Finding Your Zone

The Zone.

Maslow described this state as “peak experiences” while Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls it “flow.”

Whatever we want to call it, Dr. Lardon tells us it’s an extraordinary experience in which four primary things occur: (1) we are super focused on what we’re doing; (2) time slows down; (3) we become detached from outside stimuli; and (4) our performance soars.

The keys to tapping into this state more consistently are, of course, what this book is all about.

Let’s take a quick look at the ten core lessons to finding your Zone:

Those are the ten lessons for achieving peak performance in sports and life.

As you’d expect, each lesson has its own chapter packed with goodness.

Time to explore a few of my favorite Ideas!

Two scorecards.

This is a really cool idea.

First: Let’s remind ourselves of the obvious but important fact that there are things within our control and things that are outside of our control.

As Dr. Lardon advises, we need to identify and focus on the key variables that are integral to our success AND within our control.

In short, we need to discipline ourselves to shift our focus from results goals to process goals.

For a golfer, Lardon wants them to execute each shot as well as they can. Their process scorecard keeps track of how often they do this—specifically, they track whether they visualized their shot, hit the shot without any doubt or ambivalence and stepped away from a shot if negative thoughts popped in.

The percentage of time they execute their process well determines their results. Therefore, paying attention to THAT scorecard is way more important than paying attention to the results scorecard.

Unfortunately, as we’ve been discussing a lot in these Notes, we tend to obsess on the outcomes and fail to realize that if we put the same energy into our process, we’d be crushing it.

As Lardon tells us: “This human predilection to be strictly results-oriented is toxic to the elite performer. When you stay more process-oriented and focus on mastering the controllable variables, you inevitably accomplish greater results.”

So, let’s put the spotlight on you.

What are the key variables within your control that drive your success? How can you shift your attention away from the things you can’t change and focus it on the things you can?

Let’s get on that!

Want to unplug from the Zone?

Constantly evaluate your performance and compare yourself to other people.

Let’s focus on comparing ourselves to other people for a moment.

We *know* that this is a great way to not only unplug from performance Zones, but from consistent levels of happiness as well.

Here’s how Sonja Lyubomirsky puts it in The Hows of Happiness (see Notes): “The happier the person, the less attention she pays to how others around her are doing.”

Happy people are too focused on their own lives to worry about how they’re doing relative to other people. Get back to rockin’ it and remember: “People who pay too much attention to social comparisons find themselves chronically vulnerable, threatened, and insecure.”

Pure motivation.

This is a core lesson. And a theme we come back to often.

Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic motivation.

The research here is nuts. Remember: Even if we think we’re going to succeed while pursuing the extrinsic stuff, we’re, as the researchers say, “less psychologically stable” than when our motivation is intrinsic.

Are you driven by your love for what you do? That’s awesome. Intrinsic.

Or, are you motivated by your desire to be famous and super wealthy? That would be less awesome. Extrinsic.

If you’re feeling a little tired or burned out, notice if you’ve shifted away from the your pure love for what you do and see how you can simplify things and get back to making it FUN again.

Confidence.

There’s no way we’re going to get into the Zone without it.

Here’s how Gary Mack puts it in Mind Gym (see Notes): “What do you think is the most important part of the mental game? It’s a question I’ve asked hundreds of managers, coaches, and professional athletes during plane flights and bus rides to stadiums over the past twenty years. The answer is always the same. It’s confidence. When you’re confident you can relax, trust your stuff, and perform at your best. Confidence is the bottom line.

Where does confidence come from? Great athletes say that confidence is knowing they are prepared physically and mentally. Experience tells them what to do and confidence allows them to do it. Confidence is the emotional knowing that you are prepared, mind, body, and spirit, for anything.”

Remember that the word confidence comes from the Latin confidere which = “to have full trust.” To be confident, quite simply, means that we trust ourselves.

And this takes work.

Think of it like a garden. Get down on your hands and knees and tend your good thoughts and good actions. Pull out the weeds of negativity and self-doubt that choke your potential.

Not once or twice or when you feel like it. Vigilantly. Consistently.

Here’s an image: Pema Chödrön tells us that when we allow negativity to dwell in our minds, it’s like pouring CONCRETE over our garden.

Imagine that. Not just a few weeds you need to pull. Concrete.

Not a whole lot of potential for our flourishing if we allow that, eh?

Robin Sharma tells us: “You have now learned that the mind is like a fertile garden and for it to flourish, you must nurture it daily. Never let the weeds of impure thought and action take the garden of your mind. Stand guard at the gateway of your mind. Keep it healthy and strong—it will work miracles in your life if you will only let it.”

Back to you.

What can you do to tend your confidence garden a little more actively/wisely?

P.S. This gem from David Reynolds’s Constructive Living (see Notes) might be my favorite thought on confidence: “The mature human being goes about doing what needs to be done regardless of whether that person feels great or terrible. Knowing that you are the kind of person with that kind of self-control brings all the satisfaction and confidence you will ever need. Even on days when the satisfaction and confidence just aren’t there, you can get the job done anyway.”

P.P.S. As we’ve discussed, scientists describe this trust in ourselves as “self-efficacy.” Lardon tells us that the field of self-efficacy was developed by Dr. Albert Bandura, a Professor at Stanford.

Bandura identified four components of confidence. Here’s a quick look at them:

1. Mastery experiences = the experience of having performed well.
2. Vicarious learning = seeing someone do something that you can see doing as well.
3. Modeling someone’s behavior = being inspired by someone achieving something and going for it as a result.
4. Social persuasion = getting positive support from someone you trust.

Activation energy. (= Amazing.)

Want a fire?

451 degrees Fahrenheit.

Not 423. Not even 450.

451.

Reminds me of Orison Swett Marden’s story about 212 degrees from He Can Who Thinks He Can (see Notes): “Before water generates steam, it must register two hundred and twelve degrees of heat. Two hundred degrees will not do it; two hundred and ten will not do it. The water must boil before it will generate enough steam to move an engine, to run a train. Lukewarm water will not run anything.

A great many people are trying to move their life trains with lukewarm water—or water that is almost boiling—and they are wondering why they are stalled, why they cannot get ahead. They are trying to run a boiler with two hundred or two hundred and ten degrees of heat, and they cannot understand why they do not get anywhere.”

Lukewarmness in his work stands in the same relation to man’s achievement as lukewarm water does to the locomotive boiler. No man can hope to accomplish anything great in this world until he throws his whole soul, flings his force to his whole life, into it.”

How’s your activation energy?

Have you thrown your whole soul, your whole life force into what you’re doing?

What would it look like if you gave just one degree more?

Let’s remember that the difference between good and great is immeasurably small.