The Maximal Life

Have you ever noticed how someone’s negative energy can permeate an entire space, inhibiting the comfort and enjoyment for everyone nearby? A positive interaction can completely transform your attitude. It can straighten your posture, put a pep in your step, and lower your blood pressure. We can feel the power of positive and negative energy from daily interactions. We can feel it in our chest, our guts, our neck, and our shoulders.

Maximal Achievers see a lot of opportunity everyday to electrify our environments with the kind of energy we want to spread around us. When we honor our need for positive interactions and trustworthy relationships, we feed our bodies and minds in a way that creates more positive energy, and energy is the antidote to any challenge you face.    

A major pillar in living the Maximal Life is developing a Win/Win approach in both business and personal relationships. Win/Win is a mindset of determination to seek out the options most mutually beneficial. It allows us to expand beyond the illusion that we don’t have options. It creates allies. It rejects the societal notion that one person’s success can only be achieved at the expense of another. When you are committed to the win/win mindset, you elevate your entire team alongside you.

Investing in Win/Win takes effort and time, but the return for your connections, success, energy, and health allows you to live The Maximal Life.

Society promotes the Grind Mind, and the media constantly floods our minds with unrealistic impressions of what a good life is supposed to look like; Get all the BIG expensive status symbols, and THEN you’ll be happy. Work work, work, so you can spend, spend, spend. That’s the mainstream cultural conditioning of today. There is nothing wrong with having strong work ethics and producing results. It’s what Maximal Achievers do. But there IS such a thing as working TOO hard. Time may be finite, but energy can be harnessed, replenished, and invested intentionally toward whatever we choose. The minutes of our lives present themselves one after the other, and the value of those minutes are directly proportional to the quality of the energy we bring to the moment. We assume fully, the responsibility for our own greatness, For the price of just a few minutes a day, we stand to gain years of living. Let’s invest our energy on the actions that make us our Maximal Selves.

Think about how a crash diet with severe caloric restriction never seems to work, because all the extra weight returns as soon as one returns to ‘normal life’. Think about how becoming fiercely involved and dedicated towards something seems not to bring about success, but only burnout and exhaustion. Think about why intensity fails to deliver the desired results but how consistent, systematic and sustained effort crafts accomplishment and drives lasting success. It is like the parable of the tortoise and the hare that brings out the importance of gradual but steady, definite and consistent performance. That is what helps you become your Maximal Self.

Our lives are spent either in consuming or creating. When we engage in activities like writing, setting up a business or fleshing out a new idea, we are creating. We are engaged in activities that are rewarding for us and others around. When we watch TV, eat a packaged meal, surf the web or social media for celebrity gossip we are merely consuming. Societal conditioning and expectations have made consumers out of us when we were meant to be creative, inventive individuals. We are meant to be actively experiencing and producing and making; not just absorbing and consuming!

Numerous studies have demonstrated how creative pursuits are not only enjoyable and rewarding but also good for health and brain function. Researchers demonstrated how emotional writing helped improve disease parameters for HIV infected people and how expressive writing helped trauma survivors in psychiatric settings. While most people have experienced the uplifting and stress relieving properties of creative pursuits such as creating art, immersive musical experiences or drama, researchers have proved that engagement with the arts results in healthy outcomes. Visual arts therapy, music, expressive writing and movement based creative expression can in fact help improve health and slow down cognitive decline. Participating in creative activities during middle age and later in life lowers chances of developing mild cognitive impairment by as much as 71%.

Think of all the times when you felt compelled to say yes to something that you would rather have said no to: an extra meeting with a business associate, a favor for an acquaintance, a party, errands for a friend. These are things that you either don’t want to do or don’t really have time for. But how can you refuse? Can you refuse? How do you say no to someone without being rude, without feeling guilty, and without the other person feeling hurt or disappointed?

Saying no is difficult. When someone asks for help, it makes us feel valued and important. We want to say yes because we like to help, to please others. We also say yes when we ought to say no because it is like instant gratification; we say yes because it is what we want to do in that moment; perhaps without giving a thought to future cost or consequence. It feels good until we realize that by saying yes to one thing, we say no to something else. Researchers found that people who have difficulty saying no to others are more likely to be stressed and even depressed.

How old are we really? Scientists are now classifying a person’s true age based on how well they are in mind and body. This new way of determining age is broken into two categories: Diseasespan and Healthspan. Our healthspan is the number of years we live free from diseases that affect the quality of our lives. Diseasespan defines the number of years spent with a noticeable decline in health. Your chronological age maybe 55, but you could be in a healthspan more relative to that of a 40-year-old. Your biological age would then be 40. While certain illnesses are coded into our genetics, it’s our environment and lifestyle that determine whether or not those genes are activated. By making positive choices for living The Maximal Life, we have the power to activate disease-preventing genes and keep the disease-promoting genes lying dormant for longer. The Body is a Reporter, and when we listen carefully and respond appropriately to our body, we activate the Disease-Preventing genes, and we are rewarded with natural energy. And that energy is the antidote. Now is a great time to make small, consistent, positive changes that will support your health-span, and lower your biological age so you can live The Maximal Life.

We are taught while we are growing up that genes and genetics were something you are just born with and that we all just have to play the hand we were dealt. However, we now know that we CAN change our genetics. It is now known by the scientific community that while it’s true we don’t have control over the genes we inherited, we do have control over which genes are actively affecting our lives. Science has now proven that it is possible to get on top of and take control over how our inherent genes express themselves in our bodies.  

It’s our environment and habits that most influences our health and longevity. The food choices we make, the chemicals we are regularly exposed to, how active we choose to be, and even how we socialize, can alter our health at a genetic level. Our bodies are constantly communicating with us about what we need and how we feel. This report is not sourced from our inherent genetic makeup. Our body report is the most current news. It’s telling us what we need now to be healthy, comfortable, and energetic. And energy is the antidote to any challenge we face.

You obviously cannot change your family history. You can change your family’s future and change your life by making better choices, building better habits, and getting more positive input from your food, exercise, and interactions. Maximal Achievers are not just born, they are made when we commit ourselves to live The Maximal Life.

Ever noticed how many things we seem to do on autopilot? Chances are, you don’t recall those individual actions but you did them precisely and perfectly. You perform this ritual every day. You have perfected a series of steps and streamlined some of your most commonly performed actions; helping you perform that task efficiently, completely and effortlessly each time.

There are a lot of successful people who begin each day with certain rituals: Waking up early at a fixed time each day, taking time for some quiet contemplation, meditation, yoga, or any kind of exercise to energize and prepare for a demanding day ahead.    

Make small incremental changes to the steps of the rituals to make the entire process fast, efficient, effective and resource-conserving in terms of your time and effort. Fine tune or streamline a ritual to bring it more in line with your goals. Examine the sequence of steps in your ritual. Reordering those steps may help. Cutting out some steps or adding new ones could make the ritual more fulfilling and effective and less resource intensive. Consider changing the time of your rituals. choose the rituals that most effectively serve as a springboard for your success; that supercharge your day with positivity.

The link between protein intake and athletic performance is well established. For a long time, we've understood how elite athletes have higher protein needs, and researchers have found that they could need 50 to 100% more protein than those with sedentary lifestyles. It's been reported that the top level executives must care for their energy as much as NFL quarterbacks do. Every individual has their own needs, but I’d like you to consider how the demands of your day is similar to that of an elite athlete. How you require similar levels of stamina, strength, and support.

Your food choices have an immediate and direct impact on how your day unfolds! Leverage your food intake. Leverage what you now know about brain chemistry and boost your productivity. Identify and recognize your cravings for what they are. Give your body and your brain the boost it deserves. Shop smart. Make a list and stick to it. Minimize the amount of unhealthy stuff that gets into your shopping cart; and therefore my home and my body. Stock up with my healthy Positive Input protein shakes and keep the shaker bottles handy, ready for use at work and at home. Make your food choices count for YOU every day. Get into the habit of being full of energy, and being a dynamic leader for your Maximal Life.

Every day you accomplish great things that come in small packages. Small wins are the sparks that ignite the brightest fire! Perhaps you smoothed over some concern with a client that will result in a windfall of future referrals. You may have made a few phone calls that will get the ball rolling on an important project. Or maybe you adhered to your health goals today that created momentum to stick with it again tomorrow. Even our mistakes hold within them the Seeds of Success.

Celebrating our small wins reinforces the behaviors that lead to a willingness to repeat those same positive actions tomorrow. Tracking our progress and acknowledging our efforts, both great and small, triggers the release of dopamine by the reward center of our brain. As a result, we essentially develop an addiction to progress. Make time for a weekly scheduled appointment for you to intentionally review your week, and identify all your micro-wins. Feel the win to generate more confidence and enthusiasm for your progress.

As you celebrate your wins, both personal and professional, and the wins of your team, your business becomes more desirable to others. The Brain is a Bank. Perception becomes reality. Others will respond and want to participate in what you are successfully building long before it is ever built.