An article entitled 10 High-Performance Habits that Lead to Success by Justin Su’a is noteworthy. This isn’t a normal article. It talks about 10 specific principles that, if practiced carefully, will help increase one’s performance and mental toughness.

Justin Su’a is a former competitive baseball player and despite not having the physical prowess and physical ability like some other players, he was still able to gain success. His family trained him to face any adversity with a positive mindset. Their team also had a sports psychologist who spoke to the players about tools and strategies that were taught to Olympians.

The principles taught by the sports psychologist resonated with Justin and ignited a desire for him to follow the same career path. These principles not only work for sports but can be applied by people of all walks to every aspect of life. Here are the 10 high-performance habits that lead to success:

Win the morning
Do hard things
Embrace feedback
Learn from failure
Choose your attitude
Do one more
Have a purpose
Recommit every single day
Be patient
Fear no one

Win the morning

Winning the morning is all about starting strong. People complain they don’t have enough time in the day but the truth is, there’s not enough time because they’re not using the time they have. Instead, they’re wasting it. All you need to do is to start the morning strong by getting up with purpose. Successful people and high-performers are able to do hard things. Sometimes one of these is to wake up early when nobody else does.

Move towards your goal by telling your body to get up, even when it wants to sleep. This is you practicing to dominate your body. If you do that over and over again, you are going to be able to train yourself to do difficult things. When you don’t want to pick up the phone to make a sales call, train yourself by telling yourself to pick up the phone anyway. Make that first decision ad it will get easier. Winning the morning is important because it starts your day off with taking control. Tell yourself to do one thing and attack it.

Regardless of whether you’re a night person or a morning person, your morning begins when you wake up. Wake up strong by doing it on purpose and with passion. Set up a routine, workout, eat right, fill your mind, and fill your heart.

There are two things that people often underestimate when trying to achieve greatness: How long it’s going to take and how hard it’s going to be. Whether you set a personal goal or a professional goal, don’t underestimate how difficult it’s going to be or how long it’s going to take for you to achieve the goals. The danger in doing so is that you’re mentally unprepared when adversity comes. When problems strike, many would-be performers pull the plug and give up. High-performers, on the other hand, have the ability to do hard things because they have acknowledged beforehand that achieving their goals may be hard. They’ve prepared themselves mentally and physically for the hard things.

Successful people didn’t realize their achievements overnight. Many hours, days, months, and sometimes years are spent working towards their goals. They win the morning and keep going.

Little things matter

People tend to seek out the hard actions and don’t realize the tedious detail-oriented things matter just as much. Examples are reading for on-going education and taking notes during training. Great performers don’t take these details for granted. The details that need to be executed will be different from one person to the next. The key is to find the details that apply to your success and whatever they are, do them.

Learn from failures

The inability to learn from failure is the number one factor that destroys would-be performers. Many professionals from various careers and industries are afraid of failure. It’s not necessarily even the failure in itself, but their interpretation of failure. They perceive that failure means they’re not good enough. These negative phrases that play over and over in someone’s mind lead to feelings of failure but you can train yourself to understand these feelings don’t reflect the truth of the situation. Instead of viewing failure negatively, It can be looked at as an opportunity to learn. Every successful entrepreneur has seen failure and fought against it. They overcome these adversities by using failures as a means to learn from their mistakes and get better.

Sarah Blakely, the CEO of Spanx, was asked why she’s so good at her job. She attributed her success to the training that got from her father. Sarah’s father would ask her, “How did you fail today and what did you learn from it?” She grew up learning from failure. Those who are willing to learn from failure will fear it less and those who fear it less are more dangerous because they know how to use it.

When you can wake up every morning, not being afraid of failure, you take the pressure off yourself. You’re able to go after your goals and take chances you might not have otherwise. You will experience failure but when you do, you’ll know how to face it, learn from it, and overcome.

A laundry list of failures

Prepare yourself mentally for failure by listing all the ways you could fail. List them all no matter how simple, unlikely, or outrageous these failures could be. Once you have identified them, think of ways to respond to each of these scenarios and have a plan of action. Having a bounce-back plan gives you the confidence to take care of these potential adversities because now you know you have a course of action. This will save you from reacting emotionally and negatively when failure strikes and you will be less likely to give up.

Keeping the momentum

We can start a new venture well but it takes the right traits and qualities to keep the momentum going. Typically, the problem isn’t about the lack of motivation or the lack of competence. Oftentimes, the problem lies in the size of the list.

Sometimes we have too many actions on the list and we become overwhelmed. It’s important to start small. Start with one high-performance habit and when you achieve it, motivation will naturally fall into place.

There are many elements to having mental toughness. The most important thing is to identify the one thing that keeps you from excelling right now and take on a new habit to defeat that mindset or situation. Hone in and develop the behaviors around that. Once you’ve automated that one habit, go onto the next one. It’s a continuous learning process. It’s continual growth and development until you become the successful person you want to become.

Do one more

You can also develop mental toughness by doing something even if it’s difficult to do. Your body will go where your mind takes you. The ‘do one more’ principle means telling your body what you want it to do. This is one of the important habits that lead to success If a typical salesperson has a goal of talking to 10 prospects in one day, then don’t be typical. Do one more. By making this decision, you’ve taken control. Doing this over and over again will increase your motivation as you achieve your goals. This is one of the most powerful principles that you can develop.

High performers don’t settle for average. They go up and beyond. They hit one more call, they read one more book, and they write one more email. That is the separating factor.

Fear no one

Fear no one but be respectful to everyone. Treat everyone the same regardless of their social status and carry this mindset everywhere you go, regardless of who you’re talking to. Everyone is important.

Stop trying to read other people’s minds because that will plant seeds of doubts in your own brain and you defeat yourself. You’re allowing other people to intimidate you because of the script you’ve created in your own mind. You may have a little trepidation but that’s normal. Everyone feels some fear but you still have the opportunity to be courageous by acting despite the fear. Remember, anyone can be beaten.

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