One thing matters to top performance—
You.
One thing matters to you delivering top performance—
You being in a top performance state of mind.
That’s the difference between an amateur and a pro.
An amateur just shows up, but a pro shows up their best every time.
Why the mind of an athlete?
Because they are hardcore, of course.
Perhaps the most conditioned minds on the planet.
A reason I say this is because unlike say a military mind that has been forged in a system of conditioning.
The mind of an athlete is forged as a force of will.
Choice. Discipline. Routines. Used over and over again.
Not in theory, like the many who pretend to meditate…
But in practice, every day getting your mind game ready to drive top performance.
What did Jordan do?
What did Tyson do?
What did Lindsay Vonn do to keep charging the mountain, even after breaking her body time and time again?
IDK!
I never read about stuff like that.
I’d never watch the 10 hour documentary on Jordan, although I keep hearing great things about it.
I only care about what, SPECIFICALLY, you do.
And then rather than watching others do it, how many seconds a day you can be training yourself like a pro.
Knowledge is impotent
This is one of the greatest learnings in all of my work.
Literally, tens of thousands of hours R&D’g the best neuroscience, psychology, programming, and what I’ve most learned is this.
It’s irrelevant what you know.
Watching Arnie Pumping Iron will never make you stronger.
Watching others perform at their peak is top performance porn.
Thinking you need to accumulate knowledge is a form of resistance.
All that matters is taking the absolute best ideas you can find and training them as much as you can every day.
That’s what the Four Step Protocol is built to do for you.
The Four Step Protocol
This Protocol is baked into many of my programs that are focused on top performance.
Over countless hours and iterations I built this tool to bring together the best I know on the mind in a way you can easily put it to work every day.
It is designed to be highly practical and actionable.
You might spend many hours, days, weeks, years, developing your specific “devices” that you use inside the Four Step Protocol…
But you’ll see how quickly and powerfully you can put this to work right now.
1. Intent
Imagine you’re walking into a meeting.
Quick, what’s your intent?
Really, why are you showing up here?
Are you just going in to do a meeting? See how it goes? Chit chat for an hour or so?
A pro athlete never goes into their game that way.
They know exactly what they are here to do, and how they plan to do it.
Clear intent is one of my Two Secrets For Doing What You Want you see in my books.
And it is so crucial to top performance that this protocol is baked into many of my Masterclasses.
So whether you’re walking up to Meet Wonder Woman, or crush your Public Speaking, or into Win Every Meeting, or Land That Crazy Job or Raise Your Fund Faster, or are a banker making it rain, etc…
This first step in the protocol is you showing up with clear intent.
Again, you can use whatever “content” you like in here.
See yourself like Jordan. Or Tyson. Or Vonn. Or anyone you choose.
Go real deep on exactly what fired them up for every competition.
But more importantly, figure out how you bake Intent into your winning game.
Especially now, where your stadium is your home, how much more valuable is crushing intent for you?
2. Character
When Kobe stepped on the court he took on the persona of Black Mamba.
That’s all I know!!
Like I said, I don’t read bios, I don’t follow sports, I don’t need to know what specific character your favorite athlete plays.
You only need to know—
When it’s time to deliver your top game, which character are you stepping into?
Often people say to me on this topic, what do you mean, I’m just me?
I ask, which you? The you who shows up at work? One talking to your pet? Or spouse? Or parents? Or college friends?
See my point?
We’re always playing some version of “me.”
And here we’re saying, to condition your mind like a pro athlete, showing up game ready to deliver your crushing performance…
Which version of you is showing up?
3. State
Athletes use pre-game routines because showing up in a peak performance state is their job.
If they show up so-so, you see it in their game, and soon they don’t have a game!
They never want to show up prepared to lose, so they do everything they can to get into a winning state of mind.
This doesn’t happen because they simply choose it.
Like I wrote about here on Tyson, it happens because they are constantly conditioning it.
The same you see here on the face of Michael Phelps—now that’s a face that says you’re showing up to win!!
What about you?
What are your peak performance states?
What specific routines might you use for getting into them?
And most importantly, how many seconds a day are you conditioning them?
Again, it’s one thing to spend hours and hours watching and talking about how Jordan conditioned himself to win.
And another to be all day every day conditioning yourself to win!!
4. Tools
This is a deeper topic that doesn’t come back to the mind, so much as it locks the other top performance steps in place.
What I mean here is, take Lindsay Vonn.
She skied like a demon because in her toolkit she has every tool she needs to control skis at high speed.
Jordan was the same.
Shot after shot after shot he practiced building his toolkit for top performance that solidified his Intent, Character, State.
And of course drove him to win.
Competence builds confidence.
So when you’re tooled up like a pro athlete walking into a game or meeting or public speaking, etc…
Well now you walk in with the hardcore mindset that you are here to win!
That’s the game
The game of top performance.
The game of life.
Showing up your best like a pro athlete comes back to how good you are at putting yourself here.
Not once.
Not only when it counts.
But crushing the game of life is how many seconds are you showing up your best every day?
Yes, yes, I know this is hardcore, but if you like hardcore, I’ve just gotta say again, you’ll love the free program for Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger