- Hey, it's Brendon, and this is a special episode
of The Brendon Show because I'm going to teach you a concept
that is so important to your high performance
which is your ability to succeed over the long-term.
It's one topic, it's one concept, and it kinda blew my mind.
I mean, you know I've been teaching personal
and professional development for 20 years of my life,
and 10 years full-time teaching about high performance,
so I kinda know a lot about it.
But we conducted the world's largest study
of high performers, and I learned one new concept,
I didn't know how important it was, and this concept
is called raising your psychological necessity.
Big fancy phrase, let me tell you what it means
and why it's so important for you
to be basically awesome in everything that you do, okay?
I'll give you a story about it to explain the concept.
I was working with this gold medalist Olympic sprinter.
So, this person is just absolutely elite at what they do.
And we were out on the track and the person
was kind of getting ready for their warmup and everything,
and we were just talking about competition.
Like, you know, the competitors.
As sprinters in a sport where, you know,
the difference between first and second place
might be a tenth of a second or a hundredth of a second,
it's really close, so I said, "You know,
"when you're thinking about your competition,
"how do you even know who's gonna win?
"I mean, when you go down to the blocks,
"you put your hands down, your foot in the block,
"you're getting ready to go, you're waiting for that gun
"to go off, and you're looking across at the other people,
"or thinking about the other people,
"how do you know who's gonna win that race?"
And he says, "I'm gonna bet on the person
"who looks at the finish line and says,
"I'm gonna do this for my mom."
And I was like, "Wow."
And that kind of explains the concept
of performance necessity.
Performance necessity is using your mind
and priming your mind in a way
that makes you doing a good job
in that specific activity a must and not a preference.
There's a lot of things that people would like to do
or want to do, but they don't do it
because the psychological necessity is not there.
Meaning, it's not necessary for them to perform well.
It's not necessary for them to excel
or to win there, so they don't.
But what I found in this huge study
was that high performers, like, to a T,
they all kind of psych themselves up
going into the major activities.
If they're walking into work that day,
they're gonna go, "I'm gonna crush it today,"
and then they say things to themselves with their self-talk
that make them crush it that day.
I know that sounds like common sense, but, here.
One, it's not always common practice,
and two, there's distinctions that can help you
that we learn from high performers.
I talk all about it in my book, High Performance Habits,
how extraordinary people become that way.
It's out right now, and I want to tell you right now,
here, the distinctions that make the difference,
like how do you develop that kind
of psychological necessity?
I mean, maybe one time you've thought,
"I want to lose some weight,"
but you didn't 'cause it wasn't a must.
How do we get you to that must category
where your performance is so important.
Like, whether that's you becoming a great dad
or a great mom, or it's you crushing it in the next meeting,
or you doing the sales video just right,
or you're doing your photo shoot
and you show up in your best, amazing energy.
Like, whatever you're trying to do,
how do you do it with exceptional excellence,
what we call high performance?
'Cause what we know about high performers
is they're able to achieve long-term success
more than other people, and one of the primary reasons
is psychological necessity.
So let me tell you how do you develop it.
There's four things about psychological necessity.
Number one, the reason it's a must
and not a preference for them is because high performers
have kind of allowed themselves to associate their identity
with doing well in that specific thing.
And that's scary for most people.
We don't want to put our hearts and our minds
and our identity all in to something
'cause what if we do bad, you know?
If you want to be a poker player and you say,
"I'm a poker player and I'm being a world-class
"poker player," and you lose a bunch of games,
there's a lot of psychological risk there, right?
Most people never go all-in with their identity
to something because it's scary, you know?
I remember when I became an author, I mean,
putting a book out can be terrifying.
When I say to people, they say, "What do you do, Brendon?"
I say, "Well, I'm a writer and I'm a trainer."
I remember the day that I owned that.
"I'm a writer."
I mean, I literally remember the day I owned it,
like, this is who I am and what I do.
So now imagine when I go to launch a book,
if that book didn't do as well as I wanted,
how bad I could feel.
I mean, so there's risk there, right?
But that's a risk that high performers take.
They're allowing themselves to associate their identity
with doing well in that specific area.
Like, I was saying, "I'm going to become a great writer
"one day, I will do the research,
"I will write lots of different styles."
So if you've ever read any of my books,
they're all different, Life's Golden Ticket's different
than Motivational Manifesto, different than The Charge,
different than High Performance Habits.
I'm doing that as a writer 'cause I'm trying to get better.
I'm willing to say, "I'm a writer.
"I'm gonna become excellent at it."
And that's why it's important for me to write well.
You see?
If your identity says you're an amazing mom,
you treat your kids differently
than if you don't think about how you are as a mom, right?
If you're gonna go in that meeting,
two guys go into the meeting and one says,
"I'm going to be present and deliver
"just exceptional in this meeting,"
and another dude just kinda strolls in from Starbucks.
(laughs) You know?
I'm gonna bet on the guy who goes in
with high intention for being exceptional there.
So, you have to say that.
You have to allow yourself to say,
"I'm going to deliver here with excellence.
"It's important to who I am as a person."
When I interviewed these high performers
from around the world in these structured,
deep, psychological interviews, here's what was amazing.
Almost to a T, every single one of them,
every single one of them allowed themselves that,
association of their identity.
Most of the general public, they don't do that.
Under-performers never do, it's too much risk, right?
They might get disappointed.
So I'm just here, if you want to be
exceptional at what you're doing,
you need to adopt the identity that says,
"It is important to who I am to do well here."
And here's what high performers also do.
They don't always say, "It's important to who I am
"to do well here because it's part of my identity,"
when I talked with them in the interviews,
they all said, "I can't imagine doing anything else."
They all said it.
"This is my thing, I love this thing,
"it's who I am, Brendon, to do this."
That's why they're succeeding at it.
It's who they are to do it.
If it's who you are to do it, then you don't
have to force it, it's just who you are.
You're doing the thing that is who you are.
You follow?
That's why they become high performers
'cause everyone else is faking it till they're making it.
They're forcing it, they're not following who they are,
they're not congruent, right?
High performers are doing what they feel
is congruent to who they really are,
and that's why they outperform everybody else around them.
And that's just one element of psychological necessity
we talk about in the book.
The second one is also an internal game,
and that is, um, how do I explain this?
High performers allow obsession as well.
They allow association with identity doing well,
but they also allow obsession.
Meaning, all high performers tend to
be obsessed with a topic.
I mean, like, dork out about it,
like, geek out about it, like, they get obsessed.
And obsession is different than a passion, okay?
Passions are okay.
The whole world wants you to be passionate, right?
Live with passion, follow your passions,
do your passions, be passionate at work.
Everyone wants you to be passionate.
Passion is safe, passion is accepted,
and passion is expected.
But here's the difference between a passion
and an obsession.
When you're obsessed with something,
people think you're crazy.
(laughs) You know?
When you're passionate, they congratulate you.
(clapping) Ooh, passion!
When you're obsessed, they warn you.
(laughs) You know?
They say, "Wow, you're spending too much time on that."
You know, "Why do you care so much about it?"
They think you're weird for liking it.
That's how you know the difference.
Now, of course, there's unhealthy obsessions,
when you do it and focus on it so much
that you wreck a relationship,
that you can't stop thinking about it.
It becomes so compulsive.
But I will share that high performers,
they are obsessive about their topic,
and what I mean by that is they're obsessive
about mastering that topic.
They want to get good at it.
Like a high performing chess player,
they want to master that game.
They don't want to just, you know, play the game,
they want to be known for the game.
Like, they want to develop a high level of mastery at that.
Same thing in any other given genre.
Like, high performers always stand out
because you can tell they do more research on it, why?
'Cause they're obsessed with it, right?
They pay attention to their numbers, why?
They're obsessed with it.
They want that feedback, why?
They're obsessed with getting better at that specific topic,
so they do deliberate practice.
We know this of high performers, that internally,
they generate this necessity by saying,
"This is who I am, and I love this topic so much,
"I'm gonna obsess on it."
Then, that's just the internal game,
there's an external game of necessity, too.
Sometimes you perform at your highest levels
because you feel a sense of social duty,
or social obligation, or even maybe spiritual purpose.
Meaning, there's something outside of you,
so it's not just your identity or what you like to do,
or are obsessed with doing, it's that there's something
that you feel called to do or obligated to do,
and you do it because of that.
You've heard that phrase that we'll often do more
for other people than we'll do for ourselves?
That comes true with high performers.
When I interview them, they say, "You know what?
"I had to do that."
I said, "Why are you so amazing?"
"You know, I'm doing it for my family."
"Why are you so amazing?"
"Well, you know, my wife and I were,
"our backs were against the wall financially,
"so I'm showing up each day."
"Why are you so amazing?"
"Well, you know, because I know that my team,
"or my fans, or my students, or the kids across the street,
"they're watching, they're seeing me.
"I want to be a role model for them."
Right, "Why are you so amazing?"
"Well, my parents are struggling right now,
"and I know that they need me to show up
"and bring my A game."
Who needs you to bring your A game?
That's a question high performers ask themselves.
You know, when they sit down at their desk,
I didn't know this, by the way,
this is one of the things I said to you,
this was a surprise to me.
Now, at my house, at my desk, there's a little postcard
because a high performer told me about this,
that right next to my desk, I sit down,
and it says, "Who needs your A game?"
And it makes me, instead of just jumping into my inbox,
or starting my day, or getting hooked
on social media, or some distraction,
and go, "Who needs me to show up today?"
It's that sprinter from the beginning of this video
saying, "Now, I'm gonna bet on the person who says,
"I need to just win this race for my mom."
That's psychological necessity and external drive, right?
Social duty, obligation, purpose,
doing well for other people is a drive.
And then the last element of these four,
remember number one is they associate their identity
with doing well, right, that's why it becomes a must.
They're obsessed with it, that's why it becomes a must.
They're doing it for others, or for a calling,
or a spiritual purpose, or for an obligation, right?
Some, I mean, I think it's important to say
that high performers don't do it
just because it's, you know, rainbows
and airy-fairy and everything's perfect,
sometimes it's obligation.
It's the CEO who's outperforming the other people
in their competition or their industry,
not because they want to but because there's pressure
from the other, you know, from Wall Street,
from their investors, from the competition itself.
So sometimes, you know, bringing your A game,
you don't bring your A game just because it's amazing
and you want to be awesome, you bring your A game
'cause you have to, right?
You have to, you have to deliver.
And this last one is so important,
the fourth one has a lot to do with that.
It's, get ready, you're gonna hate it, sorry!
Deadlines.
High performers, it's necessary
for them to bring their A game
'cause there's usually an external deadline.
Let me tell you, writing this book
took me three years of my life.
Almost a million dollars in research spending
went into this book.
I mean, there's 50 pages of cited reference material
in the back.
I read every one of those research studies.
I read every one of those books.
I obsessed about this myself.
I am a writer.
I wanted to get this book out to you guys.
So I had it all, right?
Identity, yes!
Good job!
Obsession, oh I love this topic!
Social obligation, duty, purpose, calling,
I want to give this to you!
And you know what?
I wouldn't get the book done 'cause it wasn't complete,
necessity wasn't complete until you hit me
with a deadline, and it was like, dang.
That last element, wham!
As soon as I had that deadline, guess what happened?
Output per hour increased.
More pages were getting done, baby, 'cause necessity,
sometimes you need that external pressure.
Maybe you don't like it, no one likes
being forced on a deadline, but hey,
Olympians don't choose when and where the Olympics are.
CEOs don't choose when and where
the quarterly call or the meeting is, right?
We don't get to choose these things.
Entrepreneurs don't choose, don't get to choose
when and where and how much their customers are gonna buy.
We have to show up for others,
and to others' timelines in life sometimes, too.
So here's what high performers do.
They remind themselves of the deadlines
and the times and why it is necessary,
why there are consequences to doing it by then, right?
And they remind themselves, they psychologically
give themselves that self-talk.
They go, "I need to get this done,
"now, and here is why," and being connected
with that too is really important.
I need to win this race at this stage of my career.
I'm gonna be better for my relationship
right now at this stage of our marriage.
Like, they tell themselves about the timing
and why it's important to do well.
So, how do you tie all this together?
The next time you're gonna go do some important activity,
whether that important activity for you
is walking onto a stage, whether it's
putting a good PowerPoint together,
whether it's doing the video, whether it's
just being awesome in a meeting or your home life,
before you walk into the situation,
raise your psychological necessity
to be awesome in that situation.
That's your job.
That's your goal.
This is what high performers do,
before they walk into that activity,
they raise the necessity, they say,
"I need to do well in this situation
"because," and the answer is usually
"'cause this is who I am.
"I excel, I bring excellence,
"I care about doing well here.
"It's because I love this stuff.
"I'm walking into this situation 'cause I chose it.
"I want to be here.
"I want to deliver.
"I want to be great.
"I want to get better at it.
"Because I want to get better at it,
"I'm going to obsess about it.
"I'm going to pay attention to if I'm getting better.
"I'm going to take that feedback, I'm going to improve."
They say, "I gotta do well in this meeting for these people,
"for that person, for this cause, and then you know what?
"I better do it now 'cause you know what?
"Life is short," or, "I've got this deadline."
But all these things, when these come together
more and more and more and often for you,
then what happens?
You start achieving that necessity, that mindset
of necessity, to become exceptional at what you do,
and then, you do that over and over,
and you get this tagline.
How extraordinary people become that way?
Extraordinary people become that way
'cause they choose to be that way.
They choose to psych themselves up
to deliver, to do a good job.
They raise that necessity and because they
raise the necessity, they raise their performance.
They raise their performance, they change their lives,
and they achieve long-term success.
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