The High Performance Edit: Hard Work in Harmony, Not Hustle

purpose, packed with sciencebacked tools to beat burnout and boost happiness, hosted by us, Tess Brower, and seventime world champion Lane [music] Beley. We're the founders of Awake Academy. This podcast mixes raw life lessons, expert [music] wisdom, and practical tips to help you stop sleepwalking through life and start living it on your terms. You ready to wake up and thrive? Let's go. Before we begin, we have a quick favor to ask. If this podcast has been landing for you, please hit subscribe and leave us a rating or review. It helps us grow the show and keep bringing these conversations to more people. Welcome back, Dream Team. So today we are talking about high performance. In fact, we are going to high performance school with the one and the only Lane Beley. Tada. I want to know about high performance from you. But the reason why I want to know more and learn more from you, LB, is cuz most people think that high performers are just more driven or they've just got more skill or they've just got more talent or they were just born with it. Um, which I'm sure there's a little bit of that ingredients in there. There's a few of those ingredients in there for sure. I mean, I certainly wasn't born with it. I wasn't born with the talent either. You weren't born a good surfer. No. No. I was born with good balance. There you go. That was your superpower. That Well, part of it. Yeah. And that's only in the water. Yeah. The rest of it outside of the water was just [laughter] [gasps] Isn't that amazing? Like you can't walk in a straight line, but then you can balance on a board. [laughter] If the surface is stable, I am very imbalanced. Everything needs to be imbalanced for me to be balanced. Do you know what? At the height of my corporate endeavors, I used to say I can walk better in high heels than I can do in flat feet. Wow. Yeah. Right. What did that say about you at the time? I wore a lot of high heels. [laughter] So, in this episode, we are going to give our dream team some tools that give you some shifts that help you perform at a high level no matter where you are. cuz I think we all want a little bit of an edge in our lives without the cost and the compromise of health and wellbeing and connection and love and all of those sorts of things. Yeah, we want high performance and happiness. Yeah, that's what we're going for. That is what we're going for. So, if you are feeling that you want more focus, to be more consistent, to be more centered, more connected and loving to yourself and to those around you,

within the business world, I would say there is a consistent theme when it comes to high performance and that's hard work in harmony with my well-being, with my dream team, with my with myself, connection with myself. So when I'm out of harmony, I've I've stepped out of high performance mode and I've stepped into hustle mode. And a lot of people equate high performance with the hustle. And when when hustle is overtaking the high performance mentality, it means it's coming at a significant cost to either relationships, to your health and wellbeing, or to the success of the thing you're going after. Yeah. What about you?

and the effortless of it. But when it's when you hit a roadblock or a bit of a a moment in time where you're pausing and you're like, uhoh, things aren't going as as well as they as I want them to, it's a it's a stock take. It's a moment of reflection. It's not a, as we've referred to often, the feather brick truck moment. It's not a truck. It's perhaps a feather or a brick. Yeah. You listen more. Yeah. You listen more. So you don't you don't get run over by a Mac truck. So So or in our case, two of them at once. Yeah. Exactly.

it. And that has been the biggest game changer um that I know. And even my dad today, he said he was at Wyard Station. Yeah. And there's three areas to go up and down into Wyard Station. And one is you take the escalator down and he said it was packed. One is the escalator going up and it was also packed and in the middle of the stairs and no one was on them. And like I reflect on those moments is you do have a choice. Yes, you do. And it's the micro moments of rest, of taking the stairs, of actually prioritizing yourself, your well-being, that helps you consistently perform. But the big thing was the awareness of how I was getting in my own way in my head.

no room for crickets. No, I would say that most people have a a lot of board meetings multiple and different tabs. Okay. Um, so by slowing down, by learning about my brain and how I work to getting a bit of a compass, this the thoughts are now not me, right? So you are not your thoughts. You are not your thoughts. But the ability to he to when I go into a spiral or a worm or my anxiety peaks or my depression takes over and I become a bit like woe is me the the time that I have of that space is dramatically shortened. So I stay in the struggle less, right? And that has been a high performance edge is like I I can the noticing of the struggle, refraraming it and taking action has probably been the biggest shift in my new corporate life. That's a beautiful thing because I mean that is how you achieve sustained success. Yeah. Cuz I like always exercise, tick, eat healthy, tick, drink too much, not cross. [laughter] overworked, hustle, cross. Uh, but the brain, I never knew how much we controlled that and how much of that was sabotaging or serving me. And what stops us from being able to hear it is distraction is, uh, emails, uh, notifications, social media, fear-based media, doom scrolling, bosses, business partners, well, deadlines, uh, financial pressures. There's so many distractions that are keeping us with our amydala being hijacked that all we're noticing is the fear response. All we're noticing is the rapid heart rate, the poor digestion, the the weight gain, the the depressed mood. Like we're noticing the feelings more so than we're noticing the thoughts. And that's okay as long as we're noticing. If we're not noticing, then we're not honoring and then we can't take action. So to your point about your dad's recognizing that most people were on the escalators and no one was on the stairs. Today when I arrived at the podcast studio, I had an option to take the escalator or I mean the elevator or the stairs. And based on the fact that I was in bed sick all day yesterday, I knew that the best thing to honor my body today was to actually take the elevator, not the stairs. Interesting cuz I've seen you walk up and down those stairs with a moon boot on. [laughter] That's just a thing in the hustle. Yeah. I just Recalcitrant. Oh, I've never heard that word. Recalcitrant. What does that mean? It just means being like an obstinate child that you just can't reason with. Ah, yeah. You know, just like I'm not honoring anything into I'm not listening. I'm just doing. But there was there's times when you actually have to honor where you're at. Well, every day is a beauty a beautiful opportunity just to stop and pause and go, where am I at right now? What does love do? What does love do right now? Self love. What does self love do right now? And as much as I want to walk up the stairs, I know I just need to take a break because I chose to surf this morning. Yeah. But what does love do in that moment? I limit myself to an hour. No more. I take it easy on the way back out. I I'm present in the rest. And rest is just as important as perseverance and pushing. Well, we don't want to encourage pushing through, but persevering and pushing requires rest to be able to for for us to sustain that model.

rest protocol is one of the most important doctors so to speak in a high performance mentality. How would have your career changed if you were I don't know how my career would have changed but I know how my life would have changed. I would not be dealing with the pain that I have in my neck had I honored my body and chosen to rest. The opportunity was there for me to rest and I didn't take it. I could have easily taken at least a couple of months off to allow my body to heal itself and yet I chose not to. For example, with my face, you know, my face was paralyzed after my board hit me and I still paddled out the next day because there was no duty of care that was is extended to me and I had zero empathy for myself and there was no duty of care for me. So I know that I would be a healthier, happier, more painfree human being today had you have

that I may have had long-term um consequences of of head knocks and concussions. I've broken my nose three times, my board, hitting me in the face, split my lips. But even if there was like a head knot protocol back then or even just the awareness of it, you would have slowed down a bit. Would have slowed down. Yeah. So now there's athletes who take concussion breaks and follow concussion protocols and go into darkness and stillness. Yeah. Had no idea what that any of that was all about. Yeah. See, I equate that to periods of like when you've had to work really hard um and you've had a huge cognitive load like to achieve a milestone or a moment or financial like end of financial year, whatever that may be. time to totally rest after that like to decompress. Yeah. And that's really important that scheduling in that time to decompress is super important. So when I used to stage my surfing event and that took everything out of me and my team of two, we scheduled in a week off after that because we needed to rebuild from that. But a lot of teams like I see these people in the corporate world for example just push on in these have these massive projects and deliver these extraordinary things and then go back to work the next day. How do you do that?

system fires every part of your body. So, if you're f if you're firing from a burntout state, your work quality is poor. You um we've just had a sexologist in, you have less sex, you are not you're not as present with your loved ones, so you're not connecting more. So, everything around like rest, recovery, focus, all of that really does come down to honoring your body that we are not monkeys in machines just going, going, going. Exactly. And we know that we work best in 90-minute sprints. That bell curve does impact our productivity and our ability to focus and be purposeful in our work. So if you just think about the hustle mode from 90 minutes, some people are hustling 90 days, 90 weeks. Yeah. Right. And without taking any break, without taking any break and then wonder why everything is burnt to the ground and yet they're still persevering and pushing on and that's unhealthy. That is not high performance.

lives. Okay. Step one. Mhm. Get clear on what matters. What does that actually mean? [laughter] Well, it's clarity. So what are your priorities? What are you trying to achieve? Like what's the outcome? But I feel that you need to bring it all the way back. Getting clear on what matters is who are you? Yeah. So you can't, as our friend Ben Crow always says, you can't create what you want until you know who you are. So getting clear on who you are is the most important thing. Otherwise, we lose ourselves in the doing and we stop being. Yeah. So being clear on who am I and who do I want to be? How do I want to show up? That's the I am model. and then getting clear on what is it that you want to achieve. Yeah. And the way I've applied this um and look, we're busy people. So, we don't and if you want to do the full work on who you are, come and do our own your truth course. Um for what really matters to me and what I was getting clear on is our home. So, we want a healthy harmonious home. Nice. So, in order to do that, we have planning meetings. um they were Sundays, sometimes they're Mondays, and sometimes I even do it on a Friday so I can not think about it on the weekend, but we always do it. So shopping's done, schedules are shared like and that clarity actually stops the like throughout the week. Um and eases the mental load. Yeah. And but we do all of this planning at the office, like write to-do lists, we have feedbacks, one-on- ones, like we're reviewing, but why don't we ever do it at home? So, that is a big one because what happens at home happens at work and vice versa. Yeah, exactly. I think it's a little different when you're running a family environment. You know, you've got a four-year-old, a husband, you got stepkids, you got a dog, you've got distance. Yeah. You got to travel. Yeah. You've got extended family like And I work with a lot of high performers. Yeah. And you do and lead them too. So, I have to have this process in me. Absolutely. And a challenging um business partner that doesn't really honor structure very well. So you got to keep me lane on lane time. Yes.

walk into a room and present a workshop we recognize that it gives we give a lot of ourselves and so we have to ensure that we take specific measures after that work to ensure that we are protecting our energy. So normally it involves nourishing food, no alcohol, time to decompress and then the day off the following day because we can we have the luxury of doing that. Not everybody who works in a corporate environment has the luxury of saying I'm taking the day off tomorrow. You do have to have the capacity to ask for what you need and that starts with knowing who you are. So once you're clear on who you are and how you best operate, protecting your energy comes down to asking myself, what do I need today? So for me, for surfing, for example, I need to get in the water, but I know I don't need to push too hard. I know I don't need to stay out there too long. I know I need to stay warm. I know I need to get out of the water before I exhaust myself. You know, there's all those little nuances where you can hold yourself accountable to help protect your energy so you can show up to the work that you love without taking it out on people, lashing out, behaving in ways that's in congruent with who you are, and then going home and feeling so depleted and so burnt out and so exhausted that you drown yourself in a bottle of wine, have a [ __ ] sleep, wake up tomorrow and do it all again. How do you protect your energy?

big part of my rest. Um, but like I had to work the next day. Yeah. Um, I had to get we had we've got a afterare package when people do our course that needs to be customized and sent out and and I had a few deadlines and I just set myself a timer and said you've got 2 hours that's it. Um, and by the end of that 2 hours I was like absolutely done. I did try and push past that and my work output and quality was awful. Right. And then I thought you know this doesn't serve anyone. So, I actually booked into work the next morning and it was a weekend, but I wanted to do it cuz I was I was just better, more efficient. So, it's about knowing how to work with your energy. The science of POS um like psychology is you can match your energy to the work that you do. So, if you're going away and your energy is up and you're excited and you've got a holiday planned, do future thinking, do planning, do the exciting creative ideas. If you're low and down, match that energy to more critical thinking. So, budget reviews, um, reviewing strategy or frameworks or looking at stuff that requires detail and focus because the more tired you are, the more inward you become. And it's a really and you become more critical and you need to be critical when you're looking at budgets and finance and things like that. So I thought of doing a budget review or finance review or energy review when I'm down in energy just doesn't seem to correlate. Yeah, it doesn't until you know you need to do it and you're clear and you're focused and you're quite calm. Yeah. Right. Um so it's I mean not obviously like totally burnt out and depleted cuz you're just going to go, "Yeah, yeah, that looks good. Turn it off." I'm just talking about cuz we do have different mood states and energy states in the day and I'm a morning person. So we are morning people. Clearer in the morning. Get the eat the frog in the first first thing you do. Your hardest task need to be in the morning. You get me after 1 or 2:00. It's like crickets.

you're aware of how you're feeling, then you're aware of how you're behaving. So when you start to train your mind to to identify uh what's going right and what's going wrong, or what's what's working and what's not working, let's take the right and wrong out of it, but let's just focus on like where's the head noise coming from? Yeah. Where's the distractions coming from? Write it out. Dump it out. Yeah. Share it. Yeah. Yeah. either with yourself or with a loved one. And the biggest thing in this is like choose your hard. It is really [ __ ] hard listening to your head noise all day. Yeah. But if you get in front of it and like as I have discussed with you plenty of times, I go for a walk and I ask myself, what am I choosing to believe right now and what do I need to do about it? Yeah. And you know what? It's it's if you're stuck in this spiral, it's really hard to talk yourself out of it and think yourself out of it. So, that's when you need a dream team member, a therapist, a journal. I actually was just filling in a survey um like a a health survey yesterday for a test that I've done and it asked me a question around um it's all around my gut health and have I noticed any of these symptoms? I'm like, ah yeah, yeah, and yeah. And I was thinking my depressed mood and my lack of mental clarity and my fatigue and my poor energy had everything to do with everything that was going on in my life. Yeah. And it actually has nothing to do with that. It's just that because I'm focusing my attention on things that aren't working, I equated that with the state. Whereas if I actually first I first I actually became aware that I was feeling that way. Second, I looked at what was I was attributing it to. So, I was seeking evidence. I wasn't training my brain to look at positive. I was training my brain to look at everything that was proving to me that you were rash, that I was right, that I was tired, that I had poor poor mental fat, like I was fatigued, I was poor mental health, um I was in a depressed state, all these things that were going on. And then when I had the realization of it, it actually lifted me immediately. And I went, "Ah, [laughter] I've just been looking for all the [ __ ] I actually have need to retrain my brain to notice the beauty, the joy, the fun, the ease, and commit to doing those more regularly cuz it's all there. It is all there, but I wasn't." And I'm trained in this stuff, and I still get stuck in the [ __ ] [laughter] I was as uh so you needed to go outside and smell the roses and just actually pick up a franchi smell the flower and get really intentional with it. Beautiful. Simple.

right now? How can you build that into your diary and schedule it? Most people schedule every meeting. Yeah. But do you schedule self-care, walks, time out, rest, and recovery? Cuz like discipline and consistency creates freedom and love, right? 100%. I woke up on Saturday morning depleted, overwhelmed, and really down. Yeah. And Kirk went, "What's wrong? What's bothering you?" And I said, "I feel so overwhelmed by my life right now. I've got paperwork that's all over the office. I'm so far behind on my accounting. I've got just piles and piles of stuff that needs to be done and I just don't know where to start." And he said, "Well, just pick one." Yeah. And go and do it. I said, "All right, I'm going to time box." Yeah. I'm going to give myself 90 minutes and I'm going to just commit to doing my receipts and my paperwork. And I got that done and I felt such a joy. I did. I felt such a sense of reward. Yeah. I went, "Oh, it's that easy." It's that easy. It's what's what's not easy is seeing it and turning around and walking away from it because it lives inside your brain. I have to because I have like now and my mom reflected on this and I still have it um since my injury is like working through a list and just keeping on adding to it but crossing it off. And so I've got like a life list. Oh, it's not just a to-do list. It's not. No, it's a life list. And then I've got like work things that need to be done, but it's like how do I have more freedom in my life because otherwise it just sits in your head. I need to, I should do, I'm not. Should a would a could everything that you're thinking about needs to be dumped down somewhere. So life planning is a routine that you could implement in your life. True. disciplined routine for me is and Kirk too. When we get up every morning, the first thing we do is grab a glass of water. You're wonderful about your well-being routines. You are awful with your life admin routines. It's true. So, just put that mentality over like into your life admin and then small ticks. Yeah. Time boxing first thing to do. Okay. And the last picking which one I want to time or just match it to your energy, right?

three? Like silence, dark room, meditation. Really? Yeah. It's just that sounds like one thing. It is one sauna, spa. Yeah. like and um walking in the sunshine and all of those things except for the sauna and spa is free and I think we try and outsource like every time I've told you this before I love getting massages and facials but I know that I'm just outsourcing my recovery to someone else which isn't a bad thing but good but regularly it gets expensive. Yeah. So that's it for our episode today. It was a quick one. It was a high performance toolkit for you guys to get going. Um, of course, it was brought to you by our partner AIA Vitality. They have got a wonderful tool called the AIA age calculator. It is a great way to see how you are currently tracking. And what we love about that is it gives you a goal. So if you start doing all of this high performance tools and strategies and disciplines and routines and taking care of yourself over a period of time, you will start to see your age hopefully decreasing ideally. Yeah. Because you were taking better care, your biological age that is not your actual age. You can't reverse your age that you are, but you [laughter] biological. You can. It's called Botox. Or you can be like Kirk and never behave your age. [laughter] [gasps] All right. So, if you want more tips and tools to build healthy habits into your life, please come and see us at awakeacademy.com.au. But this was a short and powerful one. And we might do another one actually. I quite like the short hard truths that people can put into their day as they go. Why not? We're here to serve. [laughter] So, from one high performer to another. Thanks, LV for today. Thanks, Dream Team, for tuning in. Please share this episode with another high performer cuz we just want to help people grow and feel better in their lives. Thanks everyone. Toodles. Have you been listening to this episode and thought mic drop? Maybe I'm ready to get coached or have some therapy, but you don't want to go all the way down and get a therapist. Welcome to the Awake Collective where we do monthly coaching [music] to help people feel accountable, supported, and they keep on doing the work that you hear in this podcast. It is life transformative, right LB? [music] It's a community of support and like-minded people who are willing to keep investing in themselves because what we do is we help people help themselves. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, then the Awake Collective [music] is for you. So, come and join us at awakeacademy.com.au and join us for monthly [music] coaching, a community that supports you and tools that you can use in your life to thrive. Let's go. See you there. Before we close, we just want to gently remind you that Awake Academy is not a licensed mental health service and this podcast is not a substitute for personalized mental health advice, assessment, diagnosis, or treatment. What we share here is general in nature and is designed to offer reflection, insight, and practical tools for everyday life. Therapy can be life-changing, and we deeply encourage you to speak to your GP about your mental health and well-being options.