I looked over and I’ve seen the promised land.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Most recently in my career, I (Brendon Burchard) have wondered whether high performers have a particular worldview on clarity—about themselves, what they want, and how to get it. I wondered what, if anything, they were clearer about than most people.
To find out, I analyzed the comments of high performance students, called on achievement researchers, and spoke with Certified High Performance CoachesTM about what gives their clients an edge. I also conducted structured interviews focused solely on the topic of clarity, with nearly a hundred people who reported in our surveys as being high performers, I asked them questions such as:
- Which things are you absolutely clear about that help you perform better than your peers?
- What do you focus on to stay clear about what matters most?
- What aren’t you clear about, and how does that affect your performance?
- What do you do when you are feeling uncertain or undirected?
- If you had to explain to someone you were mentoring what it is that makes you successful, what would you say?
- What else do you know about yourself—beyond your values and strengths and plans—that makes you successful?
In almost every basic question of who they were or what they wanted, the highest performers had a great ability to focus on the future and divine how they would achieve excellence. They didn’t just know who they were; indeed, they rarely focused on their present personality or preferences. Instead, they consistently thought about who they wanted to be and how to become that. They didn’t just know their strengths today; they knew what broader skill sets they would have to master in coming months and years to serve with excellence at the next level. They didn’t just have clear plans to achieve their goals this quarter; they had lists of future projects that would lead them to a bigger dream. They didn’t think just about how they could get what they personally wanted this month; they obsessed with the same focus about how to help others get what they wanted in their overall lives and careers.
This “future focus” went well beyond what they wanted to become or how they would achieve what they and others wanted. They could also describe with great clarity how they wanted to feel in upcoming endeavors, and they knew specifically what conditions could destroy their enthusiasm, sense of satisfaction, and growth.
Out of this research, we discovered specific habits that help create this kind of next-level clarity.
* Source: High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard