It’s impossible to reflect on peak performance and not come back to this theme.

Process vs. Results.

If you want to understand how to create optimal systems in your life, reading autobiographies of extraordinary human beings is a GREAT place to start because they’re almost always packed with their jaw-dropping routines/rituals/systems.

For now, what’s the result you want in your life? (Obviously, we need a target so this is super important.)

AND…

What’s the PROCESS you need to go through to achieve that result? (It’s easy to get stuck obsessing about the results that fire us up and forget that, once we have that target, it’s *all* about showing up and rockin’ the day-in and day-out systems that get us there.)

Here’s my goal: __________________________________________

Here’s my process: _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Well that’s one way to turn poison into medicine/see the obstacle as the way, eh?

In The Undefeated Mind (see Notes), Alex Lickerman tells us: “From the Buddhist perspective, I told him, all of us have the capacity to make use of any circumstance, no matter how awful, to create value. This ability to “change poison into medicine,” as it is known in Nichiren Buddhism, makes plausible the transformation of even the most horrific tragedy into something that enables us to become happier. . . .

Believing in your ability to transform poison into medicine when you don’t know how, and often won’t except in retrospect, is difficult, I admit. But that’s the confidence you have to find. That’s the confidence that represents your greatest defense against discouragement.”

In The Obstacle Is the Way, Ryan Holiday puts it this way: “Whatever we face, we have a choice: Will we be blocked by obstacles, or will we advance through and over them?

We might not be emperors, but the world is still constantly testing us. It asks: Are you worthy? Can you get past the things that inevitably fall in your way? Will you stand up and show us what you’re made of?

Plenty of people have answered this question in the affirmative. And a rarer breed still has shown that they not only have what it takes, but they thrive and rally at every such challenge. That the challenge makes them better than if they’d never faced the adversity at all.”

What negative thing is going on in your life?

How can you use it to grow?

The opportunity is always there. The wisest and strongest among us seize it. Let’s.

And, here’s another way to look at it:

Ronda worked three jobs while training to become an MMA fighter. This scene is after a particularly brutal day (/couple weeks) when she visited her boyfriend who was in rehab trying to kick his heroine addictions.

C.r.a.z.y. challenges.

And, that’s a *genius* way to re-frame it, eh?

Reminds me of Hal Elrod. After being hit head-on by a drunk driver he was dead for 6 minutes then in a coma for days after that—suffering significant brain damage and told he’d never be back to normal.

Here’s how he framed that experience in The Miracle Morning (see Notes): “Know that wherever you are in your life right now is both temporary, and exactly where you are supposed to be. You have arrived at this moment to learn what you must learn, so you can become the person you need to be to create the life you truly want. Even when life is difficult or challenging—especially when life is difficult and challenging—the present is always an opportunity for us to learn, grow, and become better than we’ve ever been before.

You are in the process of writing your life story, and no good story is without a hero or heroine overcoming their fair share of challenges. In fact, the bigger the challenges, the better the story. Since there are no restrictions and no limits to where your story goes from here, what do you want the next page to say?”

Are you going through hard times?

Can you see that the story isn’t over yet and that how you respond to this big challenge has the chance to be one of the most compelling parts of your journey?

Remember, by DEFINITION a hero faces challenges. The more the merrier. It’s overcoming the challenges that makes the story interesting!!

Get through the next few pages. Keep writing!

Want The Secret™ to success?

Work hard for a long long time. Bam. Done. (Hah.)

Speaking of Mastery, here’s how Robert Greene puts it in his genius book (see Notes):

“In our culture, we tend to denigrate practice. We want to imagine that great feats occur naturally—that they are the sign of someone’s genius or superior talent. Getting to a high level of achievement through practice seems so banal, so uninspiring. Besides, we don’t want to have to think of the 10,000 to 20,000 hours that go into such mastery. These values of ours are oddly counterproductive—they cloak from us the fact that almost everyone can reach such heights through tenacious effort, something that should encourage us all. It is time to reverse this prejudice against conscious effort and to see the powers we gain through practice and discipline as eminently inspiring and even miraculous.”

Ronda is an ASTONISHING embodiment of his ideals.

Here’s to 20,000 hours.

This is *exactly* what Jim Loehr talks about in his books (including The Power of Full Engagement and The New Toughness Training for Sports

Loehr’s research revealed that champion tennis players trained themselves to recover better between points and that their ability to deeply relax in that brief interval made a HUGE difference in their rate of success.

He calls it “making waves” and tells us we NEED to get *really* good at, as Ronda puts it, knowing when to explode and when to relax.

Here’s how he puts it on a macro level: “It’s important to understand that only rarely does the volume of stress defeat us; far more often the agent of defeat is insufficient capacity for recovery after the stress. Great stress simply requires great recovery. Your goal in toughness, therefore, is to be able to spike powerful waves of stress followed by equally powerful troughs of recovery. So here is an essential Toughness Training Principle:

WORK HARD.
RECOVER EQUALLY HARD.

From a training perspective then, training recovery should receive as much attention as training stress. Unfortunately, that is rarely the case.”

Of course, very few of us get into the cage or onto a competitive tennis court, but the same rules apply. Train hard. Recover equally hard.

How’s your training and how’s your recovery? What’s one thing you can do to dial each in?

That’s so good.

Dana White, the President of the UFC, was asked in 2011 when women would fight in the UFC.

His immediate answer? “Never.”

But, that was before he met Ronda.

Now, having the type of extraordinary belief that Ronda had (and has) isn’t enough by itself. It’s what they call “necessary but insufficient.” You need to match her RIDICULOUS vision with her equally RIDICULOUS work ethic and tenacity. Then, maybe (!), you can make history.

Lest we think this is just some crazy tough fighting chick getting lucky, here’s how a few other geniuses put it.

First, Stanford Professor and uber-everything Bernie Roth shares this in The Achievement Habit : “Statistics show you trends, they can’t predict your life. Likewise, consider that the odds have always been against greatness. If one were to decide on a career path just by the odds of financial success, we would have no movie stars, authors, poets, or musicians. The odds of any one person becoming a professional, self-supporting musician are very low—and yet turn on the radio and you hear hundreds of them. The odds were against the Beatles, Elvis, and the Grateful Dead, too. They could have been ‘scientific’ about the whole thing and chosen more reasonable career paths, and what a loss for the world that would have been!

If you succeed, the odds are then meaningless. Any path may have a 2 percent success rate, yet if you’re in that 2 percent, there’s a 100 percent chance of success for you. The long shots are often the most rewarding.”

Then there’s Dilbert creator Scott Adams. In How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big (see Notes), he tells us: “Realistically, what were the odds of being the first person on earth to beat a focal dystonia? One in a million? One in ten million? I didn’t care. That person was going to be me. Thanks to my odd life experiences, and odder genes, I’m wired to think things will work out well for me no matter how unlikely it might seem.”

And then there’s Jon Eliot, one of the world’s experts on peak performance (and relative of Harvard deans + T.S. Eliot) puts it this way in Overachievement : “History, though, shows us that the people who end up changing the world—the great political, social, scientific, technological, artistic, even sports revolutionaries—are always nuts, until they’re right, and then they’re geniuses.”

Plus: “You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.”(And this gem: “As soon as anyone starts telling you to be ‘realistic,’ cross that person off your invitation list.”)

And, here’s another gem from Ronda to wrap it up:

“‘Someone has to be the best in the world. Why not you?’

My mom asked me a variation of that question every day.

‘Why not you?’ she said. ‘Seriously, why not you? Somebody has to do it. They’re handing out Olympic medals. They’re literally handing them out. Why don’t you go get one?’

Her question was not rhetorical. She knew what it took to be the best in the world. She had been a world champion. Being the best in the world is not easy, but it is completely achievable—if you are willing to put in the effort. My mom taught me to expect that I could be the best.”

How’s your dream? How’s your hustle?

Why not YOU?