Amplify Results with Higher Level Focus

Know what the "real work" is.

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The next time you’re at a sporting event, keep an eye on the sidelines.

The more you see an athlete speaking to their performance coach, the more likely it is that they are struggling. It’s a little-known fact that I’ve learned from doing mental performance work with high-level athletes, and you’ll see it during the biggest games, matches, or events. 

You see, as a coach who operates with the psychology of the player, the rule is that if you are physically present in the big moments, you leave the athlete alone to do their best work. That’s what you prepare for when working with them. 

But if they’re interrupting their own high-stakes moments to chat on the sidelines? There’s a problem.

As an athlete, you spend your entire life preparing for the moments ahead. You do the training, the exercises, the recovery, and the psychological work…so when the big game comes, you are in a position to make game-changing plays. 

You’re in the zone, focused on the things that matter, and you know what you need to do. Coming to the sidelines every five minutes would be a distractor, and it would crush your game if you’re in a good place. 

That’s why the best rarely do it. 

The same applies to all of us. We do our best work when we put all of our hard work and preparation to be able to step into those big moments and don’t interrupt ourselves. When we use the grit of what we’ve done, leveraging our backgrounds and knowledge to their highest potential—and giving ourselves the space to run forward and use those gifts to make the big moves. 

These are the moments you have prepared for, the ones that create the stories you’ll tell over drinks in the future. Doing the work, coming up with big plays that will change the game, and pulling off the unthinkable. It all looks seamless, organic, and sometimes like the most natural thing in the world…and great athletes, like great people in business, strive to have these as often as they can.

You should be doing this too. 

This edition is about how to push performance by recognizing your highest zone of operation—including the internal barriers to doing this that many face—and how it multiplies your impact when you keep your focus sharply on the things that move the needle.