Being Your Best
The idea that the average is good is an anathema to the high performance client, being average is settling, being average is being unhealthy, lousy at relationships, unhappy with work, and most important unhappy with yourself.
Many of the clients that we see day in and day out are average, and are trying to aspire to even greater averageness. If we consider the American Sociologist Massey, he came up with the notion of 3 distinct areas of human development
0-7 Imprinting
8-15 Modelling
15-21 Socialisation
It is this last phase of development that most strikingly effect clients, either high or low to average performance, one of life’s goals is to simply fit in. This means that striving for greatness is not high on many peopleâs list of priorities. In fact, to aspire to be more than average is often discouraged by parents, teachers and friends. The high performance client, throws this notion away, and makes no attempt to be average and simply fit in; rather, they attempt to push back the frontiers of what is to what can be.
Our principle task when working with people like this, we want to help them to get the edge. This is where the principles of success come into their own. If you note on the next page what is required for people to achieve this edge.
Personal responsibility is essential and it is this idea that makes high performance clients who they are, they are unwilling and even unable to relinquish responsibility for the direction that they take. In fact, all they require from you is assistance in staying on this path, but they do not want you to do it for them or to them. Here is a formula:
Greater Responsibility=Greater Freedom
If we think about it, responsibility gives greater scope for freedom than a lack of responsibility. When you lack responsibility, you are at the command of others, when you are responsible; you are your own commander in chief. If we look at leaders and leadership, those at the top have more options available to them than those at the middle or bottom. The reason for this is that those at the top have and take more responsibility on in order to reach fulfilment. I certainly recommend that when working with high performance clients, you attempt to get them to take on more personal and professional responsibility which in turn will give them more options to hit their target.
An example would be a very talented young amateur golfer who I have worked with, one of the first things we worked on was for him to take responsibility for his own training regimen. Rather than having people telling him when and how to practice, he could make those choices himself. By doing this, he gave himself not only more time to practice, but also more time for him to get a round of actual play in. This lack of time is what brought him to me in the first instance.
