The clever art of performance most miss

‘Arg!’

‘I’m not doing enough.’

‘I should be working more and creating more and doing more.’

But I’m not.

And this bothers me.

I used to beat myself up a lot when I wasn’t creating enough.

This is a common side-effect of being in the content-creation game for years.

I can put a lot of pressure on myself.

But I do it for what I believe is a good reason. We all do.

We want to succeed. We want to see our hard work bear fruit.

When I observe that I am falling short (of targets I set myself, no less), I can be self-critical.

One day, I took a closer look at the connection between the days when I worried about how little work I was doing and my actual output on those days.

I saw the irony.

There was a clear correlation between my worrying about not working enough, and...

Very little actual productivity.

So I knew I needed a new approach.

And the common denominator I found was the worry part.

When I worried, I’d be less productive.

Which is funny, because many of us believe worry can somehow spur us into controlling our reality and seeing improvements.

Nope. It never does. It just creates further stagnation.

When I overthink and take my feelings of boredom or frustration seriously, I disconnect from simply being.

Existing.

And herein lies the solution.

When I merely ‘exist,’ - as unproductive as this sounds - I am more often far more productive.

Why is this? Because, by existing, I’m not actively resisting what I dislike about my reality.

I just am.

And when I’m ‘amming,’ I’m connected again. Connected to my inner flow (rad man! But true...)

That’s existing.

I’m not trying to be anything particular. I just let go.

In this more relaxed state, free of self-pressure to perform, I can more easily just do what it makes sense for me to do next.

Things become almost effortless.

If this idea tickled you, and you want to reduce overthinking in a matter of days, you might like my Untethered Mind course.

This course distils the best of what I've learned over a decade of understanding the mind and delivers what you need to shift your understanding of how your thoughts work.

It’s the understanding that changes everything.

Clear understanding = far less overthinking = immediate reduction in stress = increased performance.

Let me show you more, here.

Alex