Have you ever wondered what goes into making a champion? Human performance is the outcome and accomplishments achieved by humans. There are many factors that can attribute to human performance and various areas that can be looked at to understand what goes into actually improving or altering human performance in order to achieve the results or goals that you have set for yourself.

Environment helps performance. It’s imperative that you surround yourself with people who are motivated to reach their goals and dreams. You should associate yourself with individuals who are high performers and who truly believe in pushing themselves. You’ll gain a lot from them. Not only does it help to bring out the best in you, but it also help you to teach others to bring out the best in them.  You have to find an environment that is suitable for you, one that you’re comfortable in. A healthy and encouraging environment can assist you to improve your performance.

The “physical” environment is just as important as the “mental” environment. Depending on your goals or your aspirations, where you physically “train” can be driven by the mental atmosphere, but to actually be able to visualize others physically working towards and achieving their goals help motivate you to push yourself and your physical limits. It helps to have that mindset that you want to achieve that goal.

Natural health is key. Being a natural athlete is a huge part of my life. I strive to promote a healthy lifestyle. Being around the gym atmosphere, you see a variety of individuals who are pumping iron, walking on the treadmill, doing aerobics, cycling or whatever it may be. The thing is you have to maintain a healthy diet to go with the exercise.

In order to maximize your human performance you have to work with your body, not against it. We breathe in enough pollution in our everyday environment that can destroy our bodies over time. It doesn’t make sense to go to a fast food restaurant and pig out or go out and drink all night, thinking that you can just go to the gym and work it off the next day.  It just doesn’t work that way. You shouldn’t go to the gym or workout just to work off your bad habits.  Eventually those bad habits will catch up with you.

There are individuals who may seem like they are training hard, but they are loaded up with performance enhancers, e.g., steroids, GHB, etc.  That doesn’t cut it either.  These types of shortcuts also produce temporary results and long-term agony and pain to your mental and physical being. We are supposed to be involved in healthy activity to keep a healthy body and a healthy mind.  

A good night sleep and balanced diet, along with exercise will get the job done. Don’t stress yourself too much about quantity, as quality and consistency is the key.

Training is essential. Know and be open to learning your shortfalls or weaknesses. Knowing your weaknesses is very important. But, working to strengthen them is far more important. Many people tend to use their strengths more and hide their weaknesses. It’s important to train that weakness, just to the point where you feel as confident when you perform these tasks as you do with your strong points.  You should not spend all the time in the world working your strong points when you have a weak point that needs to be strengthened.

You will have to face that weak point time and time again in your life. There’s going to be a point where you cannot run from it any more.  This is not just with the physical side of life, but also the psychological side. People try to break you down by finding your weak points. Once they find these weaknesses, they will drill it to no end. Recognize them before they do and accept it and do something to build it up and to eliminate this factor from your life. Don’t let your weakness be your worst enemy, let it be your best friend.

Motivation and achievement lead to accomplishment.  Motivation is mental and achievements are the “prizes” that help keep your motivation going. Being able to reach new heights is a big part of seeing your hard work pay off; therefore, you want to reach even higher.  The greater your achievements, the greater drive and hunger you get. Your motivation feeds from achievements.

Stress Management is a must. Balance is the key to stress management. I’ve had several people tell me that they thrive on stressful situations, but years later they experience a lot of health issues.  There are enough speed bumps or road block that we face each and every day. Don’t allow yourself to be your biggest obstacle. Remember that you can’t always control the things that happen around you, but you can control your thoughts and actions towards these things. Don’t be a hostage to your own thoughts.

Don’t encourage any excessive “stress” by allowing others to bog you down with negative thoughts. You have to be careful in how you thrive with stressful situations. You have to be able to flush out the impurities in your mind, give it a purge. You need to be able to move on into a positive direction.

There will always be stresses in life, but you have to be able to give up the things that use and abuse your body and mind and replace it with more refreshing thoughts and a more refreshing environment.  Everyone needs a place, whether it’s a mental or a physical get away where you can go and release. An example for me of a great stress reliever is working out. For others, it could be weight training, running, swimming, tennis, golfing, reading or whatever it might be for you. You need that mental break to manage your stress. 

Time Management is imperative. It is imperative to set time to do the things that you want to do. Don’t put all of your focus on just one area because the scale will not be balanced. Even if you have to write things down regarding what time and when you want to do things, do so until you can become consistent. This also helps when you’re not much of an organized or self-motivated person.  Pick up that pen and paper and start writing things down.  Being repetitious about every day life can help you to sort out and complete things that need to be done.

Being able to manage your time wisely will also help in the stress management department. It can reduce stress.

Mental Stability is critical. You have to build up a strong and steady mind in order for you to reach your higher heights or your ultimate performance levels. It’s interesting because your mental being controls your physical being. Your body can tell you that you want to do something, but if your mind doesn’t work together with your body, it will be very hard to accomplish anything. It pays to have a strong and healthy mind, a clear mind in order to accomplish your goals.

I can’t stress enough the importance of being around others who have healthy minds. This will definitely help or assist you in achieving your goal and your ultimate human performance. Please remember that it’s one thing to be around someone who is striving for things and who has a strong mind, but it’s even more important to deal with someone who is unselfish, someone who is willing to help you achieve the goals that you want to achieve. Both people can learn and grow from it and become better individuals.

Mental Imagery brings success. As an athlete, it is good to visualize what you are going to do in your mind. Having a clear picture of what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it will give you a great head start for success.  When I compete, I am aware of what I’m going to do because I’ve not only visualized it, but I’ve practiced it before putting it into action.  For example, if you are playing tennis you practice your different strokes and techniques.  You can envision the way you are going to hold the racquet, the way you slice the ball, the placement of the ball, and how you’re going to attack the net. It is also important to know your opponents game, if possible.  Know their weaknesses and play to those weaknesses.

As a weightlifter, I take a different approach. It’s important that I set in my mind that it doesn’t matter who I have to compete against as long as I go into the competition with a goal and perform at my personal best. With weight training, it’s better to just do your personal best, to compete against yourself. It’s just you and the weight.  Don’t focus on what your competitors are doing. Instead, focus on you, your technique, how you position your hands on the bar, and listen for or pay attention to the commands from the head judge.

These are key points in getting the most of your human performance.

Faith is the key to accomplishing everything else. One must believe that they can achieve their goals before putting it into action. Never go into anything lacking confidence, lacking belief or not having faith with yourself and your abilities. Faith is a belief in something greater than yourself that gives you that drive to climb mountains and the assurance that you’re not alone in any of your endeavors.

No one is born a champion, but you can learn to be a champion. To do that you have to be self-disciplined, motivated, driven, you have to be willing to put in the time and effort and you have to want something bad enough.  You have to be willing to accept setbacks and you have to be willing to allow yourself to bounce back from those setbacks.  Always look for a positive in a setback.  There are reasons why things happen. Instead of harping on the negative, look for the positive.

No one person’s life is like a rose garden, but it’s how you go about things and how you let things affect you in your life that determine your human performance.