Going Deeper into Elite Performance. It’s not all about Performance.

Recently I was listening to a small clip on youtube, Brendan Gleeson the actor was being interviewed, and he was asked about his own mortality now that he had turned 70. Interestingly he replied that he had been considering his mortality for many years, his own inevitable death, and then he said something very very true, that if he avoided or looked away from his own death he would in turn miss out on the deliciousness of life.

So we come back to the dangers of elite performance, life is more than performance, it is not just a results based experiment, we are not just sophisticated performing monkeys, our human condition demands more. Many of our elite performers both athlete and corporate are not experiencing the deliciousness of life.

How Do We Avoid The Trap And Temptation Of Elite Performance?

Let me try to answer this by recounting a true story of my own. I had the opportunity of visiting the hospice over a two year period while my mother died of a slow neurological disease. Like Brendan Gleeson, in the hospice I had the time and environment to become aware of my own mortality mine and yours - and ponder on the delicious/ adventurous life or the not so delicious. One day a woman in her mid seventies came into the Hospice, I was told by the sister in charge that this woman had a week or so left to live. I found this hard to believe as the woman looked so alert and relatively healthy, for the next week I observed this woman, what I noticed was that she had no fear and never became distressed in the face of the reality that was facing her. As the week went by her family and friends regularly visited her and she remained happy and calm. It was obvious to see the richness of relationships she had. One day I came to visit my mother and the woman was gone she had died the previous night and I had witnessed her last week, but in that week what was obvious was the substance of her life, not just a performance. I have over the years thought about this woman, pondered why she was so happy, content, fulfilled at the end, I had also witnessed the opposite, people dying in distress with regret and fear. My understanding of this woman’s demeaner was at the end she was satiated, she was satisfied, we normally associate the word satiation with hunger, when we are no longer hungry we say we are satiated we are satisfied, I imagine if I had gone to this woman to tell her she was coming to the end she would have communicated to me she was no longer hungry she had drunk and eaten her fill.

We all have a natural hunger for life, in the end we will have to face the question, Am I full or did I fulfil my potential and become satiated. The tragedy is that by just performing in a unidimensional way does not give satisfaction to this hunger and this is what I believe many elite performing athletes and elite performing professionals find out, results do not guarantee deeper purpose and meaning.

So what are you hungering for and is it leading to the deliciousness of life? What is the big vision?