What Lies Beneath the Performance

When I bring complaints about my workload and my tendency towards overwork, my coach usually asks me about what I think has me so resistant to slowing down.

My first response to that is always "It's not that I can't slow down. It's just that I want to move things forward. I want to make things happen. I don't like being mediocre and I want to put good things into the world."

That's usually followed up with a question like "Why do you think it's so important to you to be making things happen?"

This is usually the point where I get defensive.

I don't really want to look at my tendency towards performance. Instead, I defend it.

It's a good thing that I perform at a high-level. It's a good thing that I don't slow down and that I'll make things happen no matter how I'm feeling. There are lots of times where you need to do whatever you have to do, if you want to make something happen in your life.

This tendency of mine is good, so why bother looking at it?

That protectiveness is a natural part of anyone's process. In my choice of words, you can hear how closed I am around the idea of loosening my grip on high-performance.

Even the inquiry into what it might be about spurs some protectiveness.

The tricky part here is that I'm right — high-performance has plenty of benefits, and there are times when it's necessary to make things happen, and so on.

The reasons you hang on so tightly to your strategies will?always?be valid, on some level.

The problem is that there's no single right way to be all of the time. All of my defensiveness and protection around a way of being I've created just leaves me unwilling and unable to look beyond it.

My reaction to my coach's question shows the real issue: I'm so wound around this particular strategy that I'm unwilling to consider, for more than an instant, what might be beyond it.

This is how our patterns keep us stuck.

When we're protecting something, it's a sign that there's some tenderness underneath it.

When I begin to soften, I can start to release my need to protect the strategy, and instead simply get curious about it.

And what I discover under the surface is that there's a lot of heartbreak and disappointment I'm trying to outperform.

I'm trying to outperform the disappointment I currently feel in my business. I'm trying to outperform the disappointment I currently feel in my relationship. I'm trying to outperform the disappointment I feel about how I show up in my friendships.

I'm trying to outperform the disappointment I feel with other people, so that I won't show up like them, and create the same disappointment in others.

I'm trying to outperform the disappointment that is inherent in life. (Have you noticed this? There's an inherent gap between what life?could?be, and what it is. In this gap lies disappointment).

The idea is that, as long as we perform enough, we can somehow alleviate this inherent disappointment.?

But we can't. Instead, we tend to be left with a continual low-grade disappointment that our efforts don't quite make the difference we're hoping for.

When we start to release the need to avoid or overcome a particular state, like disappointment, we discover that a lot of our coping strategies start to become unnecessary.

It's not that high-performance falls away entirely. It's simply that it now becomes a tool we can choose?when it's appropriate, as opposed to something we have to use automatically and reactively.

When we do this kind of work, what blossoms for us is the possibility of high-performance being something chosen and freeing, rather than a prison of our own making.

Here are some questions I'd love to hear your thoughts on:

Where do you find your high-performance is most automatic?

What do you think your need to perform might be attempting to keep at bay or avoid?

What would be possible if you were able to loosen the grip on your own need to perform?

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