performance

the beauty of any performance is that we can feel it when we get it right. yet when we experience a performance of breathtaking and effortless skill and creativity we are mostly unaware how we got to that point. it was, as if by magic, the unified states of our entire being are briefly connected. yet, as unexpectedly as it arrived, it quickly disappears leaving us wondering how we can retrieve that same experience again.

of course we understand now that we were in what is often called ‘flow’ or ‘in the zone’. that every fibre of our mind, body and spirit flows in the same direction. it’s as if time slows and our senses heighten. we become absolutely aware, our decision making magnificent and our creativity glorious. it makes our performance look easy - just like it is supposed to be.

creativity

we all have the potential to be artists and we all have the potential for creativity. we often describe certain performers who reach a state of flow and make instantaneous decisions freely and creatively as genius. these are the performers who allow themselves to reach this creative state more often than most. the elite of the elites - the successful athletes, empowered entrepreneurs and the most gifted performers.

we can consider creative performers as artists because they have chosen to risk everything to reach this state from where their performance can unleash itself. they have risked and failed endlessly and because of these invaluable experiences they have crafted their creative mastery and turned it into a performance of genuine genius.

most of us never consider ourselves artists because we like to compartmentalise them as painters, poets, musicians or actors. in reality an artist is simply a description of anyone who desires to solve a problem with a creative solution. yet most of us choose not too. we know the opportunity exists but we like to choose strategies that are safe, well known and, at least, provides a small return on our efforts. the alternative is to follow our own personal choices but that would mean to risk failure and we don’t like doing that. it’s a paradox. without risk reaching for the stars we never achieve what we really desire and so we settle for safe and dull.

what seperates creative performers from the rest of us is that they risk vulnerability and potential failure as a daily challenge. they understand that without personal risk there is no growth. the rest of us simply scrape through our day attempting to make as few mistakes as humanly possible because we are incapable of the necessary courage to take risks day after day. it’s not always our fault. sometimes we live in environments where creativity isn’t a life strategy we can learn and we certainly weren’t taught creative skills at school. so doing ‘just enough’ is all we know. we often justify our lack of desire by playing safe and contrasting our small wins with the less fortune of others.

but many of us do desire more and we can sense the desire within. we live for the invigorating spark that life can offer but we dont have the first idea of what our next step may be. so we mostly end up doing nothing at all or instead, we take the safe option and we glance at decent professionals who have done well. the temptation is to emulate their performance behaviours in the wishful thinking that some of their success might rub off. this is a false flag. not only does it bypass our own unique decision making but it fails to recognise that most professionals are by default not elite level professionals. those that have established elite level performance will tell you to explore, work hard, create, make mistakes and find your own way on your performance journey. how much better could decent but low level professionals be if they trusted their own capabilities as creative individuals? these are people who undoubtedly commit to a journey that leads them but they do not lead the journey. for this reason, they would not be considered artists. they are ‘workers’.

let me explain.

did you know in china there are some of the best counterfeit painters in the world? they have incredible talent and technique. they can copy a van gogh, monet, picasso or a renoir. their abilities are such that even experts are unable to distinguish the difference between a counterfeit from an original art piece. why is this important? if you can replicate work and get the same outcome every time, it’s not art, its work. work that is replicated without creative problem solving is not art. it is regurgitation, they are copiers that copy, they are high in noise production and low in signal production and therefore they are considered productive workers.

why then do most athletes, actors, business people or performers of any kind make the mistake of working instead of creating?

each of us have our own unique creativity that we can share with the world - but we don’t. all artists and creative performers strive for greatness and have the courage to act on their intuitions and convictions. they step into the uncertainty without knowing if they can ever achieve a successful outcome. just because they desire an outcome does not make it so. each day they must face their fears and their vulnerabilities of potential catastrophic failure and face the possibility of ridicule in every moment. authentic artists work on their creativity always. they do so because they have no other choice and know of no other way of daring to strive for brilliance. yet creative people embrace their fears every day because they understand everything that a worker who strives for safety does not.

committing to the journey of creativity, brilliance and of course mastery leads the very best to the edge of what is possible, the genius traverse the event horizon that drives awareness, growth and performance and they enjoy it.

workers don’t like making mistakes and like it less so in front of other people. they have psychological profiles that fear failure and they are unable to handle the vulnerability of uncertainty…so they choose the easy option and make safe choices.

it matters.

mental wealth & performance

whether in sport, business, art or exploring an optimal lifestyle how we act in our own environment and how we observe ourselves is the first distiction towards obtaining something more. if we are able to understand where we are now then we have the means of choosing how to be something better later. we can delve into the obstacle that stands in our way of being the best we can be. as painful as it may be, if we can accept that we have reached rock bottom, then we can choose an action or behaviour that can provide an upward trajectory out of our gloomy situation. interestingly if we are unable to see or refuse to look at our current position then it is extremely difficult to know how or where to start.

most of us never even consider that our reality may not be what we believe it to be. we regularly confuse what we see and we almost never question that our senses can be easily fooled. popular visual illusions or tv hypnotherapy tricks clearly disturbs our sense of ‘what you see is what you get’ (wysiwyg). people generally have poor sense making skills and are very unaware of it. we largely compensate with an overconfidence in our reality and we certainly make poorer decisions because of it. how can we learn to improve our sense making to better influence our flow and our performances?

the solutions to these questions will be fueled by you.