4 Steps to Having More Peak Experiences

by Chris McNeil
Pensarc Marketing

Much has been written about the “zone”: a  state of peak performance highly treasured by athletes and artists alike. Can you remember  times when everything seemed to flow? When you were filled with inspiration and immersed in what you were doing?

Fields like Sports Psychology and NLP study this “peak performance” state with an eye towards methods to create it more consistently and utilize it in the service of higher achievement.

With our attention scattered by multiple devices and a steady stream of emails, learning and implementing the peak performance flow state has more relevance an strategic advantage now than ever. So, let's consider a simple 4-step process for bringing more peak performance to your team and your life:

Define - Discover - Analyze - Implement

1. Define the state of peak performance

Charles Garfield, in his book Peak Performance, defined the state as having the characteristics of 

1. Confident – Knowing you have the resources and can rally them to accomplish what you want.
2. Focus- All of your attention is brought to the task at hand for the purpose of achieving the goal you are aiming for.
3. Highly Energized- Having more than enough mental and physical energy to achieve the task at hand.
4. Aware- Being  fully in the here and now. NLP calls this “uptime”. The opposite might be called "lost in thought."
5. In Control- The sense of directing your mind and body to do what you wish fully intentionally at every step..

These characteristics can be the criteria for determining that an experience was A "peak experience".
 
2. Discover a set of peak experiences

Make an inventory of some of your personal peak experiences. Remember a specific time when you were really in the zone, and you felt extremely focused and successful about whatever it is you were doing. The context isn't as important as the feeling.  Find at least 3 or 4 personal peak experiences and give each one a name and short description that will jog your memory.

Bring these experiences more to life by associating into them. Relax and. . see what you were seeing . . . hear what you were hearing, feel what you were feeling . While they immersed  in these peak experiences,  your body positions, posture, and facial expressions will shift.

3. Analyze Once you have a few peak experiences at hand, a little analysis goes a long way to showing these things don't happen by chance. There are both internal and external controllable factors that bring them about. Doing a "mind map" is one good way of mapping these experiences with free association thinking where one idea leads to another.
 
4. Implement. By studying these mind maps of your personal peak experiences, you can discover and utilize peak experience drivers" that you find are common to all of them. This way you can design your  environment and actions so  peak experiences happen more often.  For example, if you find that having a coach was common to all of these, you know to build  having a coach into your current plan.

By digging into and analyzing your personal peak performances, you can draw from them to utilize the factors you may have used to bring them about unconsciously now in a more conscious way to live at a higher level of inspiration and success.

Reprinted with permission from the longer version of the blog at The Mental Game of Business.

Chris McNeil  has won multiple innovation awards for web applications, is the founder of Pensarc Marketing and the creator of the e-Merg program that  combines digital marketing with customer touch point optimization and team alignment.