How To Build A High Performance Mindset - Jake Humphrey

I look at people all the time, and I think all of you are living in this place where it is, but when, but when, but when, but when, but when. It's a nonsense, man. This is it. These are the good old days. You know, we now look at photos of our kids from two years ago and go, "Oh, they were so small then." Two years ago, we were looking at photos of them two years before going, "Oh, they're so small. Look how beautiful they are." You don't see it when you're in it. You can't wait until you've got no stress or worry in your life before you decide to be happy because guess what? You will always have stress, and worry, and anxiety, and problems, and issues to deal with, so you have to decide now that happiness is something that you're going to have. You can't wait until you've been hugely successful before you start focusing on charity and giving and caring for other people.

(wind blowing) Jake Humphrey, welcome to the show.

Thanks very much for having me. How are you?

I'm good, man. I'm good. All the way from Austin, Texas back to the UK.

Lovely. I bet it's a little bit warmer there than it is. It's about three degrees here in Norwich today, and we- I've been told it's minus five tonight, so I've been doing all the glamorous stuff like getting the hose pipes in, um, because they're gonna freeze and damage, and covering the taps with little thermal boxes so that we don't get a lot of blown-out side taps this evening. So it's all glamour here in the, uh, English countryside this winter, Chris.

As I'm sure it is. So you ask everyone on your podcast the same question to start your show, so I'm gonna reverse it round. What does high performance mean to you?

Um, interestingly, right, high performance means something totally different to me now that I've spent two years interviewing people for the High Performance podcast because I sort of... Like, I really wanted when I started High Performance for people to get sort of punched between the eyes with a real dawning realization of how hard you have to work, and how much you have to struggle, and how sacrifice is key, and how graft is everything to be successful, and that's really what I thought and what I believed. And it's only through the conversations we've had on High Performance that I've, I've realized that all of those things are true. You do have to work hard. There is sacrifice. Consistency is absolutely vital. You have to make sure that passion is central to everything that you do. But none of it is worth doing if it doesn't take you to a place of being happier or being more content or feeling, um, like you're in a better head space, and I didn't, I never considered that until I began High Performance. I just thought it was sacrifice, and struggle, and graft. And now I realize it's sacrifice, struggle, and graft as long as it makes you happy, and that's actually been, uh, k- kind of like a good thing for me to understand really because I think it's important that people don't listen to High Performance and come to our podcast, um, and because it is... The whole point of this podcast is that we get straight in with the questions that matter immediately. There's no floating around the surface. There's no messing around. It's like, right, tell us the secrets. Tell us what you've learned. Let your lived experience be a lesson for somebody else. And so I'm always wary that that can be quite hard and tough because some people who are high performers do live hard and tough lives. That's how they've got to where they've got to, so I now always caveat it with, "This is absolutely fine, but it isn't for everyone. And you only need to live this kind of life if it makes you happy." Um, and I think also an understanding, Chris, that, like, high performance doesn't mean being an Olympian. It doesn't mean being a billionaire. It doesn't mean being a tech entrepreneur. It doesn't mean being the best investor in the country. It sort of means finding what your own high performance is. And for some people, that is literally being happier than they were yesterday, or having a better relationship with their kids, or being able to have that conversation with their boss that they've been putting off for the last 12 months. If listening to the High Performance podcast gets them to that level of high performance, their own version of high performance, then I'm happy.