How to Achieve and Maintain Peak Performance in Your Practice and Life

As physicians, we all strive for peak performance. We're dedicated to helping others and making a positive difference in the lives of others. But consistent peak performance can be hard to maintain. For as often as we peak, performance inevitably seems to dip.

Reaching peak performance all the time is possible. It just takes changing up your mindset and some of your daily habits. Experts have been looking for years at ways to maintain performance. Here's a look at six of their best tips.

Tips for Maintaining Peak Performance?

1. You Have to Enjoy the Journey

In Japanese culture, there's no such thing as retirement. The philosophy is if you reach the end, how are you going to go anywhere? An essential part of the process of performing is enjoying the journey. It's not enough to just feel like we're constantly chasing something. When we're working towards our goals, we should stop to enjoy where we're at right now without worrying about reaching the end.

2. Don't Give Up Too Quickly

Some people just seem to have a natural starting point that's farther ahead of everyone else. You might have physical gifts or experiences that allow you to start ahead of someone else. But time and time again, people who didn't start quite as well ended up exceeding expectations. Their success came from not giving up too quickly. A big part of their success is they learned resilience and perseverance. Think of the effort that top-tier athletes put in, practicing the same skill over and over again, and how they were rewarded for sticking with their passion.

3. You Need Rest

Although persistence and resilience are essential, you need to know when to take a break. Rest is important for your health, and prepares your mind to do better once you are ready to get back to practicing. Formula One Racing may be seen as the epitome of top-tier performance. But one thing all race car drivers have to do to win a race is a pit stop. We all need pit stops as well, to take care of the basics like recharging and renewing our energy.

4. Communication is a Skill to be Built

At the end of the day, nearly all problems in the workplace come down to a communication issues. People who are achievement seekers can become very task-oriented, to the detriment of interpersonal relationships. They may not stop and talk to people and build relationships. Every goal that you're working towards is going to involve working with other people. Tasks don't complete themselves; there are people behind everything. If you master your relationships, maintaining performance toward your goals becomes easier.

5. Learn to Accept Feedback

We may let fear, our egos, or other limiting beliefs stop us from listening to feedback. That's missing an opportunity to grow and develop. You are better prepared to adopt the growth mindset by learning to accept feedback. Once you've tapped into the growth mindset, you now see hope where you used to see fear and discouragement.

6. You Have to Take Care of Yourself First

As healthcare providers, we're naturally inclined to help others. But how can we do that if we're not taking care of ourselves first? Think of the safety instructions you get on every plane ride--if the oxygen masks come down, take care of yourself first before helping others.?

This article is a summary of my conversation with Corey Sigvaldason, ELP, CBB, MBA, PhD-C on the Provider's Edge Podcast.?

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