Most individuals when they take on a new skill develop rapidly at first, then over time their progress slows, eventually hits a wall, and stops altogether. But there are a few individuals that continue to improve, and go on to become great in that skill. What is their secret? There is no magic pill, or single attribute that will miraculously make you great, but there are four attributes that the highest performers in any skill understand that help them accelerate and maintain development.

1. They understand the formula to high performance

There are some people that believe that the potential we are born with will determine what we will accomplish and who we will be in life. About 10% of the population fits into this category. They believe that: POTENTIAL = PERFORMANCE

However, most of the world knows that we can train ourselves to become better than we are now. They believe in the traditional formula of performance: POTENTIAL + TRAINING = PERFORMANCE

Now, because of psychological science and decades of research, some individuals have realized that there is still something missing in the formula. They can see that some individuals that are born with potential and train still do not reach greatness. Something was holding them back. It was interference.

The High Performance Formula:

POTENTIAL + TRAINING – INTERFERENCE = HIGH PERFORMANCE

Those individuals that go on to be great understand that they have potential, but that is not enough, they need to train. They then work to eliminate the interference in their performance and lives—interference like self-doubt, pleasing others, and negative intelligence. We cannot become truly successful until we start to rid our lives of the interference that is holding us back.

2. They understand the importance of accountability

To most people accountability has become something to fear. They associate accountability with negative performance and a negative result. What they don’t understand is that accountability is one of the most important tools to accelerate development and maintain that improvement over time.

The first thing to remember about accountability is that we should never be acceptable for the aspects of our performance that are out of our control. We need to be accountable only to those things we can control. We are in control of our training, our conscious thoughts, and our approach to challenges. We are not in direct control of outcomes when other people are involved.

To become great we need to embrace accountability, seek out more ways keep ourselves accountable for those things that are in our control, and stop seeing accountability as a negative thing to have in our lives.

3. They understand that going from good to great depends on the details

When we start to develop a skill we focus on the fundamentals and build those first. As we develop the fundamentals we progress rapidly, but once we are competent at the fundamentals our progress slows and if we don’t begin to focus on the details our progress can stop altogether.

Those that have gone from good to great work constantly to be precise and exact with the skill. The more exact and focused on the details we are the stronger the neuro-connections in our brain become. It is the strength of the neuro-connections in our brain that allow us to consistently perform a skill well.

Not only will focusing on the details will improve our ability to perform a task, but it will help us develop the skill more rapidly than if we just focus on the basics.

4. They understand that development is about approaching not avoiding

We are constantly told not to do this or that. It seems that an avoidance mentality has become the norm nowadays. What most people do not understand is that knowing how not to perform a specific skill tells us nothing about how to perform it. Knowing what not to do is negative intelligence, and if we let negative intelligence consume our subconscious it will throw us into cycles of interference and prevent us from progressing.

Instead of focusing on what not to do, the highest performers in the would focus on what to do. They approach positive attributes instead of avoid negative ones. Because we all have most likely grown up with an avoidance mentality being taught to us it will take work and deliberate conscious thought to gain an approach mentality. It is alright to be told what not to do as long as we can change that thought into what we need to do, and encode that positive intelligence into our subconscious.

There is no secret to achieve high performance. It is done by building skills, and using the mind—the core of everything we do—to our advantage. If we want to keep developing and accelerate that development we need to approach skills, focus on the details, hold ourselves accountable, understand that potential and training will only get us so far, and eliminate interference from our lives. We need to be fearless.

 

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