Today, I share with you the #3 habit of High Performers: Raise Necessity from Brendon Burchard’s book High Performance Habits. This is an important habit to build on because necessity is one of the ultimate drivers of motivation and achieving excellence. While interviewing high performers, Brendon asked them “why” they worked so hard, and how they stayed so focused. Their responses:
- It’s just who I am
- I can’t imagine doing anything else
- This is what I was made to do
- People need me now, They are counting on me
- I can’t miss this opportunity
- If I don’t do this now, I’ll regret it forever
- I feel a deep emotional drive and commitment to succeeding, and it consistently forces me to work hard, stay disciplined, and push myself
People who agree with the statements above scored high on every high-performance test they were given along with studies showing they showed great confidence, happiness, and most importantly success over a long period of time.
So, what does Raising Necessity mean?
It is all about feeling emotionally committed to whatever you want to do in life, and reaching a point where it becomes necessary that you will excel at all costs.
To start to build this habit your first course of action is understanding the driving force behind what makes you feel that necessity and motivation to perform at higher levels. Brendon shares with us the four forces of necessity in his book.
Four Forces of Necessity
Identity (Personal Standards of Excellence)
As we discussed in the first habit of high performers they know exactly who they are, how they want to feel, and what is meaningful to them. With all those areas so clearly defined, High Performers set very high standards for themselves.
Obsession
High Performers have high intrinsic motivation because they strive to learn about things they find interesting, enjoyable, and personally satisfying. Obsession is a strong word and often has some negative connotations around it, but high performers simply are just more curious than others about their specific primary field of interest. They get to the point where they become so passionate about something that it can feel obsessive, and they feel this need or desire to master a specific subject matter.
Duty
High performers often feel that someone else is counting on them, or that their purpose is much greater than anything they personally want to achieve. They feel a duty to someone or something beyond themselves. Brandon found that for the top 15% of high performers it is not rare to hear them use words like legacy, destiny, divine timing, God, or a moral responsibility to other generations as primary motivations for their performance.
Urgency
A survey of 1,100 high performers revealed that their underperforming counterparts get pulled into fake urgencies or deadlines three and half times more often than they do. High performers feel the necessity to get something done because it affects other people.
Three practices on how to raise necessity in your life:
1.Know who needs your A game
A simple practice can just be reminding yourself if you are giving it your all today. Brendons research found that high performers are human just like you and me, so often they can find themselves in moments of self-doubt. To get them back on track they use tricks like this below:
Keep a post-it note, or set an alarm and write down these questions:
Who needs me on my A game the most right now?
This will force you to think and ask questions like these:
What is my A game?
Am I bringing my A game today?
Think of someone else which will hold you at a higher level of accountability
2. Affirm your Why
One of the differences between a high performer and low performer is the ability to share with others and themselves their goals, secrets or “why” they do the things. By affirming something you are confirming it and you say it with confidence assuming it will happen. High performers have confidence in their goals, and they feel proud to tell you about their purpose.
High performers tend to be more open about their goals and purposes to others because it raises their accountability in getting it done. They know that by telling others, they have to follow through. One of the main reasons high performers share their goals with others is because they actually don’t believe they are always right. They do this to be open to other processes and help from others to get to where they want to go.
So, this practice is simple. Open up to people who you are close to and tell them about your goals. If you don’t, ask yourself what are you hiding? What if you need help? Do you truly care about your goal to the point that you feel it is a necessity to get done?
3. Level up your squad
This has been proven time and time again – associating yourself with the most positive and successful people in your personal or professional network can help increase your performance. First, you need to evaluate who in your life causes you frustration, negativity, and limits your ability to be the person you want to be. Then you must remove those people out of your life, and simply focus on building relationships with people who are positive and successful.
If you felt like these were helpful feel free to purchase the book here or check out this blog, podcast, and website here for other helpful insight on living your best life. Remember, making the choice to read through the practices is the first step. The second step is putting action towards implementing them into your day.
Now, Wake Up! It’s Day One.
