why not stay with therapy, carmen? why peak performance? are you saying that other levels of performance are (fill-in-the-blank with negative adjective of your choice)? no, that is not what i am saying. that is not why i am veering off the main road. i am compelled to pay attention to the brilliance that occurs at that level of performance; it utterly captures my attention!
but the inquiry needs to reach much further back.
we perform our best when we are at our best, holistically.
what does that really mean? does that mean that it is mostly the few, who were chosen by fate to have comfortable, safe childhoods, who can train to evolve to that level of performance? what about the (probably) 99.9% of the rest of us who were touched by some sort of uncomfortable experience or denigrating trauma in our childhoods? are we incapable of attaining peak levels of performance?
i found an answer today.
i realized that the reason for my interest in (high) performance is largely the same reason for my interest in psychology. i wanted to know what? why? and how? and then what?
what happened? what did that result in? how can the lived experience to date be changed and improved after that happened?
change.
but the approach to these questions - and to the change itself - differ markedly between the practice of therapy and coaching / consulting.
i now understand the psychology of behavior. and i understand how to influence change from this platform; or, at times, to recognize how much and what kind of change is possible (and why).
what emerged in my therapy work was the inevitable merging of an old love - high performance - and a new discovery - my attention was increasingly captivated by clients who were able to sustain the change process which occurs in therapy, thereby achieving personal evolution. i eventually became uncomfortable with clients who were unable to walk down this road. these latter clients knew they wanted to experience a different - better - life. but what kept showing up was their inability or unwillingness to engage in the process of change, to be comfortable with discomfort (for a little bit), to be honest about their defenses (which make sense, but still need to be looked at to see if or how they are useful/less), and to actually do the day-to-day work that change requires. basic work. basic, as in ... sleep well. eat nourishing food. stretch a little. literally. metaphorically. go inward and reflect. be honest with yourself. it became evident that their energy was invested in maintaining a particular narrative which not only wasn't serving them but it was stonewalling personal growth, unbeknownst to them.
show stopper for therapy. fertile soil for resentment and frustration to bloom, with a decisive, "therapy doesn't work" message added to the narrative.
my own narrative had a fundamental nuance. therapy works if you make it work (read: sweat, blood, tears). and those who make it work have something inside of them that enables them to make it work that the others do not. what is that something? and why am i so energized when i work with these clients? and why do i get impatient and mentally check out when i'm in conversation with the ones who don't (want to) make it work? "i better pay attention," says i to self.
and here's what i discovered. but first, a paraphrased quote from michael gervais: one commonality 80% of the world's top-performing ceos share is a childhood history of trauma.
wait! WHAT?!
and here's the discovery and the interpretation of the quote. people don't excel because they haven't experienced some form of trauma in childhood. they most likely excel because of it!
80% OF HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT IS MOST LIKELY A RESULT OF ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES.
so, if we were to generalize this figure to other performance areas, then we come to learn that most high performers perform at that level because they are overcoming something painful! and that is the answer i came to. and i tied the whole package with a nice, fat, red bow. so therapy and performance enhancement address the same issue, trauma, but possibly with different populations, definitely from a different platform.
therapy works (with people who want it to work) for people who have identified their own less-than-optimal childhood and work to surmount the trauma, psychologically.
performance enhancement is sought by people with the above two givens already processed and shelved as "part my my history" and "now i want to look at present and future, to continue the trajectory of [overcoming that past by] performing at a superlative level as much as i am capable of doing [with some mental skills work]."
you see, the issue is ... where does it all come from? where does psychological dysfunction come from? where does stellar performance come from? they're offshoots of the same root: a sub-par (possibly traumatizing) childhood. but where the twins depart from one another is what the individual does with this burden: one road leads toward dysfunction (mostly), the other leads toward overcoming.
resilience. intensity of purpose. reaching for achievement and excellence. pretty much always and in every sphere of activity.
let me explain. if i grow up with a parent for whom my efforts are never good enough, who expects excellence - be it subjective or objective, but mercilessly relentless - and constantly reminds me of this (not constructively, to say the least), then i have two options (for i must survive my childhood and am creating some sense of self as i go along, surviving). option 1: i learn that i am not good enough (subconsciously) and (unconsciously) stop there, meanwhile developing, first anxiety, then depression; later in life, my narrative says, "i'm not good enough; everyone else is better; i don't deserve to feel good about myself." option 2: i learn that i am not good enough (subconsciously) and furiously seek (unconsciously) (and probably create) opportunities for myself to disprove that uncomfortable "knowledge" (so as to gain my parent's approval).
sadly, this is not my discovery. harvard business review explored it here. but, it is an important link between points on the performance continuum.
performance is fundamentally approval-seeking behavior. however, it is an adaptive response to the long-standing, original-source disapproval.
i have wandered off the so-called main road because i am interested (and always have been) in how we - these complex organisms known as a humans - surmount difficulties. why and how we create constructive and purposeful meaning out of pain or discomfort or adversity.
and that is the reason i wanted to understand human psychology in the first place.
thanks, robert pirsig.
