Unravel
The Future
Konstantinos Karypidis | Peak Performance Coach | Motivational Speaker
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” – Karl Marx
The only way to avoid the farce, is to overcome our “Next Idea Syndrome”. Simply put, the executive of the future will be the one who is a serious scholar of the past.
We tend to focus too much into the future, preparing our executives to face future threats and opportunities. We ask of them to break the rules and become more creative, more innovative, more agile, more collaborative, more and more and more… Consultants and professional speakers alike try to find new words to describe what is already known but maybe forgotten along the quest for newness.
Well… it doesn’t have to be so complicated nor science fiction.
If you look well into the past and record the main attributes, values or competencies for success throughout the years you’ll come to a surprising revelation. We just change the names of the competencies we’re looking for in our team members to make them more attractive or modern if you’d like. The main competencies though required to achieve peak performance surprisingly remain constant throughout the centuries. Written in stone by the ancient Greeks to modern philosophers and management gurus these five competencies or values if you prefer are the ones that will remain constant for centuries to come.
Welcome aboard!
Konstantinos
Peak Performance Coach & Motivational Speaker
Meet my heroes
Join me on a time travel that will change the way you view the future
and the competencies required to achieve peak performance.
ARISTOTLE
Be Courageous To Live In Eudaimonia
“You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honour and it is the first of human qualities, because it is the quality which guarantees the others.” – ARISTOTLE
Did you know that the root of the word courage comes from the latin word for heart? It is rather interesting, because as our heart pumps blood to our whole body so it can function, courage has the same role in our psychological lives and our ability to be our best selves. As Rollo May so precisely laid the idea in “The Courage to Create”: “Without courage other values wither away into mere facsimiles of virtue”.
If one is serious about reaching peak levels of performance, the first thing to see through is that the fabric of peak performance and a bright future of any kind, is the courage to make decisions and take care of the fundamentals that will form a platform for greatness.
SENECA
Choose & Go All In
“When some state or other offered Alexander a part of its territory and half of all its property he told them that ‘he hadn’t come to Asia with the intention of accepting whatever they cared to give him, but of letting them keep whatever he chose to leave them.’ Philosophy, likewise, tells all other occupations: ‘It’s not my intention to accept whatever time is leftover from you; you shall have, instead, what I reject.’ Give your whole mind to her.” – SENECA
When we look at people who have been able to achieve greatness they all have a common trait. They were intense about reaching the peak of their choice. Which implies that they were crystal clear about what they wanted to produce. Clarity is power. Robin Sharma said that “clarity precedes success”. George Bernard Shaw said it differently but pointed to the same thing: “Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.”
Knowing where you want to go and being intense about it means that you are able to ignite. Carbon and hydrogen atoms are hanging out in wood all day every day. Oxygen also is hanging out in the air all day every day. These three elements never combine to form fire molecules until a certain threshold is reached. We need 451° of heat to create enough energy to make fire appear. Clarity and intensity create that heat. Sri Ramakrishna said: “Do not seek illumination unless you seek it as a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.” I am arguing the exact same thing. You won’t peak perform unless you seek success to any field a man whose hair is on fire seeks a pond.”
SENECA
EPICTETUS
Claim Responsibility + Practice + Get Gritty
“Happiness and freedom begin with one principle. Some things are within your control and some are not. […] Remember that thou art an actor in a play of such a kind as the teacher (author) may choose; if short, of a short one; if long, of a long one: if he wishes you to act the part of a poor man, see that you act the part naturally; if the part of a lame man, of a magistrate, of a private person, (do the same). For this is your duty, to act well the part that is given to you; but to select the part, belongs to another.” – EPICTETUS
Taking 100% responsibility for the results you produce is an inevitable fundamental if you want to reach peak performance levels to anything that matters to you. Responsibility defined in the most basic manner is this: What you can do you can do, what you cannot do you cannot do. Stop paying attention, making excuses, complaining about all these things you can’t do anything about. It is totally nonsense. Instead, focus, practice relentlessly and develop unparalleled grit about those things you can affect. All these aspects are in your hands. Get interested, work hard, do something not only for yourself, have a clear sense of what you want to see in your life and be urgent to do whatever it takes. These thoughts echoing Hal Elrod: “Remember, the moment you accept total responsibility for *everything* in your life is the moment you claim the power to change *anything* in your life.” As simple as that.
BUDHA
Beat Worry and Stop Chocking
“Driven by fear, people run for security to mountains and forests, to sacred spots and shrines. But none of these can be a safe refuge, because they cannot free the mind from fear. […] When your mind is stuck, you are in Dukkha. Go into the forest and sit beneath a tree and then to simply watch the breath. If the breath is long, notice that the breath is long. If the breath is short, notice that the breath is short.“ – BUDDHA
One of the greatest entanglements to peak performance is choking. That reminds me Sian Beilock’s wisdom when she said: “If you can manage to interpret your body’s response to the situation as positive, as a call to action, you are likely to thrive. But if you interpret your body’s response as a sign that you are in a bad place with no way out, the worries and ruminations that result may send you into a ‘choke.”
The number one reason that individuals choke? Worry. The number one antidote to worry? Mental strength practice. The best mental strength practice? Meditation or more simply – and less fancier for sure – our ability to control our breathing pattern while we reframe our body signals.
BUDDHA
CHARLES DARWIN
Expand To Reach The Limitless
“The facial expressions and body language that accompany the simple and also the most important of the complex emotions are instinctual or innate, but a few, such as weeping and laughter, require repetition by an individual to achieve their fullest expression […] Humans and other animals display power and dominance through expansive non- verbal displays, and these power poses are deeply intertwined with the evolutionary selection of what is “alpha”“ – CHARLES DARWIN
Motion creates emotion. The way we move our bodies affects directly the way we feel and act. Amy Cuddy expresses the same thing in her book Presence: “… if nonverbal expressions of power are so hardwired that we instinctively throw our arms up in a V when we win a race—regardless of cultural background, gender, or whether we’ve seen anyone else do it—and if William James was right that our emotions are as much a result as they are a cause of our physical expressions, then what would happen if we adopt expansive postures even when we are feeling powerless? Since we naturally expand our bodies when we feel powerful, do we also naturally feel powerful when we expand our bodies?”
When we are cooking, we follow precise steps. Taking action in a peak state is not different. We can follow precise steps and that will enable us to be in a peak state whenever we want, for as long as we want. It is something which I refer to as “body-spirit cooking” and it works like a charm.
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