Ensure you are consistently getting quality sleep, proper nutrition, regular exercise, and cultivating strong, deep relationships, as these are fundamental physiological and social pillars that directly enhance mental performance and cognitive function.
When self-doubting thoughts arise, pause and debate them by applying evidence, logic, and considering faulty reasoning, similar to how you would debate an external topic, to avoid automatically believing negative thoughts and biases that impact behavior.
Pay attention to your emotions, habits, and relationships, noticing patterns (e.g., when you get angry or when you’re at your best) without judgment, because you cannot change what you are not aware of, and observation helps uncover what needs adjustment or can be leveraged.
Actively design your physical and mental environment to make good habits easy to perform and bad habits difficult to perform (e.g., healthy food visible, snacks hidden), as the environment communicates with your subconscious and powerfully shapes behavior.
When building new habits or skills, start with small, manageable actions that can be consistently maintained (e.g., 60-second mental exercises, 2 minutes of meditation while brushing teeth) rather than attempting large, intense overhauls, to build sustainable habits and integrate new practices effectively.
Identify people or content that are “fountains” (leveraging values, offering perspective, critical thinking, humor) and actively surround yourself with them, minimizing exposure to “drains” (complainers, excuse-makers), to positively influence your internal mental environment and draw on diverse strengths.
Actively define what success looks like for yourself, rather than allowing external societal pressures or expectations to dictate your definition, to avoid pursuing a definition of success that doesn’t truly matter to you and leads to dissatisfaction.
After every performance or outcome (win or loss), consistently ask yourself: “What did I do well today? What went well today? What did I learn today? What am I going to do better tomorrow?” to prevent winning from masking deficiencies and to extract valuable lessons from both successes and failures.
When confidence is low, shift your focus from feelings to actions, trusting your preparation and training, and executing to the best of your ability regardless of how you feel, as confidence is not always an accurate predictor of success and can be easily derailed.
Instead of demanding dedicated, intense sessions, collaborate with others to embed small, consistent practices (e.g., “mental minutes,” habit formation programs) into existing routines, as this approach respects finite resources like time and attention, fostering consistency.
Before an event or period, consciously decide what you want to observe or look for (e.g., heart rate changes, specific emotional responses, effective strategies), as priming helps your mind actively search for answers and patterns in the moment, making reflection more effective later.
When facing a challenge, ask yourself how you’ve successfully addressed similar challenges in the past, or what strategies you already possess, to leverage existing tools and knowledge, polishing them up rather than immediately seeking external solutions.
Apply the concept of refactoring to your personal systems and processes, aiming to make them more efficient and faster, even if the ultimate outcome remains the same, to improve resilience (bounce back faster) and refocusing abilities.
When long-term goals feel distant or motivation dips due to struggles, create smaller, temporary “lights at the end of the tunnel” (e.g., short-term goals for the week or day) to leverage the goal gradient effect, build momentum, and keep energy up.
When approaching a significant goal or bonus, avoid the “action bias” of trying to do something different or more; instead, trust and stick with the process that has been effective so far, as unnecessary changes can disrupt an established process.
When studying success, look beyond just the “winners” and examine those who didn’t achieve the top outcome, observing their processes and strategies, to gain a more complete and accurate understanding of effective approaches, overcoming survivorship bias.
To raise standards or create new norms (e.g., psychological safety, learning culture), ensure that leadership models the desired behaviors and that the organizational system is explicitly built to support and satisfy these norms, as standards cannot be merely declared.
Identify your optimal “arousal control reference point” (e.g., intensity level 5-7) and develop specific balancing loops: actions to increase arousal if too low, and actions (like focusing on long, deep exhales through diaphragmatic breathing) to decrease arousal if too high, to maintain performance within your optimal zone.
Apply the “map is not the territory” mental model to evaluate your performance, looking beyond simple metrics (e.g., 0-for-4 vs. 4-for-4) to understand the underlying process, execution, and context, to avoid misinterpreting outcomes and find true areas for improvement.
As a parent, allow children to experience failure, practice autonomy, choose battles wisely, and openly share your own failures with them, to help them develop resilience, learn from mistakes, and navigate life’s challenges.
Teach yourself and your children to understand the low probabilities of success in highly competitive fields, but to still pursue what you love if the intrinsic drive and passion are strong, as true love for an endeavor can propel individuals to overcome immense challenges.
Distinguish between “losing” (not giving your best effort, beating yourself) and “being beaten” (giving your absolute best, but the opponent was superior) to learn lessons and maintain a healthy perspective, avoiding self-blame when effort was maximized.
Mentally prepare for the reality that achieving one goal often reveals more goals (“behind mountains are more mountains”), and adopt a mindset for the “long haul” rather than finite sprints, to sustain motivation for ongoing growth and achievement.
Focus on mastering the fundamentals and various aspects of your life (e.g., time, energy, finances) to earn freedom, as freedom, including creativity and the ability to approach problems from different angles, is a byproduct of deep understanding and mastery of a domain.
Strive to build relationships, both personally and professionally, that are strong enough to bear the weight of truth, where individuals feel safe from judgment to share struggles and internal dialogues, allowing for open self-exploration and the realization of one’s own answers.
Practice zooming in and out for better perspective, conducting premortems (anticipating potential failures), and deploying gratitude in difficult situations, as these are mental skills that help achieve tasks and streamline mental processes.
Reflect on past moments when you were intensely driven and passionate about something, and recognize that this “driven bug” is within you, to understand and tap into your innate capacity for sustained effort and excellence when pursuing goals you genuinely care about.