And there is an answer. It comes down to what I call the cooperation principle. Very simple. We've all heard it. Most don't understand it or apply it correctly.

But it says this, to the degree that you give others what they need, Very simple. We've all heard it. Most don't understand it or apply it correctly. But it says this, to the degree that you give others what they need, they will give you what you need. And most folks are focused on, what do I need from this person? I need their contract. I need their business. I need their attention.

That's backwards. You want thriving relationships. To the degree that I, to the degree you give others what they need, they give you what you need. And so it's really focusing, what do they need? When I'm talking in a particular thing,

I go to what I call five work languages. If you know the language of the person you are speaking to, speak more of that to them, you get more from them. Absolutely. So those are belief, engagement. What are the L, I, E, and F? L is listening. It's amazing to me that the research has not changed a bit. The average person gets 25% of what is being said. Okay.

75% of the time they are daydreaming or thinking of their next response. They're tuned in 25% and they retain about 25%. That is a setup for failure in business and in relationships. And so I teach people how to go from 25% to 75, 95% effectiveness, that you really stay tuned in and you get all the information you need understood accurately. And in most cases, it's not that people are rude, they're interrupters, they're bad people. They just never have been taught how to listen. And my guess is most listeners on this podcast had classes in English, maybe in speech, mathematics, algebra. But probably almost nobody had a 15-week class on how to listen to somebody.

Yeah, no, I don't think so. Do you think that's getting worse? Meaning like I find people having their phone and there's some research to show, gosh, like that only 50% of the time we're in the present moment regardless. Like it's just, you know, our attention is getting worse. Do you think that is impacting our active listening, or do you think it's just consistently only 25% of the time, regardless of those trends? It is getting worse. Okay. And electronic devices, the phones are a major culprit. I know they're easy to pick on these days, but they do have consequences. People of an older generation, and you can decide for yourself what that means,

probably spent their youth outside in the backyard playing games, whatever it was. Their mom would say, go out, have fun, I'll see you at lunch, and that was it. For the most part, that doesn't take place in our society now. It's pretty much on the devices all day long. But the researchers tell us we had something like 50,000 hours outside playing with kids, working out conflicts, forming teams, learning how to get along, talking, listening. That's 50,000 hours of practice and

listening that's gone. Wow, that's scary. That people just are getting worse because they're not practicing face-to-face communication. And there's so many distractions on this little phone. Yeah, absolutely. So the other three is I for importance, E for example, F for follow-through. What would you like to tell us about those three? Importance is all about motivating the best in others. The number one job complaint is you could do a hundred things right, not hear a darn thing about it. Do one thing wrong, but right in your back. Chat hasn't changed at all in the last many years. People complain about not getting enough praise, enough compliments. Well, there is truth in that. Everybody knows that. So if all bosses, coaches, leaders know that's important, there's obviously a gap between knowing they

should do it and actually doing it. But people never get too much praise, too many compliments, too much encouragement. And so I go through 17 techniques of how do you give people praise, recognition that doesn't cost anything, takes almost no time, lifts their spirits and brings out their best. And most people aren't any more skilled than saying, well, attaboy, keep it up, good job. Yeah. Fairly inadequate. And not very specific. So, you know, I don't know what I should continue to do if it's just like, good job. Thank you. You know, it's like what, what the more specific the compliment is, the better. Absolutely. The more they specific it is, the more they know

you're not just saying it could apply to anyone. You crafted that for me. And then I tend to internalize and believe it. So the E in belief is all about confrontation. And I think, well, that's a big one because I don't really love confrontation. I think most people don't. So what could you give us just a little bit of overview on that? E stands for example. All things we've talked about in this podcast have been positive communication skills, but there are times people are doing things that are not acceptable, not effective, not appropriate, and we need to confront them. So E stands for how do I set an

example of caring at the same time I'm giving negative feedback, confronting them and not get them defensive? And so I give people a series of questions. I want you to stop and think for 60 seconds. Let the questions go through your mind as filters to filter out the destructive defense producing responses. Like, is it necessary? Is it kind? Yeah. Will it be helpful?

And if you can't go through the filters and answer those questions appropriately, you're probably going to get into a fight. Yeah. And so people will screw this up, and they'll go back and say, oh, I didn't mean it that way. I'm sorry I didn't mean it that way.

Even if you didn't mean it that way, it's dangerous. Let me suggest, they'll never forget what you said and always doubt your apology. So learn to say it right in the first time. They never forget what you said and they doubt that your apology. Right. Super helpful. So let's put a little bow on these 12 keys today. And the last is F for follow through. Yeah. And that is, if I'm doing all these things to build thriving relationships,

how do I get them to follow through and do what I want? Part of it is asking in the right way. I tell people, if you want a G,T, you have to A-S-K. You have to ask, ask, ask. It's not beating around the bush, giving little hints, but going straight to someone face-to-face, will you do it? Give them the skills for asking. And if you ask in the right way, you get a lot more yeses and follow through. And I finish up my two-day program.

If all of this stuff doesn't work, a lot more yeses and follow through. And I finish up my two-day program. If all of this stuff doesn't work, how do you force people to go along with you in a way that is positive and is ethical? They just can't see it in the beginning. And there's things that coaches do all the time. One of my mentors was John Wooden, the great basketball coach. Absolutely.

For a while. Yes. Taught me some of this. That there are ways that he forced people to do what he wanted them to do in a way that they've still respected him and followed along. Excellent. And gosh, there's so many great things that we talked about today. I love your content and your principles because they're so sticky and so rich and we could dive into them in so much more detail.

And so one of the things that you have coming up that I'd love for you to tell the listeners is your journey to extraordinary. And you have a special offer for us if we want to learn more about these 12 keys. So tell us a little bit about what you have going on and what you could offer us. Absolutely. The two-day program is called Journey to the Extraordinary. It's a powerful, intense experience, 16 hours of time together, a two-day virtual setting. As you mentioned in the beginning, I've offered this across the world, all kinds of organizations, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. People just write about how it's changed their lives, changed their relationships, changed their careers. First six keys, the first day is all about

your own peak performance, being your very best, second day, thriving relationships. I'll be doing it once this year. That's available to everybody. I do it often for companies on site, but for the entire public, anybody can join October 3rd and 4th. It'll be virtual and comes a 175 page manual, tons of stuff, highly interactive. So it's not a one person talking, you listen, being bored to death. You'll find this to be fun, engaging, exciting. To find information, the website is attend-the-journey.com. Attendthejourney.com with those dashes. And because Cinder's been such a wonderful host, you'll find a coupon place there. Put in Cinder's name, C-I-N-D-R-A, and immediately $100 off the registration fee. Excellent. Thank you so much for doing that.

I love today's episode. I found like so much value in what you talked about today with these 12 keys. We started talking about the first key today, which was all about self-esteem and confidence. I love your three-legged stool to help us think about our own purpose, which is number two. And then you had us think about our goals and the affirmations that can support our goals. Jeez, I took some notes here. We talked about attitude and act instead of react, this idea of risks. And you had us ask three questions to help us think about the risks. Then we talked about balance in the eight slices, right? And making sure that there's something good and working in each of those eight

slices. And then we talked about this belief of how can you continue to have extraordinary relationships with the belief model. So I'm just so grateful that you're here today, just giving us some of your wisdom and some real practical tools that we can use every day. So thank you so much for joining us on the High Performance Mindset today. I'm so grateful you're here. I'm honored. Thanks, Cydra, and all the listeners. Thanks for joining. And I am truly honored. Thanks so much. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes.

And to join my exclusive community for high performers, where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week.