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In traditional coaching, our level of performance is often explained with some version of this formula:
Level of Performance = Capacity + Information
If that were true, the only thing between you and optimal performance would be a missing piece of information. Once you knew what to do, you would get the most out of your innate capacity. But even a cursory glance at our own life will show up the fallacy in that idea.
- How many “strategies for success” have you studied in your lifetime?
- How much of what you’ve learned do you actually apply on a regular basis?
- Are your results commensurate with how much you’ve studied, or do they seem to have more to do with how you show up in actual performance situations?
Level of Performance = Capacity – Interference
In other words, when we eliminate interference, we perform closer to our full capacity. But in order to eliminate interference, we first have to understand what it is and where it comes from.
Here’s a visual representation of how our mind functions when we’ve got our mojo working – in the zone and on our game:
When we’re operating in sync with our natural design, we’re tuned in and receptive to the infinite potential of the universe (Mind). We’re able to experience the energy of the universe taking form (Thought) via an aperture that is continually expanding and contracting (Consciousness).
To function at our absolute best, all we need to do is allow the system to operate as designed. Thought takes form in our personal consciousness as fresh ideas, creative possibilities, loving thoughts, and a moment-by-moment sense of direction, and we move forward in absolute harmony with the intelligence of the universe made manifest via our common sense and a sort of “wisdom within”.
What could possibly interfere with such a great design?
Well, the problem with a brain is that over time it starts to produce lots and lots of repetetive personal thinking over and above whatever fresh “of the moment” thinking we really need to perform at our best. Since our experience of life is really an experience of Thought, the more we have on our mind, the more complicated everything seems, and the more the aperture of our consciousness tends to contract. Before we know it, all we can see when we look out into the world is our own habitual thinking reflected back to us in the fun-house mirror of our own self-consciousness.
Where we get ourselves into real trouble is when we then start analyzing and attempting to control our thinking. In the process, we completely lose sight of both the power of Thought and the intelligence of the deeper Mind that can guide us through life with relative ease if we let it.
It looks something like this (but not this):
Simply put, the less we have on our mind, the higher our level of performance. Or to put it even more accurately, the less we think about what happens to be on our mind, the better we tend to do at whatever it is that we’re doing.